Kurzfassung

In contemporary research, tourists, travelers, vagabonds, and the like are frequently presented as travelling characters, who, while being on the road, resonate with and negotiate culturally specific – individual and collective – discourses of encountering and constructing the foreign and 'the other' (including unknown spaces/ ‘Terra Incognita”). However, in contrast to (visual) ethnology, literary and cultural studies approaches to factual and fictional forms of 'traveling texts' have so far...In contemporary research, tourists, travelers, vagabonds, and the like are frequently presented as travelling characters, who, while being on the road, resonate with and negotiate culturally specific – individual and collective – discourses of encountering and constructing the foreign and 'the other' (including unknown spaces/ ‘Terra Incognita”). However, in contrast to (visual) ethnology, literary and cultural studies approaches to factual and fictional forms of 'traveling texts' have so far neglected the body as a medium of travel, despite the fact that travelers are always also "traveling bodies” since the body is a central aspect of each travel experience. Following a panel offered at the 3rd annual conference of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft in Gent, Belgium ("Bodies in Motion"), this interdisciplinary conference focuses on traveling as an embodied cultural practice, arguing that in particular the experience of the sensual body ("Leib") can be seen as a medium for the communication and negotiation of social norms and values. Hence, individual papers will analyze body discourses as they become visible in textual, visual, and audiovisual as well as in performative negotiations, representations and performances of traveling. In addition, this conference aims at discussing practices of mobility and perception, images and metaphors of traveling bodies (e.g. gendering space in the context of orientalism and colonialism), the performance of 'the body' (own vs. other) as well as culturally specific body practices and how they challenge traditional notions about embodiment. Of special significance are representations of the obstinate or 'ill-functioning' body (e.g. the 'resistant' body, the power of the body over mind, bodily functions and control, discourses on health and hygiene), and limits and delimitations of body experience while traveling (e.g. norms and regulations, spatial experiences, thresholds, and borders; (technological) body enhancement while abroad/ on the road).» weiterlesen» einklappen