[Discussion] UPDATE: The Avant-Garde and the Margin (4/20/05; MSA, 11/3/05-11/6/05)

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

Modernist Studies Association 7th Annual Conference
November 3-6, 2005
Chicago, Illinois

Proposed panel: THE AVANT-GARDE AND THE MARGIN

(deadline for proposals: April 20, 2005)

It may be argued that the redefinition of the relations between the
center and the margin was at the heart of the modernist project; nowhere
was it more prominent than in the avant-garde movements. The geographic
effect of this principle was an emphatic internationalization of the
avant-garde activity. The multifaceted relations established between the
avant-garde "centers" (Paris, Berlin, Zurich, Moscow, Rome, and New
York) and their counterparts in the cultural "periphery" (Buenos Aires,
Athens, Bucharest, Cairo, Tokyo, Belgrade, and others) engendered unique
artistic and literary dialogues. The "periphery" groupings most often
transformed the avant-garde project in an attempt to express the
specificities of their own cultural and politico-historical positions;
in turn, they "exported" their version of a movement back to the center,
thereby initiating a complex process of artistic reflecting and
refracting. Some movements appeared simultaneously in cultural centers
and at seemingly marginal locations. Yet others originated in the
"periphery" and metamorphized in their search for a "center." A large
number of the avant-garde movements, however, remained fixed in the
cultural suburbia, energized precisely by this minority position. The
process of re-discovery of such movements is still slow.

We invite the proposals that address the interaction between the
"center" and the "margin," either through a specific exploration of a
movement (futurism, dadaism, surrealism, expressionism, etc.) in a
culturallyperipheral setting and its relation to a "center" or through a
conceptualization of the general dynamic of the margin and the center in
the avant-garde. While the papers exploring the reciprocity of
influences or arguing for the power of the "cultural suburbia" are
particularly welcome, we would also like to encourage the submission of
the papers that reinterpret the known predicaments of the so-called
"small literatures"--belatedness, the complex of mirroring, anxiety of
authenticity, political misappropriations, and so forth. This panel
ultimately aims to incite a wide discussion about the dynamics of the
center and the margin in the avant-garde.

Please send a 300-word abstract together with a brief CV to Sanja
Bahun-Radunovic and Marinos Pourgouris at bahunic@rci.rutgers.edu. The
deadline for submissions is April, 20, 2005.



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