*with apologies for cross-posting*
The Authors and the World research hub has a small number of bursaries for
postgraduate and early-career researchers to attend our next event in
Lancaster on November 27-28. Bursaries cover registration, travel,
accommodation and food.
Applicants should contact Emily Spiers at [log in to unmask] with
expressions of interest and a short summary of research no longer than 200
words.
Programme, speakers and abstracts
*Contemporary Critical Performances of the Authorial Role, 27-28 November
2014*
*Venue: Lancaster University, County South: Private Dining Room*
*Thursday 27 November 2014*
12.00-13.00 Registration and buffet lunch
13.00-13.15 Rebecca Braun: Welcome and Introduction
13.15-14.15 Timothy Brennan: A Confusion of Categories: Literary Authority
in an Age of the General Author
14.15-15.00 Diana Holmes: Performing the Middlebrow ? Women Writers and
Literary Stardom in Contemporary France
15.00-15.45 Refreshments and small group discussions
15.45-16.45 Cornelia Gräbner and Alejandro Reyes: Crossing Paths at the
Crossroads: Authorship, Critique, and Commonalities
16.45-17.30 Gary Hall: Authors in a Post-Crash World
17.30-18.30 Discussion
19.30 Conference dinner in the Private Dining Room
*Friday 28 November 2014*
*Venue: Lancaster University, County South: Private Dining Room*
9.30-12.30 Workshop with Timothy Brennan: Is there a Peripheral Aesthetics?
In this workshop, we will explore the idea of an aesthetic of the periphery
? that is, an attitude or set of criteria that writing within former (or
still existing) colonies shares, despite its many stylistic, personal, and
thematic differences. One way of imagining such an aesthetic is to ask
whether there is a connection between the expansion of the literary field
to the global periphery (?world literature?) and the demotion of the status
of the author as person. This also involves questioning our own practice as
literary scholars. For the role of the author has been demoted in Western
academic analysis in a number of ways: surface reading, object-oriented
criticism, and also precisely by the tendency in world literature theories
towards distance reading. If by ?aesthetics? we in part mean the principle
of allowable perception (what is and is not perceived as beautiful,
intellectually compelling, reasonable, ?interesting?) we should ask what,
in the current configuration, can authors *not* say in order to be heard,
and how do we, as critics, set about hearing it? We live under the
impression that capital can contain, and co-opt, everything. But is it
true? What are the unsayables; where, and how, might they get said
otherwise; who listens, and how?
*Preparatory Reading (expected):*
Eduard Douwes Dekker, better known by his pen name Multatuli, was a Dutch
writer famous for his satirical novel, *Max Havelaar*, which denounced the
abuses of colonialism in the Dutch East Indies. We?ll be reading *Max
Havelaar *alongside Timothy Brennan?s ?The case against irony? in
preparation for the workshop.
12.30-14.00 Lunch
14:00-16:00 Academic Co-Authorship in Literary Studies ? A New Model for
Interdisciplinary Collaboration?
Participants are invited to reflect on the kinds of outputs that a truly
interdisciplinary project might hope to produce, explore possible models
for this current workshop series on literary celebrity, and hear from
advisory members of ?Authors and the World? about their own experiences in
academic co-authorship.
16:30 Coffee and close
*Speakers and Abstracts*
*Timothy Brennan* is Samuel Russell Chair of the Humanities at the
University of Minnesota, and a professor in the departments of Cultural
Studies & Comparative Literature, English, and American Studies. He writes
on problems of colonialism and imperial culture, the role of intellectuals,
cultural theory, the Marxist and phenomenological traditions, the
avant-gardes, translation theory, and popular music. His essays have
appeared in a variety of publications including *The Nation, Critical
Inquiry, New Left Review, Transition, The Christian Science Monitor, The
Times Literary Supplement, *and*the London Review of Books. *His books
include *Secular Devotion: Afro-Latin Music and Imperial Jazz* (Verso,
2008),*Empire in Other Colors *(Revolver, 2007), *Wars of Position: The
Cultural Politics of Left and Right* (Columbia, 2006), *At Home in the
World: Cosmopolitanism Now *(Harvard, 1997), and, mostly recently, *Borrowed
Light: Vico, Hegel and the Colonies *(Stanford, 2014). Volume II of that
work, *Borrowed Light: The Interwar Moment and Imperial Form*, is
forthcoming (Stanford UP, 2015)*. *http://cscl.cla.umn.edu/ *and *
http://english.cla.umn.edu/faculty/
*?A Confusion of Categories: Literary Authority in an Age of the General
Author?*
Any concept of world author today is forced from the start to consider the
digital devaluation of authorship. Blogging, for instance, is not
perceived by many of its creators as sounding off but as a project
comparable (in their own minds) to Diderot?s encyclopedia, as ambitious and
often heavily footnoted analyses of figures from Marx to François Laruelle,
or as original attempts of world philosophy and world religion. Authorship
has become general. Everyone is an author ? not just a writer, in other
words, but one with a legitimate expectation of an audience and a
circulation of their own authorial value. If standards of evaluation were
debated (and debatable) in the past, criteria and distinctions seem here to
be absurd, or at least overwhelmed. Put another way, if the project of
philosophical dissidents in the early nineteenth century was to ?make the
world philosophical,? it could not then have imagined the kind of
impediments raised when the entire world ? everyone with an internet
connection ? was already a philosopher, or thought they were. The facility
of authorship, like information overload itself, appears democratic, but is
that so? How can criticism persuade in an environment of the pure
relativity of opinion? This dilemma has its complementary opposite in a
second major feature of world authorship today. Just as famous athletes
and film stars at times become politicians on that basis, so authors of
novels and plays, by virtue of being authors alone, are often taken to be
oracles on major political or social issues: Richard Powers pronouncing on
the Holocaust (because he wrote a novel about a black Jewish jazz
musician); David Mamet in a *Harpers *cover story on the future of the
internet. What is this gullibility, or misplaced authority, granted
authors in our culture? What do authors actually know? This confusion of
categories has had profound effects on educational funding, grants awards,
and the structure of faculty hires. It raises in a fiercely contemporary
way the older debate over the writer and the critic. In two quite
different ways, then, the role of *criticism *is displaced by evolving
forms of world authorship, and a conventional notion of authorial
uniqueness (genius) somehow accompanies a tyrannical market ?democracy? of
the loudest voice.
*Diana Holmes* is Professor of French at the University of Leeds and one of
the founding members of the Leeds-based Popular Cultures Research Network.
Her work on French women?s writing from the late nineteenth century to the
present (most recent monograph*Romance and Readership in Twentieth-Century
France: Love Stories*, 2006) ranges across the hierarchy of culture from
?high? to ?low? brow, with a particular interest in what women choose to
read. Her recent work has focused particularly on popular fictions, with
articles on bestsellers, a Special Issue of *French Cultural Studies:
Story-Telling in Contemporary French Fiction: le ?prêt-à-penser? and
Reading Pleasure *(with David Platten, 2010), and two co-edited books:
*Imagining
the Popular: highbrow, lowbrow and middlebrow in contemporary French
culture,* with David Looseley(Manchester University Press 2013), and *Finding
the Plot -Storytelling in popular fictions*, with David Platten, Loic
Artiaga, Jacques Migozzi (Cambridge Scholars? Press, 2013). She is one of
the editors of the international on-line journal of popular cultures
*Belphégor*, and is writing a book on the French middlebrow to be published
by Liverpool University Press. She also works on film and co-edits the
Manchester University Press series French Film Directors, which is close to
publishing its 40th volume.
*Performing the Middlebrow ? Women Writers and Literary Stardom in
Contemporary France*
France, in this respect more like its European neighbours than the UK,
maintains a strong allegiance to high culture as a central element of
national identity. This is particularly true of the literary field: both
mainstream media and academic criticism prize difficulty, resistant
readings, experimentalism and play with genre, and tend to patronise or
denigrate commercial success, along with the more familiar literary
conventions that generally determine this. Yet the French reading public
are no different from their counterparts elsewhere in enjoying story,
suspense, empathetic characterisation, romance and all the other features
of the page-turning novel. In this paper I want to look at the way three
best-selling women novelists negotiate their public performances within
this conflicted context. Nancy Huston, Amélie Nothomb and Anna Gavalda each
occupy a slightly different rung on the literary hierarchy, but all belong
to what I define as the contemporary middlebrow: they are well-known faces
in the mainstream media, their novels are widely read by a
?non-professional? readership, yet they tackle serious themes with
self-aware literary skill. Through a consideration of the fictional worlds
they create, and of their public performance of authorship, I will explore
these writers? appeal for a predominantly female reading public in a
culture still committed to what we might term ?high modernism? and still
arguable gendered masculine.
*Cornelia Gräbner* was born in Germany. She has lived in the U.S., the
U.K., and The Netherlands. She has spent much time in Mexico, and spends
even more time in transit. She holds an M.A. in Comparative Literature from
the University of Bonn and a PhD in Cultural Analysis from the University
of Amsterdam. She is Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at Lancaster University
and has published and researched on politicized performance poetry, the
poetics of resistance, and imaginaries of alternative globalisation in
contemporary committed writing.
*Alejandro Reyes* was born in Mexico City. He?s a writer, journalist, and
translator. He?s lived in the U.S., Brazil, and France. He holds an M.A. in
Latin American Studies and a PhD in Latin American Literature from the
University of California at Berkeley. He?s the author of *Vidas de
rua* (Street
lives), *Cuentos mexicanos* (Mexican Story), *Sueños en tránsito: crónicas
de migración* (Dreams in Transition: Chronicles of Migration), *Vozes dos
porões* (Voices from the Basements: Essay about Marginal Literature in
Brazil). His novel*La reina del Cine Roma* was awarded the Lipp Prize
(México) and was among the finalists for the Premio Leya (Portugal). It has
been published in Portugal, Brazil, Mexico, and France. He currently lives
in Chiapas, Mexico.
*Crossing Paths at the Crossroads: Authorship, Critique, and Commonalities*
Cornelia Gräbner, Alejandro Reyes
In this half-hour conversation we explore the crossroads between creative
writing and critique with reference to Alejandro Reyes? novel *La reina del
cine Roma* (The Queen of Cinema Rome), set among street children in San
Salvador Bahía in Brazil; and with reference to critique in the context of
committed methodologies like the poetics of resistance, Chela Sandoval?s
methodology of the oppressed.
The theme of ?crossing paths? and ?crossroads? makes reference to two
manifestos: the ?Manifestação da Literatura Divergente ou Manifesto
Encruzilhador de Caminhos? (Manifesto of Divergent Literature or Manifesto
of Crossing Paths) from Latin America, and *The Coming Insurrection* from
Europe. ?Crossing Paths at the Crossroads? points towards the ethical
dimensions of writing about ?those from below? and of committed critique,
and will include a discussion of the legitimacy of writer and critic.
The conversation starts from a previously identified shared truth (we?re at
the crossroads), and then progresses to build critical, creative, and
political commonalities around it (the crossing of our paths). Always with
regards to the novel and with regards to different forms of critique, it
focuses on the following themes: ?environment/world? and ?truth? (as
theorized by The Invisible Committee), ?opacity/opaqueness? and
tricksterism, and on porous and relational autonomy.
*Gary Hall* is Professor of Media and Performing Arts, Director of the *Centre
for Disruptive Media
<http://wwwm.coventry.ac.uk/researchnet/grandchallenges/digitalmedia/Pages/Keythemes.aspx>
*at
Coventry University, UK, and Visiting Professor at the *Hybrid Publishing
Lab ? Leuphana Inkubator
<http://www.leuphana.de/zentren/cdc/forschung-projekte/alle/hybrid-publishing-lab.html>*,
Leuphana University, Germany. He is author of *Culture in Bits*
<http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Il36ypJK_agC&dq=%22Culture+in+Bits%22+%22gary+hall%22&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=XPst_i1xds&sig=zOmUg3Oni5TstzuNtbYocb2OjyM&hl=en&ei=IGVMS8G9BYSr4Qaf6OTiDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false>(Continuum,
2002), *Digitize This Book!: The Politics of New Media, or Why We Need Open
Access Now* <http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/H/hall_digitize.html> (Minnesota
UP, 2008, and *Pirate Philosophy* (submitted), co-author of *Open
Education: A Study in Disruption* (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), and
co-editor of *New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory* (Edinburgh UP,
2006) and *Experimenting* (Fordham UP, 2007). He has over thirty
peer-reviewed publications in edited books and academic journals
including *American
Literature*, *Angelaki*, *Cultural Studies*, *New Formations,* *The Oxford
Literary Review *and *Radical Philosophy*. In 1999, with Dave Boothroyd,
he co-founded the open access journal *Culture Machine*, a pioneer of OA in
the humanities. In 2006, with Sigi Jottkandt and David Ottina, he
established *Open Humanities Press <http://openhumanitiespress.org/>* (OHP),
the first open access publisher dedicated to critical and cultural theory.
More details are available on his website *http://www.garyhall.info*
<http://www.garyhall.info/>.
*Authors in a Post-Crash World*
Bernard Stiegler insists in *Technics and Time* that Western philosophy has
forgotten that its origins lie with technics, that it has ?repressed
technics as an object of thought?. However, many literary and critical
theorists ? including Stiegler himself, ironically enough ? have forgotten
and repressed the media technologies by which *their own work* is not only
produced, published and distributed, but also commodified and privatised by
for-profit companies operating as part of the cultural industries.
Such repression is often noticeable when research is made available via
those transnational corporations associated with disruptive digital media
technologies, including social and mobile media, e-books, search engines
and the cloud: Apple, Amazon, Google etc. Nowhere is forgetfulness more
evident, however, than in the way academic authorship continues to be
dominated by the print-on-paper codex book and journal article, together
with many of the core humanities concepts that have been inherited with
them. The latter include the individualized author, the proprietorial
subject, intellectual property and copyright. But they also include the
signature, the proper noun or name, originality, immutability or ?fixity?,
the canon, the discipline, even the human.
I thus want to raise a question that is also an exhortation: how, as
academic authors can we perform *differently* with regard to *our own* work,
business, roles and practices ? to the point where we actually begin to
confront, think through and *take on* some of the implications of the
challenge that is offered by literary and critical theory to concepts such
as the author, the subject, copyright and the human, for the ways in which
we create, circulate and share our writing and research? In short, if some
are calling for a post-crash economics (*http://www.post-crasheconomics.com
<http://www.post-crasheconomics.com/>*), a radical rethinking of the field
that would challenge its own foundational assumptions in the light of the
most recent crisis of capitalism, do we need a post-crash critical theory
too ? a theory that does just call on us to *think* otherwise but also
exhorts us to *change radically *our own academic and authorial practices.
Emily Spiers
Research Associate
Department of Languages and Cultures
Lancaster University www.authorsandtheworld.com
Editorial Assistant* Oxford German Studies www.maneyonline.com/loi/ogs
<http://www.maneyonline.com/loi/ogs>*
Teaching Assistant in German
New College, Oxford
Lecturer in German
Wadham College, Oxford
--
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
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