Archiving / Translating Glissant

Archiving / Translating Glissant
Date
Thu May 21st 2020, 12:00am
Event Sponsor
the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages; the France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies; the Taube Center for Jewish Studies; the Center for African Studies; and the Stanford Humanities Center
Location
Humanities Center

Postponed. Check back here and at DLCL.stanford.edu for the latest update.

This symposium will bring together a preeminent group of scholars from the humanities and the social sciences, writers, archivists, filmmakers, translators, psychiatrists, and “grands témoins” to discuss the legacies of the work of Caribbean thinker Édouard Glissant (1928-2011). 

Developing new directions and methodologies in the study of Glissant’s “œuvre archipel” lies at the heart of this symposium. We will take advantage of the breadth and strength of existing scholarly publications and the new possibilities of the recently BNF deposit of the Glissant archives to deepen Stanford’s already extensive collaboration with the BNF to explore new ways of looking at Glissant’s work from multidisciplinary perspectives in the age of the digital humanities. 

We will explore the interconnections between Glissant’s work and the construction of postcolonial identities in the Americas, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and more broadly in diasporic communities at large. We will examine the myriad ways of the timely relevance of re-investigating the glissantian cultural concepts, from rhizome to constellation, from antillanité to creolization, but also the controversies raised by his publications, political engagement and public interventions. We will, moreover, pay close attention to translation studies, to translating Glissant’s literature into foreign languages, beyond French and créole, and into the language of architecture. 

The symposium will take place in the Board Room all day, both days.The keynote address will be in Levinthal Hall at the end of the first day.