Unwriting

Welcome to the international and interdisciplinary symposium on unwriting!

The term “unwriting” that guides the theme of this symposium is meant to express philosophical and literary strategies, in the post-WWII period up until today (and possibly further), that attempt to escape totalizing tendencies of thinking and writing. The symposium aims to explore unwriting as a way of resisting to inscribe the world in a self-sufficient system of thought or a method of writing that determines the world, “fixing it in a phrase”. Thus, “unwriting” is not to be conceived as a (pre)fixed concept with a determined meaning, but neither as a mere writing of erasure where “un” is a negation in undoing. Instead of these modes of conceptualizations that still rely on the object of their resistance, unwriting could offer a different approach by means of breaking, interrupting, fragmenting or in other ways evading traditions and premises of literary and philosophical forms of thinking and writing.

The symposium gathers scholars from different disciplines and backgrounds and offers a space for dialogue, in an effort to understand various literary, philosophical, and artistic practices in their attempt to evade totalitarian structures and totalizing thought.

Speakers:

• Aïcha Liviana Messina (Diego Portales University, and The European Graduate School)
• Caetano W. Galindo (Federal University of Paraná)
• Hedvig Härnsten (Stockholm University)
• Irina Sandomirskaja (Södertörn University)
• Karl Clemens Härle (University of Siena)
• Karolina Enquist Källgren (Stockholm University)
• Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback (Södertörn University)
• Mikhail Iampolski (New York University)
• Peter Trawny (University of Wuppertal)
• Ramona Rat (Södertörn University)
• Tora Lane (Stockholm University, and Södertörn University)

Link to the Symposium Programme HERE pdf, 224.6 kB, opens in new window.

The symposium is organized with the generous support of the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES), and it is connected to the research project “Writing and Thinking at the Margins: A Philosophical Strategy to Resist Totalitarianism in Post-War Eastern Europe” (Project Leader: Tora Lane) funded by the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies.