Gothic Remains: Symptoms of the Modern
Saturday December 3rd 2005, 9:30am -7:00 pm - BSMS (Medical School
Teaching Building), University of Sussex, Falmer (Brighton)
This one day conference, hosted by The Centre for Modernist Studies at The
University of Sussex, with support from The International Gothic
Association, brings together specialists in Psychoanalysis, the Gothic,
and Modern Culture.
Technomatic Modern
Professor Fred Botting (Lancaster)
'Casting the Ruins: Gothic, Cybergothic and the Remains of Horror'.
Professor Herman Rapaport (Southampton) 'Borderline Desire in Japanese
Manga'.
Dr. Ben Noys (Chichester) 'A Gothic Sinthome? The Case of H. P. Lovecraft'.
Real Freudian Gothic
Professor Elisabeth Bronfen (Zurich)
'Night Talks: Gothic Returns in Film Noir'.
Dr. Dany Nobus (Brunel)
'Folding Back the Years: Sexuality, Death and the Receding Excess of
Knowledge'.
Philip Dravers (Oxford, The London Society of The New Lacanian School) 'The
Uncanny Imaginary and the Phantasmatic Real'.
Desiring Remains
Professor David Punter (Bristol ) 'Dry Bones: Messages from the
Reliquary'.
Dr. Luke Thurston (Wales, Aberystwyth) 'Poe-faced: Beckett's Gothic Folly'.
Olga Cox (Irish Psychoanalytic Association, and The Association for
Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Ireland) 'Desire in Charlotte Bronte's
Jane Eyre and James Joyce's Anna Livia'.
Thematic Outline:
'There are nearly always residual phenomena'
Sigmund Freud
In 'Analysis Terminable and Interminable' Freud struggles with the
dilemma of the untreatable part of the symptom, 'the bit of Real', as
Jacques Lacan later calls it, that can't be reached through the usual
processes of analysis, or the symptom that the subject enjoys too
much to completely give up. Lacan starts his research where Freud ends,
and also struggles with this bit or remainder throughout his
work. For Lacan, however, particularly in his later seminars, this
remainder becomes a catalyst for creatively reconsidering processes of
analysis. In fact, in his post-Joycean seminars, the remains of
the symptom eventually push Lacan to radically reconfigure some
classical psychoanalytic notions of subjectivity. While links between
the Gothic and psychoanalytic concepts like the uncanny have certainly
been approached before, this symposium intends to use Freud's insightful
dilemma in 'Analysis Terminable and Interminable', and Lacan's
creative reconsiderations of the remainder, to construct a conceptual
framework for the analysis of Gothic remains in the Modern. We put
forward the following questions as a flexible skeletal model to flesh
out: Are aspects of the Gothic, like symptoms, remainders that linger in
Modern culture and Modern texts? Even though some Modern writers may
consciously repudiate the Gothic, could they unconsciously enjoy the
Gothic too much to completely give it up? Or, are these remainders too
embedded in Modern culture to repudiate? Do these Gothic remainders
hinder the Modern text, or do they offer new possibilities of reading
the Modern, ways to radically reconfigure some classical notions of the
Modern? Does rereading Modern texts with this conceptual
framework further enrich our understanding of the Modern subject? Is
there something in Gothic remainders that, like the symptom, structure
the Modern subject? Could the symptom be Gothic?
For more info, and booking, see Projects/ Forthcoming Conference at The
Centre for Modernist Studies: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/modernist, or
contact the Conference Convener: Nancy
Gillespie [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]
*********************************************************
British Association for Romantic Studies
http://www.bars.ac.uk
To advertise Romantic literature conferences, publications, jobs, or
other events that the BARS members would be interested in, please
contact Sharon Ruston <[log in to unmask]>
Also use this address to register any change in your e-mail address,
or to be removed from the list.
Messages are held in archives, along with other information about the
Mailbase at: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/bars.html
*********************************************************
|