[Bilimsel Haber] CFP: Left/Out: 'Texts' and their 'Ur-Texts' (France) (9/15/06; 3/18/07-3/19/07)

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

Call for Papers

"Left/Out: 'Texts' and their 'Ur-texts'"

International Conference

18 - 19 mars 2007

Université Nancy 2, France


More and more the public is being given access to material that was
never originally meant for its eyes. From film extras added to
collector’s edition DVDs to sensitive governmental files declassified
by laws like the Freedom of Information Act, this once-restricted
material has significantly contributed to our questioning not only the
process behind a “text’s” construction but also its universal claimof
being whole/complete/finished upon publication. For example, DVDs that
include special features which contain original material edited out of
final production challenge us to weigh our initial response to the
completed film or TV series against this unseen footage (itself edited)
which, if reinserted, potentially alters the text’s controlled message.
Films and DVDs are, of course, not the only “texts” affected by
deletions and post-production emendations such as these. Other potential
areas of study could include (but are not limited to):

• the genetic reading of a literary text’s manuscripts and or/variorum
edition
• the comparative analysis of a painting’s studies
• the parallel reading of a film’s or TV series’ dialogue with its
subtitles or its dubbing
• a comparative reading of an author’s bilingual editions
• a reconstructive examination of declassified information.

All are examples of how the study of discarded textual material
practiced on a pluridisciplanary level with interdisciplinary methods
promotes the establishment of a non-teleological grammar that not only
challenges existing practices of valuing product over process but
undermines all categorical distinctions between the two terms. In
other words, studying the fragments “left out” of a text, either
separately as texts in and of themselves or in relation to the larger
work from which they were discarded, would serve to demonstrate how the
process is the product. One hypothesis behind the reasons for these cuts
is that they are politically determined by “conservative” motives (in
the broader sense of the word: conserve, conservatism, conservation,
etc.) and that the lost material often contains the very seeds of the
larger text’s deconstruction, which justify their exclusion.

While research such as this already exists in each of the individual
fields mentioned, the colloquium proposes to address the phenomenon
collectively, examining how “left out” material in a variety of fields
and disciplines reshapes a final text, determines the nature of its
self- or state-imposed expurgation, and establishes a non-teleological
theory that values its process as product. What does the editing out or
re-insertion of “new” material into a “text” that has already become
fixed for many readers/viewers change in our analysis of it, indeed in
our analytical methods in general? Are there any consistent similarities
in the types of material that are cut, despite the genre? Can studying
the editorial process in various disciplines help us construct a
“theoretical model” of interdisciplinarity that studies not only the
links between disparate fields but also the researcher’s tools with
which to study them? While the immediate goal of the colloquium would be
to examine the gestalt of textual construction, its more extended goal
would be see if common ground can be found between the interdisciplinary
object and subject—between those of us who study a text using different
disciplines and those of us from different disciplines studying a
text—and how this may help us prepare for an academic future wherein
interdisciplinary theory and practice seem poised to become the standard
of scientific inquiry more than the exception.

Half-hour presentations can be written in English or in French. A
selection of extended presentations based on the conference proceedings
will be published in “Regards croisés sur le monde Anglophone,” by the
Presses Universitaires de Nancy. Please send your proposals (title and
500-word abstract) or completed papers by email attachment to John S.
Bak (john.bak at univ-nancy2.fr) before 15 September 2006.


Organizing committee:

John S. Bak
Nathalie Collé-Bak
Monica Girard
Rachel Hutchins-Viroux
David Ten-Eyck
Jeremy Tranmer




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