[NIS_GS:] CFP: Intimacy and Exteriority (11/30/05; ACLA, 3/23/06-3/26/06)

Intimacy and Exteriority
ACLA Annual Conference Seminar, Princeton University, March 23-26, 2006

Mon semblable, mon frиre

Deadline for proposal submissions: Nov. 30, 2005

From Petrarch, who wrote familiar letters to his classical models, to Derrida, who could elide the boundary between his own voice and the voices of his texts to powerful effect, a disarming sense of intimacy between reader and text has been a consistent aspect of humanistic practise. Yet beside the extraordinary proximity achieved in humanistic
reading there always seems to open a great distance, as though we are never so far away from our texts as when we are closest to them. In Humanism and Democratic Criticism Edward Said referred to this twinning of intimacy with exteriority under the headings of receptivity and resistance, but analogous formulations can be found in ethnography,
ethics, political theory, and fiction.

We wish to explore how the simultaneity of intimacy and exteriority has been articulated in different times, places, and discursive modes.
Readings, comparative or otherwise, of literary, theoretical, philosophical, or critical works are welcomed, as are broader original formulations on the theme. Papers that can enact the theme at the same time as they discuss it are especially welcome. Topics and authors might include the philosophy of friendship, Derrida/Nancy on touch, figurations of intimacy in fiction and poetry, the possession of language, intimacies in religious experience; but this is not, of course, an exclusive list.

Papers will be presented as a seminar at the annual conference of the American Comparative Literature Association; proposals for this seminar, including title and a 250-word abstract, should be submitted at the ACLA's conference web site (http://webscript.princeton.edu/~acla06/site/index.php), selecting "Intimacy and Exteriority" as the desired panel.

For more information, contact sgurd@alcor.concordia.ca

-- Sean Alexander Gurd Assistant Professor, Ancient Greek Studies
Department of Classics, Modern Languages and Linguistics Concordia
University 1455 de Maisonneuve West Room H-663 Montreal, QC H3G 1M8
CANADA
------------------------------- (514) 848 2424 x5473
------------------------------ sgurd@alcor.concordia.ca