Alter & Ego – Age & Ego: A German-Norwegian Workshop

The workshop addresses a current trend in German and Norwegian literature: texts that push and transgress the borders between life and literature, facts and fiction – usually called autofiction, Ego-Literatur or virkelighetslitteratur. The workshop focuses on the nexus between ego, age and ageing in this type of literature. It will investigate literature as a medium of reflection on ageing and as a medium of creation of alternative ego-conceptions. The German title of the workshop plays in addition on the Latin term alter ego, evoking notions of the other self that is awaiting us when we grow older, already lurking beneath the surface and just becoming apparent when one is ageing, a personality we do not recognize as ours, but which we might develop into. For few things challenge the ego as ageing, confronting it with change and caducity.