Research Symposium

Narrating Precarious Lives: Dehumanisation, Survival and (Re)Constructions of the Self, Freiburg, 11-12 May 2012

Organised by Barbara Korte (University of Freiburg) and Frédéric Regard (Sorbonne University)

The issue of human suffering and ‘precarious life’ (Judith Butler) as a challenge to representation has come to the fore again in recent years. This is, in part, a consequence of increased societal awareness of the consequences of neoliberalism, child neglect and familial violence, circumstances in developing countries, the aftermath of wars, the hardships of migration and other factors which the news media habitually bring to our attention. At the same time, there is a notable interest in highly personal(ised) representations of abjection in its various forms; indeed, the so-called ‘misery memoir’ and other forms of testimonial have become a major success on the British book market of the 21st century.The conference aimed to explore the various perspectives from and styles in which literature and other fictional and factual forms of representation (such as photography, reportage, film or digital storytelling) have attempted to present precarious lives: What audiences reactions are prefigured by specific modes of presentation? How do texts or images avoid or enforce a voyeuristic gaze? What agency of articulation is given to people in misery to narrate their ‘own’ traumatic experiences, and what does this agency mean for a re-construction of their lives? What ethical responsibility do cultural practitioners have when they not only regard, but actually expose the pain of others? 

Publications from the conference:

1. Narrating Poverty and Precarity in Britain: Literary and Cultural Perspectives, edited by Barbara Korte and Frederic Regard (forthcoming)

Poverty and precarity as urgent social problems are receiving wide public attention in the UK (as in other countries of the global North), and they are being addressed extensively in social studies. Since the 1990s, i.e. roughly the end of the Thatcher/Major era, economic precariousness and social inequality have re-emerged as conspicuous themes in British literature and other forms of cultural production. Although some of these products have been critically acclaimed or are part of ‘popular’ culture, they have not yet been studied in-depth, either in literary or cultural studies – while a corresponding development in the US has given rise to a number of literature- and film-based studies over the past few years. Our book attacks this critical gap for the case of British culture, providing theoretical and historical input and scrutinising a wide range of relevant texts from the Victorian period to the present.