As AI technologies advance, language departments face questions of relevance, while exophonic writing by authors like Jhumpa Lahiri and Yoko Tawada flourishes.

The etymology of the term “exophony”: “exo” (from Ἐξ [ex] = “outside, external”) and “phony” (from Φωνὴ [phōnē] = voice) can be understood as the voice from outside. Yet, what’s "outside"? Every “exo” inherently implies an “endo”.

As Yasemin Yildiz suggests, languages are shaped by nationalistic frameworks that confine their identity to the nation-state with which they are associated. Primarily articulated by Tawada in her 2003 essay Exophony: Travels Beyond the Mother Tongue, exophony aims to transcend such restrictive assignments. However, it remains a theoretically under-explored field, with limited research dedicated to it. While “migrant literature” and “translingualism” engage with related themes, they are not interchangeable concepts. Further investigation could thus unveil new avenues of inquiry and significantly advance this area of study. Additionally, exploring the definition of exophony may serve as a heuristic tool for examining and understanding the evolving landscape of language technologies, particularly in relation to artificial intelligence.

We welcome papers aiming at defining exophony by engaging with, but are not limited to, the following themes:

1. Exophony in the Digital Age: How does the rise of AI-powered translation and language learning tools impact the practice and reception of exophonic writing?

2. The Politics of Linguistic Choice: What are the political and philosophical impacts of writing in a non-native language in AI-driven globalization?

3. Exophony and Translation Studies: How does exophony challenge or complement current approaches to translation, in light of advancing AI translation capabilities?

4. Future of Linguistic Diversity: Reflections on how exophonic practices might influence the preservation and evolution of linguistic diversity in an AI-dominated future.

Dans un contexte où les technologies d’intelligence artificielle (IA) redéfinissent les pratiques linguistiques, cette recherche propose d’examiner comment des étudiants francophones en cours de traduction et de rédaction en coréen intègrent les outils de traduction automatique (ChatGPT, DeepL, Papago, etc.) dans leurs productions écrites. Plus précisément, elle s’appuie sur le concept d’exophonie, qui désigne l’acte d’écrire dans une langue étrangère et interroge la créativité, l’identité et la voix de l’auteur.

Au sein d’une classe de traduction dans un établissement d’enseignement supérieur en France, nous recueillerons deux versions de travaux écrits : une première rédigée sans aide d’IA, et une seconde réalisée avec l’appui d’outils automatiques. Nous procéderons ensuite à une analyse comparative de ces textes afin de mesurer l’incidence de l’IA sur la qualité linguistique, la diversité lexicale, mais également sur les aspects exophoniques tels que l’appropriation créative d’une langue non maternelle. Des entretiens semi-directifs permettront en outre d’approfondir la perception qu’ont les étudiants de leur propre « voix » lorsqu’ils se reposent sur l’IA pour produire un texte en coréen.

Par cette double approche, quantitative (analyse des écarts linguistiques) et qualitative (étude des discours d’apprenants), nous souhaitons mettre en lumière la tension entre standardisation des productions écrites et maintien d’une spontanéité exophonique. L’enjeu de cette étude est d’élaborer des stratégies pédagogiques qui encouragent à la fois l’autonomie et la créativité des apprenants, tout en reconnaissant l’apport potentiel de l’IA dans la correction et la fluidité linguistiques.

En définitive, cette recherche contribue à éclairer la manière dont l’IA peut reconfigurer, enrichir ou, au contraire, uniformiser l’exophonie, ainsi qu’à proposer des pistes pour l’enseignement du coréen dans un environnement technologique en pleine évolution.

Exophony begins with the recognition that writing need not be anchored in a singular, “pure” literary heritage, challenging the entrenched notion that one’s so-called mother tongue—or a stable, inherited literature—constitutes the exclusive domain of authentic creative production. In exophonic practice, an author’s “voice from the outside” disrupts the myth of a monolingual text through code-switching, stylistic experimentation, and deliberate cultural boundary-crossing. These techniques expose the plasticity of literary forms, revealing that traditions once perceived as fixed can, in fact, accommodate new idioms, hybrid genres, and intertextual dialogues.

In a parallel yet distinct manner, artificial intelligence decentralizes familiar literary models by creating what can be termed “algorithmic interweavings.” Rather than drawing upon a personal or cultural lineage, AI relies on vast multilingual datasets and stochastic pattern-matching. In the process, it may produce mistranslations, dissonant registers, or unexpected textual mash-ups—anomalies that can challenge conventional understandings of literary style and coherence. Far from mere technical glitches, these moments highlight how creative potential may arise from processes not guided by a single authorial vision. By placing AI’s outputs alongside exophonic writings, we begin to see a shared disruption of any strictly “inherited” literary framework. What once seemed like errors can instead become generative sites for renewing our sense of what literature can be.

This shared framework of productive “accidents” grows more vivid in diasporic exophony, where authors may adopt new languages due to familial relocations or economic pressures rather than through explicit ideological choice. Korean-Zainichi author Ook Chung, for example, did not embrace French to resist a dominant culture; instead, his family’s move to Montreal led to an “accidental” adoption of the French language. Much like AI’s stochastic reassemblies, Chung’s linguistic path complicates neat literary categories—whether “Francophone,” “Zainichi,” or “Korean”—and shows how unplanned collisions can yield innovative modes of expression. These diasporic tensions echo AI’s algorithmic interweavings by illustrating how new literary voices emerge when traditional boundaries are disrupted by circumstance or design.

Therefore, whether it is the deliberate boundary-crossing of an exophonic writer, the stochastic textual mixing of AI, or the “accidental” linguistic shifts characteristic of diasporic authors, each demonstrates that literary expression thrives in the tensions and interweavings among languages, cultures, and technologies. By embracing these "voices from the outside"—be they human or machine—comparative literature can cultivate a space that not only acknowledges the fluid, shifting terrain from which new forms, genres, and narratives continually emerge but also renegotiates the very boundaries that define its fields.

As an anthology horror comic with a main target group of girls aged 10–15 and featuring a relatable female heroine for (pre-)teens, Vanessa – Die Freundin der Geister [‘friend of the spirits’] (1982–91) was an exception within the comics market in German-speaking countries in many ways.

Other comics for a young audience such as Bessy (1965–1985), Lasso (1965–85), Silberpfeil [Silver Arrow] (1970–88), Gespenster Geschichten [‘Ghost Stories’] (1974–2006), and Spuk Geschichten [‘Spook Stories’] (1978–95), might have been read by all genders, but their dominance of male protagonists and marginalizing depictions of helpless female supporting characters offered more potential for identification for boys than for girls.

The main story of the anthology was always written by Peter Mennigen and featured the teenager Vanessa as its central character.

In addition to the main story, all formats of the series contained up to four translations of horror comics and short stories with female protagonists.

With its constant heroine and a mixture of recurring and new characters, mostly Vanessa’s adventures intertwined aspects of everyday teenage life with paranormal elements. The stories about Vanessa were designed as a hybrid as they also include (mild) romance and (slapstick) humour as continuous elements. Alongside her boyfriend Harold, a teenage spirit from the middle ages, Vanessa fights many sorts of supernatural villains, mostly gothic archetypes such as demons, ghosts, vampires, or witches. However, troubles in Vanessa’s teenage life not only result from her contact with the other world: The stereotypical evils housekeeper, Mrs. Hagglon, and her sidekick, the butler Brady, are eager to get rid of the teenager and her parents to have the castle and its hidden treasure to themselves. Whereas Vanessa's heroism in the interaction with the supernatural always terminates a threat and sometimes even establishes new friendships, the everyday life adversory with Mrs. Hagglon as personification of the trope of the evil houskeeper permanent.

In my talk, I will discuss the series' manyfold concepts of heroism and villainy in the context of the intertwinement of the natural and the supernatural sphere.

My intersectional analysis of adversary in the comic focuses on age, gender, class, and species.

I argue that the demonification of Mrs. Hagglon leads to a domestification of the supernatural villains and vice-versa - and that Vanessa's female heroism party has a problematic ageist and mysogenic downside.

In the dissertation I will propose the concept of Asian-futurism inspired by Afrofuturism, which consider the present and the future of the African diaspora community through reflecting the past. In the dissertation, I will employ Afrofuturism and “Asian-futurism” to analyze the issues of history, social justice, and colonization in post-colonial theory, especially in settler colonization, in the genres of films, novels, and graphic novels. In Asian-futurism, I will focus on the literary works of Taiwanese indigenous, including Chiu Ruo-Long’s graphic novel Seediq Bale (2011) and documentary Gaya (1998) of Seediq tribe, Huang Ming-Chuan’s film The Man from Island West (1990) of Atayal tribe. I will argue that Taiwanese Indigeneity is like “The Wretched of the Earth”; African American is like “Black Skin, White Masks” via Frantz Fanon’s post-colonial theory.

Afrofuturism, according to John Jennings, is “a theoretical framework, aesthetic and cultural movement, and it attempts to address these questions and many more through electronic music, visual and performance art, speculative fiction and poetry, and an Afrocentric view of what the days to come hold for individuals of African descent.” In Afrofuturism, the term “Sankofa” is from Akan tribe in Ghana and it means “retrieve” and literally “go back and get” (san-: return; -ko-: go; -fa: look, see and take). According to Patricia Metoyer, “the Akan believe the past serves as a guide for planning the future; to the Akan, it is this wisdom in learning form the past which ensures a strong future.” In African American art and literature, “Sankofa” represents the need for the African American community connect to the past in order to reflect better future possibilities. What inspired me to “Sankofa” (retrieve) my own ancestors’ history and to comprehend how the past accomplished the present and consider how to build a potential future was the protagonist in Octavia E. Butler’s novel Kindred. Butler’s Dana adventures in time travel between Los Angeles in the year of 1976 and Atlanta in the year of 1815. However, contemporary scholarship lacks research on a lineage of significant Taiwanese and African American literary works in the perspective of post-colonialism: including Huang Ming-Chuan’s The Man from Island West (1990), Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Good Men, and Good Women (1995), Göran Hugo Olsson’s Concerning Violence (2014), and Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred (1979). Doing so, I argue that colonial nostalgia is not only for the colonizer but also for the colonized; the more colonial figures in literary works are forgotten, the closer relationship the colonizer and the colonized of the post-colonial period are. Most specifically, I will revisit the aforementioned Taiwanese and African American films, literary works, and graphic adaptations and analyze the following shared elements:

(1) Representation of fragmented history and of use of ellipsis;

(2) Cultural conflicts and hybridity.