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"Pleasure in the Text - Pleasure of the Text": An International and Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Conference (Reid Hall, Paris)

Publié le par Florian Pennanech (Source : Fabien Arribert-Narce)

CALL FOR PAPERS

Skepsi's Third International and InterdisciplinaryPostgraduate Conference

Pleasure in the Text — Pleasure of the Text

17 April 2010, Paris, Reid Hall Campus

Just as we seek pleasure in our daily lives, so, as readers,we seek pleasure in literary texts. We may look for and discover pleasure inthe content of the text — that is, in representations of emotions, situationsor images — but we may also look for it in the form of the language thatattempts to capture them.

How do the content and the form of a literary text stimulatereaderly pleasure? Hegel sought aesthetic delight in the ideal of an‘immanently harmonious and self-reliant' narrative. Barthes suggested that thepleasure of the text is independent of ‘the logic of understanding' and alludedto its equivocation by calling it ‘a drift, something both revolutionary andasocial […] something neuter'. For his part, Lacan advanced the view thatlanguage is asymptotic to carnal pleasure and that the text will neversuccessfully communicate the peculiarity of this experience.

To what extent — if at all — can intellectual, aesthetic,erotic or sexual pleasure be represented in or by a text? What textual devicescan be used to convey pleasure? Does the contemporary proliferation ofdifferent media further problematise the relationship between pleasure andtext? Are different media capable of conveying different pleasures? Do thepleasure and the methods of its representation evolve in a temporal and spatialsense?

The conference theme, ‘The Pleasure in and of the Text', canbe interpreted in many ways. We invite potential speakers to enquire into thesources and conditions of the reader's jouissance and to analyse its variousforms as well as to explore the possibilities, temptations and risks ofreproducing the ‘real life' pleasure.

The conference will have an international andinterdisciplinary character. The following list is neither prescriptive norexhaustive:

– ComparativeLiterature

– ModernLanguages and Linguistics

– Philosophyof Language

– Continentaland Analytical Philosophy

– Aestheticsand Visual Arts

– GenderStudies

Abstract proposals (max. 300 words) for twenty-minute papersin English should be sent as a Microsoft Word attachment to the conferenceorganising committee at: pleasure2010@kent.ac.uk

The email should include the name of the author, institutionand a short bio. You should also indicate in your proposal any audiovisualrequirements you may have.

The deadline for abstract submission is 20 January 2010.

Funding may be available for University of Kent speakers.Check application form at

http://www.kent.ac.uk/secl/local/graduate/docs/Forms%20Research/Research%20and%20conference%20trips.pdf

Selected papers will be considered for publication in thefifth issue of the on-line research journal Skepsi.

http://www.kent.ac.uk/secl/journals/skepsi/index.html

http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/skepsi/