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digest 2006-04-15 #004.txt
litsci-l-digest Saturday, April 15 2006 Volume 01 : Number
169
In this issue:
SUB 06 Panel Proposal: "Evolution and 'Life'"
SUB 06: Darwin, Purism, and World War I
SUB 06 Paper Proposal: =?ISO-8859-1?B?sw==?=Animal
Life=?ISO-8859-1?B?sg==?=: Matter, Evolution and Aesthetics in Erasmus
Darwin=?ISO-8859-1?B?uQ==?=s Zoonomia and Botanic Garden.
SUB 06 "being : mineral"
SUB 06: Written Code Codes Writing
SUB 06: Recognizing Life in Hegel and Frankenstein
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 19:10:24 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Karen Leona Anderson"
Subject: SUB 06 Panel Proposal: "Evolution and 'Life'"
We are looking for a third member for this panel.
Karen Leona Anderson (kla27@cornell.edu)
Panel Description: Evolution and "Life"
This panel aims to explore a term that is basic to evolutionary
discourse
by examining various definitions of human and nonhuman "life." Our
first
panelist looks at how eugenic discourse about "life" and evolution was
taken up and dismantled by two early twentieth century poets. Our
second
panelist examines some features of what "life" meant in eighteenth
century
France, Switzerland, and Germany through the cultural evolution of
affect
in musical automata.
Paper 1: Poetry, "Life," and Eugenic Evolution
Karen Leona Anderson
Ph.D. Candidate
Cornell University
kla27@cornell.edu
Through the lens of Foucault and Agamben's notions of "life"-that
shifting feature linking the human with animals and plants at the same
time as constitutes political "biopower"-this paper will argue that two
twentieth century poets intervened in the understanding of evolution
common to mainstream eugenics. In the sense that eugenics was
represented
as an artificial corollary of natural selection-as Frances Galton put
it,
"[w]hat Nature does blindly, slowly, and ruthlessly, man may do
providently, quickly, and kindly"-it depended heavily on an idea of
evolution as a controllable and ameliorative process. Poems by Marianne
Moore and Lorine Niedecker, on the other hand, expose an unstable "life"
as the ground for eugenic analogies drawn between moral and intellectual
improvement and plant or animal breeding. The failure of such analogies
within the poems is used to challenge both the eugenic methods of
evaluating ?¨improvement?Æ and the idea of evolution as necessarily
progressive or degenerative. Further, in their versions of such
metaphors,
these poems point out how this progressive or degenerative "life"
authorizes the sub-categorization of humans by race, ethnicity, class
and
gender, constituting a social critique of eugenic evolution by showing
how
the human under eugenics is always premature, the not-yet-human.
Keywords: life; eugenics; poetry; analogy
Paper 2. "Evolution" and "life" in the construction and interpretation
of
eighteenth-century android automata
Adelheid Voskuhl
Assistant Professor
Department of The History of Science
Harvard University
acv3@cornell.edu
Of the famous android automata built during the eighteenth century by
French, Swiss, and German artisans, a surprising number were designed as
figures engaging in artistic activity such as writing, drawing, or
music-making. In my paper I will look at two automata -- both display
women playing a keyboard instrument -- and explore how they bring to the
fore not only the convergence of "motion" and "life," but also the
evolution of gesture and affective expression. The automata's
sophisticated mechanisms allow them to play music on ordinary
instruments
of their time like a human would play them, and they also allow them to
move their upper bodies, heads, and eyes in harmony with their musical
pieces. This technical architecture, and the automata's motions coming
with it, embody and illustrate eighteenth-century efforts to develop
codes for the expression of affects and passions during musical
performance through the musician's moving body. Relying on close
readings
of two types of texts -- a satire on "machine-men" by the German poet
Jean
Paul (1763-1825) and widely disseminated pedagogical literature on how
to
play musical instruments by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Johann Joachim
Quantz -- I investigate the interrelations between bodily motions, the
generation and communication of affects during music-making, and the
evolution of conventions of sentimental selfhood, social interaction,
and
bodily comportment in the newly emerging bourgeois culture of
eighteenth-century Europe.
Keywords: life; automata; affect; technology; selfhood
- -
+-+-+-+-+-+
Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
links and unsubscribing info:
http://www.law.duke.edu/sls
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 20:58:58 -0400
From: jghatch
Subject: SUB 06: Darwin, Purism, and World War I
Please find pasted below my paper submission for the 2006 SLSA =
conference.
Thank you.
=20
john hatch
- --
Dr. John G. Hatch=20
Associate Professor (Art History)=20
Graduate Chair=20
Dept. of Visual Arts
The University of Western Ontario=20
London, Ontario=20
Canada N6A 5B7=20
Tel: 519.661.3440=20
Fax: 519.661.2020=20
e-mail: jhatch@uwo.ca
web: http://publish.uwo.ca/~jhatch/
=20
=20
=20
The Great White Hope: Darwin, Purism, and World War I
=20
John G. Hatch
The University of Western Ontario
=20
Near the end of the First World War, the Swiss architect Le Corbusier =
joined
forces with the French painter Am=E9d=E9e Ozenfant, in seeking to =
redress
European society. Although they saw the "Great Test" as symptomatic of
=
the
degeneration of European culture, it nevertheless provided an =
opportunity
for an almost complete reconstruction of that culture, and the =
technological
tools to achieve it. Their thoughts on this, as expressed in their =
numerous
writings during and immediately following the war, were heavily indebted
=
to
Social Darwinism. For Le Corbusier, natural selection would be the
mechanism determining everything from the efficient design of everyday
objects to framing the social interactions between human beings. In the
hope of improving society, Ozenfant and Le Corbusier=92s =93Purism=94 =
adopted a
vision that paralleled the rather disturbing uses of Social Darwinism at
=
the
end of the 19th century that ultimately contributed to the rise of =
National
Socialism in Germany.
=20
=20
Keywords: Le Corbusier, Ozenfant, Social Darwinism, Art and =
Architecture,
World War I
=20
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 21:07:01 -0400
From: Allison Dushane
Subject: SUB 06 Paper Proposal: =?ISO-8859-1?B?sw==?=Animal
Life=?ISO-8859-1?B?sg==?=: Matter, Evolution and Aesthetics in Erasmus
Darwin=?ISO-8859-1?B?uQ==?=s Zoonomia and Botanic Garden.
Karen - I would be interested in the Evolution and "Life" panel if you
stil=
l
need a third member
If not, I submit the proposal to the general pool.
=B3Animal Life=B2: Matter, Generation and Aesthetics in Erasmus
Darwin=B9s
_Zoonomia_ and _Botanic Garden_.
=20
This presentation situates the work of Erasmus Darwin=8Bpopular poet,
prolifi=
c
scientific writer, and grandfather of Charles Darwin=8B within his
scientific
and aesthetic contexts in order to engage questions about the
overlapping
roles scientific and literary texts play in articulating conceptions
=B3life.=
=B2
Darwin=B9s radical theory of development begins with a conception of
matter
that has the capacity for agency and self-generation, proposing an
organic
system of life in which in which individual organisms develop over time
through an active engagement with the environments in which they unfold.
Asserting that =B3the whole is one family of one parent,=B2 Darwin works
toward
a theory of nature through =B3rational analogy=B2 founded on this
=B3similitude.=B2
I explore the ways in which Darwin=B9s proto-evolutionary biological
system
simultaneously works within and challenges eighteenth-century methods of
knowledge-making and models of self-description, contributing to the
emergence of modern models of consciousness and subjectivity. I then
focus
on close readings of Erasmus Darwin=B9s medical treatise _Zoonomia, or
the
Laws of Organic Life_ (particularly Chapter XXIX, =B3Of Generation=B2)
in
conjunction with Part I, =B3The Economy of Vegetations,=B2 from his
popular
two-part epic poem, The _Botanic Garden_. Reading Darwin=B9s eighteenth
century aesthetic practices alongside his dynamic model of =B3Animal
Life=B2
will provide a prospective from which to discuss the potential
scientific
and literary texts have to contribute reciprocally to evolutionary (and
literary) models of life.
=20
Keywords: Evolution, Eighteenth-Century, Poetry, Aesthetics, Self,
Agency,
Materialism
- --=20
Allison Dushane
Ph.D. Candidate, Duke University
English Department
316 Allen Building
Box 90017
Durham NC 27708
- -
+-+-+-+-+-+
Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
links and unsubscribing info:
http://www.law.duke.edu/sls
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 18:02:23 -0700
From: Nathan Brown
Subject: SUB 06 "being : mineral"
being : mineral
This paper takes recent advances in molecular-scale materials
research=20=
as the occasion for a return to Heidegger=92s three theses in The=20
Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, according to which =93the stone=20
(material object) is worldless; the animal is poor in world; man is=20
world-forming.=94 The emergence of nanobiotechnology threatens=20
Heidegger=92s schema by promising an endowment to inorganic
materiality=20=
of =93life=94: those capacities of sensory receptivity and
environmental=20=
=93access=94 that, for Heidegger, specify =93the kind of being that =
pertains=20
to animals and plants.=94
Heidegger=92s schema has become a major topos for contemporary=20
philosophical investigations of =93life=94 and its modalities of
being,=20=
figuring prominently in Georgio Agamben=92s The Open: Man and Animal,
in=20=
Jean-Luc Nancy=92s The Sense of the World, and in Jacques Derrida=92s =
final=20
seminar, =93The Beast and the Sovereign.=94 This paper attempts to =
situate=20
these treatments of and challenges to Heidegger=92s schema in relation =
to=20
the evolution of synthetic life by nanobiotechnology, attending in=20
particular to the ontological status of the stone, or material object.
=20=
Addressing recent deployments of the stone as an ontological object=20
lesson by Nancy, Bernard Steigler, Ian Hacking, and Bruno Latour, the=20
paper juxtaposes this primordial =93object=94 and perennial =
philosophical=20
example with forms of synthetic life in order to interrogate the (now=20
routine) application of the category of =93life=94 to inorganic matter,
=
and=20
to demarcate the philosophical stakes of that application.
KEYWORDS: nanotechnology, life, inorganic, Heidegger, objects
Nathan Brown
Ph.D Candidate, UCLA
email: nbrownat@ucla.edu
- -
+-+-+-+-+-+
Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
links and unsubscribing info:
http://www.law.duke.edu/sls
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 21:13:02 -0400
From: Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo
Subject: SUB 06: Written Code Codes Writing
PANEL: Written Code Codes Writing : Electronic Textual Encounters
Convenor: Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo, cynthia@cynthialawson.com
1. Dovetailing Details Fly Apart - All Over, Again, In Code, In =20
Poetry, In Chreods
Stephanie Strickland & Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo
Poetry and code=97and mathematics=97make us read differently from other
=20=
forms of writing. Written poetry makes the silent reader read three =20
kinds of pattern at once; code moves the reader from a static to an =20
active, interactive and looped domain; while algebraic topology =20
allows us to read qualitative forms and their transformations, both =20
those written by available pathways and patterns and entropy =20
budgets, and those we conjure out of =91nothing=92
Stephanie Strickland is both a print and a new media poet with =20
several prizewinning works in both media. She has taught at many =20
universities, including Parsons The New School for Design, and serves
=20=
on the board of the Electronic Literature Organization.
Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo is a new media artist, educator, and =20
technologist. She is currently Director of the Integrated Design =20
Curriculum and Assistant Professor at Parsons The New School for Design.
2. Story, Discourse, and Re-Shaping Interactive Fiction
Nick Montfort
Interactive fiction (IF) indicates a form of text-based computer =20
game, a sort of dialog system, and a kind of literary art which has =20
existed for about 30 years. Since Aristotle, theorists of narrative =20
have distinguished between the level of underlying =20
"story" (corresponding to the simulated world in IF) and =20
"discourse" (corresponding to the way that events and things in that =20
world are related.) But although IF has been around for 30 years, IF =20
systems have not yet embodied this distinction by abstracting the =20
telling from what is told. I describe an IF system that is based on =20
this distinction, extending techniques from computational linguistics
=20=
(specifically, from natural language generation) by using concepts =20
from narratology.
Nick Montfort is a poet, an author of interactive fiction and other =20
literary works for the computer, and a scholar of new media. He's =20
working on a computer science Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania.
3. Thinking/Reading/Writing the Multi-Modal
Talan Memmott
Literary Hypermedia (un)rests somewhere between the visual, the =20
procedural, and the literary. As such, it requires different modes of
=20=
signification, and different way of thinking about writing practice. =20
Text in works of literary hypermedia is more than the written word, =20
with interface environment and interactivity having as much =20
rhetorical value. Though it may seem that these modes of =20
signification, when broken apart, are in competition with one =20
another, it seems more valuable to consider the harmonics and =20
resonances between them as an holistic meaning-making device. Through
=20=
a demonstration of a number of works, this presentation will look at =20
the process of multi-modal meaning making in literary hypermedia.
Talan Memmott is a hypermedia artist/writer/editor originally from =20
San Francisco, California. He is the Creative Director and Editor of
=20=
the literary hypermedia journal beeHive, which he started in 1998.
4. Geometry and Recombinant Poetics
Daniel C. Howe & Aya Karpinska
This presentation will explore how geometry, which studies =20
relationships of angles and surfaces, can complement recombinant =20
poetry, which uses configurations and arrangements of words and =20
phrases to generate meaning. We all have intuitions about how =20
geometric shapes behave in the world around us. Shapes will fit with =20
each other in a predefined and finite number of ways, just as words =20
and phrases in a recombinant text only "fit" (have meaning) in =20
certain ways. In our collaborative work, three-dimensional shapes =20
often inspire the writing. The spatial relationships among these =20
shapes are what matters - change the shapes, and the writing must =20
follow. At the heart of creative writing lie constraints; geometry =20
provides a logical basis for constraints in a visual space.
Daniel C. Howe is a digital artist, researcher & doctoral candidate =20
at NYU=92s Media Research Lab. His interests include generative systems
=20=
for artistic practice & social aspects of technology design. He is =20
the 2005 recipient of the Brown Fellowship for Electronic Writing.
Aya Karpinska is a digital media artist who creates interactive =20
experiences through installation art, digital poetry, computer music,
=20=
and game design (but not all at the same time.) Aya currently works =20
as an interaction designer in New York City.
-------------------------------
Dehlia Hannah
4/15/2006 9:52:25 PM
SUB 06: Recognizing Life in Hegel and Frankenstein
Dehlia Hannah
Ph.D. Candidate
Philosophy Department
Columbia University
SLSA Abstract: November 2006
Recognizing Life in Hegel and Frankenstein
This paper examines the divide between object and organism, and
between organism and subject, in the philosophical definition and
narrative description of ?´life?? in Hegel??s Phenomenology of Spirit
and Mary Shelley??s Frankenstein. For Hegel the conditions for
recognizing another being as a human subject sit over two fault
lines: the first divides the non-living object from the living
organism, and the second divides the living organism from subject
or self-conscious spirit. Shelly??s Frankenstein creates a being
whose monstrosity arises from its trespass against the first
boundary, as the monster is transformed from mechanical object to
live organism, followed by its failure to cross the second
threshold, as the monster lives in a state of abjection as a living
organism that is self-consciousness, yet can neither give nor
receive recognition from human beings. The story of Frankenstein
and the monster of his own making is one in which the Hegelian
?´struggle unto the death?? between two equals to produce enslavement
is inverted to produce a tragic contest between two radically
unequal beings, whose struggle fails to produce either equality or
sustainable inequality ?± ending rather in the death of both.
Whereas Hegel??s slave learns from labor and becomes Marx??s hero,
Frankenstein??s monster haunts us in the form of a proliferation of
scientific perspectives that seem to reduce humans to lifeless
machines, and economic conditions that discipline humans to the
rhythm of mechanical production, but fail to grant machines human
dignity. My use of the Frankenstein story will clarify the ways in
which Hegel??s concept of a subject must be produced, ordered, and
recognized in the senses of both epistemological identification and
social valuation. I will read Frankenstein??s monster as a foil to
Hegel??s totalizing historical teleology and an indication of how
mechanization (as natural philosophy) and industrialization (as its
worldly incarnation in the context of capitalism) imply a
transformation of what counts as life, and what life counts for in
the determination of who will be recognized as a subject and
accorded its privileges.
Keywords: life, subject, Hegel, mechanical production, abjection,
recognition
