Sartre Society Wrap

Today's my first full day back from the North American Sartre Society. Lately, since Storm Heter specifically asked me about this, the blog writing process proceeds as follows:

1. Brainstorm. In this case: good conference, good people.
2. Read material for teaching. Why did I put this off until today?
3. Three weeks later.

So I'll write this now. I don't promise any literary quality. Notice how most of these sentences are structured as subject/verb/predicate. Only the second using any recursion?

As it turns out, the Sartre Society meetings are my favorite conferences. The papers that I attended were great, and ranged over a diverse set of topics. For a field that probably seems to outsiders to be fairly narrow, the papers ranged from politics and critical race theory to the meaning of groove, and in many ways Sartre himself formed the background point of reference but not always the immediate focus. I moderated the panel on jazz, and only one panelist made an explicit reference to Sartre.

If you're interested in tweets and pictures, we even tried the hashtag thing, #SartreSociety2015, which was temporarly derailed my comments about our attempt to absorb the nightlife in Bethlehem.

Finally, I left feeling motivated to reread Sartre and write more. I also with a strong idea of what my next Sartre Society paper would be about. My paper started like this:

This talk is the first part of a larger project that is currently entitled Negative Philosophy: Extinction, Humanism, and Animal Rights. While I cannot outline the entire project, I can indicate how today’s talk fits within the whole project.

[The talk was dedicated to a response to the thesis of extinction as defined by Eugene Thacker, who himself picks it up from Ray Brassier, who in a sense picks it up from Lyotard, Nietzsche, et cetera. Sartre also maintains that there is no ultimate--transcendent, teleological, ontotheological--meaning, but does not embrace (and for good reason) the pessimist aesthetic or the mysticism that Thacker endorses.]

In the second chapter, I will argue that Existentialism is a Humanism is a performative text, in which Sartre nihilates the anthropocentrism and human triumphalism present in traditional accounts—such as those of Pico della Mirandolla and Feuerbach—of humanism. The final chapter asks whether or not it is possible for a nihilist or pessimist to defend animal rights, and I will contend that it is possible to hold a position that sounds like a nihilistic Tom Regan.

Most of the questions I got during later, informal discussions had to do with the part about a nihilistic Tom Regan. People wanted to know what the hell that meant. Given that I also want to know, I'll be writing that up for 2016.

Schedule for NASS 2015

The final schedule is now available for the North American Sartre Society meeting happening this weekend. It is available here. I'll be giving a talk during the first session on Friday (2:00–3:45), and then I'll be moderating this panel:

Perhaps I'll gain a better picture of whatever it is that my friend Storm Heter has been working on. I know it has something to do with authenticity and aesthetics, and, at least at one point, it discusses Jean-Michel Basquiat. That is probably where our last face-to-face discussion had left off. Since then he's tweeted tantalizing clues:

My working title = "black noise" pic.twitter.com/1iA1w2WrE7

— T Storm Heter (@Storm_Heter) February 9, 2015

From what I can tell, he takes his coffee black, but I want to know about the rest of it.

Poster for NASS 2015

Here's the poster for the upcoming Sartre Society meeting. The organizers are still finalizing the schedule, but last I looked I'm giving a talk on an existentialist response to Eugene Thacker's cosmic pessimism and Ray Brassier's nihilism on Friday afternoon. It looks like I'll be name-dropping Bataille, Beauvoir, and Nietzsche along the way.

NASS 2011 Conference Schedule

In a few weeks, from April 27-29, the North American Sartre Society will be meeting in Montréal. The schedule for the conference is up here (PDF). As you will see, I will be giving a paper on Thursday, the 28th, around 2:15. For those who have looked, I'd like to clarify that I'm giving the paper entitled "The Being and Nothingness of Equality: Sartre’s Influence on Rancière," and not the one listed on Michel Henry (I would suppose that this talk will be delivered by the other panelist, Ian Coleman).

This paper has been, unlike a few others over the past few years, fun to work on. I had a fairly clear idea of what I wanted to do when I submitted the abstract, and the process of writing has fleshed out the connections that I thought were there. However, I say that now, having established the transition from Disagreement to Being and Nothingness--but I still have to write something about the latter.

North American Sartre Society CFP Reminder

Just a reminder: you've got all weekend to work on an abstract for the NASS conference in Montréal, April 27-29, 2011. They're due December 20th.

North American Sartre Society CFP 2011

I've already talked about how much fun I had at the North American Sartre Society's 2009 meeting in Memphis, and now with a new call for papers, you might have a chance as well, and in Montreal no less. For updates, their website is here.

18th Biennial Conference of the North American Sartre Society
Hosted by TÉLUQ, Montréal – April 27-29, 2011

CALL FOR PAPERS — APPEL À COMMUNICATIONS

This year’s keynote speaker will be Régine Robin. Robin is Professor Emerita in the Department of Sociology of Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM). She is an historian and sociologist who also writes novels and essays. In her work, she explores questions related to collective and individual memory, Jewishness, city dwelling, as well as relations between literature, culture and society. In 1987, she was awarded the prestigious Governor General of Canada’s prize for her book Le réalisme socialiste: une esthétique impossible. In 2001, she was awarded the City of Montreal’s Grand Prix du livre for Berlin chantiers. She has published more than twenty theoretical and critical essays including Le roman mémoriel : de l’histoire à l’écriture du hors-lieu (1989), Le Golem de l’écriture : de l’autofiction au cybersoi (1997), La mémoire saturée (2003), Mégapolis : les derniers pas du flâneur (2009), as well as La Québécoite (1983), considered to be one of the representative novels of what has been coined the migrant literature of Quebec.

Papers in any area of Sartrean scholarship are welcome (philosophy, literature, psychology, politics, intellectual history). Reading time for a paper should be 25-30 minutes (to be followed by the respondent’s commentary (optional) and 10 minutes of discussion). In addition to individual papers, we would be most interested in receiving suggestions for panel topics. Panel topics that deal with any aspect of Sartre’s work; its relationship to other authors as well as those that deal with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir will be seriously considered. Graduate students are encouraged to submit papers. A limited number of stipends will be available to help defray the cost of travel and lodging. Graduate students whose paper has been accepted must apply for these stipends.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS: DECEMBER 20, 2010.
Please E-MAIL a 2 page abstract of your paper as an attachment to cdaigle[at]brocku.ca For panel submissions, please submit an abstract for the whole panel as well as abstracts for each individual paper. These will be forwarded to the Program Committee for blind refereeing.

Le 18ième Colloque de la Société Sartrienne de l’Amérique du Nord sera accueilli par la TÉLUQ, Montréal du 27 au 29 Avril 2011

Nous vous invitons à nous soumettre des propositions de communication d’une durée de 25 à 30 minutes ayant trait à tout aspect de la vie et de l’oeuvre de Jean-Paul Sartre (la littérature, la philosophie, l’engagement politique, la psychologie, la critique artistique etc.). Des suggestions de tables rondes sur tout aspect de l’oeuvre de Sartre ainsi que sur des thèmes tels que: ses rapports avec l’oeuvre d’autres auteurs et surtout sur ces rapports avec Simone de Beauvoir sont aussi les bienvenues. Nous apprécierons aussi des soumissions d’étudiants des cycles supérieurs. Un nombre limité de bourses leur seront réservées pour défrayer les frais de déplacement et de logement. Les étudiants dont les communications auront été acceptées par le comité organisateur du colloque devront soumettre une demande pour obtenir l’une de ces bourses.

Les communications peuvent être présentées en français ou en anglais.

DATE LIMITE POUR L’ENVOI DE VOS PROPOSITIONS: 20 DÉCEMBRE 2010.
Veuillez envoyer une proposition de communication de 2 pages au maximum. Les propositions doivent être envoyées sous la forme d’un fichier attaché par courrier électronique à Madame Christine Daigle, à l’adresse suivante: cdaigle[at]brocku.ca. Pour les propositions de table-rondes, veuillez fournir un résumé de la thématique de la table-ronde ainsi qu’un résumé de chaque communication devant être incluse. Votre proposition sera ensuite transmise au comité organisateur du colloque pour un processus d’évaluation anonyme.

Chaque année, la Société Sartrienne de l’Amérique du Nord invite un conférencier de renom. Cette année, notre conférencière invitée sera Régine Robin, qui est professeure émérite au Département de sociologie de l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Historienne, sociologue, romancière, essayiste et nouvelliste, Régine Robin explore dans ses ouvrages de théorie et de fiction des questions reliées à la mémoire collective et individuelle, à la judéité, à la ville et aux échanges entre littérature, culture et société. Elle reçut en 1987 le prestigieux Prix du Gouverneur général du Canada pour Le réalisme socialiste : une esthétique impossible chantiers et le Grand Prix du livre de la Ville de Montréal en 2001 pour Berlin. On lui doit en outre une vingtaine d’ouvrages de théorie et de critique parmi lesquels figurent Le roman mémoriel : de l’histoire à l’écriture du hors-lieu (1989), Le Golem de l’écriture : de l’autofiction au cybersoi (1997), La mémoire saturée (2003), Mégapolis : les derniers pas du flâneur (2009), ainsi que La Québécoite (1983), considéré comme l’un des romans phares de ce que l’on appelé l’écriture migrante du Québec.

More About Memphis

Another fellow traveler from the Sartre conference has posted a blog entry about his time in Memphis, and it almost feels like he and I visited different cities. Here's the reason: I spent most of my time either at panels (including his paper) or thinking about defending my dissertation, because I had just found out about the tentative date for the defense right before I left for Memphis. So I envy the apparently two-three hour span he spent wandering around the city between conference events, because he really had a chance to let the city lull in his experience, whereas I was pretty much running around the whole time. I recommend reading his piece here. I took in some of the sights, and I can picture them in his description. I just wish I would have had a clearer head to take them in.

He describes in great detail the sense of disorientation that the National Civil Rights Museum can produce:

I heard my mind say: "What an odd place for a shitty motel." But instantly, of course it hit me. Of course I knew that they'd preserved the facade of the motel Martin Luther King Jr. was staying at when he was murdered. And of course I'd seen that very motel countless times before. Of course I knew exactly where he'd been standing when he was shot without having to see the large memorial wreath hanging from the wrought iron balustrade.

My mind had been thinking it had seen countless motels just like that one before. I have no idea how many motels I've stayed in just like that.

The author goes on to describe the fact that we often view history as something detached from our own world (think of most of Washington D.C.'s 'founding father' architecture here), which explains some of the cognitive dissonance the facade of the Lorraine Motel produces. But it's a striking reminder that history is made in precisely many of these countless places, not in buildings with Doric columns.

Yet what struck me was that for many in the South at the time, 1968 may have been the high tide of historical opportunity, whereas today something like the Lorraine Motel facade/NCR Museum might be less the site of what has been accomplished than it is a reminder of how much remains to be done.

Thoughts on the Sartre Conference

I can't say I saw too much of Memphis (mainly the neighborhood at Cooper/Young, Beale Street and the National Civil Rights Museum), but I can say that I saw a lot of good papers at the most recent North American Sartre Society meeting, and that I met a lot of good people.

Before going, I was struck by how the conference was organized: the papers were held on the University of Memphis campus, but there was also a performance of Sartre's No Exit at the Brooks Museum on Thursday night and the keynote addresses and dinner at the Civil Rights Museum. For most conference organizers, multiple destinations over a city as large as Memphis, pose a lot of logistical problems, but the NASS organizers pulled it off admirably.

The conference was an excellent time. The staged reading of No Exit was so strong that it was easy to forget that the actors were holding their scripts through parts. I would reference the director, but her name is not in the schedule, which is too bad: she deserves a lot of credit for her work.

The plenary session on the anniversary of the Critique de la raison dialectique, including talks by Robert Bernasconi, Ronald Aronson, and Thomas Flynn, was thought provoking, and during the question period, Flynn's quick wit carried the day. The panel on Aronson's Living without God was also a high point, with contributions from Adrian van den Hoven, Ron Santoni, and Matt Eshleman. To list all the people I met and all the good conversations I had would be a bit much, but I can note that Bill Martin convinced me that I should be reading the later Althusser, which I already knew, but was just trying to put off. Needless to say, when I returned home I ordered a copy.

Most importantly, the conference motivated me to keep working on Sartre and the questions and problems that I find in his work, that it is worth taking up a new project and seeing where it goes, and (almost) wherever it goes, the next Sartre society meeting will be willing to listen. The organizers, primarily (to my knowledge) Christine Daigle and Jonathan Judaken, deserve praise for their efforts to make the conference both welcoming and worthwhile.