Walid Bouchakour: New approaches to literary engagements/ writing in times of war
February 07 | 14:30
DREAM Seminar: The script of revolt. Écritures, consignations, transcriptions dans des mondes en révolution
Session 3
New approaches to literary engagements/ writing in times of war. Beyond the Crisis : Aesthetics and Politics in the Algerian Novel of the 1990s
With: Walid Bouchakour, French Studies (Yale University)
Discussion: Elena Chiti (University of Stockholm)
Session in French
Inscription: dream@cmb.hu-berlin.de
Further information: http://dream.hypotheses.org/
Description of the seminar:
The semi-public seminar of the DREAM project “ The Script Of Revolt. Writings,Consignments, Transcriptions In Worlds In Revolution”focuses this year on the written word. We propose to open the discussion to a plural reflection on the place of texts and written traces and how they accompany the revolutionary moments in the Mediterranean Arab world from the second half of the 20th century.
This exploration will focus on gestures that have a place in the study of collective revolutionary journeys: those that propose to leave traces, whether they are tiny and ephemeral or constitute sums, testimonies, resources.
The seminar is oriented towards archives, libraries and spaces of knowledge, it questions the place of literature and commitment, and it tries to draw a line of reflection between the practices of writing and the fields of revolt. In a way, this semester we will try to go beyond the opposition between letter and practice to understand how they meet at the heart of action.
Thus, it is a form of script of the revolt that we will try to find together; that is to say, both a thread of writing that tells and a meticulous recording that makes traces. We will also walk through the different media of writing, from walls to computer screens, from paper to mobile phones, from newspapers to materials that can be found in prison cells. The written word is also the place where relationships between powers and societies develop, forms of policing, as well as forms of subversion.
If “graphic delinquency” (Philippe Artières) is a modern invention, it opens up a field of confrontation that is constantly being renewed through all these media. They also say something about our work as researchers, in contact with traces. We propose here to turn away from words and their meanings to understand how they come to our attention, and the battle they allow us to witness.
Contact
Dorothee Mertz
mertz ( at ) cmb.hu-berlin.de