Anthology planned for publication in Lang’s Canadiana book series
Ed. Stefan L. Brandt
Deadline for complete essays: December 31, 2016
In Cultural Studies, the concept of liminality has been used in various ways. Numerous scholars have dealt with the stage ‚betwixt and between,‘ as Victor Turner most famously described it. This anthology aims at re-mapping the field, focusing on liminality and the liminal within Canada.
Originally developed by cultural anthropologist Arnold van Gennep in his seminal study from 1909, and rediscovered by Victor Turner in the 1960s, the metaphor of ‚liminality‘ has become a keyword in contemporary cultural criticism to refer to processes of identity negotiation connected to experiences of transition. It has been used in connection with terms such as ‚border,‘ ‚frontier,‘ and ‚threshold,‘ and in opposition to the equally metaphorical concept of ‚marginality.‘ While marginality connotes ‚periphery,‘ and thus mainly focuses on exclusion from and by dominant discourses, liminality is concerned with the space of the borderline itself, with feelings of ambiguity and ambivalence.
Liminality can be experienced as challenging, uncomfortable, threatening, and disruptive, but also as subversive and powerful, as a stage facilitating creativity and change. In the context of Canadian Studies, liminality has been employed to discuss geographical frontiers such as the Niagara Falls, the St. Laurence River, the Rocky Mountains, the Canadian Prairies, British Columbia, Quebec, and the Arctic, as well as symbolic frontiers including migration, French-English relations, encounters between First Nations and settlers, and Northrop Frye’s ‚garrison mentality.‘ Liminality has also been examined as an aesthetic concept in its relation to the sublime and the uncanny.
As a theoretical concept, liminality can be of help for an analysis of the construcedness of Canada’s collective identity/identities as well as of individual processes of identification and change. These observations lead us to the following questions: How has the Canadian cultural imaginary fashioned itself with regard to the ‚boundariness‚ of its social and identificatory practices? Which role do symbolic ‚frontiers‘ play in Canadian discourses of self-representation (with respect to inner-Canadian border areas, but also in comparison to the U.S. American frontier)? How do ethnic, sexual, and other minorities position themselves in this nexus of liminal identities?
This anthology aims at bringing together scholars who wish to discuss Canadian liminal spaces and places, that is, in particular, fragmented and contradictory social, cultural, and political practices, real and imagines borders, contact zones, thresholds, and transitions in Anglo-Canadian literature and culture. Possible topics for essays may include, but are – by for – not limited to, the following:
- geographical and imagined borders
- spatial and temporal liminalities
- Canadian ‚frontiers‘
- the relationship between Anglophone and Francophone Canada
- the Canadian North
- the aesthetics and poetics of liminality
- the liminal and the subliminal
- cultural encounters and First Nations
- queer cultural spaces
- transgender and intersex identities
- hybridity, multiculturalism, and transnationalism
- the figure of the trickster
- aspects of intersectionality, transgression, and normativity
- old age as a liminal stage
Complete essays of no more than 5.000 words, together with the name, institutional affiliation and a bio blurb (max. 150 words) should be sent to this email address. The closing date for submissions is Saturday, December 31, 2016.
Should you have further questions, please contact the editor of the volume, Univ.-Prof. Dr. Stefan L. Brandt.