Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 13:46:05 -0700 (PDT)
From: Roger Taylor <trodtaylor-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Source of line of thinking


Ok steve, 
 
Last time: I'll put it in the email this time. Damn it. 
 
Roger
 

Department of Comparative Literature, Emory University

Fourth Annual Graduate Student Conference

"The Event of War: Interventions in the 20th and 21st Centuries" 

November 5-7, 2004

The "Event of War" conference will be held this fall semester, November 5-7, 2004 in White Hall and aims to bring together graduate students and faculty from different departments at Emory, as well as international scholars from various disciplines in the humanities. Corresponding with past interdisciplinary conferences at Emory, this conference is being organized by graduate students from the Department in Comparative Literature, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and is being co-sponsored by Middle Eastern Studies, the Department of French and Italian, the Institute for Liberal Arts, the Ethics and Society Program in the Graduate Division of Religion, the Graduate School, and the Hightower Fund, among others.

"The Event of War": centuries of wars – world wars, religious wars, the Cold war – the 20th century has raised urgent questions concerning the adequacy of responding to aggression, the limits of human action, the dangers of technological development, and the status of the human. How is the event of war an interruptive force in language, psychoanalysis and philosophy and how can it be represented in literature and media? What political, rhetorical and legal transformations have emerged as a consequence of America’s justification of foreign intervention? Furthermore, how can the humanities respond to the recent shifts in American interventionist policies that threaten the self-determination and political stability of foreign nations? Conference papers will address this shift in traditional warfare and account for the uniqueness of war in the 21st century from literary, philosophical, political, ethical, rhetorical and religious points of view. 

This year we look forward to welcoming as our keynote speaker Robert Jay Lifton, M.D. As a groundbreaking psychoanalyst in the field of social theory, Dr. Robert Jay Lifton is currently a Visiting Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts and will address the socio-political, historical and religious aspects that the "Event of War" conference demands. In the past, Dr. Lifton has served as Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the Graduate School University Center and Director of The Center on Violence and Human Survival at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at The City University of New York. He has also previously held the Foundations' Fund Research Professorship of Psychiatry at Yale University for more than two decades. 

Dr. Lifton’s ground-breaking work raises the kind of inquiry we feel would be timely and important to both the students and faculty attending this conference. In fact, his recent book, The Superpower Syndrome played a crucial role in developing and articulating the goals of this conference. We feel his work on death anxiety and trauma in The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima, and Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism articulates the kind of response that has been missing from academia since the events following September 11th. In particular, his work on the impossibility of an "absolute confrontation" with death as an "experience" in the survivor and the death impulses of the false witness beginning with the Holocaust, raises the question of the "moral" necessity of killing, and its most recent manifestations of the perpetual American war on "evil". As he states in
 The Superpower Syndrome, the two parallel and idealistic struggles to master death and "fluid world control" in the American and Islamist apocalyptic movements have produced a confrontation whose potential consequences threaten every aspect of humanity. As graduate students interested in trauma theory and concerned with the tension between political and social approaches to recent events in world history, we are very excited to welcome Dr. Lifton as our keynote speaker for this year’s conference. 

The "Event of War" Conference Committee: , Co-Chair (CPLT), Seth R. Wood, Co-Chair (CPLT), Jess Boersma, Co-Chair (Spanish & Portuguese), Scott Weintraub, (Spanish & Portuguese), Leah Wolfson, Roger Taylor, Brian McGrath, Raina Kostova, Mirja Lobnik. For information or questions, please contact Jessica at jsellou-AT-emory.edu, or Seth at srwood-AT-emory.edu.

Department of Comparative Literature, Emory University

"The Event of War: Interventions in the 20th and 21st Centuries," November 5 – 7, 2004

Conference Schedule

White Hall

Rooms 111 & 112



 

Friday, November 5

`



3:00 – 5:30

Registration & Small Reception White Hall 208

Hallway of White Hall 208





5:30 – 7:00 Documentary Film Screening

(Part I of Dr. Lifton’s Presentation)



 

7:00 – 8:00 Town Hall Meeting or Respondent Panel to Film



8:30

Conference Dinner Faculty Dining Hall, DUC, Emory Campus

Open to All Emory Faculty & Conference Attendees 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Schedule continues on next page

"Event of War" Conference Panel Schedule

Saturday, November 6 – Sunday, November 7

White Hall Rooms 111 & 122

Carlos Museum, Reception Hall

Emory Campus

9:00 – 10:00 Breakfast

Hallway of White Hall Rms. 111 & 112 



10:00 – 11:30 

Panel 1A Theme: "Rhetoric and War" (Title TBA)

Moderator: Deborah Mayrhofer, Department of Comparative Literature, Emory University

1. Jillinda Weaver, Ethics and Society Program, Graduate Division of Religion, Emory University

"Freedom, Self and Other in the War Speeches of George W. Bush"

2. Immy Wallenfells, Department of English, Syracuse University

"The Rhetoric of War Dissolved in Emily Dickinson’s "It feels a shame to be Alive"

3. Carol Lea Clark, University of Texas at El Paso

"Is Iraq a Just War? Lessons from the The Atlantic Monthly’s Coverage of the Vietnam and Iraqi Wars, 1968 to 2004"

Panel 1B Theme: "Empire" (Title TBA)

Moderator: Emory Faculty Member, T.B.A.

1. Dr. Ikechi Mgbeoji, Osgoode Hall Law School, University of Toronto:

"The Bearded Bandit, The Outlaw Cop, and the Blind Emperor: Towards a TWAILian (de)Construction of the Texts and Contexts of International Law’s (dis)Engagement With State Supported Terrorism"

2. Nicholas J. Kiersey, Program in Environmental Design & Planning, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University: 

"Empire and Liberal Government in International Relations Theory; towards an understanding of the Campaign for Middle East democracy as a condition of the war in Iraq"

3. Dr. Eva Cherniavsky, Director, American Studies Program, Department of English, Indiana University: "After Hegemony: Left Academics and the State"

11:30 – 11:45 Break



11:45 – 1:00

Panel 2A Theme: "War Memorial" (Title TBA)

Moderator: Dr. Angelika Bammer, Institute for the Liberal Arts, Emory University

1. Peter Milne, Department of Philosophy, Emory University

"For What? The Canadian War Art Collection and the Event of War"

2. Susan Eastman, Program in Linguistics, University of Tennessee

"Back in the World: Materialization of Memory at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial"

3. Ben Miller, Department of Comparative Literature, Emory University

"Memorial Voids and Iconic Backfill"

4. Dr. Carolyn Marvin, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

"Mission Failure: Ritual Perspectives on the Iraq War"

Panel 2B "Governing Through Peace: Critical Perspectives"

Moderator: Brian McGrath, Department of Comparative Literature, Emory University

1. Alison Howell, Department of Political Science, York University, Toronto, Canada

"Disrupting the ‘Cycle’ of Violence?’: Securing Liberal Peace through the Treatment of Trauma in Post-Conflict Situations"

2. Kyle Grayson, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Canadian Consortium on Human Security, Toronto, Canada

"Our Great Law of Peace? Imperialism, War, and the Democratic Peace in the Liberal (Geo)Political Imagination"

3. Tina Managhan, Department of Political Science, York University, Toronto, Canada

"Competing Rationalities and New American Fantasies: The Battle for Iraq"

4. Colleen Bell, Department of Political Science, York University, Toronto, Canada

"The Biopolitics of Securing Peace: Reflections on the North American Security Ministries"

 

1:00 – 2:45 Lunch (Emory Village)

3:00 – 4:30 

Panel 3A Theme: "The Stateless Subject" (Title TBA)

Moderator: David Kelman, Department of Comparative Literature, Emory University

1. Spencer Wolff, Department of Comparative Literature, Yale University

"The Primrose Path: Structural Similarities in Anti-Dreyfusard, National-Socialist, and Early Zionist Thought"

2. Dr. Tatjana Gajic, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Emory University

Title of Paper TBA

3. T.B.A.

Panel 3B Theme: "Media and War" (Title TBA)

Moderator: Emory Faculty Member, T.B.A.

1. Dr. Jennifer R. Ballengee, Department of English, Towson University

"War and the Rhetoric of Torture"

2. Dr. Steve Lukits, Department of English, Royal Military College of Canada, Ontario

"Someone had blundered" – again: A paradigm for news media coverage of the military from 19th century Crimea to 21st century Iraq"

3. Dr. Cynthia Keppley Mahmood, Director of Graduate Studies, Associate Professor of Anthropology, The Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame: "Violence, Play and the Problem of Post-Conflict Healing"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

End of afternoon Panels ------------Conference moves Reception Hall of Carlos Museum

4:30 – 5:30 Conference Reception

Reception Hall, Carlos Museum

5:30 – 6:00 

Opening Remarks Jessica D. Sellountos, Conference Co-Chair Graduate Student, CPLT Department



Introduction Dr. Claire Nouvet, Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature, Associate Professor of French and Italian, Emory University 

6:00 – 7:30 

Keynote Presentation Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, Visiting Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts Harvard University



8:30 Dinner (off campus) Faculty and Committee Members 

-AT- Food Studio in Buckhead



10:00 Conference Party – All attendees invited Address: 730 Dalerose Ave., Decatur, GA

(near the intersection of E. College Ave. & Sams Crossing)



Sunday, November 7



 

9:30 – 10:30 Buffet Breakfast (Cox Hall)

10:30 – 12:30

Panel 4 

"Communicating the Unreadable Event: 

Perspectives of the Witness and the Language of Testimony"

Moderator: Jess Boersma, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Emory University

1. Naomi Shulman, Department of Comparative Literature, University of California at Berkeley

"Reading 'Truthfulness': Gender and Community in Charlotte Delbo's Auschwitz and After" 

2. Leah Wolfson, Department of Comparative Literature, Emory University

"Remembering the Unknown: A Re-examination of the 9/11 Hero"

3. Dr. Brett Holden, Chapman Community at Kohl, Bowling Green Street University

"Teaching 20th century Literature of War as Literature of Witness"

4. Rasmus Ohlenschlaeger Madsen, Department of Nordic Studies, University of Copenhagen

"The Blind Eyewitness – American essayists on terror and war"

5. Dr. David McCrary, Department of English, University of Tulsa

"Refining Trauma: Tim O’Brien’s Revisions to "Speaking of Courage""

12:30 – 1:00 Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, Visiting Professor of

Closing Remarks Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts Harvard University



 

 

 





 

 

 


"steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk> wrote:
roger,

In theoretical terms I tend to agree with the below - which makes me 
wonder precisely why the analysts who call themselves Jungians, are 
always in my limited experience - how ridiculous this seems as I write 
this - so much more humane. With the caveat of the common social 
imaginary, which should be taken into account and couldn't this be 
considered the common identity you are refusing. Either way a clearer 
explanation as to how you can accept Lyotard's false consciousness of 
'humanity' as a species, given the implications of the below would be 
interesting, because isn't the underlying implication of the below the 
rejection of the notion of 'species' - Or is it that a subject is 
forever only a human being in your theoretical structure ?

Technics later - tomorrow perhaps, have worked enough this weekend...

steve

>Ok, Klein and Jung. The problem with Jung that I have is that he assumes a uniform self-same consciousness and unconsiciousness running between humans. I don't and won't buy that. Why? It should be obvious. I will not subcribe to a before the fact identity between subjects. On the other hand, there is something binding between us that Lyotard in his writings on Kant and the Sensus Communis betrays. We all feel but with the stopgap that each instance of feeling is entirely singular. This does not mean that cultural patterns cannot develop. Of course they do. But that is a second order of commonality. (I'll have to come back to this later). And just a short note on Klein: I was analyzed by a Kleinian for two months and found it to be one of the most confining environments I have ever experienced. 
> 
>
> 
>

		
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