CFP: The Post-Kantian Poe

The following is a call for papers for a special edition of The Edgar Allan Poe Review, to be edited by Sean Moreland, Devin Zane Shaw, and Jonathan Murphy. It will have its own permanent page here, so that it does not get lost in the shuffle.

“Theory Mad Beyond Redemption”: The Post-Kantian Poe

A call for papers for a special issue of The Edgar Allan Poe Review, forthcoming in Fall 2012, and guest-edited by Sean Moreland, Devin Zane Shaw, and Jonathan Murphy.

The editors invite original essays that address the influence of German Idealist and Romantic thought upon Edgar Allan Poe. While it has become a critical commonplace that Poe both makes use of and mocks many elements of German Idealism, there has been scant discussion of the specificities of Poe’s complex, and often vexed, treatments of Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Poe studies enjoyed a brief revival of the “French Poe” following the psychoanalytic and deconstructive interventions of Lacan and Derrida, but the anti-theoretical backlash of the past two decades has tended to extradite Poe back to his country of origin, restoring his “American Face” at the cost of recognizing the transatlantic influences that indelibly shaped his writing. This collection will focus on Poe’s indebtedness to, as well as his critical distance from, the German Idealist and Romantic writers, but its intent is not to delineate, as Hansen and Pollin (1995) have done,  the “German Face” of Poe, so much as it is to reintroduce the theoretical aspect of Poe’s artistry back into the critical conversation.
 

We especially welcome papers that consider the relationship between Poe’s reception of Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy (including Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schiller, and the Schlegels) and that of his American literary contemporaries (including Emerson, Fuller, Hawthorne, and Melville); articles that examine the role of Coleridge and Carlyle, Cousin and de Stael in disseminating German idealism upon American shores; and essays that interrogate more recent peregrinations of German philosophy in Continental theory, especially as they pertain to a reconsideration of Poe’s literary legacy.

We require a 250 word abstract and a brief bio by no later than April 30, 2012, and the finished paper (Chicago-style, no more than 9000 words including endnotes) by July 15, 2012.  Abstracts, papers, and questions should be directed to: theorymad@gmail.com.

Post-Althusserians in Review

Filed away for future reference, before they get away from me:

• Todd May discussing Jacques Rancière's Althusser's Lessons.
• Jason Read reviewing Etienne Balibar's Citoyen sujet.
• And, Read again, reviewing Pierre Macherey's Hegel or Spinoza.
• And, and, before I forget, the post-Middlesex Cahiers pour l'analyse site.

Lyrical Ballads 1798 and 1800

Thanks to insistence of occasional contributor Sean Moreland, I've lately taken some interest in British romanticism. The impetus is a co-authored paper that we are writing on Schelling, Coleridge, and Poe. I've already mentioned the fun I've had reading Poe, but my research on Coleridge has increased my interest in the aesthetics and politics of the British romantics, not only STC, but also Wordsworth, and the now lesser-known John Thelwall.

After reading volume one of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, acquiring a copy of Lyrical Ballads seemed to be the next obvious step. But which edition to acquire was not so obvious, since they are numerous. I did some browsing and settled on Lyrical Ballads 1798 and 1800, edited by Michael Gamer and Dahlia Porter, and published by Broadview Press. This edition was slightly more expensive than those of Penguin or Oxford, but it is more useful for the academic who finds himself (or herself) a novice in a new field.

The Lyrical Ballads 1798 and 1800, reproduces not just the first two editions, but also  an excerpt of Wordsworth's 1802 preface, contemporary reviews of both editions, and numerous appendices including: poems by Coleridge that were originally intended to be published in the LB, correspondence and commentary on the volumes, excerpts from contemporary prose and poetry, and a short section on mapping the locations of the poems. 

It's a lot of material, but very useful. For my purposes, I was interested in how Wordsworth's contemporaries received the poems. For I was initially hesitant to make the jump from German to British romanticism because I had understood Wordsworth to be, as he is now often presented, a nature-poet. Reading Rancière in advance of the Lyrical Ballads had challenged that characterization, and the contemporary reviews, reproduced in this volume, confirm that his contemporaries did not miss the political aspect of Wordsworth's concept of nature, from the hints of Rousseau, to the way that his experiments in ascertaining "how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure" undermined the accepted hierarchies of aesthetic, moral, and political attitudes of the time.

I found the 1798 edition to be more compelling, but this could be due to reading the 1800 edition soon after. Nevertheless, I do appreciate the playful aspect of beginning the later edition with Wordsworth's "Expostulation and Reply" and "The Tables Turned," which introduce the Lyrical Ballads by asking the reader not to read it. And I couldn't complete this short review without noting the apt characterization (in the 1800 edition's 'Argument' prefacing The Ancient Mariner) of the mariner's act as a demonstration of "contempt of the laws of hospitality."

Communism and Racial Equality in the South

We've had an eye on the historian Robin D.G. Kelley since...well, not just since we read his book on Thelonious Monk last year, but since we had first discovered--many years ago--Aimé Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism (Kelley wrote the introduction to the most recent edition).

When a few links to an NPR program on "How 'Communism' Brought Racial Equality to the South" popped up in the feeds today (not to mention on I Cite), we figured that Kelley must have been involved in some form. When I thought I'd make a joke about how some Republican hack was going to find this out and turn it into one of those rousing primary non-issues (LOOK! NPR IS PUSHING COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA!), I discovered that the interview is originally from February 2010. 

It's a short reminder (in fact a discussion of Kelley's Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression) that the Communist Party played an important role in organizing civil rights struggle in the 1930s, and something to think about as the Occupy movement reorganizes for 2012.

Prof. KELLEY: In 1928, the communist position internationally was that African-Americans in the South have the right to self-determination. Meaning: they have the right to create their own nation in the South. In this position that came out of Moscow, it came from other black communists around the globe.

And with that idea in mind, they sent two organizers to Alabama and they went to Birmingham. And they chose Birmingham because it was probably the most industrialized city in the South. And they went there thinking they would organize white workers. And from white workers, black workers would follow. But no white workers had come forward.

And so, the first two organizers was a guy named James Julio(ph), who was a Sicilian worker who had migrated to Alabama, and another guy named Tom Johnson(ph), and together they went out looking for white workers and black workers came.

And black workers came in fairly large numbers right away because to them, they had a memory of reconstruction, the memory of the Civil War. And in that kind of collective memory, they were told that one day the Yankees will come back and finish the fight. Well, when they saw these white communists, they said, oh, good, the Yankees are here. We cant wait to join.

And it was no small part of the movement:

Prof. KELLEY: Well, theres a couple of ways to think about this. One, in terms of actual dues-paying members, they never had more than 600, 700. But then, if you look at all the other auxiliary organizations, the International Labor Defense, which focused on civil rights issues, they had up to 2,000. The Sharecroppers Union had up to 12,000. You had the International Workers Order. You had the League of Young Southerners. You had the Southern Negro Youth Congress. If you add up all these organizations, it touched the lives easily of 20,000 people.

Finally, the moral:

MARTIN: Hmm. So, what would you hope people would take away from all the work that youve done, documenting this history?

Prof. KELLEY: Well, first what I really emphasize is the fact that these were ordinary people, most of whom could not read or write, who were able to, on their own, form a very strong and productive movement that saw not just black peoples problems, but all peoples problems as connected. They saw joblessness and Civil Rights, and the right not be raped or lynched, self-protection - that all these things are part of one big struggle. And they really did succeed in building an interracial movement. Even if the whites were in the minority, those whites were there with them. And that vision, that ordinary people can make change, was a legacy they left us.

Representing Art Theories

One of the most, maybe the most, time consuming parts to preparing a lecture for the course "Theories of Art" is searching for decent digital reproductions of paintings and sculptures. Even when you can access a resource like ARTstor, I spend a lot of time considering what images are most appropriate (is an image verging on cliche? if less known, is it still formally interesting? etc.). Note that ARTstor is not complete, which leads to the next paragraph:

If you don't have access to these resources via a library, things get tougher. As long as a work is in the public domain (more or less), Wikipedia is fairly reliable, although you often have to switch between languages to find your way to the more extensive galleries (often this requires going to the page in the artist's native language, where there is often the most interest in his or her work). When the work is still under copyright, things get much trickier. I spent the last two days working on a lecture on Max Raphael's Proudhon, Marx, Picasso, on excerpts from the chapter on Marx. Overall the book was a pleasure to read--too bad it's faded into obscurity (I discovered it  while researching Walter Benjamin's sources).

Every lecture starts with an image of the critic if possible. This lead me to MoMA, where I discovered a watercolor by Max Pechstein, Max Raphael, 1910:

But when I wanted to address some of the questions posed by Raphael, and pose them through the interpretation of visual arts, I had some difficulty finding the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Diego Rivera. To save you some time, if you like, and if you would like a source for images for teaching some contemporary work under copyright, here are a few links:

• Diego Rivera's murals from 1931-1932 at MoMA are here.
• Basquiat, at Potomitan, a resource for créole culture.
• And from my research last year, the gallery Latin American Masters. I found the site while looking for José Bedia, whose work figures prominently in Gerardo Mosquera's article "The Marco Polo Syndrome."

Egypt, Revolution, Samira Ibrahim, and Western Paternalists

In the recent Egyptian elections the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties won the majority of votes. Overrated intellects such as Alan Dershowitz and Thomas L. Friedman will be giving their "I-told-you-so"s to the West and even advice to secularists in Egypt. See Friedman's December 6, 2011 article "Egypt, the Beginning or the End?" in the New York Times. Dershowitz really knows best. On 01/31/11 he wrote a piece for the Huff Post World titled "The Egyptian Revolution May Produce a Lebanon-Type Islamic Regime." He wrote:

I have visited Egypt on several occasions, most recently a few months ago. Compared to other repressive dictatorships I have visited over the years, it was a 5 or 6 on a scale of 10 for the average Egyptian. The hard question is will it get better or worse. "It's too soon to say." My best guess is that it will get better for some and worse for others.

Wow! So much insight. Dershowitz somehow has the ability to judge the scales of repression in undemocratic countries.

I think it is a shame and disgrace that Egyptians or any other country would be expected to defend their revolutions from anyone other than their own. A revolution by its definition is an internal conflict that a given society has to resolve with its self. It is also condescending to tell them what they should do. Egyptians don't need so-called advice from Friedman or others. There is one thing we as Westerners, especially US citizens, can do: We can tell our government to stop sending billions of dollars (coming from US tax payers) of military aid to the Egyptian military. You know, that military that has kept the corrupt regime in power and tortured civilians. I may be wrong on this, but it seems the Egyptian military historically pawned off the job of repression more on the Egyptian police. Initially, when the revolution against President Mubarak began, the Egyptian military attempted to divorce themselves from the dictator and the police. The military posed as guardians of the people and the revolution. Their true colors came out quickly. The military now attempts to control and perhaps sabotage the revolution to maintain the power it always had.

Why do I not mention and criticize groups such as those austere and grim Salafists from the Nour Party that have recently took power in the new government? Because my tax money does not empower them. The US government has helped fund and maintain the long standing regime. The Egyptian state uses state power to repress Egyptians and the US government contributes to that power. Hence, the US is linked to this legacy. Brave activist women like Samira Ibrahim have fought against the US funded tyranny of Mubarak, the police and the military. As a consequence she, along with countless other women, had not only suffered under Mubarak's rule for decades, but currently had "virginity tests" (rapes) from the Egyptian military while incarcerated. (It could have been worse. As Dershowitz pointed out, this was only repression on the scale of 5 to 6 out of 10.)I have posted two youtube clips talking about her and her struggle. She is an inspiration to many and a condemnation to others.

Of course I hope this revolution gets better and transforms Egypt into a prosperous nation. I want to see Egypt have religious equality and gender equality. Egyptians, not I, will do that work. There are plenty of issues for US citizens to take on in our own country. Yet, I should try to get my own government to stop using limited US funds for repression-devices and weapons to be put in the hands of the bad guys in Egypt (and elsewhere).

Courbet and Proudhon

I've already mentioned the texts that I am teaching in the course "Great Philosophers," but I haven't yet posted about "Theories of Art," which I am teaching for the Department of Visual Arts. The course is organized around three themes, the first being "The Intersections of Art and Politics." We're reading, during this part of the course, Plato, Baudelaire, Proudhon, Zola, and Max Raphael.

Courbet, Proudhon and His Children in 1853 (1865)

Tomorrow, I'll be teaching an excerpt from Proudhon's Du principe de l'art et de sa destination sociale, and next week, we'll look at Zola' rejoinder (to an already dead Proudhon, and not in a metaphorical sense). The debate, as it were, turns on whether the artist or the artwork has some kind of social obligation--and the work of Courbet is right in the middle of it all. Proudhon says yes (in a very moralizing kind of way), Zola says no, and Courbet says, when he rejects being awarded the Legion of Honor in a letter (which was published) dated June 23, 1870:

My opinions as a citizen do not allow me to accept a title that derives essentially from the monarchic order....Honor is neither in a title nor in a ribbon, it is in actions and the motivation for those actions....When I am dead, they must be able to say of me, "That one never belonged to any school, to any church, to any institution, to any academy, and, above all, to any regime except the regime of freedom" (From Letters of Gustave Courbet, ed. Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, University of Chicago, 1992).

Courbet demands independence, but not on a purely individualistic basis like Zola. I think at least this much is evident from the fact that Courbet participated in the Paris Commune--and was it not, then, "the regime of freedom?"

In absentia / year in review

Comrade McLennan here. To my dozen or so faithful readers on this blog, I bid you hearty greetings after a long, long interval.

2011 was an insane year. The parabola dipped pretty low, but the year was seized. I travelled extensively, defended my dissertation, forgot how to play guitar, and had an amazing time teaching. And yes I'm still reading books and caring about politics. So expect me back, with a sporadic vengeance!

Reminders: CFP for Schelling Society Meeting

Don't forget that the deadline for the submission of abstracts to the first meeting of the Schelling Society of North America is January 15th. For information, see HERE.

Also, for graduate students: the deadline for the "German Idealism: Legacies and Controversies"  conference, here at the University of Ottawa, is January 30th. For information, see HERE.

The New Semester is Starting

I'll be introducing my first course for the winter semester in under two hours. Here's the reading list for the course:

• Plato, The Republic, Books IV and X
• Aristotle, Politics, Book I
• Descartes, Discourse on Method, Part I, and Meditations I, II, IV and (briefly) VI
• Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise (selections)
• Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (selections)
• Marx, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts ("Alienated Labor" and "Private Property and Communism")
• W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, chapters 1 and 3
• Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity (as much as we can read in two weeks)

Compared to previous iterations of the course, I've switched from the first few books of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics to the Politics, and added Wollstonecraft and Du Bois (who I've previously taught in the course "Fundamental Questions"). In addition, I decided to change things up with Beauvoir. Instead of teaching Sartre's "Existentialism is a Humanism" followed by the introduction to The Second Sex, we will be sorting out The Ethics of Ambiguity--why absurdity and ambiguity are not the same thing.