[tags: hybridity, writing, picture, visual, verbal, autobiographical]<\/p>\n
Call for Papers
\nInternational and Interdisciplinary Conference<\/p>\n
Hybridity in Life Writing: How Text and Images Work Together to Tell a Life<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Organizers: Clare Brant (King\u2019s College London), Arnaud Schmitt (Bordeaux University & LARCA, Universit\u00e9 de Paris)<\/p>\n Venue: Universit\u00e9 de Paris, Paris, 7\u20138 July, 2022<\/p>\n Keynote Speaker: Pr. Teresa Bru\u015b (Wroc\u0142aw University)<\/p>\n clare.brant and arnaud.schmitt by 30 November, 2021<\/strong> at the latest.<\/p>\n It might seem that, to some extent, almost all visual content in autobiographical texts is visual aid<\/em>. But what is it in aid of? Of the text, somehow. Victor Burgin notes that \u201cwe rarely see a photograph in use which does not have a caption or a title, it is more usual to encounter photographs attached to long texts, or with copy superimposed over them. Even a photograph which has no actual writing on or around it is traversed by language when it is \u2018read\u2019 by a viewer.\u201d As powerful as images can be, and they frequently outshine the text that precedes or follows them, their narrative potential is nevertheless tethered to the text that introduces them or comments them a posteriori. In other words, the text has the first or last word, it frames<\/em> the picture and, in a way, \u2018tames\u2019 its impact: a picture is at the text\u2019s service. And yet, it can also be argued that images contradict texts in the same Derridean way as texts and more particularly words contradict each other, or at least unsettle themselves. In Picture Theory<\/em>, W. J. T. Mitchell states that he wants \u201cto concentrate, however, on the kinds of photographic essays which contain strong textual elements, where the text is most definitely an \u2018invasive\u2019 and even domineering element.\u201d Thus, even if and when they are supposed to work together, words and images in a memoir establish a balance of power, one that requires investigation as the autobiographical narrative of a hybrid memoir depends on this very balance.<\/p>\n From a historical point of view, this balance of power may also result from the evolution of each medium\u2019s status, as an art form or cultural artefact. For instance, it can be argued that the first memoir written by a photographer is Talbot\u2019s The Pencil of Nature<\/em>. Teresa Bru\u015b claims that \u201cThe Pencil of Nature<\/em>, presented to the public in 1844, is the first autobiographical book of a photographer. [\u2026] aligning the \u2018art\u2019 of photography with a rhetorical, if not a literary, project.\u201d But in Photography and Literature, <\/em>Fran\u00e7ois Brunet points out that, contrary to what might have been expected, Talbot\u2019s effort had little effect on the publishing world, and this \u201cestrangement of photography from literature,\u201d with the odd exception, lasted until the end of the 19th century. According to him, nothing much happened before the beginning of the 20th century and \u201cthe growing recognition of photography as a distinct art form.\u201d It makes sense that photography\u2019s relation with literature very much depended on its evolving status.<\/p>\n On a more positive note, hybridity may also be seen to operate beyond this semantic and cultural balance of power and to aim at an additional meaning<\/em> created thanks to intermediality at a level where, despite their intrinsic cognitive features and differences, text and images are able to produce content that they would not have been able to produce had they been kept separate. In a way, it hinges on how a book balances text and images, how it \u2018monitors\u2019 intermediality. But Gilles Mora writes that \u201cphotography has rarely generated autobiographical works able to exist without the support of language\u201d (\u201cla photographie a rarement produit des \u0153uvres autobiographiques qui puissent se passer de l\u2019appui du langage<\/em>\u201d). Maybe because one of the main (if not the only) functions of photographs in life writing is to authenticate<\/em>. Roland Barthes is mostly responsible for the widespread belief that photography is better at accessing the past than words, principally through two assertions he made in Camera Lucida<\/em>: \u201cit [photography] does not invent; it is authentication incarnate. [\u2026] Every photograph certifies a presence\u201d (\u201celle [la photographie] n\u2019invente rien ; elle est l\u2019authentification m\u00eame. [\u2026] Toute photographie est un certificat de presence<\/em>\u201d) and \u201cIt seems that Photography always carries its referent with it [\u2026]\u201d (\u201cOn dirait que la Photographie emporte toujours son r\u00e9f\u00e9rent avec elle<\/em> [\u2026]\u201d). The role of non-photographic images in hybrid memoirs or autobiographical works is thus more complex as paintings for instance do not have this ability to authenticate and similarly to words do not \u201ccarry their referent with them.\u201d However, in a post-PhotoShop age, the way photographs have the ability to tamper with or even falsify \u201ctheir referent\u201d can be seen as highly problematic in an autobiographical context.<\/p>\n The same can be said about graphic memoirs, a booming field, as drawings are also very low on the \u2018authentication scale\u2019. Nevertheless, Narratologist Robyn Warhol made the following remark regarding them: \u201cThe juxtaposition of cartooning with verbal memoir offers methods of representing subjectivity that are unprecedented in traditional autobiography. Indeed, as Versaci asserts \u2018while many prose memoirists address the complex nature of identity and the self, comic book memoirists are able to represent such complexity in ways that cannot be captured in words alone\u2019.\u201d But is this \u201csubjectivity\u201d represented separately or jointly? And in the latter case, how? Also not as authenticating as photographs, paintings remain nevertheless a potential narrative resource for any autobiographer. In The Privileged Eye, Max <\/em>Kozloff reminds us that \u201ca main distinction between a painting and a photograph is that the painting alludes to its content, whereas the photograph summons it, from wherever and whenever, to us.\u201d It might only be \u201calluding to a content,\u201d but a painting in a memoir simply is another form of hybridity and a way for an author to diversify the work\u2019s content. Stanley Cavell wrote that we might say that \u201ca painting is<\/em> a world\u201d and that \u201ca photograph is of <\/em>the world\u201d but a painting in many ways continue to allude to the<\/em> world, and more precisely to the autobiographer\u2019s world.<\/p>\n Finally, beyond the intermedial question, there is the issue of autobiography, and more specifically autobiography at the beginning of the 21st century, a different type from previous centuries, one more informed of the limits of referential writing and more than ever aware of its importance; one also that has often outgrown its usual vessel\u2014even though the latter remains its most prestigious one in terms of official recognition\u00ad\u2014and has branched out into social and often more visual media (just one example among so many: the renowned American photographer Stephen Shore\u2019s Instagram account on which he posts one picture everyday). Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson have identified and explored \u201cthe visual-verbal-virtual contexts of life narrative\u201d which have multiplied through for example performance and visual arts, autobiographical films and videos, and variously curated online lives.<\/p>\n V\u00e9ronique Mont\u00e9mont rightfully points out that Philippe Lejeune, one of the most prominent life writing theorists, \u201cdoes not mention photography because for him autobiography involves enunciation, a narrator in other terms.\u201d And yet photography has entered the field of autobiography in a multitude of ways. In Picturing Ourselves: Photography & Autobiography,<\/em> Linda Haverty Rugg sums up her study\u2019s main objectives thus: \u201cThis book explores the intersection of these two debates\u2014the point at which photographs enter the autobiographical act. What (or how) do photographs mean in the context of an autobiography?\u201d The aim of this symposium is to explore the point at which animage, any<\/em> image, whether fixed or moving (in vlogs for instance), enters the autobiographical act and confronts the verbal form.<\/p>\n Keynote Speaker<\/strong>: Pr. Teresa Bru\u015b (Wroc\u0142aw University), author of the forthcoming Face Forms in Photography and Life Writing of the 1920s and 1930s<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [tags: hybridity, writing, picture, visual, verbal, autobiographical] Call for Papers International and Interdisciplinary Conference Hybridity in Life Writing: How Text […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cfp"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Admin","author_link":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/news\/author\/yanb\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"[tags: hybridity, writing, picture, visual, verbal, autobiographical] Call for Papers International and Interdisciplinary Conference Hybridity in Life Writing: How Text […]","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n