Cultural Recycling and Recirculation

This was originally posted on 24/6/2012 on another blog 

 On June 16, 2012 I attended an international colloquium on "Allusions and Echoes: Cultural Recycling and Recirculation" at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK. The colloquium was co-organized by Berit Astrom  and Sarah Annes Brown. This inspiring event brought together an array of scholars from Sweden, Switzerland, Italy and UK. It provided a stimulating environment for delegates to reflect on the multidimensional realizations of allusions and echoes as mechanisms by which writers, texts, and readers engage in a complex network of dialogue, critique,  and reformulation. The organizers couldn't have chosen a more urgent theme for this colloquium considering the recent emphasis on circulation or mobility as a descriptive metaphor and methodological framework for the ceaseless flow of cultural forms, ideas, texts, and images.

Berit Astrom's "Re-writing the Troubadour Effect?: Male Pregnancy Fan Fiction’ which focused on slash fiction and MPreg (a totally new area for me); Rapheal Lyne's "Yet Once More: Lycidas" Alan Robinson's "In the Cave: Lawrence Norfolk revives Paul Celan" really introduced some thought-provoking ideas for the consideration of delegates. I was particularly intrigued by Robinson's introduction of the ethical dimensions of allusions. I found some ideational convergence among Anna-Lena Pihl's "Translating intertextuality: Poems as Part of Virginai Woolf's To the Light House," Lykara Rider's "Fictions Attractions to the Perfect Language and the Story of Babel" and my paper.

My paper was titled "Call and Response: An examination of the summons motif in Everyman, Young Goodman Brown, and The Trial." In  my presentation, I suggested that Kafka's The Trial and Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" could be read as transformations of the summons motif in Everyman. Everyman is an exemplary text that employs the motif of the summons to articulate a narrative of redemption. However, Kafka and Hawthorne deploy the same motif to advance narratives of crisis and abandonment. My conclusion was that perhaps the reason for the enduring presence of this motif is its capacity to suggest both a redemptive and tragic view of our existence.

As I reflect on the outcome of the colloquium, a series of questions come to the fore: "How does our understanding of allusions and echoes enrich or redefine textual or literary hybridity and the third space? Is it possible or necessary at all to establish connections between the two notions? In what direction (s)? How will the "third space" be redefined or reconceptualized in the context of allusions and echoes?

Well, the good thing about colloquiums, like the Anglia Ruskin one, is that they set delegates thinking. I'm grateful to all the delegates for setting us on this path of meditation.