Event overview
GLITS (Goldsmiths Literature Seminar)
Meiping Zhang
'The Condition of "Viewing Unseen": Automatism and Anarchism in Stanley Cavell’s Ontology of Film'
Stanley Cavell’s philosophy of film is an interesting case as we consider the question of tradition and originality in film criticism. I will discuss Cavell’s notion of automatism, which is key to his reflections on the nature of the medium. My close examination of the notion is, however, not circumscribed by some technical concerns.
It aims to introduce implications associated with automatic transcription: the relation between the audience’s perceptual condition and the issue of scepticism (a central topic in Cavell’s philosophy in general); and the relation between anarchic impulse/effect of film and the idea of the ordinary.
By developing these relations alongside Wayne Wang and Paul Auster’s Smoke (1995) I wish to spell out consequences of the audience’s connection, or lack thereof, with reality. The condition of ‘viewing unseen’ as Cavell succinctly puts it not only reveals phenomenological import but has an ethical dimension that concerns our being in the world and with others.
Lucia Llano Puertas, 'Uncovering the Layers of Lost History: Memory and Trauma in Neo-Slave Narratives'
In this paper I will look at traumatic memory and how it is evoked in two neo-slave narratives, The Long Song by Andrea Levy and Un dimanche au cachot by Patrick Chamoiseau. I will examine Cathy Caruth's use of Freud's work on dreams to open my discussion, before turning to Marianne Hirsch's work on postmemory to consider the creative process behind the 'rememorialisation' of slavery. Lastly, I will look at Toni Morrison's reflections on her own writing and an idea of 'ancestral memory'.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 9 Mar 2017 | 6:30pm - 8:00pm |
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