Genre Struggles

Laura Vivanco

Genre logically implies a struggle between the genres in so far as each genre aspires to prevail and to reduce the others to sub-genres.

That's what's stated in a call for papers for the Gender/Genre Conference (Nov 22-23, 2013) (abstracts Jan 15, 2013), to be held at the University of Paris Est (Créteil/Marne la Vallée). That may be what it logically implies but, the cfp continues,

Literature understood in the sense of writing, blurs, disturbs and shakes up categories whether they be sexual or literary, and introduces differentiation into genre. Categories which we held to be atemporal then turn out to be susceptible to historical variations and reversals as well as numerous, intermittent developments. In English, the term gender is a deconstructing force which elicits questions.
Papers from very different fields: linguistics, the history of ideas and literary theory, or commentaries on singular works will be welcome, as long as they bring together notions of difference between the sexes and between literary genres. A selection of papers will be published in an edited volume.

At an earlier conference on genre the "logic" or law of genre was also interrogated:

At the Strasbourg International Colloquium on Genre, in July 1979, French philosopher Jacques Derrida began his essay, "La Loi du genre" with "Ne pas meler les genres" (Genres are not to be mixed). The essay proceeds by a series of intellectual feints, turns, and interrogations of its own rhetoric [...] to suggest that such a law - "Genres are not to be mixed." - is, for genres, madness. (Delany 63)

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Delany, Samuel R. “The Gestation of Genres: Literature, Fiction,Romance, Science Fiction, Fantasy ...” Intersections: Fantasy and Science Fiction, eds George E. Slusser and Eric S. Rabkin. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1987. 63-73.