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Australasian Association of Literature
The University of Melbourne
July 2-4, 2014
Deadline: February 28, 2014
Confirmed keynote speakers: Heather Love (University of
Pennsylvania), Sharon Marcus (Columbia University), & Gillian Russell
(Australian National University)
What is “the affective turn” and where did it come from? The relationship between literature and
affect has long been a fraught one. On the one hand, the discipline of literary
criticism derives from early eighteenth- century aesthetic philosophy that can
be understood as an attempt to theorize pleasure. On the other, after Kant,
criticism is predicated upon the separation of feeling from judgment.
Enshrining this separation as a principle of critical practice, W. K. Wimsatt
and Monroe C. Beardsley formulated “The Affective Fallacy” (1949) to name the shame
of an emotional entanglement with the literary text. Here, the aesthetic functions
as a conceptual mechanism for separating pleasure and value. And if pleasure is
such a contested topic, what about pain, what about the ugly feelings? (to use
Sianne Ngai’s coinage). And where is the body in all of this?
More recently, the so-called “affective turn” has turned a
new attention upon the world of feeling. It returns literary criticism to New
Criticism’s scandalous scene of the affective fallacy in order to re-evaluate
the languages of feeling. A shaping force in illuminating the value of the
affective has been queer theory, in its vital exploration of the transformative
potential both of forward-looking utopian desires and backwards feelings such
as shame. The affective turn has also been powered by the recognition that
emotion and history are not opposed, and that emotion itself has a history.
(Indeed, in a dramatic statement of the inseparability of history and affect, the
Marxist cultural historian, Fredric Jameson, asserts that “History is what
hurts”.) Perhaps paradoxically, new intensities of interest in literary form (e.g.
as objectified and “unfelt” emotion) and in the cognitive dimensions of feeling
also energize this turn and challenge the distinction between reason and
feeling.
The committee invites papers that engage with any aspect of literature
and affect; explore the significance for literature of the affective turn that
has informed the humanities more broadly; analyze the relationship between
affect and the literary aesthetic; engage affect and emotion to explore (or
indeed contest) the singularity of literature. The committee also invites papers that
consider literature and affect historically, and that consider affect, literature
and the problem of evaluation (aka judgment).
Possible topics might include:
- Literary hedonisms and literary pleasure Practices of reading New formalisms Cultures of taste
- Memory and affective histories Affect and temporality Literature and public emotions Theories of affect and emotion Fandom, celebrity, scandal, Cognitive literary criticism, psychoanalysis and the neurosciences Pain and trauma
- Sensation and corporeality Sexuality and eroticism Literary and aesthetic judgment Aesthetic-affective moods, modes and tones (e.g. sentiment, melodrama, camp)
- Non-human, impersonal and animal affect Actors and performance Emotions and new media (e.g. memes, avatars, social networking)
Please submit a title and 500-word abstract for proposed
papers by Friday February 28, 2014 via the submission form on the AAL conference
website.
Conference organizers: Clara Tuite, Sarah Balkin, Sarah
Comyn, Corey Wakeling (English and Theatre Studies, The University of
Melbourne)
