We are pleased to announce that the next annual meeting of The Kristeva Circle will be held at Concordia University in Montreal, on October 24–26, 2024. This year will mark the 50th anniversary of Revolution in Poetic Language. An edited volume on the celebrated dissertation and new directions in Kristeva studies will appear for the anniversary (forthcoming in 2024, with SUNY Press). Selected contributors from the edited volume will participate in a roundtable discussion at the conference.
In Revolution in Poetic Language (1974), Julia Kristeva resisted the abstract use of language, with its aim of totalization and finality, in all its colonizing and alienating forms. A major thinker and critic, Kristeva reappropriated Hegel’s concepts of desire and negativity, in conjunction with the thought of Heidegger, Arendt, Freud, and Lacan, to revolt against modern nihilism and the Western inability to deal with loss.
This call is for papers celebrating any of the themes of Revolution in Poetic Language. We also invite papers on any topic revisiting Kristeva’s oeuvre and establishing exciting new directions in Kristeva studies. We especially welcome papers engaging with queer and transgender studies, disability studies, decolonial studies, and more, and pushing the boundaries of Kristeva’s thinking about loss, revolution, and revolt.
The conference features three keynote speakers: Fanny Söderbäck, Associate Professor at Södertörn University and author of the monograph Revolutionary Time: On Time and Difference in Kristeva and Irigaray (SUNY Press, 2019); Alia Al-Saji, Associate Professor at McGill University and pioneering author of numerous publications in phenomenology around issues of temporality, racialization, and embodiment; and Perry Zurn, Provost Associate Professor at American University and a prolific scholar of social and political philosophy and trans subjectivity studies. Julia Kristeva herself will participate via Zoom.
We are seeking to introduce new encounters in Kristeva themes and readership. Please submit abstracts of 500 words, prepared for anonymous review, by April 30, 2024, to kristevacircle@gmail.com. In a separate document, include a short author bio with contact info. For more information on the conference, please write to the local host, Emilia Angelova, at emilia.angelova@concordia.ca.