ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others

Both matter and essence, the timeless memory of the humankind and the ephemeral glimpse of the mind, the eventful being of language has never ceased to captivate our imagination. The multiple ways in which language structures the human have given rise to some of the fundamental articulations of human cognition, individual and social being: the controversial ontological status of language (the aporetic divide between words and things, extending from Plato to Saussure and Foucault), the paradoxes of the language-thought correlation (the approach of Sapir-Whorf and the philosophical-rhetorical deconstruction of cognitive forms), the varied modes of ideological (mis)appropriations of language (the critical tradition from Gramsci to Bourdieu) and others. The heteronomy of our time appears as a good host for much of this intellectual questioning. It, however, also brings forth some new bifurcations and unexpected conjunctions. The panel Language Ideology and the Human addresses the position of language in the multi-paradigm setting of the new humanities: cutting across disciplines, epistemological frontiers, and political practices, it will examine the position and the potential of language as such.

[more…]

Centuries of territorial conflict, shared tradition, and economic exchange between the nations of East and South Asia have produced a wide-range of hybrid cultural expressions influenced by the identity politics of both regions. The evolution of Tibetan representations of the Indian-born Buddha over the centuries, for example, displays Tibet’s ongoing attempts to integrate South Asian tradition into the hegemonic Chinese culture dominating its territory. A plethora of travel writings, for example by eighteenth-century British writers George Bogle and Samuel Turner and modern-day Indian writer Vikram Seth, illustrate the various cultural lenses, colonial, Western and postcolonial, non-Western, that have speculated on the interpolation of East and South Asian cultures.

This panel explores how the social, political, economic, and religious interactions between East and South Asia have influenced and produced a wide-range of subjectivities framed by those regions, as expressed through literary and cultural productions from the ancient through modern times. Paper topics may address themes pertaining, but not limited, to: Reading and Representing the “Subject”; Literature and Human Rights; Language and the Human; Translation and Metamorphosis; Western Readings of Orientalism and Otherness; Media and the Human; The Human and the Natural World; Philosophy, Literature, and the Human; Gender and Transformation; Religion and Globalism; Terrorism and Tradition; Monsters and Angels; and Temporal and Spatial Expressions of Identity.

[more…]

This seminar explores the concept of testimony beyond humanist interpretations of what it means to witness pain or injustice. In the humanist tradition, witnessing has often been construed ideally as the act of a self-identical subject, whose testimony would reflect an “I” that was fully present at the event(s) in question, and whose speech therefore establishes the conditions under which truth can be ascertained and a judgment can be rendered. These presuppositions belie the complex relationship between experience and representation (including memory), and also the infinite nature of justice, which cannot be reduced to a closed circuit of restitution and appropriation. The papers in this seminar explore ways in which the experience of witnessing exceeds the subject and its cultural, social and political correlates—the legal system, social constructions of identity, and the nation—and thereby allows us to rethink how we relate to human and non-human others (including the dead and disappeared), and consequently to the possibility of justice.

[more…]

This seminar aims to explore how the category of the “human” can come to be reformulated through the structure of perversion, especially in the readings of literary texts. The comparative study of literatures has been instrumental in forming the category of “perversion,” as writers such as Petrarch, Sade, and Sacher-Masoch have, in their international receptions, helped to shape what counts as “perverse” in relation to the properly human. Lacan’s formula for perversion, a<>$, suggests that the pervert can present him or herself in such a way that would radically restructure relations between the human and its other: in becoming the “other” for a subject’s enjoyment, the pervert can test, contest, and reconfigure the limits of subjectivity. Freud, on the other hand, in insisting upon the perversity infused into the very constitution of the “normal” human subject, destabilized any sharp division that might be made between the properly human and its perverse “others.” Moreover, Deleuze’s work on sadism and masochism suggests that perverse discourses emerge in and through aesthetic categories that separate them from the properly “human.” A good example of the ramifications of this analysis would be Deleuze and Guattari’s investigation of the masochistic “Equus eroticus” in A Thousand Plateaus. We welcome papers that explore the connection between the perverse and the human in literary texts. Papers from diverse theoretical perspectives, and from any period and national tradition, are welcome insofar as they focus on the relation between the perversity of the relation between the human and its others.

[more…]

Biotechnology, a technological corollary of molecular biology and the Human Genome Project, is continually redefining what it means to be human in the context of the natural world. Genetic engineering is producing animal clones, enhancing human traits and even creating new species. However, unresolved questions remain as to how these novel constructs will affect the idea of the human and its relationship with them. Papers that address insights into the “othering” mechanisms of biotechnology generated in the realm of literature are especially welcome. From Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow to Butler’s Dawn, the effects of technology on human subjectivity in the postmodern era are brought to light in fictional manner. The themes of these novels resonate with readers on how the human has been shaped by science. This seminar is devoted to coming up with new understandings of humanity in the face of novel biotechnologies that seem directed at dominating nature rather than evoking new paradigms in which we as humans can live more congruently with the ecosystem. In this postmodern era of technology evolving at lightening speed, it is ever more imperative that society can conceive of biotechnology through the lens of narrative fiction.

[more…]

The rise of individualism has long been acknowledged within the social and human sciences as an index of the transition from pre-modernity to modernity (however marked by fits and starts, dead-ends and reversals). But recently, at least since the linguistic turn, this conceptual framework has been called into question on the grounds of its essentialist or exclusionary figuration of the human. Accordingly, I am interested in papers that explore literature’s participation in the construction of the modern self-regulating or self-autonomous “individual.” I welcome studies devoted to any historical period, including those on contemporary literatures and the problematics of post-humanism, the death of the subject, relativism or skepticism, and from any perspective within literary studies, ranging from psychoanalysis and feminism to critical theory and beyond. I also welcome studies on any national context, including Latin American, African, and Asian literatures, that might provide a counter-narrative or contestation to the Western claim on the rise of the (modern, Western) subject, self, or individual.

[more…]

The rise of individualism has long been acknowledged within the social and human sciences as an index of the transition from pre-modernity to modernity (however marked by fits and starts, dead-ends and reversals). But recently, at least since the linguistic turn, this conceptual framework has been called into question on the grounds of its essentialist or exclusionary figuration of the human. Accordingly, I am interested in papers that explore literature’s participation in the construction of the modern self-regulating or self-autonomous “individual.” I welcome studies devoted to any historical period, including those on contemporary literatures and the problematics of post-humanism, the death of the subject, relativism or skepticism, and from any perspective within literary studies, ranging from psychoanalysis and feminism to critical theory and beyond. I also welcome studies on any national context, including Latin American, African, and Asian literatures, that might provide a counter-narrative or contestation to the Western claim on the rise of the (modern, Western) subject, self, or individual.

[more…]

The rise of individualism has long been acknowledged within the social and human sciences as an index of the transition from pre-modernity to modernity (however marked by fits and starts, dead-ends and reversals). But recently, at least since the linguistic turn, this conceptual framework has been called into question on the grounds of its essentialist or exclusionary figuration of the human. Accordingly, this seminar is focused on papers that explore literature’s participation in the construction of the modern self-regulating or self-autonomous “individual,” in the early modern period in Europe.

[more…]

The rise of individualism has long been acknowledged within the social and human sciences as an index of the transition from pre-modernity to modernity (however marked by fits and starts, dead-ends and reversals). But recently, at least since the linguistic turn, this conceptual framework has been called into question on the grounds of its essentialist or exclusionary figuration of the human. Accordingly, I am interested in papers that explore literature’s participation in the construction of the modern self-regulating or self-autonomous “individual.” I welcome studies devoted to any historical period, including those on contemporary literatures and the problematics of post-humanism, the death of the subject, relativism or skepticism, and from any perspective within literary studies, ranging from psychoanalysis and feminism to critical theory and beyond. I also welcome studies on any national context, including Latin American, African, and Asian literatures, that might provide a counter-narrative or contestation to the Western claim on the rise of the (modern, Western) subject, self, or individual.

[more…]

The rise of individualism has long been acknowledged within the social and human sciences as an index of the transition from pre-modernity to modernity (however marked by fits and starts, dead-ends and reversals). But recently, at least since the linguistic turn, this conceptual framework has been called into question on the grounds of its essentialist or exclusionary figuration of the human. Accordingly, I am interested in papers that explore literature’s participation in the construction of the modern self-regulating or self-autonomous “individual.” I welcome studies devoted to any historical period, including those on contemporary literatures and the problematics of post-humanism, the death of the subject, relativism or skepticism, and from any perspective within literary studies, ranging from psychoanalysis and feminism to critical theory and beyond. I also welcome studies on any national context, including Latin American, African, and Asian literatures, that might provide a counter-narrative or contestation to the Western claim on the rise of the (modern, Western) subject, self, or individual.

[more…]