CENTRAL UNIVERSITY OF TAMIL NADU
Neelakkudi
Kangalanchery 610 104
Tamil Nadu
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
SIGN AND THE WORLD: IMPLICATIONS FOR ECOCRITICISM
The sign, especially linguistic sign, has become the key concept of western critical discourse after the time of C.S. Peirce (1839-1914) and Saussure (1857-1913). It has become the basic principle of semiotics/semiology (and all their sub-disciplines), structuralism, poststructuralism and critical theory itself. After Derrida asserted that there is nothing outside of the text, sign has taken precedence over the world itself. The map has become the country and the representation of the war the war itself. Peter Barry calls such precedence attributed by theorists to sign "constructedness," which is based on the assumption that reality is constructed by language. The fundamental reality for ecocriticism is the world itself, the tiNai (oikos) constituted by the relation between the humans, nature and the sacred. How do we know and live out this relation? How does the sign mediate this relation? Is it possible to know and live this relation except through the sign? Is the world of ecocriticism also semically constructed? Challenging this line of thinking, Kate Soper asserts that "It isn't language which has a hole in its ozone layer." In short, we have two camps of theorists -- language hole theorists and ozone hole theorists. The former give precedence to sign and the latter to the world. How about you? Join this significant debate on the banks of veTTaaRu, one of the tributaries of Kaaveeri.
Some possible topics
Constructedness in theory and ecocriticism
The world in ecocriticism
The debate of the constructed world vs the given world and related ideas in Tamil and other Indian traditions and ecocriticism
The debate of the constructed world vs the given world and related ideas in western/non-western traditions and ecocriticism
Linguistic sign, world and ecocriticism
Aural sign (as in music), world and ecocriticism
Visual sign (as in painting), world and ecocriticism
DATES: 1-2 September 2015
Venue: Central University of Tamil Nadu, Neelakkudi Campus
Patron: Prof. T. Sengadir, Vice-Chancellor (Acting)
Organizer: Nirmal Selvamony, Associate Professor in Central University of Tamil Nadu, and President, tiNai (an initiative of OSLE-India, an academic forum that promotes ecocriticism in India)
Collaboration: tiNai will collaborate by providing the experts for the conference
Please send your abstract (in about 200 words) to the organizer before 15 August 2015. Each paper, about 8 pages (1600 words approximately) long, will be given a maximum of 15 minutes for presentation.
Conference participants will have to make their own travel and lodging arrangements. They will be given tea and working lunch. The university will neither pay TA/DA nor collect any registration fee.
The university is situated in a village called Neelakkudi, about 10 kms away from Tiruvarur. Information about transport to the university from Tiruvarur will be given in the subsequent communications. The nearest railway/bus station is Tiruvarur and the nearest airport, Tiruchi, about 4 hours away by road.
Information about the university is available at its website: www.cutn.ac.in
For more information contact:
Nirmal Selvamony
Mobile: +91 94 94 24 26 45
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