Special Session

French and Francophone / Multiethnic and Indigenous

El hadji Malick Ndiaye (Seattle University)
ndia@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

Faced with the planetary ecological, socio-economic, and psychic impasses of our era, it is urgent to replace the paradigm of utopia with the more demanding and grounded framework of "actopia." Historically, utopia—defined by its nature as an abstract "non-place" (ou-topos) and its teleological structure—has been used to justify tabula rasa projects that often compromised or obstructed radical transformation. Actopia designates immanent, situated, and autopoietic processes of "bricolage"—the hands-on work of changing the world from within. Rather than a top-down blueprint for the future, the actopie is an "ecology of the act" that thrives in the cracks of existing power structures.

We invite paper proposals that could contribute to the building of the theoretical framework of les actopies, as developed by El Hadji Malick Ndiaye and Claire Sagan, to examine the intersections of language, space, and power within Francophone contexts. In a world structured by the "topos" of established authority and the hierarchies of the ruling classes, actopia represents a decentralized field of action—a "topology of the act." Unlike a utopia, which exists in "no-place," an actopia is a localized, discursive ecology where agency is performed and realities are reconstructed. We seek papers that explore how Francophone literature, film, and visual arts move beyond mere critiques of power to map these active "territories of practice."

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

Ecologies of Discourse: How localized vernaculars and multilingualism dismantle inherited cultural and class hierarchies.
The Topology of the Act: Specific sites in Francophone texts where social or political agency is enacted by the "have-nots."
Beyond the Heroic: Moving from the veneration of legendary figures to the horizontal, collective creation of community power.
Intermedial Actopies: The role of performance and visual media in creating autonomous spaces that defy elite control.