Call for Papers
International Society for Fiction and Fictionality Studies (ISFFS/SIRFF)’s Second International Conference
Theme: Impossible Fictions
Thursday 28–Saturday 30 October, 2021
University of Chicago
https://fiction.hypotheses.org/evenement-events#CFPEnglish
Submission deadline for 250-word proposals: December 15, 2020
The second international conference of the ISFFS/SIRFF will be held from 28–30 October 2021 at the University of Chicago.
The conference theme will be “Impossible Fictions.” Fiction has long been associated with possibility and plausibility, as far back as Aristotle’s claim that poetic narratives are governed by the laws of probability and necessity. In the modern period, the rise of the European novel has been linked to an increase in rationality and plausibility (Chevrolet 2008, Duprat 2009). Yet fiction (and the pleasure of aesthetic experience more generally) has also been understood in terms of the free play of the imagination. The contemporary period has seen a renewed taste for impossible fictional worlds, from fantasy series to video games inspired by the worlds of Tolkien or Lovecraft. At the same time, many readers and spectators devote themselves fanatically to tracking down and recording “goofs” (incongruities, continuity errors, anachronisms, etc.) in written or cinematographic fictions, indicating a heightened awareness of violations of plausibility (Hamus-Vallée and Caïra 2020). Anomalies in fiction fascinate, and can generate intense hermeneutic activity.
The goal of the conference is to bring historical, comparative, and theoretical perspectives to bear on the question of impossibilities of and in fiction, from three main angles. 1) Theorists of fiction sometimes argue that contradictions make it impossible to build a fictional world (Dolezel 1998). Over the past decade, however, the current of so-called “unnatural » narratology has revived narratologists’ interest in unrealistic fiction (Richardson 2015; Alber 2016). An analysis of borderline cases will bring to light the paradoxes and contradictions that are judged to be incompatible with the construction of a fictional world. 2) The acceptance and rejection of contradictions and physical, logical, psychological, or other impossibilities varies according to historical period and cultural tradition. We will explore these variable and fluctuating degrees of tolerance for fictional impossibilities. 3) Fictions are sometimes considered impossible in themselves, either for political, religious, or ethical reasons or because of the supposed exhaustion of fictional forms and motifs. The best-known version of this debate involves the unrepresentability of certain subjects, especially historical atrocities and trauma. But we will also consider the contemporary resurgence of a generalized suspicion or even hatred of fiction—whether in nonfiction, in the name of “reality hunger” (Shields 2010), or, paradoxically, within fiction itself.
Within the conceptual framework set out above, we welcome a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives (literary history and theory, narratology, philosophy, film and media studies, cognitive sciences). Submissions may deal with any time period or cultural tradition, and we invite considerations of fictional works in various media (including games, comics, film, TV series).
Possible topics include:
- Logical paradoxes and contradictions (affirmation of A and not-A; liar paradoxes, temporal paradoxes, inversions of cause and effect)
- Violations of physical laws (flying people, talking animals, omnipotence, invisibility, mixing dream and reality)
- Unlikelihood, implausibility in particular contexts
- Impossible narrative acts (dead narrators, impossible perspectives, unreliable narration etc.)
- Violations of ethical principles or decorum governing what may or may not be represented in a fiction; unacceptability to a given audience.
- Genre conventions and limits (e.g., science fiction and the laws of physics).
- Cultural and historical variations in the acceptance of fictional impossibilities
- Media-specific impossibilities
- Reader/spectator responses to fictional impossibilities
All participants in the conference must become members of the International Society for Fiction and Fictionality Studies (after papers are selected).
Please send 250-word proposals (in French or English) to impossiblefictions2021@googlegroups.com by December 15, 2020.
SIRFF/ISFFS Prize: The SIRFF/ISFFS will offer a prize for the best paper by an early-career scholar (doctoral student or scholar who has received the PhD within the last 3 years), to be presented at the conference. The winner will receive a monetary award of $1000. If you would like to be considered for this award please submit your completed conference paper (no more than 3,500 words/20,000 characters) by January 31, 2021 to impossiblefictions2021@googlegroups.com
REFERENCES
Alber, Jan (2016). Unnatural Narrative: Impossible Worlds in Fiction and Drama. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Caïra, Olivier (2011). Définir la fiction. Du roman au jeu d’échecs. Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS.
Chevrolet, Teresa (2007). L’Idée de fable. Théories de la fiction poétique à la Renaissance. Geneva: Droz.
Doležel, Lubomír (1998). Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Duprat, Anne (2009). Vraisemblances. Poétiques et théorie de la fiction, du Cinquecento à Jean Chapelain, 1500-1670. Paris: Honoré Champion.
Lavocat, Françoise (2010). « Paradoxes, fiction, mimesis », Methodos, savoirs et textes, 2010. http://methodos.revues.org/2443
——— (2016). Fait et Fiction, pour une frontière, partie III, ch. 2 « Mondes possibles impossibles », Paris : Les éditions du Seuil, coll. « Poétique ».
Lewis, David (1978). “Truth in Fiction.” American Philosophical Quarterly, 15: 37–46.
Hamus-Vallée, Réjane and Caïra, Olivier (2020). Le goof au cinéma. De la gaffe au faux raccord, la quête de l’anomalie filmique. Paris: l’Harmattan.
Matravers, Derek (2014). Fiction and Narrative. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McHale, Brian (1987). Postmodernist Fiction. New York: London: Routledge.
Nolan, Daniel (2015). “Personification and Impossible Fictions.” British Journal of Aesthetics 55(1) 57–69.
Piaget, Jean (1974). Recherches sur la contradiction. Paris: PUF.
Priest, Graham (1997). “Sylvan’s Box: A Short Story and Ten Morals.” Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 38(4) 573–582.
Richardson, Brian (2015). Unnatural Narrative, Theory, History and Practice. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
Ryan, Marie Laure (2010) “Cosmologie du récit. Des mondes possibles aux univers parallèles.” In Françoise Lavocat (ed.), La Théorie littéraire des mondes possibles. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 53-81.
——— (1980). “Fiction, Non-Factuals, and the Principle of Minimal Departure.” Poetics 9(4) 403–422.
——— (2012). « Impossible Worlds. » In The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature, eds. Joe Bray, Alison Gibbon and Brian McHale. London: Routledge, 368–79.
Shields, David (2010). Reality Hunger: A Manifesto. New York: Knopf.