A lecture by Carsten Strathausen, University of Missouri, hosted by German & Romance Languages and Literatures. This talk discusses the current "affective turn" in the humanities from a political, philosophical, and biological perspective. A number of influential critics have embraced affect as a means to escape from what they consider the hegemony of deconstructive methods of aesthetic investigation that focus on language rather than bodies and prioritize the production of sense over the production of sensation. By contrast, Dr. Strathausen argues that bodily affect and cognitive meaning are co-constitutive and interrelated aspects of aesthetic experience. Both on the phenomenological and the neurological level, it is impossible to say where sensation ends and signification begins. His overall goal will be to outline a post-Adornian aesthetic theory that focuses on the interaction of these two registers rather than trying to play off one against the other.
Mon, 22 Mar 2010 21:15:00 GMThttp://calendar.jhu.edu/calendar/EventList.aspx?view=EventDetails&eventidn=47610&information_id=99734&type=&rss=rss
