Stemming from the project “Mapping performative writing and the page as an expanded field (1966- the present): experimental, exophonic and ecstatic literatures in transcultural Anglophone spheres”, this conference will focus on performative writing. 

We understand this to be writing wherein the materiality of a text and the act of writing in itself are strategic, creative-critical devices that fuse form and content. Performative writing is an urgent theme given its enactment of self and/as language. This can broaden our understanding of what literature is or can be on and beyond the page. Perhaps more importantly, we find it to be uniquely capable of reflecting a rich, complex world. In her essential text “Performing Writing” (1998), Della Pollock identified one of performative writing’s core characteristics as its intersubjective ability to “bring the reader into contact with ‘other-worlds’ [...]: worlds of memory, pleasure, sensation, imagination, affect and in-sight.” (80). 

• Experimental: conceptual writing (from poetry to fiction) that employs conceptual strategies, typically in the second half of the 20th century. Its origins can be found in the art and literature of the late 1960s and 1970s. Strategies such as appropriation, typographical experiments, collage, insertion of multiple genres, found text, image/text juxtapositions, repetition, artistic/objectual conceptions of the book, etc. contribute to the performativity of the work on the page.

• Exophonic: located outside the “monolingual paradigm”, this writing prioritises the voices (in the largest sense of the term) through which meaning is transmitted, especially when “understanding” is compromised. Outside language(s) as we are used to conceiving of them, it may even attempts to escape language itself. Devices used here are explicitly multilingual writing, self-translation and bilingual versions, accents free of relation to identifiable language.

• Ecstatic: invested in citational practices, this writing uses (and acknowledges) other people’s words not only to scaffold critical discourse, but also as a creative device. This may have implications in the way we theorise and narrate the self (for example, in autotheory, see Fournier, Brostoff); and it is, inevitably, political (Ahmed). Katherine McKittrick, writing from a Black studies perspective, asks that referencing “takes us outside ourselves” (16), an unhinging of the self (16). By using citations as creative literary devices, the textual body ecstatically stands outside itself. New meaning emerges as the text is iterated and performed anew.

THU 13TH

9.00 registration

9.20 housekeeping

9.30 INTERACTIVE LIBRARY (intro + interactive lecture in clusters)

EXPERIMENTAL / EXOPHONIC / ECSTATIC.

H. Van Hove (VUB, BE) + T. Veneboer (Gent, BE) + M. Gil Ulldemolins (UHasselt, BE) + C. Mole (Sorbonne Nouvelle, FR) + A. Murphy (Sorbonne Nouvelle, FR)

11.00 Coffee

11.15 Lecture

"Ana Mendieta & Jayne Cortez / A Machete Scraping Across Polished Gallery Floors"

Carol Laurent (Université Libre de Belgique, BE)

12.00 Performative lecture:

"Gorse Returned: Craft as Co-theorist"

Cat Auburn (U. of Edinburgh)

12.30 joint discussion

13.00 Lunch

14.00 Keynote lecture

“What does it mean to write a square? Adrian Piper and the (non) Representation of the Self"

Nizan Shaked (California State University, Long Beach, US)

14.45  response + Q&A

15.30 break

15.45 Reading

"Her Discourse"

Sharon Kivland (Kingston U. + Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, London, UK)

16.30 Coffee

17:00 Lecture + performance:

"La voix, le souffle/Echoes of Elsewhere"

Amanda Murphy (Sorbonne Nouvelle, FR) + Thierry Roustan (independent)

18.00 Pre-dinner casual gatherings, followed by symposium dinner

FRI 14TH

9:00 registration

9:30 Workshop

“Unending Translation: Creative Critical and Experimental Workshop”

Delphine Grass (U. Lancaster, UK) + Lily Robert Foley (U. Paul Valéry Montpellier 3, FR)

11:00 Coffee

11:30 Participants’ conversation clusters

12.30 Lunch

13:30 Contributions

Lecture:

“Readers Digest”

Henry Andersen (KASK Gent), BE

Performative lecture:

"Father Figure: show notes"

Rebecca McKenzie (U. Glasgow, UK)

Performative lecture:

"Sexual, Aging, and Alone: A Collaborative Search for Beauty"

Kristin Sanders (U. of Arizona Global Campus)

15:00 joint discussion

15:30 Coffee

16:00 Keynote lecture (online)

"More Mothering: On Art/ Writing and the Conundrum of Analysis"

Peggy Phelan (Stanford University, US)

16:45  response + Q&A

17:30 Closing remarks

Available here.

• Maria Gil Ulldemolins, Assistant Professor, Universiteit Hasselt

• Christopher Mole, ATER, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle

• Amanda Murphy, Maîtresse de conférences, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle

• Kris Pint, Associate Professor, Universiteit Hasselt

• Arvi Sepp, Professor, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)

• Hannah Van Hove, Postdoctoral Researcher, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)

• Tessel Veneboer, Doctoral Student, Universiteit Gent

maria.gilulldemolins [at] uhasselt.be

Conference will take place at USquare, Brussels.

> Located at the intersection of Boulevard Général Jacques and Avenue de la Couronne, Ixelles.

We have a discount code for CityBox Hotel in Ixelles, a 2km tram ride away:

EEE_conference2025 

(valid for stays 12/11 - 15/11 )