8th International Conference on Language, Literature & Culture “Struggle for Recognition: identity-formation and subjectivation”
Brest, France, 6-7 June 2019
We are honoured to announce the 8th International Conference on Language, Literature & Culture “Struggle for recognition: identity-formation and subjectivation” organized jointly by Université de Bretagne Occidentale (Brest, France) and Çankaya University (Ankara, Turkey) on June 6-7, 2019. This International Conference is an annual, peer-reviewed academic event and comprehensive venue for the free exchange and dissemination of ideas on language, translation, literary and cultural studies, and aims to bring together scholars and graduates researching the intersections of these fields in the welcoming atmosphere of Université de Bretagne Occidentale in France.
The struggle of recognition has emerged, in the recent years, as a powerful paradigm. The theme of struggle for recognition is at the intersection of different areas of the human sciences: philosophy, gender studies, critical theory, discourse analysis, literature, etc. It is widely associated with the works of Axel Honneth, Nancy Fraser, Charles Taylor, Paul Ricoeur, to name just a few prominent figureheads. According to Axel Honneth, the core of any public sphere is always a struggle for recognition. Nancy Frazer goes as far as talking about a recognition theoretical turn to describe a tendency to tackle many pressing real-life issues –such as discrimination, exclusion, social justice, political equality, gender equality– in terms of struggle for recognition and against all forms of disrespect.
At the core of the struggle for recognition paradigm, we find the question of identity formation, self-realization and subjectivation. Those engaged in a struggle for recognition are always of course struggling against institutionalized patterns of value that sustain and reinforce various mechanisms of exclusion. They are also struggling against those institutionalized patterns of value because they strip them of their dignity and subordinate them out of existence. Therefore, when they engage in struggles for recognition, they seek to redress injustices as much as to step out of invisibility and to claim their ethical capacity as full right subjects. The struggle for recognition may take different forms, which can be classified into two categories: argumentation or violence. Obviously enough, these two forms are exclusive; we can come across many examples when the struggle for recognition is both argumentative and violent. Some struggles for recognition seek reconciliation and a viable consensus, while others may refuse the idea of consensus and seek instead to perpetuate an agonistic confrontation.