Over the centuries borders have been used to signal differences, separations, distinctions, discontinuities, the beginning of the other, as well as the need for protection and preservation. One could mention cultural, linguistic, political, social, gender borders, and the list could of course be much longer. In The Order of Things Michel Foucault maintained that the concepts of boundaries and partitions should be replaced by that of “threshold” and “hinges”, whereby the latter are “porous borders” that both separate and communicate. Such a contiguity inherent in the very notion of threshold suggests a physical adjacency, a spatial contact that, although it can or cannot be pursued, certainly calls for attention.
In this regard, modernism as a wide-ranging of philosophical and artistic expressions that cross several ideological, political and cultural boundaries epitomises Foucault’s concept of permeable lines and borders. In particular, this conference will explore those borders that modernism has either dissolved or provocatively recovered in light of an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural and trans-geographical approach.
Call for papers available here
« Borders of Modernism », organisé par le Centre for European Modernist Studies, se tiendra à Pérouse du 14 au 16 décembre prochains.