A C O N F E R E N C E O N

Caryl Phillips

Caryl Phillips

INHABITING THE VOIDS OF HISTORY

23-24 MAIUniversité de Caen Normandie CAMPUS 1MRSH (Maison de la recherche et des Sciences Humaines) Amphithéâtre de la MRSH

Often labelled a neo-slave narrative, Crossing the River is em-blematic of an interest in slave history and slave narratives which has manifested itself in recent decades. As such it invites a reflexion on the nature and workings of collective memory, and in particular the socio-historical workings of memory for-mation – which includes forced obliterations – as well as the need for mnemonic vigilance.

The conference proposes to look at the work of Phillips beyond the scope of traditional post-colonial themes such as identity, belonging, unbelonging, to envisage the formal cha-racteristics of Caryl Phillips’s novels, in particular those juxta-posing various narratives, such as Crossing the River, Higher Ground, Foreigners: Three English Lives, as well as his latest novel The Lost Child. These multi-entry novels, which span various locations and historical contexts, set the reader off on different narrative paths whilst inviting him/her to reflect on the themes which reverberate at the heart of the novels though reiterations and reworkings of common patterns.

Built around ellipses and narrative voids they partake of an aesthetic which summons the reader into mnemonic vigilance.Although Caryl Phillips reworks the problematics of precarious narratives and subaltern histories, he refrains from substituting a fixed narrative for a void and chooses to generate pathways towards elusive trajectories which the reader has to follow.

Rather than interrogate forms in a post-modern way his aesthetics reconnects with some aspects of the agenda of the great modernists. In terms of literary history, this distinctive quality of his work has set him apart, on the edge of postcolo-nial literature as it were, but in dialogue with literature at large.

A C O N F E R E N C E O N

Caryl PhillipsINHABITING THE VOIDS

OF HISTORY UNICAEN | CAEN campus 1

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restaurant universitaire A SUAPS

crèche

MLI

restaurant universitaire B

pavillon international

cité universitaire LES TILLEULS

cité universitaire LES PEUPLIERS

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sortie 5 Côte de Nacrepériphér ique nord

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Maison des langues et de l’international

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Arrêt Universitébus 2/4/5/18/19/61

Arrêt CROUS-SUAPS

AGORAEépicerie solidaire

tram avers campus 3

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AmphiMRSH

Maison de la rechercheen sciences humaines

POUR ACCÉDER À LA MRSH :

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE :Françoise KRAL (Université de Caen) Anne-Laure TISSUT (Université de Rouen)

11.00-12.30 panel 6CHAIR : Catherine LANONEEri KOBAYASHI (Seiki University, Japan)‘Literary intertexts and its effects in Caryl Phillips’s The Lost Child’Arijana Luburic CVIJANOVIC (University of Novi Sad) ‘From Crossing the River to The Lost Child : A ge-nealogy of liminal space’

12.30-14.30 Lunch

14.30-16.30 panel 7CHAIR : Françoise KRALHajer ELAREM (Higher Institute of Applied Lan-guages of Moknine) ‘Places of memory and cultural trauma in the work of Caryl Phillips’Maxim FARRAR (Leeds Beckett University) ‘Radical dislocation, multiple identifications, and the subtle politics of hope in Caryl Phillips’s novels’Bénédicte LEDENT (University of Liège) ‘Caryl Phillips’s Crossing the River and the Chorus of Archival Memory’

16.30-17.00 Coffee break

17.00-17.45 Conclusion with Caryl PHILLIPSCHAIR : Kathie BIRAT

INHABITING THE VOIDS OF HISTORYA Conference on Caryl Phillips

TUESDAY 23 MAY MRSH amphithéâtre - campus 1

9.00-9.15 Registration 9.15-9.30 Opening addressFrançoise KRAL : Inhabiting the Voids of History

9.30-10.45 panel 1 CHAIR : Kathie BIRATFrançoise CLARY (University of Rouen) ‘Extending intersectionality theory to the perception of blackness and otherness, or how to reconnect to the past by bridging Colour me English and Crossing the River’ Justine BAILLIE (University of Greenwich, London) ‘There are no paths in water’ : History, Memory and Narrative Form in Crossing the River and Foreigners : Three English Lives’

10.45-11.00 Coffee break

11.00-12.30 panel 2 CHAIR : Françoise CLARYCatherine LANONE (University Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle)‘A bunch of daffodils : (un)belonging in Caryl Phillips’s Crossing the River’ Heliane VENTURA (University of Toulouse)‘The Final passage in Crossing the River’

12.30-13.30 Lunch

13.30-14.30 Caryl PHILLIPS in conversation with John McLEOD

14.30-15.00 Coffee break

15.00-16.30 panel 3CHAIR : Bénédicte LEDENTBruna MANCINI (Università della Calabria)‘Spaces of memory and identity in Crossing the River and A Distant Shore’Kathie BIRAT (University of Lorraine) ‘Historicising emotion in the fiction of Caryl Phillips’

16.30-17.45 PANEL 4CHAIR : Bruna MANCINIGiulia MASCOLI (University of Liège) ‘Haunting memories Voiced through Mnemonic Prose in Caryl Phillips’s The Nature of Blood’Maria FESTA (University of Torino) ‘The nature of blood and fragmented history’

18.00-19.00 Drinks party

WEDNESDAY 24 MAY MRSH amphithéâtre - campus 1

9.00-10.30 panel 5CHAIR : Anne-laure TISSUTJosiane RANGUIN (University Paris XIII, Sorbonne Paris Cité) ‘Happiness is not always fun’ in Caryl Phillips’s ‘ ‘IV : Somewhere in England’ in Crossing the River (1993), Somewhere in England (2016) and Ali : Fear Eats the Soul by Rainer Fassbinder (1974)

Chloé DEBART (University of Caen) ‘Voice(s) and silence(s) : Caryl Phillips’s reshaping of the slave narrative’

10.30-11 Coffee break