This article by Michel Charles tells of his pursuit, with wide eye and raised brow, of Professor R.-L. Etienne Barnett, a shadowy individual most of whose contributions to major humanities journals turn out to be lightly rewritten reprintings of articles by other scholars, or sometimes re-reprintings of articles he’d already appropriated from others. (English summary here.) I read manuscripts for several editorial boards, and while I can pick out a bad argument or a sloppy paragraph, I’m not always alert to the possibility of plagiarism; for that, I would have had to read and remember a monstrous amount of writing in an ever-expanding world of publications. Will editors start google-checking every manuscript, or feeding them through Turnitin as if authors were undergraduates? Michel Charles fingers the ultimate culprit: the pursuit, by individuals and institutions, of the highest possible “impact factor,” calculated automatically.

And speaking of impact factors, I wonder if you will get negative points by contributing to the following:

 

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Neohelicon: Discourse of Madness
(Special volume of Neohelicon [43, 2016]. Guest-Editor: R.-L. Etienne Barnett)

PROSPECTUS

Contributions on any aspect of madness in (of, and) textuality are welcome for consideration. Possible areas of focus, among a plethora of other options: literary representations of the alienated mind; mad protagonists or mad writers; madness as a vehicle of exile, as a form of marginalization, of dissipation, of disintegration, of revelation or self-revelation; interpretations of madness as a manifestation of structure, style, rhetoric, narrative; madness as a reflection of cultural assumptions, values, prohibitions; madness, as prophetic or dionysiac, poetic, or other; the esthetics of madness; philosophical, ethical, ontological, epistemological, hermeneutic and esthetic implications of the discourse/narrative of madness..

From an alternative vantage point, one might question: how does the deviant mind-set of authorial figures and/or fictional characters determine the organization of time, space and plot in the narrative? How does the representation of delusional worlds differ from the representation of other “non-mad” mental acts (dreams, fantasies, aspirations) and from other fictional worlds (magic, imaginings, phantoms) — if it does? Contributors are welcome to address these and other questions in a specific work, in a group of works, or in a more general/theoretical reflection, in and across any national tradition(s), literary movement(s) or œuvre(s).

SUBMISSIONS

Theoretical or applied contributions focused upon “discourses of madness” in the literary “arena” are invited and will be accorded full and serious consideration.

Manuscripts in English, French German or Italian — not to exceed twenty (25) double-spaced pages, including notes, bibliography and appendices, where applicable — are welcome. Contributions written in any but one’s first (or native) language must be scrupulously reviewed, edited and proofed by a “native” specialist prior to submission.

Format and submission requirements: Papers must prepared in strict accordance with APA (not MLA) guidelines and are to be accompanied by an abstract and 6-8 key words or expressions in English. (A second abstract and set of key words in the language of the article, if not in English, is strongly recommended.)

Submit via email in the form of a WORD document (attachment) to: R.-L. Etienne Barnett (Guest-Editor) at: RL_Barnett@msn.com (primary submission address) with a second copy to RLEBarnett@editionsdegresecond.be (secondary submission address).

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: OCTOBER 1, 2015

Prof. R.-L. Etienne Barnett
RL_Barnett@msn.com (Primary Email)
RLEBarnett@editionsdegresecond.be (Secondary Email)
Email: rl_barnett@msn.com (primary email)
Visit the website at http://www.springer.com/education+%26+language/linguistics/journal/11059