Symposium: Experimental, exophonic, ecstatic: performative writing & the expanded page

Stemming from the project “Mapping performative writing and the page as an expanded field (1966- the present): experimental, exophonic and ecstatic literatures in transcultural Anglophone spheres”, this conference will focus on performative writing.

We understand this to be writing wherein the materiality of a text and the act of writing in itself are strategic, creative-critical devices that fuse form and content. Performative writing is an urgent theme given its enactment of self and/as language. This can broaden our understanding of what literature is or can be on and beyond the page. Perhaps more importantly, we find it to be uniquely capable of reflecting a rich, complex world. 

In her essential text “Performing Writing” (1998), Della Pollock identified one of performative writing’s core characteristics as its intersubjective ability to “bring the reader into contact with ‘other-worlds’ [...]: worlds of memory, pleasure, sensation, imagination, affect and in-sight.” (80).

The syposium is on Thursday November 13th and Friday November 14th at Usquare Brussels. Keynotes by Peggy Phelan (Standford, US) and Nizal Shaked (California State University Long Beach, US) are already confirmed.