Thinking Work
The London Postgraduate French Conference
Friday 4 November 2016
Room G35, Institute of Modern Languages Research, University of London,
Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU
Keynote speaker: Dr Claire White (King’s College London)
Thinking work – in all its forms and modes, in all its intensities and absences – has been a source of constant inspiration and concern for French and Francophone contexts across art, literature, film, philosophy, and political thought. What does it mean to work, or for something to stop working? What is the subjectivity, the phenomenology, the economy, the psychology, or even the neurology of work?
We invite postgraduates working any area across French studies to submit abstracts for 20 minute papers in English or in French on topics including, but not limited to:
times and spaces of work – production – labour (pains) – economies of work – exploitation – strain and injury – function and dysfunction – sex work – overworking, underworking, underperforming –the division of labour – processes – working up, working on, working around, working through –making work – undoing work – the work of the negative – the work of mourning – the work of psychoanalysis – plasticity – the work of genius, the work of art – le travail de l’écriture – leisure –boredom, ennui – repetition – exhaustion, saturation, breaking point – excess – waste –désœuvrement – stasis – slowness and acceleration – distraction, procrastination – technologies of work – invention, creation – “it will never work” – the industrial – the robotic – mode d’emploi – emploi du temps –displacement – replacement
Please send abstracts of 250-300 words to:
thinkingwork2016@gmail.com
The deadline for submission of abstracts is 1 September 2016.
Organisers: Ben Dalton (KCL), Kate Foster (KCL) and Adina Stroia (KCL)