The last CCWW cross-cultural seminar for the summer term is on Wednesday 26 June 2013, 2.30-5 pm, room 243, Senate House, University of London


The Aesthetics of Disgust: Revolting Bodies and Other Gruesome Things in post-1990 Women's Writing

Convenor: Katie Jones (Nottingham)


Disgust is a strong immediate visceral reaction. Classed among the universal human emotions, it can feel like an obvious or even a natural response to physical stimuli such as putrefaction or bodily waste products. However, a closer look at the cultural construction of disgust and its elicitors reveals a much deeper complexity: while the disgust reaction itself may be intrinsic to humans, the cultural meanings ascribed to particular objects, bodies or behaviours play a significant role in whether or not they are experienced as disgusting. This interplay between bodies and ideas makes the disgusting a particularly powerful source of metaphor in literature, but the often extreme nature of the disgust response means it is hard to control. Disgust is also problematic for feminist analysis, due to a misogynistic tradition in which the female body has often been coded as disgusting. While excrement and corpses are key elicitors of disgust, images of pregnancy, menstruation and excessive fleshy femaleness are disproportionately present in cultural representations of the disgusting, and, according to Winfried Menninghaus (1999), the body of the old woman is the ultimate object of disgust, bringing together key cultural anxieties about ageing, sex and death in one horrifying image.

Since the late 1990s, there has been a marked increase in theoretical interest in disgust in a range of fields of enquiry. As Carolyn Korsmeyer (2011) points out, this has coincided with an increase in the production of artworks that represent disgust as their main focus, or which set out to provoke disgust in their audience. This symposium seeks to take advantage of this disgusting moment in aesthetic representation and theory to develop a new approach to reading contemporary women’s writing. Bringing together analyses of literature in French, German and [Spanish, Portuguese Italian], the papers will consider the various ways in which women represent, manipulate and engage with disgusting themes and the experience of disgust. The concluding discussion will evaluate the possibilities and limitations of disgust for a nuanced understanding of women’s self-representation in a contemporary context and across cultures.

Speakers:
Katie Jones (French, Nottingham): 'Towards a Feminist Aesthetics of Disgust? Amélie Nothomb, Marie Darrieussecq, Charlotte Roche'
Nina Schmidt (German, Sheffield): '"[I]mmer so ekelhafte Gedanken" ['Always such disgusting thoughts'] - Illness, Death and the Female Grotesque in Charlotte Roche's _Schossgebete_ [_Lap Prayers_]'
Emma Bond (Italian, St Andrews): 'Food Disgust in New Female Intercultural Italian Writing'
Elizabeth Boa (Nottingham): 'Lust or Digust? The Blurring of Boundaries in Karen Duve's _Regenroman_'

Abstracts for all four papers are on the event's web page: see http://events.sas.ac.uk/igrs/events/view/13606/The+Aesthetics+of+Disgust%3A+Revolting+Bodies+and+Other+Gruesome+Things+in+post-1990+Women%27s+Writing+%28CCWW+Seminar%29

All welcome. No charge. Please advise me at [log in to unmask] if you wish to attend.

The seminar series is linked to the Studies in Contemporary Women's Writing book series - see http://www.igrs.sas.ac.uk/sites/default/files/files/Research%20Centres/CCWW/SCWW%20Flyer%20(Effe).pdf
 

Professor Emerita Gill Rye,

Director, Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing,

Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies,

University of London,

Senate House,

Malet Street,

London WC1E 7HU.

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