Seminar: Literature and Globalization—Some Thoughts on Translation and the Transnational
Presented by David Roberts
David Roberts is Emeritus Professor in German Studies and a former Director of the Centre. His many publications include Art and Enlightenment: Aesthetic Theory after Adorno (1990), Reconstructing Theory: Gadamer, Habermas, Luhmann (1995), Canetti’s Counter-Image of Society (2004), Dialectic of Romanticism: A Critique of Modernism (2004). He is a member of the editorial board of Thesis Eleven.
Abstract
The paper has a dual focus: a critique of the institutionalization of literary studies in departments of national literature and a re-evaluation of the role of translation in literary studies.
Robert Savage is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Centre. His publications include Imagining the Future: Utopia and Dystopia (2006), Moderne Begreifen: Zur Paradoxie eines sozioästhetischen Deutungsmusters (2007) and Hölderlin after the Catastrophe: Heidegger – Adorno – Brecht (2009).
Abstract
In his first book, Paradigms for a Metaphorology (1960), Hans Blumenberg argues for the existence of ‘absolute metaphors’, which are said to be historical in a far more radical sense than concepts. I will try to make sense of this claim by exploring the relationship between metaphorology and the history of ideas, on the one hand, and the Heideggerian project of a history of Being, on the other.
From Flaubert to the Fantastique—Science Fiction and the Literary Field
Presented by Andrew Milner
Andrew Milner is Professor and Deputy Director of the Centre. His publications include John Milton and the English Revolution (1981), Cultural Materialism (1993), Class (1999), Re-Imagining Cultural Studies (2002), Contemporary Cultural Theory (2002) and Literature, Culture and Society (2005). His Tenses of Imagination: Raymond Williams on Utopia, Dystopia and Science Fiction is in press with Peter Lang.
Abstract
Flaubert’s only historical novel, Salammbô, was published in 1862, a year before the first of Verne’s ‘Voyages Extraordinaire’, Cing semaines en ballon. For Jameson, this moment when the historical novel ceased to be ‘functional’ was the moment of the emergence of SF. For Bourdieu, by contrast, the moment of Flaubert was that of the emergence of the modern ‘literary field’. This paper will analyse the place of SF in the genesis and structure of the modern literary field.
Compelling Fictions—Spinoza and George Eliot on Belief and Faith
Presented by Moira Gatens
Moira Gatens is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. He publications include Feminism and Philosophy (1992), Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality (1996), Collective Imaginings: Spinoza, Past and Present (1999) and Feminist Interpretations of Benedict Spinoza (2009).
Abstract
This paper is presented in three parts: Firstly, it offers an exposition of Spinoza’s views on belief and faith, including the role of imagination and fiction in religious life. Secondly, it considers how Eliot’s views on belief and faith and fiction develop aspects of Spinoza’s view but also depart from that view. Thirdly, it raises the question of whether the philosophy of Spinoza can be expressed in aesthetic terms.
Seminar: The Writer as Genealogist—The Realist Poetics of Dostoevsky and Flaubert
Presented by Millicent Vladiv-Glover
Millicent Vladiv-Glover is Associate Professor in Comparative Literature and Slavic Studies. Her publications include Narrative Principles in Dostoevsky’s Devils: A Structural Analysis, (1979), Lirska drama slovenskog modernizma (1997),Russian Postmodernism (1999) and Romani Dostojesvkog kao Diskurs Transgresije i Pozude (2001).
Abstract
The French Realist manifesto of 1840, Les français peints par eux-mêmes, and its Russian copy of 1841 (Russians portrayed from nature by Russians) call for the modern writer to portray the manners and mores of the times and act as a local historian. Dostoevsky and Flaubert take up this call inflected through a more sophisticated model of history, subsequently theorized by Foucault (under impulses from Nietzsche) as genealogy or as “effective history” which focuses on “emergence, the moment of arising.” Flaubert’s Bouvard and Pécuchet (1881) and Dostoevsky’s The Adolescent (1875) will be analysed as ‘documents’ capturing a ‘moment in time’ staging themselves as ‘writing’ or as a language game of domination and interpretation.
On the Limits of Virtue and Duty—Kant and the Question of Friendship
Presented by Blair McDonald
Blair McDonald is a PhD student in the Centre, currently researching a thesis entitled Irreconciliations: Friendship and the Political.
Abstract
This paper traces the points of overlap and separation whereby through the paradigm of friendship the morals and politics of Kant’s discourse can be reconsidered for its points of tension, undecidability and contradictory demands. Friendship is not discussed as an explicitly political concept in Kant or a form of relations that could be thought to found a politics. It is rather a topic that emerges by way of discussions on respect, intimacy, secrecy, public and private relations and analogically, through his discussion of social physics. Consequently, the paper will show how the question of friendship finds a place in the threshold between morality and politics, and so question the compatibility of Kant’s theory of politics with his claims on morality. In doing so it will look at two well-known discussions of Kant’s discourse on friendship, namely, the second half of Doctrine of Virtue and his “Lecture on Friendship.”
The Return Journey—Rasa and the Aesthetics of Desire in Michael Ondaatje’s Poetry and Fiction
Presented by Chandani Lokuge
Chandani Lokuge is Director of the Centre for Postcolonial Writing at Monash. Her publications include two novels, If the Moon Smiled (2000) and Turtle Nest (2003), and a collection of short stories, Moth and Other Stories (1992). She is also editor of the Oxford University Press Classics Reissues series of Indian women’s autobiography and fiction.
Abstract
South Asian diasporic literature in English projects a rich vein of desire for spiritual restfulness in the globalised world. This paper focuses on the desire for a physical/imaginative homeland, for complete and spiritual restfulness as both the key subject for texts and as an internal dynamic creating textual power. It attempts to extend current postcolonial contextual and political analysis through attention to textual forms, strategies and values. Distinguishing itself from western reader reception theories which can mask this literature’s distinctiveness, the Theory of Rasa, the classical Indian theory of aesthetics is used to offer a more holistic, incisive and empathetic analysis, re-informing political and cultural content. The development of a new research project, this paper will read selected fiction and poetry by Michael Ondaatje, alongside the Theory of Rasa.
In this special event, held as part of the 3rd International Conference of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS), local writers Elizabeth Honey, Alice Pung and Tara June Winch take part in a discussion on Australian literature and translation. Writers will read excerpts from their works, reflect on their experiences with writing, interculturalism and/or being translated.
The event will be followed by drinks and a book signing. Books will be available for purchase on the day.
W710 (ECPS Library) 7th Floor, Menzies Building Clayton Campus Monash University Victoria3800 Australia
Matthew Ryan lectures in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies. His publications include Imagining the Future (2006) and Demanding the Impossible (2008). He is an editor of Arena Magazine.
Room W710, Building 11 Clayton Campus, Wellington Rd Monash University Victoria3800 Australia
Literary festivals and the publishing industry: friends or foe?
Rosemary Cameron has been director of the Melbourne Writers Festival since November 2005. Before Melbourne, Rosemary directed the Brisbane Writers Festival for 3 years. For 2 years she was a judge of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Prize for Fiction and, when in Brisbane, she was a judge of One Book, Many Brisbanes for Brisbane City Council and on the selection panel for the John Oxley Fellowship at the State Library of QLD.
