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From: "Susan Bainbrigge" <[log in to unmask]>
FORUM FOR MODERN LANGUAGE STUDIES
Forthcoming Special Issue on ‘Autothanatographies’
Call for articles
Contributions are sought from scholars working in French, German,
Russian, Spanish, Italian and English Studies for a Special Issue on
the theory and practice of ‘autothanatography’. Within the context of
the socio-cultural treatment of death (cf for example Baudrillard) the
volume will focus more particularly on the ways in which death informs
autobiographical practice. In this last regard, a recent comment by
Jeremy Tambling in his study, Becoming Posthumous: Life and Death in
Literary and Cultural Studies (Edinburgh UP, 2001) suggests that death,
rather than life, informs our understanding and exploration of self in
the present: ‘[i]t might be better if we started with the assumption of
death working through the living, and not dissociated, therefore, from
our sense of the present’ (p. ix). This Special Issue will thus explore
the intersections between autobiography and death bringing together a
wide-range of authors and texts from different periods and cultures and
in the context of changing critical, literary and cultural
perspectives.
Contributors may seek to address one or more of the following issues,
though the list is not exhaustive: the autobiographical text as
‘testament’; autobiography as defence against death; confrontations
with mortality; negotiations of trauma (personal and/or collective);
theorists on ‘autothanatography’ (eg. Derrida, Marin, Blanchot); death
and the feminine (cf. E. Bronfen, Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity
and the Aesthetic); writing endings; alterity in autobiography (death
and the Other as unknowns); existentialist autobiography; the Death
drive in autobiography. It is hoped that a variety of critical
approaches will be represented.
Prospective contributors are invited to send a 300-word abstract as
soon as possible and, at the latest, by 31 January 2004. Articles
chosen for further consideration must be submitted in final form by the
strict deadline of 31 October 2004. Articles should be around 5 000
words long, including endnotes, and must conform to the FMLS
stylesheet, which is available on request.
Informal enquiries are most welcome. Communications via e-mail
are preferred, to [log in to unmask]; or write to Dr Susan
Bainbrigge, French, University of Edinburgh, 60 George Square,
Edinburgh EH8 9JU, U.K. Articles which do not find a place in the
Special Issue will be considered for inclusion in general issues of
FMLS.
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