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Apologies for x-posting ~ please advertise widely Reading Leo Bersani: A Retrospective Three-Day Intensive, Interdisciplinary Seminar Dublin, Ireland Friday 12, Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 June 2009 http://www.theeories.com As Part of The(e)ories: Advanced Seminars for Queer Research 2009 in Collaboration with the MA in Gender Writing/Graduate Education and Research Programme in Gender, Culture and History at University College Dublin. Seminar Description: This three-day intensive seminar will be devoted to discussing the influential thinker Leo Bersani whose work spans half a century and which helped to define the fields of lesbian and gay studies and what later came to be called queer theory. His vast, in many ways unclassifiable, oeuvre has traversed and blurred the boundaries of the disciplines of modern French literature, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, art history, film theory, aesthetics, masculinity studies and sexuality studies. This seminar will seek to open up and illuminate the connections and relations Bersani's writings have forged among and between these disciplines (and others). Day one (Friday 12 June) will be devoted to ‘Reading Bersani Retrospectively’ and will focus on four main themes: identity, desire, relationality and aesthetics. Two trigger papers will be read in advance of each session which will be discussion-based and chaired by an expert facilitator. The readings chosen cover a small but representative sample of Bersani’s writings and it is hoped that the thematic focus will allow for an engaged discussion of some distinct (yet overlapping) unifying features which have animated, and continue to animate, Bersani's work. Day two (Saturday 13 June) will be devoted to ‘Getting Intimate with Leo"’and will see Professor Bersani present from his new and ongoing work followed by a discussion with seminar delegates. After the lecture there will be a screening of Intimate Strangers, directed by Patrice Leconte (2004), which Bersani discusses in chapter one of his recent book Intimacies (co-authored with Adam Phillips). Day three (Sunday 14 June) will centre on ‘Reading Intimacies’ and will be grouped into three sections each taking one chapter from Intimacies as its focus: self (chapter 1), sex (chapter 2) and ethics (chapter 3). Each session will be chaired by an expert facilitator and will feature short responses to the book from a wide variety of disciplinary locations. Professor Bersani will participate in this discussion of his book. The emphasis in all three seminars will be on discussion. Required Reading: There are a number of required texts for this seminar: copies of the trigger papers for day 1 of the seminar (Friday 12 June) will be provided in a reading pack in advance however delegates must source a copy of Bracha Ettinger's book themselves. Please note: reading packs can only be sent to people who confirm their attendance at the seminar by registering in advance. The Author: Leo Bersani is Professor Emeritus of French at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. His many books include: Intimacies (with A. Phillips, Univ. Chicago Press, 2008); Caravaggio's Secrets (with U. Dutoit, MIT Press, 1998); Caravaggio (with U. Dutoit, British Film Institute, 1999); Forming Couples: Godard's Contempt (with U. Dutoit, Legenda/European Humanities Research Centre, 2003); Forms of Being: Cinema, Aesthetics, Subjectivity (with U. Dutoit, British Film Institute, 2004); Homos (Harvard University Press, 1995); Arts of Impoverishment: Beckett, Rothko and Resnais (with U. Dutoit, Harvard University Press, 1993); The Culture of Redemption (Harvard University Press, 1990); The Freudian Body: Psychoanalysis and Art (Columbia University Press, 1986); The Forms of Violence (with U. Dutoit, Schocken Books, 1985); The Death of Stéphane Mallarmé (Cambridge University Press, 1981); Baudelaire and Freud (UC Press, 1979); A Future for Astyanax (Little, Brown, 1976); Balzac to Beckett (Oxford University Press, 1970); and Marcel Proust: The Fictions of Life and of Art (Oxford University Press, 1965). Seminar Schedule: DAY 1, FRIDAY 12 JUNE: READING BERSANI RETROSPECTIVELY 9-9.30: Opening remarks and introductions 9.30-10.45: Session 1 - Identity Trigger Papers: 'Erotic Assumptions: Narcissism and Sublimation in Freud' in The Culture of Redemption (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1990) 29-46. 'Persons in Pieces' in A Future for Astyanax: Character and Desire in Literature (London: Marion Boyars, 1976) 286-315. 10.45-11.15: Tea and Coffee Break 11.15-12.30: Session 2 - Desire Trigger papers: 'Desire and Death' in Baudelaire and Freud (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977) 67-89. 'One Big Soul (The Thin Red Line)' (co-authored with Ulysse Dutoit) in Forms of Being: Cinema, Aesthetics, Subjectivity (London: BFI, 2004): 124-78. 12.30-1.30: Lunch 1.30-2.45: Session 3 - Relationality Trigger papers: 'Sociability and Cruising', Umbr(a): A Journal of the Unconscious (2002): 9-23. 'Against Monogamy', The Oxford Literary Review 20:1/2 (1998): 3-21. 2.45-3.15: Tea and Coffee Break 3.15-4.30: Session 4 - Aesthetics Trigger papers: 'Psychoanalysis and the Aesthetic Subject', Critical Inquiry 32:2 (Winter 2006): 161-174. 'Sexuality and Aesthetics' in The Freudian Body: Psychoanalysis and Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986) 29-50. DAY 2, SATURDAY 13 JUNE: GETTING INTIMATE WITH LEO 10.30-11: Opening remarks and introductions 11-1: Lecture by Professor Bersani, followed by discussion 1-2: Lunch 2-4: Screening of Intimate Strangers, directed by Patrice Leconte (2004) DAY 3, SUNDAY 14 JUNE: READING INTIMACIES 9.30-10: Opening remarks and introductions 10-12: Session 1 - Self Reading: ‘The It in the I’ (Intimacies, chapter 1) 12-1: Tea and Coffee Break 1-3: Session 2 - Sex Reading: ‘Shame on You’ (Intimacies, chapter 2) 3-3.30: Lunch 3.30-5.30: Session 3 - Ethics Reading: ‘The Power of Evil and the Power of Love’ (Intimacies, chapter 3) 5.30 Thanks and closing remarks Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips, Intimacies (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2008). Description: Two gifted and highly prolific intellectuals, Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips, here present a fascinating dialogue about the problems and possibilities of human intimacy. Their conversation takes as its point of departure psychoanalysis and its central importance to the modern imagination—though equally important is their shared sense that by misleading us about the importance of self-knowledge and the danger of narcissism, psychoanalysis has failed to realize its most exciting and innovative relational potential. In pursuit of new forms of intimacy they take up a range of concerns across a variety of contexts. To test the hypothesis that the essence of the analytic exchange is intimate talk without sex, they compare Patrice Leconte’s film about an accountant mistaken for a psychoanalyst, Intimate Strangers, with Henry James’s classic novella The Beast in the Jungle. A discussion of the radical practice of barebacking—unprotected anal sex between gay men—delineates an intimacy that rejects the personal. Even serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and the Bush administration’s war on terror enter the scene as the conversation turns to the way aggression thrills and gratifies the ego. Finally, in a reading of Socrates’s theory of love from Plato’s Phaedrus, Bersani and Phillips call for a new form of intimacy which they term 'impersonal narcissism': a divestiture of the ego and a recognition of one’s non-psychological potential self in others. This revolutionary way of relating to the world, they contend, could lead to a new human freedom by mitigating the horrifying violence we blithely accept as part of human nature. Charmingly persuasive and daringly provocative, Intimacies is a rare opportunity to listen in on two brilliant thinkers as they explore new ways of thinking about the human psyche. Table of Contents: Preface (Phillips) 1 The It in the I (Bersani) 2 Shame on You (Bersani) 3 The Power of Evil and the Power of Love (Bersani) 4 ‘On a More Impersonal Note’ (Phillips) Conclusion (Bersani) Further Information: This seminar is organised by Dr Noreen Giffney ([log in to unmask]), Michael O'Rourke ([log in to unmask]) and Dr Anne Mulhall ([log in to unmask]). For further information or to register, please contact one of the organisers. Places are limited so early registration is advised. The(e)ories: http://www.theeories.com Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com