Literature and Affect Conference

                Australasian  Association  for  Literature         Literature  and  Affect  Conference   Old  Arts  Building,  University  of  Mel...
Author: Amie Lee
3 downloads 0 Views 3MB Size
                Australasian  Association  for  Literature  

     

Literature  and  Affect  Conference   Old  Arts  Building,  University  of  Melbourne   Wednesday  2  July  –  Friday  4  July  2014        

Program  and  Abstracts  

   

 

 

1  

 

Wednesday  2  July   Registration  from  1:30pm   Head  of  School’s  Welcome  and  Opening  of  Conference:     Rachel  Fensham     Introductory  Announcements     Welcome  to  Country     2pm:  Macmahon  Ball  Theatre   Session  1:  2:30-­‐4pm     Macmahon  Ball   Theatre  

North  Lecture  Theatre  

South  Lecture  Theatre  

Panel  1       Postcolonial  Affect:       Chair:  Kim  L.  Worthington     R.  Benedito  Ferrao   Whiteness  is  a  Feeling:  Indo-­‐ Portuguese  Colonization   and  the  Affective  Archive  of   Skin         Jessica  Gildersleeve   The  Best  of  All  Possible   Worlds?:  Cultures  of   Emotion  in  Christos   Tsiolkas's  The  Slap  and   Barracuda      

Panel  2     Maternal  Affect:     Chair:  Laura  Saxton       Elizabeth  Towl   “Hi  thole  this  ded  for  thine   sake”:  Explaining  the   Atonement  in  Two  Middle   English  Devotional  Texts         Daniel  Hourigan     Coraline,  Psychoanalysis,   and  the  Other  Mother         Katie  Hansord   Emotion  and  Critical   Distance  in  Emily  Manning’s   The  Balance  of  Pain  

Panel  3     Affective  Fallacies:     Chair:  Joe  Hughes       Niklas  Fischer   Narrative,  Empathy,  and  the   Limits  of  Understanding:   John  Steinbeck’s  The  Grapes   of  Wrath  and  J.M.  Coetzee’s   Life  and  Times  of  Michael  K       Penelope  Hone   Physiological  Acoustics  and   Literary  Form:  the   Nineteenth-­‐Century   “Affective  Turn”     Ilona  Urquhart   ‘Deceit,  to  the  point  of   diabolism’:    The  Danger  of   Humbert’s  Narration  in   Lolita  

  Afternoon  Tea:  4-­‐4:30pm    

   

 

 

2  

Macmahon  Ball   Theatre   Panel  4     Beckett’s  Affects:       Chair:  Anthony  Uhlmann     Paul  Rae   Woe  is  Me:  The   Subtheatrical  Prompts   of  Happy  Days         Russell  Smith   Benevolence,  Eroticism  and   the  Sentimental  Encounter:   Laurence  Sterne’s  A   Sentimental  Journey  and   Samuel  Beckett’s  The   Calmative     Corey  Wakeling   Hypnosis  by  Theatrical   Temporality  in  Samuel   Beckett's  Theatrical   Trilogy  Not  I  /  Footfalls  /   Rockaby  

  Session  2:  4:30-­‐6pm     North  Lecture  Theatre   South  Lecture  Theatre   Panel  5     Ecocritical  Feeling  and   Literature:     Chair:  Stephen  Harris     Grace  Moore   ‘So  Wild  and  Beautiful  a   World  Around  Him’:   Anthony  Trollope  and   Antipodean  Ecology         Tom  Bristow   Affective  Points  of  Contact:   Bioregional  Biography  in   Alice  Oswald's  Sleepwalk  on   the  Seven  (2009)         Tom  Ford   Can  Literature  Feel  Green?  

Panel  6     Feeling  Victorian:       Chair:  Penelope  Hone     Scarlet  Luk   Middlemarch's  Narrator   and  the  Ladies           Jenny  Kohn   Feelings,  Identification,  and   Difference:  the  Politics  of   Victorian  Novel  Form           Helen  Groth   Automated  Affects:   Experimental  Late  Victorian   Narrative  Forms  

  Public  Lecture  and  Keynote:  Heather  K.  Love   The  Salt  of  the  World:   Desire  and  Description  in  Patricia  Highsmith’s  The  Price  of  Salt   Chair:  Clara  Tuite   Public  Lecture  Theatre:  6-­‐7pm       Cocktail  Reception:  7-­‐9pm   Woodward  Centre     th 10  floor,  Melbourne  Law,  185  Pelham  St        

 

 

3  

  Thursday  3  July       Session  4:  9-­‐10:30am     Macmahon  Ball   Theatre  

North  Lecture   Theatre  

South  Lecture   Theatre  

Lecture  Theatre   C  

Panel  7     The  Hounds  of   Love:       Chair:  Grace   Moore       Rowena  Lennox   Head  of  a  Dog                 Susan  Pyke     The  Circling  Bush               Lisa  Smithies   Writing  DNA:  How   Does  Human   Behavioural  Biology   Influence  Creative   Writing?  

Panel  8     The  Speaking   Body:     Chair:  Sarah   Balkin       Stephanie  Trigg   'A  glance  of   brightness':  Facial   Expression  and   Emotion  in  Jane   Austen       Sean  Barry     Great  Talkers  on   Little  Matters:   Prolixity  and  the   Grounds  of   Character  in  Byron,   Scott,  and  Austen     Joe  Hughes   Time,  Form  and   Desire:  The   Representation  of   Action  in  Fanny  Hill    

Panel  9     Popular  Fiction:       Chair:  Leigh   McLennon       Patricia  J.  Smith   "Popsies"  and  Pussy   Galore:  James  Bond,   the  Profumo  Affair,   and  the  Zeitgeist  of   1963       Daniel  Bedggood   Utopian  Desire  and   the  Problems  of   Posthuman  Affect           Nicholas  Cowley   Weirdly  Reading     Desire,  Frustration,   and  the  Pulp   Audience  in  H.P.   Lovecraft  

Panel  10     American  Poetics:       Chair:  Bridget   Vincent       Lindsay  Tuggle     “Phantoms  of   Countless  Lost”:     Amputation  and   Affect  in  Walt   Whitman’s  War   Prose     Sean  Pryor   Mina  Loy's  Bliss:   Affect  and  Form               Gavin  Smith   “The  Emotion  of   Having  a  Thought”  –   Poetry  as  an   Embodied   Experience:  From   Robert  Frost  to   Antonio  Damasio  

 

Morning  Tea:  10:30-­‐10:50am    

   

 

 

4  

  Session  5:  10:50-­‐12:20pm     Macmahon  Ball   Theatre  

North  Lecture   Theatre  

South  Lecture   Theatre  

Lecture  Theatre   C  

Panel  11     Material   Sympathy:       Chair:  Helen  Groth         Sarah  Comyn   The  Woollen  Coat:   Adam  Smith’s   Sympathetic   Economy       Beornn  McCarthy   Affective  Labour   and  Field  Stone   Covenants:   Romantic   Repetitions  of  Job   from  Robert  Lowth   to  Autonomists     Stephanie  Russo   Importing  French   Fashions:  Mary   Robinson,  Marie   Antoinette  and  the   French  Revolution    

Panel  12     Monster  Lady:           Chair:  Susan  Pyke       Gabrielle   Kristjanson     Cruel  Desire:   Narcissism  and  the   Female  Predator       Laura  Saxton   ‘God,  I  Hate  Her’:   Affect  in  Twenty-­‐ First-­‐Century   Representations  of   Anne  Boleyn  as   Stepmother       Fiona  Gregory   Feelings  on  Display:   Representations  of   the  Actress  and   Mental  Illness  

Panel  13     Trauma:         Chair:  Ned   Curthoys     Dvir  Abramovich   The  Holocaust  Affect   on  the  Israeli   Literary  Aesthetic:  A   Torturous   Relationship     Sarah  Richardson   ‘Phoebe  “Never  Gets   Over  Anything”   Gloeckner’:  Trauma   and  Productive   Shame  in  two   Comics  

Panel  14     Medieval  and  Early   Modern  Desire  and   Cognition:     Chair:    Helen   Hickey     Tekla  Bude     Math,  Affect,  and   Mystical  Theology:   Desire  and  the   Language  of  God       Antonina  Harbus     Cognitive  Processing   and  Emotion  in   Literary  Responses   to  Poetry           John  Severn   Menippean  Discourse   and  Same-­‐Sex  Desire   in  John  Fletcher's   The  Woman's  Prize,   or  The  Tamer   Tamed  

  Lunch:  12:20-­‐1.15pm       Keynote:  Sharon  Marcus   Celebrity  2.0:  The  Case  of  Marina  Abramovic   Chair:  Sarah  Balkin   Public  Lecture  Theatre:  1.15-­‐2.15pm        

 

 

5  

  Afternoon  Tea:  2:15–2:45pm       Session  6:  2:45-­‐4:15pm     Macmahon  Ball   Theatre  

North  Lecture   Theatre  

South  Lecture   Theatre  

Lecture  Theatre   C  

Panel  15     Queer  Affect:         Chair:  Jonathon   Zapasnik     Angela  Hesson     Of  Hedgerows  and   Holy  Relics:   Queering  Nostalgia   in  the  Novels  of   Ronald  Firbank       Sashi  Nair   Affect,  Desire  and   Queer  Ecologies  in   Patrick  White’s  The   Twyborn  Affair     Stephen  Ablitt   Hermaphrodite   Himself:  Jacques   Derrida,  Generic   Illegibility  and  the   Queered  Reader    

Panel  16     Dead   Performance:         Chair:  Corey   Wakeling     Mary  Luckhurst   Acting  and   Reanimating  the   Dead             Sarah  Balkin   Monist  Dramaturgy   in  Strindberg’s  The   Black  Glove       Denise  Varney   Visceral  Affects  and   Disavowal  in   Contemporary   Performance      

Panel  17     Spectacular   Bodies,  High  and   Low  Affect:     Chair:  Elena   Benthaus     Jen  Craig   Overlooking  the   Body:  The  Gagging   Reflex  in  Theoretical   Writings  about   Culture  and  Eating   Disorders     Rosslyn  Almond   Exulting  in  Her   Shouting  Body:     Corporeality  and   Affect  in  Fiona   McGregor’s   Indelible  Ink  

Panel  18     Literature  and  the   Passions:       Chair:  James   Phillips     R.  A.  Goodrich   Wollstonecraft,   Hartley,  and  Hume:   Assaying  the   Passions         Aleksondra   Hultqvist   Eliza  Haywood's   Laboratory  of   Feeling     Jacinthe  Flore   Affects  of  the   Perverse   Imagination      

   

 

 

6  

  Session  7:  4:15-­‐5:45pm   Macmahon  Ball   Theatre  

  North  Lecture  Theatre  

South  Lecture  Theatre  

  Panel  19     Mediations:     Chair:  Fiona  Gregory       Elena  Benthaus   So  You  Think  You  Can  WOW   –  Popular  Screen  Dance  and   Affective  Bodies         Prithvi  Varatharajan   Mediation  of  Affective   Response  in  Vicki's  Voice             Victoria  Reeve   Bridging  Gaps  in  Affective   Space:  Kazuo  Ishiguro’s   Floating  Worlds  

Panel  20     Film:     Chair:  Francesca   Kavanagh     Laura  Henderson   The  Film  Moved  Me:   Emotional  Contagion,  Film   and  Affective  Landscapes           Nick  Strole   Reconfiguring  and   Performing  Emotions   Passed:  Image  and  the   Performative  in  Mouawad   and  Villeneuve’s  Incendies       Monique  Rooney   Earth-­‐Object:  Lars  von   Trier's  Melancholia  (2011)   and  Melodramatic  Affect  

   

 

 

Panel  21     American  Codes:     Chair:  Joshua  Comyn       Nick  Lord   Design  and  Affect:  Feeling   Our  Way  through   Danielewski's  Labyrinths         Tyne  Daile  Sumner   The  Electric  Milker,  The   Wifey:  Domesticity,  Poetry   and  Cold  War  Anxiety               Scott  Wark   The  Technical  Temporalities   of  Feeling  in  Jonathan   Safran  Foer’s  Tree  of  Codes  

 

7  

  Friday  4  July       Session  8:  9-­‐10:30am     North  Lecture  Theatre   South  Lecture  Theatre  

Macmahon  Ball   Theatre   Panel  22     Polite  Fictions:       Chair:  Russell  Smith     Jasmin  Kelaita   Awkward   Characters/Anxious   Subjects:  The  Affect  of   Awkwardness  in  the   Modernist  Fiction  of  Jean   Rhys     James  Phillips   She  Stoops  to  Conquer:   Oliver  Goldsmith  and  the   Stakes  of  Politeness           Mark  Steven     Not  Sappho,  Sacco:   Communist  Affect  in  Muriel   Rukeyser’s  Theory  of  Flight    

Panel  23     New  Media:       Chair:  Justin  Clemens     Simone  Murray   Everyone’s  a  Critic:  Mass   Amateur  Book  Reviewing  in   the  Digital  Literary  Sphere           Anna  Helle   The  Affective  Performatives   of  Body  and  Sexuality  in   Tytti  Heikkinen’s   Taxidermied  Animal’s   Warmth       Anna  Gibbs   Charged  Feeling:  The   Affective  Current  in   Electronic  Literature  

Panel  24     Theory:     Chair:  Scott  Wark     Ned  Curthoys   Richard  Rorty’s   Contribution  to  Affect   Studies           Joshua  Comyn   “The  routine  was  coming  to   him  like  dictation”:  The   Automatism  of  Affect  in  the   work  of  William  S.   Burroughs       Michael  Richardson   The  Indeterminacy  of  Affect  

Morning  Tea:  10:30-­‐11am      

Keynote:  Gillian  Russell   Master  Betty’s  Accents:  Affect,  Celebrity  and  the  Irish  Voice  on  the   Romantic  Stage  around  1800   Chair:  Stephanie  Trigg   Public  Lecture  Theatre:  11-­‐12pm    

   

 

 

8  

  Lunch:  12-­‐12:45pm       Session  9:  12:45-­‐2.15pm     Macmahon  Ball   Theatre  

North  Lecture   Theatre  

South  Lecture   Theatre  

Panel  25     Avatars,  Affect,   and  Agency:     Chair:  Angela   Ndalianis           Justin  Clemens   Avatar  Degree  Zero:   An  Introduction  

Panel  26     Politics  and   Emotion:     Chair:  Clara  Tuite             Emily  Direen   Anxious  Vessels:   Unruly  Affect  and   the  Figure  of  the   Child  in  Post-­‐9/11   Fiction         Ling  Toong   The  Great   Singaporean  Divide:   The  Dialectics  of   Absenting  Affect  in   the  Works  of   Catherine  Lim     Aaron  Humphrey   Emotion,  Anonymity   and  Affect  in  Asylum   Seeker  Comics  

Panel  27     Memory:       Chair:  Victoria   Reeve           Zoe  Thomas   The  Siren  Song  of   Affect:  Nostalgia  as   a  Vessel  for   Autobiographical   Practice         Stephen  Harris   ‘Landscape  Memoir’:   Ecopoetic  Affect  and   Literary  Politics      

      Robbie  Fordyce   Positioning  the   Videogame  Avatar:   Perspective,  Affect,   Investment       Luke  van  Ryn   Dwarf  Fortress:     Homestead  and   Laboratory    

   

 

Lecture  Theatre   C  

Panel  28     Shame,  Guilt  and   Repentance:  the   Ethics  of  Regret  in   Contemporary   World  Literature:     Chair:  Celina   Bortolotti     Kim  L.   Worthington   Confronting  a   Forgotten  Past:   Shame,  Guilt  and   Blame  in  Jaspreet   Singh’s  Helium   (2013)     James  Meffan      J.M.  Coetzee  Is  Bad   at  Sex             Chris Danta Celina  Bortolotti   Red Peter, Telling  Whispers:   Anthropotechnician: Emotions,  Secrets   Kafka with Sloterdijk   and  Identity  in  Las     historias  secretas   de  Marta     Veneranda/The     Forbidden  Stories       of  Marta  Veneranda     (1997)  

 

9  

Session  10:  2:15-­‐3:45pm     Macmahon  Ball   Theatre  

North  Lecture   Theatre  

South  Lecture   Theatre  

Lecture  Theatre   C  

Panel  29     Gothic:       Chair:  Sarah   Comyn         Francesca   Kavanagh   Fast  Cars  and  Classic   Literature:  Innocent   and  Guilty  Pleasures   in  Stephenie  Meyer's   Twilight  Saga           Ashleigh  Pyke   ‘Subjects  of  thought   furnish  not  sufficient   employment  in   solitude’:  Gothic   Sociability,   Eighteenth-­‐Century   Reading  and  the   Affective  Turn     Leigh  McLennon   Burial,  Language   and  Postcolonial   Trauma:  Reading   Gothic  Melancholia   in  Last  of  the   Mohicans  

Panel  30     Queer  Reading:         Chair:  Patricia  J.   Smith         Peta  Mayer   Recovering  Affect,   Sensuality  and  the   Backwards  Turn  by   Staging  the   Performance  of  the   Aesthete  in  Anita   Brookner’s     A  Misalliance   (1986)     Anna  Westbrook   Relational   Jouissance  and  the   Erotics  of  Reading   Queerly,  or:   “Something  Like   Orgasm   Accompanied  By   Crying”?     Jonathon  Zapasnik   The  Event  of   Sexuality:   (Un)Reading  Eric   Michaels’   Unbecoming  

Panel  31     Twentieth  Century   Novel:     Chair:  Tyne   Sumner         Tamlyn  Avery   Disaffected  Youth:   Consumerism  and   the  Early  “Waning  of   Affect”  in  the   American   Bildungsroman           Kate  Montague   Tragic  Affect  and   the  Postwar   American  Novel               Anthony  Uhlmann   Intertextuality  and   the  Sense  of  Truth  in   Coetzee’s  Dusklands  

Panel  32     Roundtable  on   Affect,  Critical   Reading,  and  the   Embodied  Self:     Chair:  Antonina   Harbus     Melissa  Raine   Affect,  Critical   Reading  and  the   Embodied  Self                 Helen  Hickey   The  Authority  of   Tears                 Michael   Richardson   Escaping the Problem of Judgment

Afternoon  Tea:  3:45-­‐4:15pm   Closing  Roundtable:     Heather  Love,  Sharon  Marcus  &  Gillian  Russell   Chair:  Corey  Wakeling   Macmahon  Ball  Theatre:  4:15-­‐5:15pm   AGM  –  Macmahon  Ball  Theatre  (all  welcome):  5.15pm   Tsubu  for  Drinks  from  5.15pm      

10  

Keynote  Abstracts   Heather  K.  Love

(R.  Jean  Brownlee  Term  Associate  Professor  at  the  University  of  Pennsylvania)

  The  Salt  of  the  World:   Desire  and  Description  in  Patricia  Highsmith’s  The  Price  of  Salt In  this  presentation,  I  reconsider  Patricia  Highsmith’s  realism  by  framing  it  in  the   context  of  practices  of  observation  and  description  in  postwar  U.S.  social  science.   In   my   current   book   project,   Reading   as   a   Social   Science,  I   consider   microanalytic   accounts   of   interior   experience   undertaken   by   linguists,   psychologists,   anthropologists,   ethnologists,   and   sociologists   alongside  “observational”   practices   in   the   modern   novel.   Setting   these   representational   practices   side   by   side   allows   me   to   challenge   the   close   association   of   the   novel   with   accounts   of   deep   or   occult   subjective   experience,   suggesting   that   a   range   of   Cold   War   novelists  sought  to  consider  human  interaction—in  the  words  of  Walker  Percy— as  “an   empirical   happening.”   This   presentation   focuses   on   Highsmith’s   1952   novel,  The   Price   of   Salt,   considering   her   meticulous   construction   of   “small   worlds”  like  the  lunchroom  of  Frankenberg’s  department  store  or  the  lobby  of  a   roadside   motel.   Challenging   the   sharp   divide   that   critics   have   posited   between   this   early   lesbian   romance   and   Highsmith’s   later   thrillers   (read   as   uniformly   bleak   and   ironic),   I   suggest   that   we   can   read   a   practice   of   observational   realism—here  animated  by   desire—across   the   body   of   her   work.   I   use   this   reading   as   the   occasion   to   consider   affect   studies   as   a   descriptive   (rather   than   speculative  or  structural)  practice.       Heather   Love  is  the  R.  Jean  Brownlee  Term  Associate  Professor  at  the  University   of  Pennsylvania.  Her  research  interests  include  gender  studies  and  queer  theory,   modernism   and   modernity,   affect   studies,   disability   studies,   film   and   visual   culture,   psychoanalysis,   sociology   and   literature,   and   critical   theory.   She   is   the   author   of  Feeling   Backward:   Loss   and   the   Politics   of   Queer   History  (Harvard,   2007),  the  editor  of  a  special  issue  of  GLQ  on  Gayle  Rubin  ("Rethinking  Sex"),  and   the   co-­‐editor   of   a   special   issue   of  New   Literary   History  ("Is   There   Life   after   Identity   Politics?").   She   is   working   on   projects   on   reading   methods   in   literary   studies,   comparative   social   stigma,   and   pedagogy   and   mentorship   in   queer   studies.  In   2014-­‐2015,   she   will   be   the   Stanley   Kelley,   Jr.,   Visiting   Professor   for   Distinguished  Teaching  in  Gender  and  Sexuality  Studies  at  Princeton.        

 

11  

Sharon  Marcus  

(Orlando  Harriman  Professor  of  English  and  Comparative  Literature  at     Columbia  University)      

Celebrity  2.0:  The  Case  of  Marina  Abramovic  

    How  have  social  media  changed  celebrity  and  fandom?     Using  the  case  study  of   Marina  Abramović,  whose  2010  live  performance  at  the  Museum  of  Modern  Art   catapulted  her  into  celebrity,  "Celebrity  2.0"  presents  four  theses  about  celebrity   in   order   to   identify   which   features   of   modern   celebrity   have   remained   fairly   constant   for   over   a   century   and   which   have   been   significantly   altered   by   the   advent   of   digital   media.     What   kinds   of   affect   do   celebrities   like   Abramović   trigger  in  fans,  and  what  do  fans  want  from  celebrities?       Sharon   Marcus   specializes   in   nineteenth-­‐century   British   and   French   literature   and   culture,   and   teaches   courses   on   the   19th-­‐century   novel   in   England   and   France,   particularly   in   relation   to   the   history   of   urbanism   and   architecture;   gender   and   sexuality   studies;   narrative   theory;   and   19th-­‐century   theater   and   performance.   She   is   the   author   of  Apartment   Stories:   City   and   Home   in   Nineteenth-­‐Century   Paris   and   London  (University   of   California   Press,   1999),   which  received  an  honorable  mention  for  the  MLA  Scaglione  Prize  for  best  book   in  comparative  literature,  and  Between  Women:  Friendship,  Desire,  and  Marriage   in  Victorian  England  (Princeton:   2007),   which   has   been   translated   into   Spanish   and  won  the  Perkins  Prize  for  best  study  of  narrative,  the  Albion  prize  for  best   book  on  Britain  after  1800,  the  Alan  Bray  Memorial  award  for  best  book  in  queer   studies,  a  Lambda  Literary  award  for  best  book  in  LGBT  studies.    With  Stephen   Best,  she  recently  edited  a  special  issue  of  Representations  on  “The  Way  We  Read   Now.”  Recent   publications   include   essays   in  PMLA,  Victorian   Studies,Social   Research,  Theatre   Survey,  The   Blackwell   Companion   to   Comparative   Literature,   and  The   Cambridge   History   of   Victorian   Literature.    The   recipient   of   Fulbright,   Woodrow   Wilson,   and   ACLS   fellowships,   and,   at   Columbia,   a   Gerry   Lenfest   Distinguished   Faculty   Award,   she   is   currently   writing   a   book   about   theatrical   celebrity  in  the  nineteenth  century.      

 

12  

Gillian  Russell  

(Gerry  Higgins  Chair  of  Irish  Studies  at  the  University  of  Melbourne)      

Master  Betty’s  Accents:   Affect,  Celebrity  and  the  Irish  Voice  on  the  Romantic  Stage   around  1800  

    The  sensation  of  1804-­‐5  in  Britain  and  Ireland  was  the  child  actor  William  Henry   West   Betty   (1791-­‐1874),   also   known   as   Master   Betty   or   the   Young   Roscius.     When   he   made   his   debut   at   Covent   Garden   theatre   on   December   1   1804,   the   crowd   outside   the   theatre   was   so   great   that   soldiers   had   to   be   deployed   to   control   it;   inside   men   and   women   clambered   over   each   other   to   get   a   view   of   him.     The   fanaticism   for   Betty   was   such   that   the   public,   according   to   a   later   biographer,  ‘went  temporarily  out  of  its  mind’.    Betty  was  English  born  but  had   an  Irish  father  and  was  brought  up  in  the  north  of  Ireland,  where  he  first  made   his   name   acting   in   the   Belfast   theatre.     His   fame   was   the   product   of   print   publicity,   beginning   in   the   Belfast   News-­‐Letter,   and   spreading   throughout   the   country,   making   Betty   a   multi-­‐media   national   phenomenon.       His   brief   stratospheric  career  is  an  important  precedent  for  mass-­‐media  pop  celebrity  and   its   investments   in   affect,   particularly   the   accentuated   ephemerality   of   the   conjunction   of   youth   and   theatre   embodied   by   the   child   star.     One   of   the   most   powerful   aspects   of   Betty’s   appeal   to   audiences   was   his   voice   and   this   paper   focuses   on   the   evidence   of   how   he   spoke   as   a   way   of   exploring   a   largely   neglected  aspect  of  Betty’s  career  –  his  questionable  ethnic  identity.    Combining   perspectives   from   Irish   studies,   Romantic   studies,   and   theatre   history   I   seek   to   analyse   Betty’s   progress   as   an   allegory   of   Anglo-­‐Irish   relations   immediately   before   and   after   the   Act   of   Union   of   1801   and   also   as   a   potent   example   of   the   historical  voice  as  a  channel  of  affect.       Gillian   Russell   is   the   Gerry   Higgins   Chair   of   Irish   Studies   at   the   University   of   Melbourne.   She   is   author   of   The   Theatres   of   War:   Performance,   Politics   and   Society   1793-­‐1815   (1995)   and   Women,   Sociability   and   Theatre   in   Georgian   England   (2007).   She   is   currently   completing   a   project   on   ephemeral   print   culture,  sociability  and  the  cultures  of  collecting  in  Britain  and  Ireland  in  the  long   eighteenth  century.      

 

13  

   

Abstracts:     Stephen  Ablitt  (La  Trobe  University)   Hermaphrodite  Himself:  Jacques  Derrida,  Generic  Illegibility  and  the  Queered  Reader     Commenting   on   Jacques   Derrida’s   impact   on   queer   theory,   Michael   O’Rourke   affirms   that   Derrida   is   “always   already   queer”,   while   also   noting   a   perplexing   “general   indifference   to   Derrida’s   work   among   the   queer   theoretical   ‘community’”   (2005,   n.   p.).   Impelled  by  this  intersection  between  the  composition  of  the  text  and  its  reception  by  a   community  of  readers,  this  paper  seeks  to  expose  a  queerer  aspect  of  Derrida,  locating  a   gender-­‐  and  genre-­‐bending  in  the  critical  reading  strategy  he  stages  beneath  the  heading   “deconstruction”.   Departing   from   Derrida’s   peculiar   assertion,   written   to   the   absent   addressee   of   the   lacuna-­‐filled   novel-­‐in-­‐love-­‐letters   The   Post   Card,   that   “[w]e   are   Hermaphrodite   himself   …   in   person   and   properly   named”   (145),   this   paper   locates   a   hermeneutic   hermaphroditism   at   play   in   the   de/composition   of   his   weird   textual   configurations,   and   suggests   that   a   significant   effect   of   the   dual   failures   of   normative   notions   of   genre   and   gender   to   remain   legible   in   The   Post   Card   is   to   re/produce   a   queered  reader.   Deconstruction   is   staged   as   the   identification   and   destabilisation   a   series   of   hierarchical   couplings,   revealing   an   originary   complexity   and   an   impossible-­‐to-­‐locate   origin   as   it   approaches   (but   never   resolves)   the   aporia,   the   impassable   excessive/lacking   experience   of   the   undecidable   decision.   Interrogations   and   contestations   of   genre   and   genealogy   are   crucial   here,   and   thus   punctuate   Derrida’s   oeuvre.   The   third   key   term   sharing   an   etymological   root   with   genre   and   genealogy   is   gender:  from  the  French   genre,  “kind,”  type,”  “sort,”  and  the  Old  French  gendre,  from  the   Latin   stem   genus,   itself   from   the   proto-­‐Indo-­‐European   gen(e),   “produce”,   “beget”,   “be   born”.   The   three   terms   come   together   perhaps   most   fully,   if   obtusely,   in   the   fleeting   reference   to   the   Greek   demigod   Hermaphrodite   slipped   unobtrusively   into   The   Post   Card,  in  a  lengthy  missive  dated  1  June  1978.  A  god  of  bisexuality,  effeminacy,  sexuality   and  fertility,  Hermaphrodite  is  the  fourth  child  of  Hermes  (fleet-­‐footed  messenger,  god   of   transitions   and   boundaries)   and   Aphrodite   (goddess   of   love,   beauty,   pleasure,   and   procreation).  Born  a  remarkably  handsome  boy,  Hermaphrodite  is  transformed  into  an   androgynous  being  after  encountering  the  water  nymph  Salmacis,  who  in  some  accounts   raped   the   boy,   and   the   gods,   as   punishment,   merged   the   two   bodies   together.   Hermaphrodite’s   appearance   posits,   if   somewhat   obliquely,   a   gender-­‐bending,   metonymic  of  a  genre-­‐bending,  at  the  very  heart  of  The  Post  Card’s  composition,  which  is   itself  unclassifiable,  an  epistolary  fiction  about  love  letters  which  lose  their  way  between   sender   and   addressee   itself   caught   somewhere   between   the   reason   of   Philosophy   and   the   affect   of   Literature.   Generically   illegible,   it   refuses   resolution   and   interpretive   certitude,   like   the   “postal   principle”   which   it   performatively   enacts,   refusing   the   easy   markers  of  genre  which  would  expedite  a  closed  and  determined  reading.  The  frustrated   communications  experienced  by  the  sender  are  echoed  in  the  frustrations,  and  ultimate   failure,  of  the  reader  to  reach  their  own  hermeneutic  destination.  But  these  frustrations   and  failures  are  finally  revealed  to  be  transformative,  as   The  Post  Card  effectively  queers   its  reader,  who  comes  to  understand  frustration  and  failure,  this  queer  art,  and  retracing   one’s  steps,  as  a  crucial  to  this  vitally  productive  queer  reading  strategy.        

 

14  

Dvir  Abramovich  (The  University  of  Melbourne  Program  in  Jewish  Culture  &  Society)   The  Holocaust  Affect  on  the  Israeli  Literary  Aesthetic:  A  Torturous  Relationship     In   her   book   Nos’ei   Hachotam   (Memorial   Candles)   Dina   Wardi   (one   of   the   first   Israeli   psychotherapists   to   utilize   group   therapy   in   treating   the   post-­‐war   generation)   coined   the  term  Memorial  Candles  to  denote  the  role  the  children  of  Holocaust  survivors  were   invested  with  by  their  parents.  Her  seminal  book  explains  how  the  Holocaust  imprinted   its   own   stamp   on   the   second   generation,   unloading   its   victims’   burden   on   to   the   shoulders   of   their   children   and   creating   an   index   of   feelings   including   guilt,   excessive   anxiety,   fear   of   separation   and   a   lack   of   independence.   It   was   no   accident   that   those   children   exhibited   symptoms   that   mirrored   their   parents’   pathology.   This   suggested   unequivocally  that  such  disorders  were  transferred  by  the  survivors  onto  their  children,   who  internalised  the  traumatic  stress  foisted  upon  them  by  their  families.  In  the  1980s   and  1990s  young  Israeli  authors  turned  to  the  subject  of  the  Holocaust,  asking  whether   the  pen  can  tackle  the  ultimate  savagery  in  a  time  and  place  where  words,  morals  and   life   had   been   stripped   of   their   normative   meanings.     In   the   process,   taboos   were   shattered   and   boundaries   crossed.   This   generational   shift   marked   the   beginning   of     ‘Second-­‐Generation   Shoah   writing’,   led   by   authors   who   were   not   part   of   the   ‘Concentrationary   Universe’,     but   for   whom   the   Holocaust   was   still   very   much   part   of   their   being.     At   the   heart   of   this   paper,   is     a   wide-­‐angle   examination   of   second-­‐ generation  narratives  and  their  language  of  feeling,  exploring  how  Israeli  authors  have   been  re-­‐imagining  and  rewriting  Holocaust  memories.  The  presentation  will  look  at  how   these   stories   not   only   uncover   and   describe   the   deep   residue   of   damage   that   fills   the   lives   of   the   inheritors   of   the   Holocaust   generation,   but   also   depict   the   social   and   psychological  pain  suffered  by  those  descendants  who  have  become  the  torch  carries  of   Shoah   memories.   Moreover,   the   paper   will   examine   the   authors’   operating   motifs   and   literary   stratagems   in   portraying   the   Israeli   public’s   emotion,   and   the   anguished   memories   resonating   perpetually   through   the   fractured   soul   of   the   Israeli   and   the   Jewish  nation.                 Rosslyn  Almond  (Australian  Catholic  University)   Exulting  in  Her  Shouting  Body:    Corporeality  and  Affect  in  Fiona  McGregor’s  Indelible  Ink     Fiona  McGregor’s  novel  of  2010,  Indelible  Ink  follows  Marie  King’s  shift  from  apathetic   affluence   to   deliberate   deviance,   to   self-­‐discovery   and,   ultimately,   self-­‐acceptance.   The   novel   features   tattoos,   alcohol   and   suicide,   yet   is   set   in   Sydney’s   opulent   Mosman   and   features   a   fifty-­‐nine   year   old   female   protagonist.   The   disjuncture   between   the   themes   of   the  narrative  and  its  setting  and  protagonist  challenges  stereotypical  expectations,  both   from   within   the   novel   and   without.   A   burgeoning   addiction   to   tattooing   supplants   Marie’s   alcoholism,   but   for   her   milieu,   tattooing   is   a   far   less   acceptable   practice   than   drinking.   Because   Marie’s   actions   transgress   the   limitations   of   the   polite   society   she   inhabits,   these   actions   are   liberating   and   offer   her   a   new   identity   –   one   in   which   she   feels   comfortable   and   in   control,   as   though   the   tattoos   have   revealed   aspects   of   self;   Marie’s   desire,   pleasure   and   sorrow   are   manifest   in   her   physicality.   The   necessary   physicality  of  tattoos—that  is,  the  pain  associated  with  tattooing  that  evokes  an  inherent   corporeality  in  the  viewing  of  the  tattooed  image—means  that  she  has  been  marked  as   distinct,  different  and  discrete.  The  mien  of  her  former  peers  alters  dramatically  in  line   with   the   modification   of   Marie’s   body,   as   though   her   entire   construction   has   changed   because  of  marks  on  her  skin,  simultaneously  affecting  her  readings  of  others  and  their   readings   of   her.   Where   she   views   her   tattoos   as   physically   beautiful,   they   represent   a   movement  away  from  stereotypical  expectations  to  which  she  previously  adhered,  and   she   accordingly   takes   charge   of   her   corporeality   and   the   construction   of   her   own   identity.     She   is   able   to   transgress   expectations,   and,   thus,   limitations,   externally  

 

15  

imposed  on  her  expression  of  self,  allowing  her  to  access  different  affective  responses;   the  modulation  of  her  corporeal  experience  necessarily  changes  her  affect.             This   paper   will   draw   on   corporeal   feminism   as   literary   theory,   in   order   to   demonstrate   how   theories   of   corporeal   experience   can   be   utilised   to   ‘read’   both   the   construction  of  Marie’s  body  and  affect.  Using  Spinoza’s  conception  of  affect,  this  paper   will   address   the   ways   in   which   affect   is   evident   in   Marie   King’s   characterisation   in   Indelible   Ink.   It   will   examine   affect   through   its   interaction   with   the   embodied   self   and   will   argue   that   the   expression   of   affect   through   deliberate   manipulation   of   one’s   physicality   allows   one   to   claim,   or   reclaim,   a   semblance   of   power   over   one’s   body   and   emotions.   This   paper   will   argue   that,   through   her   deliberate   manipulation   of   her   physical   self,   the   consequent   changes   in   her   affect   facilitate   Marie   to   move   towards   ‘perfection’,   and   that   the   markings   on   her   body   both   express   and   generate   particular   affective  turns.             Tamlyn  Avery  (University  of  New  South  Wales)   Disaffected   Youth:   Consumerism   and   the   Early   “Waning   of   Affect”   in   the   American   Bildungsroman     In   his   seminal   work,   Postmodernism,   Or,   The   Cultural   Logic   of   Late   Capitalism,   Fredric   Jameson   locates   the   shift   from   late   modernism   to   postmodernism   in   “the   waning   of   affect”.   The   American   bildungsroman,   particularly   the   metropolitan   form,   succumbs   to   the   “waning   of   affect”   very   early   in   the   history   of   the   novel.   This   is   primarily   because   alienation  is  not  only  a  term  associated  with  affect,  but  also  with  capital;  and  whilst  the   Nineteenth   Century   European   bildungsroman   was   bourgeois   and   concerned   with   traditions  of  class  structure,  the  American  bildungsroman  was  more  concerned  with  the   effects   of   diversity   within   a   competitive   capitalist   economy.   For   the   American   bildungsroman  the  pressing  urgency  of  capital,  excites  a  perpetual  trajectory  of  growth   that   culminates   in   the   alienation   of   the   self   rather   than   its   achievement.   This   is   a   remarkable   feature   of   what   was   to   become   the   post-­‐1900   American   bildungsroman,   removing  it  entirely  from  the  European  traditions.     This   paper   aims   to   examine   the   intricate   and   unique   manner   in   which   the   metropolitan   bildungsroman,   as   a   particular   microcosm   of   wider   capitalist   American   society,  develops  from  this  nexus  of  affect  and  capital,  merged  to  the  point  at  which  the   latter   phases   the   other   out   from   the   bildungsroman   narrative   entirely.   As   the   Twentieth   Century  presses  on,  consumerism  acts  to  soothe  the  overwhelming  affects  of  alienation   and  anxiety  in  the  American  bildungsroman,  those  affects  which  were  the  mark  of  late   modernist   subjectivity,   yet   arrives   at   a   point   where   all   affect   has   been   lost.   A   need   for   limitless  financial  flexibility  overrides  the  need  for  the  growth  or  education  of  the  soul,   utterly   transforming   the   way   we   reflect   upon   the   bildungsroman   tradition.   The   narrative  duty  of  this  now  commodified  bildungsheld  is  to  be  incapable  of  experiencing   the  affects  which  determine  a  harmonious  path  to  bildung  as  in  the  Goethean  prototype   of  the  genre,  where  larger  senses  of  belonging  and  collective  are  often  critically  explored   through   descriptions   of   affect.   As   the   century   goes   on,   many   authors   turned   to   increasingly   shocking   transgression   and   destruction   as   means   available   to   their   bildungshelden   in   order   to   escape   this   monotonous   realm   of   endless,   mindless   consumerism  and  disaffect.   The   paper   will   focus   upon   Catcher   in   the   Rye,   the   mid-­‐century   New   York   bildungsroman  by  J.  D.  Salinger,  as  evidence  of  the  emergence  of  this  trend  of  “waning   affect”  in  bildungsroman  fiction  over  the  course  of  the  Twentieth  Century.  Through  the   lens  of  Catcher  in  the  Rye,  we  may  establish  that  this  trend  of  disaffect  is  one  which  looks   back  to  the  likes  of  Fitzgerald  and  Wharton,  and  far  forward  to  postmodernists  such  as   Bret  Easton  Ellis  and  the  Blank  Fictionist  set.    

 

16  

Sarah  Balkin  (University  of  Melbourne)   Monist  Dramaturgy  in  Strindberg’s  The  Black  Glove     During   his   Inferno   period   (1894-­‐1897)   August   Strindberg   studied   Ernst   Haeckel’s   monism,   which   sought   to   bring   the   divine   back   into   Darwinistic   natural   science   and   proclaimed  the  unity  of  all  being.  Strindberg’s  study  of  Haeckel’s  monism  coincided  with   his   alchemical   investigations   into   the   transformability   of   matter.   It   is   well   known   that   after  his  Inferno  period  the  style  of  Strindberg’s  dramaturgy  shifted  from  naturalism  to   symbolism  and  expressionism.  I  argue  that  Strindberg’s  study  of  Haeckel  and  the  occult   altered  his  dramaturgical  approach  to  human  and  nonhuman  stage  matter,  particularly   the   affective   relations   between   character   and   setting.   My   paper   thus   historicizes   monism’s   influence   on   the   emergence   of   modernist   theatre   and   posits   Strindberg’s   dramaturgy  as  an  inverse  predecessor  to  present-­‐day  new  materialisms.   Strindberg’s  final  and  least  performed  chamber  play,  The  Black  Glove  (1909),  has   a  prop  for  a  protagonist:  a  lost  glove  that  travels  around  a  modern  apartment  building  at   Christmastime.  The  glove  moves  via  human  and  nonhuman  means;  hapless  servants  and   apartment  residents  try  to  return  the  glove  to  its  owner,  a  spoiled  Young  Wife,  while  a   Christmas   Gnome   and   a   Christmas   Angel   keep   the   glove   away   from   the   Young   Wife   to   teach   her   a   lesson.   At   one   point   the   glove   travels   in   an   elevator;   thus,   not   only   nonhuman  characters,  but  also  mechanical  components  of  the  set  propel  its  movements.   The   Gnome   and   the   Angel   also   steal   the   Young   Wife’s   child,   the   play’s   affective   focal   point.   The   child   is   not   played   by   a   human   actress:   her   presence   and   absence   are   indicated  by  clothes,  toys,  furniture,  flickering  electric  lights,  and  the  actors’  responses.   The  Black  Glove  teaches  the  Young  Wife  a  lesson  in  humility  via  a  network  of  human  and   nonhuman  characters,  objects,  and  reactions.   The   apartment’s   attic   houses   an   Old   Man,   a   taxidermist   who   tries   to   solve   the   “riddle  of  life,”  a  reference  to  the  monist  belief  in  the  unity  of  matter  and  specifically  to   Haeckel’s   The  Riddle  of  the  Universe   (1899).   Strindberg   attempted   to   prove   this   theory   through  his  alchemical  studies.  But  the  Christmas  Angel  tells  the  Old  Man  to  “ponder  the   duality   of   nature”   in   order   to   show   him   “that   life   is   spirit   imprisoned   in   a   body,   in   matter”—and   to   show   him   the   error   of   abandoning   his   family   to   pursue   his   studies.   If   the   taxidermist   embraces   dualism   on   the   brink   of   his   own   death,   Strindberg’s   dramaturgy  extends  the  definition  of  a  body  to  matter  that  is  neither  human  nor  alive.       Judith  Barbour  (University  of  Sydney)   Found   in   Translation:   the   double   work   of   Dante   Gabriel   Rossetti   from   New   Life   to   The   House  of  Life     Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti  (1828-­‐1882)  was  the  firstborn  son  of  the  third  generation  of  an   expatriate   Italian-­‐English   family.   His   maternal   grandfather   Gaetano   Polidori   had   travelled   to   England   in   the   1780s   as   Tuscan   tutor   to   the   Piedmontese   tragic   dramatist   Count  Vittorio  Alfieri.  In  London,  Alfieri  produced  a  strikingly  new  kind  of  life-­‐writing,   combining  Bildüngsroman  (the  young  man  comes  of  age),  and  Künstlerroman  (the  artist   finds  his  vocation).  Its  title,  Vita  scritto  da  esso    [Life  written  by  himself],  glanced  back  to   the   Vita   Nuova   of   Dante   Alighieri,   as   Alfieri   posed   himself   at   the   cusp   of   a   restored   literary  language    for  the  Italian    Risorgimento.       Gaetano   Polidori   married   an   English   woman   and   settled   into   London’s   cosmopolitan   Soho   as   a   translator   and   publisher.   Their   eldest   son   John   William   was   a   precociously   brilliant,   stormy   polymath.   Graduating   too   young   to   practice   medicine   from  the  famous  Edinburgh  Medical  School  he  was  hired  by  Lord  Byron  as  his  personal   physician   when   the   poet   left   England   under   a   cloud   in   1816.     Polidori   was   present   in   Byron’s   rented   villa   on   Lake   Geneva   on   the   rainy   night   when   Mary   Shelley   began   the   ghost   story   later   published   as   Frankenstein:   or,   The   Modern   Prometheus.     Not   to   be  

 

17  

outdone,   Polidori   published   The   Vampyre,   a   Gothic   fable   of   incest,   murder,   and   the   threat  posed  to  idealistic  young  men  by  the  soulless  resurrected  bodies  of  the  damned.  It   was  attributed  to  Byron,  and  the  scandal  magazines  pilloried  the  tyro  author  as  one  of   the  degenerates  in  a  “League  of  Incest”  presided  over  by  Byron.  The  25-­‐year  old  Author   of   The   Vampyre   died   by   his   own   hand   in   1821.   His   stricken   father   suppressed   all   mention   of   his   name   and   fate.   Dante   Gabriel   Rossetti   grew   up   under   his   grandfather’s   ban   of   silence.   A   blank   line   criss-­‐crosses   all   similitudes   and   parallels   that   a   reader   might   draw   between   John   William’s   meteoric   rise   and   precipitous   fall,   and   the   peaks   and   troughs   of   his   no   less   brilliant   nephew’s   career.   The   truism   that   history   forgotten   will   force  itself  back  into  recognition  can  be  at  best  a  rough  guide.     In   1848   Rossetti   joined   the   Cyclographic   Society,   a   group   of   arts   students   meeting   in   the   evenings   in   their   parents’   London   homes.   They   were   experimenting   with   printing   and   photography,   contemporary   innovations.   Rossetti   charmed   them   into   a   mock-­‐medieval   artisanal   guild   that   he   named   the   Pre-­‐Raphaelite   Brotherhood.   In   autumn   1849   he   set   off   on   a   railway   trip   through   northern   Europe   with   his   studio   workmate   Holman   Hunt,   leaving   behind   him   a   number   of   half-­‐finished   poems   and   already   commissioned   paintings-­‐in-­‐progress.     The   first   fruit   of   the   tour   was   the   triumphant   slogan   “NON   NOI   PITTORI”   ––   “NOT   OUR   KIND   OF   PAINTERS.”     The   Pre-­‐ Raphaelites   were   to   clear   a   virtual   space   for   new   imaginings   and   banish   from   their   sights   the   late-­‐Renaissance   and   baroque   master-­‐painters,   Rubens,   Correggio,   and   their   ilk.   In   Paris,   Bruges   and   Ghent   Rossetti   feasted   his   eyes   and   formulated   his   critical   judgments   on   those   small   lustrous   oils   on   wooden   panels,   and   those   altarpieces   in   Northern   kirks   and   city   galleries,   that   bridged   or   straddled   the   divide   between   Gothic   (or   Dark   Ages)   works,   and   the   grand   visions   of   Rome,   Florence   and   Venice   in   the   Italian   Rinascimento.     Michelangelo,   Raphael,   and   Botticelli   had   copiously   illustrated   the   works   of   Dante   Alighieri   and   produced   that   great   flowering   of   painting   and   poetry   of   the   Marian   devotion   that   was   inspired   by   Alighieri’s   patron   saint,   St   Bernard   of   Clairvaux.   He,  Rossetti,  would  go  directly  to  the  fountainhead  in  Alighieri’s  Vita  Nuova  of  1293.  And   he   would   transplant   it   into   the   dark   and   foggy   London   that   was   his   house   of   present   exile.  On  the  rock  of  a  translated  new  life  he  would  raise  his  original  House  of  Life.     In  the  giant  shadow  of  Dante  Alighieri  he  doubled  between  painting  and  poetry,   between   translation   and   original   invention,   and   between   devotion   to   the   monumental   European   tradition   and   the   creative   firmament   of   the   restless   megalopolis   London,   challenging  and  changing  around  him  as  the  latter-­‐day  Victorian  British  Empire  rose  to   rival  Rome.         Sean  Barry  (Longwood  University)   Great  Talkers  on  Little  Matters:  Prolixity  and  the  Grounds  of  Character  in  Byron,  Scott,  and   Austen     This  paper  considers  the  creation  of  character  out  of  excessive  talk.  Examining  a  trio  of   aged  storytellers—the  narrator  of  _Don  Juan_,  the  Baron  of  Bradwardine  in  _Waverley_,   and   Miss   Bates   in   _Emma_—this   talk   investigates   prolixity   as   an   index   of   individual   feeling.   Each   of   these   characters   is,   to   borrow   Austen’s   description   of   Miss   Bates,   a   “great  talker  upon  little  matters.”  On  the  one  hand,  this  tendency  makes  these  characters   laughable   and   perhaps   even   objects   of   contempt.   As   Byron   describes   such   social   blunderers,  they  are  “pestilently  prolix  and  paradoxical  and  personal.”  Their  anti-­‐social   absorption   in   their   own   preoccupations   tests   the   limits   of   readers’   patience   and   sympathy.  By  the  same  token,  I  argue  that  their  talk  helps  complicate  our  understanding   of   expressive   individualism   and   the   romantic   pursuit   of   authenticity.   Byron,   Scott,   and   Austen   locate   the   sources   of   these   characters   in   their   almost   ceaseless   compulsion   to   talk.  Unmoored  from  standards  of  decorous  sociability  yet  thoroughly  engrossed  by  the   world   around   them,   these   pedants   express   their   attachment   to   trivial   objects   and  

 

18  

pursuits.  Romantic-­‐era  writers  adopt  the  pedant  as  a  persona  for  articulating  an  identity   whose   origins   lie   at   once   within   the   self   and   in   the   world.   Alongside   familiar   romantic   representations   of   a   self-­‐conceived   in   sublime   or   quietistic   isolation,   these   writers   model  character  as  the  product  of  mundane  preoccupations  and  trivial  enthusiasms  that   eschew  decorum  and  sympathy  as  the  basis  of  a  character  rooted  in  social  life.           Daniel  Bedggood  (University  of  Canterbury)   Utopian  Desire  and  the  Problems  of  Posthuman  Affect     This  paper  will  consider  the  so-­‐called  “affective  turn”  in  relation  to  the  representation  of   the   human   body   and   “other”   in   two   twentieth-­‐century   science   fiction   texts:   Philip   K.   Dick’s   Do   Androids   Dream   of   Electric   Sheep   and   Iain   (M)   Banks’   The   Player   of   Games.   Science   fiction   itself   may   be   considered   an   “affective”   genre,   engaged   as   it   is   in   speculation   and   the   ensuing   “pleasures   of   the   text”   through   genre-­‐fiction   fandom   -­‐-­‐   functioning   as   an   “oneiric”   fantasy   domain   for   readers.     Such   a   view   may   have   marginalised   the   work   of   authors   like   Dick   and   Banks.     The   speculative   domain   of   “serious”   science   fiction,   though,   is   often   the   vehicle   for   critical   reflection   on   current   societies  and  possibilities,  allowing  critics  such  as  Fredric  Jameson  and  Darko  Suvin  to   see   utopian   literature   to   be   convergent   with   science   fiction   in   its   affective   defamilisation-­‐refamiliarisation  tactics.             Looking   at   Dick’s   Do   Androids   Dream   of   Electric   Sheep   (1968)   and   Banks’   The   Player   of   Games   (1988),   I   examine   their   concern   with   posthuman   affect,   testing   the   limits  of  utopian  desire  and  humanity  by  means  of  examining  the  body  and  its  responses   in   relation   to   “other”.   I   will   be   using   Deleuze   and   Guattari’s   concepts   of   “affect”   and   “affected”   to   examine   both   the   tactics   of   “cognitive   estrangement”   used   by   these   writers   (after   Suvin)   and   the   “affected”   subjects   within   the   texts;   I   also   draw   on   Fredric   Jameson’s   conceptions   of   utopian   desire   and   nostalgia   alongside   theorists   of   the   posthuman   condition   such   as   Francis   Fukuyama,   Donna   Haraway,   and   Sherryl   Vint   to   analyse  the  different  approaches  to  the  embodied  “human”.            Examining   Dick’s   largely   dystopian   text,   I   will   consider   the   central   focus   on   “empathy”  as  an  identifying  mechanism  for  the  human,  and  the  putative  role  of  animals   and   androids   as   affective   others   in   this   identification.     Dick’s   flawed   protagonist,   Deckard,   is   important   as   the   self-­‐reflexive   arbitrator   of   the   distinctions   between   human,   sub-­‐human   and   artificial   other,   coming   to   question   these   distinctions   and   voice   the   problems   of   human   schizoid   breaks   that   Dick   theorises   as   necessary   for   such   identification,   especially   apparent   in   the   presence   of   arbitrary,   simulated   or   mediated   “affect”  mechanisms  in  the  novel.    Viewing  Banks’  critical  utopian  text,  I  will  discuss  the   utopic,   posthuman   body,   augmented   and   supplemented   by   technologies   present   in   the   protagonist’s   hedonistic,   utopian   society:   The   Culture.     Against   this,   I   will   discuss   the   novel’s  engagement  with  the  nostalgic  appeals  of  the  “organic”  primitive:  the  embodied   appeals  of  barbarism,  violence  and  sensual  agency  that  the  protagonist  “player”,  Gurgeh,   ultimately  rejects.    This  rejection,  however,  is  complicated  by  Gurgeh  being  “played”  by   his   Culture:   becoming   the   embodied   proxy   in   an   inter-­‐civilisation   clash,   an   organic   avatar  in  a  war  on  the  Empire  of  Azad  sublimated  to  the  Azad  game  board.             Dick   and   Banks’   texts,   then,   are   forerunners   to   the   “affective   turn”   critical   re-­‐ engagement   with   appeals   to   embodiment;   yet   they   also   speculate   on   problems   of   the   scope  or  authenticity  of  bodily-­‐situated  affect  in  a  posthuman  context.                      

 

19  

Elena  Benthaus  (University  of  Melbourne)   So  You  Think  You  Can  WOW  –  Popular  Screen  Dance  and  Affective  Bodies     In  this  presentation  I  argue  that  ‘WOW’  can  be  read  as  a  verbal  and  corporeal  expression   to   respond   to   emotive,   excessive,   intense   and   spectacular   movement   moments   in   relation  to  the  popular  screen  dance  aesthetics  of  the  American  television  show  So  You   Think   You   Can   Dance.   When   Henry   Jenkins   argued   for   the   appreciation   of   the   complexity   and   diversity   of   pop-­‐cultural   performances   in   his   book   The   Wow   Climax:   Tracing   the   Emotional   Impact   of   Popular   Culture,   he   says,   “most   popular   culture   is   shaped   by   a   logic   of   emotional   intensification.   It   is   less   interested   in   making   us   think   than   it   is   in   making   us   feel.”   (Jenkins   2007)   Jenkins   specifically   uses   the   term   “wow   climax”  to  describe  the  effects  of  pop  cultural  performances,  a  concept,  which  he  traces   back  to  the  vaudeville  tradition,  in  which  it  was  common  to  use  a  spectacular  movement   series  or  trick  at  the  end  of  an  act  to  leave  the  audience  pleasurably  speechless  or  as  a   means   to   stop   the   show   as   a   result   of   the   audience’s   emotional   reaction   and   applause.   Apart  from  being  an  expressive  response  to  something  too  stunning,  too  spectacular,  too   intense,  or  too  emotional  to  put  into  more  elaborate  verbal  expressions  yet,  the  WOW  as   an  immediate  physical-­‐verbal  expression,  hovers  at  the  threshold  of  a  more  articulated,   re-­‐cognized  verbalized  emotional  response.  As  such,  it  is  the  result  of  a  series  of  emotive   effects   and   can   be   read   as   sitting   in   between   an   affective   physical   response   and   the   cognitive   conscious   recognition   of   an   emotion.   Considering   this   in   relation   to   So   You   Think   You   Can   Dance,   ‘WOW’   is   intimately   linked   to   its   dancing   bodies,   but   also   simultaneously  to  its  spectating  bodies  and  their  physical-­‐verbal  reaction  to  the  dancing   bodies.  Performing  the  ‘WOW’  thus  shifts  the  emphasis  from  effective-­‐ness  to  affective-­‐ ness,   which   will   be   discussed   in   this   presentation   by   drawing   on   a   combination   of   Brian   Massumi’s   notion   of   affect,   Sara   Ahmed’s   notion   of   ‘impression’   and   the   notion   of   kinaesthetic  affect.       Celina  Bortolotti  (Massey  University)   Telling   Whispers:   Emotions,   Secrets   and   Identity   in   Las   historias   secretas   de   Marta   Veneranda/The  Forbidden  Stories  of  Marta  Veneranda    (1997)     Shame   implies   an   attack   on   the   self,   so   the   freedom   allowed   in   fiction   “can   present   a   unique  opportunity  for  us  to  examine  this  emotion”  (Morrison  10).  In  this  collection  of   stories  within  a  frame  story,  much  in  the  format  of  Boccaccio’s  or  Chaucer’s  tales,  a  close   group  of  Cubans  émigrés  living  in  New  York  successively  talk  to  Marta,  a  Ph.D.  literature   student   interested   in   the   dynamics   of   shame   and   secrecy.   Intuitively   agreeing   with   shame   theorists   (Morrison,   Miller),   Marta   has   changed   disciplines   convinced   that   literature   and   not   psychology   will   allow   her   to   enter   “more   passionately   into   the   labyrinths   of   these   souls”   making   her   knowledge   more   “real”   (Rivera-­‐Valdés   8).   Marta   wants  to  write  her  thesis  on  the  discrepancy  between  shame  felt  and  the  level  of  social   condemnation   of   the   shameful   incident   as   such   and   opts   to   explore   this   not   quantitatively   but   by   compiling   secret   s   willingly   told.   But   if   “the   most   common   reasons   for   secrecy   [are]   all   motivated   by   shame”,   and   people   tend   to   avoid   detrimental   self-­‐ images   at   all   costs   (Kelly   134),   why   do   the   protagonists   of   these   stories   decide   to   air   their  dirty  laundry  before  a  literature  student?     This   analysis   of   Rivera-­‐Valdez’s   collection   uses   insights   from   psychology   and   psychoanalysis  to  explore  the  dynamics  of  shame,  pride,  identity  and  confession  in  these   accounts  that  serve  to  complicate  and  redefine  self-­‐images.  While  some  characters  seem   to  opt  for  the  full  acceptance  of  responsibility  implied  in  confession,  claiming  agency  and   bearing   its   implications;   others   resort   to   the   seemingly   less   damaging   excuse,   thus   avoiding  full  responsibility  and  self-­‐questioning.  Mayté’s  proud  detailed  account  of  her   active  sexual  role  in  her  first  lesbian  relationship,  for  example,  complicates  her  identity  

 

20  

as  a  submissive  heterosexual  Cuban  wife  and  offers  an  alternative  embodiment  of  Cuban   womanhood;   Rodolfo’s   detailed   account   of   an   “uncontrollable”   sexual   frenzy   that   repeatedly   draws   him   to   his   obese   and   smelly   neighbour,   destabilizes   his   identity   as   a   hygiene  freak  but  consolidates  his  virility  as  a  true  Cuban  macho.  The  collection  deploy  s   ironic   humour   to   recreate   and   evidence   some   of   the   deep   connections   between   commitment   to   particular   identities   and   the   social   feedback   that   this   demands   for   validation.   It   further   consolidates   literary   fiction   as   a   particularly   fruitful   space   to   explore   self-­‐conscious   emotions   like   pride   and   shame   (Morrison   1996,   Griffith   2003,   Miller   2007)   by   presenting   humorous   but   complex   fictional   accounts   which   ultimately   prompt   a   reflection   on   the   close   relationship   between   affect,   responsibility,   identity   and   social  values.       Tom  Bristow  (University  of  New  England)   Affective   Points   of   Contact:   Bioregional   Biography   in   Alice   Oswald's   Sleepwalk   on   the   Seven  (2009)     Meditative,  musical,  bioregional,  proto-­‐ecopoetic,  sonic  and  topographic:  these  are  some   of  the  ways  to  describe  the  work  of  T.S.  Eliot  prizewinner,  Alice  Oswald.  Oswald's  poetry   is   inspired   by   sonic   engagements   with   environments   within   nature   –   estuaries,   rivers   and  the  sea.  She  has  rejected  the  category  of  'nature  poet'  to  distance  herself  from  the   Romantic   sense   of   those   that   express   the   continuity   of   humans   with   nature:   'if   the   phrase  must  be  used  then  a  nature  poet  is  someone  concerned  with  things  being  outside   each   another...   How   should   extrinsic   forms,   man   and   earth   for   example,   come   into   contact?'   Sleepwalk   on   the   Severn   exemplifies   this   poet's   interest   in   the   contrariness   of   nature.   It   speaks   of   ‘moodswung   creatures   |   That   have   settled   in   this   beautiful   |   Uncountry   of   an   Estuary’.   The   poem’s   emphasis   on   creaturely   affect   and   the   changeability   of   place   suggests   that   settlement   and   contact   in   the   Severn   estuary   (southwest   England)   is   highly   contingent   and   provisional   owing   to   the   influence   of   moon.   The   region's   subjects   exhibit   predominantly   unstable   identities   calibrated   in   accordance  to  fluid  cartographies  of  the  poem’s  eye  born  of  tidal  movements.     This   paper   explores   affective   registers   in   Oswald’s   second   book-­‐length   poem   and   it   seeks   to   outline   how   new   nature   writing   gives   rise   to   compelling   forms   that   explore  ideas  of  contact  and  continuum  within  a  context  of  change.       Tekla  Bude  (Cambridge  University)   Math,  Affect,  and  Mystical  Theology:  Desire  and  the  Language  of  God     Math,  Affect,  and  Mystical  Theology:  Desire  and  the  Language  of  God        Nicholas  of  Cusa’s   De   Docta   Ignorantia   –   On   Learned   Ignorance     (ca.   1440)   is   a   strange   theological   treatise.     Half   scholastic   theology,   half   apophatic   mysticism,   it   attempts   to   reconcile   humanity’s   relationship  with  God  in  mathematical  terms.    “All  theology  is  circular  and  is  based  upon   the   circle,”   Cusa   says   in   Book   I,   elsewhere   defining   God   as   an   unending   line   whose   curvature   is   straightness,   as   a   triangle   which   is   also   a   circle,   and   as   the   omnipresent   center  of  an  infinite  sphere.    In  other  words,  Cusa  imagines  God  as  the  limit  at  which  all   language  –  including  mathematical  proofs  –  break  down,  leaving  the  human  intellect  no   way  to  actually  speak  of  God:  “There  cannot  be  an  ascent  to  an  absolute  maximum,”  he   says,   and   “the   Divine   Nature   cannot   be   diminished   so   that   it   becomes   conracted   in   speech.”   Having   exhausted   reason,   De   Docta   Ignorantia   is   left   with…   what?       The   answer   is   affect.   Believers,   says   Cusa   in   the   third   and   final   book,   ascend   to   Christ   through   an   “ardent   desire”   that   drags   them   into   a   type   of   “ignorant”   and   supremely   simple   truth   which  is  not  revealed  through  language,  reason,  or  logic.    By  concluding  his  treatise  with  

 

21  

this   rarified   feeling   of   God,   Cusa   bookends   his   mathematial-­‐theological   writing   in   two   types   of   desire:     “A   certain   unpleasant   sensation   in   the   opening   of   the   stomach   precedes   the   appetite…   and   wondering   precedes   the   desire   for   knowing,”   De   docta   ignorantia   begins.    It  ends,  having  rejected  mathematical  language,  with  the  “inflaming  desire  of  the   joyous,   divine   embrace.”     Desire   thus   imbues   language   with   a   potency   beyond   its   semantic   or   rational   content:   affect   manifests   a   type   of   truth   that   both   precedes   and   goes  beyond  the  speakable.           This   paper   investigates   Nicholas   of   Cusa’s   ¬De   docta   ignorantia   in   the   context   of   other   theological,   mystical,   and   literary   texts   written   in   the   religiously   tumultuous   fourteenth   and   fifteenth   centuries.   How   is   the   language   of   proof   or   provability   used   –   and   rejected   –   by   the   orthodox   and   the   heretic   alike?     From   Lollard   sermons   to   Marguerite  Porete,  and  from  Dante’s  Primum  mobile  to  Chaucer’s  apotheosis  of  Troilus,   how  did  late  Medieval  writers  use  mathematical  language  to  reason  –  or  reason  away  –   the  affective  experience  of  the  divine?           Though   distant   from   us,   these   writers   ask   a   question   relevant   to   our   understanding   of   a   world   increasingly   laden   with   numerosity   and   scientific   discourse.     That  is:  what  is  the  affective  capacity  of  mathematical  language?           Justin  Clemens  (University  of  Melbourne)   Avatar  Degree  Zero:  An  Introduction     Although   ‘Avatar’   is   the   name   today   loosely   given   in   popular   culture   to   the   custom-­‐ altered  creatures  familiar  from  videogaming,  in  its  strictest  acceptation  an  avatar  is  any   interface  technique  that  serves  to  bind  computing  hardware  to  a  extra-­‐computer  body:   hence  even  the  minimal  mark  that  is  the  flashing  cursor  on  a  word  document  must  be   considered   an   avatar.   Whatever   focuses   attention,   signals   location,   and   enables   intentions  to  be  elaborated  within  a  screen  environment  is  an  avatar.  But  the  avatar  is   therefore  not  only  an  in-­‐world  representation  of  a  user  and  a  functional  operator,  but  a   user-­‐reprogrammer   too;   that   is,   a   pedagogical   practice   working   through   granular   modulations  of  affect.  This  triplet  of  focalisation-­‐localisation-­‐intentionalisation  (FLI)  is  a   key  operational  complex  that  can  take  on  a  truly  staggering  multiplicity  of  forms,  both   within   the   screen   environment   and   in   the   —   ahem   —   ‘real   world’   too.   This   paper   will   range  over  a  variety  of  well-­‐known  computer  games  in  order  to  sketch  out  some  current   limits  and  tendencies  of  this  FLI  complex  by  way  of  examples,  drawing  from  Computer   Chess,  BioShock,  Dragonage,  and  others.       Joshua  Comyn  (University  of  Melbourne)   “The   routine   was   coming   to   him   like   dictation”:   The   Automatism   of   Affect   in   the   work   of   William  S.  Burroughs     In  his  seminal  essay,  “The  Autonomy  of  Affect”,  Brian  Massumi  writes  that  ‘[m]uch  could   be   gained   by   integrating   the   dimension   of   intensity   [considered   as   affect]   into   cultural   theory’,   and   furthermore,   that   ‘the   stakes   are   the   new’.   William   S.   Burroughs’   cut-­‐up   trilogy   could   well   be   understood   in   these   same   terms,   as   being   addressed   to   the   possibility  of  the  (novelty)  of  freedom  in  a  situation  of  absolute  control,  and  the  cut-­‐up   technique  itself  as  precisely  that  ‘expression  event’  for  writing  that  in  Massumi’s  words   constitutes   ‘the   collapse   of   structured   distinction   into   intensity,   of   rules   into   paradox’.     The  extreme  literalism  of  Burroughs’  conception  of  the  word  and  image  virus  which  he   conceived  in  terms  of  an  embodied  parasitism,  a  conception  that  refuses  the  distinction   between   symbolic   representation   and   the   physical   world   it   represents,   has   strong   affinities  with  one  of  the  chief  ideas  informing  Massumi’s  own  work—that  ‘ideality  is  a   dimension  of  matter’.  

 

22  

  But   if   the   correspondences   between   Massumi’s   conception   of   affect   and   Burroughs’  cut-­‐up  are  valid,  then  the  conceptual  difficulties  faced  by  one  are  very  likely   shared   by   the   other   as   well.   In   particular,   if   the   cut-­‐up   disrupts   language   conceived   as   structure,  as  ‘the  place  where  nothing  ever  happens,  that  explanatory  heaven  in  which   all  eventual  permutations  are  prefigured  in  a  self-­‐consistent  set  of  invariant  generative   rules’,  and  if  this  structured  language  is  in  turn  a  control  virus  as  Burroughs  maintains  it   is,   and   if   there   is   no   essential   difference   between   representation   and   the   things   represented,  is  it  not  then  the  case  that  the  cut-­‐up  transports  us,  not  to  a  place  beyond   control,   but   rather   to   the   very   heart   of   control   itself—to   the   very   incipience   of   its   corporeal   parasitism?   And   if   the   correspondences   between   the   cut-­‐up   and   Massumi’s   theory  of  affect  are  correct,  is  it  not  the  case  that  Massumi’s  theory  of  affect  is  caught  in   the  same  dilemma—not  the  dissolution  of  structured  repetition,  but  rather  its  incipient   essence?  It  is  these  questions  that  my  paper  will  address  and  attempt  to  answer.           Sarah  Comyn  (University  of  Melbourne)   The  Woollen  Coat:  Adam  Smith’s  Sympathetic  Economy     Adam   Smith   has   long   been   anointed   the   father   of   modern   economics,   but   this   recognition  has  often  come  with  the  forced  division  of  Smith  as  economist  and  Smith  as   moral  philosopher.  This  ambiguous  binary,  and  the  marginalisation  of  his  moral  theory   by   the   economic   profession,   epitomises   the   sidelining   of   morality   from   the   field   of   economics.   The   tradition   of   reading   Smith’s   moral   philosophy   as   separate   from   his   economic   theory   highlights   the   tradition   of   disciplinary   dissection   that   has   worked   to   classify  economics  as  a  descriptive  science  rather  than  a  normative  social  theory.   In  his  seminal  text  of  ethical  philosophy,  The  Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments  (1759),   Smith   appeals,   however,   to   the   important   function   of   the   imagination,   suggesting   that   “How   selfish   soever   man   may   be   supposed,   there   are   evidently   some   principles   in   his   nature,   which   interest   him   in   the   fortune   of   others,   and   render   their   happiness   necessary   to   him,   though   he   derives   nothing   from   it   except   the   pleasure   of   seeing   it.”   Exploring   the   literary   nature   of   Smith’s   curious   economic   figures   this   paper   will   examine   the   role   the   empathic   imagination   performs   in   maintaining   an   economically   flourishing  civil  society.       Jen  Craig  (University  of  Western  Sydney)   Overlooking   the   Body:   The   Gagging   Reflex   in   Theoretical   Writings   about   Culture   and   Eating  Disorders     In  the  humanities,  discussion  in  the  last  several  decades  about  eating  disorders  since  the   work   of   Susan   Bordo,   Susie   Orbach   and   Kim   Chernin   has   tended   to   focus   on   how   our   body   image   and   self-­‐esteem   has   been   affected   by   visual   cultural   norms.   Debra   Ferreday,   however,   has   suggested   that   the   very   concern   to   examine   eating   disorders   in   a   way   which   relies   on   ‘the   spectacular   regime   of   looking’,   where   the   ‘tropes   of   abjection,   disgust  and  discipline’  are  in  fact  reproduced,  has  led  to  ‘an  impasse  in  the  field’  because,   ‘while   the   figure   of   the   anorexic   is   imagined   in   highly   affective   ways,   as   an   object   of   disgust,   the   emotions   experienced   by   anorexics   themselves   are   obscured’.   (2012)   In   a   recent  ethnographic  study,  Abject  Relations:  Everyday  Worlds  of  Anorexia,  (2010)  Megan   Warin  succeeds  in  pushing  the  discussion  beyond  this  ‘spectacular  regime’  towards  the   subjective   experience   of   the   anorectic.   Her   research   uncovers   the   astonishing   findings   that  anorexic  practices  serve  as  a  means  by  which  the  subject  is  able  to  keep  disgust  at  a   distance.   Warin   concludes   that   ‘[a]norexia   was   a   practice   that   removed   the   threat   of   abjection’.    

 

23  

The   implications   of   these   findings   about   the   practical   relationship   between   eating   disorders   and   abjection   for   discussions   about   literature   and   the   body,   however,   have  not  yet  been  sufficiently  probed.  Studies  that  draw  on  Warin’s  work,  including  her   own,  still  tend  to  be  caught  in  the  same  mimetic  hall  of  mirrors  as  before:  in  short  they   reproduce,   as   Ferreday   anticipates,   ‘the   spectacular   regime   of   looking’.   In   my   paper   I   would   like   to   draw   on   Elspeth   Probyn’s   evaluation   of   what   happens   to   disgust   in   the   politics  of  representation  to  demonstrate  that  the  very  turning  from  disgust  towards  a   decontamination   of   the   subject   through   a   process   of   casting   off   operates   in   key   writings   on  eating  disorders  and  culture  in  a  manner  comparable  to  that  which  Warin  observes   in   her   anorexic   participants,   and   that   this   seemingly   unconscious   but   sharp   affective   turning   away   –   analogous   to   a   gagging   reflex   –   is   one   of   the   principle   reasons   the   subjective  experience  of  disgust  in  the  eating  disordered  person  is  so  difficult  to  grasp   by  researchers,  even  when  the  researcher  acknowledges  a  personal  experience  of  such   matters.   In   essence   I   will   be   demonstrating   how,   in   the   discursive   context   of   eating   disorders   and   culture,   the   emotional   experience   of   the   eating   disordered   person   is   usually  overlooked.     In   my   paper   I   will   first   examine   the   marked   turning   away   and   casting   off   that   occurs   in   the   most   recent   work   of   an   influential   writer   whose   ostensible   focus   is   the   very   specific,   disgust-­‐filled   body   that   her   rhetorical   approach   ultimately   evades   –   the   same   disgust-­‐filled   body   whose   sudden   overlooking   in   a   pivotal   chapter   of   the   book   presents   a   serious   challenge   to   her   wider   argument:   Susie   Orbach’s   Bodies.   (2009)   I   will   then  discuss  how  this  persistent  casting  off  manoeuvre  operates  in  the  most  ambitious   attempt   to   date   to   discuss   literature   alongside   eating   disorders:   Leslie   Heywood’s   Dedication   to   Hunger:   The   Anorexic   Aesthetic   in   Modern   Culture,   (1996)   where   she   argues,  controversially,  that  ‘the  “great  books”’  of  modernism  have  ‘given  us’  anorexia.         Nicholas  Cowley  (La  Trobe  University)   Weirdly  Reading  Desire,  Frustration,  and  the  Pulp  Audience  in  H.P.  Lovecraft     Infamous  author  of  hateful  pulp  horrors,  H.P.  Lovecraft,  offered  up  the  above  as  one  of   the   strongest   defining   characteristics   of   what   he   dubbed   'Weird'   Fiction.   Readers   of   these   tales   are   often   forewarned   that   the   titillating   horrors   that   they   are   after   shall   never   be   known   to   them   (lest   the   reader,   like   the   characters   within,   lose   all   sense   of   self).   Yet,   we   may   consider   that   the   reader   who   continues   past   this   point   is   fascinated   in   precisely  this  narrative  aporia.  An  aporia  that  serves  the  affect  of  weird  fascination  that   Lovecraft  is  interested  in.  The  reader  of  the  pulp  magazine  opens  its  pages  in  search  of   delights,   knowing   full   well   that   their   desires   shall   be   stymied,   and,   one   may   argue,   enjoying  both  the  desire  and  its  arrest  all  at  once.  These  are  narratives  of  fascination  for   the   failure   of   the   possibility   of   narrative.   One   might   likewise   place   the   weird   writer’s   dense   network   of   intertextual   references   to   pseudobiblia   within   this   understanding   of   the   weird   as   a   genre   redolent   in   readerly   failure.   This   archive   of   false,   or   weird   texts   then   is   made   complicit   in   the   same   disruption   of   narrative   to   which   the   stories   stylistically   and   affectively   participate.   We   might   likewise   apply   here   what   the   author   China  Mieville  has  said  in  his  afterward  to  Jeff  and  Ann  Vandermeer's  2009  The  Weird:  A   Compendium   of   Strange   and   Dark   Stories   that   weird   fiction   of   the   kind   that   Lovecraft   wrote  “passes  from  us  into  pages,  infects  healthy  fiction”  (1115)  disrupting,  or  weirding   the  ways  in  which  we  read  all  future  texts.     Through  some  close  readings  of  Lovecraft's  early  tales  1921’s  'Facts  Concerning   the   Late   Arthur   Jermyn   and   His   Family'   and   1926’s   'He',   the   weird   reader,   it   would   seem   for  the  author,  is  positioned  as  one  who  knowingly  frustrates  their  own  readerly  desires.   This   frustration   is   made   manifest   in   both   in   the   plots   of   the   stories   focussed   on   aristocratic   men   undone   by   non-­‐white,   non-­‐male   sexuality,   and   in   their   thematic   and   affective   outcomes   of   strange   suspension.   Also,   this   frustration   is   seen   in   Lovecraft’s  

 

24  

generating   of   a   community   for   the   reader   that   exacerbates   these   pleasures   of   the   perverse.     Lovecraft   attempts   to   inaugurate   a   style,   but   also   the   community   for   whom   this  style  is  to  be  received.     This  paper  will  position  the  stylistic  concerns  of  Lovecraft's  weird  tales  alongside   a   material   history   of   the   magazines   in   which   they   appeared   and   the   readership   for   whom   they   were   to   appear.   Arguing   that   escape   from   time,   space,   and   additionally   the   constraints  of  consumer  capitalism  are  only  half  of  the  equation,  and  that  positioning  the   reader  of  the  pulp  magazine  as  one  who  knowingly  frustrates  their  own  readerly  desires,   is  the  other  half.         Ned  Curthoys  (University  of  Western  Australia)   Richard  Rorty’s  Contribution  to  Affect  Studies     The  contribution  of  the  late  pragmatist  philosopher  Richard  Rorty  to  the  affective  turn   in   literary   and   cultural   studies   is   perhaps   underestimated.   In   a   touchstone   essay   ‘Paranoid   Reading   and   Reparative   Reading’   (1994),   Eve   Sedgwick   called   for   a   less   ‘suspicious’  or  cognitively  motivated  relationship  to  the  literary  text.  At  around  the  same   time  Rorty  was  critiquing  professional  philosophers  in  the  analytic  tradition  for  thinking   they   could   write   a   veridical   or   denotative   philosophical   prose   devoid   of     ‘contingent   human   needs   and   interests’.   Drawing   on   the   psychological   sensitivity   of   his   pragmatic   forebear   William   James,   Rorty   maintained   that   the   history   of   philosophy   is   ‘to   a   great   extent   that   of   a   certain   clash   of   human   temperaments’,   in   which   the   philosopher   tries   to   ‘sink  the  fact’  of  her  or  his  temperament,  by  urging  ‘impersonal  reasons’  for  her  or  his   conclusions.   Rorty’s   historicist   argument   that   imaginative   literature   (a   broad   category   that   can   include   suasive   fiction,   comparative   literary   criticism,   and   post-­‐Nietzschean   philosophising),   is   more   effective   in   extending   human   solidarity   than   rational   argumentation   and   abstract   philosophical   principles   has   been   widely   discussed.   However   Rorty’s   wide   ranging   critique   of   the   legacy   of   Kantian   rationalism   in   ethical   theory,  and  his  support  for  the  revival  of  virtue  ethics,  in  part  a  project  inspired  by  the   feminist  and  literary  minded  concerns  of  thinkers  such  as  Iris  Murdoch,  Annette  Baier,   Alasdair   Murdoch,   and   Martha   Nussbaum,   is   still   underappreciated.   In   this   paper   I   draw   attention   to   Rorty’s   attempts   to   enrich   the   vocabularies   of   moral   and   political   deliberation   by   reviving   the   pre-­‐Kantian   tradition   of   affiliating   moral   judgment   with   aesthetic   sensitivity   to   the   world   as   a   theatrum   mundi,   the   world   as   a   stage   both   phenomenally   diverse   and   continually   recurring   with   a   repertoire   of   character   traits,   an   approach   prominent   in   the   ethical   theories   of   Adam   Smith   (the   ‘impartial   spectator’)   and   David   Hume   (the   ‘progress   of   sentiments’).   In   particular,   following   Amanda   Anderson,  I  argue  that  Rorty’s  pragmatism  is  profoundly  ‘characterological’,  envisaging   a   moral   world   based   on   the   wisdom   of   the   novel,   in   which   ‘moral   comparisons   and   judgments  would  be  made  with  the  help  of  proper  names’  rather  than  the  general  terms   and   general   principles   invoked   by   ‘ontotheological   or   ontico-­‐moral   treatises’   .I   apply   Rorty’s  utopian  desire  to  a  reading  of  the  Israeli/Palestinian  conflict,  arguing  that  recent   works   of   literature   such   as   Ludmilia   Ulitskaya’s   Daniel   Stein   Interpreter   (2006)   can   provide   us   with   various   affective   ways   of   seeing   that   transcend   the   polarizing,   identarian  rhetoric  that  tends  to  overwhelm  attempts  to  discern  prospects  for  peaceful   coexistence  and  new  forms  of  life  amidst  deep-­‐rooted  antagonisms.          

 

25  

Chris  Danta  (University  of  New  South  Wales)   Red  Peter,  Anthropotechnician:  Kafka  with  Sloterdijk     “The  true  path  is  along  a  rope,”  Kafka  writes  in  the  first  of  The  Zürau  Aphorisms,  “not  a   rope  suspended  way  up  in  the  air,  but  rather  only  just  over  the  ground.  It  seems  more   like   a   tripwire   than   a   tightrope.”   Displacement   of   perspective   is   one   of   Kafka’s   basic   rhetorical  techniques.  In  the  above  aphorism,  which  Peter  Sloterdijk  takes  as  a  starting   point  for  his  recent  reading  of  Kafka  in  You  Must  Change  Your  Life:  On  Anthropotechnics,   Kafka  first  makes  his  readers  look  up  at  a  lofty  tightrope  before  reorienting  their  gaze  to   an  earthy,  but  equally  dangerous  tripwire.  Sloterdijk  reads  Kafka’s  rope  as  a  metaphor   for   a   de-­‐spiritualized   form   of   acrobatism:   “Kafka’s   hermetic   note   can   …   be   assigned   to   the   complex   of   developments   that   I   call   the   de-­‐spiritualization   of   asceticisms.   It   shows   that   the   author   is   part   of   the   great   unscrewing   of   the   moderns   from   a   system   of   religiously  coded  vertical  tensions  that  had  been  in  force  for  millennia.”  Sloterdijk’s  chief   claim   in   You  Must  Change  Your  Life   is   that   modern   humans   have   separated   themselves   from   the   vertical   tensions   of   traditional   religious   systems   by   becoming   anthropotechnicians—or   beings   that   make   and   transform   themselves   through   de-­‐ spiritualized   forms   of   practice.   In   this   paper,   I   want   to   use   Kafka’s   1917   story   “A   Report   to  an  Academy”  to  test  Sloterdijk’s  claim  that  a  de-­‐spiritualized  form  of  asceticism—or   anthropotechnics—defines   the   human.   To   be   sure,   Red   Peter   becomes   human   in   Kafka’s   story   by   adopting   and   maintaining   certain   human   practices:   speaking,   drinking   schnapps,  spitting  and  shaking  hands.  But  to  read  the  story  in  this  way  is  to  miss  Kafka’s   rhetorical   technique   of   the   displacement   of   perspective.   Kafka   displaces   anthropotechnics  onto  an  ape  in  order  to  mock  the  idea.  Nowhere  is  this  mockery  more   apparent  than  when  Red  Peter  comments  sarcastically  on  two  human  trapeze  artists  he   has   seen   in   the   vaudeville   theatres:   “You   mockery   of   holy   Nature!   No   building   could   stand   up   to   apedom’s   laughter   at   such   a   sight.”   I   will   suggest   contra   Sloterdijk   that,   in   Kafka’s  fable,  anthropotechnics  is  in  fact  the  tightrope,  while  proximity  to  nature  is  the   tripwire.       Emily  Direen  (University  of  Melbourne)   Anxious  Vessels:  Unruly  Affect  and  the  Figure  of  the  Child  in  Post-­‐9/11  Fiction     The   fall   of   the   twin   towers   on   September   11,   2001   was   arguably   one   of   the   most   significant   moments   of   cultural   upheaval   in   the   Western   world   in   the   twenty-­‐first   century.   This   visceral   and   socially   shocking   event   represented   a   moment   of   culturally   unprecedented   social   crisis,   which   triggered   widespread   re-­‐evaluation   of   notions   of   catastrophe,  as  well  as  social  modes  of  being  in  its  aftermath.  9/11  continues  to  function   as  a  cultural  reference  point,  and  I  argue  is  a  crucial  moment  of  cultural  revivification.  In   light   of   this   paradigm   of   cultural   upheaval,   my   paper   addresses   attitudes   towards   appropriate  and  inappropriate  emotion  in  response  to  catastrophe,  as  these  constructs   are   navigated   through   post-­‐9/11   fiction.   This   paper   is   driven   by   the   argument   that   child-­‐centred   emotion—emotion   experienced   by,   and   directed   at,   the   child—plays   a   significant  role  in  the  regulation  of  socially  dictated  boundaries  regarding  ‘appropriate’   and  ‘inappropriate’  affect,  particularly  in  times  of  social  upheaval.     My   paper   will   focus   on   two   post-­‐9/11   texts   that   orbit   around   the   figure   of   the   child:   Cormac   McCarthy’s   The   Road   (2006)   and   Steven   Amsterdam’s   Things   We   Didn’t   See   Coming   (2010).   Both   narratives   deal   with   emotional   unrest   around   moments   of   catastrophe.  Using  disaster  theory,  particularly  Brian  Massumi’s  work  on  ‘the  ontology   of   threat’,   to   conceptualise   hypothetical   affective   responses,   I   will   consider   the   impact   of   catastrophe  on  normative  concepts  of  affective  response.  I  synthesise  this  study  with  the   ongoing   literary   discourse   generated   by   critics   such   as   Ellen   Pifer,   James   Kincaid   and   Lee   Edelman   concerning   the   role   the   figurative   child—the   child   as   a   potent   symbolic  

 

26  

figure   of   the   future—plays   in   the   projection   of   collective   social   anxieties:   whereby   the   fictional  child  acts  as  a  cipher  for  social  angst.     I   argue   that   both   novels   offer   compelling   portraits   of   what   I   term   ‘affective   revivification’:  the  renegotiation  of  emotional  boundaries,  and  the  re-­‐evaluation  of  social   dictum   concerning   ‘appropriate’   emotional   display.   Specifically,   this   paper   will   focus   attention  on  each  novel’s  representation  of  ‘the  look’  and  ‘the  touch’  as  a  means  of  both   regulating  and  negotiating  unruly  affect.         R.  Benedito  Ferrao  (La  Trobe  University)   Whiteness  is  a  Feeling:  Indo-­‐Portuguese  Colonization  and  the  Affective  Archive  of  Skin     This  paper’s  title  refers  to  Margaret  Mascarenhas’  novel  Skin  (2001),  which  takes  as  its   subject  the  dermal  histories  of  the  female  offspring  of  a  slave-­‐owning  Goan  family  and  of   a   line   of   women,   once   enslaved,   and   descended   from   a   seventeenth   century   Angolan   prophetess.  With  this  novel  as  its  backdrop,  my  proposed  paper  will  seek  to  argue  that   Indo-­‐Portuguese  colonization,  both,  remade  Portuguese  identity  in  the  colonial  context   and,   thereby,   also   recast   native   racialization   in   the   same   milieu   by   affectively   aligning   somatic   whiteness   with   modernity.   Conversely,   despite   this   turn,   and   as   the   novel   evidences,  what  lies  below  the  skin  –  that  bodily  archive  of  what  conjoins  the  histories   of  slaves  and  slave-­‐owners  –  constantly  arises  as  a  disruptive  counter-­‐history.   In  illustrating  the  Inquisition  in  Goa  as  a  method  through  which  the  de  Miranda   Floreses,   as   colonial   subjects,   could   operate   as   agents   of   colonization   themselves   because   of   the   presence   of   enslaved   black   female   bodies,   Skin   constitutes   the   Indian   Ocean  as  a  theatre  of  racialized  biopower  that  shaped  the  modern  identities  of  colonizer   and   colonized.   Ann   Stoler’s   Race   and   the   Education   of   Desire   (1995)   dwells   on   the   “[i]mperial   discourses   that   divided   colonizer   from   colonized,   metropolitan   observers   from   colonial   agents,   and   bourgeois   colonizers   from   their   subaltern   compatriots   [...],”   which   “in   turn   defined   the   hidden   fault   lines   –   both   fixed   and   fluid   –   along   which   gendered   assessments   of   class   and   racial   membership   were   drawn.”   Within   a   multicultural  setting  like  colonial  Goa,  as  Mascarenhas’  novel  strives  to  represent  it,  not   only   was   there   the   kind   of   racialized   identificatory   reflexivity   between   the   metropole   and  the  colony  which  Stoler’s  work  makes  conspicuous,  but  a  doubling  of  authoritarian   power.   It   allowed   the   “subaltern   compatriot”   to   stand   in   for   the   colonial   patriarch,   by   mirroring   and   reproducing   the   gendered   and   classed   distinctions   along   raced   “fault   lines”   within   the   colony.   As   I   will   demonstrate,   this   was   one   of   the   methods   through   which   race   and   affective   power   coalesced.   Even   as   this   indicates   how   the   colonial   hierarchy  was  racialized  through  a  perverse  multiculturalism,  it  also  forms  the  basis  of   explaining   how   the   Portuguese,   once   ruled   by   ‘heathen’   Moors,   recast   their   own   racialization  in  colonial  settings.   By  conjoining  affectivity,  race,  and  history,  this  paper  will  extend  usual  readings   of   blackness   and   slavery   by   highlighting   an   arena   beyond,   but   still   connected   to,   the   Atlantic  world.  In  The  Black  Atlantic  (1993),  Paul  Gilroy  describes  that  spatiotemporality   as   a   highly   fraught   affective   space   within   which   modernity   emerged,   “[marking]   out   blacks   as   the   first   truly   modern   people,   handling   in   the   nineteenth   century   dilemmas   and   difficulties   which   would   only   become   the   substance   of   everyday   life   in   Europe   a   century  later.”  On  the  other  hand,  by  focusing  on  Portuguese  colonization,  I  also  aim  to   underscore   histories,   literatures,   and   racializations,   both   affective   and   bodily   ones,   which   should   be   differentiated   from   Anglo-­‐centric   post/colonial   perspectives,   so   as   to   centre  affective  bio-­‐power  and  the  role  played  by  gender  and  sexuality  in  colluding  with   and  subverting  such  design.          

 

27  

Niklas  Fischer  (University  of  Sydney)   Narrative,   Empathy,   and   the   Limits   of   Understanding:   John   Steinbeck’s   The   Grapes   of   Wrath  and  J.M.  Coetzee’s  Life  and  Times  of  Michael  K     The   phrase   “affective   turn”   implies   a   history   of   affective   neglect.   It   points   to   a   time   in   which   affect   and   literature   were   not   deemed   suitable   subject   matter   for   literary   criticism.   While   affect   has   been   redeemed   as   a   subject   fit   for   literary   criticism,   one   particular   form   of   affective   reading   practice   –   empathic   reading   –   has   attracted   little   critical   attention   outside   of   the   scholarship   of   Martha   Nussbaum   and   Suzanne   Keen   which   focuses   on   the   influence   empathic   reading   has   on   moral   development.   This   approach   neglects   the   long-­‐standing   tradition   of   thinking   of   empathy   as   a   form   of   verstehen   or   understanding   in   nineteenth-­‐century   German   philosophy   as   found   in   the   work   of   Friedrich   Schleiermacher   and   Wilhelm   Dilthey.   This   tradition   has   fallen   out   of   scholarly   grace   due   to   the   work   of   Hans-­‐Georg   Gadamer,   whose   Truth   and   Method   (1960)   did   for   empathy   as   a   hermeneutical   concept   what   Wimsatt   and   Beardsley’s   “The   Affective   Fallacy”   (1949)   did   for   affect   in   literary   criticism.   The   radicalization   of   aesthetic   thought   in   the   work   of   Gadamer   does   away   with   the   subject-­‐object   relationship   which   underlies   empathic   models   of   intersubjectivity   and   consequently   discredits   empathy   as   a   form   of   understanding.   Recent   accounts   in   the   philosophy   of   mind   sceptical   of   these   claims   have   revived   empathy   as   a   possible   form   of   understanding  and  this  paper  reconceptualises  empathy  as  a  simulation-­‐based  form  of   understanding  as  proposed  by  Karsten  Stueber  which  draws  on  contextual  or  narrative   knowledge.   This  concept  of  empathy  will  be  applied  to  a  reading  of  two  structurally  similar,   but   stylistically   strongly   divergent   texts:   John   Steinbeck’s   The   Grapes   of   Wrath   (1939)   and   J.M.   Coetzee’s   The   Life   and   Times   of   Michael   K   (1983).   Both   texts   address   the   question   how   a   narrative   makes   the   inner   or   mental   life   of   its   characters   accessible   to   the  reader.  The  paper  will  argue  that  Steinbeck’s  narrator  attempts  to  render  the  lives  of   the   Joads   intimately   present   to   the   reader   by   making   their   thoughts,   motivations,   and   actions   understandable   as   a   product   of   the   historical   context   in   which   their   story   unfolds.  Their  thoughts  and  emotions  therefore  becomes  available  for  simulation-­‐based   understanding.   The   particular   narrative   form   of   The  Grapes  of  Wrath,   which   alternates   between  chapters  devoted  to  the  Joads  and  intercalary  chapters  and  which  situates  their   story  within  a  larger  socio-­‐historical  context,  functions  as  a  framework  within  which  the   story   of   the   Joads   becomes   accessible   to   the   reader   on   both   an   intellectual   and   emotional   level.   In   contrast,   the   psychology   of   the   protagonist   in   Life   and   Times   of   Michael  K  and  the  text’s  narrative  structure  challenge  the  assumption  that  the  inner  life   of   such   a   character   can   be   laid   open   to   a   reader.   Situated   in   a   historical   narrative   of   civil   war,  Coetzee’s  characters  find  themselves  in  a  constant  struggle  to  make  sense  of  their   situation  without  success,  which  asks  the  question  to  which  degree  a  narrative  can  help   or   prevent   understanding.   Taken   together,   Steinbeck   and   Coetzee’s   texts   give   valuable   insights   into   how   the   understanding   in   fictional   texts   work,   how   this   form   of   understanding  can  be  thought  of  as  empathic,  and  what  its  limitations  are.       Jacinthe  Flore  (La  Trobe  University)   Affects  of  the  Perverse  Imagination     In   the   final   decades   of   the   nineteenth   century,   the   Viennese   forensic   psychiatrist,   Richard   von   Krafft-­‐Ebing   (1840-­‐1902),   published   his   Magnum   Opus,   Psychopathia   Sexualis.   This   textbook,   central   to   the   burgeoning   scientia   sexualis   at   the   fin-­‐de-­‐siècle,   presented   case   notes   of   patients   in   the   form   of   narratives.     Many   of   the   cases   in   the   textbook  follow  a  particular  narrative;  patients  give  an  account  of  their  life  through  the   practice   of   confession   and   the   physician   publishes   the   patients’   history   from  

 

28  

prepubescence  to  adulthood,  alongside  his  clinical  judgement.  However  fragmented  the   patient’s   words   were   during   the   clinical   encounter,   they   were   subsequently   arranged,   edited   and   distributed   in   the   form   of   a   coherent,   structured   story.   The   sexology   of   Krafft-­‐Ebing,  hence,  was  historically  a  literary  practice.           This   paper   examines   the   uses   of   literature   in   Psychopathia   Sexualis   and   the   medicalisation   of   sexuality.   I   suggest   in   particular   that   literature   was   used   by   Krafft-­‐ Ebing  to  account  for  pathologies  of  sexual  appetite,  that  is,  sexual  excess  and  sexual  lack.   Patients   with   excessive   sexual   affects–classified   as   hyperaesthesia   sexualis–were   individuals   enslaved   by   literature   and   the   associated   overstimulation   of   their   imagination.  Yet  literature  was  also  an  important  feature  for  patients  whose  erotic  life   was  barren.  Individuals  who  lacked  affective  attachment  had,  in  Krafft-­‐Ebing’s  words,  a   blank   leaf   in   their   lives.   Fiction   had   no   influence   on   them,   and   their   imaginations   remained   unaffected.   The   patient   who   read   but   whose   affective   response   remained   lacking   was   pathologised   precisely   because   there   was   no   stimulation.   In   nineteenth   century  sexology,  as  evident  in  the  writings  of  Krafft-­‐Ebing,  literature  was  pathologised   as   either   inducing   excessive   passions   in   the   patient   or   as   lacking,   as   the   patient’s   eroticism  fails  to  flourish,  leading  to  the  pronouncement  of  pathology.           This   paper   also   suggests   that   an   examination   of   Psychopathia   Sexualis   reveals   that   while   Krafft-­‐Ebing   deplored   his   patients’   dependence   on   literature,   he   also   harnessed   the   literary   form   to   diagnose   pathologies   and   solidify   clinical   judgement.   In   doing   so,   the   physician’s   own   affective   and   literary   labour   become   implicated   in   the   description   of   disease.   Krafft-­‐Ebing   practiced   medicine   through   the   case   study,   yet   the   way   he   practiced   medicine   was   excessive   in   itself   by   borrowing   from   fiction   to   strengthen   his   scientia   sexualis.   Manifesting   an   intimate   connection   between   the   medicalisation   of   sexuality   and   the   written   word,   literature   structured   Krafft-­‐Ebing’s   science;   it   was   central   to   his   theoretical   framework.   Literature   was   both   an   object   of   pathology,   whereby   the   patient   was   overstimulated   or   not   affected   at   all,   and   also   a   tool   inextricable  from  the  medicalization  of  sexual  excess  and  lack.         Tom  Ford  (University  of  Melbourne)   Can  Literature  Feel  Green?     Virginia   Woolf’s   answer   in   Orlando   appears   to   be:   no.   Orlando,   writing   a   poem   on   nature,   looks   out   his   window   for   inspiration:   “After   that,   of   course,   he   could   write   no   more.  Green  in  nature  is  one  thing,  green  in  literature  another.  Nature  and  letters  seem   to   have   a   natural   antipathy;   bring   them   together   and   they   tear   each   other   to   pieces.”   Green,  this  passage  suggests,  can  be  represented  only  negatively.  Letters  are  not  natural,   and   the   attempt   to   make   them   so—to   devise   a   literary   language   of   nature—is   self-­‐ defeating.  Woolf  here  passes  a  grim  judgement  on  any  attempted  literary  mediation  of   the  affective  powers  of  the  natural  world.         Or   maybe   not.   Whatever   else   Orlando   may   be,   it   is   also   a   history   of   English   literature,   and   a   history   which,   seen   from   our   present   standpoint,   is   strikingly   eco-­‐ critical.   In   Orlando,   climate   change   changes   cultural   history;   atmospheric   shifts   alter   the   structure  of  human  sense-­‐perception.  The  enduring  literary  problem  faced  by  Orlando  is   precisely   that   of   the   literary   feeling   for   nature.   And   even   this   sentence,   so   apparently   unequivocal,   is   troubled.   The   antipathy   between   letters   and   nature   is   said   here   to   be   “natural.”   Nature   gets   doubled,   so   that   if   nature   has   natural   feelings,   so   also,   it   would   seem,   do   letters.         Woolf’s   strong   distinction   between   green   in   nature   and   in   letters   recalls   Kant’s   distinction   early   in   the   Critique   of   Judgement   between   green   as   an   objective   sensation—the   colour   of   the   meadow   we   perceive—and   the   subjective   pleasure  that  accompanies  this  sensation.  For  Kant,  this  subjective  pleasure  is  a  feeling   that   is   non-­‐conceptual,   non-­‐representational,   even   non-­‐cognitive.   In   this,   the   feeling   of   green  is  like  an  artwork  for  Kant:  like  art,  it  brings  no  knowledge,  teaching  us  nothing.  

 

29  

But   unlike   the   equally   non-­‐conceptual   pleasures   of   pure   aesthetic   judgement,   which   are   identifiable  for  Kant  because  they  are  entirely  disinterested,  the  feeling  of  green  brings   with  it  a  desire  for  its  object.  When  we  feel  green,  that  is,  we  want  that  green  thing—the   meadow,  the  laurel  bush,  nature—to  continue  in  existence.  And  this  is  not  the  case,  for   Kant,  with  artworks.             Because  the  feeling  of  green  is  always  “interested”  in  this  way,  it  is,  for  Kant,  only   a  “charm,”  rather  than  being  beautiful.  It  exhibits  only  a  compromised,  sensory  appeal.   But   as   with   Woolf,   this   absolute   distinction   between   beauty   and   the   feeling   of   green,   between  disinterested  aesthetic  pleasure  and  affective  interest,  is  not  as  clear-­‐cut  as  it   first   appeared.   Maybe   green   is   indeed   a   pure   beauty,   Kant   later   suggests.   Maybe   when   we  see  green  we  see  it  not  only  as  a  colour  but  also  as  a  reflective  atmospheric  structure.   Maybe,   that   is,   with   green   we   somehow   register   the   atmospheric   mediation   of   our   perception,   sensing   along   with   the   colour   the   formal   texturing   of   light   and   air   through   which   that   colour   is   conveyed   to   us.     In   that   case,   Kant   concludes,   nature   does   indeed   speak  to  us  in  a  comprehensible  language  of  its  own.  And  in  that  language,  the  meaning   of  green  is  not  antipathy  but  friendliness.         Robbie  Fordyce    (University  of  Melbourne)   Positioning  the  Videogame  Avatar:  Perspective,  Affect,  Investment     The   avatar,   as   the   visual   link   between   the   player   of   a   videogame   and   their   agency   in   the   game  world,  is  an  important  element  in  the  affective  assemblage  of  gaming.  This  paper   provides   a   schematic   understanding   of   the   different   relationships   between   player   and   avatar   that   videogames   afford.   Studies   in   Human-­‐Computer   Interaction   have   analysed   the  role  of  avatars  in  player  identification,  realism,  and  enjoyment.  Yet,  while  terms  such   as  “first  person”  and  “third  person”  -­‐-­‐  referring  to  a  perspective  respectively  “inside”  and   “outside”  the  avatar  -­‐-­‐  are  common  in  the  popular  press,  a  comprehensive  analysis  of  the   positioning   of   the   avatar   has   yet   to   be   undertaken.   This   paper   maps   the   player   perspectives   of   several   video   games   against   the   models   of   agency   that   they   employ.   These   range   from   invisible,   omnipotent   perspectives   in   “god   simulation”   games   like   Sim   City  to  blinkered  exploration  in  first-­‐person  shooters  like  Half  Life.  Three  key  points  are   proposed   for   the   relationship   between   the   player   and   the   avatar.   Firstly,   the   avatar   appears  a  means  of  solving  a  technical  problem:  suturing  the  player  into  the  world  of  the   game.   Secondly,   the   positioning   of   the   avatar   is   an   index   of   the   agency   of   the   player’s   power.   Thirdly,   the   avatar   is   analysed   as   a   site   of   investment   for   players:   emotionally   and  increasingly  economically.       Anna  Gibbs  (University  of  Western  Sydney)   Charged  Feeling:  The  Affective  Current  in  Electronic  Literature     Charged  Feeling:  the  affective  current  in  electronic  literature    Focusing  in  particular  on   Australian   artist/writer   Grant   Stevens’   video   text   works,   this   paper   examines   the   particular   forms   of   affective   transmission   in   electronic   literature,   with   its   distinctive   modes  of  what  N  Katherine  Hayles  (2006)  terms  ‘eventalization’.  While  Hayles  tends  to   underestimate  the  continuities  between  print-­‐based  text  and  digital  media  writing  given   that   all   literary   reading   is   performance   for   which   text   functions   as   score,   provoking   ‘probabilistic,   not   mechanistic   reading’   and   ‘producing   the   text   ‘as   an   event’   (Drucker,   2011),   digital   media   works   nevertheless   arguably   produce   a   distinctive   experience   of   both  text  and  reading.  Drawing  on  work  done  in  collaboration  with  Maria  Angel  in  the   context  of  an  ARC-­‐funded  project  (‘Creative  Nation:  writer  and  writing  in  the  new  media   culture’,   2011-­‐13),   which   examines   the   way   digital   media   works   redistribute   agency   computer   and   human,   by   way   of   the   work   of   code   which   is   not   immediately   visible   or  

 

30  

accessible   to   the   human   participants   in   them,   producing   a   machinic   agency   into   which   human  capacities  can  be  conscripted  to  nonhuman  ends,  this  paper  explores  the  work  of   affect   in   that   kind   of   arrangement.     On   the   one   hand,   against   writers   like   Kittler   and   Kramer,  who  regard  the  interface  of  the  data-­‐processing  system  as  ‘eyewash’,  it  could  be   argued  that  the  interface  (in  this  case  e-­‐poetry)  represents,  rather,  the  affective  excess   produced  by  the  need  for  seduction  –  the  eye  in  tail  of  the  of  the  peacock,  in  Darwinian   terms   –   that   conscripts   human   participation   into   new   forms   of   creation.   On   the   other   hand,   such   conscription   has   implications   both   for   subjectivity   and   what   counts   as   reading  and  thought,  as  Richard  Forman  points  out,  describing  the  rise  of  a  new  self  that   needs  to  contain  less  and  less  of  an  inner  repertory  of  dense  cultural  inheritance  –  as  we   all   become   ‘pancake   people’   –   spread   wide   and   thin   as   we   connect   with   that   vast   network  of  information  accessed  by  the  mere  touch  of  a  button.”  What  then  becomes  of   literary  subjectivity,  with  its  affectively  invested  absorption,  as  a  site  for  the  production   of   the   affective   doubling   that   ‘gives   the   body’s   movements   a   kind   of   depth   that   stays   with  it  across  all  its  transitions  –  accumulating  in  memory,  in  habit,  in  reflex,  in  desire,  in   tendency’   and   produces   emotion   ‘as   the   way   the   depth   of   that   ongoing   experience   registers   personally   at   a   given   moment’   (Massumi   2003)?     Through   close   analysis   of   Grant  Stevens’  video  texts,  this  paper  inquires  into  the  way  the  immersive  environment   of   video   installation   might   modulate   both   the   becoming-­‐image   of   text   and   the   disorganising  tendencies  of  digital  distraction.           Jessica  Gildersleeve  (University  of  Southern  Queensland)   The  Best  of  All  Possible  Worlds?:  Cultures  of  Emotion  in  Christos  Tsiolkas's   The   Slap   and   Barracuda     In   his   foreword   to   a   new   edition   of   Robin   Boyd’s   The   Australian   Ugliness,   Christos   Tsiolkas   makes   a   powerful   statement:   ‘No,’   he   says,   ‘this   isn’t   the   best   of   all   possible   worlds.   We   can,   we   must,   do   much   better’   (xiv).   Tsiolkas’s   words   may   in   part   explain   why   contemporary   Australian   literature   has   experienced   an   affective   turn   in   recent   years.  Appearing  at  once  as  a  consequence  of,  and  in  direct  contrast  to,  the  discourse  of   mateship,  community  and  pride  instilled  by  a  reliance  on  the  ‘Anzac  spirit,’  more   recent   cultural   and   literary   discourses   in   Australia   describe   disruption,   shame,   humiliation,   anger,  and  accompanying  violence.         This   paper   forms   part   of   a   project   (a   book   in   progress,   Christos   Tsiolkas:   The   Utopic   Vision)   which   aims   to   develop   wider   discussion   of   the   nature   of   ethics   and   responsibility   in   literature   through   an   analysis   of   the   ways   in   which   Tsiolkas’s   work   takes   negative   emotions,   such   as   fear,   shame   and   grief,   and   puts   them   to   use   as   techniques   of   cultural   influence   and   analysis.   With   reference   to   Tsiolkas’s   two   most   recent  novels,  The  Slap  (2008)  and  Barracuda  (2013),  I  argue  that  Tsiolkas  engages  with   such   emotions   in   order   to   turn   them   towards   what   I   term   his   ‘utopic   vision’   for   Australia.   An   Australia   bound   by   trauma   and   violence   is   certainly   not   an   idealised   or   romanticised  ‘lucky  country’,  Tsiolkas’s  work  points  out,  but  neither  is  it  ethically  right   for   us   to   simply   observe   or   critique   such   social   problems.   Tsiolkas’s   writing   suggests   that  literature  can  play  a  key  role  in  shaping  responsible  behaviour  and  a  better  future   for  Australia.             The  Slap  explodes  the  myth  of  cultural  harmony  and  exposes  the  way  in  which   the  shame  game  works  to  exclude  and  divide,  undermining  the  narrative  of  a  unified  and   diverse  Australian  community.  Rather  than  wallowing  in  postcolonial  guilt,  as  so  many   of   his   characters   do,   by   showing   how   shame   circulates   socially   and   culturally   Tsiolkas   analyses   the   usefulness   of   shame   in   twenty-­‐first-­‐century   Australia.   Barracuda   emerges   from  and  into  an  Australia  marked  by  political  turmoil  and  racial  debates,  particularly  to   do   with   immigration   and   asylum   seekers.   Tsiolkas   himself   is   a   regular   contributor   to   such  discussions.  In  his  simultaneous  vision  of  what  the  nation  is  doing  wrong,  and  yet  

 

31  

what   it   could   be,   in   Barracuda   Tsiolkas’s   central   concern   is   with   what   it   means   to   be   ‘good’.   Barracuda   constructs   an   ethical   framework   which   intersects   with   its   affective   concern   with   anger   and   continues   The   Slap’s   interest   in   discourses   of   shame.   Danny   Kelly’s   violence   and   anger   figure   a   continuation   of   the   marginalised   character   of   Gary   in   The  Slap,  as  well  as  the  careless  violence  of  Ari  in  Loaded  and  the  savage,  bloodthirsty   aggression   of   Isaac   in   Dead   Europe.   The   paper   will   examine   where   Danny   differs   from   his   literary   precursors   –   his   willingness   to   atone   –   and   how   we   might   read   this   as   a   cultural  guideline  for  contemporary  Australia.       R.  A.  Goodrich  (Centre  for  the  History  of  Emotions,  University  of  Melbourne)     Wollstonecraft,  Hartley,  and  Hume:  Assaying  the  Passions     This   paper   expressly   juxtaposes   three   eighteenth-­‐century   British   writers,   Mary   Wollstonecraft,  David  Hartley,  and  David  Hume.  The  over-­‐arching  question  raised  is:  To   what   extent   can   the   psychological   portrayal   of   the   central   protagonist   of   Wollstonecraft’s   Mary:   A   Fiction   (1788)   be   analysed   in   terms   of   the   distinctive   contributions  of  Hartley  and  Hume  to  debates  about  the  nature  of  the  passions?       There   is   no   denying   that   more   popular   current   accounts   of   Wollstonecraft   (1788)  can  be  read  thematically  as  a  feminist  polemic  or  inter-­‐textually  especially  with   Jean-­‐Jacques   Rousseau’s   Julie   (1761)   and   Émile   (1762),   teleologically   as   an   Enlightenment   precursor   of   Romantic   literary   developments   or   generically   as   fictionalised   autobiography.   Whilst   such   relatively   familiar   readings   may   account   for   passions   or   emotions   by   default,   this   paper,   however,   will   examine   the   work   specifically   for   how   it   portrays   the   world   of   pleasurable   and   painful   passions   that   beset   “the   Heroine  of  this  Fiction.”    At  the  same  time,  the  passions  or  emotions  portrayed  will  be   overtly  conceptualised  by  way  of  two  dominant  intellectuals  of  the  period,  occasionally   mentioned  in  passing  but  never  pursued  by  scholars  of  Wollstonecraft:  the  philosopher   and  physician  Hartley  and  the  philosopher  and  essayist  Hume.  Amongst  their  distinctive   contentions   are   two   of   particular   relevance.   Hartley,   in   his   Various  Consequences   (1746)   and   its   partial   re-­‐incorporation   in   Part   One   of   his   magnum   opus   Observations   on   Man   (1749),  postulates  that  the  physio-­‐psychological  development  of  an  individual  emerges   from   a   series   of   “transferences”   of   emotion   during   the   transformative   process   of   the   self   and   its   painful   and   pleasurable   experiences.   Hume,   in   his   second   Dissertation   Of   the   Passions   (1757),   a   radically   reduced   re-­‐configuration   of   Book   Three   of   Treatise   on   Human  Nature  (1739),  assumes  the  provocative  stance  that  reason  not  only  is  but  also   ought  to  be  “the  slave  of  passion,”  thereby  leading  to  the  view  that  emotions  operate  at   the  centre  of  character  and  agency  as  depicted  in  the  case  of  conflicting  emotions  in  his   third  Dissertation  Of  Tragedy  (1757).   For   us   to   enter   eighteenth-­‐century   enquiries   into   the   nature   of   emotions   or   passions  and  to  assess  how  these  might  be  manifested  in  prose  fiction  is  to  contextualise   them   in   terms   of   at   least   four   key   factors.   Firstly,   for   this   or   any   other   period,   an   elaboration  of  what  defines  the  mind  tends  to  involve  a  re-­‐definition  of  human  emotions   and,  with  it,  a  re-­‐appraisal  of  emotional  norms  typically  regarded  as  natural  or  ordered   as  distinct  from  those  construed  as  unnatural  or  disordered.  Secondly,  there  is  a  gradual   uncoupling   of   assessments   of   emotions—be   they   categorised   as   affections   or   feelings,   sentiments   or   passions—from   criteria   solely   derived   from   religious   faith   or   doctrine.   Thirdly,   seminal   debates   were   not   confined   to   an   educated   or   social   elite;   rather,   such   debates  were  disseminated  through  school  curricula  and  advisory  manuals  as  much  as   through   medical   texts   and   literary   works.   Fourthly,   and   contrary   to   our   practice   some   eight   or   nine   generations   later,   the   psychological,   physiological,   and   philosophical   dimensions  of  the  debate  in  Britain  often  overlapped.        

 

32  

Fiona  Gregory  (Monash  University)   Feelings  on  Display:  Representations  of  the  Actress  and  Mental  Illness     In   Joan   Didion’s   novel,   Play   It   as   It   Lays   (1970),   an   actress’s   mental   disintegration   is   conveyed  through  the  character’s  seeming  lack  of  affect,  distancing  both  the  character’s   friends  and  acquaintances,  and  the  reader.  The  denial  of  feeling  in  Didion’s  portrait  is  a   striking  depiction  of  mental  illness,  particularly  that  of  the  performing  woman,  a  figure   more   typically   represented   through   images   of   emotional   excess.   Some   one   hundred   years   earlier,   Anna   Cora   Mowatt   had   signalled   the   mental   breakdown   of   an   actress   in   her   novella   Mimic   Life   (1856)   through   the   character’s   inability   to   control   her   feelings,   especially   on   stage.   When   Stella   makes   her   curtain   call,   Mowatt   writes,   her   “look…was   almost   ghastly.   Her   lips   had   not   yet   been   taught   to   assume   the   forced   professional   smile   with   which   the   suffering   actress   veils   her   real   emotions.”   This   paper   examines   the   place   of  feeling  in  representations  of  the  actress  and  mental  illness,  reading  the  above  fictional   works   by   Didion   and   Mowatt   alongside   memoirs   by   real-­‐life   actresses   such   as   Diana   Barrymore   (Too   Much,   Too   Soon,   1957)   and   Frances   Farmer   (Will   There   Really   Be   a   Morning,   1973).   It   considers   the   status   of   the   actress   as   a   woman   authorised   to   ‘feel   emotion   publically’   on   stage   and   screen,   and   the   tension   that   emerges   when   private   feelings  overwhelm  the  professional  self.         Helen  Groth  (University  of  New  South  Wales)   Automated  Affects:  Experimental  Late  Victorian  Narrative  Forms     This   paper   examines   the   early   English   film-­‐maker   &   theorist,   Cecil   Hepworth’s   experimental   approach   to   cinematic   affect   and   narrative   sequence.     Known   for   his   adaptations   of   Dickens,   Carroll   and   others,   Hepworth’s   practice   was   not   limited   to   literary   adaptation.     He   was   also   keenly   interested   in   why   audiences   felt   such   ‘intense   enthusiasm’   for   the   ‘short,   crude   films’   that   he   regularly   exhibited.     In   his   accounts   of   these   performances   he   tells   of   exhibiting   films   back   the   front   and   upside   down   to   gauge   audience   responses   and   of   arguing   with   audience   members   who   responded   in   unruly   ways  to  his  chaotic  assemblages  of  still  and  moving  images.    This  paper  will  argue  that   this  practice  exemplifies  Hepworth’s  interest  in  forging  a  cinematic  language  that  moved   beyond  the  ‘moving  images’  provided  by  literary  sources  on  which  he  depended  to  make   his   living.     It   is   possible   to   trace   in   Hepworth’s   interest   in   cinematic   assemblage   and   actuality   something   akin   to   what   Virginia   Woolf   so   evocatively   describes   in   her   observations  on  cinema:  “…  if  a  shadow  at  a  certain  moment  can  suggest  so  much  more   than  the  actual  gestures  and  words  of  men  and  women  in  a  state  of  fear,  it  seems  plain   that  the  cinema  has  within  its  grasp  innumerable  symbols  for  emotions  that  have  so  far   failed  to  find  expression.”                 Katie  Hansord  (Deakin  University)   Emotion  and  Critical  Distance  in  Emily  Manning’s  The  Balance  of  Pain     Imaginative   compassion   for   others   was   considered   to   be   particular   to   women’s   intelligence   in   the   nineteenth   century,   as   it   was   understood   to   be   intuitive   rather   than   reasoned.   Emily   Manning’s   title   poem   ‘The   Balance   of   Pain’   represents   maternal   love   and   womanhood   as   powerful   elements   which   recur   throughout   The  Balance  of  Pain,  and   Other   Poems,  evoking  ‘The  Cult  of  True  Womanhood’  and  associated  feminised  religion.   Manning  brings  questions  of  women’s  compassion  into  the  realm  of  the  supernatural  in   ‘The  Balance  of  Pain,’  through  depictions  of  Agatha  as  a  ‘seer’.  The  poem,  structured  as  a   theatrical   dialogue   between   Agatha   and   Theodore,   presents   a   feminised   alternative   to   the   emerging   ‘political   morality’   of   rationalism.   This   paper   will   examine   some   of   the  

 

33  

ways   in   which   gendered   conceptions   of   emotion   and   reason   are   challenged   and   rebalanced  in  Manning’s  poem,  as  well  as  the  broader  significance  of  gender,  feeling  and   detachment   to   Victorian   cultural   debates   and   female   poetic   tradition.   As   Amanda   Anderson  has  argued,  “Valorised  forms  of  detachment  within  Victorian  culture  are  often   allotted   to   those   empowered   by   virtue   of   their   gender,   their   race,   their   nationality,   or   their   social   position”   (5).     Manning   seems   careful   not   to   posit   Agatha   as   the   victor   in   the   debate   through   the   power   of   mental   reasoning,   offering   up   ‘feminine’   alternatives;   Agatha   is   capable   of   ‘seeing’   into   the   minds   of   others,   and   intuits   rather   than   argues.   However,  the  success  of  Agatha’s  persuasion  is  significant,  as  it  is  a  victory  of  a  feminine   discourse   of   feeling   and   spiritualism   over   a   masculine   and   materialist   area   of   discourse.   A  reading  of  ‘The  Balance  of  Pain’  as  a  poem  concerned  with  the  value  of  emotion  and   empathic   response   in   an   increasingly   materialistic   society   is   supported   by   the   use   of   occult   mesmeric   trance   which   frames   the   argument   of   Manning’s   defence.   Manning   overrides   concerns   with   material   injustice   with   the   concept   of   female   or   maternal   suffering   as   transcending   class.   Within   Agatha’s   mesmeric   vision,   the   mother   ‘lays   her   lace   and   jewels   by   /   Rich,   yet   so   lonely,   with   a   sigh’   and   repeats   this   symbolic   action   more  emphatically,  declaring:     While  I  am  envied—I!  Who  fain     Would  give  my  riches  all  to  gain     Health  for  my  darling.     Manning  places  value  on  the  maternal  as  a  site  of  love,  care,  and  grief,  thereby  rejecting   the  cultural  emphasis  on  the  value  of  material  possessions.  As  Agatha  relates  the  close  of   the  scene,  material  wealth  is  again  presented  as  falsely  valued,  as  she  views  the  mother   ‘Through   silken   curtains   …   she   weeps’   (7).   The   emphasis   on   suffering   and   loss   recalls   Hemans’s   melancholic   preoccupation   with   female   suffering   in   Records   of   Woman.     Manning’s   poetry   reflects   not   only   the   inheritance   of   women   poets   like   Hemans,   a   continuing  female  tradition.  As  Isobel  Armstrong  points  out,  as  well  as  being  a  popular   poetic   form   in   the   Victorian   period,   the   theatrical   monologue   was   of   particular   use   to   women   poets   as   a   means   of   examining   gender   from   behind   the   mask   of   anonymity   or   multiple   voices.   Indeed,   Armstrong   suggests   that   poets,   such   as   Landon   and   Hemans   were  among  the  first  to  adopt  the  technique  (Victorian  Poetry  318).       Antonina  Harbus  (Macquarie  University)   Cognitive  Processing  and  Emotion  in  Literary  Responses  to  Poetry     This   paper   considers   how   a   modern   reader   is   able   not   only   to   make   sense   of   a   poetic   text   from   a   temporally   remote   culture,   but   also   to   have   an   aesthetic   and   emotional   reaction   to   it.   Specifically   cognitive   approaches   to   the   linguistics   of   literature   can   provide  new  explanatory  frameworks  for  considering  such  questions,  however,  to  date   there   has   been   very   little   conceptual   interaction   between   scholars   of   cognitive   poetics   and  those  working  in  medieval  English  literature.             This   paper   will   address   potential   of   this   combination,   by   blending   ideas   and   methods  from  cognitive  science,  cognitive  poetics,  cultural  history,  and  literary  analysis   to   consider   the   embedded   durability   of   the   affect/aesthetic   combination   in   literary   response.   In   particular,   it   will   deploy   insights   from   neuroscientific   work   on   the   role   of   emotion  in  mental  processing,  along  with  cognitive  poetic  approaches  to  the  aesthetics   of   reading,   to   consider   how   poetic   language   use   relies   on   cognitive   and   affective   processes.  For  example,  our  use  of  conceptual  metaphor  to  communicate  abstract  ideas   is  a  key  point  of  contact  with  our  medieval  predecessors,  whose  literary  representations   of  embodied  emotions  we  are  able  to  recognise,  process,  and  appreciate.  Similarly,  text   world  building  and  conceptual  blending  recruit  familiar  evolved  cognitive  capacities  in  

 

34  

combination   with   culturally   specific   schemas   in   a   process   that   lends   itself   to   specifically   cognitive  analysis.           To   demonstrate   these   ideas   in   practice,   this   paper   will   explore   the   shared   cognitive   basis   of   meaning   and   feeling   in   short   (translated)   medieval   English   poetic   extracts.   Using   the   Old   English   elegies   'The   Wife’s   Lament'   and   'The   Wanderer',   this   paper   will   consider   the   relationship   between   mind   and   meaning   from   the   perspective   that  the  mind  and  human  emotion  are  the  result  of  the  close  and  dynamic  interplay  of   culture  and  biology.  This  intersection  is  particularly  productive  for  the  consideration  of   texts   created   in   temporally   or   geographically   remote   societies,   such   as   Anglo-­‐Saxon   England.  From  a  history  of  emotions  perspective,  consideration  of  the  affective  potential   of  such  texts,  written  down  over  1000  years  ago  in  a  language  that  is  the  antecedent  of   our   own,   allows   us   to   consider   the   role   of   culture   in   the   experience   of   emotions.   In   turn,   we   can   pursue   how   that   experience   and   its   literary   representation   might   change   over   time,   especially   given   differing   deployments   of   language,   including   metaphorical   and   blended   constructions,   but   also   how   the   emotional   trigger   works   beyond   the   immediate   context.  Instances  from  Old  English  poetry  can  allow  us  to  ask  whether  the  experience   being   represented   in   these   medieval   texts   is   the   same   as   similarly   named   emotions   experienced   by   us   today;   and   more   broadly,   to   what   degree   emotions   are   intelligible   cross-­‐culturally.           This   paper   will  argue  that  texts  can  produce  emotional  experiences  in  a  modern   audience,  notwithstanding  their  acknowledged  remoteness  and  fictionality,  as  a  result  of   embodied  cognitive  and  affective  reactions.  Readerly  emotional  investment  arises  from   linguistic   features   (including   but   not   confined   to   metaphoric   language;   conceptual   blending;  and  text  world  building)  to  produce  a  literary  effect,  a  reaction  analysed  in  this   paper.       Stephen  Harris  (University  of  New  England)   ‘Landscape  Memoir’:  Ecopoetic  Affect  and  Literary  Politics     In   the   prologue   to   his   experiment   in   literary   genre,   The   Blue   Plateau:   A   Landscape   Memoir,  Mark  Tredinnick  introduces  the  ‘landscape  memoir’  through  a  kind  of  conceit:   the   land   (of   the   eponymous   plateau)   is   figured   as   an   “essay   in   slowness”;   soil   erosion   an   “essay   in   drama”;   the   plateau   and   authorial   self   are   commingled   in   dramatic   form   –   “I   am   a   landscape   of   loss”;   then,   through   literary   elision,   the   plateau   becomes   interchangeably   “a   landscape   of   loss”   (4-­‐5).     Later   in   the   narrative,   the   pathetic   fallacy   amplifies   the   effect:   mountains   are   given   “blood”   and   seen   to   “suffer”;   the   plateau   is   explicitly   given   a   “self”   (71);   and   with   an   affective   accent,   the   author’s   wife’s   body   becomes   the   intimately   felt   “geography”   under   the   writer’s   custodial   hand.     Metaphor   folds   into   metaphor,   not   hierarchically   but   dynamically   and   interactively,   just   as   generic   identities  (‘landscape  memoir’)  fuse  and  blur  in  the  writer’s  striving  for  communicative   and  imaginative  expansiveness.       Aesthetically   and   conceptually,   Tredinnick’s   literary   effort   could   be   said   to   perform,   or   at   least   gestures   towards,   an   ecopoetic   ‘reinhabitation’   of   place,   as   the   exponents  of  the  ‘bioregional  imagination’  refer  to  it  when  describing  the  wider  field  of     ’ecocritical’   iterature.     As   Tredinnick   defines   it   in   his   earlier   study   of   American   nature   writers,  The  Land’s  Wild  Music  (2005),  the  ‘landscape  memoir’  represents  a  “literature  of   place,   ecologically   imagined   and   written   in   the   landscape’s   own   vernacular   …   [a]   celebration  of,  [and]  an  enacted  belonging  in,  the  land”  (7).    The  imagery  of  immersion  is   conspicuous   here:   such   an   ‘enacted   belonging   in   the   land’   seeks   to   effect   an   emotional   responsiveness   as   the   basis   of   an   imaginative   and   (by   inference)   practical   (re)engagement  with  the  natural  world.    If  this  invokes  the  language  of  intentionality,  it   can  also  be  said  to  represent  an  instance  of  the  affective  fallacy,  wherein  the  literary  text   asserts  it  evaluative  ‘place’  according  to  what  it  implicitly  wants  to  do  to  the  reader  –  the  

 

35  

reader’s   felt   response   becomes   the   measure   of   the   text’s   validity   as   both   experimental   genre  and  a  form  of  ‘eco-­‐political’  advocacy.     Using   Tredinnick’s   text   as   a   reference,   this   paper   will   critically   reconsider   the   question   of   affect   in   relation   to   the   wider   claims   by   ecocritics   as   to   the   ethical   and   political  efficacy  of  the  literary  imagination.    What  kind  or  quality  of  emotional  response   does  the  ‘ecopoetic’  literary  text  elicit,  and  how  does  this  correlate  with  or  contradict  the   ethical   and   political   agenda   of   such   writing?     Do   the   transformative   ambitions   of   texts   such   as   Tredinnick’s   ‘landscape   memoir’   (Tim   Winton   is   credited   with   coining   the   term)   constitute   a   phenomenological   poetics   by   which   affect   is   transfigured   as   political   effect?     By   extension,   the   literary,   cultural   and   philosophical   implications   of   the   “landscape   memoir”   will   be   considered,   for   the   genre,   if   open   to   question,   is   a   response   to   an   imperative   born   of   the   contemporary   ecological   crisis.     In   providing   a   means   of   imaginatively  re-­‐viewing  of  the  relation  of  human  beings  to  the  land  and  earth  –  the  land   is   poetically   reconceived   as   interactive   presence,   not   framed   object   –   the   ‘landscape   memoir’   challenges   the   conventional   assumptions   concerning   the   human   subject’s   place   in  and  experience  of  the  non-­‐human  world.       Anna  Helle  (University  of  Jyväskylä,  Finland)   The   Affective   Performatives   of   Body   and   Sexuality   in   Tytti   Heikkinen’s   Taxidermied   Animal’s  Warmth     Tytti   Heikkinen   (b.   1969)   is   a   Finnish   experimental   female   poet   who   uses   found   material   from   the   internet   as   the   raw   material   of   her   poems.   She   has   published   three   collections  of  poetry  in  Finnish:  Täytetyn  eläimen  lämpö    (2008,  “Taxidermied  Animal’s   Warmth”);  Varjot  astronauteista  (2009,  ”Shadows  From  Astronauts”);  and  Moulin  Extra   Beauté   (2012).     A   selection   of   her   poems   has   also   been   published   as   an   English   translation  titled  Taxidermied  Animal’s  Warmth  (2013).       Many   of   Heikkinen’s   poems   in   Taxidermied   Animal’s   Warmth   deal   with   corporeality  and  sexuality.  This  paper  focuses  on  the  so  called  “Miss  FATTY-­‐XL”  poems   which  in  the  Finnish  original  Varjot  astronauteista  form  a  separate  section.  The  speaking   I   of   these   poems   is   a   young   girl   who   talks   quite   unrestrainedly   and   roughly   about   her   body   and   sexuality,   but   about   loneliness,   shame,   and   fatness,   too.   The   poems   express   and  arouse  different  kinds  of  feelings  such  as  anxiety,  pity  and  amusement  which  make   the  reading  experience  quite  confusing.       The  language  and  style  of  the  poems  is  affective  in  many  ways.  The  first  one  of   the   “Miss   FATTY-­‐XL”   poems   begins   with   the   following   lines:   “Fuck   i’m   a   fatty   when   others   are   skinny.   /   Also   Im   short,   am   I   a   fatty   or   short?   Wellyeah   /   I’m   such   a   grosss   fatty  that  it  makes  no  sens…”    From  the  very  beginning  it  is  clear  that  the  vocabulary  of   the   poems   is   rather   vulgar   and   that   the   poems   are   replete   with   spelling   mistakes   that   at   times  remind  of  the  language  of  the  internet  chat  forums.         This   presentation   approaches   Heikkinen’s   poems   as   performatives   of   certain   kind   of   girlhood   in   which   the   excessive   bodily   and   sexual   aspects   are   at   the   forefront.   The   paper   seeks   to   analyze   the   poems   from   the   viewpoint   of   the   emotions   or   affects   expressed  by  the  speaking  I  but  also  from  the  angle  of  how  the  poems  affect  the  reader.   One   of   the   key   concepts   here   is   excess:   the   speaking   I   sees   herself   as   too   fat,   she   is   excessively   sexual,   she   makes   too   many   misspellings   and   she   speaks   too   openly   about   her  personal  life  and  problems.       The  paper  discusses  both  the  form  and  the  content  of  the  poems  form  the  angle   of   affectivity.   The   theoretical   frame   of   the   presentation   consists   of   theories   of   affect   (Ngai   2005,   and   others)   but   the   feminist   viewpoints   will   also   be   considered.   Since   the   Miss   FATTY-­‐XL   poems   are   made   of   supposedly   authentic   found   material   from   the   internet  chat  forums  the  poems  are  immediately  political  on  their  nature  which  will  also   be  taken  into  account.  

 

36  

Laura  Henderson  (University  of  Melbourne)   The  Film  Moved  Me:  Emotional  Contagion,  Film  and  Affective  Landscapes       There  is  little  doubt  that  certain  landscapes  hold  an  “affective  atmosphere”:  an  aura  of   contagious   emotion   that   touches   every   person   who   explores   the   space.   One   of   the   key   aspects   found   in   a   review   of   the   literature   on   psychogeography   and   emotional   landscapes   is   the   way   that   humans   infuse   the   landscape   with   an   emotional   contagion.   The   underlying   principle   is   that   the   subject,   by   walking   the   space,   begins   to   take   on   and   experience   emotions   previously   implanted   into   the   environment.   However,   although   filmic   landscapes   often   present   the   most   affective   geographies   people   make   contact   with,   very   little   work   has   been   done   on   how   the   cinematic   spectator   understands   psychogeographies.  This  paper  explores  emotional  contagion  as  a  mechanism  for  affect   transferring  from  space  to  subject,  and  from  screen  to  spectator.  It  sets  out  an  account  of   film   as   a   spatialized,   embodied   narrative   which   moves   the   viewer   (emotionally)   by   moving  the  camera.             Compounding   the   gap   in   literature   on   filmic   psychogeography   is   a   dearth   of   interdisciplinary   accounts   of   affect.   Consequently,   the   paper   approaches   the   topic   of   affective   landscapes   through   a   psychological   and   theoretical   lens.   The   paper   looks   at   some  of  the  prescient  research  on  empathy  and  mirror  neurons  in  order  to  create  a  fully   phenomenological   framework   for   considering   the   spectator.   It   also   examines   Michael   Wooldridge   and   Nicholas   R.   Jennings’   work   on   multi-­‐agent   theories   of   emotional   contagion,   in   order   to   better   realise   how   the   subject’s   interaction   with   space   is   a   destabilising   force.   Sofia   Coppola’s   film   Somewhere   (2010)   is   used   as   an   example   of   a   filmic  psychogeography.  The  characters  in  Somewhere  travel  in  order  to  spark  feelings   and   experiences.   In   so   doing,   they   reveal   many   of   the   underlying   instincts   that   lead   humans   to   relate   to,   explore   and   be   affected   by   landscapes.   Consequently,   the   paper   argues  that  cinema  give  us  the  opportunity  to  experience  a  space,  to  say  “I  am  touching   the   walls”   from   within   a   filmic   psychogeography.   By   manipulating   and   mirroring   the   cognitive   functions   behind   consciousness,   cinema   is   able   to   achieve   this   without   fully   revealing   the   virtuality   of   the   experience.   Subsequently,   the   emotions   of   a   film’s   landscape  infect  the  viewer  as  they  would  in  a  material  affective  atmosphere.           Though   limited   in   scope,   this   research   has   potentially   wider   applications.   By   examining   the   idea   of   cognitive   frameworks,   it   becomes   clear   that   films   inexorably   change  our  perception  of  material  landscapes.  Furthermore,  the  experience  of  cinematic   psychogeography   may   represent   one   of   the   larger   and   more   fundamental   pleasures   of   spectatorship,   and   therefore   further   illuminate   why   exactly   human   beings   are   so   captivated  by  films  and  their  settings.  The  question  of  why  film  moves  us,  it  would  seem,   must   first   be   answered   by   considering   what   landscapes   the   film   camera   is   moving   us   through.         Angela  Hesson  (University  of  Melbourne)   Of  Hedgerows  and  Holy  Relics:  Queering  Nostalgia  in  the  Novels  of  Ronald  Firbank     In   a   review   of   the   most   recent   edition   of   Ronald   Firbank’s   Valmouth  and  Other  Novels,   Steven   Moore   advised   readers,   ‘Wear   your   best   clothes   when   you   read   these,   and   have   a   magnum   of   champagne   at   hand.’   Here,   Moore   articulates   the   long-­‐standing   association   between   Firbank’s   writing   and   pleasure;   the   sense   of   luxury,   of   sensuality,   of   frivolity,   which   pervades   his   work,   and   also   the   personal,   even   intimate   ways   in   which   his   texts   have  been  received.  W.H.  Auden  famously  proclaimed  Firbank’s  novels  ‘an  absolute  test.   A  person  who  dislikes  them…may,  for  all  I  know,  possess  some  admirable  quality  but  I  do   not   ever   wish   to   see   him   again.’   Conversely,   Evelyn   Waugh,   reacting   to   the   perceived   immaturity  and  vulgarity  of  Firbank’s  narratives,  remarked  that  ‘I  think  there  would  be   something   wrong   with   a   middle-­‐aged   man   who   could   take   pleasure   in   Firbank.’   That  

 

37  

Firbank   should   inspire   such   passionately   polarized   responses   is   unsurprising.   As   this   paper   will   demonstrate,   his   novels   fluidly   interweave   erotic,   religious   and   decorative   excess   in   a   manner   so   self-­‐consciously   scandalous   that   the   reader   must,   almost   by   necessity,  select  a  mode  of  outright  absorption  or  outright  exclusion.     For   Firbank,   as   for   the   Decadent   writers   of   the   1890s   upon   whose   work   much   of   his   own   was   modelled,   the   artistic   surface   was   fetishised   and   narrative   frequently   subjugated   to   it;   yet   his   novels   are   equally   preoccupied   with   notions   of   feeling.     When   Firbank   published   Valmouth   in   1919,   England   was   in   the   grip   of   post-­‐war   Protestant   nationalism,  the  hearty  moral  earnestness  of  which  lent  his  cast  of  lustful  centenarians,   ‘twinkling   negresses,’   and   debaucherous   Roman   clerics,   as   well   as   his   heady   exoticist   interiors,   an   unmistakable   air   of   dissidence.   It   becomes   apparent,   early   in   any   chosen   example   of   Firbank’s   writing,   that   queerness   is   the   rule   rather   than   the   exception.     Religious   feeling   is   allied   invariably   with   an   erotic   impulse;   saints   and   martyrs   are   evoked   not   as   icons   of   purity,   but   as   symbols   of   fleshly,   sexually   ambiguous   desire.   Perhaps   most   curious   is   the   combination   of   Firbank’s   eccentric,   ritualised   hedonism   with  his  insistence  upon  the  essential  Englishness  of  his  narrative,  his  determination  to   build  his  erotic,  exotic  fantasy  upon  the  cornerstones  of  the  country  house  novel.  It  is  via   the   picturesque   lanes   of   old   England   that   we   arrive   at   Valmouth,   and   it   is   in   the   great   houses   of   the   aristocracy   that   the   interlacing   narratives   of   fetishistic,   homoerotic,   and   interracial   desire   are   realised.   His   work   is   thus   inflected   with   an   unlikely   and   potent   amalgam  of  subversion  and  nostalgia.     Yet  in  spite  of  the  elements  of  caricature  and  cliché  integral  to  Firbank’s  unique   brand  of  camp,  his  novels  are  equally  infused  with  a  sincerity  of  affection  that  is  directed   both   inward,   toward   their   characters,   and   also   outward,   toward   the   knowing,   sympathetic   reader.   Mining   the   farthest   reaches   of   empire   for   inspiration,   Firbank   invented  a  fetishistic,  homoerotic  utopia,  cosily  enveloped  in  familiar  countryside.    This   paper   will   argue   that   Firbank’s   novels,   replete   with   rituals,   relics   and   stolen   glimpses   through   hedges,   serve   not   only   to   glorify   a   Decadent   past,   but   also   to   aestheticise,   historicise  and  sanctify  a  queer  present.         Helen  Hickey  (University  of  Melbourne)   The  Authority  of  Tears     Lisa   Zunshine   praises   the   fruitful   and   fluid   potential   of   the   ‘fuzziness   of   boundaries’   and   temporal   instability   that   cognitive   cultural   approaches   offer   to   literature.   Using   Zunshine’s   suggested   ‘bricoleur’   approach,   this   paper   explores   human   tears   in   readers   and   authors   of   literature.   Tears   provide   a   perplexing   challenge   when   thinking   about   embodiment   and   affect.   Ephemeral   and   evaporative,   their   polymorphous   and,   at   times,   ambiguous   meaning   challenges   our   understandings   about   their   cause   and   their   work.   Two   strands   of   this   visceral   challenge   apply:     writing   that   induces   tears   in   its   readers   and   writing   that   induces   or   originates   in   the   affect   of   tears   in   the   author.   Examples   from   two   dissimilar   genres   (works   of   Charles   Dickens   and   autographical   medieval   manuscripts)  will  highlight  my  case.          

 

38  

Penelope  Hone  (University  of  New  South  Wales)   Physiological  Acoustics  and  Literary  Form:  the  Nineteenth-­‐Century  “Affective  Turn”     According   to   Wimsatt   and   Beadsley’s   “The   Affective   Fallacy”,   the   aesthetic   value   of   a   work  of  art  has  little  to  no  correspondence  with  the  mind’s  experience  and  response  to   aesthetic   form.   Censuring   critics   who   try   to   derive   a   “standard   of   criticism   from   the   psychological  effects”  of  a  work  of  art,  their  1949  polemic  is  particularly  hostile  towards   physiological   theories   of   aesthetic   affect.   Drawing   on   nineteenth-­‐century   physiological   novel  theory,  this  paper  contests  Wimsatt  and  Beardsley’s  a-­‐historicising  supposition.   It  is  in  part  owing  to  Wimsatt  and  Beardsley’s  pointed  censure  of  physiological   considerations   of   how   a   text   might   be   read   that   the   constitutive   relation   between   the   formation  of  a  modern  literary  aesthetics  in  the  mid-­‐nineteenth  century  and  emergent   physiological   theories   of   mind   has,   until   recently,   been   forgotten–buried   under   an   accumulated  critical  unconscious.  However,  as  Nicholas  Dames  and  Vanessa  Ryan  have   shown,   the   relation   between   mid-­‐nineteenth-­‐century   theories   of   literary   form   and   psycho-­‐phsyiology  produced  a  rich  and  contested  cultural  discourse.  Expanding  on  their   work,  this  paper  considers  the  particular  role  acoustics  played  in  conceiving  of  a  literary   aesthetics  in  this  period.  Contra  Wimsatt  and  Beardsley’s  suggestion  that  the  work  of  art   under   consideration   disappears   under   the   subject-­‐oriented   focus   of   physiologically   driven  criticism,  the  period’s  sensitivity  to  the  sonic  imprint  literary  form  made  on  the   reader’s   mind   reveals   a   theory   of   literary   form   that   is   at   once   respectful   of   a   work’s   (universal)   aesthetic   value,   and   attentive   to   the   constitutive   role   affect   plays   in   its   (aesthetic)  mediation.     This  paper  reads  George  Henry  Lewes’s  physiological  account  of  literary  form– The   Principles   of   Success   in   Literature–with   a   particular   ear   to   its   emphasis   on   the   acoustic  affect  of  the  literary  voice.  Doing  so,  I  underscore  how  this  ‘affective  turn’  in  the   1860s  brought  critical  attention  to  the  ways  in  which  a  text  conscripts  (to  borrow  from   Garrett  Stewart)  a  particular  response  through  the  rhythmic  cadences  of  prose.  Noting   the   similarities   between   Lewes’s   and   Matthew   Arnold’s   contemporary   cultural   theory   the   paper   then   considers   how   this   theory   of   literary   form   defers   to   an   individual’s   physiological   response   to   literary   form,   as   well   as   a   Romantic   notion   of   an   inspired   literary   aesthetics.   The   paper   therefore   highlights   the   historical   short-­‐sightedness   of   Wimsatt   and   Beardsley’s   critique   of   physiological   theories   of   literary   affect.   Sharing   distinct   similarities   with   more   recent   critical   theories   of   literary   aesthetics,   such   as   Stewart’s   Phonotext,   the   “affective   turn”   reverberating   out   of   the   nineteenth-­‐century   illuminates   a   complex   history   of   the   relation   between   the   reading   mind   and   literary   form.           Daniel  Hourigan  (University  of  Southern  Queensland)     Coraline,  Psychoanalysis,  and  the  Other  Mother     Neil  Gaiman’s  imagining  of  the  terrain  of  girlhood  in  works  such  as  Coraline  may  be  seen   to   popularise   a   post-­‐feminist   view   of   femininity.   Although   many   of   Gaiman’s   texts   and   their   adaptations   into   other   media   such   as   cinema   deal   with   issues   of   daughterhood,   motherhood,   fatherhood,   class,   power,   gender   and   ethnicity,   the   overwhelming   recognition   of   Gaiman’s   work   focuses   on   his   innovative   story-­‐telling   techniques   that   fuse   the   art   of   contemporary   fairytales   with   the   traumatic   dark   encounters   of   H.P.   Lovecraft.  The  point  of  focus  for  this  paper  is  the  narrative  of  Coraline.  Both  the  novella   and   the   film   tell   the   story   of   a   young   girl,   Coraline   Jones,   and   her   encounter   with   a   mysterious  other  world  accessible  through  a  small  door  in  her  family’s  new  home.  The   narrative   sets   its   namesake   protagonist   on   a   difficult   path   to   unraveling   the   enigma   of   the  familial  bond  and  her  place  within  such  a  bond.  More  specifically,  the  question  that   Gaiman   raises   in   the   context   of   Coraline   is   the   question   of   maternal   desire:   what   does  

 

39  

the   mother   want?   Without   reducing   Coraline   to   an   echo   of   the   late   Freud’s   question   ‘what  does  woman  want?’  Gaiman  takes  his  audience  through  several  key  thematics  of   feminist   psychoanalysis   and   post-­‐feminist   critique:   the   formation   of   gender   and   identity   in   the   phallocentric   economy   of   paternal   authority,   the   enigma   of   the   Other’s   desire   and   the  distortion  and  anamorphosis  of  the  all  too  human.  These  themes  are  important  not   only   to   Gaiman’s   text,   but   also   to   broader   questions   of   femininity,   sexualities   and   the   faculty   of   desire   itself   for   they   query   the   basis   of   understanding   our   own   embodiment   and  the  possibility  for  transgression.           While  subjective  enjoyment  is  an  important  device  in  the  story  of  Coraline,  it  is   more   difficult   to   discern   the   contours   of   how   Gaiman   is   approaching   the   mother-­‐ daughter  relationship.  At  a  glance,  Coraline  is  an  oblique  examination  of  the  figure  of  the   mother   from   a   daughter’s   point   of   view.   It   is   the   namesake   daughter   of   Coraline,   Coraline   Jones,   who   encounters   this   motherhood   in   its   enigmatic   otherness.   Therefore   the  focus  of  this  discussion  is  how  Coraline  tarries  with  the  enigma  of  maternal  desire   and   re-­‐establishes   her   symbolic   position   with   her   family   in   the   wake   of   a   traumatic   encounter  with  an  archaic  ‘other  mother’.       Joe  Hughes  (University  of  Melbourne)   Time,  Form  and  Desire:  The  Representation  of  Action  in  Fanny  Hill     In   1804   Anna   Latetia   Barbauld   remarked   with   some   surprise   that   the   early   novel   was   not  actually  scenic.  The  conception  of  the  novel  as  a  series  of  linked  scenes  was  not  at  all   a   given   of   novel   form—and   this   despite   the   number   of   novelists   with   ties   to   the   theatre.   It  is  only  with  Burney,  she  proposes,  that  the  novel  becomes  properly  scenic  because  it   is   only   with   Burney   that   the   novel   begins   to   form   itself   around   the   extended   representation   of   dialogue.   Dialogue,   as   has   often   been   noted,   allows   narration   to   approach   mimesis.   It   gives   the   act   represented   the   form   and   time   of   the   act   itself.   It   creates  the  illusion  of  scene.     Amongst  the  many  questions  Barbauld’s  observation  raises  is  a  question  which   is   the   inverse  of  the  one   she   posed:   not  why   does   dialogue  allow   scene   to   emerge,   but   why   does   the   novel   consistently   fail   to   represent   action   scenically?   In   fact,   the   action   scene—extended   passages   narrated   in   the   scenic   mode   which   relate   a   sequence   of   actions—is   exceptionally   rare   both   before   and   after   Burney.   While   dialogue   scenes   abound   after   Evelina,   the   representation   of   action,   when   it   appears,   inevitably   tends   toward  summary  rather  than  scene.       In   this   paper   I   want   to   explore   an   early   exception   to   this   failure   of   representation:   the   proto-­‐pornograpic   novel.   The   demands   of   the   genre   require   that   the   narrative   slow   down   and   pause   on   each   action   and   reaction,   making   the   sequence   available   to   the   reader’s   gaze.   Cleland’s   keyhole   scenes   are   exemplary   in   this   regard:   alongside  Fanny  Hill  we  peep  into  the  room  and  allow  our  gaze  to  stop  on  each  gradual   revelation   of   a   bosom,   each   manly   thrust   of   the   machine,   each   contortion   of   pleasure.   The   proliferation   of   metaphors   for   various   organs,   the   rapid   oscillation   between   description  and  reflection,  Cleland’s  extreme  detail,  the  careful  sequencing  of  action,  all   create   surfaces   with   a   certain   coefficiant   of   friction   which   slows   the   narration   down,   allowing  it  to  approach  the  time  of  action  and  reaction  and  thus  become  properly  scenic.   These   narrative   techniques   can   be   read   precisely   as   attempts   to   slow   down   narrative   time  and  allow  the  reader’s  gaze  to  be  absorbed  in  the  scene.     My   argument   is   not   that   Barbauld   has   missed   an   early   precursor   to   the   scenic   novel.   On   the   contrary,   her   argument,   as   far   as   literary   history   goes,   is   more   or   less   accurate.  My  claim  rather  is  that  this  early  anomaly    reveals  an  essential  feature  of  the   scenic  form,  namely  the  convertibility  it  establishes  between  form  and  desire.      

 

40  

Aleksondra  Hultqvist  (Centre  for  the  History  of  Emotions,  University  of  Melbourne)   Eliza  Haywood's  Laboratory  of  Feeling     The  early  novel,  because  of  its  ability  to  acutely  describe  both  inner-­‐sensation  and  outer   demonstration  of  feeling,  because  of  its  ability  to  examine  both  the  inner  workings  of  a   fictional   mind   and   the   outer   commentary   of   the   narrator,   is   the   perfect   site   for   explorations   in   the   significance   of   emotion   in   the   eighteenth   century.     Several   critics   have   recently   examined   eighteenth-­‐century   literature   and   the   way   it   explores   emotion   and   explains   significant   historical   and   political   change.     Jon   Elster   has   argued,   “we   can   read   plays   and   novels   as   the   closest   thing   to   a   controlled   experiment   involving   high-­‐ stakes  human  emotions.”  (Elster,  Alchemies  of  the  Mind  108).    And  scholars  such  as  Alan   T.  McKenzie,  Nicole  Eustace,  Rebecca  Tierny-­‐Hinez,  and  Kathleen  Lubey  explore  the  way   in  which  the  depictions  of  emotion  in  the  literature  of  the  eighteenth  century  provided   not   only   a   laboratory   of   feeling,   but   also   a   platform   for   individual   understanding   and   social   change.     The   work   of   Eliza   Haywood   is   a   particularly   fertile   place   to   examine   feeling,  or  “the  Passions,”  in  social  structures.    Much  of  her  early  fiction  takes  emotion  as   its   starting   point,   such   as   her   first   successful   novel,   Love  in  Excess   (1719).     In   her   fiction,   she  defines  the  major  and  minor  meanings  of  passion,  creates  characters  dominated  by   their   emotional   life   and   then   places   them   in   dynamic   plots,   as   if   to   see   how   their   passions   will   determine   their   character   and   life   outcomes   through   navigating   such   situations.    Through  these  explorations,  Haywood  writes  an  authentic  philosophy  of  the   passions  years  before  the  more  formal,  later  eighteenth-­‐century  works  on  the  theories   of   sentiment   were   published.     This   is   not   to   say   that   Haywood’s   explorations   of   the   passions   and   the   moral   philosophy   of   the   later   eighteenth   century   are   the   same,   but   rather   that   they   are   of   a   kind.     Haywood’s   work   developed   an   ethics   of   passionate   experience:   her   prose   effectively   forms   a   vocabulary   for   the   passions,   demonstrates   their   significance   in   the   experience   of   the   fictional   characters,   and   uses   authorial   commentary  to  create  an  ethics  of  emotion.       This   paper   argues   that   Eliza   Haywood’s   sustained   and   specific   discussion   of   emotion  in  her  fiction  theorizes  philosophical  modes  of  emotional  discourse  in  narrative   form.    By  examining  the  laboratory  of  feeling  that  she  creates  in  Love   in   Excess,  I  define   her   ethics   of   emotion   which   both   builds   upon   pre-­‐   and   early   modern   theories   of   the   passion,  and  anticipates  later  eighteenth-­‐century  philosophies  of  emotion.           Aaron  Humphrey  (University  of  Adelaide)   Emotion,  Anonymity  and  Affect  in  Asylum  Seeker  Comics     Two   comics   about   Australia’s   asylum-­‐seeker   policies   gained   considerable   online   attention,   almost   simultaneously   in   February,   2014.   The   first   was   an   18-­‐page   “graphic   novel”   published   by   the   Australian   government’s   Customs   and   Border   Protection   Service   (CBPS)   intended   to   deter   members   of   the   persecuted   Hazara   minority   in   Afghanistan   from   seeking   asylum   in   Australia.   Although   the   comic   was   published   on   the   CBPS  website  in  November,  it  was  brought  to  public  attention  in  February  by  an  article   in   The   Guardian   which   attracted   more   than   700   reader   comments,   and   was   quickly   republished  across  the  web  by  sites  like  BuzzFeed  and  News.com.au.   The   second   comic,   ‘A   Guard’s   Story,’   was   a   webcomic   centred   around   an   anonymous   interview   with   a   former   immigration   detention   centre   worker.   One   of   the   last  pieces  to  be  published  on  the  non-­‐profit  journalism  site  The  Global  Mail  before  the   site   stopped   updating   in   February,   the   comic,   which   is   highly   critical   of   the   Australian   government’s  policies,  spread  quickly  on  social  media,  and  has  been  shared  more  60,000   times  on  Facebook.   Although   the   two   comics   were   intended   for   different   audiences   and   are   diametrically   opposed   politically,   both   use   graphic   literature   to   depict   Australia’s  

 

41  

refugee   detention   centres   as   emotionally   distressing   place   to   be.   Both   are   examples   of   the  way  the  unique  grammar  of  comics  (including  Scott  McCloud’s  concepts  of  ‘closure’   and   ‘masking,’   and   Thierry   Groensteen’s   concept   of   ‘braiding’)   can   be   used   to   encourage   readers   to   invest   their   imaginations   and   emotions   in   these   graphic   narratives,   potentially  increasing  their  potential  to  be  spread  virally  over  social  networks.     Furthermore,   while   the   visual   nature   of   these   comics   is   part   of   their   emotional   and   psychological   appeal,   it   also   has   the   effect   of   distancing   the   reader   from   their   sources.   In   this   paper,   I   will   demonstrate   how   the   CBPS   comic   describes   Australia’s   detention   centres   as   an   inhumane   deterrent   in   a   way   that   cannot   be   easily   quoted   as   government   policy,   while   employing   an   inscrutable   visual   style   that   recalls   the   anonymity  of  clipart.  Conversely,  ‘A  Guard’s  Story’  uses  an  idiosyncratic  style  of  drawing   as   a   way   of   affecting   a   personal   psychological   depth   while   politically   shielding   its   anonymous   narrator.   By   focusing   on   these   discourses   of   emotion   and   anonymity,   this   presentation  will  examine  how  each  of  these  comics  fits  into  the  wider  national  dialogue   about   asylum   seekers,   exploring   how   each   comic   attempts   show   the   un-­‐sayable,   both   psychologically  and  politically.       Francesca  Kavanagh  (University  of  Melbourne)   Fast   Cars   and   Classic   Literature:   Innocent   and   Guilty   Pleasures   in   Stephenie   Meyer's   Twilight  Saga     In   her   series   the   Twilight   Saga,   Stephenie   Meyer   uses   her   heroine   Bella   to   navigate   competing   and   morally   hazardous   pleasures.   While   Bella   is   faced   with   numerous   chances   to   enjoy   the   wealth   and   privileges   of   her   vampire   boyfriend   she   repeatedly   rejects   them,   preferring   to   indulge   the   seemingly   more   innocent   pleasure   of   reading.   The   delicate   balance   maintained   between   these   two   realms   of   pleasure   is   made   more   uncertain   by   the   construction   of   Bella’s   character   as   both   unfeminine   and   yet   inexplicably   alluring,   as   well   as   the   audience’s   desires   to   vicariously   enjoy   these   guilty   pleasures   through   her.   In   this   paper,   I   seek   to   demonstrate   that   the   act   of   reading   for   both   Bella   and   the   reader   of   Twilight,   blurs   the   boundaries   of   innocent   and   guilty   pleasures  constructed  by  Meyer.   The  longest  instance  of  direct  literary  engagement  in  the  first  novel  can  be  seen   as   the   tipping   point   in   the   conflation   of   guilty   and   innocent   pleasures.   Once   she   has   admitted  to  herself  that  she  loves  Edward,  Bella  draws  on  a  much  used  “compilation  of   the  works  of  Jane  Austen”  (Meyer,  147)  to  distract  her  from  the  anxiety,  and  increasing   frustration   of   his   absence.   However,   she   soon   finds,   as   the   thousands   of   Twilight   fans   already   know,   that   literature   is   tied   to   pleasure   in   a   much   more   ambivalent   relationship   than   simple   escapism.   Austen,   rather   than   serving   as   a   distraction,   returns   Bella   again   and   again   to   both   Edward’s   name   and   his   character,   drawn   from   the   rakish   Byronic   heroes  of  Austen’s  fiction.  Bella’s  frustration  becomes  progressively  sexual  as  she  strives   to   find   distraction.   She   eventually   settles   for   “think[ing]   of   nothing   but   the   warmth   on   [her]   skin”   (Meyer,   148).   Lying   outside   in   the   sun,   she   traces   the   sun’s   progress   down   her   body   “my   eyelids,   my   cheekbones,   my   nose,   my   lips,   my   forearms,   my   neck,   soak[ing]   through   my   light   shirt…”   (Meyer,   148).   Meyer   stops   just   short   of   including   Bella’s   breasts   in   the   list   of   places   associated   with   desire   and   pleasure.   She   fades   out   with  an  ellipsis  and  then  jump-­‐cuts  to  a  few  hours  later,  as  Bella  is  woken  by  her  father   returning   home.   The   dreams   and   the   implications   of   such   an   erotically   charged   moment   are  left  hanging.  Unlike  many  of  Bella’s  periods  of  unconsciousness,  this  one  is  given  no   overt   significance   by   the   narrative   except   the   uncanny   mood   at   the   scene   of   waking   where   Bella   tantalisingly   adds   that   she   feels   “that   I   wasn’t   alone”   (Meyer,   148)   before   throwing  herself  into  cooking  and  cleaning  duties  for  her  apparently  inept  father.     This   is   the   last   literary   reference   in   the   first   novel   and   despite   the   lack   of   commentary,   it   is   clear   that   reading   is   deeply   associated   with   the   now   blurred  

 

42  

boundaries  between  innocent  and  guilty  pleasures,  allowing  Bella  to  experience  desire,   and   work   through   her   frustration   with   the   help   of   Austen’s   Edwards.   Literature   has   enabled   the   guilty   pleasure   of   sex   to   be   made   consistent   with   Bella’s   ‘innocent’   character.   This   is   crucial   in   the   maintenance   of   the   text’s   own   set   of   literary   pleasures   which   range   from   ‘guilty’   indulgence   in   feminine,   young   adult   fiction,   to   ‘innocent’   joy   in   the  reading  process  and  criticism.       Jasmin  Kelaita  (University  of  New  South  Wales)   Awkward   Characters/Anxious   Subjects:   The   Affect   of   Awkwardness   in   the   Modernist   Fiction  of  Jean  Rhys     The  recourse  to  gracious  and  polite  social  interaction  forms  an  undisclosed  contract  in   fiction.   This   paper   examines   the   implications   of   this   civility   and   questions   how   the   practice   of   social   graciousness   and   well-­‐conditioned   manners   supports   the   belief   that   to   be  “proper”  is  to  be  a  unified,  consolidated  and  unaffected  self.  The  inter-­‐war  fiction  of   Jean  Rhys  presents  female  protagonists  that  are  not  gracious  and  rarely  polite;  they  lack   decorum  and  social  perception,  as  well  as  being  considerably  misaligned  with  structures   of   appropriate   femininity.   Rhys’s   women   exist   on   the   borders   which   define   proper   selfhood,   and   in   so   doing,   expose   the   seams   of   the   subject   in   modernity.   I   argue   that   the   affect   produced   by   the   inherent   social   awkwardness   of   Rhys’   female   characters   is   critical   to   understanding   the   subversive   potential   they   offer.   I   examine   this   subversive   potential   by   way   of   illustrating   how   these   characters   challenge   and   reshape   available   subject   positions   through   their   mincingly   loud,   and   corporeally   excessive,   rejection   of   social   structures   of   propriety.     The   social   unease   generated   by   this   incongruence   sparks   an  awkward,  and  often  visceral  and  materially  felt,  reaction  from  other  characters  in  her   work;   namely,   the   gentlemen   who   proliferate   her   texts   and   are   aligned   with   standard   discourses   of   social   propriety   and,   as   such,   cannot   stand   “women   making   scenes   of   themselves.”     These   “scenes”   are   also   keenly   felt   by   the   reader   who   cannot   help   but   cringe  at  the  constant  faux  pas  performed  by  Rhys’s  leads.       The   conceptual   engagement   with   awkwardness   as   a   function   of   subject   production,   maintenance   and   acceptance   draws   on   scholarly   examinations   of   civility   and   social   propriety   in   Victorian   fiction.   Re-­‐placing   this   frame   on   Modernist   fiction   exposes  the  intrinsic  class  and  gender  distinctions  presupposed  by  this  field  of  inquiry   which,  in  turn,  reveals  the  violence  civility  enacts  on  the  body.  Exploring  this  violence  in   the  context  of  Rhys’s  work  highlights  the  tensions  inherent  to  standard  accounts  of  her   as   a   Modernist,   a   woman   writer   and   a   Caribbean   expatriate.   By   way   of   highlighting   how   affect   generates   sites   of   resistance   to   normative   subject   positions   through   embodied   rejections   of   decorum   and   propriety,   this   paper   reclaims   Rhys’s   work   from   the   commonly  held  assumption  that  her  female  characters  exist  simply  as  victims,  or  social   outcasts  starved  of  agency.         Jenny  Kohn  (University  of  Michigan)   Feelings,  Identification,  and  Difference:  the  Politics  of  Victorian  Novel  Form     As   Adam   Phillips   wrote,   “That   people   are   not   identical,   but   that   it   is   possible   to   be   equal   in   certain   ways,   is   one   of   our   modern   political   hopes."   This   was   also   the   optimistic   premise  of  nineteenth-­‐century  liberalism,  which  confronted  the  challenges  of  imagining   a  collectivity  composed  of  vastly  different  people  in  an  era  of  colonization,  globalization,   and   unprecedented   industrialization.   This   paper   explores   the   problem   of   difference   in   nineteenth-­‐century  culture  as  the  task  of  embracing  the  possibility  of  people's  difference   while  also  mitigating  the  political  effects  thereof.  What  was  a  foundational  problem  for   nineteenth-­‐century  liberal  theory  was  also,  this  paper  argues,  a  constitutive  problem  to  

 

43  

which  the  form  of  the  Victorian  novel  responded.  I  argue  that,  in  modeling  an  affective   structure   based   on   general   rather   than   individual   feelings,   the   Victorian   novel   taught   its   readers   to   live   with   difference   by   learning   to   feel   with   characters,   even   or   especially   when  they  could  not  identify  with  them.         Political   shifts   in   and   involving   Britain,   such   as   the   Reform   Acts   and   Married   Women’s   Property   Acts   and   uprisings   in   the   colonies,   brought   the   fact   of   difference   into   close   proximity   in   the   Victorian   period,   as   the   body   politic   had   to   contend   with   reimagining  citizenship  on  a  broader  scale.  Liberal  ideals  of  equality  and  freedom  were   premised   on   a   notion   of   progress,   and   a   basic   belief   in   a   universal   human   good   to   which   all   people,   regardless   of   their   differences,   could   at   least   in   principle   aspire.   Moreover,   difference  posed  a  particular  problem  for  the  literary  marketplace,  as  the  novel  had  to   become  relevant  to  what  was  taking  shape  as  a  mass  readership  on  an  unprecedented   scale  –  what  novelist  Wilkie  Collins  called  “The  Unknown  Public.”  Focusing  on  popular   novels  of  the  nineteenth  century,  which  dealt  quite  explicitly  with  the  problem  of  living   with  difference  in  an  expanding  world,  this  paper  argues  that  novels  solved  the  question   of  how  to  live  with  difference  in  a  way  that  political  theories  of  equality  could  not  access.   These   novels   cultivated   a   large,   varied,   and   crucially   unknown   readership,   rather   than   a   selective   one,   and   in   so   doing   hailed   their   readers   as   a   mass   public.   As   such,   readers   were   interpellated   as   the   direct   addressees   of   a   text,   while   simultaneously   understanding  that  summoning  their  readers  as  the  addressees  of  the  text,  while  always   framing   that   the   text,   as   a   mass   product,   could   not   address   any   one   particular   reader,   but  must  address  all  its  readers  in  all  their  differences.  My  paper  thus  sheds  light  on  our   understanding   of   the   politics   of   novel   form,   and   the   way   in   which   it   operates   through   what   Raymond   Williams   has   described   as   practical   consciousness,   and   what   David   Halperin   has   more   recently   described   as   practices   of   being:   a   way   of   feeling   that   is   collective,  premised  on  a  shared  and  general  affective  form,  rather  than  specific  affective   content.       Gabrielle  Kristjanson  (University  of  Melbourne)   Cruel  Desire:  Narcissism  and  the  Female  Predator     In  Femininity   and   Dominance  (1990),  Sandra  Lee  Bartky  writes,  “narcissism  is  at  once  a   source  of  profound  satisfaction  and  a  temptation  to  be  resisted”  (39).  Filled  with  desire   and   trepidation,   feminine   narcissism   urges   its   subject   forward   as   it   holds   her   back— problematically   promising   a   satisfaction   that   it   also   warns   against.   This   tension   is   compounded   when   the   narcissistic   female   character   is   portrayed   as   a   child   predator.   Yet,  what  at  first  seems  a  troubling  pairing  of  the  narcissist  and  the  child  predator  can   instead   be   interpreted   as   an   inevitable   and   mutual   eventuality.   Indeed,   Bartky   claims   that   “[w]e   can   now   grasp   the   nature   of   feminine   narcissism   with   more   precision:   It   is   infatuation   with   an   inferiorized   body”   (40;   emphasis   in   original).     For   Bartky,   this   obsession   is   experienced   as   a   self-­‐infatuation   characterized   by   excessive   efforts   to   maintain   a   youthful   and   beautiful   body,   but   when   self-­‐centered   desire   is   extended   outward,  the  “feminine  ideal  of  stasis”  can  only  be  situated  alternatively  in  the  body  of   the  child  (40).           My   paper   will   interrogate   this   exteriorization   of   feminine   narcissism   through   an   analysis   of   Alissa   Nutting’s   2013   novel,   Tampa.   In   this   controversial   depiction,   Nutting   provides  an  especially  cruel  version  of  feminine  desire  in  her  protagonist  Celeste  Price,  a   young   and   beautiful   year   eight   English   teacher   who   engages   in   illicit   sexual   relations   with  two  of  her  male  students.  The  primary  relationship  is  with  Jack,  a  quiet  boy  on  the   cusp  of  puberty  who  believes  that  he  is  Celeste’s  lover.  Yet,  the  book  makes  clear  to  the   reader   that   their   relation   is   not   one   of   mutual   exchange,   but   rather   Jack   is   used   by   Celeste   as   an   object   upon   which   she   can   project   and   act   out   her   own   masturbatory   fantasies.   Jack   serves   as   a   place-­‐holder   for   Celeste’s   narcissistic   desire   for   herself;   as  

 

44  

Bartky   describes,   the   narcissistic   female’s   obsession   is   with   “her   own   finished   and   perfect   thinghood,”   here   played   out   not   through   the   mirror   but   through   the   inferiorized   body  of  an  adolescent  boy  (38).           The  cruelty  of  this  self-­‐satisfying  practice  is  palpable,  making  the  experience  of   reading  Tampa  distasteful  and,  arguably,  traumatic.  The  reader  is  acutely  aware  of  Jack’s   emotional  trauma,  a  latent  trauma  only  realized  after  his  encounter  with  the  predator,   which  invites  a  reading  of  Jack  as  a  victim.  Significantly,  however,  this  interpretation  is   not  merely  because  of  his  youthful  vulnerability  but  because  Jack  represents  a  particular   type   of   masculinity   that   is   victimizable   by   female   desire.   Jack   is   contrasted   by   the   character  of  Boyd,  the  other  male  student  that  Celeste  targets,  who  relishes  in  their  illicit   affair.   Boyd’s   presence   neutralizes   the   cruelty   and   power   of   the   female   narcissist   and   allows   for   her   sexual   excess   to   be   contained   by   the   text.   Importantly,   it   is   the   collision   between  these  two  types  of  masculinities—Jack’s  and  Boyd’s—that  results  in  the  end  of   both  affairs  and  brings  Celeste  to  criminal  trial.             Rowena  Lennox  (University  of  Technology  Sydney)   Head  of  a  Dog       How   do   literature   and   other   writing   affect   what   we   feel   and   know   about   dogs   and   dingoes?  Can  a  human  get  inside  a  dog’s  head?   I   begin   this   paper   by   following   my   dog   and   observing   how   she   perceives   the   world   before   thinking   about   how   various   dogs   in   fiction   and   non-­‐fiction   are   represented.   The   stories   people   tell   about   dogs   and   dingoes   affect   more   than   just   how   we   respond   to   them   and   how   we   treat   them.   Humans’   stories   and   language   construct   them.     In   a   passage   in   Anna   Karenina   Leo   Tolstoy   effectively   gets   inside   the   head   of   Levin’s  dog  Laska  when  they  are  out  hunting,  portraying  her  sense  of  smell  as  her  way  of   understanding  the  world,  and  also  her  obedience  to  Levin  even  when  she  knows  better.   The  dog  heroes,  Buck  and  Dusty,  in  Jack  London’s  The  Call  of  the  Wild  and  Frank  Dalby   Davison’s   Dusty   are   also   extremely   loyal   one-­‐man   dogs.   Buck   and   Dusty   both   straddle   the  divide  between  tame  and  wild  but  the  narrative  shape  of  each  book  differs.  The  Call   of  the  Wild  builds  to  an  emotional  crescendo  and  ends  with  Buck  roaming  free  with  the   timberwolves   in   the   Yukon.   Dusty   cannot   roam   like   Buck   because   much   of   his   environment  has  been  cleared  and  fenced.     The   dingo   of   Captain’s   Flat,   described   in   a   1942   Canberra   Times   article,   is   a   product  of  such  an  agricultural  environment.  This  dingo  had  allegedly  killed  1,000  sheep   before   it   escaped   from   a   trap   by   chewing   off   its   front   leg   and   held   a   pack   of   domestic   dogs   at   bay   before   a   man   killed   it   with   a   stick.   Similarly   Inky,   a   young   Fraser   Island   dingo,   was   also   killed   for   not   knowing   his   place   in   relation   to   human   beings.   He   displayed  behaviour  that  showed  he  had  become  habituated  to  humans  so  Queensland   National   Parks   and   Wildlife   Service   rangers,   in   accordance   with   the   management   strategy  that  prohibits  interaction  between  humans  and  dingoes,  killed  him.     Deborah   Bird   Rose   describes   different   relationships   between   humans   and   dingoes   when   she   draws   upon   her   knowledge   of   Aboriginal   Beginning   Law.   Judith   Wright,   in   her   elegy   for   a   trapped   dingo,   places   the   dingo   in   the   framework   of   Greek   mythology.  In  ‘Name  of  a  Dog,  or  Natural  Rights’  twentieth-­‐century  philosopher  of  ethics   Emmanuel  Levinas  evokes  a  stray  dog  who  recognised  Levinas  and  his  fellow  prisoners   in   a   Nazi   labour   camp   as   men   when   their   gaolers   and   other   humans   treated   the   prisoners  as  subhuman.     Each   of   the   dogs   discussed   in   this   paper   cannot   simply   be   positioned   on   a   continuum   between   tame   or   wild,   or   aggressive   or   docile.   Each   of   these   canine   characters   displays   constellations   of   behaviour:   curious   and   threatening,   or   independent  and  friendly,  or  irrational  and  rational.  Whether  we  can  incorporate  them  

 

45  

into  a  humane  system  of  ethics  yet  or  not,  dogs  have  lived  with  humans  for  longer  than   any   other   animal.   They   are   part   of   our   story   and   many   of   them   show   an   emotional   understanding  of  humans  that  humans  are  still  learning  to  reciprocate.       Nick  Lord  (University  of  Queensland)   Design  and  Affect:  Feeling  Our  Way  through  Danielewski's  Labyrinths     In   this   paper,   I   will   examine   the   role   of   affect   in   the   process   of   interpreting   ostentatiously   designed   metafictional   texts.   In   her   introduction   to  The   Affective   Turn:   Theorizing   the  Social,  Patricia   Clough   notes   that   we   have   witnessed   “a   recent   turn   in   critical  theory  to  affect,  especially  the  conceptualization  of  affect  that  draws  on  the  line   of   thought   from   Gilles   Deleuze   and   Félix   Guattari   back   through   Baruch   Spinoza   and   Henri  Bergson”  (1).  Such  a  line  of  critical  inquiry  has,  in  certain  manifestations,  sought   to   redefine   or   clarify   the   relationship   between   the   conscious   and   pre-­‐conscious,   an   endeavour   exemplified   by   Brian   Massumi’s   realignment   of   cultural   theory’s   emphasis   from   language   to   the   body—from   speech   to   feeling—   and   Catherine   Malabou’s   and   William   Connolly’s   theoretical   considerations   of   the   materiality   of   the   brain.   Cultural   products,   too,   have   been   examined   as   ways   of   uncovering   the   connections   between   affect   and   aesthetics.   My   paper,   informed   by   this   tradition   of   critical   thought,   will   investigate  Mark  Z.  Danielewski’s  2000  novel,  House  of  Leaves.           Danielewski’s   book   is   polyvocalic   and   diegetically   complex,   consisting   of   a   number   of   paratexts   that   have   been   constructed   around   an   apocryphal   film   by   the   award-­‐winning   photographer,   Will   Navidson,   which,   it   seems,   documents   his   family’s   reaction   to   and   exploration   of   a   vast   and   shifting   labyrinth   that   opens   up   inside   their   home.   Navidson’s   exploration   of   this   space   is   emulated   at   each   narrative   level   in   a   variety   of   ways:   the   bulk   of   the   novel   consists   of   a   pseudo-­‐academic   study   of   the   film   by   a  blind  “graphomaniac”  named  Zampanó,  which,  in  turn,  has  been  compiled  and  edited   by  a  tattooist  named  Johnny  Truant,  whose  footnotes  document  his  own  reflections  on   the  manuscript.  At  the  outermost  level  are  the  Editors,  who  have,  ostensibly,  published   the   edited   manuscript   as   House   of   Leaves,   complete   with   their   own   clarifying   footnotes,   appendices,  and  index.  The  reader  is  thus  encouraged  to  navigate  between  these  levels,   making   decisions   as   to   which   narrative   path   to   follow   and   for   how   long.   The   reading   experience  is  further  complicated  by  the  novel’s  gradual  dissolution  into  textual  chaos,   marked   by   the   presence   of,   among   other   obstacles,   blank   pages,   upside-­‐down   and   sideways  print,  musical  notation,  Braille,  and  Morse  code.         We  can,  therefore,  think  of  House  of  Leaves  as  engaging  with  design,  whether  it   be  the  architecture  of  the  Navidson’s  home  or  the  meticulous  planning  of  the  book  itself.   Because  of  this,  my  paper  will  heed  Bruno  Latour’s  observation  that  designed  artefacts   lend   themselves   to   interpretation,   and   will   extend   a   theory   of   design   that   is   based   on   James  Gibson’s  concept  of  affordances—that  is,  it  considers  what  the  design  of  the  object   offers  or  provides—by  incorporating  the  phenomenological  work  of  both  Wolfgang  Iser   and   Martin   Heidegger.   This   will   allow   me   to   explore   how   the   book’s   construction   of   labyrinthine   textual   and   narrative   spaces   is   able   to   invoke   and   manipulate   an   affect   similar  in  structure  to  Freud’s  unheimlich  and  Heidegger’s  angst  that,  I  argue,  is  crucial   to  an  interpretative  engagement  with  the  novel’s  plot.                

 

46  

Mary  Luckhurst  (University  of  York)   Acting  and  Reanimating  the  Dead     Since  the  eighteenth  century  Western  constructs  of  actor  training  have  been  allied  with   scientific  discourses  but  the  description  of  performance  by  actors  themselves  has  often   been   shot   through   with   allusions   to   the   uncanny   and   the   spectral.   Many   performers   describe   acting   in   terms   of   making   connections   with   an   otherworldly   realm,   raising   spirits,   channelling   energy   forces   and   resurrecting   the   dead.   For   Simon   Callow   performing  is  ‘kind  of  voodoo’  and  for  Declan  Donnellan  it  is  the  release  of  an  internal   ghost,  a  hidden  persona  in  the  actor.  Theorists  have  been  impatient  with  what  they  see   as  mystification  but  the  fact  that  actors  often  articulate  what  they  do  in  spectral  terms  is   connected   with   the   origins   of   modern   actor   training   and   is   an   attempt   to   reach   for   metaphors  which  bridge  orthodox  science  and  the  occult  in  order  to  find  a  language  that   can   address   states   of   self-­‐alienation,   feelings   of   bodily   transcendence,   and   experiences   of  otherness.  This  paper  considers  examples  of  actors  attempting  to  describe  a  craft  that   Phillip   Seymour   Hoffmann   once   said   that   ‘normal   people   run   screaming   from’   and   seeks   to  account  for  the  professional  actor’s  preference  for  metaphors  of  the  uncanny.       Scarlet  Luk  (Yale  University)   Middlemarch's  Narrator  and  the  Ladies     As  popular  belief  goes,  the  narrator  of  Middlemarch  is  obviously  a  man,  or  at  least  one   has   a   “strong   sense”   that   they   are,   thereby   continuing   to   sponsor   an   unusually   strong   boundary   between   author   and   narrator.   In   one   version   of   this   reading,   Cathy   Maxwell   has  said  “[Dorothea  Brooke’s]  very  ignorance  seems  to  make  her  more  attractive  to  the   narrator:  it  gives  her  the  sexual  piquancy  of  the  innocent  and  it  makes  him  powerful  in   his  superior  knowledge  as  a  voyeur”.  And  yet,  what  if  this  superior  voyeurism  was  not   the  bearer  of  a  “him”,  but  a  ‘her’?  As  Henry  James  attests,  what  distinguished  Eliot  from   male  writers  like  Fielding  and  Thackeray  in  her  depiction  of  women  is  the  lack  of  “a  sort   of   titillation   of   the   masculine   sense   of   difference”.   Assuming   that   James’s   own   ‘strong   sense’  holds  out  against  others  to  the  contrary,  this  identification  is  a  tantalising  one.     My   paper   engages   with   the   erotic   readerly   possibilities   of   this,   taking   the   cue   from   David   Kurnick’s   spin   on   Kenny   Marotta,   who   casts   the   “conqueror”   Eliot   as   the   “butch   hero   to   Dorothea’s   damsel-­‐in-­‐distress”.   This   crosshatches   in   a   provocative   way   with   a   well-­‐rehearsed   critical   engagement   in   Eliot’s   gender   politics,   especially   in   the   narratorial   engagement   with   characters   such   as   Dorothea.   For   example,   despite   the   acerbity   with   which   George   Eliot   parodied   the   titular   fiction   in   “Silly   Novels   by   Lady   Novelists”,   there   lingers   a   certain   perverse   fondness   for   them   (and   most   certainly   in   the   recapitulation   of   their   novelistic   traits),   much   like   an   overseer   would   have   to   a   group   of   hopeless   initiates   into   her   own   perfected   art.   More   startlingly,   much   of   what   Eliot   excoriates  appears  in  her  own  fiction,  rearranged  into  less  hysterical  variations:  “she  [a   generic   ‘she’]   as   often   as   not   marries   the   wrong   person   to   begin   with,   and   she   suffers   terribly   from   the   plots   and   intrigues   of   the   vicious   baronet;   but   even   death   has   a   soft   place  in  his  heart  for  such  a  paragon,  and  remedies  all  mistakes  for  her  just  at  the  right   moment”.  No  vicious  baronets  exist  in  Middlemarch,  but  many  of  the  foibles  of  the  lady   novel  do  –  the  “frothy,  the  prosy,  the  pious,  or  the  pedantic”  live  on  in  various  guises.     I  propose  that  Eliot  recuperates  certain  formal  and  affective  aspects  of  the  lady   novel  by  the  narrator’s  reading  of  them  in  a  kind  of  conceptual  quotation,  with  Dorothea   as   the   subject   not   only   as   a   muted   kind   of   parody,   but   (as   suggested   above)   of   desire.   The  fascination  for  the  somewhat  awkward  Dorothea  is  also  an  implicit  fascination  with   the   lady   novel.   The   result   of   such   rearrangement   and   narrative   focalisation   is   a   problematic  one,  however,  especially  taking  the  narrator’s  possible  gender  into  account:  

 

47  

Dorothea  is  ‘kept’  for  the  narrator,  and  the  reader  too  experiences  the  complicity  with   which  we  may  be  denied  vision,  closure  or  the  dignity  of  self-­‐realisation.       Peta  Mayer  (University  of  Melbourne)   Recovering  Affect,  Sensuality  and  the  Backwards  Turn  by  Staging  the  Performance  of  the   Aesthete  in  Anita  Brookner’s  A  Misalliance  (1986)     In   A   Misalliance   (1986),   Anita   Brookner’s   sixth   novel   (of   25),   the   main   protagonist,   Blanche  Vernon,  habitually  visits  the  Italian  Rooms  of  London’s  National  Gallery  seeking   knowledge   of   ‘the   world   of   love   and   pleasure’   depicted   in   Renaissance   paintings   of   nymphs.   When   Blanche   meets   the   ‘spectacular,   vivid,   obtrusive’   Sally   Beamish,   and   decides  she  ‘was  in  fact  a  sort  of  a  nymph’,  Blanche’s  visits  to  the  gallery  are  suspended   and  her  obsession  is  transferred  to  the  striking  younger  woman  (M,  29).           In   Frank   Kermode’s   review   of   A  Misalliance,   the   master   critic   claims   the   novel   ‘is   about  a  woman  abandoned  by  her  husband  of  20  years.’    He  adds:  ‘perhaps  some  of  the   motifs   and   symbols   are   a   bit   too   heavily   marked’.   John   Bayley   joins   the   censorious   chorus   to   contend   that   Brookner’s   unnecessary   emphasis   on   symbolism,   ‘reveals   a   touching  lack  of  self-­‐confidence.’           In   this   paper   I   suggest   the   canonical   figures   of   Bayley   and   Kermode   epitomise   the  dominant  response  to  Brookner’s  fiction  by  recuperating  negative  affects  of  loss  and   longing   through   what   I   term   the   ‘hetero-­‐chronic   symbolic’.   In   addition,   these   critics   demonstrate   a   resistance   to   contextualising   positive   affects   of   homoerotic   love   and   pleasure  in  Brookner’s  oeuvre.            I  present  a  queer  reading  of  A  Misalliance  by  producing  the  narrative  personae   of   the   aesthete   as   the   hermeneutic   figure   able   to   access   and   interpret   an   array   of   affective,  sensual,  aesthetic,  temporal  and  erotic  behaviours  in  the  text.  I  connect  a  field   of   floral,   fruity,   botanical   and   climatic   motifs   in   Brookner’s   novel   to   the   intertextual   matrix   surrounding   the   Greek   poet   Sappho.   Through   my   readings   of   Sappho,   Plato,   Madame  de  Staël,  Charles  Baudelaire  and  Walter  Pater,  I  index  the  Brookner’s  Sapphic   intertextuality   more   specifically   as   form   of   nineteenth-­‐century   sapphism   –   and   related   to  a  mode  of  Romantic  Hellenism  –  both  of  which  form  part  of  the  signifying  matrix  of   the  figure  of  the  aesthete.  I  combine  the  text’s  homoerotic  motifs,  the  configuration  of  a   ‘backwards  turn’  and  the  idolatry  of  the  senses  to  produce  the  figure  of  the  aesthete.    I   draw   on   Walter   Benjamin’s   figure   of   history   as   an   image,   and   Thomas   Bahti’s   reading   of   Benjamin’s   ‘angel   of   history’,   to   nominate   the   rhetorical   figure   of   metaleptic   prolepsis   and   the   narrative   of   metamorphosis   as   the   organising   narrative   and   rhetorical   forms   across  which  to  stage  the  performance  of  aesthete  in  A  Misalliance.               I   propel   the   performance   of   the   aesthete   in   A   Misalliance   across   the   narrative   contours   of   guilt,   punishment,   redemption,   purification   and   blessedness   that   Mikhail   Bakhtin  supplies  as  the  problematic  knots  of  the  metamorphosis  narrative.    Based  on  my   readings   of   Jacques   Lacan,   Bourdieu,   Benjamin   and   Plato,   I   stage   the   self-­‐begetting   performance   of   the   aesthete   in   A  Misalliance   across   the   preconditions   for   a   metaleptic   turn  in  the  contours  of  Blanche’s  guilt  and  punishment  in  a  hetero-­‐chronic  present,  the   redemptive   flashback   as   Blanche’s   encounter   with   the   nymphs   and   the   forward   prolepsis   in   the   contours   of   purification   and   blessedness   which   chart   Blanche’s   relationship  with  Sally  and  her  final  journey  to  the  sun.                

 

48  

Beornn  McCarthy  (University  of  Melbourne)   Affective   Labour   and   Field   Stone   Covenants:   Romantic   Repetitions   of   Job   from   Robert   Lowth  to  Autonomists     ‘Have  you  read  Job?’,  asks  the  Young  Man  in  SØren  Kierkegaard’s  philosophical  novella,   Repetition   (1843).     ‘Read   it.   Read   it   again   and   again.’     This   curious   display   of   an   impassioned,  poetic  taste  for  The  Book  of  Job  is  a  telling  repetition  in  Kierkegaard,  who   portrays   the   Young   Man   as   an   heir   of   a   familiar   Romantic   trajectory.     The   Young   Man   is,   of   course,   diagnosed   by   Kierkegaard’s   pseudonym   psychologist   Constantin   Constanius   as   a   poet   who   has   failed   at   religion   and   is   therefore   condemned   to   a   pathetic   sway   of   affections   from   tragedy   to   comedy.     Kierkegaard’s   ability   to   plumb   the   depths   of   a   repetition   of   Job   is   ‘in   covenant   with   the   stones   of   the   field’   (Job   5.23),   and   the   formulations   in   Repetition   are   best   understood   in   relation   to   the   interpretation   of   religion  that  emerged  in  Enlightenment  philosophers  such  as  Locke,  Spinoza  and  Bayle,   whose  philosophies  of  affections  had  a  sympathetic  absorption  in  the  belles  lettres  and   poetic  critics  of  the  eighteenth  century.               One   of   these   eighteenth-­‐century   critics   of   poetry,   Bishop   Robert   Lowth,   gave   a   series   of   lectures   at   Oxford   beginning   in   the   1740s.     Published   in   the   Latin   work,   Praelectiones  Academicae  de  Sacra  Poesi  Hebraeorum  (1753),  Lowth’s  lectures  analysed   the   sublime   rhetoric   of   Job   and   his   friends.     The   work   would   be   translated   by   George   Gregory  in  the  year  Lowth  died,  in  1787.    The  publisher  of  this  volume  Lectures  on  the   Sacred  Poetry  of  the  Hebrews  was  Joseph  Johnson,  whose  publishing  house  sheltered  a   generation   of   radical   English   authors.     With   such   a   readership,   Lowth’s   work   was,   as   Robert  Southey  put  in  his  1807  Specimens  of  the  Later  English  Poets,  ‘fresh  in  the  mind  of   every  scholar’.               Kierkegaard’s   arrangement   of   poetry   and   prophecy,   poet   and   prophet,   is   consistent   with   Lowth   approach   to   sacred   poetry:   the   Young   Man   in   Repetition   is   consumed   with   affections   ‘on   the   border   of   poetry’,   seeking   refuge   in   his   ‘silent   confident’,   Job.     Repetition’s   modern   poet-­‐Job   is   clearly   a   late-­‐comer   to   German   Miltonism  and  its  reception  of  Lowth.    ‘The  concept  of  the  modern  poet-­‐prophet’,  argues   Robert  D.  Richardson  in  his  biography  of  Emerson,  ‘runs  from  Lowth  to  Blake,  to  Herder,   and   to   Whitman.’     Such   a   list   of   secret   sharers   in   a   peculiarly   modern   vocational   assemblage   does   not,   however,   seem   satisfactory.     This   paper   will   propose   a   different   way   of   considering   the   enduring   influence   of   Lowth’s   sacred   poetry.     It   will   trace   the   ‘runs’   of   one   prophetic   book   –   Job   –   as   it   emerges   in   the   writings   of   Lowth,   passes   through   William   Blake   and   Kierkegaard,   parabolises   affective   labour   in   the   works   of   Antonio   Negri,   and   possibly   encounters   OOO.     It   will   be   argued   that   Romantic   repetitions   of   Job   locate   transcendence   ‘on   the   border   of   poetry’,   in   a   zone   of   indistinction  between  prophecy  and  poetry,  where  we  find  relations  of  labour  and  affect   that   act   as   tottering   foundations   for   both   literature   and   modernity.     Homo   faber,   and   homo   sacer   or,   rather,   the   sacer   faber,   have   become   the   source   of   a   modernity’s   covenant,   which   marks   out   the   space   of   life   and   action   that   Marx’s   working   class   was   intended   to   fill.     Inevitably,   this   prophecy   has   provoked   Greek   and   Latinist   revivals   of   acedia  against  Romanticism’s  Jobs.         Leigh  McLennon  (University  of  Melbourne)   Burial,   Language   and   Postcolonial   Trauma:   Reading   Gothic   Melancholia   in   Last   of   the   Mohicans     A   pattern   of   hiding,   conflict,   capture   and   eventual   escape   repeats   throughout   James   Fenimore   Cooper’s   the   Last  of  the  Mohicans   (1826).   As   part   of   this   pattern,   the   narrative   repeats   the   Gothic   motifs   of   gory   violence,   entombment   and   burial.   This   paper   argues   that  Cooper  evokes  these  Gothic  motifs  in  Last  of  the  Mohicans  in  order  to  aestheticise  

 

49  

colonialism   as   an   unspeakable   national   and   racial   trauma.   By   aestheticising   the   violence   of   America’s   colonial   and   colonising   past   –   and   the   way   this   past   is   often   buried   and   silenced   –   Cooper   constructs   a   Gothic   melancholia   in   his   text.       The   Last   of   the   Mohicans   participates   in   a   trope   that   represents   the   vanishing   of   the   Indian   as   inevitable.   However,  the  novel  also  suggests  that  the  violence  of  this  vanishing,  a  colonial  violence   that  has  been  buried  by  national  history,  will  inevitably  return  to  haunt  us.  Framed  by   the  psychoanalytic  criticism  of  Freud,  Abraham  and  Torok,  and  Eve  Kofosky  Sedgwick,   my   paper   analyses   how   Mohicans   attempts   to   represent   the   melancholic   loss   of   America’s   native   people   in   three   ways:   through   Gothic   representations   of   burial   following  death,  of  live  burial  and  of  the  burial  of  language.  As  Sedgwick  argues,  Gothic   narratives   are   concerned   with   how   language   buries   meaning:   they   bury   narratives   through  framing  stories  and  stories  retold;  through  the  circuitous  repetition  of  narrative   events;   and   they   generally   are   concerned   with   the   unspeakable   and   the   unrepresentable.   This   paper   thus   analyses   how   Gothic   burial   and   language   work   together  in  Last  of  the  Mohicans  to  encrypt  its  Indian  characters  melancholically.         In   doing   so,   the   paper   next   engages   with   Dana   Luciano’s   analysis   of   grief   and   mourning  in  Mohicans.    Luciano  contrasts  emotive  Indian  “voice”  with  white  language,   constructing  a  binary  account  in  which  Indian  voice  is  the  true  expression  of  affect  and,   oppositionally,   white   language   is   merely   a   means   of   representation.     If   Luciano’s   text   reads  the  affective  and  sacred  purity  of  Indian  voice  in  Last  of  the  Mohicans,  this  paper   responds  by  reading  the  Gothicized  unspeakableness  of  the  Indian  language  in  this  text.   Through   this   reading,   the   paper   further   suggests   that   there   is   a   need   to   analyse   how   Mohicans   (and   frontier   novels   more   broadly)   occlude   or   minimise   racial   encounters   through  what  they  do  not  narrate.        The  paper  concludes  by  noting  three  key  difficulties   in  performing  an  analysis  of  colonial  melancholia.  First,  it  notes  the  inherent  difficulty  of   attempting   to   speak   of   the   unspeakable   when   analysing   trauma.   Second,   drawing   on   Sara  Ahmed’s  work  on  affect  and  trauma,  it  notes  that  contemporary,  critical  diagnoses   of   postcolonial   melancholia   problematically   assume   that   such   criticism   comes   from   a   position  removed  from  the  aftermath  of  the  trauma  that  is  buried.  Third  and  finally,  the   paper   suggests   recent   analyses   of   postcolonial   melancholia   fail   to   recognise   that   the   language  of  the  psychoanalytic  framework  is  itself  Gothic.  Consequently,  there  has  been   a   significant   failure   to   recognise   how   analysis   of   melancholia   further   Gothically   aestheticises  the  very  burials  that  it  attempts  to  excavate.           James  Meffan  (Victoria  University  Wellington)    J.M.  Coetzee  Is  Bad  at  Sex     What  to  make  of  the  persistent  strain  of  unflattering  sexual  disclosure  that  runs  through   JM   Coetzee’s   “autobiographical”   works?   Not   only   does   this   seem   a   topic   that   lacks   the   gravity   expected   from   the   memoir   of   a   great   writer,   at   times   (in   Summertime   in   particular)   it   threatens   to   displace   all   mention   of   identifiably   “writerly”   concerns   entirely.   In   this   paper   I   will   explore   the   function   of   sexual   disclosure   in   Coetzee’s   writing,  paying  particular  attention  to  the  way  it  represents  an  evidently  unsatisfactory   physical   intimacy   as   in   some   way   correlated   to   the   intimacy   of   the   relationship   between   reader  and  writer.      

 

50  

Kate  Montague  (University  of  New  South  Wales)   Tragic  Affect  and  the  Postwar  American  Novel     In  Poetics  Aristotle  writes  that  the  proper  aim  of  tragedy  is  the  imitation  of  an  action  in   order   to   arouse   “pity   and   fear,   wherewith   to   accomplish   its   catharsis   of   such   emotions.”   In   other   words,   the   experience   of   dramatic   tragedy   should   evacuate   the   body   of   these   feelings,   via   the   transformation   of   emotions   into   unnameable   intensities.   Framing   the   relationship   between   art   and   the   emotions   in   similar   terms,   Fredric   Jameson   has   very   recently   written   that   affect   “somehow   eludes   language   and   its   naming   of   things   (and   feelings),   whereas   emotion   is   pre-­‐eminently   a   phenomena   sorted   out   into   an   array   of   names.”  If  for  Aristotle,  catharsis  is  directed  at  the  bodily  purgation  of  emotions  via  the   mediation  of  art;  and  if  for  Jameson  affect  is  the  excess  of  un-­‐codified  bodily  sensation  in   literature;  then  we  can  say  that  affect  is  the  energetic  sine  qua  non  of  the  tragic  genre.   This  paper  proposes  to  investigate  the  manifestation  of  tragic  catharsis  conceived  of  as   affective   intensity   across   several   celebrated   postwar   American   novels—William   Gaddis’s   The   Recognitions,   Thomas   Pynchon’s   Gravity’s   Rainbow,   Cormac   McCarthy’s   Blood  Meridian,  and  Philip  Roth’s  “American  Trilogy.”  In  all  of  these  late  twentieth  and   early  twenty-­‐first  century  novels,  dramatic  forms  of  the  tragic  genre  assert  themselves   anachronistically.   By   tracing   the   resurgence   of   premodern   forms   of   tragedy   from   within   these  postmodern  novels,  this  paper  will  address  two  questions:  what  are  the  aesthetic   implications   of   this   return   to   a   tragic   formalism   for   what   is   now   called   the   “affective   turn”  in  contemporary  literature?  And,  why  does  the  history  and  geography  of  postwar   America  give  rise  to  a  specifically  tragic  affect.         Grace  Moore  (Centre  for  the  History  of  Emotions,  University  of  Melbourne)   ‘So  Wild  and  Beautiful  a  World  Around  Him’:  Anthony  Trollope  and  Antipodean  Ecology     Trollope  visited  the  Antipodes  twice.    Once,  for  about  eighteen  months,  between  1871   and  1872,  and  then  again  in  1875,  when  he  mostly  remained  in  New  South  Wales.    His   early  colonial  writings  were  marked  by  a  proprietorial  approach,  through  which  he   frequently  depicted  landscapes  as  feminized,  while  asserting  a  sense  of  mastery  over  all   he  surveyed.    By  the  time  he  travelled  to  Australia,  however,  Trollope’s  attitude  to  the   colonial  environment  had  become  much  more  nuanced,  and  his  attitude  to  Antipodean   ecology  was  often  remarkably  perceptive  and  engaged.     Examining  a  combination  of  Trollope’s  fiction  and  travel  writing,  this  paper  will   map  his  engagement  with  settler  culture’s  impact  on  the  Australian  terrain.    I  will   explore  Trollope’s  representations  of  mining,  ring-­‐barking  and  fire,  positioning  the   author  in  relation  to  the  advice  meted  out  in  guidebooks  and  emigrants’  manuals,  while   analyzing  his  engagement  with  ideas  of  the  pastoral.       I  will  consider  some  of  the  challenges  that  the  Australian  wilderness  posed  to   Trollope’s  sense  of  the  aesthetic,  and  I  will  seek  to  situate  his  writing  in  relation  to   developing  notions  of  an  Australian  gothic.    Furthermore,  I  shall  examine  Trollope’s   representations  of  Australian  fauna,  contextualizing  his  famous  remark  that  ‘Australia  is   altogether  deficient  in  sensational  wild  beasts’  (A&NZ,  208)  and  interrogating  his   representations  of  both  endangerment  and  adaptation.    This  paper  will  end  with  an   analysis  of  dingo-­‐hunting,  using  the  work  of  Deborah  Bird  Rose  and  Freya  Mathews  to   examine  how  the  persecution  of  wild  dogs  provided  an  outlet  for  other  forms  of  settler   panic,  while  reading  the  dingo  as  a  counter-­‐pastoralist.  

     

 

 

51  

Simone  Murray  (Monash  University)   Everyone’s  a  Critic:  Mass  Amateur  Book  Reviewing  in  the  Digital  Literary  Sphere     The  rise  of  mass  amateur  book  reviewing  on  the  internet  has  fundamentally  changed  the   nature   of   modern   literary   evaluation.     The   traditional   idea   of   the   solitary   newspaper   critic,   steeped   in   the   literary   canon,   dispensing   judgement   from   Olympian   heights   to   a   culturally   inferior,   silent   and   anonymous   readership   has   gone.     In   its   place   we   are   witnessing  the  rise  of  book  reviewing  as,  in  the  words  of  Will  Self,  ‘more  a  conversation   than  a  series  of  declarations’  (2013).    Amazon  customer  reviews,  literary  blogs,  library   self-­‐cataloguing   sites,   and   online   fora   attached   to   television   book   clubs   incubate   a   culture  of  vigorous,  multivocal  and  ongoing  popular  literary  evaluation  in  which  critical   capital  cannot  be  assumed  but  is  up  for  grabs.           Such   developments   throw   a   harsh   light   on   the   relationship   between   academic   criticism   and   book   reviewing.     The   academy   has   long   evidenced   surprisingly   little   intellectual   interest   in   the   cultural   institution   of   book   reviewing.     Furthermore,   the   subjective   and   specifically   affective   responses   to   books   common   amongst   amateur   book   reviewers   highlight   by   contrast   how   academic   literary   criticism   has   long   striven   to   relegate   emotional   response   to   the   periphery-­‐-­‐-­‐a   critical   orthodoxy   prevalent   as   much   among  New  Critics  as  among  post-­‐structuralists.           In  one  sense  mass  amateur  reviewing  represents  a  dramatic  democratisation  of   literary   culture,   and   welcome   evidence   of   public   interest   in   matters   literary.     Yet,   on   the   other  hand,  over-­‐easy  equation  of  the  internet  with  the  popular  risks  naivety.    Hosts  of   literary   reviewing   websites   such   as   book   retailers   have   a   direct   financial   interest   in   book   sales,   risking   preferential   treatment   for   ‘positive’   reviewers.     Literary   bloggers   derive   free   books   and   potential   advertising   income   from   book   publishers   in   search   of   positive  review  coverage.    More  diffusely,  shouldn’t  the  widening  gulf  between  popular   literary  reviewing  and  professional  academic  literary  criticism  give  us  pause?    How  is  it   that   a   sizable   proportion   of   amateur   reviewers   are   so   alienated   by   the   opaque   terminology  and  suspicious  reading  strategies  institutionalised  in  English  departments   that   they   represent   themselves   by   contrast   as   ‘true’   lovers   of   literature?         Most   pertinent  to  the  conference  theme,  what  is  the  status  of  affect  in  the  emerging  reviewing   culture   of   the   digital   literary   sphere?     Clearly   the   days   of   the   seemingly   bloodless   and   dispassionate   critic   dispensing   ‘objective’   verdicts   on   literary   and   aesthetic   worth   are   over.    But  in  their  place  have  we  entered  an  era  of  radical  egalitarianism  where  any  form   of  cultural  credentialism  is  lost  in  the  cacophony  of  online  opinion?  And  what  about  the   potential  for  detailed,  reflective  and  reasoned  reviewing  in  an  online  world  privileging   the   short,   immediate   and   easily   rankable   ‘starred’   review,   a   climate   in   which   Gideon   Haigh  laments  ‘  “liking”  and  “not  liking”  are  the  only  options’  (2010).          This   paper   analyses   the   phenomenon   and   implications   of   mass   amateur   book   reviewing  in  the  contemporary  digital  literary  sphere  and  asks  whether  broadening  an   admitted   previously   narrow   critical   coterie   necessarily   requires   wholesale   abandonment  of  notions  of  cultural  expertise.    It  suggests  that  acknowledging  the  long-­‐ banished   affective   impact   of   literary   works   needn’t   reduce   us   to   a   digital   world   characterised  by  intemperate  tides  of  gushing  and  flaming.         Sashi  Nair  (University  of  Melbourne)   Affect,  Desire  and  Queer  Ecologies  in  Patrick  White’s  The  Twyborn  Affair     Australian  ‘mainstream’  history  is  invested  in  stories  of  failure  and  loss  in  the  face  of  a   hostile   environment.   These   stories   work   to   highlight   the   triumph   and   tenuousness   of   rural   life,   while   simultaneously   romanticising   that   life.   Cultural   and   social   interactions   with,   and   responses   to,   the   Australian   environment   are,   in   turn,   informed   by   the   historical   experience   of   alienation   from   that   environment.   Less   readily   recognised   are  

 

52  

the   experiences   of   social   and   cultural   alienation   that   result   in   a   search   for   a   place   to   belong  -­‐  according  to  these  narratives,  both  real  and  imagined,  the  search  for  belonging   is   grounded   in   identification   with   the   physical   world.   The   hostility   of   the   environment   may   remain   but   it   is   recast   as   potentially   transformative   -­‐   no   longer   something   to   manage   or   conquer,   the   environment       facilitates   unexpected   new   interpersonal   identifications  and  is  itself  a  source  of  identification.           This  paper  is  concerned  with  the  search  for  place  that  is  enacted  by  the  socially   or   culturally   marginalised   subject.   That   this   search   often   fails   is   significant   -­‐   while   failure   to   ‘defeat’   the   landscape   is   a   feature   of   historical   and   fictional   accounts   of   any   settler  society,  this  failure  is  rarely  deemed  productive.  Central  to  my  intervention  into   the   study   of   queer   affect   and   ecocriticism   is   the   experience   of   national   and   cultural   alienation,  which  resulted  in  attempts  to  ‘belong’  away  from  ‘home’.  The  failure  of  such   attempts   provided   the   impetus   for   the   establishment   of   new   relationships   with   ‘place’.   I   am   interested   in   ‘failure’,   then,   as   an   experience   that   was   also   productive   for   the   development   of   identity   and   of   modes   of   representation   –   imagining   new   identities,   communities   and   spaces   brought   them   into   existence.         Work   that   has   been   done   on   ‘queer’  ecologies  has  pointed  to  the  organisation  of  the  ‘bush’  or  ‘wilderness’  as  sites  of   ‘heteromasculinity’.   Yet   this   project   will   examine   the   Australian   environment   as   a   contested  site,  imagined  as  a  place  in  which  the  subject  who  is  ‘queer’  (in  the  broadest   sense  of  the  term)  can  enact  a  search  for  belonging.  In  this  paper  I  will  examine  Patrick   White’s  The  Twyborn  Affair  (1979),  arguing  that  in  this  novel,  Australia  at  first  appears   sanitised,  as  gender  non-­‐conformity  and  sexual  ambiguity  are  relocated  to  a  Europe  that   is  perceived  as  less  hostile  to  their  expression  in  the  lead  up  to  the  First  World  War.  It  is   only   when   Eudoxia   Vatatzes   returns   to   Australia   as   Eddie   Twyborn   and   heads   for   the   ‘outback’   that   a   hostile,   exotic   Australian   landscape   provides   fertile   ground   for   queer   representation.   Eddie   longs   for   a   relationship   with   the   ‘bitter   landscape’,   searching   for   belonging  in  the  isolation  of  the  bush.  He  feels  a  seemingly  inevitable  and  inexpressible   affection   for   his   manager   Don   Prowse,   who   appears   to   have   forged   just   such   a   relationship.   The   representation   of   homoerotic   desire   in   Australia   is   tied   to   a   unique   configuration   of   failure   and   the   unforgiving   environment,   and   it   transforms   our   understanding  of  the  environment  itself.       James  Phillips  (University  of  New  South  Wales)   She  Stoops  to  Conquer:  Oliver  Goldsmith  and  the  Stakes  of  Politeness     This   paper   examines   an   eighteenth-­‐century   play   for   its   contribution   to   Enlightenment   reflections  on  the  meaning  of  politeness.    The  affective  dimension  of  politeness  lies  in  its   irreducibility  to  a  set  of  rules  of  conduct.    Civility,  which  knows  when  and  when  not  to   overlook   breaches,   lends   itself   to   being   discussed   in   terms   of   a   sociable   affect.     Goldsmith's  characters  lose  the  ground  underneath  them  and  commit  gaffe  after  gaffe:  if   they   are   to   recover   a   world   in   which   they   can   at   least   believe   they   make   sense   to   one   another,   they   have   to   feel   their   way   out   of   a   kind   of   state   of   nature.     It   is   a   collective   but   heterogeneous   effort.     The   pedagogic   and   civilising   programmes   of   the   Enlightenment   contain   an   anti-­‐monarchical   moment,   since   a   society   whose   members   have   found   a   means   to   circumvent   their   disagreements   through   politeness   does   not   provide   the   Hobbesian   sovereign   with   a   pretext   for   asserting   his   authority.     Melville’s   story   “Bartleby”,   whose   central   character   makes   of   politeness   a   confrontation   with   commands,   is   read   as   a   late   reflection   on   the   failure   of   this   Enlightenment   project   to   reconfigure  society  without  sovereignty.              

 

53  

Sean  Pryor  (University  of  New  South  Wales)   Mina  Loy's  Bliss:  Affect  and  Form       In   this   paper   I   will   consider   the   relation   of   affect   and   poetic   form   in   the   work   of   the   modernist   poet,   Mina   Loy.   Focusing   especially   on   Loy’s   early   career   in   the   1910s   and   1920s,  I  will  argue  first  that  Loy’s  poetry  endeavours  to  describe  a  range  of  affects,  and   second  that  this  effort  to  describe  is  necessarily  and  self-­‐consciously  at  odds  with  affect   that   precedes   language   and   cognition.   The   paper   will   then   turn   to   examine   Loy’s   peculiar   and   experimental   prosody,   and   speculate   about   the   kinds   of   affect   which   poetic   form  might  be  said  to  capture  or  induce,  independent  of  the  particular  poem’s  particular   themes,  images,  concepts.  For  this  I  will  place  Loy  in  the  context  both  of  her  modernist   contemporaries  and  also  of  her  Victorian  and  Romantic  precursors.  I  hope  to  conclude   by   reading   a   short   section   of   Loy’s   long   poem,   “Anglo-­‐Mongrels   and   the   Rose”   (1923-­‐ 1925),   and   by   asking   how   the   affects   of   prosody   compensate   for,   complicate,   or   clash   with  the  affective  content  of  the  poetry.       Ashleigh  Pyke  (University  of  Queensland)   ‘Subjects   of   thought   furnish   not   sufficient   employment   in   solitude’:   Gothic   Sociability,   Eighteenth-­‐Century  Reading  and  the  Affective  Turn     Replacing  classical  notions  of  the  beautiful  with  the  awe,  darkness,  solitude  and  terror  of   the   sublime,   the   gothic   is   always   strongly   identified   by   an   uncanny   aesthetic,   which   is   at   once  celebrated  and  condemned  for  the  peculiar  affect  it  has  upon  readers.  As  texts  from   this  genre  are  primarily  assessed  on  how  successfully  they  achieve  their  desired  reading   affect,   gothic   fiction   presents   a   problem   for   literary   criticism   that   separates   emotion   from  judgments  of  literary  value.  The  affective  turn  is  therefore  particularly  significant   to   gothic   critique   as   it   allows   for   studies   that   investigate   the   genre’s   social   and   intellectual   contexts,   and   the   reading   and   writing   practices   surrounding   such   fiction.   Given  the  increasing  scholarly  and  public  interest  in  the  gothic  over  the  last  five  to  ten   years,   though,   it   is   surprising   that   there   are   no   studies   that   exclusively   examine   the   social   networks   to   which   the   gothic   authors   belonged,   and   the   influence   these   relationships  had  on  their  aesthetic  choices.  As  part  of  a  larger  project,  this  paper  goes   someway  toward  filling  this  gap.     By  canvasing  the  exchanges  between  early  gothic  authors,  as  well  as  considering   their   theoretical   and   critical   writings,   this   paper   aims   to   demonstrate   that   the   social   politics   of   the   gothic   literary   circle   had   a   direct   impact   upon   the   strategies   chosen   to   create   reading   affect   in   gothic   texts.   Looking   at   paratextual   material   –   the   prefaces   to   fictional  texts,  essays,  reviews,  correspondence  and  journals  –  it  can  be  seen  that  a  key   concern   for   gothic   authors   was   how   to   best   achieve   reading   affect.   In   negotiating   the   strategies  they  favoured  or  believed  important  to  the  makeup  of  the  genre  in  this  regard,   gothic   authors   also   position   themselves   strategically   in   relation   to   other   authors.   For   example,   in   her   preface   to   The  Old  English  Baron,   Clara   Reeve   contests   Horace   Walpole’s   ‘defective’   method   of   eliciting   terror   in   The  Castle  of  Otranto,   therefore   challenging   his   power   or   authority   to   determine   the   production   of   gothic   literary   discourse   and   his   control  over  ideological  reproduction  in  future  texts.     Within   an   increasingly   commercial   environment,   in   which   the   professionalisation   of   writing   produced   a   dichotomy   between   the   marketability   of   popular   fiction   and   the   aesthetic   value   of   literature,   it   was   very   much   a   case   of   whom   you   knew,   not   what   you   knew,   that   decided   an   individual   author’s   success   or   livelihood.   These   relationships   will   be   shown   to   be   generally   more   significant   to   the   evolution   of   the   genre,   than   has   previously   been   considered,   as   they   result   in   the   development,   or   abandonment,  of  certain  formal,  stylistic  and  aesthetic  elements  that  not  only  contribute   to   the   production   of   gothic   reading   affect,   but   also   allow   for   the   characteristic  

 

54  

identification   of   the   genre.   Finally,   consideration   will   be   given   to   the   implications   of   these  relationships  for  the  traditional  modeling  of  the  public  and  private  spheres  in  the   eighteenth   century.   This   paper   ultimately   confirms   that   the   gothic   aught   to   be   at   the   center  of  any  conversation  of  literature.       Susan  Pyke  (University  of  Melbourne)   The  Circling  Bush     This   paper   considers   if   less   ‘man-­‐made’   environments   have   a   particular   role   to   play   when   hosting   the   banshee   scream   of   feminist   protest.   This   investigation   begins   with   the   premise   that   the   unsignified   scream   articulates   an   affect   that   might   not   otherwise   be   freed.   The   banshee   announces   the   death   of   silencing   containment.   I   approach   the   questions  to  what  degree  the  scream  in  the  wilderness  might  offer  a  voicing  out  of  new   gender  relations,  through  a  feminist  reading  of  the  poetics  of  Emily  Brontë’s  Wuthering   Heights.   I   suggest   the   plea   of   the   vanished   and   vanquishing   Cathy   is   a   banshee   scream   that   batters   against   the   containment   of   words.   Her   ghost-­‐woman   scream   ‘let   me   in’   creates  a  readerly  affect  which  allows  an  amplification  of  the  protest  in  this  literary  yet   barely  signified  communication.  This  is  demonstrated  in  Kate  Bush’s  performative  wail   to  a  circle  of  trees.  Her  plea  to  be  ‘let  me  in’  is  strident  and  persistent,  as  it  echoes  the   scream  of  Brontë’s  Cathy-­‐ghost.  Bush’s  literary  reference  circles  patriarchy,  the  protest   is  undiminished.  The  ripple  effect  of  readerly  affect  continues  into  the  feminist  dynamics   of   Christine   Ardeef’s   reference   to   Bush’s   reference   to   Brontë’s   words.   In   the   film,   Soft   Fruit  the  protagonist,  Nadia,  playacts  the  scream  ‘let  me  in’,  voicing  her  discontent,  her   lack  of  fitting  in.         I   then   consider   the   affect   in   the   repetition   of   these   angry   words   from   a   neo-­‐ materialist   perspective,   wondering   what   role   the   surrounds   might   have   on   these   different  voicings  of  performative  hysteria.  If  the  scream  approaches  that  which  Irigaray   calls  a  ‘source  of  energy  that  has  not  been  coded’,  then  what  is  to  be  made  of  the  signifier   under   the   scream,   this   desire   to   be   ‘let   in’?   Bush’s   scream,   Cathy’s   wail   and   Nadia’s   mockery  create  a  cacophony  of  banshee  protest  which  might  be  as  much  about  being  let   out,  as  being  let  in.      At  this  point  I  ‘let  in’  the  nonhuman.  Kate  Bush’s  ghostly  ‘let  me  in’  is   a  wailing  wind  that  circles  Emily  Brontë’s  posthuman  poetics.  When  these  shared  words   are   transposed   to   Bush’s   ‘red   dress   video’,   and   then   stilled,   Bush’s   arms   become   branches   and   her   lower   torso   roots   into   the   ground.   This   material   meshing,   created   through  Bush’s  dervish  spin  on  the  sacrament  of  Wuthering  Heights’  afterlife,  suggests  a   techno-­‐textual   diffraction   that   has   something   of   the   intra-­‐action   Karen   Barad   conceptualises.  The  differentiations  between  human  and  ‘other’  matter  are  immaterial.   It   may   be   that   Bush’s   lyrical   lapwing   dance   hosts   this   transcorporeal   moment.   Bush’s   Cathy   performs   the   knotted   subject,   that   wild   woman   that   Elizabeth   Bronfen   argues   transforms   ‘anxieties   and   desires   into   somatic   manifestations’.   These   mad-­‐as-­‐in-­‐angry   women  scream  with  and  beyond  the  signifier  with  a  productive  unintelligibility  that  is,   as  the  repetitions  illustrate,  both  recognisable  and  amplifiable.    I  offer  this  idea  gently,   understanding  the  importance  of  moving  on  from  the  resistance  of  hysteria’s  silence  to  a   more   defensive   response,   as   outlined   by   Marta   Caminero-­‐Santangelo.   I   argue   for   the   power  of  resistance  through  the  hysterical  response,  but  I  do  not  assert  hysteria  alone  is   adequate  to  achieve  change.              

 

55  

Paul  Rae  (University  of  Melbourne)   Woe  is  Me:  The  Subtheatrical  Prompts  of  Happy  Days     Is  it  a  blessing  or  a  curse  to  go  through  life  with  Samuel  Beckett’s  Happy  Days  (1961)  in   your   pocket?   At   seventeen,   having   worked   on   a   production   as   a   rehearsal   prompt,   I   would   naturally   have   said   the   former:   I   took   great   pleasure   in   the   language,   and   it   transformed   my   relationship   with   my   grandmother.   These   days,   routinely   assailed   by   rueful  recognitions  of  the  aging  process,  I’m  not  so  sure.     In   this   paper,   I   use   familiarity   with   Happy  Days   as   a   means   of   exploring   what   we   might  call  the  subtheatrical  dimension  of  everyday  life.  This  is  not  to  be  confused  with   theatricality  or  spectacle.  The  fact  that  certain  practices,  events  and  behaviours  look  like   theatre  and  are  recognized  as  such  suggests  they  may  not  be  the  only  or  even  the  most   important  extra-­‐theatrical  venues  where  theatre,  for  want  of  a  better  word,  happens.  If   we   wish   to   register   the   theatrical   ground   bass   as   it   rumbles   and   reverberates   through   our  selves  and  societies,  we  may  more  properly  find  it  amongst  those  manifestations  of   theatre   that   do   not   attain   sufficient   distinctiveness   as   to   be   hived   off   from   the   general   flow  of  expression  and  designated  as  such.     Happy  Days  is  a  useful  reference  point  here  not  only  because  it  is,  in  its  own  way,   so   damn   catchy,   but   also   because   it   stages   that   very   phenomenon.   It   is   impossible   to   calculate   with   any   precision   the   debts   we   owe   to   specific   encounters,   events   and   experiences   –   artistic   or   otherwise   –   in   the   formation   of   our   worldviews,   self-­‐ understandings   and   affective   milieux.   But   to   the   extent   that   Happy   Days   offers   an   exemplary  meditation  on  that  very  matter,  I  argue,  it  plays  a  distinctive  role  in  bringing   these   considerations   to   our   attention,   and   of   shaping   the   ways   we   might   think   about   them.         Melissa  Raine    (University  of  Melbourne)   Affect,  Critical  Reading  and  the  Embodied  Self     A   framework   for   understanding   how   the   reading,   affective   subject   is   organized   is   indispensible   to   a   productive   discussion   of   how   affect   participates   in   the   process   of   critique.   Research   from   the   field   of   embodied   cognition   finds   that   “higher”   cognitive   functions   are   grounded   in   the   intertwined   affective   and   motor   processes   of   the   self.     Accordingly,   reading   -­‐-­‐   the   process   of   making   meaning   from   written   (in   this   case,   specifically   literary)   texts   –   is   directly   reliant   upon   the   reader’s   embodied,   affective   experience.   How   can   such   a   model   of   embodied   selfhood   be   incorporated   into   critical   methodology?   Guillemette   Bolens’   The   Style   of   Gestures   will   be   considered   as   an   innovative  response  to  this  challenge.       Victoria  Reeve  (University  of  Melbourne)   Bridging  Gaps  in  Affective  Space:  Kazuo  Ishiguro’s  Floating  Worlds     Ishiguro’s   first   novel,   A   Pale   View   of   Hills   (1982),   created   a   stir   among   critics   when   it   introduced  a  spatiotemporal  disjunction  in  the  form  of  a  ‘pronoun  slip’  that  enabled  the   instancing  of  two  different  speakers  in  different  timeframes  through  the  same  utterance.   Tellingly,   the   utterance   takes   place   upon   a   bridge   linking   two   sides   of   post-­‐WWII   Nagasaki.   In   this   early   novel,   Ishiguro   references   British   fascination   with   the   Orient   through   the   name   of   the   narrator’s   second   daughter,   Niki,   which   must   be   ‘modern’,   according   to   her   Japanese   mother,   and   sound   ‘Eastern’   according   to   her   British   father.   A   similar   disjunction   between   culture   and   cultural   mimicry   prevails   in   Ishiguro’s   second   novel,   An   Artist   of   the   Floating   World   (1986),   through   overt   reference   to   Ukiyo-­‐e—a   style   of   painting   depicting   pleasure-­‐seeking   activities.   Ukiyo-­‐e   translates   to   ‘floating  

 

56  

world’,   which   was   the   term   applied   to   the   pleasure   district   (in   what   is   now   Tokyo)   during  the  Edo  period;  Ukiyo-­‐e  artist  Hiroshige’s  Sudden  Shower  Over  Shin-­‐Ohashi  Bridge   and   Atake   (1857)   was   reproduced   in   the   impressionist   style   by   Van   Gogh   in   1887   as   Bridge  in  the  Rain  (After  Hiroshige).   Ishiguro’s   use   of   the   term   ‘floating   world’   together   with  the  importance  of  the  bridge  in  establishing  an  affective  space  linking  the  past  and   present,   would   seem   to   draw   upon   distinctions   evident   in   the   Hiroshige   and   the   Van   Gogh,   the   Van   Gogh   repeating   the   effect   created   through   the   naming   of   Niki.   In   this   paper  I  argue  that  Floating  World’s  reliance  upon  the  divisions  created  by  the  bridge  and   its   correlates—pathways   and   corridors—enables   the   formulation   of   an   affective   space   representing   the   gap   between   culture   and   cultural   mimicry,   between   memory   and   understanding,  and  between  past  and  present.       Michael  Richardson  (University  of  Western  Sydney)   The  Indeterminacy  of  Affect     Affect   is   not   only   autonomous,   but   indeterminate.   It’s   hard   to   pin   down,   to   point   to   precisely,   to   put   one’s   finger   on   exactly.   Not   quite   sensation,   not   yet   emotion,   affect   is   that  which  bridges  gaps,  constitutes  encounters,  reshapes  bodies.  But  how  does  such  a   thing  become  the  practice  or  the  subject  of  literary  analysis?  As  a  field  of  contemporary   theory,   affect’s   virtue   and   challenge   is   its   heterogeneity,   an   outcome   of   its   emergence   from  multiple  and  disparate  fields  (Gregg  &  Seigworth  2010).  Literature  and  affect  are   not   necessarily   an   easy   fit—scant   literary   theory   is   to   be   found   among   those   diverse   origins.   Compared   to   the   textual   ontology   of   post-­‐structuralism,   affect   theory   seems   almost   an   outsider   to   the   literary   game.   Its   obvious   antecedents   have   the   aura   of   pre-­‐ Kantian  aesthetics,  long  since  discredited.  Yet  affect  offers  a  way  past  the  disembodied   intertextuality   of   post-­‐structuralism   while   retaining   its   emphasis   on   instability,   uncertainty   and   the   fluidity   of   meaning.   Affect   returns   the   body   to   literature,   but   it   does   so  with  indeterminacy.   This   paper   explores   affect   as   an   approach   to   literature   that   embraces   indeterminacy  and  makes  it  a  productive  force.  Emerging  from  the  intersection  of  post-­‐ structural  and  psychoanalytic  approaches  to  literature,  trauma  theory,  with  its  focus  on   unknowable   rupturings   of   experience,   reveals   both   the   limits   of   post-­‐structural   approaches   to   analysis   and   the   necessity   of   moving   beyond   psychoanalysis   (Kaplan   2005,  Bennett  2005).  Rather  than  falling  short  of  accounting  for  that  which  resists  entry   into   language,   affect   precisely   describes   it.   Affect’s   value   is   not   limited   to   trauma,   but   thinking   about   literary   trauma   in   affective   terms   highlights   how   affect   enables   new   understandings   of   the   charged   space   between   page   and   reader.   Crucially,   it   does   not   seek   to   ‘resolve’   the   unknowable,   but   rather   to   provide   a   way   of   understanding   its   forces,   impacts,   and   enduring   effects.   This   as   made   possible,   as   Brian   Massumi   (1996)   reveals   in   his   influential   article   “The   Autonomy   of   Affect,”   by   the   existence   of   affective   intensities  outside  the  subjects  and  objects  to  which  we  normally  confine  agency.  Such   Deleuzian  conceptions  have  proven  productive  in  film  studies,  where  the  importance  of   non-­‐verbal   elements   makes   clearer   the   limitations   of   intertextuality.   Paradoxically,   bringing   affect   to   bear   on   literature   calls   for   an   analogous   (although   by   no   means   equivalent)   de-­‐emphasising   of   words   themselves,   and   an   embrace   of   form   and   the   unwritten   as   having   crucial   force   in   the   production   of   affective   meaning.   Where   post-­‐ structuralism  ascribed  the  indeterminate  to  the  inherent  instability  of  signs,  this  paper   argues  that  affect  is  valuable  precisely  in  its  embrace  of  the  indeterminacy  of  meaning   that   occurs   between   reader   and   text   in   the   act   of   reading.   This   indeterminacy   is   not   simply  linguistic,  it  resides  in  the  autonomous  relations  that  are  the  stuff  of  the  body’s   encounter  with  the  literary  text.  The  indeterminacy  of  affect  is  not  only  the  uncertainty   of   meaning   in   literature,   but   the   inescapable   force   of   that   instability   upon   the   reading   body.  

 

57  

Sarah  Richardson  (University  of  Melbourne)   ‘Phoebe   “Never   Gets   Over   Anything”   Gloeckner’:   Trauma   and   Productive   Shame   in   two   Comics     Working  across  a  variety  of  visual  and  literary  media,  Phoebe  Gloeckner’s  texts  trouble   the   borders   of   autobiography   and   fiction,   of   genre   and   of   the   intimate   and   the   luridly   violent,  but  they  always  return  to  the  representation  of  the  areas  of  women’s  lives  that   usually   go   unwitnessed   or   are   hidden,   placed   out   of   sight:   the   literally   obscene.   Gloeckner’s  ‘”shameful”  work’  narrates  formative  encounters  with  violence,  trauma  and   –  in  what  may  or  may  not  be  life  writing  –  self-­‐realisation.  Her  1998  collection  of  shorter   comics,   A   Child’s   Life,   is   framed,   through   its   Introduction   and   Foreword,   as   well   as   their   accompanying   portraits   of   Gloeckner,   as   a   text   which   reveals   personal   histories   of   shame.   Two   comics   in   particular,   ‘Fun   Things   to   do   with   Little   Girls’   and   ‘Minnie’s   3rd   Love   or   “Nightmare   on   Polk   Street”,’   narrate   Minnie’s   (Gloeckner’s   ‘visual   analogue,’   if   not   her   direct   biographical   avatar)   experiences   of   sexual   violence,   desire   and   humiliation.       Gloeckner’s  work  in  publically  presenting  these  narratives  of  gendered  violence   (her   most   recent   work   concentrates   on   the   femicides   in   Ciudad   Juarez)   and   complex,   compromised  female  sexuality  evokes  Eve  Kosofsky  Sedgwick’s  understanding  of  shame   as   potentially   productive,   rather   than   as   a   paralysing   end   to   interest   and   experience.   Sedgwick   follows   Silvan   Tomkins,   who   characterizes   the   experience   of   shame   as   an   encounter  with  strangeness,  particularly  when  one  is  expecting  familiarity.  Shame  is  an   affect  of  disorder.  Gloeckner’s  protagonists  are  shamed  when  their  parents  punish  and   humiliate   them,   alienating   them,   when   they   expected,   if   not   needed,   kindness   and   protection.   As   shame   is   a   result   of   isolation,   of   a   failure   to   connect,   these   texts   instead   testify   to   experience,   voicing   it   in   a   cultural   void   characterised   by   the   silencing   of   women’s   voices   and   experiences,   and   work   towards   a   sense   of   community   and   identification.         Gloeckner   employs   various   strategies   that   exploit   the   hybrid   nature   of   comics   to   register   trauma   and   shame.   The   title   panels   of   ‘Fun   Things’   and   ‘Minnie’s   3rd   Love’   depict  the  adult  Gloeckner  gazing  directly  out  of  the  page.  Her  stare,  respectively  bitterly   accusatory   and   warmly   associative,   invites   the   reader   –   and,   like   in   her   2002   autobiographical  novel  The  Diary  of  a  Teenage  Girl’s  dedication,  ‘all  the  girls  when  they   have   grown’   –   to   identify   with   these   shamed   (and   shaming   –   the   reversed,   accusatory   gaze  turns  upon  the  father  figures  who  punished  and  humiliated  these  girl  protagonists)   narratives.   The   recursive,   looping   time   structure   and   visual   and   linguistic   rhymes   in   ‘Fun   Things’   construct   a   claustrophobic   atmosphere   in   which   patterns   of   violence   repeat,   and   the   aftereffects   of   trauma   refuse   to   allow   the   author   to   ever   ‘get   over   anything.’   The   productivity   of   shame   is   often   alluded   to   in   critical   theory   but   rarely   specifically   addressed.   Instead   of   the   crippling   arrest   of   humiliation,   these   works   ‘dramatiz[e]   and   integrat[e]’   shame   (Sedgwick   44).   Gloeckner’s   work   does   not   seek   to   move  beyond  shame,  as  such.  As  Sedgwick  points  out,  acknowledging  strangeness  as  the   trigger   for   the   experience   of   shame   allows   one   to   avoid   the   necessary   association   of   pathos   with   shame,   and   therefore   to   potentially   see   this   affect   as   one   which   may   not   always  demand  a  resolution  or  cure.         Monique  Rooney  (Australian  National  University)   Earth-­‐Object:  Lars  von  Trier's  Melancholia  (2011)  and  Melodramatic  Affect     Lars  von  Trier’s  cinematic  oeuvre  (which  includes  such  films  as  Dancer   in   the   Dark   and   Dogville)   brings   together   theatrical   and   filmic   traditions   and   canvasses   philosophical   ideas  about  being,  affect,  language  and  metamorphosis.  Von  Trier’s  European-­‐American   crossover  film,  Melancholia  (2011),  idiosyncratically  combines  the  affective  power  of  the  

 

58  

Hollywood   ‘woman’s   film’   with   the   disaster   movie:   its   central   characters—two   sisters— encounter   their   differences   to   one   another   as   a   rogue   planet   hurtles   towards   earth,   threatening   the   extinction   of   their   world.   It   has   also   been   described   as   a   ‘music   video’   and   a   ‘chamber   piece’   and   the   latter   designation   particularly   places   it   within   a   longer   theatrical   tradition.   Continuous   with   melodrama   (melo/drama,   play   with   music)   as   it   first  emerged  in  the  post-­‐Enlightenment  era,  I  argue  that  Melancholia  is  a  plastic  version   of   a   mythic   story   that   moulds   new   and   old   elements,   including   its   evocation   of   a   theatrical   or   proscenium   stage-­‐like   setting   ,   its   use   of   computer   generated   images   of   outer   space   for   its   cinematographically   spectacular   ‘Prologue’,   citations   and   re-­‐ enactments  of  Renaissance  and  other  classical  painting  and  a  Wagnerian  musical  score,   Tristan  und  Isolde.  The  film’s  evocation  of  melodrama  opens  the  possibility  of  reading  it   through   Rousseau’s   ur-­‐melodrama,   Pygmalion:  scène  lyrique  (written   1762;   performed   1770)—about   an   artist’s   beloved   statue   who   springs   to   life   on   stage—and   which   dramatized   the   composer-­‐philosopher’s   theorisation   of   the   relationship   between   aesthetics,   social   relations   and   cultural   transformation.   In   particular,   Pygmalion  enacts   arguments  made  in  Rousseau’s  treatise,  Essay  on  the  Origin  of  Language  (publ.  1781  but   written  in  the  1750s),  about  the  differing  expressive  capacities  of  sounds  and  images.     My   paper   will   read   Melancholia   as   a   melodrama   that   creates   a   (dis)unity   of   music   and   spoken   word   and   that   draws   attention   to   a   distinction   between   a   language   of   affective   immediacy   or   proximity   (bodies   that   touch)   and   of   distance   (the   spectacle   of   gestural   bodies).   In   reference   to   Rousseau’s   Galatea,   and   picking   up   on   Catherine   Malabou’s   work   on   plasticity,   my   paper   proposes   that   earth   is   Melancholia’s   Galatea-­‐ object   and   a   figure   for   thinking   about   a   being   that   is   both   melodramatic   and   metamorphic.         Stephanie  Russo  (Macquarie  University)   Importing  French  Fashions:  Mary  Robinson,  Marie  Antoinette  and  the  French  Revolution     Mary   Robinson   and   Marie   Antoinette   met   in   a   visit   to   France   undertaken   by   Mary   Robinson  in  1781.  Robinson  was  credited  with  importing  the  French  Queen’s  robe  a  la   anglaise   into   England,   and   at   the   end   of   her   life   Robinson   was   to   describe   their   encounter  in  terms  of  rapturous  mutual  admiration,  even  though  the  two  never  spoke.   In   Robinson’s   account,   she   and   Marie   Antoinette   wordlessly   admired   each   other’s   clothing   and   accessories,   and   this   precipitates   an   intense   reciprocal   emotional   connection.   Robinson   and   Marie   Antoinette   have   an   immediate   mutual   sympathetic   response   to   the   other,   and   this   sympathetic   response   is   grounded   in   the   language   of   fashion.  Robinson  went  on  to  idolize  Marie  Antoinette  in  poetry  and  prose,  transforming   her   from   the   sexually   insatiable   and   monstrous   spendthrift   of   French   political   pornography   into   the   ideal   bourgeois   wife   and   mother.   However,   Robinson   was   also   well  known  for  her  enthusiastic  and  ongoing  support  for  the  French  Revolution.  In  fact,   Robinson   skilfully   uses   her   belief   in   revolutionary   ideology   to   rehabilitate   Marie   Antoinette’s   image.     Mary   Robinson’s   affective   response   to   the   Queen   not   only   reflects   her  attempt  to  reconfigure  her  own  public  identity,  but  is  indicative  of  the  ways  in  which   Romantic   female   writers   were   able   to   use   the   image   of   Marie   Antoinette   in   order   to   comment  on  the  relationship  of  fashion  and  materiality  to  female  power.  I  argue  that  the   stories   of   the   heroines   of   Robinson’s   novels   can   be   read   as   correctives   to   the   story   of   Marie  Antoinette:  moving  forward  from  the  execution  of  the  Queen,  Robinson  suggests,   it   is   (or   should   be)   possible   for   a   woman   to   maintain   a   public   profile,   while   also   as   fashionable,  and  exemplary  in  the  domestic  arena,  as  Robinson’s  representations  of  the   French  Queen.          

 

59  

Luke  van  Ryn  (University  of  Melbourne)   Dwarf  Fortress:  Homestead  and  Laboratory     The   ‘fortress   simulator’   game   Dwarf   Fortress   (Bay   12   Games,   2006-­‐present)   allows   players   the   space   to   conduct   experiments   with   an   economy,   without   granting   them   a   body.  The  player  is  not  granted  an  avatar  in  the  world,  and  retains  only  an  immaterial   presence,   but   this   does   not   mean   that   the   player   is   granted   the   role   of   a   transcendent   deity  either.  Instead,  the  player  operates  on  the  relational  level  –  completely  managing   all   economic   interactions,   and   assigning   social   codes   to   different   spaces.   This   different   type   of   play   in   Dwarf  Fortress   is   hostile   to   new   players   because   it   lacks   a   strong   didactic   pedagogy.  Lacking  a  ‘win’  condition,  players  are  free  to  engage  with  the  game  however   they   wish,   including   allowing   for   the   immediate   and   unsympathetic   demise   of   the   community.   As   play   continues,   Dwarf   Fortress   ceases   to   be   a   fortress,   and   instead   becomes   what   the   autonomists   describe   as   a   ‘laboratory’   (Hardt,   1996).   The   social   relations   of   the   factory   become   upturned,   and   the   site   of   the   domination   of   labour   becomes   the   site   for   experiments   in   production.   The   fortress   too   becomes   the   site   for   thought  experiments  on  alternative  economies;  as  a  text  that  has  multiple  versions  and   modifications  in  distribution,  it  contains  not  one,  but  many  social  laboratories.       Laura  Saxton  (Australian  Catholic  University)   ‘God,   I   Hate   Her’:   Affect   in   Twenty-­‐First-­‐Century   Representations   of   Anne   Boleyn   as   Stepmother     The  second  wife  of  Henry  VIII,  Anne  Boleyn  has  been  a  perennial  figure  in  fictional  and   nonfictional   historical   narratives   since   her   execution   in   1536.   The   majority   of   twenty-­‐ first-­‐century  authors  consider  Boleyn  to  have  been  innocent  of  the  treason,  adultery  and   incest  for  which  she  died,  yet  they  regularly  argue  that  her  own  misconduct  created  an   environment   in   which   her   enemies   (and   husband)   were   able   to   act   against   her.   These   narratives   thereby   present   Boleyn   as   the   agent   of   her   own   downfall,   highlighting   or   inventing   manipulative,  cruel  or  deceptive   behaviours   that   are,   in   turn,   represented   as   self-­‐destructive.   Representations   of   the   combative   relationship   between   Boleyn   and   her   stepdaughter   Mary   provide   an   apt   case   study   of   this   association   between   affect,   character  and  culpability.  The  degree  to  which  she  is  responsible  for  Mary’s  misfortune   varies   between   texts   yet   the   depiction   of   Boleyn   as   vengeful   and   hateful   is   consistent;   her   interactions   with   Mary   are   characterised   by   frenzied   speech   and   violence   in   the   form   of   physical   abuse   and   death   threats.   Affect,   which   here   encompasses   emotion,   motivations  and  the  reasoning  that  informs  action,  is  thus  central  to  characterisations  of   Boleyn   as   stepmother.   Anne’s   apparent   prioritisation   of   her   own   ambitions   above   Mary’s   wellbeing   and   relationship   with   her   father   is   described   in   recent   narratives   as   unnecessarily  and  incessantly  cruel,  and  primary  sources  suggest  that  she  repented  her   actions  as  she  awaited  execution  thus  explicitly  linking  her  treatment  of  Mary  with  her   downfall.   The   increasing   antipathy   with   which   Henry   and   the   nobility   viewed   Boleyn   was   integral   to   the   circumstances   that   led   to   her   arrest,   particularly   with   regard   to   Henry’s   growing   awareness   of   her   manipulative   and   cruel   behaviours.   By   directly   associating  this  antipathy  with  Boleyn’s  actions  toward  Mary,  she  is  portrayed  as  having   been  responsible  for  her  own  death  irrespective  of  the  charges  against  her.     Adopting   a   postmodern   perspective,   this   paper   will   argue   that   representations   of  Anne  Boleyn  in  twenty-­‐first-­‐century  historical  narratives  necessarily  construct  affect   and  in  doing  so  position  her  as  having  been  responsible  for  the  circumstances  which  led   to   her   death.     The   past   as   it   once   existed   is   inaccessible,   thus   writers   of   historical   narrative   construct   representations   of   the   individuals   and   events   about   which   they   write,  regardless  of  genre,  audience  or  veracity.  As  such,  this  paper  will  examine  recent   representations   of   Boleyn   as   stepmother   in   both   fictional   and   nonfictional   histories,  

 

60  

including   Eric   Ives’   The   Life   and   Death   of   Anne   Boleyn:   The   Most   Happy,   Philippa   Gregory’s   The  Other  Boleyn  Girl,   Hilary   Mantel’s   Wolf  Hall   and   Bring  Up  the  Bodies  and   Alison   Weir’s   The   Lady   in   the   Tower:   The   Fall   of   Anne   Boleyn.   These   texts   represent   a   range   of   genres,   including   academic   histories,   popular   biography,   literary   historical   fiction,  and  historical  romance.  In  spite  of  the  differing  generic  conventions,  the  shared   difficulties  associated  with  identifying  and  describing  past  emotion  and  demands  of  the   narrative  form  means  that  these  authors  do  not  discover,  but  instead  imagine,  Boleyn’s   affect  and,  in  turn,  contribute  to  the  creation  of  her  historical  persona.           John  Severn  (University  of  New  South  Wales)   Menippean  Discourse  and  Same-­‐Sex  Desire  in  John  Fletcher's  The   Woman's   Prize,   or   The   Tamer  Tamed     This  paper  proposes  a  new  approach  to  John  Fletcher’s  The  Woman’s  Prize,  or  The  Tamer   Tamed   (c.1611),   arguing   that   a   reception   of   the   play   as   an   example   of   Menippean   discourse  reveals  a  plotline  of  male  same-­‐sex  desire  overlooked  by  modern  critics,  but   that  theatrical  evidence  suggests  was  available  to  early  modern  audiences.   Recent  criticism  has  focussed  intently  on  the  play’s  relationship  to  Shakespeare’s   The   Taming   of   the   Shrew,   characterising   Fletcher’s   play   variously   as   a   revision,   an   adaptation,  a  sequel  or  a  response  to  Shakespeare’s  play.    Consequently,  The   Taming   of   the   Shrew  is  frequently  and  apparently  unproblematically  referred  to  as  “the  source”  of   Fletcher’s  play.    Nonetheless,  while  both  plays  have  a  central  concern  with  gender  roles   within   marriage,   only   three   characters’   names   are   common   to   both   plays,   the   personalities  of  the  characters  bearing  them  differ  significantly  in  two  of  the  three  cases,   and  the  plays  differ  in  their  settings,  plotlines  and  literary  texture.       In   the   introduction   to   their   recent   edition,   Celia   Daileader   and   Gary   Taylor   usefully   look   beyond   The  Taming  of  the  Shrew  to   suggest   Ben   Jonson’s   Epicœne,  or  The   Silent   Woman   and   Aristophanes’   Lysistrata   as   additional   sources,   or   interlocutors,   for   Fletcher’s   play.     Nonetheless,   this   paper   suggests   that   the   richness   of   The  Woman’s  Prize   has  been  obscured  by  an  intense  focus  on  male-­‐female  relations  as  embodied  in  a  small   number   of   central   characters,   by   a   normalised   conceptualisation   of   the   relationship   between  The  Woman’s  Prize  and  The  Taming  of  the  Shrew  –  alone  or  in  conjunction  with   other  works  –  as  one  of  thesis  and  antithesis,  of  source  and  revision/adaptation,  and  by   a  disregard  for  the  literary  and  dramatic  texture  of  the  play.   This   paper   suggests   that   a   more   productive   approach   to   The   Woman’s   Prize   would   be   to   receive   it   as   an   example   of   Menippean   discourse   –   a   notoriously   difficult   form   of   writing   to   define,   but   one   that,   as   theorists   Milowicki   and   Wilson   suggest,   is   characterised  by  a  discontinuous  style  of  mixture  and  mélange,  both  highly  intellectual   and  ribaldly,  grossly,  physical,  drawing  on  multiple  literary  traditions,  and  incorporating   competing   and   often   discordant   allusions   to   other   literary   works.     Approached   in   this   respect,  the  multiple  literary  allusions  and  parallels  in  The  Woman’s  Prize  –  not  only  to   The   Taming   of   the   Shrew,   Epicœne,   or   The   Silent   Woman   and   Lysistrata,   but   also   to   Thomas   Kyd’s   The   Spanish   Tragedy,   Virgil’s   Aeneid,   Petronius’   Satyricon   and   Plautus’   Mostellaria,  amongst  others  –  might  be  seen  as  instrumental,  such  allusions  designed  to   provoke  changes  in  register  and  to  invite  a  range  of  changing  interpretative  frameworks   for  the  audience.   One   outcome   of   approaching   The   Woman’s   Prize   as   Menippean   is   that,   taken   together,   a   number   of   these   literary   allusions   suggest   a   shifting,   unstable   plotline   of   same-­‐sex  desire.    In  its  ability  to  reveal  –  rather  than  represent  denotatively  –  on-­‐stage   same-­‐sex   desire,   Fletcher’s   use   of   Menippean   discourse   resists   the   concretisation,   commoditisation,   containment   and   control   that   often   accompanies   theatrical   representations   of   desire,   and   discloses   itself   as   well   attuned   to   desire’s   fluctuating,   unstable,  disorientating,  uncontainable  nature.  

 

61  

Gavin  Smith  (University  of  Western  Sydney)   “The   Emotion   of   Having   a   Thought”   –   Poetry   as   an   Embodied   Experience:   From   Robert   Frost  to  Antonio  Damasio     “A   poem”   Robert   Frost   says   “is   the   emotion   of   having   a   thought.”   What   Frost   means   is   that   a   poem   not   only   has   mental   qualities   but   physical   qualities   as   well.   Emotion,   Frost   appears   to   say,   underpins   thinking,   and   this   is   revealed   to   us   in   our   experience   of   a   poem   –   any   poem.   Our   poetic   experience,   then,   has   embodied   and   not   merely  abstract  qualities.  The  poetic  experience  is  an  embodied  experience;  moreover,  it   is   an   intersubjective   experience   because   of   its   embodied   nature.   At   first   glance,   this   might   appear   a   generous   claim   about   an   indistinct   quote,   but   Frost   is   working   on   a   deeply  conceptual  level.     Frost   was   heavily   influenced   by   William   James,   from   whom   he   derived   a   framework   of   philosophical   and   psychological   insights   that   underpins   his   poetics.   Principal  among  James’s  influential  insights  is  the  theory  of  embodied  emotion;  that  is,   emotions  emerge  from  physiological  processes.  Emotions,  in  James’s  conception,  are  not   isolated  “inside  the  head,”  but  are  integral  to  human  thought  and  experience.  Poetry,  as   an   experience,   an   embodied   experience   according   to   Frost’s   prosody,   engenders   in   the   reader   emotional,   physiological   changes   as   predications   of   thought.   A   poem,   then,   primes  the  reader  for  thought  by  subtly  changing  the  reader’s  body  state.     At   the   centre   of   both   Frost’s   poetics   and   James’s   theory   are   the   mimetic   dimensions   of   emotion.   Emotion   is   not   only   embodied,   it   is   communicative,   shared   by   virtue   of   its   common   embodiment   in   all   humans.   We   understand   emotion   when   we   perceive   it   because   we   undergo   the   same   physiological   changes   we   are   witnessing.   Research   into   mirror   neurons   suggests   that   we   do,   indeed,   “mimic”   the   emotional   states   of  others.  Antonio  Damasio,  whose  work  draws  on  James’s  original  theory,  extrapolates   this  point  through  the  notion  of  “the  as-­‐if  body-­‐loop.”  Damasio  identifies  a  discrepancy   in   James’s   theory:   its   lack   of   a   “supplementary   mechanism”   for   triggering   embodied   emotional   transactions   abstractly.   The   “as-­‐if   body-­‐loop”   helps   to   establish   the   link   between   aesthetic   experience,   in   this   case   poetic   experience,   and   the   physiological   structures  of  emotion  in  an  abstract  domain  of  experience.     In   this   paper   I   will   triangulate   Frost’s   ideas   about   metaphor   and   prosody   with   James’s   theory   of   emotion   and   Damasio’s   notion   of   the   “as-­‐if   body-­‐loop.”   I   will   show   that,  through  the  Jamesian  connection,  Damasio’s  notion  of  the  as-­‐if  body-­‐loop  helps  to   explain  what  Frost  means  by  “a  poem  is  the  emotion  of  having  a  thought.”  I  will  argue   that  the  poetic  experience  is  an  abstract,  “as-­‐if”  experience,  but  one  that  is  nevertheless   grounded   in   the   physiological   basis   of   experience.   Emotions   help   to   qualify   our   experiences,  informing  us  of  how  things  are  going  for  us  in  our  environment,  laying  the   grounds   for   higher   reflective   behaviour,   namely   thought.   A   poem,   then,   I   will   show,   puts   us   in   a   frame   of   mind   for   thought   by   enacting   emotional   responses   through   metaphor   and  prosody  as  aspects  of  our  supplementary  mechanisms  of  emotional  engagement.         Patricia  Juliana  Smith  (Hofstra  University)   "Popsies"  and  Pussy  Galore:  James  Bond,  the  Profumo  Affair,  and  the  Zeitgeist  of  1963     In   1963,   D   H   Lawrence’s   Lady   Chatterley’s   Lover,   its   decades-­‐long   ban   recently   lifted,   was  gaining  a  newfound  readership  eager  to  discover  what  had  been  kept  from  them  for   so  long.    At  the  same  time,  Ian  Fleming’s  James  Bond  novels  and  their  film  adaptations   were   at   the   height   of   their   popularity.     Even   so,   the   best   selling   book   in   Britain   that   year   was   neither   a   literary   novel   nor   a   spy   fiction;   rather   it   was   a   government   document,   Lord  Denning’s  report  on  the  Profumo  affair.               For   the   entire   year   the   public   had   been   entertained   by   media   reports   detailing   the   sexual   activities   of   John   Profumo,   Britain’s   Secretary   of   State   for   War,   and   two  

 

62  

teenage  showgirls  (or,  in  Lord  Denning's  term,  "popsies,")  Christine  Keeler  and  Mandy   Rice-­‐Davies,  who  were  also  connected  with  a  wide  cast  of  characters  ranging  from  rich   slum  lords  and  Jamaican  drug  dealers  to  a  known  Soviet  spy.           The  parallels  between  the  adventures  of  the  fictional  secret  agent  qua  superhero   and  the  sexual  misadventures  of  certain  politicians  and  aristocrats  are  striking.    In  both   cases,  privileged  middle-­‐aged  men,  supposedly  defending  the  realm,  engage  in  egregious   sexual   relationships   with   attractive   and   objectified   young   women   as   heterosexual   masculinity   drives   Britain’s   struggle   to   remain   a   world   superpower   saving   the   world   from   nuclear   war   between   the   US   and   the   USSR.     But   here   the   resemblance   ends.     In   the   Bond  novels  and  films,  women  are  willing  sexual  objects  in  servitude  to  the  protagonist;   so   compelling   is   his   hypermasculinity   that   even   a   lesbian   character   such   as   the   suggestively  named  Pussy  Galore  in  Goldfinger  changes  her  sexual  orientation  after  one   night   with   him—all   in   the   name   of   making   the   world   safe   for   British   imperialism   and   male   sexual   prerogative.     In   real   life,   however,   the   ruling   Tory   government   came   crashing  down  after  public  revelations  of  the  dalliances  of  Profumo  and  other  prominent   men   with   girls   Lord   Denning   defined   as   “popsies.”   Unlike   Bond   Girls,   Keeler   and   Rice-­‐ Davies   were   neither   impressed   by   their   male   counterparts’   virility,   nor   did   they   feel   beholden   to   them   in   the   name   of   national   security.     Abandoned   when   they   became   inconvenient,   they   did   what   no   loyal   Bond   girl   would   do   by   selling   their   stories   to   the   press,  causing  much  political  havoc  and  public  entertainment.           In   this   paper,   I   will   examine   the   parallels   between   fantasy   fiction   (e.g.   James   Bond),   respectable   erotic   literature   (e.g.,   Lady   Chatterley's   Lover),   and   tabloid   journalism   as   forms   of   narrative,   as   well   as   the   affects   and   emotions   of   titillation   and   schadenfreude  they  create  in  the  public  sphere.           Russell  Smith  (Australian  National  University)   Benevolence,   Eroticism   and   the   Sentimental   Encounter:   Laurence   Sterne’s  A   Sentimental   Journey  and  Samuel  Beckett’s  The  Calmative     For   Christopher   Nagle,   the   essence   of   Sensibility   is   its   ‘eroticized   benevolence’:   in   its   ‘valorization   of   feeling   regardless   of   circumstance’,   sensibility   constantly   blurs   the   boundary   between   socially-­‐sanctioned   forms   of   feeling   such   as   sympathy   and   benevolence,  and  morally  questionable  states  of  emotional  excess,  erotic  excitement  and   promiscuous   intimacy.   Sterne’s  Sentimental   Journey  is   ‘the   most   significant   and   influential   progenitor   of   Sensibility’   precisely   because   it   is   ‘the   first   work   of   the   age   to   embody  Sensibility  in  all  its  wealth  of  ambiguous  expressions’.  This  paper  seeks  to  use   Nagle’s   account   of   the   queer   eroticism   of   sensibility   as   a   way   of   reading   Samuel   Beckett’s   postwar   novella  Le   Calmant/The   Calmative.   In   Beckett’s   story,   the   narrator’s   awkward   encounter   with   a   young   boy   holding   a   goat   by   the   horn   not   only   reproduces   various  textual  details  from  Yorick’s  encounter  with  Maria  in  A  Sentimental  Journey,  but   more   importantly   invokes   the   queer   sensibility   of   the   eighteenth-­‐century   ‘man   of   feeling’  in  search  of  ‘an  encounter  that  would  calm  me  a  little’.       Lisa  Smithies  (University  of  Melbourne)   Writing  DNA:  How  Does  Human  Behavioural  Biology  Influence  Creative  Writing?     Cognitive   linguist   Mark   Turner   proposes   a   “new   common   ground   for   the   profession   of   English:  The  analysis  of  acts  of  language  including  literature,  as  acts  of  the  human  brain   in   a   human   body   in   a   human   environment   which   that   brain   must   make   intelligible   if   it   is   to   survive”   (1991,   vii-­‐viii).   My   research   follows   Turner’s   lead,   taking   a   creative   writing   perspective,  to  argue  that  creative  writing  is  a  product  of  the  human  brain,  and,  as  such,   the  principles  of  behavioural  biology  can  be  as  usefully  applied  to  the  study  of  creative  

 

63  

writing,   as   they   are   to   the   study   of   other   human   behaviours.   When   we   write,   we   write   using  the  evolutionarily  determined  cognitive  capacities  of  our  species.  These  cognitive   capacities   operate   within   our   embodied   brains,   which   are   influenced   by   a   myriad   of   environmental  factors,  including  culture.     Recent   research   in   cognitive   neuroscience   is   allowing   greater   access   into   the   workings  of  the  human  mind,  and  literary  theorists  are  utilising  this  research  to  examine   literature   in   new   ways,   specifically,   how   and   why   we   cognitively   engage   with   the   language   of   fictional   texts.   It   is   now   clear   that   cognition   has   an   indisputable   relationship   to   emotions,   not   just   in   literature,   but   within   our   everyday   reasoning;   therefore,   ‘The   Affective  Fallacy’  has  proved  to  be  a  fallacy  in  itself.     Literature  is  also  a  brilliant  example  of  our  innate  cognitive  preoccupation  with   patterns   of   information,   particularly   those   available   in   language.   My   work   takes   the   cognitive  linguistic  perspective  to  argue  that  when  we  write  we  engage  in  an  activity  that   uses  natural  cognitive  abilities  in  a  very  natural  way.         Mark  Steven    (University  of  New  South  Wales)   Not  Sappho,  Sacco:  Communist  Affect  in  Muriel  Rukeyser’s  Theory  of  Flight     Muriel   Rukeyser   conceives   of   the   poem   as   an   integrated   system   of   incalculable   intensities.   For   her,   poetry   participates   in   an   economy   whose   currency   is   affect.   “Exchange   is   creation,”   she   writes:   “In   poetry,   the   exchange   is   one   of   energy.   Human   energy   is   transferred,   and   from   the   poem   it   reaches   the   reader.   Human   energy,   which   is   consciousness,   the   capacity   to   produce   change   in   existing   conditions.”   If   affect   describes   the   manifestation   of   unnamed   energies,   cohering   with   the   body   but   resistant   to   discursive   codification,   and   if   the   poem   is   a   machine   made   of   affect,   then   poetry   will   have   mobilized   those   peculiar   energies   for   the   production   “change.”   For   Rukeyser,   meaningful   change   could   only   be   revolutionary,   and   motivated   by   the   desire   named   communism:  “we  go  to  victory,”  she  would  insist,  “in  a  commune  of  regenerated  lives.”   But   the   singular,   human   energies   with   which   her   poetry   concerns   itself   are   not   just   forces   of   political   revolt   and   social   upheaval;   they   are   also,   and   just   as   frequently,   the   effect   of   sexuality.   How,   then,   does   poetry   handle   the   interchange   between   these   two   radically  difference  energies?     This   paper   proceeds   from   an   argument   that   poetic   affect   facilitates   the   interpenetration   of   energies   from   otherwise   autonomous   situations.   It   describes   how   Rukeyser’s  poetry  lends  itself  to  the  admixture  of  sensations  emanating  from  two  very   different   bodies:   the   amorous   body,   and   the   political   body;   the   body   as   aroused   by   desire  and  the  body  galvanized  by  political  commitment.  “You  dynamiting  the  structure   of   our   loves,”   begins   one   poem,   simultaneously   inhabiting   both   the   miners’   strike   and   the   ecstasy   of   love:   “embrace   your   lovers   solving   antithesis   /   open   your   flesh,   people,   to   opposites  /  conclude  the  bold  configuration,  finish  /  the  counterpoint…”  Coinciding  with   these  bodies'  embrace  is  a  conflation  of  the  paradigmatic  forms  that  should  attend  them;   the  document,  the  manifesto,  and  the  slogan  are  all  given  to  appear,  thrillingly,  within  a   sapphic   meter   and   its   variously   erotic   frame.   The   result   of   this   admixture   is   a   poetic   form   that   is   both   feminist   and   communist—the   inauguration   in   literature   of   what   Simone  de  Beauvoir  would  later  describe  as  the  cornerstone  of  a  truly  socialist  ethics,  an   aesthetic  built  on  the  realization  that  “there  is  in  eroticism  a  revolt  of  the  instant  against   time.”          

 

64  

Nick  Strole  (University  of  Illinois  at  Urbana-­‐Champaign)   Reconfiguring   and   Performing   Emotions   Passed:   Image   and   the   Performative   in   Mouawad   and  Villeneuve’s  Incendies     This   paper   aims   to   analyze   and   contrast   the   way   in   which   past   emotions   are   reinterpreted  through  both  performative  language  and  images  in  Wajdi  Mouawad’s  play   Incendies  and  its  film  adaptation,  directed  by  Denis  Villeneuve.  In  Incendies  (2003),  the   second   play   in   the   tetralogy   Le   sang   des   promesses,   the   Québécois   playwright   Wajdi   Mouawad   creates   a   world   where   promises   become   verbal   contracts.   The   play   unpacks   the   mysterious   and   traumatic   past   of   Nawal,   a   Middle   Eastern   woman   whose   story   is   retold  as  her  two  children  investigate  a  side  of  their  mother  that,  up  until  her  death,  had   been  silenced.  Nawal’s  voice  resurfaces  as  she  performs  the  horrors  of  her  past  for  her   children.  Time  becomes  fluid  in  Mouawad’s  theatrical  structure,  allowing  two  different   scenes   representing   two   different   time   periods   to   take   the   stage   at   the   same   time.   Mouawad,   then,   is   able   to   depict   simultaneously   both   Nawal’s   promise   in   the   past   and   the   realization   of   that   promise   in   the   present.   In   this   way,   promises   hold   a   certain   linguistic   power   for   Mouawad’s   characters   who   utilize   performative   utterances   (as   defined  by  J.L.  Austin).  The  physical  weight  of  words  pushes  characters  to  use  them  as   weapons   in   order   to   engage   with   and   manipulate   their   physical   environments.   These   characters,   therefore,   rely   on   performative   language   as   an   act   of   unveiling   the   truth   and   the  emotions  of  the  past,  no  matter  how  traumatic.  Thus,  the  play  constructs  a  linear  yet   emotional  history  that  can  speak  to  the  present.     In   the   film   adaptation   of   Incendies   (2010),   Denis   Villeneuve   does   not   allow   Mouawad’s   characters   to   penetrate   temporal   and   emotional   boundaries   through   performative  language.  Villeneuve  takes  control  of  his  characters  by  separating  them  in   every   shot.   His   characters   lack   the   performative   power   present   in   the   play   and   must   therefore   be   subjected   to   the   deterministic   narrative   unraveled   by   the   camera.   Characters  living  in  different  points  in  time  can  no  longer  exist  on  the  same  stage—the   camera  places  them  in  separate  shots,  denying  them  the  opportunity  to  occupy  the  same   time   and   space.   Instead,   Villeneuve   grants   authority   to   the   spectator   who   must   reconfigure   the   series   of   images   presented   in   the   film.   Following   Gilles   Deleuze’s   conception   of   the   “movement   image,”   the   spectator   participates   in   the   creation   of   emotional   and   narrative   movement.   The   affect   evoked   in   one   framed   shot,   one   image,   is   transformed   as   the   spectator   connects   it   to   all   the   other   images   in   the   film.   Emotions   thus  expand  and  penetrate  the  limits  imposed  by  the  framing  of  the  camera.  In  this  way,   Villeneuve’s   film   adaptation   of   Incendies   explores   the   spectator’s   own   performance   in   the   creation   and   expansion   of   emotion.   By   contrast,   in   the   original   play,   Mouawad   empowers   his   characters   with   performative   language   that   crosses   both   temporal   and   emotional   boundaries   in   order   to   promote   his   vision   of   an   inclusive   and   pluralistic   world.               Tyne  Daile  Sumner  (University  of  Melbourne)   The  Electric  Milker,  The  Wifey:  Domesticity,  Poetry  and  Cold  War  Anxiety         This   paper   considers   the   ways   in   which   specifically   mid-­‐twentieth   century   American   anxieties   over   cold-­‐war   surveillance,   nuclear   threat,   and   the   sanctity   of   the   domestic   realm   surface   in   postwar   American   poetry   about   the   home.   The   public   emotions   accompanying   cold-­‐war   anxiety   represent   an   unprecedented   moment   in   the   affective   history   of   the   United   States.   Additionally,   the   poetry   produced   in   response   to   and   expressive   of   these   anxieties   reveals   a   great   deal   about   the   relationship   between   literature   and   affect,   especially   in   war   and   postwar   contexts.   As   a   psychological   state   whose   stimulus   is   often   difficult   to   trace,   anxiety   is   a   mood   that   underpinned   and   uprooted   the   mid-­‐twentieth   century   notion   of   ‘Americanness.’   Most   notably,   the  

 

65  

denotation  of  anxiety  as  an  affective  hyperbole,  that  is  insofar  as  it  is  not  considered  to   be   a   normal   reaction   to   a   perceived   stressor,   reflects   strongly   the   American   government’s   approach   to   surveillance,   external   threat,   and   the   home   during   the   Cold   War.  In  response  to  this  tumult,  many  postwar  American  poets  explored  the  problems   inherent  in  the  American  government’s  effort  to  construct  the  family  home  as  a  sacred   space,   free   from   the   iintrusions   into   private   life   that   had   become   synonymous   with   threats  to  America’s  democratic  liberty.  As  the  themes  of  many  postwar  poems  suggest,   the   family   home   could   also   be   a   menacing   channel   for,   and   source   of,   personal   expression.   Speaking   from   within   the   home,   these   poets   inverted   America’s   obsession   with  domestic  surveillance,  revealing  the  paradoxical  and  often  frightening  double-­‐bind   generated  by  an  overemphasis  on  security.         Many   poems   respond   to   the   proliferation   of   material   (governmental   and   otherwise)   that   served   to   emphasize   the   need   for   post-­‐war   America’s   strength   and   security  through  the  repeated  ‘do,  or  else’  imperative.  Ironically,  repetition  of  claims  like   ‘we  must  stand  together  with  all  our  neighbours,  with  no  fear,  no  panic,  no  confusion,’   which  were  meant  to  inspire  camaraderie  and  confidence  in  national  defence,  only  made   it   seem   as   though   an   attack   was   inevitable.   An   excess   of   pathos   aimed   at   dissolving   anxiety  only  worked  to  intensify  it.  Thus,  as  many  postwar  poems  reveal,  the  American   government’s   attempt   to   promote   domestic   security   and   sanctity   as   a   weapon   against   communism—examples   include   barbecue   culture,   consumer   spending,   home   wares   advertising,   the   ‘DIY   bomb   shelter’—only   worked   to   reinforce   the   anxiety   it   was   attempting  to  ameliorate  from  the  start.           Importantly,  many  postwar  poets  rejected  the  correlation  of  national,  social,  and   individual   security   with   the   consumption   that   household   expenditure   and   ‘improvement’   signified.   Thus,   in   their   work,   they   appear   to   argue   that   the   postwar   period’s   economic   growth   resulted   not   from   an   array   of   practical   choices   but   rather   from   a   forced   commercialism   that   capitalized   on   postwar   anxieties   and   insecurities.   For   example,  as  Elaine  Tyler  May  suggests  in  Homeward  Bound  (1988),  ‘consumerism  in  the   postwar   years   went   far   beyond   the   mere   purchases   of   goods   and   services.   It   included   important   cultural   values   such   as   patriotism   and   security,   demonstrated   success   and   social   mobility,   and   defined   lifestyles.’   Similarly,   Vance   Packard   in   the   Hidden   Persuaders  (1959)  argues  that  these  collective  postwar  anxieties  were  both  the  vehicle   for   sales   and   the   product   being   sold,   advertisers   moved   more   goods   by   ‘successfully   manipulating   or   coping   with   our   guilt   feelings,   fears,   anxieties,   hostilities,   loneliness   feelings,   inner   tensions.’   The   extent   to   which   postwar   poetry   examines   and   reiterates   these   anxieties   through   its   often   scathing   examination   of   the   home   as   a   ‘psychological   fortress’  is  thus  an  important  consideration  in  the  affective  history  of  cold-­‐war  America.                 Zoe  Thomas  (La  Trobe  University)   The  Siren  Song  of  Affect:  Nostalgia  as  a  Vessel  for  Autobiographical  Practice     Writing   autobiographically   involves   negotiating   memory   and   imagination   to   find   ways   into  words  and  produce  a  subjective  narrative.  It  is  often  concerned  with  making  some   sense   of   the   author’s   feelings   about   her   or   his   lived   experience.   This   paper   is   chiefly   interested   in   modes   of   production   for   the   literary   practitioner   within   the   life-­‐writing   realm.   It   seeks   to   investigate   specifically   how   nostalgia   and   affect   may   open   up   productive  pathways  for  writers.   Although   affect   theory   is   understood   to   be   a   complex   and   fraught   subject   of   inquiry,   it   is   the   newer   stream   –   sometimes   referred   to   as   the   “affective   turn”   –   which   this  paper  will  use  as  its  point  of  entry.  Nostalgia,  with  its  pathologised  history,  can  be   described   as   an   affective   mood   that   not   only   elicits   conscious   memory   reproduction   but   can   also   be   powerful   enough   to   produce   autonomic   responses.   William   Mazzarella   contends   that   the   affective   body   ‘preserves   the   traces   of   past   actions   and   encounters  

 

66  

and   brings   them   into   the   present   as   potentials.’   He   refers   here   to   the   work   of   Brian   Massumi,   whose   seminal   work   on   affect   explores   experiential   “traces”   which   can   manifest  as  “autonomic  repetition”  (2012:  292).  It  is  this  condition  of  the  affected  body  –   with  its  shimmering,  quivering,  aesthesis   from  the  past  –  that  holds  great  promise  for  a   means  of  accessing  repositories  of  story.     With   its   indeterminate   boundaries   that   allow,   and   sometimes   insist,   on   interdisciplinary   movement,   this   paper   will   also   look   to   the   pioneering   work   of   Eve   Sedgwick,  who  advocates  and  agitates  for  a  critical  engagement  with  emotions  and  the   body.   It   will   examine   her   affective   notions   of   “beyond”,   “beneath”   and   “beside”   in   partnership   with   the   “in-­‐between”   and   examine   how   these   indeterminate   spaces   can   contribute   to   the   writing   process.   Furthermore,   if   these   affective   spaces   are   valuable   for   the   autobiographical   writer   (who   must   render   them,   somehow,   perhaps,   with   language)   then   this   paper   will   question   whether   a   symbiotic   liaison   between   nostalgia   and   its   affect   may   deliver   some   valuable   insights   for   autobiographical   methodology.   By   engaging  with  the  affective  ‘force   or   forces   of   encounter’   (Seigworth  and  Gregg  2009:  2),   this  work  also  hopes  to  move  nostalgia  beyond  its  initial  determination  as  a  bateau  for   romanticisation   and   transmutation   and   probe   whether   it   can   also   function   as   a   facilitator  for  autobiographical  praxis.  Affect  and  memory  also  partner  in  crucial  ways  to   produce   the   autobiographical   act,   so   if   it   is,   in   part,   the   job   of   the   writer   to   not   only   reveal   elements   of   the   past   but   also   to   elucidate   ‘the   vaporous   evanescences   of   the   incorporeal  (events,  atmospheres,  feeling-­‐tones)’  (Seigworth  and  Gregg  2009:  2),  then  it   is   surely   worth   examining   the   causalities   of   the   relationship   between   autobiography,   nostalgia  and  affect.   Finally,  it  must  be  addressed  that  the  seductive  (at  times  potentially  fatal)  nature   of  nostalgia  can  also  be  a  hindrance  for  memory  and  reflexive  narrative.  This  paper  will   therefore  consider  something  of  the  dangers  of  reading  and  writing  nostalgically.     This   paper   will   engage   with   autobiographical   work   that   (re)cover   experiences   of   childhood.  Primarily  it  will  consider  ‘A  Sketch  of  the  Past’  by  Virginia  Woolf  –  whose  rich   memorious  text  draws  on  the  recollective  power  of  the  senses  and  is  a  lyrical  case  study   for   affect   –   and   Speak   Memory   by   Vladimir   Nabokov,   whose   portrait   of   restrained   nostalgia  is  an  excellent  example  of  a  writer’s  evocative  engagement  with  the  past.         Ling  Toong  (University  of  Melbourne)   The  Great  Singaporean  Divide:  The  Dialectics  of  Absenting  Affect  in  the  Works  of  Catherine   Lim     Catherine  Lim’s  iconic  representation  of  the  Singaporean  idiosyncratic  in  her  collection   Little   Ironies:   Stories   of   Singapore   showcases   characters   who   embody   literal   and   absolute   meaning   through   pragmatic   behaviour.   Her   stories   express   and   reflect   the   period’s   maturation   and   consolidation   of   the   nation’s   ruling   “pragmatic   ideology”   in   organising   everyday   lives   (Chua).   Written   in   1978,   during   a   period   (1965-­‐1990s)   described  by  scholars  (Poon,  Holden,  Lim)  as  the  “the  economic  and  social,  cultural  and   political  coming  of  age  of  Singapore”,  Lim  articulates  a  normativised  pragmatic  busyness   as   affectless   defence   against   instability.   Lim’s   stories   defer   affect   in   order   to   generate   irony.   Her   tales   of   everyday   pragmatic   busyness   are   stories   of   misery,   ignorance,   helplessness  and  obsession  which  are  told  in  a  detached  reportage  style.  Her  impassive   ‘observation’  of  her  characters  who  unbeknownst  to  them,  are  foils  in  their  own  stories   (whose   central   protagonist   is   in   fact,   the   alleged   ironic   twist   at   the   end)   raises   the   question   of   the   status   and   value   of   affect   as   absent   referent.   Is   irony   used   to   mask   affect   out   of   fear   or   reluctance   to   engage?   What   is   the   significance   of   affect   which   circulates   as   an  absent  referent?  The  lack  of  affect  in  Lim's  poetics  replicates  the  problematic  social   life   which   she   depicts   in   her   stories,   enacting   the   challenge   of   introducing   affect   for   which   there   is   no   public   language   or   conceptual   space.   The   lack   of   affect   not   only  

 

67  

highlights   the   failure   of   alternative   expression   but   falsely   declares   an   inherence   of   pragmatism   in   everyday   Singaporean   life   experienced   as   real,   natural   and   inevitable,   instead   of   structural   and   ideological.   Is   affect   as   absent   referent   a   deliberate   literary   strategy   or   product   of   clumsy   writing,   failed   authorial   intent,   or   even   an   unconscious   enactment  of  pragmatic  ideology?     While   the   reception   of   Little   Ironies   has   been   varied,   Lim   is   often   described   as   “the   doyen   of   Singaporean   literature”,   praised   for   her   accurate   portraits   of   everyday   Singaporean  life.  Do  readings  and  reviews  of  her  work  misread  her  authorial  intent?  Do   they   miss   the   signs   of   radical   critique   due   to   their   own   ideological   conditioning?   Or   is   praise   for   her   accurate   representations   an   ideological   affirmation,   an   unquestioning,   interaffective   call   and   response   to   the   collective   identification   and   normativisation   of   pragmatism  as  rhetorical  and  discursive  markers  of  Singaporean  identity?     In   1994,   Lim   published   two   opinion   pieces   in   the   state-­‐run   broadsheet   the   Straits   Times,   asserting   that   an   “affective   divide”   existed   between   the   ruling   People’s   Action   Party   (PAP)   and   its   people.   She   described   the   government   as   “deficient   in   human   sensitivity   and   feeling”.   PAP   members   responded   with   threats   and   violent   metaphors,   which   eventually   drew   a   written   apology   from   Lim.   This   encounter   displayed   an   affective  performance  of  gender  and  social  roles.  Lim’s  humble  supplication  performed  a   self-­‐censorship   of   emotion   as   political   strategy,   appearing   calm   and   measured   in   contrast  to  the  seemingly  pugnacious  PAP.  Performed  (simulated)  affect  from  both  sides   is   a   hyperbolic,   even   ironic   enactment   which   reinstates   affect   as   a   site   of   deferral   and   vehicle  of  pragmatism  in  both  Singaporean  politics  and  literature.  This  paper  discusses   the  ambiguous  role,  status  and  value  of  affect  in  literature  and  pragmatic  society.         Elizabeth  Towl  (Victoria  University  Wellington)   “Hi   thole   this   ded   for   thine   sake”:   Explaining   the   Atonement   in   Two   Middle   English   Devotional  Texts     Before   literary   criticism   attempted   to   evaluate   the   effect   of   the   affect,   and   before   Wimsatt  and  Beardsley  declared  such  evaluation  fallacious,  there  was  affective  devotion.   This   devotional   approach   flourished   across   Catholic   Europe,   particularly   in   the   latter   centuries   of   the   medieval   period.   Affective   devotion   sought   to   utilise   the   emotions   in   order   to   foster   devotional   engagement   by   playing   upon   the   shared   humanity   between   the  devotee  and  Christ,  and  often  between  the  devotee,  Christ  and  Christ’s  mother.  The   relationship   between   Mary   and   Christ,   human   mother   and   human   child,   modelled   the   perfect   maternal/filial   relationship   and   fuelled   the   emotional   fire   that   burned   in   accounts  of  Christ’s  Nativity  and  his  Passion.     The   traumatic   rending   of   mother   from   son   at   Calvary   was   particularly   fertile   ground  for  affective  devotion,  and  consequently,  for  the  texts  that  supported  this  form  of   devotion.   The   mother’s   reactions—which   ranged   from   preternaturally   quiet,   stoical   resolution   in   some   texts   to   raging,   raving,   swooning   and   lamenting   in   others— encouraged   the   devout   reader   to   engage   with   the   drama   of   the   Passion   and   the   mystery   of  the  Atonement,  but  also  with  the  pain  experienced  by  the  Virgin  Mary  herself.  Mary’s   suffering   at   the   foot   of   the   cross   was   both   mariologically   important   (because   of   the   Blessed   Virgin’s   role   as   co-­‐sufferer   with   Christ   during   the   Passion   and   as   mediatrix   between  Christ  and  humankind  thereafter)  and  devotionally  expedient.   This  paper  considers  two  texts  set  within  the  context  of  mitigating  or  controlling   Mary’s   pain.   The   first,   the   well-­‐known   lyric   “Stond   wel,   Moder,   under   rode”   (NIMEV   3211)  opens  with  Christ’s  request  that  Mary  “bihold  thi  child  wyth  glade  mode”  while  he   saves  mankind.  The  second,  the  less  well-­‐known  prose  text  “A  Doctor  of  the  Church  on   the  Compassion  of  the  Virgin”  (extant  in  Cambridge,  University  Library  MS  Ff.  6.  33  and   Cambridge,  Magdalene  Pepys  2125),  is  predicated  on  Christ’s  intuition  that  Mary’s  love   for   her   son   will   cause   her   great   pain,   but   that   that   pain   will   be   greater   if   she   is   not  

 

68  

forewarned  of  the  circumstances  under  which  he  will  be  sacrificed.  Both  texts  allow  the   devotee  to  eavesdrop  on  conversations  between  Christ  and  the  Blessed  Virgin  Mary,  and   so   the   devotional   triangle   of   Christ,   Mary   and   the   devout   listener   is   apparently   unmediated.   In   “Stond   wel,   Moder,”   this   conversation   occurs   while   Christ   is   affixed   to   the  cross,  while  in  the  “Doctor  of  the  Church”  text,  the  conversation  occurs  prior  to  the   events   of   Passion,   in   the   politically   charged   days   immediately   prior   to   Christ’s   arrest.   The   two   conversations   are   strikingly   parallel   in   some   of   their   detail,   although   their   structure,  tone  and  context  are  different.  In  each  case,  Mary  raises  reasonable  objections   to   the   vicious   nature   of   Christ’s   death   and   to   the   necessity   that   she   herself   participate   in   it—objections,   indeed,   that   might   occur   to   the   devotee—and   Christ   explains   why   this   death,  in  this  way,  must  be.         Stephanie  Trigg  (Centre  for  the  History  of  Emotions,  University  of  Melbourne)   'A  glance  of  brightness':  Facial  Expression  and  Emotion  in  Jane  Austen     This   paper   considers   the   trope   of   the   “speaking   face”   in   Jane   Austen’s   fictions,   when   the   expression  on  a  face  is  described  as  if  it  spoke  directly,  “as  if  to  say…”  This  trope,  which   has  a  long  history  going  back  to  medieval  literature,  is  one  of  a  number  of  means  Austen   uses  to  convey  unspoken  —  and  sometimes  unspeakable  —  thoughts  and  emotions.  The   paper   will   examine   Austen’s   varied   use   of   this   trope,   paying   special   attention   to   its   implications   for   the   individual   and   collective   understanding   of   gender,   and   the   private   and  public  expression  of  emotion.   My  title  comes  from  the  moment  in  Persuasion  when  Captain  Wentworth  looks   at  Anne  Elliot  and  “gives”  her  a  “glance  of  brightness  which  seemed  to  say,  ‘That  man  is   struck   with   you,   —   and   even   I,   at   this   moment,   see   something   like   Anne   Elliot   again.’”     Another   intriguing   example   appears   in   Emma:   “The   ladies   here   probably   exchanged   looks  which  meant,  ‘Men  never  know  when  things  are  dirty  or  not;’  and  the  gentlemen   perhaps  thought  each  to  himself,  ‘Women  will  have  their  little  nonsenses  and  needless   cares.’   In   this   second   example,   Austen   draws   a   contrast   between   the   exchange   of   (speaking)  looks  between  the  women  and  the  private  thoughts  of  each  man.  The  paper   will   examine   these   and   other   examples   more   closely,   to   interrogate   the   gendered,   affective  discourse  that  is  attributed  to  the  faces  of  both  men  and  women  in  her  fictions.     Further,   I   will   suggest   that   this   trope   might   be   understood   as   a   complex   rhetorical   version   of   what   William   Reddy   describes   in   The  Navigation  of  Feeling   as   an   “emotive”:  a  first-­‐person  present-­‐tense  expression  that  is  neither  simply  constative  nor   performative,   but   which   nevertheless   does   perform   emotional   work   of   some   kind.   For   Reddy,   emotives   such   as   “I   love   you”   emphatically   do   things   in   the   world,   in   what   we   may   call   a   form   of   emotional   practice.   What   does   this   trope   of   the   speaking   face   do?   Using   these   and   other   examples   from   Austen’s   fiction,   I   will   tease   out   some   of   the   implications   for   the   role   of   imaginative   writing   in   the   history   of   emotions,   and   the   importance   of   narrative   attempts   to   put   emotions   into   words.   In   contrast   to   many   physiological   or   taxonomic   studies   of   the   emotions   that   work   by   linking   a   single   indexical   word   (for   example,   fear   or   anger)   to   a   particular   arrangement   of   facial   features,   complex   narratives   like   novelist   fictions   can   tell   us   a   great   deal   about   how   emotions   were   perceived,   expressed,   and   interpreted   in   precise   social   and   cultural   settings.         This  paper  is  part  of  a  much  larger  project  in  which  I  plan  to  examine  the  history   of   the   speaking   face   in   English   literature.   I   have   set   up   a   Google   form   in   which   I   am   inviting   readers   to   contribute   examples   of   this   trope   from   their   own   reading,   as   the   first   step  in  a  larger  project  that  will  search  digital  archives  of  literary  texts  to  build  a  more   comprehensive  picture  of  the  history  of  this  trope.     https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1TZY6VHOKHtA4N7mYjqJlhmrpR6wa9Mr9KMjO1h7M5P4/edit  

 

 

69  

Lindsay  Tuggle  (University  of  Sydney)   “Phantoms  of  Countless  Lost”:    Amputation  and  Affect  in  Walt  Whitman’s  War  Prose     The   frequency   of   Civil   War   amputations   led   to   an   epidemic   of   phantom   limbs,   a   diagnostic   term   coined   by   Whitman’s   post-­‐war   physician,   Silas   Weir   Mitchell,   who   debuted   this   neurological   theory   in   an   1871   article   detailing   the   phenomenon   he   described  as  a  “sensory  ghost.”  In  January  1864,  Whitman  witnessed  the  amputation  of   Lewis   K.   Brown’s   left   leg.   During   the   preceding   sixteen   months   at   Armory   Square   Hospital   Brown   had   become   Whitman’s   close   friend,   and   quite   probably   his   lover.   The   poet   documented   the   neurological   consequences   of   this   severance:   “[Lewy]   could   feel   the  lost  foot  &  leg  very  plainly.    The  toes  would  get  twisted,  &  not  possible  to  disentangle   them.”  Phenomenologically,  the  phantom  limb  manifests  as  a  physical  presence  felt  most   acutely   in   its   absence.   Whitman’s   libidinal   investment   in   amputees   mirrors   his   poetic   fascination   with   erotic-­‐linguistic   vacancy.   His   reverence   toward   partial   bodies   demonstrates  an  attachment  to  the  process  of  loss,  through  which  profound  intimacies   are   formed.   Like   the   ghostly   pains   of   the   amputee,   Whitman   inevitably   returns,   “in   dreams’   projections,”   to   the   hospital   corridors.   The   poet   seeks   to   psychically   resurrect   soldiers’   abandoned   bodies   and   detached   parts.     Whitman’s   “specimen   cases”   borrow   from   contemporary   medical   rhetoric   to   chart   the   evolution   of   a   unique   category   of   “beings”.   The   term   “homo-­‐sexual”   first   appeared   in   English   in   a   translation   of   Krafft-­‐ Ebing’s   Psychopathia   Sexualis   in   1892,   the   year   of   Whitman’s   death.   The   poet’s   appropriation   of   words   such   as   Phrenological   “adhesiveness”   for   masculine   same-­‐sex   desire,  “specimen”  for  subject  of  erotic  curiosity,  and  “comrade”  for  lover  or  friend,  are   attempts   to   construct   a   nomenclature   that   could   fill   that   void.   Memoranda’s   collected   observances  represent  an  epistemological  study  in  keeping  with  Foucault’s  historicity  of   homosexuality:   “The   nineteenth-­‐century   homosexual   became   a   personage,   a   past,   a   case   history,  and  a  childhood,  in  addition  to  being  a  type  of  life,  a  life  form,  and  a  morphology,   with   an   indiscreet   anatomy   and   possibly   a   mysterious   physiology.”   Whitman   offers   a   unique   perspective   on   the   evolution   of   this   anatomy:   he   views   queer   morphology   through   reverential,   rather   than   diagnostic,   eyes.     For   Whitman,   mourning   is   an   open-­‐ ended   attachment   that   transcends   the   physical   presence   of   the   body.   The   phantom   limb   manifests  as  a  tangible  void,  a  neurological  link  to  the  lost  part.  Phenomenologically,  it  is   emblematic   of   Whitman’s   devotion   to   the   wound   as   a   corporeal   enclave   of   vacancy.   Building   on   Derridean   theories   of   hauntology   and   Sedgwick’s   concept   of   “erotic   localization,”   I   interpret   Whitman’s   narration   of   the   war’s   “human   fragments”   as   a   discourse   on   the   queer   hospitality   of   “sensory   ghosts”   and   their   perpetually   open   wounds.       Anthony  Uhlmann  (University  of  Western  Sydney)   Intertextuality  and  the  Sense  of  Truth  in  Coetzee’s  Dusklands     This   paper   will   examine   the   method   of   working   with   and   between   source   and   target   texts   in   J.   M.   Coetzee’s   first   novel   Dusklands,  and   consider   the   nature   and   implications   of   this  method.  The  notions  of  translation  and  intertextuality  will  be  addressed  alongside   an   assessment   of   the   implication   that   ‘truth’   or   insight   becomes   available   through   interpretation.  The  paper  will  examine  the  relation  between  the  first  part  of  Dusklands   ‘The   Vietnam   Project’   and   the   work   of   Herman   Kahn   on   Vietnam,   and   the   second   part   of   Dusklands,   ‘The   Narrative   of   Jacobus   Coetzee   and   The  Journals  of  Jacobus  Coetsé  (1760)   and   Willem   van   Reenen   upon   which   Coetzee   drew   in   developing   these   works.   It   will   further   look   at   Coetzee’s   theoretical   and   critical   writings   from   the   period   in   which   Dusklands  emerged  in  developing  a  reading  that  addresses  the  production  of  the  sense   or  affect  of  truth  in  this  work.    

 

70  

Ilona  Urquhart  (Deakin  University)   ‘Deceit,  to  the  point  of  diabolism’:    The  Danger  of  Humbert’s  Narration  in  Lolita     Vladimir   Nabokov’s   Lolita  (1955)   continues   to   provoke   emotional   responses   to   both   the   beauty   of   its   language   and   the   cruelty   of   the   protagonist’s   actions.   Published   only   six   years   after   W.K.   Wimsatt,   Jr.   and   Monroe   Beardsley’s   ‘The   Affective   Fallacy,’   the   reception   of   Lolita   by   critics   and   the   general   public   demonstrated   the   difficulty   of   avoiding   affective   criticism.   Initially   published   in   France   because   American   publishers   feared   that   the   novel   would   outrage   readers   and   incite   obscenity   charges,   the   novel’s   eventual   release   in   the   United   States   begat   negative   criticism   with   an   undercurrent   of   disgust,  and  positive  reviews  enraptured  by  Nabokov’s  prose.     One   modern   critic,   Trevor   McNeely,   accused   Nabokov   of   ‘diabolical   cleverness’   in   an   article   putting   forward   the   view   that   ‘[t]he   plot   has   one   justification   and   basis   only—to   trap   the   reader.’   Indeed,   Humbert   Humbert’s   unreliable   narration   is   carefully   worded   as   to   tempt   the   reader   to   put   aside   their   misgivings   and   sympathise   with   a   paedophile   and   murderer.   This   paper   explores   how   Nabokov   overtly   constructs   his   narrative  as  ‘diabolical,’  warning  readers  how  language  can  manipulate  their  emotions  if   they  do  not  read  critically.  However,  the  metaphor  of  the  Faustian  pact  suggests  that  one   only   makes   a   deal   with   the   devil   because   of   the   emptiness   of   the   alternative,   so   that   reading  without  regard  for  emotion  is  just  as  dangerous.  Nabokov’s  Lolita  suggests  that   a  reader  should  neither  succumb  to  their  emotional  reactions  nor  reject  them  in  favour   of  cold  objectivity,  but  read  attentively  and  compassionately.           Prithvi  Varatharajan  (University  of  Queensland)   Mediation  of  Affective  Response  in  Vicki's  Voice     This   paper   will   look   at   how   Vicki’s  Voice—a   radio   program   on   the   late   Australian   poet   Vicki   Viidikas,   broadcast   on   ABC   Radio   National   in   2005—directs   the   affective   responses   of   the   listener,   through   sound.   Sonic   elements   of   Vicki’s   Voice—such   as   an   edited  recording  of  the  poet’s  voice;  an  edited  recording  of  an  actor’s  voice  reading  the   poet’s   work;   edited   recordings   of   Viidikas’   peers   speaking   about   her   and   her   writing;   and  sound  effects  and  music—come  together  to  guide  the  listener’s  affective  responses.     The   paper   will   consider   both   the   role   of   the   text   and   the   role   of   the   program’s   producer   in   guiding   the   listener’s   affective   responses.   It   will   also   consider   how   attitudes   toward   affect   in   Viidikas’   poetry   align   or   fail   to   align   with   its   performance,   and   what   effect  this  may  have  on  the  poetry’s  remediated  meaning.  I  will  argue  that  Vicki’s  Voice   mediates   affective   response,   and   in   so   doing   provides   a   template   of   response   for   the   listener.   This   is   perhaps   another   way   of   saying   that   the   radio   program   is   an   interpretation   or   adaptation   of   the   work,   analogous   to   theatre   “productions”   of   texts   which   present   the   audience   with   a   performance   of   affect   in   response   to   a   text.   The   audience’s  engagement  with  the  production  may  then  be  seen  to  contain  a  second-­‐level   affective   response:   an   affective   response   to   the   performance   of   affect/affective   response.       Formalism   is   implicit   in   this   approach,   as   I   am   considering   Vicki’s   Voice   as   an   object  which  guides  or  shapes  the  listener’s  responses.  In  this  view,  listeners  may  have   different   responses   to   each   other,   but—due   to   properties   of   the   text   itself—some   responses   are   more   likely   than   others,   within   a   particular   cultural   context   for   reception.   I   am   thinking   here   of   Western-­‐educated   listeners,   who   largely   constitute   ABC   Radio   National’s   target   audience,   and   theoretical/critical   texts   on   reader-­‐response   that   consider   structural   constraints   for   reception,   such   as   Jonathan   Culler’s   “Literary   Competence”  and  Patricia  Smith’s  “Icons  in  the  Canyon.”   I   have   so   far   gestured   toward   the   text(s)   and   the   listener,   but   what   about   the   author?   Does   the   “author”   of   Vicki’s   Voice   influence   the   affective   responses   of   the  

 

71  

listener?  To  this  end,  I  will  consider  Vicki’s  Voice  as  a  performance  authored  or  curated   by   the   producer   of   the   program,   using   voice   and   sound.   I   will   entertain   the   idea   that   the   curated   performance   could   be   seen   to   mimic   the   producer’s   own   responses,   as   the   producer   would   presumably   not   present   a   performance   which   is   at   odds   with   their   own   affective   responses   to   the   source   text.   The   program’s   listeners   are   then   invited   to   participate  in  this  performance  of  response,  and  perhaps  to  replicate  it  as  the  preferred   one.   This   does   not   perpetuate   the   intentional   fallacy,   but   rather   considers   whether   intermediary   “authors”   or   “curators”   may   shape   affective   responses,   in   the   way   that   a   theatre   director   may   be   seen   to   shape   an   audience’s   affective   responses,   without   however  dictating  meaning.         Denise  Varney  (University  of  Melbourne)   Visceral  Affects  and  Disavowal  in  Contemporary  Performance     This   paper   considers   Patricia   Clough’s   notion   of   ‘the   affective   turn’   as   it   applies   to   Theatre   Studies   through   a   comparative   analysis   of   three   productions:   Hedda   Gabler,   directed   by   Thomas   Ostermeier   with   Katharina   Schüttler   as   Hedda   (Viewed   in   Melbourne,   2011);   Gross   und   Klein   with   Cate   Blanchett   as   Lotte.   (Viewed   in   Sydney,   2011);   A   Streetcar,   directed   and   adapted   by   Krzysztof   Warlokowski   with   Isabelle   Huppert  as  Blanche  du  Bois.  (Viewed  in  Adelaide,  2012)           As   Patricia   Clough   notes   in   her   essay   the   turn   to   affect   proposes   ‘a   substantive   shift’  in  critical  theory  to  ‘bodily  matter’  and  the  dynamism  located  therein  (2010).  Such   dynamism   in   theatre   concerns   the   flows   of   intensity,   sensation,   perception   and   impingements  that  circulate  during  performance  and  include  performer  and  spectator.   Live   performance   may   serve   as   a   privileged   location   for   what   Brian   Massumi   (2002)   refers   to   the   ‘primacy   of   the   affective’   and   is   marked   by   ‘a   gap   between   content   and   effect’.  It  is  not  that  the  arts  free  us  from  the  symbolic  order,  as  Clare  Colebrook  writes,   but   that   affect   in   art   ‘disrupts   the   everyday   and   opinionated   links   we   make   between   words   and   experience’   (2002).   Hence   as   James   Thompson   (2009)   points   out   for   the   theatre,  ‘Brecht’s  startle  or  Benjamin’s  astonishment’  are  both  the  affect  of  the  work  and   a  starting  point  for  critical  enquiry.             The   performances   I   discuss   provide   contrasting   examples   of   the   theatricalised   female  hysteric  but  more  particularly  a  new  representation  that  evokes  the  creation  and   disavowel   of   affect.   In   the   penultimate   moments   of   the   Schaubühne   Hedda,   Katharina   Schüttler’s  cool,  postdramatic,  contemporary  Hedda  Gabler  navigates  the  stage  with  an   apparent   lack   of   affect   and   a   distinct   lack   of   force   or   intensity   that   matches   a   lack   of   ambition   and   desire.   The   performer   appears   unmoved   by   the   great   role   she   plays   and   the  canonical  status  of  the  work  by  means  of  which  she  occupies  centre  stage.  By  way  of   contrast,   in   the   final   moments   of   Botho   Stauss’s   Gross   und   Klein,   a   non-­‐narrative,   postdramatic   work   set   in   West   Berlin   in   the   1970s,   Cate   Blanchett’s   Lotte,   stands   downstage   and   silently   weeps.   Yet   the   tears   fall   without   emotion   suggesting   affect   is   ‘enfolded’   into   a   body   suspended   in   an   affective   state.   Huppert’s   world-­‐weary,   ironic   Blanche  du  Bois  inhabits  a  body  that  jerks,  ticks,  shudders,  writhes,  howls  and  chatters   with  the  intensity  and  apparent  loss  of  cognitive  direction  of  a  body  in  shock.  Web-­‐cam   recorders   project   her   enlarged   face   onto   a   screen   behind   her   seated   body.   In   the   final   moments,  when  Blanche  walks  across  the  corridor  stage  towards  the  doctor  and  nurse,   she   delivers   the   line   —   ‘I   have   always   relied   on   the   kindness   of   strangers’   —   to   the   webcam.   Defamiliarised   and   remediated,   the   moment   is   nevertheless   powerful,   shocking,   surprising   and   intensively   affective.   There   is   no   avoiding   the   weight   of   her   circumstances,   the   nightmare   of   her   life   and   her   catatonic   state.   The   paper   will   argue   that   in   each   case   the   spectator’s   critical   engagement   is   stimulated   by   an   affective   economy   that   destabilises   conventional   meanings   of   these   works   and   opens   up   more   progressive  new  readings.                  

 

72  

Corey  Wakeling  (University  of  Melbourne)   Hypnosis   by   Theatrical   Temporality   in   Samuel   Beckett's   Theatrical   Trilogy  Not   I   /   Footfalls  /  Rockaby     Hypnosis  can  be  seen  as  a  repulsion  from  affect  into  sleep  or  dream,  or  at  least  what   Isabelle  Stengers  explores  as  a  kind  of  “deception”  (‘The  Deceptions  of  Power:   Psychoanalysis  and  Hypnosis’,  81).  However,  at  the  same  time  Stengers  is  interested  in   hypnosis  as  an  artefact  of  “false  witness”  within  the  assumption  of  “reliable  witness”   (83),  what    Brian  Massumi,  pace  Stengers  calls  a  minor,  affective  knowledge  practice   (Parables  for  the  Virtual,  309).     Beckett’s  trilogy  of  plays  Not  I  /  Footfalls  /  Rockaby  are  three  hypnotic   dramaturgical  events  which  I  argue  legitimise  the  affect  of  hypnosis  as  a  minor   knowledge  practice  of  spectatorship.  Indeed,  further  than  legitimation,  Jonathan  Crary   calls  hypnosis  “an  extreme  model  of  a  technology  of  attention”  (Suspensions  of   Perception,  65).  Each  play  poses  its  own  sensory  problem  for  attention  which  is   markedly  temporal:    i.)  Not  I’s  speed  of  unintelligibility,  ii.)  Footfalls’  spectral  trance-­‐ pace,  and  iii.)  Rockaby’s  metronomic,  20  bpm  velleity.  The  design  of  these  plays  in   Walter  Asmus’s  rendering  at  the  Duchess  Theatre  in  January  2014  extended  the   extremes  illustrated  in  Beckett’s  texts,  through  a  fully  blacked-­‐out  theatre  and  the   miniaturisation  of  the  lit  spectacle.   The  three  plays’  narratives  regard  the  dwindling  memories  of  entranced   characters.  Importantly,  witness  become  less  reliable  and  more  automatic  in  these  plays   the  more  entranced  the  characters  appear.  So,  following  Crary’s  account  of  “focalisation”   by  hypnosis  (66),  I  argue  the  “denuded  mise  en  scène”  (Stengers,  90)  of  these  hypnotics   brings  into  relief  the  unreliability  of  witness  of  memory  shared  by  character  and   spectator  as  a  theatrical  reality.     Freud  abandoned  hypnosis  because  he  considered  it  an  encouragement  of  his   analysand  Anna  O.’s  personality  disassociation  by  day-­‐dreaming  (Studies  on  Hysteria,   255).  But,  as  an  “extreme  model  of  a  technology  of  attention”  where  the  spectator  shares   in  a  hypnotised  day-­‐dream  with  character,  the  artefact  of  unreliable  witness  of  memory   is  given  spectacular  reality.         Scott  Wark  (University  of  Melbourne)   The  Technical  Temporalities  of  Feeling  in  Jonathan  Safran  Foer’s  Tree  of  Codes     Jonathan   Safran   Foer’s   Tree   of   Codes   is   a   difficult   book   to   read.   Composed   through   a   process   of   cutting   and   erasing   Bruno   Schulz’s   Street  of  Crocodiles,   the   resultant   die-­‐cut   object  flirts  with  the  limits  of  intelligibility.  Holes  in  the  book’s  pages  allow  words  deep   in   the   text   to   infiltrate   the   sentences   on   those   pages’   surfaces,   frustrating   the   relationship  between  reading  and  sense  making.  The  impressionistic  ‘Afterword’  to  Tree   of  Codes  provides  its  readers  with  the  titular  cipher  needed  to  contextualise  and  to  make   sense  of  this  strange  object.  A  series  of  small  sections  link  Foer’s  text  to  several  temporal   moments:  Schultz’s  tragic  and  arbitrary  murder  as  a  Jewish  prisoner  of  war  held  by  Nazi   captors;   the   miraculous,   lone   survival   of   his   one   extant   book,   Street   of   Crocodiles;   the   genesis   of   Tree   of   Codes   and   its   process   of   composition;   the   looming   contemporary   obsolescence   of   the   medium   of   the   book;   and,   most   touchingly,   his   book’s   status   as   monument  to  all  of  the  creative  works  lost  in  the  tragedy  of  the  holocaust.  This  code  to   Tree  of  Codes   situates   Foer’s   text   in   several   simultaneous   temporalities:   a   lost   past,   an   uncertain  present,  and  a  future  that  never  was.     This   paper   will   unpack   this   afterword   to   tie   together   technology,   time   and   feeling   in   Tree   of   Codes.   Foer’s   book   will   be   used   as   a   case   study   to   make   two   interrelated   points.   First,   that   the   material   medium   is   essential   to   sense   making   processes   in   literature   –   where   sense   is   understood,   with   Jean-­‐Luc   Nancy,   on   a  

 

73  

continuum   of   feeling   and   meaning.   This   paper   will   argue   that   the   multiple   temporalities   mobilised  by  this  book  can  only  be  understood  in  relation  to  the  physical  deconstruction   of  its  material  medium.  By  materialising  modernist  modes  of  fragmentation,  Foer’s  book   transforms   reading   into   an   engaged,   embodied   process.   Its   themes   of   dissolution,   loss,   absence  and  sadness  are  given  objective  form  in  the  fragility  of  its  pages,  the  anguished   confusion   of   its   intermingled   chorus   of   voices,   and   the   literal   deconstruction   of   its   medium   through   incision   and   erasure.   Second,   this   paper   will   argue   that   the   temporalities   generated   by   literary   texts   are   inextricable   from   their   technical   operations.   Drawing   on   the   work   of   Bernard   Stiegler,   Bruno   Latour   and   others,   it   will   assert   that   nonhuman   technologies   contaminate   and   co-­‐structure   human   perception.Tree   of   Codes’   material   medium   plays   a   constitutive   role   in   sense   and   meaning  making  –  in,  that  is,  the  composition  of  temporal  envelopes  of  experience  for  its   readers.   The   ‘meaning’   of   the   book   –   its   status   as   monument   –   is   secondary   to   the   material  process  of  reading  that  its  physical  form  encourages.  Reading  –  as  a  process  of   sense  making  –  can  only  be  understood  in  post-­‐phenomenological  terms.     Tree   of   Codes   reminds   us   of   the   embodied   nature   of   our   engagement   with   literature.  It  also  reminds  us  of  the  constitutive  role  that  nonhuman  technologies  play  in   organising   temporal   regimes   of   literary   experience   –   and   literary   sensibility,   or   both   meaning  and  feeling.         Anna  Westbrook  (New  York  University,  Sydney)   Relational   Jouissance   and   the   Erotics   of   Reading   Queerly,   or:   “Something   Like   Orgasm   Accompanied  By  Crying”?     The  relational  or  the  social  has  been  one  of  the  most  prominent  sites  of  tension  in  queer   studies  over  the  last  decade,  particularly  how  the  various  interpretations  of  queer  as  a   force   of   self-­‐shattering   are   often   played   against   scholarship   that   focuses   on   queer   ‘world-­‐making’  practices.  This  paper  contends  that  the  emotional  dimension  of  literary   jouissance,   which   opens   psyche   and   body   to   others   -­‐   hitherto   overlooked   in   English   translation,   provides   an   occasion   for   an   intervention   in   contemporary   debates   about   queer  relationality  and  parlays  into  Eve  Kosofsky  Sedgwick’s  reparative  reading.     By   taking   the   grain   of   Jane   Gallop’s   rereading   of   jouissance   in   her   2012   essay,   ‘Precocious   Jouissance:   Roland   Barthes,   Amatory   Maladjustment,   and   Emotion’,   and   advancing   her   hypothesis   that   jouissance   émue   is   similar   to   orgasm   accompanied   or   disrupted   by   weeping   -­‐   this   paper   seeks   to   extricate   jouissance   from   its   familiar   Lacanian-­‐Barthesian   phallocentric   model   and   discuss   the   possibilities   of   a   rebirthed   erotics   of   reading   outside   of   both   heteronormative   and   anti-­‐relational   queer   paradigms.   Defining   jouissance   émue   as   an   overrun   of   feeling   that   disrupts   the   cultural   narrative   of   sexuality  and  displaces  desire  for  the  ‘proper  object’,  arrests  the  teleological  trajectory   of   pleasure   toward   orgasm   and   allows   the   consideration   of   alternate   models   of   desire   and  the  integration  of  arousal  into  reparative  readings.   Following   the   trajectory   of   Sedgwick’s   ‘Jane   Austen   and   the   Masturbating   Girl’   this   paper   explores   why   the   condemnatory   charge   of   ‘mental   masturbation’   so   frequently   levelled   at   academic   research   strikes   ironically   close   to   the   mark.   In   an   erotics   of   reading   jouissance   émue   is   construed   as   a   heterogeneous   and   polymorphic   field  of  erotic  impulses  not  directed  at  desire’s  proper  (heterosexual)  object,  or  even  at   any  object.  Gallop  writes  that  Barthes’s  “image  of  the  author  ‘lost  in  the  text’  could  also   suggest   that   he   is   there   but   the   reader   cannot   find   him,   cannot   reach   him.   If   the   relation   to   the   author   is   a   relation   to   an   other,   it   is   a   relation   to   an   other   who   is   always   there   but   always  lost,  who  cannot  be  discounted  but  cannot  be  reached”.  In  considering  the  dead   author   lost   in   the   text,   attendant   but   not   forthcoming   to   entreaty,   the   weight   is   felt   of   Barthes’s   claim   that   this   absence,   staged   in   language,   is   but   a   rehearsal   of   the   other’s   death:  the  reader  is  already,  inevitably,  in  love  with  the  dead.    

 

74  

This  paper  contends  that  jouissance  émue  might  be  conceived  as  feeling  like  Kristeva’s   open   wound,   a   wound   that   the   reader   must   endure   as   a   “corporeal,   and   verbal   ordeal   of   fundamental   incompleteness:   a   ‘gaping’…   like   a   crucified   person   opening   up   the   stigmata   of   its   desiring   body”,   and   discusses   the   affects   of   jouissance   émue:   how   coming   and  crying  can  be  reading  queerly.       Kim  L.  Worthington  (Massey  University)   Confronting  a  Forgotten  Past:  Shame,  Guilt  and  Blame  in  Jaspreet  Singh’s  Helium  (2013)     Shame,   guilt   and   blame:     these   emotions   dominate   in   Jaspreet   Singh’s   haunting   novel,   Helium  (2013).  Singh’s  narrator  struggles  to  write  about  the  Sikh  pogrom  that  occurred   in   India  following   the  assignation  of   Indira   Ghandi   by   her   Sikh   bodyguards   in   November   1984.   In   the   days   and   weeks   after,   thousands   of   Sikhs   were   burned   alive,   with   the   encouragement  and  support  of  government  officials  and  police.   The   narratorial   focus   is   though   the   perceptions   of   an   Indian   ‘returning   son’   (from  study  and  employment  abroad)  who  witnessed  the  immolation  of  his  beloved  Sikh   professor   several   decades   earlier.     He   believes   his   now   ailing   father,   a   senior   police   officer,   was   complicit   in   the   mass   murders.     In   the   painful   reunion   of   father   and   son,   personal   meets   national   shame   and   blame;   and   reconciliation,   if   achievable,   demands   guilty  recollection.   The   German   language   has   a   word   for   the   struggle   involved   in   coming   to   terms   with   past   atrocities:   Vergangenheitsbewältigung.     It   arose   in   a   1960s   culture   in   which   “second-­‐generation”   Germans   (those   not   alive   or   very   young   during   WWII)   began   to   confront  the  heinous  acts  of  their  (grand)  parents  in  Nazi  Germany.  The  word  suggests   that   what   is   needed   is   more   than   a   rational   assessment   of   past   (inherited)   crimes:   an   emotional  confrontation  is  necessary.  While  Singh’s  novel  is  set  in  contemporary  India,   my   reference   here   to   post-­‐war   Germany   is   not   arbitrary.     The   work   of   Primo   Levi   is   alluded  to  throughout,  and  the  elusive  whole  evokes  the  work  of  W.G  Sebald.   There   is,   however   a   striking   difference   between   the   German   Vergangenheitsbewältigung,   and   that   undertaken   by   Singh’s   “second   generation”   narrator   (and   Singh   himself).   Post-­‐war   Germans   face   the   task   of   (emotionally)   confronting   an   acknowledged   and   memorialised   crime   of   genocidal   violence.     In   contrast,   the   central   referent   in   Singh’s   novel   (the   1984   Sikh   pogrom)   is   one   that   has   all   been   erased   from   (official)   Indian   history.   The   murderers   not   only   burned   people,   writes   Singh   in   a   recent   essay,   “they   also   burned   Memory.”   My   discussion   of   the   novel   seeks   to   explore   the   complex   relationships   between   memory   (and   forgetting)   and   the   emotions   of   shame,   guilt   and   blame.     Inevitably,   this   also   involves   questions   about   the   (im)possibility   of   reconciliation   and   forgiveness.   I   draw   on   Paul   Ricoeur’s   Memory,   History  and  Forgetting,  particularly  on  the  distinction  he  makes  between  what  might  be   called  genuine  amnesia  and  wilful  forgetting,  and  the  later  work  of  Jacques  Derrida  and   Emmanuel  Levinas,  to  frame  my  reading  of  the  novel.       Jonathon  Zapasnik  (Australian  National  University)   The  Event  of  Sexuality:  (Un)Reading  Eric  Michaels’  Unbecoming     In   this   paper,   I   examine   how   we   can   understand   the   relationship   between   affect,   memory   and   sexuality   in   Australian   AIDS   life   writing,   namely   Eric   Michaels’   posthumously  published  memoir,  Unbecoming  (1990).  This  research  reflects  my  interest   in   thinking   about   sexuality   as   an   assemblage   of   affective   memory.   Affective   memory,   according   to   Jill   Bennett   (2006),   refers   to   the   “real-­‐time   somatic   experience”   akin   to   Holocaust   survivor   Charlotte   Delbo’s   “sense   memory”,   which   designates   the   body’s   capacity   to   register   and   recall   the   event   through   a   series   of   subjective   processes.   This  

 

75  

notion   of   affective   memory   challenges   the   idea   that   memory   is   something   capable   of   representation,   emphasising   instead   memory   as   a   dynamic   and   embodied   process,   incorporating   the   visceral   sensations   that   prefigure   our   thoughts   and   actions.   Here,   memory   is   never   singular,   but   only   ever   exists   as   a   series   of   multiplicities   that   converge   and   diverge   in   a   variety   of   unpredictable   ways.   Based   on   my   reading   of   Michaels’   memoir,  I  propose  that  sexuality  is  one  of  the  many  categories  of  experience  produced   through  embodied  memory.  In  the  Deleuzian  sense,  sexuality  is  an  event  that  signals  the   ongoing   making   and   unmaking   of   bodies   and   carries   with   it   the   potential   for   agency   within  the  very  context  of  its  actualisation.  This  framing  of  sexuality  as  an  event  seeks  to   expand   the   work   of   Jasbir   Puar   (2007)   and   Amit   Rai   (2009),   who   similarly   suggest   thinking   about   sexuality   in   terms   of   its   affective   capacity   between   bodies   and   across   time,   rather   than   a   signifier   of   identity.   This   requires   us,   as   readers,   to   find   new   ways   of   understanding   the   literary   text   typically   thought   in   representational   terms.   Indeed,   as   Deleuze   (2000)   notes,   reading   is   not   about   finding   the   meaning   in   the   text,   but   rather   about  grasping  how  the  text  functions.  Drawing  on  Deleuze’s  engagement  with  literature   and   the   work   of   Eve   Kosofsky   Sedgwick   (2003)   and   Heather   Love   (2010;   2013),   I   propose   a   queer-­‐Deleuzian   method   of   reading   the   literary   text   that   is   sensitive   to   the   emergence   of   sexuality   and   the   circulation   of   affects   that   produce   its   iterations.   I   will   demonstrate   the   similarities   between   these   potentially   contentious   approaches   to   the   literary  text  and,  ultimately,  argue  for  the  productivity  of  this  tension  through  a  “close,   but  not  deep”  (Love  2010)  reading  of  Michaels’  memoir.                    

 

76  

Suggest Documents