Survivor in Context: Case Studies

A Roundtable discussion with Dr Guido Furci (Sorbonne Nouvelle), Cécile Rousselet (Sorbonne Nouvelle), and Dr Cecilia Piantanida (University of Warwick). The roundtable will be chaired by Dr Mara Josi (University College Dublin).

Guido Furci (Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Literature vs. Writing: Re-elaboration of Historical Events in Primo Levi

Cécile Rousselet (Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Arnold Mandel. From the Messianic “Périple” to the Possibility of a Glissantian “Totality” after 1945

Dr Cecilia Piantanida (University of Warwick)

‘We are. We are here’ (Rushdie 1982). Voice and Self-Determination in Narratives of Mediterranean Migration.

Dr Guido Furci (Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Literature vs. Writing: Re-elaboration of Historical Events in Primo Levi

What does it mean to re-elaborate historical events in literary writings? What is the effect of such a practice on a formal, aesthetic, and mostly political level? Why does the act of bearing witness have political implications, even when this was not its primary purpose? This talk addresses these questions, starting from the meaning they assume in Primo Levi’s work.

Cécile Rousselet (Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Arnold Mandel. From the Messianic “Périple” to the Possibility of a Glissantian “Totality” after 1945

This talk considers Arnold Mandel’s literary production. Mandel (1913-1987) writes in the attempt of the rectification of existence, identified in the Jewish word "tikun". However, this is a mystical reparation which recognises, by its incompleteness, the presence of disappointment or its failure.

Mandel’s work can be read in light of Édouard Glissant’s theories. With his concept of "Tout Monde", Glissant examines the elements which enter in relation by insisting on the inalienable aspect of each of them. Mandel’s Le Périple can be analysed as a "Tout-Monde" and as a "Toute-Histoire", therefore seeking the messianic relationship between elements that compose the world described: these elements are intertwined but also irreducible one to the other. What, then, is the ambiguous content of the reconciliation and relationship with history and the world that Arnold Mandel proposes after the Holocaust?

Cecilia Piantanida (University of Warwick)

‘We are. We are here’ (Rushdie 1982). Voice and Self-Determination in Narratives of Mediterranean Migration.

Narratives of migrant experiences of struggle and survival in the Mediterranean raise fundamental questions on the ethics and politics of representation. While aiming to create a space of recognition and solidarity for a politically disenfranchised group such as forced migrants, most documentary and fictional narratives do not reflect migrants’ representations of themselves, raising issues of agency, voice, and objectification (Spivak 1999, Woolley 2014). Starting from Salman Rushdie’s considerations on the self-validating nature of literature in ‘Imaginary Homelands’ (1982), this paper probes the potential of documentary and narrative fiction on Mediterranean migration, such as Emma Jane Kirby’s The Optician of Lampedusa (2016) and Massimo Carlotto’s La via del pepe: finta fiaba africana per europei benpensanti (2014), to engage self-consciously with the politics of representation of marginalized subjects, disrupt the idea of the refugee as a positive object of knowledge (Woolley 2014), and engender a relational understanding of migrant and refugee experiences.