ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others

This seminar invites papers on the Faustian trope throughout world literature, in particular the concept of the human and its relation to knowledge, immortality, and magic. Papers may include analyses of canonical versions of the Faust story (Christopher Marlowe, Goethe, Thomas Mann) as well as non-canonical and interdisciplinary approaches.

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This seminar invites papers on the Faustian trope throughout world literature, in particular the concept of the human and its relation to knowledge, immortality, and magic. Papers may include analyses of canonical versions of the Faust story (Christopher Marlowe, Goethe, Thomas Mann) as well as non-canonical and interdisciplinary approaches.

[more…]

To view literature and the visual arts as a form of conjuring up the dead, a form of remembering and mourning has a long-standing tradition. In recent years this preoccupation has been supplanted by an interest in literary and artistic modes of coming to terms with and appeasing the undead. Two developments seem to contribute to the present concern with the liminal space between the dead and the living: the general lack of forms and rites when it comes to transforming the biologically dead into the symbolically dead; secondly, the sheer scale of anonymous mass deaths (in camps and on battlefields) which makes this predicament particularly tangible. The seminar seeks to combine multiple disciplinary perspectives: anthropological, cultural-historical and psychoanalytic approaches aim at a more nuanced understanding of the processes of symbolic conversion, its successes and failures; a key aspect is the exploration of the aesthetic dimension of these conversion processes specific to media, such as literature, film, painting, or photography. Taking their cues from writers and artists as diverse as Georges Bataille, W.G. Sebald, Hannah Arendt, Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben, and Gerhard Richter, participants examine different modes and models of coping with or coming to terms with the anonymity and persistence of the undead. While we intend to focus this inquiry on German culture, we also included papers dealing with other European, or non-European cultures.

[more…]

To view literature and the visual arts as a form of conjuring up the dead, a form of remembering and mourning, has a long-standing tradition. In recent years this preoccupation has been supplanted by an interest in literary and artistic modes of coming to terms with and appeasing the undead. Two developments seem to contribute to the present concern with the liminal space between the dead and the living: the general lack of forms and rites when it comes to transforming the biologically dead into the symbolically dead; secondly, the sheer scale of anonymous mass deaths (in camps and on battlefields) which makes this predicament particularly tangible. The seminar seeks to combine multiple disciplinary perspectives: Anthropological, cultural-historical and psychoanalytic approaches aim at a more nuanced understanding of the processes of symbolic conversion, its successes and failures; a key aspect is the exploration of the aesthetic dimension of these conversion processes specific to media, such as literature, film, painting, or photography. Taking their cues from writers and artists as diverse as Georges Bataille, W.G. Sebald, Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben, Robert Harrison, and Gerhard Richter, scholars from a variety of backgrounds (literary and religious studies, art history, philosophy and political theory) examine different modes and models of coping with or coming to terms with the anonymity and persistence of the undead. While we intend to focus this inquiry on German culture, we would also welcome papers dealing with other European, or non-European cultures.

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Confronting his creator Victor Frankenstein, the monster exclaims: “My form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid from its very resemblance.” Taking our cue from the monster, we invite proposals that explore the relationships between reproduction and monstrosity in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century print and visual culture. The areas we are interested in exploring include:

1. the relationships between technologies of reproduction and concepts of the monstrous copy or “filthy type”;
2. the ways in which technologies of reproduction transform and/or deform the human;
3. the ways in which technologies of reproduction produce “filthy types,” i.e., bad writing and/or bad characters;
4. the ways in which “filthy types”—the criminal, the pornographer, the revolutionary—employ technologies of reproduction like the printing press;
5. seditious literature and criminal biography;
6. conceptions of the reproductive body in scientific and medical discourse.

The seminar welcomes contributions from scholars doing work on print culture and literature; popular and visual culture; media theory; the history and sociology of reading; feminism and gender studies. We also welcome papers addressing broader questions regarding monstrosity in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century: How do technical and scientific innovations affect conceptualizations of monstrosity? What do conceptualizations of monstrosity tell us about changing definitions of the human/non-human during the period? What defines a monster as such? Are monsters necessarily singular or can there be a community of monsters? Can monsters reproduce themselves?

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How can figures of form, rhyme schemes, repetitions, rhythmic elements which pervade literary works - often in so far as they are literary – be distinguished from the formulaic? When does a metaphor become a dead metaphor? When does repetition turn from a literary / stylistic device into cliche, into the hackneyed or everyday? More broadly speaking, how do all of these questions contribute to our (human) ability to recognize repetition as such in its difference from what is being repeated? Papers addressing all aspects of figures which oscillate between the heights of form and the abysses of the formulaic welcome. Topics might include but are not limited to: lists, “received ideas”, rhetorical questions (how can they be distinguished as rhetorical), dead as opposed to living metaphors, and other figures of repetition.

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The familiar letter has been at the heart of a series of humanisms in Europe, from the love story of Abelard and Héloise and its echoes in Rousseau and others, to the inversion of European perspectives in the many novels written in the “Persian Letters” or “Turkish Spy” mode. The letter has also played a role in presenting the post-colonial subject, in works as diverse as Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Mariama Bâ’s Une si longue lettre. In each of these historical instances, letters have played a central role in redefining subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Paradoxically, while the relay mechanisms for mail delivery have become ever faster and more secure, the content of letters has shrunk, along with their projection of human subjectivity. The epistolary novel had become a rarity by about 1850. Though we may not take at face value Theodor Adorno’s pronouncement that “In a social configuration in which each individual is reduced to the level of a function […] the ‘I’ in the letter is always something of a mirage,” the replacement of corrrespondence by e-mail seems to have driven the final nail in the coffin of “letterature.” This seminar will explore the issues emerging from the above exposition, and contest its admittedly one-sided history of epistolary humanisms. Papers that interrrogate theories of epistolarity (e.g., Derrida, Kittler, Siegert), that adduce examples (genuine or fictional) from non-Western epistolary practices, and that treat electronic forms of epistolarity are all especially welcome.

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