Call for Papers | Graduate Conference: Margins in Latin American Studies

Please find OLAGN Call for Papers pdf version here. 

“To be in the margin is to be part of the whole but outside the main body”, writes bell hooks, describing it as a “site of radical possibility, a space of resistance” (1995). Margins usually represent a border, the outline of a figure, but at the same time they can be found in the interstices, as third spaces (Bhabha, 2002) or entrelugares (Santiago, 2000), liminal zones, conflictive as well as productive, in which strict binaries yield their specificity or concepts such as unity and purity lose their hegemonic weight. Margins can be imaginary sometimes, others they can be terribly real; they may appear symbolically, or in the form of extreme violence, when the very existence of the limit overflows the boundaries in which it was contained. This Conference aims to examine the concept of Margins in contemporary Latin American Studies, from moving thresholds to hybrid frontiers, which are no longer barriers but passages where diverse traditions may converge.

Margins are shifting constantly, from territories being transformed by extractivism or urban expansion, to innovative ways of thinking and visualizing the limits of our imagination and existence through technology. On the one hand, this Conference seeks to explore this moving landscape in Latin America, charting it through the confluence of perspectives and approaches of graduate students from different universities, disciplines, and backgrounds. On the other hand, we aim to discuss possible resignifications of margins in and from Latin American studies, addressing it not so much as a locus of domestication, but as a space of friction, productive conflict, contamination, questioning, and possibilities.

We will approach this concept from a variety of angles and disciplines through, but not limited to, the social sciences, arts and humanities, considering problems such as centre/periphery relations, issues of marginality and dispossession, and cultural and political standpoints. We see these problems not only as unidirectional theoretical or artistic translations and reappropriations, but also as cannibalized, disfigured and transmuted strategies. We welcome different approaches in terms of positionality or intersectionality, as well as methodological or epistemic concerns. The proposals are encouraged—although not exclusively—to consider their contributions in relation to these four interconnected problems:

·     Inhabiting the margins: politics and mobility

·     Thinking inside and outside the margins: epistemics and theories

·     Side notes: methodologies and practices

·     Drawing the margins: issues of representation

Abstract submissions must include a title for the proposed presentation, five keywords, and a brief, max. 300-word overview. The deadline for submitting the paper is March 15th 2024, and all proposals must be sent via the online form that can be found in this link. 

Bibliography

Bhabha, Homi. (2002). El lugar de la cultura. Buenos Aires: Manantial.

     . (2013). Nuevas minorías, nuevos derechos. Notas sobre cosmopolitismo vernáculo. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI Editores.

Beal, Sophia. (2013). Brazil Under Construction: Fiction and Public Works. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Castro-Gómez, S. & Grosfoguel, R. (Eds.). (2007) El giro decolonial. Reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global. Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre Editores.

hooks, bell. (2015). Yearning : Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. 2nd ed., Routledge.

López-Labourdette, A., & Wagner, V. (2017). Del pensamiento a la práctica decolonial. Versants. Revista Suiza De Literaturas románicas, 3(63).

Mignolo, W. (September, 2011). “Geopolítica de la sensibilidad y del conocimiento. Sobre (de)colonialidad,  pensamiento fronterizo  y  desobediencia  epistémica”.  Revista Transversal. 

Muñoz, José Esteban. (2023). El sentido de lo marrón. Performance y experiencia racializada del mundo. Buenos Aires: Caja Negra.

Santiago, Silvano. (2000). “El entrelugar del discurso latinoamericano”. En Amante, Adriana; Garramuño, Florencia (eds.). Absurdo Brasil. Polémicas en la cultura brasileña. Buenos Aires. Argentina: Biblos.

     . (2012). “El cosmopolitismo del pobre”. En Cuadernos de Literatura, núm. 32, julio-diciembre, pp. 309-325 Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Bogotá, Colombia.

Saramago, Victoria (2021). Fictional Environment: Mimesis, Deforestation, and Development in Latin America. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

The Oxford Latin American Graduate Network (OLAGN) is part of TORCH Student Networks