[spectre] CFP: Borders and Border Transgressions in (Post-)Communist Europe (Oslo, 1-2 Jun 23)

[Andreas Broeckmann]

From: Vera Faber
Date: Nov 21, 2022
Subject: CFP: Borders and Border Transgressions in (Post-)Communist 
Europe (Oslo, 1-2 Jun 23)

Department of Literature, Area Studies, and European Languages, 
University of Oslo, Norway, Jun 1–02, 2023
Deadline: Dec 23, 2022

Trauma, Memory, and Counter-Culture: Borders and Border Transgressions 
in (Post-)Communist Europe.

Borders are central to our understanding of societies that are either 
affected by unfreedom of speech or traumatized by repressions and war 
experience. In the context of the Eastern Bloc, for example, their 
effects shaped several levels of society and culture and led, among 
other things, to individuals and groups not being able to act or 
articulate themselves freely. Given that marginalized groups, as Hannah 
Arendt has pointed out, are often unable to actively participate in 
social and political life, they remain invisible also in public space 
and public discourse. In response to imposed constraints, subversive 
efforts to overcome, destabilize, and problematize them often go hand in 
hand – thus turning members of the respective societies into border 
crossers. With the collapse of the Communist Bloc, many borders may have 
fallen in territorial and consequently also in symbolical terms. Yet, 
they have remained highly topical on the levels of memory and trauma, as 
they are an integral part of coming to terms with experiences of terror, 
repression, or war.

In the more than 30 years since the disintegration of the Communist 
Bloc, culture and society in its respective parts have generated 
widespread interest in various fields of the humanities. The 
multi­layered, often overlapping traumas resulting from as well as the 
memories of the communist era (e.g. Hundorova; Jones; Kratochvil; 
Lachmann; Sandomirskaja; Sorvari, etc.) and the Yugoslav wars (e.g. 
Beronja/Vervaet; Jelača; Lugarić/Car, etc.) have therefore become just 
as much the subject of research as counter practices which had formed in 
response to unfreedom of speech, censorship, and the doctrine of 
Socialist Realism (e.g. Giustino et al.; Kliems; Komaromi; Lipovetsky et 
al.; Zitzewitz, etc.). These studies do not only contribute to a better 
understanding of culture and society under repressive conditions; they 
also participate in bringing out of a notorious invisibility those 
spheres that were particularly affected by the impossibility of 
individual articulation and the lack of social participation.

This two-day conference at the University of Oslo aims to highlight the 
specific relevance of Border Studies for better understanding 
literature, arts, and everyday culture in repressive, transformative and 
post-war societies. It explores borders and border transgressions in the 
context of trauma, memory, and counter-culture (in the sense of 
unofficial culture) and thus on the premise of both simultaneity and 
posteriority. In this regard, both state-imposed limitations which are 
consciously drawn and borders triggered in retrospect or by the 
subconscious are of interest. Unfreedom of speech, invisibility and 
stigmatization are just a few examples of state-imposed, “simultaneous” 
constraints which, in turn, on the unconscious level show equivalents in 
the incapability of expression, in blind spots, and in psychological 
repression.

We want to look at boundaries primarily, but not only, in terms of 
border aesthetics (Gómez-Peña; Rosello; Schimanski; Wolfe) and are 
especially interested in borders in the fields of literature, arts, and 
everyday culture in their sensual, their aesthetic, and their social 
dimensions. Borders are therefore conceived beyond their geographical 
dimension, so that, for example, symbolical, cultural, societal, 
epistemological, generational, semiotic, lingual, temporal, spatial, or 
medial dimensions are of particular interest.

Given our interdisciplinary scope, we are interested in paper proposals 
from literature studies, the arts and cultural studies, as well as from 
related fields. We particularly welcome case studies on often still 
understudied areas of Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe, as for 
example Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and the Baltic States.

Paper proposals can, for example, address the following thematic fields:

- How are borders negotiated and how are border crossings produced, 
represented, or perceived in literary, visual and everyday cultures that 
arise from a context of repression, unfreedom of speech, and war experience?
- Which approaches and methods towards border and border transgression 
can be productively employed with regard to repressive and 
transformative societies and the relating traumata, memories, and 
counter-culture and implemented in the sense of an interdisciplinary 
entanglement?
- Which divergences, analogies and particularities can be identified in 
terms of border crossings in literary, visual and everyday cultures in 
terms of production, materiality, representation, and perception?
- Case studies dealing with borders and border crossings from the 
regions in question.

The conference will be framed by a keynote on “Border Semiotics and 
Empire” by Susanne Frank (Eastern Slavic Literature and Culture, Berlin) 
and a public lecture on “The Weapons of the Weak. Silent Protest in 
Russia” by Vera Dubina (Public History, Berlin).

The conference language is English. We ask participants to cover their 
travel costs. In case of successful additional funding, parts may be 
reimbursed. If you wish to apply for reimbursement, please indicate this 
in your proposal.

Please submit your abstract (300 words) including paper title, your 
name, your affiliation, and a short CV (up to 200 words) by December 23, 
2022 to Vera Faber: vera.faber at ilos.uio.no.

   *

The conference builds on the MSCA-project “Soviet Ellipses. Omissions as 
Techniques of Border Trans­gression in Photography, Literature, and 
Everyday Life” (SOVEL, No 101024131) at UiO.

Organizers
Vera Faber, “Soviet Ellipses” at UiO;
in cooperation with Johan Schimanski, Border Readings research group at UiO.

Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: Borders and Border Transgressions in (Post-)Communist Europe (Oslo, 
1-2 Jun 23). In: ArtHist.net, Nov 21, 2022. 
<https://arthist.net/archive/37982>.

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