"Trajectories of the Self"

Language-Communication-Culture Conference

Évora, Portugal, Nov 27-30, 2002

Organisers: Ana Clara Birrento acbirrento

Margarida Morgado morgadofrazao

"Writing the self" has become a wide area of research from multiple
research positions. The self as object of inquiry is at the heart of many
identity projects and feminist approaches as well as of discussions of
postmodern conditions of living.
The self as ontological being and subject of experience, problems of
referentiality and identity formation are important aspects of discussion
about writing the self that we would like to see articulated with the self
as cultural and linguistic assumption and as matter of interpretation based
on cultural codes, institutional and material formations, following lines
opened by Elspeth Probyn in her Sexing the Self (1993, p. 4): "The
possibility of the self rests within a filigree of institutional, material,
discursive lines that either erase or can be used to enable spaces in which
"we" can be differently spoken".

We welcome 20-minute papers dealing with some of the questions that are
listed below:

- How do writings of the self put the self to work?

- How do narratives of the self inscribe the subject in language, in
imagination, in society?

- How do narratives of the self rethink identity, subjectivity and the body?

- What do projects of writing (or rewriting) the self include, reject,
repudiate, and why? What is brought to the surface and into visibility and
what remains hidden?

- How do autobiographies and other writings of the self dispute and
negotiate boundaries and barriers of social formations?

- How do images of the self and the self as an image comment on the
conjuncture of discourses and everyday commonplaces (Probyn)?

Deadline for 150-word abstracts: June 30, 2002