Abundance and scarcity appear as opposites and yet both mark a deviation from a state of harmony, balance, or neutrality. Seeking out or fleeing from one of these two extremities engages the way we relate to resources, or to desire and need, and invites us to think on issues of value, norms, and excesses. Primarily an issue of basic survival, our relationship to abundance and scarcity can be observed through the organisation of our societies and of language, but also in our concerns around aesthetics and expression.
From a cultural and historical perspective, issues of abundance and scarcity evoke the realm of resources, markets and consumerism. The current ‘era of abundance’ is defined by an abundance both of consumer goods and of information. In regards to conspicuous consumption, an abundance of wealth is used to amass cultural capital. Among resources that can be either scarce or abundant, food is a particularly useful example for calling into question the ambivalence of abundance; though a feast may play a positive role in reinforcing social ties, or a host’s prestige, today’s overabundance of processed foods has shown perverse side-effects in regards to certain populations’ health, including the more disadvantaged. Abundance may also have more positive effects – such as during times where economic prosperity is combined with creative and artistic growth, during America’s ‘Roaring Twenties’ for instance (though of course times of need may also be a drive for innovation.) Conversely, abundance may also bring creative stagnation in intellectual and artistic movements as well as the adverse effects of rampant consumerism – notably in terms of the environment but also in regards to cultural, ethical, and spiritual concerns.
From a literary angle, papers might consider representations of abundance and scarcity as well as the way literary form can play with these two opposing concepts. These issues might be considered via eco-criticism, for instance, in looking at how the losses associated with environmental degradation are evoked in literature or looking at whether nature is seen as a place of overflowing abundance or as a place of lack and loss. Similarly, writings about the decadence and vacuity that are associated with consumerist profusion or unscrupulous displays of wealth question the morality of abundance and encourage a distinction between quality and quantity. Playing with gaps and wholes, with saturation and omissions, may affect a text’s reception, sometimes creating challenges to comprehension or even gaps in our understandings and interpretations – from les écritures blanches and texts that create aporia-producing gaps, to texts that seem to inflate and overflow, that hoard words and intertextual references, sometimes to the point of saturating meaning. Attention might also be given to artistic forms that derive from scarcity and paucity. Junk art, the DIY aesthetic, collage, creating something out of whatever is left over… These approaches show the creativity that can be born from times of need. Papers might also consider works that play on the oppositions between the void and the whole, between equilibrium and extremes, as well as the issue of filling, or not filling, spaces – whether a panel, a page, a canvas, a workspace, a horizon of expectation.
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