Call for papers 

In colloquial English crap is “nonsense, rubbish”; crappy is “rubbishy” or “disgusting”. Crap is “faeces”,

with the verb “to crap” meaning “to defecate”. It is this far more common use of the word crap that the

audience cannot fall to bring to mind in relation to the play. All the associations merge in this overriding

definition of crap as excrement and waste. The tapes that Krapp has accumulated during his lifetime, are

these all just waste, just crap? The “memorable equinox” about which the thirty-nine-year-old Krapp is

so enthusiastic, is this just rubbish, meaningless, crap?

All of this about Krapp we know or at least recognize. But do we remember the

protagonist’s planned great novel? The “shadows of the opus… magnum”? The young Krapp’s

grand literary dream ultimately proves a failure. What remains of it? A shadow. This conference

asks whether s(krapp) is indeed merely rubbish, meaningless, crap.

The remainder – ichnos in Greek – resists definition and capture. It is elusive, dispersed,

devoid of sensory properties and form, unrepresentable. It is “something” that persists, although

it should not properly persist at all (A. Zawadzki). As J. Derrida observes, the reversal of the

value of Leftovers – “from scraps into life source” – itself relies on an excluded remainder

which, while remaining outside the whole, simultaneously sustains it. At the same time, it resists

conceptual and signifying structures; it cannot be absorbed, enclosed, or subjected to the

mechanisms of meaning (A. Zawadzki).

Finally, what role does the archival remainder fulfil? On the one hand, the archive

disrupts historical understanding by presenting itself as a “scrap” or a “raw trace of lives that

asked in no way to be told in this manner.” On the other hand, it “brutally opens onto an

unknown world” (G. Didi-Huberman).

 We also welcome proposals that engage with the conference theme from perspectives

not explicitly represented in the topics listed above.

The conference invites contributions from scholars working in literary studies,

comparative literature, cultural studies, philosophy, media studies, theatre and performance

studies, manuscript and genetic criticism, as well as related disciplines. We particularly

encourage papers exploring fragments, remnants, residues, textual remains, incompletion,

literary waste, and other forms of residuality in literature and culture.