Call for papers
The year 2022, the centenary of José Saramago's birth, is an opportunity to revisit a work of unique global projection and a thought which, while pointing out the challenges of yesterday and today, continues to be fully current and has an unequivocal interdisciplinary vocation. One of the debates (re)opened by Saramago was that of the need for an Iberianism, not understood in the old way, but as a dialogue established from the reflections of postcolonial and decolonial studies. José Saramago's vision of Iberianism took shape progressively after the publication of the novel A Jangada de Pedra (1986), conceived in the context of the incorporation of Portugal and Spain into the European Economic Community. According to the writer, the Iberian Peninsula is a cultural constellation, it cannot be interpreted outside its historical relations and, as such, it has to maintain a constant link with Ibero-America, Africa and the other territories where an Iberian cultural presence is significative. Saramago baptized this aspiration with the name of transiberism, which makes it possible to conceive of an intellectual displacement of the world that goes beyond the great centres of power and offers a broad understanding of cultural identities (Iberian and otherwise) and of the political and cultural responsibilities of colonial expansion. In this and other respects, the thought and art of José Saramago are decisive for thinking about the changes in paradigms that have taken place between two millennia, especially with regard to the poetics and politics of difference and identities.
In order to explore these questions in greater depth, the journal Abriu proposes a monographic issue with the general title of Saramago and transiberism and invites to the contribution of articles that may deal, among other things, with one of the following axes: transiberism in the fiction of José Saramago: Forms and functions; the impact of José Saramago's transiberism on the social sciences and humanities; transiberism and its relation to postcolonial and decolonial studies; dialogues between the "Epistemologies of the South" and transiberism; Saramago's proposal and its relevance for the reading of the present and the political future of the Iberian Peninsula and Europe; Africa(s) and Ibero-America(s) through the lens of transiberism, or transiberism and translation theory.
Articles can be written in Galician, Portuguese, Catalan, Spanish or English and must adjust to the journal's editorial guidelines. The deadline for submissions is 30 October 2022. The monograph Saramago and transiberismo is coordinated by Víctor Martínez-Gil (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona-Càtedra José Saramago) and will be published in issue 12 (2023) of Abriu. Proposals will be subject to blind peer review and can only be submitted throught the Abriu website (https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/Abriu/index).
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