Literature and Marginality:

Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 6:07 PM
Indira Gandhi  National Open University (IGNOU)
School of Humanities                                             New Delhi
International Conference
Comparative Perspectives in African American Australian and Indian Dalit Literature
February, 20-22, 2013
CONCEPT NOTE
‘Marginality’ is generally employed to interpret and analyse socio-cultural, political and economic spheres, where disadvantaged people struggle to gain access to resources, and equal participation in social life. The superstructures of race in Africa, Australia, USA and caste in India inform, deform, and complicate the identities of the marginalized along lines of gender, class, and family structure. In the modern day debate, various facets of marginality have been discussed in scholarly circles in almost every disciplinary area including literature, history, sociology, and political science with implications for issues as diverse as justice, gender, equality and inequality. This academic exercise which engage experts from National and International arena will explore the convergences in imagination and expressions of writers like Ngugi and Achebe, Kim Scott and Alexis Wright and then Valmiki and Gaikwad.

Over the years, the traditional assumptions of disciplines have been challenged and scholars have also explored the role of the “canon” and debated on what the so called “great” (canonical) texts may be in their respective disciplines, and the more profound grounds of their canonicity. There is a great academic need to explore these comparative perspectives in African American and Australian, Indian Dalit Literature. The advent of literary and cultural theories in the literary field has brought major changes in the way of reading, interpreting and understanding literature and culture. This has empowered, in a significant way, marginalized discourses which often remained unnoticed by the hegemonic culture. This has constantly been argued that a comprehensive literary study of marginality and its epistemic role is necessary and would contribute to a better understanding of how humanistic knowledge has been created, structured and transmitted.

The proposed bilingual (Hindi and English) conference is to contextualize marginality in an Inter-disciplinary framework with reference to past and with its possible effects on life in future and also provide a comparative platform of literary study between Dalit, African, Australian and American discourses. Although the chief concern will be to review literature on marginality and figure out the points of coming together and departure in terms of marginalized writings yet scholarly contributions from every domain are also invited so that the inter-disciplinary or multi-disciplinary approaches can authenticate the main theme. The innovative, exciting, and intellectual discussion by the scholars of all domains will also help in promoting a high order research in this area.

The broad areas to be covered by the Seminar include: 


Subaltern Consciousness in African Australian American and Dalit Writings.
Parallelism and Ambivalences  in literature of the ‘margins’
‘Art’ and ‘Aesthetics’ of African Australian American and Dalit Writings
Literature of Marginality:  African American Australian and Dalit Literature.
Art, literature and films as modes of expression and Resistance
Issues of  language, form and genre
Nation and its Others
Autobiographies as layers of Identity and Resistance.
Representation of women, caste and Race.
Dynamics of Social exclusion - Issues, Trends and Prospects
The Subaltern Consciousness and the associated challenges
Politics of Empowerment and Subaltern issues.

Any other topic(s) relevant to the theme of the Conference is/are welcomed.