Otherness and the Arts
- Global Conference on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Otherness and
Alterity in Literature, Film and Culture
A Joint Venture between the University of Aarhus and Mary Immaculate College,
University of Limerick. August 8-9 2008
CFP deadline: May 15th 2008
Location: Aarhus University, Denmark.
“Nobody – that’s my name”
– Homer, The Odyssey, VIIII
The Delphic injunction to know thyself, to understand oneself as self, entails alienating selfreflection and the awareness that the limits of any entity, hence its individuation, are determined by
what lies outside these borders – otherness. But where is this division between the I and other
located? How is this schism constructed? Or can this schism even be discerned? Instead, the
injunction of the Arts articulates an inverse yet more immediate approach to the problem of knowing
thyself. It entails an understanding of oneself as other: the boundary between “I” and “that which I
am not,” necessary for our constitution as subjects, dissolves in our Homeric hero’s proclamation
“Nobody – that’s my name.”
Invited keynote speakers:
• Luce Irigaray (to be confirmed)
• Thomas Hylland Eriksen, University of Oslo
• Svend Erik Larsen, University of Aarhus
• Eugene O’Brien, University of Limerick
• Ann McCulloch, Deakin University
And Tabish Khair will be giving a reading
Procedure for submitting proposals for papers
The conference is open to scholars and students of all disciplines. Those wishing to participate in
the conference are invited to submit an abstract of no more than 300 words to
othernessconference@gmail.com by Thursday, 15 May, 2008. The convenors will let the
proponents know whether their proposals have been accepted no later than 15 June, 2008. Papers
may be given in English with citations in any language, and are limited to 20 minutes. Selected
papers will be eligible for publication in a peer reviewed academic journal, and possibly a hard copy
edited essay collection.
See our website at www.othernessandthearts.org for more information.
All questions regarding conference content (abstracts, presentations, speakers etc.) may be
directed to the convenors at othernessconference@gmail.com.
Conference Committee:
University of Aarhus
Susan Yi Sencindiver, Ph.D. scholar
Marie Lauritzen, Ph.D. scholar
Rebecca Parbo, Ph.D. scholar
Associate Professor Peter Mortensen
University of Limerick
Maria Beville, Ph.D. scholar
Dr. Maeve Tynan
We invite papers and speakers across a broad spectrum of interests which might
connect with the following ideas:
Otherness and fear are two concepts that offer an intriguing dynamic of cause and effect: the ‘otherness’
approached in the experience of fear almost acts as a mirror of both personal and public anxiety or terror
of the other. In consequence, representations of ‘otherness’ are all too often dark and fearful, dominated
by hesitation and repression. In much art and literature, shadows of the other abound, haunting the
disillusioned subject with reminders of a dark and unrepresentable object (‘absolute otherness’ or ‘the
real’) that is so intrinsic to subjectivity.
What specific role does the other play in the formation of normative/deviant subjectivity? As speaking
subjects constituted through processes of signification, the otherness of our subjectivity becomes most
profoundly known when the ineffable other of psychic disorder disrupts our sense of internal coherence
and linguistic transparency: as speaking subjects, we are thus faced with painful paradoxes of needing to,
but being incapable of, voicing the intense subjectivity inherent in experiences of inexpressible mental
suffering. Painfully located beyond the realm of signification, the otherness of pain and psychopathology
is characteristically circumnavigated as a consequence of sanity's supposed 'sameness' promoted by
Western ideals; however, it is always already resonating in the lacunae among articulations of the
wounded self.
Figures of otherness do not only form a part of our contemporary literature, art, and critical theory but also
of dominating Western political rhetoric. The ‘othering’ of vast numbers of the world’s population by
European colonial thought depended on the construction of a series of binary oppositions. Colonial
discourses conceived of the alterity of the non-European subject in terms of terror or deficiency, a figure
that provided the threat of both similarity and difference. The colonised land offered a consequence free
site for European transgression, an unleashing of an unfamiliar self/other from the bounds of civilisation, a
doorway into a heart of darkness. How can we ethically relate to, represent, and narrate the inaudible
voices of the subaltern, concrete marginalized others embedded in the materiality of everyday existence,
if the absolute other is inevitably translated into a relative or relational other within the economy of the
self-same? Similarly, when otherness is seen through a gendered lens, how is it possible to undermine
self-enclosed signifying systems that exclude feminine identity and disavow sexual difference? Can the
other be known without recourse to the self? Is it possible to distinguish other-than-self from the other
defined by and for itself, as well as otherness qua construct from otherness qua ontological category?
In our rapidly changing world, dominated by communication technology, we are ever faced with
encounters with ‘other’ cultures and arts. Nonetheless, we continue to erect and enforce borders and
boundaries between peoples and countries. As a natural course of conflict, this complicates relations to
and understandings of cultural others and otherness; thus, it compels exigent discussion. When the world
is simultaneously increasing and decreasing in time and space, creating a world increscently global yet
local, uniform yet diversified, which brings into relief the vexed politics of ‘othering’ and ‘saming’, how
does one navigate and negotiate cultural identity? In this context, how does the self and the same coexist
with the other in an at times estranged and estranging transcultural urban milieu?
It is precisely this variety of formulations, the polysemy of alterity, which this conference wishes to
examine from divergent disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. Its aim, therefore, is to convene on the
notion of Otherness as a site for critical, socio-political, cultural, and literary exploration.
Welcome topics include but are not limited to the following:
Otherness in Cultural Representation
Hybridity, Creolization, and the Global other
Memory, History, Trauma, and Otherness
Ethics, Responsibility, and the Other
Sexuality, Gender, the Body and the Other
M/other / Sm/other: Engendering Otherness
Ambivalence and Otherness: Mimicry & Menace
Absolute Otherness vs. Self-Same Other
Monstrosity, Spectrality and Terror of the Other
Uncanny or Abject Others; or The Familiar Other
The Sublime or the Unimaginable Other
Malignant Otherness: Madness/Sadness
Healing Otherness: Sanity & Suffering
Pathography: Voicing the Otherness of Pain