BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Sabre//Sabre VObject 4.5.8//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/Zurich X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/Zurich TZURL:http://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/Zurich BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0200 TZNAME:CEST DTSTART:19810329T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0200 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:CET DTSTART:19961027T030000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT UID:news145@english.philhist.unibas.ch DTSTAMP;TZID=Europe/Zurich:20190517T105739 DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Zurich:20190521T181500 SUMMARY:A Politics of Reading DESCRIPTION:READING IS THE PRIMARY ACTIVITY in any engagement with literatu re in its Western\, post-Gutenberg form. Its political stakes have been ce ntral to literary theory and the discipline of Comparative Literature at l east since the 1980s. With Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism and the cultural criticism of the Birmingham School\, the politics of representat ion became a central concern to literary study. By now\, literature is tak en almost paradigmatically as a “worldly” (in Said’s sense) artefact emmeshed in distributions of power\, which can be read for the socio-poli tical regimes of knowledge it displays and co-creates. In recent years\, r eading has also been the contentious key-term by which especially the disc ipline of Comparative Literature battles over its future methodological fr amework. Shall this be close\, contrapuntal\, symptomatic\, distant\, or s urface reading? Will CompLit become WorldLit? Or is comparative literature dead anyway? In these questions\, the discipline’s own ideological pres uppositions are on the line. The politics of the discipline are negotiated here by way of reading.My talk intervenes in these recent debates and exp lores reading as a necessarily collective practice\, always in language(s) and involving a polis of some sort. Reading-events exceed the bilateral\, silent interaction between reader and text\, between presumably stable su bjects and objects of study\, which continue to underlie close or distant\ , contrapuntal or surface reading. What might we gain from considering suc h reading-events not as receptive\, but as diffractive? How are reader\, t ext\, environment and reading material-semiotically entangled in such ways that a reading-event is not only an individual experience of non-appropri able alterity and the limits of the Subject (Attridge)\, but that it onto- epistemologically summons or fabricates a situational polis which involves and transforms reader and text (Rosenblatt)? In that light\, my talk purs ues less an ethics than a (micro)politics of reading. It is interested in the constitutive limitations\, appetitions and in/exclusions that enact th e mattering agential cuts (Barad) in literary reading-events\, beyond esta blished forms of representation. Importantly\, the new materialist suggest ion of diffractive reading must be accompanied by its own theory of ideolo gy (Spivak)\, to avoid rushing too quickly “beyond” a reading subject and thereby foreclosing the persistently decisive question that postcoloni al criticism has put on the agenda for any intra-active worlding: who read s what for-with-through-by whom\, where\, when and with which stakes?\\r\\ nBIRGIT MARA KAISER is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and T ranscultural Aesthetics at Utrecht University. She studied sociology and l iterature in Bochum\, Bielefeld\, Madrid and London\, and holds a PhD in C omparative Literature from New York University. Her research spans literat ures in English\, French and German from the 19th century to the present\, with special interest in aesthetics\, affect and subject-formation. She a lso publishes in the fields of postcolonial literary studies and feminist new materialism. Publications include Figures of Simplicity. Sensation and Thinking in Kleist and Melville (SUNY 2011)\, Singularity and Transnation al Poetics (Routledge 2015) and most recently Diffracted Worlds – Diffra ctive Readings: Onto-Epistemologies and the Critical Humanities (with K. T hiele\, Routledge 2018). She is also editor (with K. Thiele and T. O’Lea ry) of the book series New Critical Humanities (Rowman & Littlefield Int.) and founding coordinator (with K. Thiele) of the interdisciplinary resear ch network Terra Critica. X-ALT-DESC:READING IS THE PRIMARY ACTIVITY in any engagement with literatur e in its Western\, post-Gutenberg form. Its political stakes have been cen tral to literary theory and the discipline of Comparative Literature at le ast since the 1980s. With Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism and the cultural criticism of the Birmingham School\, the politics of representati on became a central concern to literary study. By now\, literature is take n almost paradigmatically as a “worldly” (in Said’s sense) artefact emmeshed in distributions of power\, which can be read for the socio-polit ical regimes of knowledge it displays and co-creates. In recent years\, re ading has also been the contentious key-term by which especially the disci pline of Comparative Literature battles over its future methodological fra mework. Shall this be close\, contrapuntal\, symptomatic\, distant\, or su rface reading? Will CompLit become WorldLit? Or is comparative literature dead anyway? In these questions\, the discipline’s own ideological presu ppositions are on the line. The politics of the discipline are negotiated here by way of reading.
My talk intervenes in these recent debates an d explores reading as a necessarily collective practice\, always in langua ge(s) and involving a polis of some sort. Reading-events exceed the bilate ral\, silent interaction between reader and text\, between presumably stab le subjects and objects of study\, which continue to underlie close or dis tant\, contrapuntal or surface reading. What might we gain from considerin g such reading-events not as receptive\, but as diffractive? How are reade r\, text\, environment and reading material-semiotically entangled in such ways that a reading-event is not only an individual experience of non-app ropriable alterity and the limits of the Subject (Attridge)\, but that it onto-epistemologically summons or fabricates a situational polis which inv olves and transforms reader and text (Rosenblatt)? In that light\, my talk pursues less an ethics than a (micro)politics of reading. It is intereste d in the constitutive limitations\, appetitions and in/exclusions that ena ct the mattering agential cuts (Barad) in literary reading-events\, beyond established forms of representation. Importantly\, the new materialist su ggestion of diffractive reading must be accompanied by its own theory of i deology (Spivak)\, to avoid rushing too quickly “beyond” a reading sub ject and thereby foreclosing the persistently decisive question that postc olonial criticism has put on the agenda for any intra-active worlding: who reads what for-with-through-by whom\, where\, when and with which stakes? \n
BIRGIT MARA KAISER is Associate Professor of Comparative Literatur e and Transcultural Aesthetics at Utrecht University. She studied sociolog y and literature in Bochum\, Bielefeld\, Madrid and London\, and holds a P hD in Comparative Literature from New York University. Her research spans literatures in English\, French and German from the 19th century to the pr esent\, with special interest in aesthetics\, affect and subject-formation . She also publishes in the fields of postcolonial literary studies and fe minist new materialism. Publications include Figures of Simplicity. Sensat ion and Thinking in Kleist and Melville (SUNY 2011)\, Singularity and Tran snational Poetics (Routledge 2015) and most recently Diffracted Worlds – Diffractive Readings: Onto-Epistemologies and the Critical Humanities (wi th K. Thiele\, Routledge 2018). She is also editor (with K. Thiele and T. O’Leary) of the book series New Critical Humanities (Rowman &\; Littl efield Int.) and founding coordinator (with K. Thiele) of the interdiscipl inary research network Terra Critica. DTEND;TZID=Europe/Zurich:20190521T200000 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR