Call for Papers « Boualem Sansal and World Literature »

[Version française: Boualem Sansal et la littérature mondiale]

Symposium organized by the CERCC (ENS Lyon) with the support of the CEREdI (University of Rouen-Normandy) and “Littérature et Liberté”.

Date: 14th March 2025

Location: ENS Lyon

Languages: French and English will be the working languages, but presentations can also be made in other languages if translation is possible.

This symposium is the first in a series entitled « I Heard It as a Call… »,1 initiated by the “Littérature et Liberté ” organisation (https://www.litterature-liberte.org/) to keep Boualem Sansal’s work alive while he remains silenced, being detained for two months at the time of publishing this call for papers. Upcoming symposiums will focus on topics such as “Boualem Sansal and Philosophy” and the translation and reception of Sansal’s work worldwide.

Call for Papers

In a presentation on Faulkner’s influence on the works of Rachid Boudjedra, poet and critic Hafid Gafaïti,2 expressed his surprise at how French-speaking Algerian writers are often assumed to be influenced solely by French and Algerian literature. Boualem Sansal is all too often confined to such a limited French-Algerian framework. Yet, he transcends categories and labels, drawing inspiration for his work from diverse authors in many languages and cultural contexts.

Sansal’s intertextual references are particularly rich, including Dante, Elizabethan theater, Cervantes, Dostoevsky, Thoreau, Kafka, Solzhenitsyn, Orwell, Gheorghiu, Eco, Grossman, and many more. In a recent article, historian Michel Pierre noted that Boualem Sansal positions himself “in the lineage of great South American authors, from Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Pablo Neruda, from Alejo Carpentier to Mario Vargas Llosa,” further adding that “his work has the magnitude of the great universal stories, which are ultimately rare on a global scale.”3 Moreover, Sansal explicitly aims to present an increaasingly global perspective.4

The objective of this symposium is to revisit the novelist and essayist’s body of work in light of its place within world literature to better understand its scope and significance. This event will also aim to clarify Boualem Sansal’s own conception of “Weltliteratur” (a term coined by Goethe in 1824, now given new relevance by discussions on the globalization of literature) or “littérature-monde” (Sansal contributed to the manifesto Pour une littérature-monde 5). One may reflect on whether the practice of “littérature-monde” as envisioned by Sansal can contribute to the realization of his ideal of a “world citizen,” that is, the citizen of the “Global Republic of Free Men, kings in their own homes.”6

Proposed Topics for Papers

Contributions may address, among other topics:

  • Studies on sources and influences that have shaped Sansal’s thought and writing, derived from world literature across various historical periods and languages;
  • Analyses of Sansal’s concrete relationships with authors from various countries;
  • Sansal’s relationship with global intertexts as a novelist and essayist;
  • Sansal’s perspective on specific cultures or literatures;
  • The relationship between language, culture and literature in Sansal’s conception of the “world citizen”;
  • Sansal’s views on global interconnectedness, cultural globalization, cosmopolitanism, and the balance between the particular and the universal;
  • Messages addressed to humanity by Sansal, as both novelist and essayist, grounded in his unique connection to the world.

The various symposiums in the cycle “I Heard It as a Call…” will be published either online or in print.

Organizing Committee: Éric Dayre (ENS Lyon), Hubert Heckmann (Université de Rouen-Normandie), Guillaume Houdant, Lisa Romain, Jean Szlamowicz (Université de Bourgogne).

Scientific Committee: Mohamed Aït-Aarab (maître de conférences en Littératures francophones, Université de la Réunion), Éric Dayre (Professeur de littératures comparées à l’ENS de Lyon), Guy Dugas (Professeur émérite de Littérature comparée, Université Montpellier III), Michel S. Laronde (Professor Emeritus of French and Francophone Studies, University of Iowa), Lisa Romain (enseignante et auteur d’une thèse sur l’œuvre de Boualem Sansal).

Abstracts (around 300 words) accompanied by a short biobibliography (institutional affiliation, laboratory, research areas, and publications) should be sent before February 20, 2025 to the following email address: contact [a] litterature-liberte.org

Notes

1 A phrase taken from the opening of Boualem Sansal’s novel Rue Darwin, Gallimard, 2011.

2 « L’héritage faulknérien du Nouveau Roman et sa transmission au roman maghrébin francophone » asserts the influence of American novels over his generaiton of writers. Cf. Programme of the 32nd Congrès Mondial du CIEF, p. 40. https://www.crhia.fr/doc_upload/Programme_congres%20CIEF%202018-.pdf.

3 Michel Pierre, « Pour Boualem Sansal. Plaidoyer pour un grand écrivain et un homme libre », herodote.net, 5 January 2025 (online).

4 This is how one should read Sansal’s reflection in Le train d’Erlingen about “the book that remains to be written”, as well as the call from the narrator: “I discovered that our story could not be told in the form of a novel. I had overestimated my literary abilities. The story is multifaceted; it unfolds across multiple layers, multiple countries, and multiple historical strata, involving people who have no connection with each other” (Le train d’Erlingen ou la metamorphose de Dieu, Boualem Sansal, Gallimard, 2018, p. 242). Léa thus immediately invites the reader to join a great chain through time and space so as to complete the “scattered pieces” of the novel, some of which are, precisely, reading notes dedicated to Kafka’s Metamorphosis or Gheorghiu’s The Immortals of Agapia.

5 Michel Le Bris et Jean Rouaud (dir.), Pour une littérature-monde, Paris, Gallimard, 2007.

6 Boualem Sansal, Lettre d’amitié, de respect et de mise en garde aux peuples et aux nations de la terre, Paris, Gallimard, 2021