Conference: The Pain of Words: Narratives of Suffering in Slavic Cultures (May 9-11, 2008, Princeton)

[Elena Gapova]

Conference: The Pain of Words: Narratives of Suffering in Slavic Cultures
(May 9-11, 2007, Princeton)
Call for Conference Papers
THE PAIN OF WORDS:

Narratives of Suffering in Slavic Cultures

Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures

Princeton University

May 9-11, 2008


Recent studies of emotions have pointed to a particular role of pain in
shaping identities and narratives. Regardless of their disciplinary
affiliations, scholars seem to agree that verbal expressions of pain first
of all draw attention to the suffering individual instead of describing the
actual experience of pain. Narratives of suffering provide the individual
with a powerful symbolic presence. They create emotionally charged
communities. Such narratives also lay the foundation for larger social,
political or moral claims.

This link between pain, representation, and subjectivity is well documented
in Slavic cultures, where vivid depictions of suffering saturate popular and
elite cultures alike.  As the young Mayakovski put it, "I am with pain,
everywhere." However, this conference wants to move beyond the documenting
of omnipresence of pain in Slavic cultures. Instead, we want to explore how
social, linguistic, aesthetic, moral, gender, etc. conventions determine
specific contents of pain in different historical periods and different
geographical locations. What are the symbolic contexts in which experiences
of pain are recognized? To what extent do available cultural practices
constrain or encourage certain narrative versions of pain? What gets lost in
the process of translating traumatic experience into narratives of
suffering? How is the phenomenon of pain used to galvanize individual and
group identities, to justify social values, to motivate artistic projects
or, in some cases, to undermine (or generate) political movements? In short,
what are those discourses through which Slavic cultures acquire and express
their concepts of pain?

We seek to address these problems by bringing together an interdisciplinary
and international group of people interested in exploring the value of pain
in such diverse fields as history, literature, film, music, performing arts,
everyday life, religion, ideology, politics, law, psychology, and history of
medicine. We invite papers to reflect upon the diverse vocabulary of
expressions of pain that have been constructed across Slavic space and time.
We are also interested in comparative studies that could place Slavic
narratives of suffering in larger cultural, historical, or geographical
contexts.

We especially encourage submissions that approach concrete textual or
ethnographic materials in a theoretically informed way, without reiterating
the alleged masochistic fascination of Slavic cultures with pain and
suffering.

Please send your abstract (300 words) and CV to <oushakin at princeton.edu> by
February 1, 2008.

We might be able to offer a limited number of travel subsidies for several
foreign presenters.
Finalists will be contacted in the middle of February, 2008.



Program committee:



Serguei Oushakine (Princeton), Devin Fore (Princeton), Petre Petrov
(Princeton),

Alexander Etkind (Cambridge/Princeton), Nancy Ries (Institute for Advanced
Study).

http://slavic.princeton.edu/events/calendar/detail.php?ID=1628

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