Saturday, May 4, 2019

University of Warwick, room MS.05 (Mathematics and Statistics Building)

“Determination” is a concept applicable to subjective agency, historical circumstance, and formal particularity. If determinism posits the way things must be, an account of determination is concerned not only with how something is but also how it might be otherwise: with both the genesis and possible transformation of states of affairs. How might attention to poetic determination help us to grasp the mediation of agency, history, and form by the literary work? This one-day workshop will take up this question through the resources of both philosophy and literature, foregrounding poetry and poetics as a key site for thinking through conceptual and political problems.

Programme:

9.45-10.15: Registration

10.15-10.30: Greetings and Introduction (Daniel Katz, Warwick)

10.30-11.15: Nathan Brown (Concordia): "Baudelaire's Shadow: Toward a Theory of Poetic Determination"

11.15-12.00: Eileen John (Warwick): "The Experience of Necessity in Poetry"

12.00-12.15: coffee break

12.15-13.00: Emma Mason (Warwick): "Determinacy and Weakness in Peter Larkin's Seven Leaf Sermons"

13.00-14.00: lunch

14.00-14.45: Stephen Ross (Concordia): "Equal, That Is, To the Virtual Itself: Poetic Knowledge and Self-Determination in Samuel Delany’s and Nathaniel Mackey’s Fiction"

14.45-15.30: Kyoo Lee (CUNY): “Determinalization: Serial Poecritiquing with and after Jacques Derrida, Nam June Paik, Fred Moten …”

15.30-16.00: coffee break

16.00-17.00: Round Table with Nathan Brown, Eileen John, Daniel Katz, Kyoo Lee, Emma Mason, Stephen Ross

17.00-18.00: drinks reception

Registration Now Closed

conference contact: Daniel Katz (d.katz@warwick.ac.uk)