https:\/\/secworld.anglistik.uni-halle.de\/<\/a>) was to investigate contemporary British writing published after the fall of the Iron Curtain, but imaginatively located in Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War \u2013 the so-called \u2018Second World\u2019. A particular focus \u2013 and relatively new angle within the larger context of global Cold War literature and postsocialist perspectives \u2013 was the retrotopian potential of such narratives, as conceptualised by Zygmunt Bauman. Scholars from the United Kingdom, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, and Germany attended to investigate whether more recent British writing was indeed expressing, as the CFP had proposed, \u201cthe apparent desire to review and imaginatively revisit past \u2018utopias\u2019 [\u2026] as retrotopia, the desire to retrieve \u2013 through creatively engaging with \u2018genuine or putative aspects of this past\u2019 \u2013 the utopian potential that it represented\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWith the construction of retrotopias being one of the key interests of the conference itself, the setting of this in-person event, the main campus of Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg in Saxony-Anhalt, a region in Eastern Germany, metonymically contributed to the impression that participants experienced an event of retrotopian quality. The value of the in-person event was stressed in the opening speech by the conference convenor, Katrin Berndt (MLU), who emphasised that planning an on-campus event had been part of the overall concept, even though it had been difficult to predict whether it would be possible to realise the conference in this form after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The main topic, as Berndt outlined, was inspired by both historical and current interests in the repercussions of a shared European past, manifested in collective memory and in present-day concerns with recourse to this past. What was conceptualised as \u2018Second World\u2019 and formed in the aftermath of WWII, once was celebrated by Czech writer Milan Kundera as \u201cthe greatest variety within the smallest space\u201d and as distinguished by its commitment to a shared European identity in his famous essay on \u201cThe Tragedy of Central Europe\u201d in 1984. In more recent decades, British writers such as Ian McEwan, Natasha Walter, and Julian Barnes have returned to, and set narratives in, countries of the former \u2018communist bloc\u2019, which had promised and propagated ideals that it had failed to meet. In fact, the uncompromising enforcement of this utopian promise had led to the establishment of totalitarian systems cloaked under that very promise. According to Berndt, the key motivation for the conference had been to investigate and understand British writers\u2019 desire both to revisit, and to reconceptualise, stories about this particular period of our shared European past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The different layers of meaning inherent in terms such as \u2018First World\u2019 right up to the \u2018Fourth World\u2019 were discerningly explored by Ulrich Busse (MLU) in his welcome address. The \u2018Second World\u2019 with its designation of the former \u2018communist bloc\u2019, as he pointed out, was a coinage modelled on the terminological predecessor \u2018Third World\u2019 and used to communicate political alliances as well as economic hierarchies in the Cold War period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Richard Brown (Leeds) discussed one of the most well-known contributors to the field in the first keynote lecture of the conference: \u201cMcEwan\u2019s Art of the Possible \u2026 Lessons on Fiction and the Political in his \u2018Second World\u2019 Writing from The Innocent<\/em> to Sweet Tooth<\/em>\u201d. Brown argued that \u2018Second World\u2019 was a term resonant for McEwan\u2019s fiction that provided links to Julian Barnes and Kazuo Ishiguro. From The Innocent<\/em> via Black Dogs <\/em>and Sweet Tooth<\/em> to the recently published Lessons<\/em>, there has been a succession of nuances in Ian McEwan\u2019s fiction that functions as a deconstruction of, or transgression from, retrotopias and mere nostalgia. The method applied in McEwan\u2019s Cold War novels is what Brown calls the \u2018fridge effect\u2019. This allows the writer to \u2018freeze\u2019 and preserve a historical setting and a mind-set in order to show the necessity of political and personal transgressions, and how political orientation defines cultural meanings and identities.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAfter the keynote lecture, Dr Judith Marquardt (City Councillor for Culture) opened the evening reception and expressed her welcome and gratitude to all participants, especially to the conference organisers, on behalf of the city of Halle. In her address, she drew attention to the city and region\u2019s centuries of experience with political, social, and economic transformation, emphasising that academic research and collaboration have been essential in dealing with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second day of the conference started with the keynote lecture by \u00c1gnes Gy\u00f6rke (K\u00e1roli G\u00e1sp\u00e1r University, Budapest) on \u201cAffective Encounters: The Second World in Contemporary British Writing\u201d. Her in-depth examination and mapping of three characteristic novels (Utz<\/em> by Bruce Chatwin, Under the Frog<\/em> by Tibor Fischer, and The Unconsoled<\/em> by Kazuo Ishiguro) suggested that the encounters of the West with the East, as imagined in the narratives, should be comprehended neither as \u2018the Other\u2019 nor as \u2018the Self\u2019. The recognition of the familiar and intimate in an alien environment, from a Western perspective, allows the reader to empathise with the characters\u2019 private sphere in a totalitarian regime that is seen and depicted as ominous and disconcerting in the light of nostalgic exploration. The concepts and motifs associated with the settings of the three novels include, among other notions, obscurity, Kafkaesque place and time, alienation, fascination, and an inherited sublimity that can, however, easily turn into its opposite at any time.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe topic of the \u2018Other\u2019 continued to be the key interest of the individual sessions. Melinda Dabis (P\u00e1zm\u00e1ny P\u00e9ter Catholic University, Budapest) employed Madina Tlostanova\u2019s concept of postcolonialism to argue that Kazuo Ishiguro re-imagined (one) Central Europe in The Unconsoled<\/em>. The (deliberate) disorientation created by the author suggests that the cultural identities in a postsocialist order have been cast into a maze as the borders are represented as, for a large part, undefined. The absence of particular affiliations groups the identities of Central Europe together as a distinctive postsocialist \u2018Other\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe West-East divide remained a concern in the paper of \u00c1gnes Harasztos (E\u00f6tv\u00f6s Lor\u00e0nd University, Budapest), whose discussion of \u201cThe Postmodern Baroque as a Heterotopia for East-Central Europe in post-1989 British fiction\u201d was based on a variety of intertwined paradigms, e.g. poststructuralist, postsocialist and postmodern Baroque theories, which were applied to three narratives (Utz<\/em> by Bruce Chatwin, Doctor Criminale<\/em> by Malcolm Bradbury, and Men in Space<\/em> by Tom McCarthy). The postmodern Baroque is to be understood as a counter-modern approach or vision that undermines the binary opposition of rationalism and exoticism as attributed to West and East, respectively, in the Western travelogue tradition. Western narratives and focalisations see and use the postmodern Baroque of East-Central Europe as a function to create or mirror their own heterotopias.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe next session engaged with various notions of figurative border-crossings. Robert Kusek (Jagellonian University, Krakow) addressed Deborah Levy\u2019s nostographic writing (e.g. The Man who Saw Everything<\/em>), which is predominantly concerned with shaping identities and homesickness in the frame of \u2018Central-Europeanness\u2019. Remarkably, Kusek explained that no nation had yet claimed ownership of the South-Africa-born Levy or her writing. In her narratives, which, in Kusek\u2019s opinion, have been under-appreciated, she remains in search of a home that is \u2018out of\u2019 home, and thus creates an \u2018imaginary\u2019 Central European homeland.<\/p>\n\n\n\nEastern Europe in the time of the overthrow of Ceausescu\u2019s dictatorship in Romania is the setting of Patrick McGuiness\u2019s novel The Last Hundred Days<\/em>, which was investigated in Therese-Marie Meyer\u2019s (MLU) paper on \u201cLiminal Morality\u201d. She argued that the novel offered a dystopian reading of the Romanian Revolution with a focus on moral dissociation. In a battle for integrity and survival, the everyman-protagonist, whose disposition, in Meyer\u2019s words, represents \u2018crowded isolation\u2019, learns how to make a move from passivity towards agency in order to bring down a corrupt and totalitarian system. The protagonist, however, becomes complicit in corruption himself to achieve this goal. A paradoxical ethos such as this is not easily resolved but affirmed by the need for existential (individual and societal?) security.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe third day of the conference was dedicated to legacies of fiction writing and historiography that explored ideological, personal, and institutional uncertainties and ambivalences overall. The final keynote lecture on \u201cRetrotopian Settings for Traitors: John le Carr\u00e9\u2019s Spy Fiction\u201d by Betiel Wasihun (Birmingham \/ TU Berlin) laid the foundation by unravelling how surveillance and betrayal are represented in the author\u2019s espionage novels. John le Carr\u00e9, a former spy himself, found the \u2018Second World\u2019 riddled with betrayal and chose it as his preferred topos. His novels raise the question of legitimacy of treason and betrayal all over again as there is always the concern of a \u2018positive\u2019 or \u2018moral\u2019 traitor in the light of heroism \u2013 or an arguably utilitarian opportunism. Wasihun argued that le Carr\u00e9\u2019s return to these settings from the Cold War even in his post-1990 fiction was deeply connected to the moral handling of the past. In her analysis of, for example, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold<\/em> (1963) and A Legacy of Spies<\/em> (2017), she showed how characters in a sequel retrospective narrative try to legitimise their past actions and decisions with recourse to ambivalent forces of conscience: duty, responsibility, veracity, and ethics. John le Carr\u00e9\u2019s leitmotif, as Wasihun argued, is to become and remain human in the light of ideological and ethical ambivalences.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe afternoon presentations began with a discussion of literary documentation in memoirs written on the \u2018Second World\u2019. Cultural historian Andrew Wells (Kiel) unravelled the lessons to be learnt from \u201cMemory, Ego-Documents, and Excavating the Socialist Past: Timothy Garton Ash\u2019s The File<\/em> (1997) as Showcase of Historical Methodology\u201d. The book explores Garton Ash\u2019s file recorded by the Stasi (Ministry of State Security in the GDR) and includes auto-biographic reflections as well as the results of his investigative journalism. Aimed at understanding how to use personal and archival material, The File<\/em> distinguishes fact from fiction while scrutinising potential discrepancies between Stasi reports, historical diaries, and individual memories. In line with the fact that his memoir offers a great deal of reflection upon the reliability of memory and subjectivity, Garton Ash refrains from condemnation of former Stasi collaborators, and recommends humility when confronted with the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe implementation of the \u2018correct opinion\u2019 (as the consistency of doctrine) was addressed by Olga Trebyk (Kiev) in her paper on \u201cChallenging Orthodoxy: Orwell\u2019s Legacy in Contemporary British Culture\u201d. She drew attention to the ongoing relevance of George Orwell\u2019s committed literature in both British and Ukrainian culture, exemplified by the range of creative adaptations of his works for the stage and in popular culture, including popular music, and its particular potential for satire. Drawing on the philosophical contributions of Erich Fromm, the paper foregrounded the significance of Orwell\u2019s visions for contemporary, retrotopian perspectives aiming to discern the connection between truth and freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Katrin Berndt\u2019s paper \u201cIn the Middle of Elsewhere: Central German Retrotopias in British Second World Fiction\u201d discussed the new literary interest in a larger variety of East German settings, including smaller urban centres and, occasionally, rural regions of the GDR. With a focus on Philip Sington\u2019s The Valley of Unknowing<\/em> (2013), Fiona Rintoul\u2019s The Leipzig Affair<\/em> (2014) and the Karin M\u00fcller series by David Young, she traced their representation of quotidian life in the GDR, how popular fiction such as Young\u2019s engage with \u2018exotic\u2019 settings to engender feelings of estrangement, and how strategies such as the second-person narrative translate alienation from, and disillusionment with, the GDR\u2019s \u2018really existing\u2019 socialism and its failure to fulfil its own promises.The conference could not have been more appropriately rounded off than with the public reading of The Leipzig Affair<\/em> by Fiona Rintoul herself at the Literaturhaus Halle. The lively discussion of participants and guests brought home the persistent interest in not only retrotopian perspectives on the \u2018Second World\u2019 that will undoubtedly encourage further literary and critical explorations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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\u00a9 Gerd Danigel, Sch\u00f6nhauserAllee underground station, East Berlin, GDR<\/em>, 1984, CC BY-SA 4.0, detail from https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/b\/bc\/U-Bahnsteig_U-Bahnhof_Sch\u00f6nhauserallee_1984.jpg<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n
Reading and Discussion with Fiona Rintoul, Literaturhaus Halle<\/em>, 18 September 2022 Conference Report: \u201cThe \u2018Second World\u2019 in Contemporary British Writing\u201d International Conference at Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) 16-18 September 2022 Florian GieselerMartin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany The main objective of the conference (https:\/\/secworld.anglistik.uni-halle.de\/) was to investigate contemporary British writing published after the fall of the Iron Curtain, but imaginatively located in Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conference-reports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essenglish.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essenglish.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essenglish.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essenglish.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essenglish.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3691"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/essenglish.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3719,"href":"https:\/\/essenglish.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3691\/revisions\/3719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essenglish.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essenglish.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essenglish.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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