VISR Vancouver Institute of Social Research

"Adorno's Reading of 'Endgame': Between Autonomy and Authenticity"

Theodor W. Adorno's central philosophical contribution is the development of "negative dialectics." Negative dialectics, itself, emerges as the recognition of the crisis of what Adorno calls "metaphysical meaning" or the Hegelian idea that history can be understood as embodying a rational purpose. Such a crisis becomes especially acute when seen through autonomous artworks. In particular, this essay looks at the manner in which Samuel Beckett's "Endgame" becomes for Adorno the site of a dialectical as opposed to an existential reflection on the crisis of metaphysical meaning. That is to say rather than the manifestation of a timeless condition of "absurdity", "Endgame" itself embodies the catastrophic logic of natural-history.

"13 Ways of Looking at a Crocodile"

Starting from one of the more obscure and often overlooked literary references in Freud’s Das Unheimliche– a tale about haunted houses and reptilian ghosts – my talk will engage with a series of texts that feature a strange theoretical animal: the crocodile. In a trajectory that leads from Freud’s Viennese home to Max Ernst’s collages from 19th century illustrated journals, I will explore some of the curious literary apparitions of ‘the beast in whose mouth we all are’- to paraphrase a well-known formulation by Jacques Lacan. 

There is still a great deal of investment, among writers, scholars and readers, in the idea of "canons" of "great books" that cultured persons are supposed to have read.Mancini's talk will introduce his proposal that certain texts, positioned para-canonically (alongside or nearby canons) antagonize the mythologies of literary canons. While functioning as "paracanonic," texts undermine the privileged aesthetic certainty that canons embody. Mancini will first revisit canon debates since the 1960s, to trace the contour of the canon myths these paracanonical texts perturb. Then he will bring forward a number of contrasting paracanonic case-histories, in order to inventory some of the necessary-but-insufficientconditions (including social-historical contexts and textual features) that contribute to a text’s (always temporary) position as paracanonic. Authors discussed will include William Shakespeare, Aime Cesaire, HP Lovecraft, Hart Crane, Walt Whitman and James Joyce.

This talk will explore dust and materiality through multiple mediations. In general, it will examine processes, and the invisibility of production, distribution, and consumption. Framed through Jussi Parikka’s critical lens, we will study how the “seemingly immaterial is embedded in wide material networks,” and how technoculture is anchored in a transformation of materials—from mining to waste. Specifically, the presentation proposes an approach to dust as media in relation to the body. We will look at selected examples from visual and media arts.