ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others

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.

Friday, March 24

Thomas O. Beebee, Penn State University
“E-mail Epistlemology.”
Kathleen Komar, University of California, Los Angeles
“Literature in a Post-human world? Technologically Assisted Literature from Hyper-Texts to Cybernetic Poetry Or How Technology Changes our Paradigms of Reading and Comparing Literatures.”
Daniel V. Hutchins, University of Rochester
“Reimagining the Contact Zone: Columbus and Vespucci’s Epistolary Narratives of First Contact.”
Nirvana Tanoukhi, Stanford University
“Epistolarity, Sentimentality, Weltliteratur”

Affiliated Seminar(s):

• Hypertext Literacy