Quand l’homme a voulu imiter la marche, il a créé la roue, qui ne ressemble pas à une jambe
[When man wanted to imitate walking, he invented the wheel, which does not look like a leg]
Apollinaire: Les mamelles de Tirésias, Préface

Reading Antiquity always already presupposes an act of re-membering and thereby a bringing back to heart (ri-cordare). At the same time, remembering is based on generating difference, i.e. on differences enabling the reappearance of the past as a phantom-like present. When identifying significant historical events and explaining their impact, classical mythology is often engaged in literary and cultural discourses that re-shape and re-interpret narratives that develop our sense of self. Therefore, constructing collective memories and remembering a shared antiquity are often interwoven through mechanisms of encoding, storing, retrieving and forgetting the Greco-Roman past.
Remembering Antiquity implies calling into question past cultural and political amnesia and repression: With the return of the ghost of right-wing politics which deny the relevance of intellectuals, the criteria of choosing one text and not the other become all the more important. This Conference will explore and discuss Dis-/Re-Membering as an urge to consume and/or erase the memory of “classical” texts that we may call into question by re-writing them in the context of various literary, artistic, visual or musical representations.

Possible subjects for papers
Re-/Dis-Membrance
• To what extent does the re-appropriation of classical texts contribute to (de-)constructing memory?
• What is the rhetoric of constructing memory in modern literature and art?
• How are dis-continuities exploited in favour of rejecting the concept of a collective cultural memory?
Re-Presentation
• To what extent does contemporary literature exploit classical antiquity as propaganda?
• Does the ancient world progressively elude our memories in the era of postmodern cultural amnesia, or do the spectres of the classical past still haunt us?
• How do the mechanisms of re-membering the classical past change within the context of national and transnational, sociohistorical and fictional accounts of classical literature?
• What impact does the digital age have on our relationship with our (remembrance of the) past?

Re-Canonisation
• What are the politics of (re-)establishing a Greco-Roman literary canon?
• How is cultural memory constructed as a form of opposition or as a survival technique that makes use of classical antiquity?
• How does re-/dis-membering the Greco-Roman past operate in our fragmented and/or catalogued present?
• What is the connection between personal literary and collective cultural memory, especially in times of crisis when there is a blatant lack of founding myths.
• How is the classical world (re-)mediated – as a dead corpse or as a living organism – and what aspects make Antiquity relevant for our social, moral, artistic and intellectual world?

• We invite abstracts of approximately 300 words (30 minute presentations, followed by 10 minute discussions). Abstracts and presentations are to be delivered in English.
• Abstracts and any inquiries may be sent to the organisers, at memory.bonn2017@gmail.com. Submissions are due May 15, 2017.