Backdoor Broadcasting Company

Event date: 23 March 2011 17:00 – 19:00
Win1-04, Windsor Building 
Royal Holloway University

The Humanities and Arts Research Centre (HARC) at
Royal Holloway University of London presents:

The Philosophy of Literature

Organiser: Professor John O’Brien

During the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century, the characteristics of the philosophical approach to literature have undergone some important changes. Alongside the continuation of the traditions of Continental thought, representatively symbolized by the work of Badiou and Rancière, can be detected a move back to elements that were challenged 40 years ago by the generation of Barthes, Lacan, Foucault and Derrida. The death of the author is now being countered by the notion of the author as intentional subject; the disconnection between life and art-work is giving way to a new interest in biography; the notion of the self-contained work of art, or of art-as-textuality, is being displaced in favour of a view of literary language as a hard-wired element of human cognition. From Marion’s version of phenomenology to Currie’s Arts and Minds, the philosophy that might underlie literature is being re-appraised.

Session 3: The Intentional Act

• Professor Colin Davis (French)

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• Dr James Helgeson (French, Nottingham)

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• Dr Tim Chesters (French)

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discussion:

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Event date: 23 February-23 March 2011
Win1-04, Windsor Building 
Royal Holloway University

The Humanities and Arts Research Centre (HARC) at
Royal Holloway University of London presents:

The Philosophy of Literature

Organiser: Professor John O’Brien

During the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century, the characteristics of the philosophical approach to literature have undergone some important changes. Alongside the continuation of the traditions of Continental thought, representatively symbolized by the work of Badiou and Rancière, can be detected a move back to elements that were challenged 40 years ago by the generation of Barthes, Lacan, Foucault and Derrida. The death of the author is now being countered by the notion of the author as intentional subject; the disconnection between life and art-work is giving way to a new interest in biography; the notion of the self-contained work of art, or of art-as-textuality, is being displaced in favour of a view of literary language as a hard-wired element of human cognition. From Marion’s version of phenomenology to Currie’s Arts and Minds, the philosophy that might underlie literature is being re-appraised.

Session 1(23 February 2011) : The Intentional Subject

[AUDIO HERE]

• Introduction: Professor John O’Brien
• Professor Andrew Bowie (Philosophy)
• Professor Dan Rebellato (Drama)

Session 2 (16 March 2011): (T)exteriors

[AUDIO HERE]

• Professor Robert Eaglestone (English)
• Dr Ruth Cruickshank (French)
• Dr Clare Connors (English, UEA)

Session 3 (23 March 2011): The Intentional Act

[AUDIO HERE]

• Professor Colin Davis (French)
• Dr James Helgeson (French, Nottingham)
• Dr Tim Chesters (French)

Event date: 16 March 2011 17:00 – 19:00
Win1-04, Windsor Building 
Royal Holloway University

The Humanities and Arts Research Centre (HARC) at
Royal Holloway University of London presents:

The Philosophy of Literature

Organiser: Professor John O’Brien

During the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century, the characteristics of the philosophical approach to literature have undergone some important changes. Alongside the continuation of the traditions of Continental thought, representatively symbolized by the work of Badiou and Rancière, can be detected a move back to elements that were challenged 40 years ago by the generation of Barthes, Lacan, Foucault and Derrida. The death of the author is now being countered by the notion of the author as intentional subject; the disconnection between life and art-work is giving way to a new interest in biography; the notion of the self-contained work of art, or of art-as-textuality, is being displaced in favour of a view of literary language as a hard-wired element of human cognition. From Marion’s version of phenomenology to Currie’s Arts and Minds, the philosophy that might underlie literature is being re-appraised.

Session 2: (T)exteriors

• Professor Robert Eaglestone (English)

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• Dr Ruth Cruickshank (French)

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• Dr Clare Connors (English, UEA)

Audio to come

<<== back to main conference page

Event Date: 23 February 2011, 17:00 – 19:00
Win1-04, Windsor Building 
Royal Holloway University

The Humanities and Arts Research Centre (HARC)
at Royal Holloway University of London presents:

The Philosophy of Literature

Organiser: Professor John O’Brien

During the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century, the characteristics of the philosophical approach to literature have undergone some important changes. Alongside the continuation of the traditions of Continental thought, representatively symbolized by the work of Badiou and Rancière, can be detected a move back to elements that were challenged 40 years ago by the generation of Barthes, Lacan, Foucault and Derrida. The death of the author is now being countered by the notion of the author as intentional subject; the disconnection between life and art-work is giving way to a new interest in biography; the notion of the self-contained work of art, or of art-as-textuality, is being displaced in favour of a view of literary language as a hard-wired element of human cognition. From Marion’s version of phenomenology to Currie’s Arts and Minds, the philosophy that might underlie literature is being re-appraised.

Session 1: The Intentional Subject

• Introduction: Professor John O’Brien
• Professor Andrew Bowie (Philosophy)
• Professor Dan Rebellato (Drama)

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Event Date: Tuesday 24 November 2010 5.00 pm
Royal Holloway, IN 032

Trauma and the Early Modern (1)

TRAUMA, FICTION, HISTORY seminar series

School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures

Speakers:

Professor John O’Brien, (Royal Holloway), Beginnings and Trauma

Dr Timothy Chesters, (Royal Holloway), Divine Trauma

On the face of things, there seems something ineradicably modern about trauma as a concept. Born, as ‘traumatic neurosis’, alongside modern psychoanalysis at the end of the nineteenth century, and revitalised within deconstruction at the close of the twentieth, trauma theory has also been shaped by a series of – it is sometimes supposed – uniquely modern catastrophes: World War I, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, Vietnam. So what if anything can trauma theory reveal of other historical periods? Is to speak of trauma in the early modern period, for example, merely to indulge in futile anachronism? Or can trauma theory still teach us something about early modern violence and the mental scars it left behind? More provocatively, perhaps, can early modern texts tell us anything of trauma theory itself: its assumptions, its blind spots, its own unspoken past? In the first of a two-part mini-series on ‘Trauma and the Early Modern’, Timothy Chesters and John O’Brien test the applicability of trauma theory in a number of texts arising out of the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598).

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Introduction by Colin Davis .

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John O’Brien Beginnings and Trauma:

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handout: Beginnings and Trauma (download)
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Timothy Chesters Divine Trauma :

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handout: Divine Trauma (download)

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questions:

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