__________________________________________________
Conference Announcement Theme: Margins, Marginalization and the Discourse of Marginality Type: International Conference Institution: Faculty of Letters, Vasile Alecsandri University of Bacău Location: Bacău (Romania) Date: 10.–11.5.2012 __________________________________________________ Margin(s) of society, marginalization as a social process, or global marginalization (brought about by European colonization, or/and as well as by localized hegemonic systems), exclusion-inclusion, centre-periphery, marginal experience, new ‘Othering’, have increasingly gained importance in cultural studies and discourse analyses. The recent growing interest in marginal cultures brings forth, besides issues such as culture – power – knowledge, (Michel Foucault), “principles and practices of identity and identification … access and acceptance …and group ideologies” (van Dijk 2000:160), aspects of marginality, referring to the ways in which not only cultures but also “[d]isciplines and discourses exclude and repress certain groups and terms in the construction of dominant and hegemonic patterns.” (Osborne 2002: 176). Within such a frame, the discourse about marginality (involving new topographies) and of marginality (referring to textual and discursive constructs and meanings, dominant readings, new ways of thinking about the social relations, such as feminism, for example) needs to be reconsidered. The conference seeks to explore the definition of margins and marginalization, as well as the assumptions about the center/margin power structure, as analyzing the phenomenon of marginalization is not only a survey of a unit of society (the margin) but also an examination of the relationship between textual representation and claims to power. The conference focuses on how such concepts, terms and social processes are put into discourse, on the diverse ways of expressing the state of being marginalized, on the marginality of textual and discursive spaces (such as their silences, subversions, evasions, or resistances), on the plight, place, and role of marginal cultures and identities. It also focuses on how the marginal state is constructed, as well as on the deconstruction of the binary opposition (center – margin) which is seen as a product of cultural negotiations. Sections: - Cultural Studies - Social Sciences - Linguistics - Literature - Semiotics - Gender Studies - Anthropology - Translation Studies Contact: Elena Bonta Faculty of Letters Vasile Alecsandri University of Bacău 8 Spiru Haret Street Bacău Romania Tel/Fax: +40 234 588884 Email: [email protected] Web: http://culturalspacesub.blogspot.com __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org __________________________________________________
