15 Jan Violence, Affect, and the Post-Traumatic Subject
Ruth Leys (History, John Hopkins University)
Thursday, January 15, 2015 / 5:30 PM
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB
An assessment of the latest twists in affect theory. Among the questions to be posed are: “If the twentieth century was the Freudian century, the century of libido, will the twenty first century-as has been suggested- be the century of the “post-traumatic” subject, whose affective indifference and profound emotional disengagement from the world mark him or her as a victim of brain damage? Will political, economic, and natural violence now take the form of a meaningless shock to the “emotional brain,” depriving victims of all meaning and affect? What are the stakes of such claims?
Sponsored by the Graduate Center for Literary Research, and the English Department’s Literature and the Mind Program.