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digest 2006-04-16 #001.txt
litsci-l-digest Sunday, April 16 2006 Volume 01 : Number
170
In this issue:
SUB 06 - SUB 06 Technocrat vs. Terrorist: Cybernetic Construction
of the Terrorist Other
SUB 06. Renfield's Insane Ecosystem: Queer Nature, Fin-de-Siecle
Science, and Bram Stoker's Dracula
SUB06 paper abstract, "string theory"
SUB 06 Paper Proposal: Extended phenotypes or non Darwinian beings
=?WINDOWS-1252?Q?SUB_06_Spencer=92s_Plots:_Habit,_He?=
=?WINDOWS-1252?Q?terogeneity,_and_Special_Creation?=
SUB 06: Web 2.0, Collective Intelligence and the Problem of
Mediated Evolution
SUB 06. Renfield's Insane Ecosystem: Queer Nature, Fin-de-Siecle
Science, and Bram Stoker's Dracula
SUB-06 Panel Proposal: Arakawa and Gins--Architecture Against Death
Part II
SUB 06 Panel Proposal: Catholicism, Carnival, and Cognition in the
Art of Kiki Smith
FW: Bounced by litsci-l list...
SUB 06: Darwinism and its Discontents: Three Panels/Papers
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 22:30:54 -0400
From: "Nick Hales"
Subject: SUB 06 - SUB 06 Technocrat vs. Terrorist: Cybernetic
Construction of the Terrorist Other
keywords: cybernetics, terrorism, war on terror, digital media, internet
Technocrat vs. Terrorist: Cybernetic Construction of the Terrorist Other
American political discourse as articulated by the US Executive Branch
and
Pentagon technocrats constructs Islamic terrorists and their "criminal"
activities as diametrically opposed to the American military and the
"legitimate" warfare it wages. This discourse attributes technological
proficiency to the U.S. war machine and technological crudity to the
international Islamic terrorist. This binary organizes itself around
the
trope of technology because historically American technocrats have
conceptualized and materially constructed the US military body as a
cyborgi=
c
entity, a composite of mechanical, organic, and informational
components. =
I
discuss the technocratic conceptualization of the American martial body
and
how they position it as diametrically opposed to the terrorist body.=20
Technocrats
construct the US martial body as a cybernetically controlled, coherent
entity. In contrast, technocrats construct the terrorist body as
lacking
central control, without a head, fragmented, and even sometimes as an
absence. I conclude by discussing a particularly important "text" for
understanding the martial body of both parties: digital videos
distributed
on the internet of American soldiers and civilians being beheaded. I
argue
that the terrorist subverts the dream of an ordered, controlled
cybernetic
engagement in warfare by marking the US martial body back down to the
level
of mortal flesh.
Nick Hales
hales.nick@gmail.com
PhD Student
English Department - West Virginia University
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 22:31:50 -0400
From: "Azzarello, Robert"
Subject: SUB 06. Renfield's Insane Ecosystem: Queer Nature,
Fin-de-Siecle Science, and Bram Stoker's Dracula
Robert Azzarello
Ph.D. Student in English
CUNY Graduate Center
=20
Adjunct Lecturer
City College, CUNY
=20
=20
Renfield's Insane Ecosystem:=20
Queer Nature, Fin-de-Siecle Science, and Bram Stoker's Dracula
=20
=20
Responding to Darwin's Origin of Species (1847) and Descent of Man =
(1871), as well as applications of evolutionary theory to culture, such
=
as Max Nordau's Degeneration (1895), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) =
critiques the dynamics of authority and power inherent in the =
fin-de-siecle scientific classification of nature-human and otherwise.
=
One character in particular, R.M. Renfield, acts as a pointed and =
effective epistemological disruption of knowing the difference between =
"the natural" and "the unnatural." Renfield orchestrates a food chain =
in his asylum bedroom consisting of flies, spiders, and sparrows. This
=
"insane" ecosystem and the concomitant erotics of predation, I will =
suggest, indicates the ways in which Stoker's Dracula creates a "queer =
nature" that calls into question the knowability of the "true" =
relationship between the human, the natural, and the sexual. =20
=20
=20
Keywords: queer theory, ecocriticism, fin-de-siecle literature, =
epistemology
=20
=20
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 19:31:39 -0700
From: Maria Cetinic
Subject: SUB06 paper abstract, "string theory"
string theory
While there has been a great deal of attention to the convergence of
dis=
crepant media via digital technology=2C there has been comparably
little=
attention devoted to the persistence of analog and retro technologies
a=
s a concurrent feature of our technoscientific situation=2E Nor has
suf=
ficient attention been paid to the propensity of recent literature to
re=
turn to such =93low=94 technologies as a mode of narrative invention=3A
=
as a means of imagining new models of community and of conveying
affect=
ive tonalities that both respond to and interrupt the discursive
hegemon=
y of the World Wide Web=2E To name three such texts=2C Jonathan Safran
=
Foer=92s =5FExtremely Loud and Incredibly Close=5F (2005)=2C Salvador
Pl=
ascencia=92s =5FThe People of Paper=5F (2005)=2C and Ben Marcus=92s
=5FT=
he Age of Wire and String=5F (1995) all practice a brand of magical
real=
ism that deploys =93old-fashioned technologies=2C most of which
resemble=
d children=92s toys=94 (Foer 219) as modalities of contact=2C
attachment=
=2C and transmission between =
isolated bodies=2E =
This paper reads this literary turn to retro technology in relation to
M=
ark Hansen=92s work on embodiment and new media=2C N=2E Katherine
Hayles=
=92s recent study of =93Digital Subjects and Literary Texts=2C=94 and
Br=
ian Massumi=92s insistence upon =93The Superiority of the Analog=94 in
=5F=
Parables for the Virtual=5F=2E If=2C as Friedrich Kittler argues=2C
di=
scourse networks coalesce around dominant media technologies that
determ=
ine our situation=2C this paper takes up residues and traces of
retrogra=
de=2C low=2C or popular technologies in order to ask how they might
also=
be constitutive of developments in =93high=94 technology=2C and to
inve=
stigate the forms of community and the affective conditions that are
ena=
bled by analog transmissions under the hegemony of the digital=2E
keywords=3A analog=2C digital=2C affect=2C community
Contact=3A =
Marija Cetinic
cetinic=40usc=2Eedu
Ph=2ED=2E Candidate
Comparative Literature
University of Southern California
- -
+-+-+-+-+-+
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 19:59:28 -0700 (PDT)
From: Clea Badion
Subject: SUB 06 Paper Proposal: Extended phenotypes or non Darwinian
beings
?¨The Transgenic Gaze?Æ
Abstract:
In his essay, "Why Look at Animals," John Berger describes how
the gaze between human and animal has changed so dramatically
that we no longer ?¨see?Æ them. With the creation of transgenic
animals in both science and art, a new species has emerged. Has
a new gaze emerged as well??one that demands contemplation from
the point of view of both human and animal? Are artists in
particular encouraging this gaze? In this paper, I will consider
the evolution of the gaze between human and animal, creator and
created. This evolution begs the question: Do we view these
transgenic creatures differently and do they view us differently?
Eduardo Kac has addressed the ?¨social existence of transgenic
animals?Æ in his work. This notion that transgenic animals exist
within a new social system takes on new meaning ?? and vision ?? if
genetically engineered creatures might one day become ?¨more?Æ than
us, as Donna Haraway has suggested. If we are smarter because
we??ve constructed ?¨smarter?Æ
environments, these creatures might become smarter as well.
Key words: transgenic, animal, gaze, evolution, bio art
Contact Information:
Clea Badion
clea_badion@yahoo.com
MA, Visual Criticism
California College of the Arts
- ---------------------------------
Talk is cheap. Use Yahoo! Messenger to make PC-to-Phone calls. Great
rates starting at 1¢/min.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 23:54:47 -0400
From: "James Luberda"
Subject: =?WINDOWS-1252?Q?SUB_06_Spencer=92s_Plots:_Habit,_He?=
=?WINDOWS-1252?Q?terogeneity,_and_Special_Creation?=
Abstract for SLSA 2006
Spencer's Plots: Habit, Heterogeneity, and Special Creation
The Victorian polymath Herbert Spencer is commonly described, oddly
enough,
as a foundational figure in the awkward historical construct known as
"Social Darwinism." That label is intended to suggest an adherence to a
survival of the fittest writ large, and it is here his evolutionary
reputation is often left to lie. However, the real Herbert Spencer had
an
evolving and complex set of developmental narratives he worked through
in
the 1840s and 50s. Embracing the notion of lawful organic progression
over
time, he constructed and dismissed narratives of "millions of special
creations" in favor, initially, of Lamarckian "habits" as the mechanism
of
organic change, later rolling this into the umbrella concept of an
immanent
cosmological law of differentiation/specialization that affected all
things=
,
organic and inorganic. This paper will address the uses of Spencer's
narratives of creation and evolutionary change, focusing in particular
upon
his later narrative of differentiation, which, on the one hand,
liberally
valorized difference for its own sake, while at the same provided for a
normative critique of particular differences in the context of the
teleological goal of a humanity perfectly adapted to the social state.
The
paper will identify the underlying conflicts in this key non-Darwinian
evolutionary narrative and its use for both fictional and nonfictional
plotting in the Victorian era and beyond.
Keywords: Herbert Spencer, Social Darwinism, Creationism, Lamarck,
Narrativ=
e
James Luberda
PhD Candidate, English, University of Connecticut
james.luberda@uconn.edu
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 00:20:55 -0400
From: "Wayne Miller"
Subject: SUB 06: Web 2.0, Collective Intelligence and the Problem of
Mediated Evolution
Web 2.0, Collective Intelligence and the Problem of Mediated Evolution
Keywords: World Wide Web, collective intelligence, artificial
intelligence, mediation, evolution
"Web 2.0" was coined to describe how users and developers (not all of
whom are longing to be bought out by Google) are creating a different
Web through such interactive technologies as blogs and wikis, the still
nascent Semantic Web, and social networking sites such as myspace.com.
At the core of the hype and controversy is a very specific claim: "that
[these innovators] have embraced the power of the web to harness
collective intelligence" (Tim O'Reilly). Whether "collective
intelligence" is uniquely human or biologically speaking ubiquitous, it
presents a very specific problem for discourses about human evolution.
Since the Touring test was first formulated, a form of speculation about
the role of intelligence in evolution has clustered around artificial
intelligence. Now there is a discursive space in which a mediated but
still human intelligence forms the link to a new and brighter human, or
post-human, future. We have reason to be skeptical, to seek the
structure of the need behind the hypothesized solution. Friedrich
Kittler finds that forms of media have become privileged models for our
self-understanding "exactly because it is their declared purpose to
deceive and avoid [hintergehen] this very self-understanding" (Optische
Medien 30). In this paper, I will seek to go behind "Web 2.0" to bring
out the media structure from behind the collective.
Wayne Miller
wmiller@law.duke.edu
Duke University School of Law
- -
+-+-+-+-+-+
Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
links and unsubscribing info:
http://www.law.duke.edu/sls
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 09:12:47 -0400
From: "Azzarello, Robert"
Subject: SUB 06. Renfield's Insane Ecosystem: Queer Nature,
Fin-de-Siecle Science, and Bram Stoker's Dracula
Robert Azzarello
Ph.D. Student in English
CUNY Graduate Center
=20
Adjunct Lecturer
City College, CUNY
=20
=20
Renfield's Insane Ecosystem:=20
Queer Nature, Fin-de-Siecle Science, and Bram Stoker's Dracula
=20
=20
Responding to Darwin's Origin of Species (1847) and Descent of Man =
(1871), as well as applications of evolutionary theory to culture, such
=
as Max Nordau's Degeneration (1895), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) =
critiques the dynamics of authority and power inherent in the =
fin-de-siecle scientific classification of nature-human and otherwise.
=
One character in particular, R.M. Renfield, acts as a pointed and =
effective epistemological disruption of knowing the difference between =
"the natural" and "the unnatural." Renfield orchestrates a food chain =
in his asylum bedroom consisting of flies, spiders, and sparrows. This
=
"insane" ecosystem and the concomitant erotics of predation, I will =
suggest, indicates the ways in which Stoker's Dracula creates a "queer =
nature" that calls into question the knowability of the "true" =
relationship between the human, the natural, and the sexual. =20
=20
=20
Keywords: queer theory, ecocriticism, fin-de-siecle literature, =
epistemology
=20
=20
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 11:08:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: "MARTIN E ROSENBERG"
Subject: SUB-06 Panel Proposal: Arakawa and Gins--Architecture Against
Death Part II
SUB 06 Panel Proposal:Arakawa and Gins--Architecture Against Death Part
II
Arakawa and Madeline Gins, Reversible Destiny Foundation, NY, NY
Martin E. Rosenberg, Independent Scholar
Craig Adcock, Dept. of Art History, U of Iowa
Trish Glazebrook, Dept. of Philosophy, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia
Arakawa and Gins' 2002 volume _Architectural Body_ attracted significant
attention, a two volume special issue of the journal _Interfaces:
Image/Texte/Language_, and several international symposia in Germany,
France,
Japan and elsewhere. This Fall, another volume will appear on their
radical
revision of architectural practices. This panel (and a possible second
panel
of New York City scholars to be organized momentarily) will revisit
Arakawa and
Gins' ongoing exploration of the role of architecture in reassessing
human
embodiment and the problematic capacity for human beings to engage
enactively
in a continuing evolutionary spiral with a global sensorium.
Utilizing their own unique vocabulary, Arakawa and Gins tackle embodied
cognition through such concepts as "Perceptual, Imaging and
Dimensionalizing
Landing Sites"; approaches to consensual domains, ecosystems and
environmental
awareness through an "Architectural Surround" and "crisis ethics"--
which
requires a range of "architectural procedures" to reverse the destiny of
humanity bent on mutually assured bio-destruction. They then build
architectural and environmental surrounds to force the
"subject-that-persons"
to "re-think" that trajectory.
This panel will therefore make visible cognitive procedures that can be
witnessed even in the earliest productions of conceptual artist Arakawa
and
poet Madeline Gins; explicate precise anticipations of directions in
contemporary cognitive science in their collaborations, carefully
demonstrate
the value of their accomplishments to the new critical research in
feminist-based ecological ethics.
Martin E. Rosenberg
mer19@psu.edu
412-531-9651
- -
+-+-+-+-+-+
Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
links and unsubscribing info:
http://www.law.duke.edu/sls
------------------------------
"MARTIN E ROSENBERG"
4/16/2006 10:34:35 AM
SUB 06 Panel Proposal: Catholicism, Carnival, and Cognition in the Art
of Kiki Smith
SUB 06 Panel Proposal:
Catholicism, Carnival, and Cognition in the Art of Kiki Smith
Anne Elizabeth Rosenberg U of Iowa/NYU Graduate School of Social Work
Craig Adcock, Art History, U of Iowa
Martin E. Rosenberg, Independent Scholar
(If All Goes Well) Kiki Smith, Artist
Coinciding with her one-person show at the Guggenheim next November,
this panel
seeks to address an array of issues concerning Kiki Smith's personal
engagement
with Catholicism, Phallo-logocentrism, Medieval imagery, Carnival, the
Lenten
Fair and other Crossroads phenomena, in order to foreground how feminism
becomes implicated deeply into the formal procedures of her aesthetic
productions as well as the subject matter of her corpus. Furthermore,
recognizing how cognizant the role of the aesthetic gaze has alway been
as
central to Smith's attention as the astonishing formal technique,
critical
philosophers such as Julia Kristeva (Adcock), as well as Gilles Deleuze
and
Francisco Varela (MERosenberg), will be brought to bear as well as
Bakhtin and
Stallybrass and White(AERosenberg). Thus, Smith's past involvement with
the
Bread and Puppet Theater and The Tubes will now become much more
relevant to an
understanding of her evolving aesthetic and political sensibility.
Keywords: Kiki Smith, Carnival, Cognitive Science, Kristeva, Catholicism
Martin E. Rosenberg
mer19@psu.edu
412-531-9651
-
+-+-+-+-+-+
Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
links and unsubscribing info:
http://www.law.duke.edu/sls
-------------------------------------
"Barbara Larson"
4/16/2006 1:27:42 PM
FW: Bounced by litsci-l list...
Three panels and eleven papers on Darwin and art was sent through the
list
serve yesterday, April 15 and bounced due to length. Dr. Miller offered
to
send it on himself and although I have not yet seen it come through the
list
serve I hope everyone will accommodate this glitch.
Barbara Larson
-----Original Message-----
From: Barbara Larson [mailto:blarson@uwf.edu]
Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2006 3:27 PM
To: 'Wayne Miller'
Subject: RE: Bounced by litsci-l list...
Hi Wayne,
Please forward the proposals for me. I don't know how to do plain text.
I
typed in everyone's proposal (12 in all) plus the panel proposal by
hand.
Let me know when this goes through so I can let the panelists know
everything is OK.
Barbara
-----Original Message-----
From: Wayne Miller [mailto:wmiller@law.duke.edu]
Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2006 3:13 PM
To: blarson@uwf.edu
Subject: Bounced by litsci-l list...
Hi,
Sorry to say, the following message was too long for our listserv (which
has a very low threshold) and was bounced. Same with the one ten minutes
earlier.
If you are attaching a Word or other document, please leave that off. If
you are not, I suggest trying to send the message as "plain text." If
that sounds like gibberish to you, let me know and I can forward the
panel proposal on your behalf.
Best,
Wayne
From: "Barbara Larson"
To:
Subject: FW: SUB 06: Darwinism and its Discontents: Three Panels/Papers
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 14:12:31 -0500
Wayne Miller
Director, Educational Technologies
Duke University School of Law
(919) 613-7243
Fax: (919) 613-7237
wmiller@law.duke.edu
-----------------------------------------------
"Wayne Miller"
4/16/2006 3:49:37 PM
SUB 06: Darwinism and its Discontents: Three Panels/Papers
Hi,
Sorry, everybody, for the drama induced by my sloppy email checking!
Here are the panels proposed by Dr. Larson, well within the official
time constraint.
Best,
Wayne
From: Barbara Larson [mailto:blarson@uwf.edu]
Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2006 2:03 PM
To: 'LITSCI-L@duke.edu'
Subject: SUB06: Darwinism and its Discontents: Three
Panels/Papers
KEY WORDS: Visual art, Lamarck, modernism, time, eugenics
ABSTRACT FOR THREE PANELS (WITH PAPER ABSTRACTS): DARWINISM AND
ITS DISCONTENTS: ART AND EVOLUTIONIST CONTROVERSIES (I-III)
Conveners: Fae Brauer, The University of New South Wales and
Barbara Larson, The University of West Florida
e-mails: faebrauer@aol.com; blarson@uwf.edu
When The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man and Selection
in Relation to Sex were published, Darwin and his acolytes were
animalized in popular visual culture as ?¨Monkeyana?Æ while
conversely, apes were humanized. Artists?? responses to Darwinism
were not dissimilar. In 1859, Emmanuel Fremiet submitted his
sculpture of a gorilla carrying off a woman to the French salon.
Although rejected, when a similar piece was submitted some thirty
years later, after Darwin??s Origin and The Descent of Man had
been absorbed by mainstream culture, it was not only accepted,
but awarded a medal of honor. In his imaging of human-ape
relations Fremiet was part of a popular current in high and low
art. While Matthias Duval was conducting his course ?¨Le
Darwinisme?Æ at the Ecole d??Anthropologie, Albert Besnard was
preparing his mural for the Ecole de Pharmacie in which
Prehistoric Man was portrayed as a transitional human-ape man.
The biblical murderer Cain was depicted by Fine Arts academician
Fernand Cormon, as an ape-like caveman. However, in France
Darwinism was discredited in many quarters through the reinstated
evolutionist ideas of Lamarck, and many artists and scientists
discontented with Darwinism pursued neo-Lamarckian zoological
theories of transformism which resisted the Darwinist mechanisms
of natural selection, sexual selection, and ultimately ?¨the
monkey hypothesis.?Æ Those repulsed by the possibility of their
immediate ancestor being a ?¨hairy, tailed quadruped?Æ also turned
to the pre-Darwinian evolutionary theories of Buffon, Etienne
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and Louis Agassiz as well as Erasmus
Darwin. Others disenchanted with the capitalist and colonialist
?¨civilization?Æ thought to have arisen from the uneven evolution
of the human species, explored ?¨primitivism?Æ and strove to
capture a purer, earlier time in evolutionary history.
Elsewhere, with Weismann??s discovery of germ plasm and the
rediscovery of Mendelian genetics, the advent of Galtonian
eugenics, Ernest Haeckel??s ?¨Spartan Selection?Æ and Herbert
Spencer??s ?¨Survival of the Fittest,?Æ the concept of ?¨fit?Æ bodies
championed as ?¨pure-blooded?Æ had ramifications in England,
America, Third Republic France, and Nazi Germany, and art and its
relation to evolutionism became more complex. This complexity
also included the anti-evolutionist controversies that erupted
during the Catholic revival in France and the spread of
?¨creationist?Æ Evangelism in Britain and America, leading to the
Tennessee House of Representatives outlawing the teaching of
evolution in 1925 and the notorious ?¨monkey trial.?Æ This session
will not just examine art in its relationship to these aspects of
Darwinism and its discontents, but anti-evolutionist
controversies in 1925 and the present day.
PAPER ABSTRACT: THE ?¨EMERSON MUSEUM?Æ AND THE DARWIN EXHIBIT:
OBSERVATION, CLASSIFICATION, AND DISPLAY IN THE EARLY WORKS OF
RALPH WALDO EMERSON AND CHARLES DARWIN
Lauren Klein, Dept. of English, CUNY
LKlein@gc.cuny.edu
In 1833, while Charles Darwin was on board the HMS Beagle, Ralph
Waldo Emerson was also overseas. On July 13th of that year,
Darwin, in Montevideo, prepared crates of specimens to be sent
back aboard a mail ship, where, he hoped, they would reside in
the ?¨largest and most central collection?Æ of England.
Simultaneously, Emerson, in Paris, paid his seminal visit to the
natural history museum at the Jardin des Plantes. On that day,
both men were engaged in processing specimens*Darwin in his
makeshift laboratory, and Emerson in his mind.
While Emerson and Darwin reach different conclusions, they relay
on similar methods. Both employ the techniques of observation
and classification as their primary means of analysis, and in
recording their results, they follow similar paths*private
thought to printed notebook, printed notebook to published page.
Drawing upon their journals and published works, and upon current
museum theory, this paper will explore the similarities between
Emerson and Darwin in terms of their reliance on the museum model
of display, and their embrace of the ability of language to
transport and to transcend.
PAPER ABSTRACT: DARWIN??S SEXUAL SELECTION AND THE JEALOUS MALE
IN LATE NINETEENTH-CENTURY ART
Barbara Larson, Art Dept., University of West Florida
blarson@uwf.edu
The ultimate scientific sourcebook on the passions of romance in
the late nineteenth century was Darwin??s final chapter of The
Descent ?¨Sexual Selection in Relationship to Man.?Æ Darwin
repeatedly emphasized the importance of jealousy, rage and
rivalry to the propagation of the human species. At a time when
innocent ?¨true love?Æ no longer was seen to have any benefit to
survival of the species, biological drives were on the ascendant
regarding mating behavior. Darwin believed that jealousy and
competition were necessary components of species survival and
tied these primal emotions into mating behavior found throughout
the entire animal kingdom. Darwin tied man??s primal sexual
passions directly to his ape ancestry; the theme of man??s
regressions to his animal origins and his struggle for possession
of the female can be found throughout late nineteenth century
art. Jealous men in art can be found in academic paintings like
Paul Jamin??s An Abduction*the Stone Age in which an early stone
age man fights another for the possession of a woman to the
modern painting of Munch as in Jealousy. One of Munch??s closest
friends as well as his rival in love was the novelist
Przybyszewski who wrote Homo Sapiens (which takes as its themes
jealousy, violent psychology, and sexuality associated with
biological drives and instincts). In his Darwinian world only
the strongest had a chance of winning. This paper examines the
jealous male in art in light of Darwin??s popularized theories of
human mating.
PAPER ABSTRACT: ANTI-ENTROPIC/EVOLUTIONARY MODERNISM
Blake Leland, School of LCC, Georgia Institute of Technology
Blake.leland@lcc.gatech.edu
A master trope of Western history is the notion, rooted in
biblical eschatology, of vectored time. Yet the great
instauration of modern science, Newtonian mechanics, was founded
on a notion of un-vectored, reversible time. By mid-19th
century, the Biblical timeline and the un-vectored time of
classical mechanics (and uniformitarian geology had been
displaced by, or entangled with, the vectored scientific
temporalities of thermodynamics and evolution. For the past few
centuries the West has attempted, in various ways, to sort out or
re-braid its tangle of times. This paper examines briefly some of
the ways in which Modernism often attempted to subvert notions of
vectored time (both eschatological and scientific)*attempts which
include the valorization of the isolated, infinite moment found
in Pater, Bergson, Pound; the Modernist refusal of notions of
artistic progress found in T.S. Eliot or Picasso; the Modernist
flirtation with exotic images of infinite temporal cyclicality
found in Nietzche or Yeats; the Modernist notions of synchronic
structuralism laid out by Saussure and Freud*and will, I hope,
offer some tentative suggestions as to why Modernism felt so
often compelled to deny a direction to time.
PAPER ABSTRACT: FRAMING DARWIN: ART AND EVOLUTIONISM AT THE
FIRST INTERNATIONAL EUGENICS EXHIBITION
Fay Brauer, School of Art History and Theory, The University of
New South Wales
faebrauer@aol.com
In 1912, one thousand delegates from the American Breeders
Association, Eugenics Education Societies stretching from Austin
to Dunedin, as well as scientists from every American and
European capital flocked to the first International Eugenics
Congress in London. Presided over by Charles Darwin??s son, Major
Leonard Darwin, it was strategically timed to coincide with the
British Parliament??s second reading of the Mental Deficiency and
Inebriates Bill in July. At this Congress papers addressed such
Galtonian eugenic issues as heritability, eugenic marriage,
?¨desirable?Æ procreation and ?¨undesirable?Æ miscegenation, the
advantages of sterilization and the elimination of defectives, as
well as the importance of eugenic patriotism. Even though most
delegates were small, hazel-eyed and brunette, they also heard
how the supremacy of Western nations depended upon the
proliferation of tall, blue-eyed, fair-haired ?¨Nordics?Æ
predominating over ?¨the small dark races.?Æ These papers were
visually corroborated, if not compounded by the eugenic images
assembled from America, Australia, France, Germany and all parts
of Britain for the First International Eugenics Exhibition which
?¨framed?Æ Charles Darwin.
Although Darwin had neither developed a close relationship with
Galton nor ever supported Galtonian eugenics, the entrance to the
exhibition was lined with their portraits facing one another.
Although Darwin had never presented himself as superior, his
portraits were curatorially played off as the face of genius in
contrast to photographs of such ?¨inferior biosocial characters?Æ
as criminals, epileptics, hysterics, paupers, syphilitics and
even migraine sufferers. Although Darwin??s evolution was
arboreal, a linear hereditary chart of the Darwin, Galton and
Wedgwood families was installed as an exemplar of Darwin??s model
of positive inheritance. Although Darwin never sanctioned
Herbert Spencer??s ?¨Social Darwinism,?Æ this model was juxtaposed
with the Zero von Jorger pedigree to demonstrate how alcoholics,
criminals and the ?¨feeble minded?Æ had been able to develop across
generations at the expense of the fit. By focusing upon art and
evolutionism at the First International Eugenics exhibition, this
paper will reveal how Darwin, alongside Galton, was framed as the
?¨father?Æ of eugenics.
PAPER ABSTRACT: MALE PREGNANCY, TRANSFORMATION THEORY, EVOLUTION
AND THE HSTORICAL AVANT-GARDE
Christine Kanz, Dept. of German, University of Bern
Christinekanz1@mac.com
Early 20th-century text, culture, and film are full of male birth
fantasies, of men wishing to give birth. From psychoanalysis??s
male ?´pregnancy envy?? (which is thought of as a parallel to
female ?¨penis envy?Æ), to texts by authors such as Franz Werfel,
Franz Kafka, or Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, to Fritz Lang??s
?¨Metropolis,?Æ Robert Wiene??s ?¨Dr. Caligari,?Æ and the work of
artists such as Hans Bellmer, Max Beckmann, or Umberto Boccioni;
male birth fantasies are a phenomenon of mass culture. At the
same time male birth fantasies tend to return to older theories
of evolution such as the theories of preformation or epigenesis.
In my talk I will focus on jean Baptiste Lamarck??s transformation
theory and its echoes in Marinetti??s novel ?¨Mafarka the
Futurist.?Æ Although somewhat forgotten, recent research in
genetics suggests that there may be some truth to Lamarck??s
theories. Given this background Marinetti??s Futurist text too*or
Futurism at large*once again becomes an important source on the
interrelations between modern culture and the world of modern
science.
PAPER ABSTRACT: MARCEL DUCHAMP??S READYMADES*PUNCTUATING
EQUILIBRIUM*?¨Can One make a work of art that is not a work of
art??Æ
Jim McManus, Art History Dept., California State University-Chico
jmcmanus@cuschico.edu
Stephen Jay Gould observed that ?¨Small peripheral isolates are a
laboratory of evolutionary change.?Æ In 1913 Duchamp posed the
question to himself, ?¨Can one make of art that is not a work of
art??Æ
At the time of its writing Duchamp had begun his celebrated
withdrawal from the art world. Peripherally isolated, over the
next few years he was able to conceive of a population of
objects, the readymades, (akin to Ernst Mayr??s ?¨typostrophic
variations,?Æ e.g. an entirely new type) unlike Mayr??s opposing
population (?¨ecotypic variation?Æ), objects emphasizing the
homogenizing effects of gene flow and the stabilizing of large
interbreeding populations. With this second group Mayr might as
well have been describing the condition of art??s own sense of its
evolutionary patterns. Following few earlier experiments, in
1917, the readymade (in the form of Fountain) was strategically
placed within the context of art by Duchamp*a head to head
confrontation between it operating as a ?¨typostrophic variation?Æ
and the larger population of ?¨ecotypic variations.?Æ A question
that this paper pursues is whether the readymades deviate quite
strikingly and unexpectedly from the parental pattern, and that
at their moments of entry they affect stasis as laid out by Gould
and Niles Eldredge in their theory of punctuated equilibrium.
Two historical moments will be considered. The first in the
second decade of the twentieth century when the readymades first
appeared, and the second in 1964 when Duchamp along with Arturo
Schwarz reproduced them in an edition of eight sets.
PAPER ABSTRACT: DARWINISM, LAMARCKISM AND BOLSHEVISM: THE ART
OF CREATING THE NEW SOVIET PERSON
Pat Simpson, University of Hertfordshire
p.a.simpson@herts.ac.uk
Central to Bolshevik thinking, even before October 1917 was the
idea that a successful socialist revolution would give rise to a
new species of humanity*?¨a new biologic type,?Æ as Trotsky wrote
in 1924. Throughout the 1920s there was a wide range of
discourse, debate and experiment all focused on how this goal
might be achieved, accompanied by a wealth of diverse
visualizations of this eugenic ideal in art, propaganda posters,
photography, literature and the theater. The process had to be
perceived as ?¨scientific?Æ*in keeping with the notion of
Bolshevism as ?¨scientific Socialism.?Æ It also had to be seen as
?¨evolutionary?Æ*in keeping with the link forged by Engels between
Darwinism and Marxism. The Communist Party, however, tended to
prefer Lamarckian-style ideas, which offered speedier results
than the theories of Mendel or Morgan. This paper will use
aspects of contemporary visual culture to explore this curious
and complex relationship between Bolshevism and Darwinism in this
period, with regard to the concept of the New Person. While
today we would regard the solution pursued by the Communist Party
as deeply unscientific, it will be argued that there were certain
logical aspects to this preference in the Bolshevik context of
the 1920s.
PAPER ABSTRACT: SURREALISM AND THE DARK SIDE OF NATURE
Gavin Parkinson, History of Art Dept., Oxford
gavin.parkinson@hoa.ox.ac.uk
Given its magnetic attraction to the city of Paris and an avowed
avant-garde lineage extending back to Baudelaire, Surrealism??s
confirmed association with the metropolitan is no surprise.
However, this has led to a predisposition toward the urban in the
scholarship on the movement acting entirely at the expense of the
Surrealists?? fascination with nature. My paper opens up this
overlooked area of Surrealist inquiry with reference to
Surrealism??s engagement with evolutionary theory, mapping the
reception of Darwinism and development of biology in French art
and culture between the wars.
The Surrealists were aware of the centenaries in the 1930s of two
of Darwin??s forebears*Goethe and Hegel*and were readers of
Nietzsche and Freud, both influenced by Darwin??s theory.
Focusing largely on pioneering Surrealist artists max Ernst and
Andre Masson, I locate Surrealist art and thought within this
discursive field, giving an account of its theoretical and
pictorial investment in ?¨la cote nocturne de la nature.?Æ
PAPER ABSTRACT: MAX SCHMELING: THE ?¨MODELED?Æ CITIZEN OR MISSING
LINK OF NAZI EUGENICS?
Lorettann Gascard, Dept. of Fine Arts, Franklin Pierce College
ldgascard@yahoo.com
When in 1936, Max Schmeling, the then World Heavyweight boxing
champion, defeated the seemingly undefeatable black, American
boxer, Joe Louis, shockwaves of jubilance shot through National
Socialist Germany. On his return to Germany he, along with his
actress wife and mother (!), was received by Hitler for an
afternoon of coffee and cake at the chancellery. When the film
of the fight was brought in, Hitler and Goebbels watched it
repeatedly with ?¨enthusiasm and delight.?Æ Shortly following his
victory, an over 3.5 meter bronze of Schmeling by Albert Speer??s
preferred sculptor, Josef Thorak, was permanently installed at
the Olympic Stadium complex in Berlin. Even following his defeat
by Louis two years later, he remained the embodiment of the
?¨volkisch?Æ National Socialist ideal. However, as a bulky,
powerful figure at the center of a boisterous sport, his physical
and cultural presence challenged the eugenicist??s prescription of
a German, Nordic ideal.
In their widely disseminated text, Menschliche Erblehre und
Rassenhygiene, eugenicists Baur, Fischer and Lenz, presented the
Nordic ideal as being an elegant physicality of strength,
expressive of the race??s innate, somewhat Nietzschian, spiritual
longing and quiet intensity. With this in mind, Schmeling stands
precariously balanced between a noble, conquering, racial ideal
and a popular idealization of the brutality of fists and sweat.
In this way, his position in the arena of Nazi culture offers
intriguing points for plotting the path of the party??s program to
evolve a master race by 2050.
PAPER ABSTRACT: CRACKING THE CODE: IMAGE AND INDIVIDUAL CIRCA
1955
Isabelle Wallace, Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia
My paper grapples with the implications of an apparent parallel
between shifting conceptions of the individual and the image in
the West, focusing particular attention on the fact that the
mid-1950s bears witness to two important, and I claim, related
developments in the spheres of aesthetics and genetics. In
particular, my paper links Watson and Crick??s discovery of DNA??s
structure to Jasper Johns??s contemporaneous discovery of a code
at the heart of Abstract Expressionist painting. Treating
Johns??s dispassionate analysis of Abstract Expressionist
brushwork as the pictorial equivalent of Watson and Crick??s
analysis of our own genetic code, I consider both the existence
and implications of this mutual unveiling and analysis, and ask
what conclusions can be drawn on the basis of this unremarked
synchronicity.
PAPER ABSTRACT: STELLARC AND POST-EVOLUTIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS
Michael Filas
mfilas@wsc.ma.edu
The Australian performance artist, Stelarc, argues that humanity
has reached a point where Darwinian evolution can no longer
provide the adaptations our species needs to survive. In the
contexts of digital matrices and artificial intelligence, our
bodies are obsolete anchors to a physical dimension that has
become secondary in importance to the goings on in digital and
extraterrestrial domains. Stelarc considers the present age a
time of post-evolution, a time when synthetic integration with
manufactured environments and virtual worlds is more important
than perpetuation of unified subjects existing in individual
bodies. His performances and writings dramatize contemporary
possibilities for distributed consciousness and a
post-evolutionary devaluation of embodiment.
I will situate Stelarc??s work in the context of cyperpunk
literature and film*usually dystopian narratives emphasizing the
human loss associated with post-evolution. Specifically, I will
ground my discussion in the ideas broached by William Gibson in
his 1984 cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer, and the representation of
the distributed consciousness in popular films such as the
Wachowski Brothers?? The Matrix (1999) and David Cronenberg??s
eXistenZ (1999). I will also introduce current post-evolutionary
research in the scientific community by British researcher Kevin
Warwick, and how his human-machine connectivity experiments
relate to Stelarc??s more brazen demonstrations.
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