Marijan Dović, Marko Juvan and Jola Škulj at the 20th ICLA/AILC congress in Paris

From 18-24 July 2013, the Sorbonne held the 20^th congress of the International Comparative Literature Association, titled Comparative Literature as a Critical Approach. The plenary talks focused on the relation between comparative literature studies and spatiality (Florence Delay), practices of freedom (Gayatri Spivak) and law (Jean-Paul Costa), as well as on the neurobiological theory of aesthetic experience (Jean-Pierre Changeux). More than four hundred parallel sessions included the workshop on the ‘Art of Not Thinking’, which was organised by the ICLA Research Committee on Literary Theory and chaired by John Zilcosky. Marko Juvan participated in the workshop with a paper on the Tropes of Not Thinking and the Literary Field, addressing the techniques that have from Romanticism through Surrealism to Neo-Modernism evoked creative ‘mania’. With a paper on Concepts of Criticism and the Sciences, Juvan also participated in the workshop on ‘Concepts and Comparative Criticism’. The European Network for Comparative Literary Studies (REELC/ENCLS) organised a workshop on the condition of comparative literary studies in Europe, which included Jola Škulj’s paper on the Politics of Comparative Approaches to the European Culture of Writing. And Marijan Dović participated in the session on ‘Comparative Literature: Just Another Comparative Science Among Others?’ with a paper on Literature and Law: Literary Defamation and the Edges of Artistic Autonomy.