Corps et texte

Body as/and Text 
Call for papers

The body is a text: it may be read, interpreted, translated, transposed, presupposed, and deposed. Similarly, the text is a body that can be reshaped, mutilated or cosmeticized through translation, critical interpretation, cinematographic adaptation, etc. What is the significance of the body from our cultural perspective? The term still denotes an entity properly delimited yet liquefied, universal yet autonomous, vital in defining tradition yet unsealed by history. What is still natural about the human body? Contemporary anthropology prefers talking about body multiple, whereas cultural studies deal with body culture instead. Body modification and reformation through fashion, tattoos, piercing, plastic surgery, sports, yoga, diets or due to illness, aging, physical and mental degradation and death are topics of great interest in contemporary debates. The body is the place for the inscription of socio-cultural practices. Article proposals on these questions or any other aspect of the subject matter are invited.  Possible topics could include, but are not limited to the discussion of the following aspects: - Cultural transformations, literary and philosophical representations of the body; - Body and embodiment – various modes of representation throughout the ages; - Representing the body in contemporary media, arts and architecture; - Reproductive bodies/texts - Reproducing bodies/texts; - The fragmented body/text, made up of disparate pieces (body-in-pieces); - Corporeality, race, class, and ethnic identity; - Sex, gender and the body; - Post-human bodies: technology, science, and the body; - The cultural politics of body/text modification: bodily deformation and textual deviation; - The anatomy of body politics: entrails and organs; - Body and text mutilation, modification, multiplication; - Naked bodies/adorned bodies: nudity, obscenity, fashion; - The monstrous body and the transgressive text; - Written bodies: plastic surgery, tattoos, piercing; - Broken bodies: illness, disability, old-age, and death; - Body/text posterity: organ donation and intertextuality. We welcome papers in English, German, French, and Romanian. Abstracts (c. 200 words) and full papers (up to c. 7,000 words), together with a brief biographical sketch (c. 400 words), are to be sent to the following address: . Luminita-Elena Turcu Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava Str. Universitatii 13, 720229 Suceava, Romania Phone: +40 230 216 147/ 249 Email: l_turcu@yahoo.com Visit the website at http://meridiancritic.usv.ro