For this annual international conference, which took place online because of the ongoing pandemic, the overarching theme was “CULTURAL UNIFICATION THROUGH LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT”. The conference brought a lively discussion of a wide range of topics. Dr. Kristian Van Haesendonck’s contribution to the conference was a paper titled “From Civilization to Barbarism in contemporary Latin American Film”. The aim of the paper was to show how the 19th century predominant Latin American paradigm of “Civilización y barbarie” (Civilization and Barbarism) is represented in El ciudadano ilustre (The Distinguished Citizen, Argentina 2016), a fictional account of an Argentinian writer´s life after winning the Nobel Prize, yet one with a highly ambiguous ending. Dr. Van Haesendonck argued that the film establishes a dialogic link with classics of Latin American literature such as Esteban Echerverría’s “El matadero” (the Slaughterhouse) and Domingo Sarmiento’s Facundo, however not with the aim to favor civilization over barbarism, but rather to lay bare the unresolved tension both in contemporary Argentina and in broader Latin American society. A close analysis of El ciudadano ilustre shows that, at least in Latin America, dialectic concepts have all but died, thus challenging the postmodern trend of dissolving them along other supposedly “outdated” binarisms (such as center and periphery). The paper was appreciated for the relevance of the theme discussed, as stressed by the moderator (Prof. Jagdish Batra) because civilization and barbarism are two concepts that have become increasingly important over the past few decades; there has also been little research in the field of writing on film, especially in the Latin American context.

Kris发言主题

Kris在会议上发言

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文：Kris

编辑：钱堃

审核：潘红