Meritocracy and Literature: Transcultural Approaches to Hegemonic Forms on September 18-20, 2025 in Brussels, Belgium

This conference seeks to contribute to the field of meritocracy studies from a

literary perspective. We propose to explore “how literature participates” – over

time and in a variety of contexts across the globe – in the construction, circulation

and critique of meritocratic thought (Cheah 2017). By assembling case studies

that focus on a range of periods and literary traditions across the linguistic

spectrum, we seek to approach meritocratic narratives through the lens of

literature, and as a world-literary phenomenon. In order to better understand the

reciprocal relations between meritocratic narratives and literary forms, we invite

contributions that engage with meritocratic narratives as a theme, and formation,

in literary works as well as contributions that investigate the impact of

meritocratic narratives on the production and reception of literary works in a

given context.

We accept proposals of papers offering close readings as well as overviews of a

genre, period or specific context. While not excluding the current, contemporary

situation and US/UK contexts, which are already receiving considerable attention,

we are especially interested in proposals that consider the shapes meritocratic

narratives have previously assumed and expand the debate across linguistic and

cultural contexts. To allow for a focused exchange on meritocratic narratives as

literary acts of worldmaking, we further delimit the selection of proposed

examples to genres that involve writing as an integral practice/medium.

How are narratives of achievement framed in plays, narrative and poetic texts?

How are they shaped in specific ways as forms, e.g. with regard to character

typologies, semantic fields, plot structures and other compositional elements?

Which narratives of achievement, progress and entitlement are especially

dominant in a given literary work, genre or context? How is a spectrum of such

narratives presented and negotiated in and through literature? What is the role

of literature in the perpetuation of meritocratic paradigms? And what of the

position and role of individual authors (across the spectrum of gender,

provenance, social strata) in projecting and enabling such paradigms? To what

extent is literature as a cultural practice itself subjected to, and co-opted by

meritocratic frameworks? Can it exist outside meritocratic frameworks? Can

literature provide a space for unmasking and resisting problematically hegemonic

concepts of valorisation? We look forward to receiving proposals that engage with

these and related questions. 

(Please see CFP for more details).