Presenting at Literature and Censorship AAL Conference next week

Literature and Censorship is the theme of this year's annual Australasian Association for Literature conference to be held at the National Library in Canberra next week. I am giving a presentation on  fugal modality and the limits of expression:  censorship, trauma and self-exile in ‘fugue’ writers from Joyce to exiled journalists.

Abstract:

To what extent can we be said to be ‘free’ to write? To what extent is self-expression and ‘freedom of expression’ ever fully possible, if as many theorists from Althusser (2003) to Holquist (1994) have alluded to, we are condemned to use a language that is social and patrolled and thereby censored? Does this then constitute an impossible contradiction for artists, writers and journalists who seek to use language as freedom of expression and free speech to further the principles of democracy and humanity, and (self) knowledge? If a writer’s work is censored and they go into self- exile, to what extent can they then be said to be responsible for their ‘censorship’? Is this what is implied by the poststructuralist stance (Holquist 1994)?  More pertinently, the author suggests, is the question of how does the experience beyond censorship, of self-exile, affect the exiled writer’s writing, in its form, content and effects. These are among the questions the author explores in this paper, re-positioning her (PhD, 2007) research into literary self-exiles and fugue writers, Joyce and Celan, in dialogue with biographical research into contemporary exiled writers including  journalists from Africa and South Africa whom the author has interviewed in Australia.

 Dr Ruth Skilbeck, is a Lecturer at the Journalism and Media Research Centre, in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, at the University of New South Wales.

Australasian Association for Literature Conference 2012

 HYPERLINK "http://www.aal.asn.au/conference/2012/index.shtml" http://www.aal.asn.au/conference/2012/index.shtml

Dates: 10-12 July 2012

Venue: University of New South Wales Canberra