From: David Colclasure <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: GSA-Habermas and Literature, deadline EXTENDED!
CFP: "Habermas and Literature"
GSA Conference, Milwaukee, Wisconsin September 29 - October 2, 2005
Jürgen Habermas's theories of the public sphere and of communicative
action both make reference to the importance of literature in
political public life. But the relation of this body of theory to
literary artifacts remains an ambivalent one for him. Literature is
largely relegated to a sphere of aesthetic production that is
exclusively concerned with articulations of authentic experience and
purely subjective worlds, not of normative-political discourse. Are
there nontheless arguments to be made for a significant political
role for literature within a Habermasian framework? Can Habermas be
used to argue against Habermas for a specifically literary variety of
the political public sphere, one that makes a unique contribution to
political public life? Given Habermas's insistence on the
constitutive role of "rational" discourse in the workings of the
public sphere, are Habermas's theories compatible with a notion of
"literary rationality"? Is the notion of such a rationality desirable
from the perspective of German Studies or the study of literature in
general? To what extent can Habermas's modernist theories of
political action be reconciled with postmodern discourses on
literature? In what ways would the theory of communicative action and
its concept of authenticity need to be retooled in order to yield a
useful account of the political role of literature? How would the
theory of the public sphere need to be modified in order to
accomodate the artifacts of and theoretical discourses on
contemporary literatures?
Please submit your 1 page (250-300 words) abstract with title by Feb
19, 2005 to David Colclasure at [log in to unmask] (Tel
831.647.4633, Fax 831.647.4632).
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