Plasticity ACROSS GENRES AND DISCIPLINES (International Conference)
Tunisia
Organization: ISLT, University of Carthage
Event: International Conference
Language and texts have an astounding capacity to generate different meanings with every
interpretation. As such, Catherine Malabou frames this regenerative capacity as “something like a
scar, tugging the skin of a text to distribute its meaning differently, to reveal within it a new
organization, to make possibly in the very text different movements and different effects of truth.”
She defines plasticity as “this regenerative force of reading” (29). Form, whether textual, oral,
pictorial, artefactual, documented or digitized, can thus be defined as a plastic entity constructed
through the incorporation and reworking of multiple elements into a new configuration.
As it permeates all domains of communication, plasticity
entails generativity as well as explosiveness: the moment an
entity is received into a new form, it may be transformed to
the point of rupture or partial erasure. Plastic forms, in this
sense, are open to ongoing reshaping, giving and receiving
(Malabou 32-33). They are unstable, endowed with a
capacity to shift, absorb, reconfigure, and become
continuous sites of possibility rather than limitation.
Within this configuration, subjectivities are constituted as
mutable and relational, while narratives circulate, adapt,
and reconfigure across media and languages. Consequently,
genres and disciplines can be deemed “plastic” for their
capacity to form, transform and destroy, emerging as spaces
of transformation, displacement, and/or rupture.
Drawing on Derrida’s notion of différance and instability of meaning, and informed by developments
in neuroscience and brain plasticity, Malabou revisits form as inherently capable of becoming. Her
account resonates with Gilles Deleuze’s concept of “Body without Organs”, whereby the “body”, or
any physical composition, is understood as a field of intensities and flows that exist in a fluid and
non-stratified state, enabling continuous production of new relations and modes of becoming. This
configuration embraces the Hegelian dialectic of transformation (Aufhebung) according to which
form not only receives and gives shape but may explode and become an entirely different form. In
Malabou’s framework, whether textual, medial, or neural, the material and embodied potential of
form takes precedence over signification and textual play. Plasticity, in this sense, marks an
epistemological and ontological shift from previous models of interpretation of form, re-materializing
what post-structuralism has dematerialized and situating itself within a broader inquiry into
transformation, mutation, and the generative potential of form itself, hence its transdisciplinary
nature and potential.
Literature has been a site for the negotiation of form and content. The classical genres’ tight
rules of unity and fixed structures already contained seeds of instability, whether through
conflict or reversal. These internal “deformations” come to the surface with the rise of the
novel and the subsequent modern and postmodern developments that gave rise to new voices,
temporalities and modes of expression. Today, from hypertext fiction and digital narratives to
autofiction, graphic novels, and hybrid or multimedia storytelling, literature is continuously
pushed beyond established limits, reflecting its inherently plastic logic.
As to postmodern cultural manifestations, arts, cinema and comics have contributed to the
creation of a post-cinematic age in which special effects and animation have transformed
traditional and classical realistic representations of life towards a more transgressive show of
possible digital worlds and temporalities. The all-encompassing presence of the liminal digital
space today, its fluidity and manipulative nature lead to all sorts of extremisms that feed on
fake news and distorted realities giving rise to a post-truth age. Political and democratic
debates adhere to plasticity in the way capitalist and neo-liberal structures form, transform
and even destroy our world. The new subject that is produced by plasticity, in this sense, is
thus worthy of examination in this conference.
Plasticity in linguistics is not merely related to the “flexibility”
and “adaptability” of language. It goes beyond speakers’ ability to
change their language use according to context, audience, or
communication situations that give rise to variation within a
given system. Rather, plasticity is the inherent ability of
language to transform itself as an open-ended generative system
(Deacon 269). Plasticity explores languages’ potential for
renewing, remoulding, creating, erasing and exploding meaning
and structures across time, cognition, and social and power
dynamics. Indeed, the very symbolic and self-referential nature
of language constitutes languages’ most plastic, liberating and
generative force. Sense is derived as a function of the way the
symbolic units of the lexicon operate within the system by
combining meaning and form, both governed by “a
computational system of abstract rules that operate on top of the
symbolic units” (Chomsky 15-18).
The conference seeks to explore the different modes through which plastic forms are created
across genres and disciplines. It examines reconfigurations in literary genres and narrative
forms, transformations in media representations, the dynamics of language, multilingualism
and linguistic hybridity, as well as emerging practices of translation. We welcome abstracts
addressing interdisciplinary approaches to literary, translation, media, and film studies as well
as to language, philosophy and cultural studies. We invite individual papers, panels,
roundtables, and workshops that study (but are not limited to) the following axes:
1.Plasticity of Literature:
Hybridity in genre (essay-novel, autofiction, speculative memoir, docufiction)
Experimental writing: seriality, fragmentation, etc.
Blurred boundaries between fiction/non-fiction
Mutable, fragmented, posthuman subjects
Trauma, memory, narrative reconstruction
Migration, exile, reconfigured identities
2.Plasticity in Culture, Media and Politics:
Manifestations of plasticity in politics and foreign policy
Visual and acoustic reconfigurations of narrative
Comics and the age of post-cinema
Formation, transformation and destruction of identities and spaces
Intermediality/transmediality in Cultural Studies
Platform storytelling and digital/algorithmic plasticity
3.Translation as Plastic Practice:
Translation: transfer or transformation?
Translating form, voice, genre: gains and losses
Creative transformation/deformation
Untranslatability and destructive plasticity: the limits of translation
Ethical challenges in translating testimony (trauma, violence, war)
AI and machine translation
4.Plasticity in Linguistics
Neuro- and psycholinguistic plasticity: language acquisition, brain plasticity, the Critical
Period Hypothesis (CPH), bilingualism, and aphasia as sites of cognitive adaptability
Discursive, stylistic and usage-based sociolinguistic plasticity: code-switching, style
shifting, language/register/dialectal variation, evolution of informal forms and slang
development
Phonological plasticity: cross-linguistic influence, phonological drift, acoustic remapping
Morphological plasticity: morphogenesis, morphemic fusion, lexical hybridization,
neologism
Syntactic plasticity: structural logic and diachronic transitions, syntactic re-wiring
The ubiquity of pragmatic plasticity: under/and overspecification in language use
Semantic plasticity: ambiguity and vagueness
Plasticity vs. flexibility, ontological re-shaping, language ownership, global English(es),
professional identity, subjectivity
Submission, Participation, and Formatting Guidelines
Abstracts of no more than 250 words, along with a short biographical note (100 words), should
be submitted to plasticity.islt@gmail.com
Deadline for abstract submission: July 1, 2026
Notification of acceptance: August 1, 2026
Authors of accepted proposals will be invited to deliver presentations of 15 minutes.
Submissions should follow the appropriate citation style according to their disciplinary
orientation:
MLA (9th edition) for contributions in Literature and Cultural Studies.
APA (7th edition) for contributions in Linguistics.
Authors are responsible for ensuring consistency and accuracy in formatting, citations, and
references. Authors of accepted proposals are expected to submit full papers by November 15,
2026. All submissions will undergo blind peer review, and final acceptance will be based on the
reviewers’ evaluations.
Conference Convenor and Chair: Dr. Olfa Belgacem
Asma Dhouioui