"Literatur gegen Unterdrückung"
Crossroads of Liberty. Asian, African and European Literature Towards Freedom and Oppression; ed. Adam Bednarczyk, Magdalena Kubarek, Magdalena Lewicka, Maciej Szatkowski
This volume is a selection of papers originally read in English at the fifth edition of the International Conference on “Orient in Literature – Literature of the Orient” (OLLO), which took place from 28 March to 29 March 2019 at the Faculty of Languages of the Nicolaus Copernicus University (NCU) in Torun.
The present volume consists of 20 articles that cover a wide range of perspectives and approaches. This book is alphabetically arranged1, not least because of the disparity of material and the depth of individual analyses. The majority of the contributions deal with contemporary literature written from the mid-19th century to the present by writers from different countries and regions of Africa (Egypt, Nigeria and Somalia) and, above all, Asia (Kuwait, Qatar, Iranian Azerbaijan, India, China and Japan). Only two articles explore ancient and early medieval texts (Iwona Milewska on stories in the Indian epic Mahābhārata and Arzu A. Sadykhova on Arabic poetry). Four articles focus on the perception and representation of “the Orient” through “Western” eyes; one of these studies (by Zofia Litwinowicz-Krutnik) is exclusively devoted to film material, while another article (by Maria Szafrańska-Chmielarz) takes also films into consideration. Rare, ephemeral exceptions notwithstanding, these contributions generally demonstrate the extent to which their sources reproduce the stereotypical, distorted images of “the Orient” as outlined in Edward Said’s seminal work and in more recent postcolonial studies on (Neo-)Orientalism, Exotism and/or (Ethno-Racial) Othering. However, it is noteworthy that even the wife of a French colonial servant in Morocco (see Małgorzata Sokołowicz’s article on the French painter and writer A.-R. de Lens), and even more so Polish travellers to the Orient (though Poland did not belong to the European colonial powers; see the article by Anna Kołos) adopted such a clichéd, one-sided, dichotomous worldview.
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Der Band enthält auch die auf Japan bezogenen Beiträge eines von der Japanologie der Goethe-Universität veranstalteten Panels zum Thema 'Freiheit und Unterdrückung in der japanischen Gegenwartsliteratur' - von Filippo Cervelli, Adam Greguš, Christian Chappelow und Lisette Gebhardt.
Titel der Beiträge:
- Filippo Cervelli: The Oppression of Democracy: Political (Mis)Representation and Community in Takahashi Gen’ichirō’s Writings
- Christian Chappelow: Henmi Yō’s Literary Approaches towards Death Sentence in Japan – Locating Oppression in Contemporary Japan
- Lisette Gebhardt: Thought Control and Totalitarian System in Recent Japanese Literature: Yoshimura Man’ichi, Tsushima Yūko and Kirino Natsuo
- Adam Greguš: When Bubblonia Bursts: Kirino Natsuo’s Politikon and its Subversive Utopia
Zitat aus dem Vorwort von Rita Badry:
"Supposedly, the four articles on recent Japanese literature in the aftermath of “3.11”, as the triple disaster of 11 March 2011 is often referred to, may best illustrate the previous remarks. Moreover, they might be most interesting and elucidating for a wider public, as they also form a larger unit among the articles related to other regions or countries, and draw a picture of Japan that contradicts the mainstream image. While Lisette Gebhardt (University of Frankfurt/Main) presents in her article, based on her keynote speech, an overview of the new revival of political literature exemplified by three authors and their novels, the other three articles (by Filippo Cervelli, Christian Chappelow, and Adam Greguš) concentrate on single authors and their literary output. All texts, fictional as well as non-fictional, depict a dark, dystopian future Japan. In their scathing critique of Japanese society the writers point, inter alia, to the revival of totalitarian, neo-fascist, and militarist tendencies in Japanese policies of the past decade; the inadequate representation of citizens; the manipulation of messages sent to the citizens which diverts their attention to minor problems of daily life and generates political apathy; and the death penalty as a manifestation of a mechanism of oppression upheld by the socio-political framework, lack of humanity, and enduring patriarchal gender relations."
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Die Konferenz in Torun behandelte die folgenden Aspekte des Themas Literatur gegen Unterdrückung:
The key-theme of the 5th edition of the conference is literature towards freedom and oppression that implies numerous perspectives in research on literary texts:
- represliterature as a laboratory of freedom and oppression
- literature as a release from…
- literature against totalitarianism
- rebellion, alienation and striving for freedom in literature
- prison literature
- an image of an oppressed man
- motive of freedom and oppression
- relations between freedom and the existential philosophy
- creative freedom and the right of experiment with the word
- author’s autonomy
- political and ideological independence of the creator and the characters he drew
- symbols of the struggle for freedom
- definitions, topoi and ranges of freedom and oppression
https://ollo2019en.wordpress.com/call-for-papers/