ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others

The seminar interrogates the notion of “being at the threshold” as an ontologically scripted open (non)-place in conjunction with Agamben’s (2004:92) suggestion that “in our culture man has always been the result of a simultaneous division and articulation of the animal and the human, in which one of the terms of the operation was also at stake in it. To render inoperative the machine that governs our conception of man will therefore mean no longer to seek new - more effective or more authentic - articulations, but rather to show the central emptiness, the hiatus that - within man – separates man and animal, and to risk ourselves in this emptiness: the suspension of the suspension, Shabbat of both animal and man.” Papers address historical, theoretical, (bio)political, ethical and practical issues arising from various instantiations of the “open” in a zone of indistinction.

[more…]

In the post-Freudian West, dreams are most often understood as expressions of our unconscious, or subconscious, selves. But prior to and outside of the psychoanalytic tradition, dreams have often been seen as privileged locations for connection between humans and their others. Religious and mythological traditions from around the world emphasize the potential of dreams to lead the dreamer outside of herself, to provide access to super-human, extra-human, or other-than-human realms. Many cultures have thus produced literature in which dreams are shown to provide connection with the divine; to be a source of hidden truths; to allow the human soul to travel outside of the body; to transcend the human constraints of geography and time. How have world literatures figured dreams as a point of contact between humans and others? How do dreams figure the relationship between the dreamer and things outside of herself? What can humans do in dreams that they cannot otherwise do? How does the otherness of dreams serve to define the humanness of the waking self? What literary purposes do dreams serve, if not to elucidate the mind of the dreamer? Papers in this seminar will discuss literary accounts of dreaming which are outside of or challenging to the psychoanalytic tradition. We will discuss literature from a range of time periods, from Late Antiquity to the present.

[more…]

Medievalism has for centuries been a tool for defining, but also temporalizing, essential European and by extension “human” traits, and has thereby provided a means for mapping humanity in time. Critical studies of medievalism have focused primarily upon its importance in the writing of European national identities and upon its role in placing colonized peoples “back” in human time. But medievalism was also practiced in European colonies, by the very people against whom Europe and the human were being defined. This seminar seeks to understand the uses, functions, and effects of those Other Medievalisms, specifically those developed outside the geographic and imaginary boundaries of “Europe.” What did medievalism look like from the other side of the colonizer’s “mirror”? To what effect did colonized Others use the tool of medievalism? What were their motives? What was their legitimization and rationale? Did their efforts intervene in the production of “Europe” and the “Middle Ages”? How did their actions interact with the possibility of their partaking in the civilized Human realm?

[more…]

This panel proposes to continue inquiries from previous ACLA conferences which invited the application of post-colonial theories and concepts to the literature and culture of Eastern Europe and related geographical spaces. In previous sessions we discussed the classical empires (the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian) and their cultural influences. Last year’s panel focused specifically on echoes of the “Soviet Empire” on Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Eurasia. Working within the theme of this year’s conference, we can surmise that the empires roaming through the past and looming in the present of Eastern Europe have created not only Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Eurasia as a specific kind of Eastern “Other,” as opposed to the more “Human” West (i.e., enlightened, democratic, progressive, etc.), but also that Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Eurasia have at different times created their own hierarchies of “Others” (i.e., gypsies, various Asian peoples, etc.). These processes are recorded and reflected, however obliquely, though literary and cultural production, and conversely literature and culture also actively participate in the othering process. We invite papers on various aspects of Othering of and in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Eurasia. We are interested in the ways that traditional empires “Othered” the peoples of Eastern Europeans, the Balkans, and Eurasia, but also the way in which Eastern Europeans “Other” each other in contemporary literature and culture. We are specifically interested in papers that explore how this creation of “Others” relates to themes of nationalism, violence, class, gender, and identity.

[more…]

This panel proposes to continue inquiries from previous ACLA conferences which invited the application of post-colonial theories and concepts to the literature and culture of Eastern Europe and related geographical spaces. In previous sessions we discussed the classical empires (the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian) and their cultural influences. Last year’s panel focused specifically on echoes of the “Soviet Empire” on Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Eurasia. Working within the theme of this year’s conference, we can surmise that the empires roaming through the past and looming in the present of Eastern Europe have created not only Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Eurasia as a specific kind of Eastern “Other,” as opposed to the more “Human” West (i.e., enlightened, democratic, progressive, etc.), but also that Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Eurasia have at different times created their own hierarchies of “Others” (i.e., gypsies, various Asian peoples, etc.). These processes are recorded and reflected, however obliquely, though literary and cultural production, and conversely literature and culture also actively participate in the othering process. We invite papers on various aspects of Othering of and in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Eurasia. We are interested in the ways that traditional empires “Othered” the peoples of Eastern Europeans, the Balkans, and Eurasia, but also the way in which Eastern Europeans “Other” each other in contemporary literature and culture. We are specifically interested in papers that explore how this creation of “Others” relates to themes of nationalism, violence, class, gender, and identity.

[more…]

This panel investigates the crucial role played by faith in the articulation of identity, not only in religious terms but also in geographical and ethnic terms. From the early modern period the incorporation of faith in discourses of imperialism caused religion and race to function as vectors of alterity in dramatically new forms. Already in this period it is possible to observe the ways in which alterity came to be predicated on the basis of a biological or racial nature rather than that of a spiritual orientation, while faith – by definition Christian faith – came to be the exclusive property of the Western subject. This panel examines the ways in which religious, geographic and ethnic categories of alterity and identity have been deployed and reclaimed in imperial and postcolonial contexts. Panelists draw from a variety of disciplinary methodologies, including anthropology, history and comparative literature. Case studies encompass the role of supernaturalism and formation of identity in nineteenth-century America, South Asia and the Middle East and contemporary Britain, Iran, and South Asia.

[more…]