French and Francophone
/ World Literatures and Comparative Studies
Aurore Bissières (Mary Immaculate College)
biss@****.com (Log-in to reveal)
This panel explores how Francophone and Hispanophone fantastic literatures engage structures of power, hierarchy, and authority across diverse historical and cultural contexts. From the nineteenth century to the present, the fantastic has unsettled the boundaries between the real and the impossible, transforming narrative hesitation into a subtle critique of domination. As theorists such as Tzvetan Todorov and David Roas have argued, ontological uncertainty reflects deeper crises of legitimacy and sovereignty. Emerging from societies shaped by imperial expansion, colonial violence, dictatorship, revolution, and migration, fantastic texts often interrogate political, colonial, patriarchal, racialized, and economic hierarchies. In dialogue with PAMLA 2026’s theme, the panel invites proposals examining how the fantastic exposes suppressed histories, destabilizes institutional authority, and reimagines power across literary and cultural forms. Proposals engaging the conference theme are welcome, and submissions exploring other dimensions of Francophone or Hispanophone fantastic studies are strongly encouraged.
From the nineteenth century to the present, Francophone and Hispanophone fantastic literatures have unsettled the boundaries between the real and the impossible. Emerging from interconnected histories shaped by imperial expansion, colonial violence, dictatorship, revolution, and migration, the fantastic operates not only as narrative hesitation, but as a subtle language of power. As theorists such as Tzvetan Todorov and David Roas have shown, ontological uncertainty is never merely aesthetic. It signals deeper crises of authority, perception, and legitimacy.
Writers including Guy de Maupassant, Julio Cortázar, Jorge Luis Borges, Horacio Quiroga, Amélie Nothomb, and Samanta Schweblin mobilize ambiguity, doubling, and narrative instability to interrogate structures of domination. In contexts marked by censorship, authoritarian leadership, or colonial hierarchies, the fantastic functions obliquely. It transforms uncertainty into critique and hesitation into resistance.
In dialogue with PAMLA 2026’s theme, Our Ruling Classes: Culture, Power, Conflict, this panel invites proposals examining how Francophone and Hispanophone fantastic works engage political, colonial, patriarchal, racialized, and economic hierarchies. How does the fantastic expose what official discourse suppresses? How does narrative instability destabilize ruling elites and institutional authority? In what ways do haunting, metamorphosis, and temporal rupture challenge sovereignty and nationhood?
Possible topics include (but are not limited to): - The fantastic under dictatorship or censorship - Colonial and postcolonial anxieties - Gender, race, and normative authority - Memory, trauma and spectral return - Urban modernity and bureaucratic power - Eco-fantastic and environmental crisis - Transatlantic and translingual comparisons
Interdisciplinary and comparative approaches are especially welcome. While the panel engages the conference theme directly, proposals exploring other dimensions of Francophone or Hispanophone fantastic studies are strongly encouraged.