Re-/Un-working Tragedy: Perspectives from the Global South
6-7 December 2019
SG1/2, CRASSH, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT
Details of the programme are here: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/28574
Link to register is here: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/28574
Summary
Building on ideas explored in the Re- Interdisciplinary Network’s CRASSH events, the conference aims to examine ideas of repetition within canonical traditions of tragedy from the perspective of the Global South, in the process raising questions about the problems of those categories as they are changing. We want to scrutinize the literary, political, and philosophical relevance of re-/un-working tragedy in cross-cultural contexts. Taking up the concept of ‘tragedy’ in a world shaken by global conflicts, deterritorialization, and migration crises, the conference asks:
- How do people in various zones of crisis embrace, interpret and adapt canonical traditions of tragedy to make sense of their suffering and express their resistance?
- How do authors, playwrights, performers, philosophers, and critics respond to the questions raised by the reworking of tragedies?
- How does the reworking of tragedies in the Global South transform the idea of the canon and/or decolonise the literary curricula?
We often employ the prefix ‘re-’, as in ‘re-working’, ‘re-writing’, ‘re-thinking’, ‘re-imagining’, ‘re-appropriating’, ‘re-presenting’ as if to situate the modern work in a historical line, or dialectical movement, of repetitions. The creation of the new cannot but come with reference to the prior. But how does recognisable repetition operate as a unique kind of site for invention, and for speech? Besides, how might we rethink the tragic canon as a destabilizing gesture – an un-working, rather than re-working – through perspectives from the Global South? In reference to ‘unworking’, or désoevrement as a concept that interrupts, suspends, and counteracts the work in the moment of its unfolding, the conference will look for ways to put the authoritative position of the ‘original work’ at stake. Unworking this notion of ‘the original’ reveals the work of tragedy as that which opens itself to reinvention and becomes self-consciously meaningful in the moment of its re-presentation.
The conference will bring together artists and authors who adapt classical tragedies together with academics from various disciplines. The programme will comprise roundtable discussions, panels and creative workshops.