Colloque: 2010, Egypte

Parcours/échanges et recoupments culturels

November 11-13, 2010 International Conference, Cairo University (Faculté des Lettres, Département de Langue et de Littérature Françaises)

Organized in cooperation between Cairo University and the Universities of Guelph and Waterloo (Canada).

The representation of the Other and of oneself (of oneself through the Other) questions the reflexes of curiosity, mistrust, hostility and even rejection towards the Other, but also makes more and more room for the notions of exchange, interculturality, migration, lifting or at least removal of barriers, appropriation, and hybridity. Reference works like Nous et les autres by Tzvetan Todorov have helped to define this area of research. Some authors have come to embody through their own trajectory the confluence of traditions and an expanded humanism, open to several cultural areas: Edward Said, Amin Maalouf, and many others. A very current appreciation of multiculturalism and, even more, the awareness, which is ours, that literature and culture can no longer be understood as autonomous and homogeneous blocks lead us to reconsider the literary texts of the past and present and to search, among other things, of traces of a vision of the Other as a source of inspiration and exchange. The following questions will therefore be found at the heart of our conference:

What are the aspects of intercultural exchange - and the changes it causes in mentalities?
How do literary works mirror these exchanges and journeys from one culture to another, with their tensions and revisions?
To what extent does travel literature testify to the range of reactions elicited by contact with the culture of the Other?
To what extent have translation and adaptation contributed in the historical and cultural removal, of barriers?
What role could the discovery of other cultures have played - through migration, exile, expatriation - in the career of certain writers or thinkers?

Documents from the event: