ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others

By defining the soul in terms of self-motion, Aristotle has established movement as a human affair. Yet already in Aristotle, “movement” refers both to a physical phenomenon and to an abstract notion (defined in the Physics as the actuality of the potential as such). The history of this figure runs at least since Heraclitus to reach our times with an unnoticed wealth of ambiguous usage. Think of expressions like the “stream of consciousness,” the “movement of thought,” or the “movement of meaning”; think of the notion of meaning as the effect of an incessant movement of signifiers, the movement of deferral and difference, the movements of desire; think of “lines of flight,” the “image-movement,” “speed” and “acceleration.” Movement is upon us, but what is it that we are saying when we apply the term “movement” (or its related figures) to the study of meaning in literature and the other arts? What critical force does this term carry? What makes it helpful, if it is, for textual analysis? What are its philosophical ramifications? What has the new art form of the moving-image contributed to the efficacy of this term or to our theoretical understanding of a notion of motion? This seminar presents studies of movement in literature, film, philosophy, rhetoric, and the arts. It also offers an investigation of the notion of movement even as it is applied in critical analysis.

Friday, March 24

Rossen Roussev, St. John’s University
“Différance and Mouvance, or Signification as Evasion”
Arnd Wedemeyer, Princeton University
“Eppur non si muove: The Post-Copernican Returns of Phenomenology”
Marcus Coelen, University of Munich
“Bewegungstrieb: On a Psychoanalysis of Movement”
Jane Thrailkill, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
“‘Moving Members’: Feeling and Embodiment in William James and John Dewey”

Saturday, March 25

Ella Brians, New School University
“Flux and the Conditions of Meaning: Deleuze’s Return to the Origin”
Lisa Akervall, Europa Universität Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder
“The Moving Still as Freeze Frame (On La Jetée)”
Theresa Geller, Rutgers University
“The Cinematic Syntax of the Moving Image”
Livia Sacchetti, La Sapienza University (Rome)
“Motion in Late Twentieth Century Drama: The Paradox of a Shifting Present”

Sunday, March 26

Andy Vogel, Ohio State University
“Modern Motion: The Rise of Automobility in America”
Jentery Sayers, University of Washington
“Restless Machines and Turbulent Text: Moving Toward the Center of Blast”
John Golden, Harvard University
“‘Getting…Being out of Motion’: A. R. Ammons and the Motions of Poetry”
Ilan Safit, Pace University, NYC
“The Meaning of ‘Motion’”