"Ghosts, Gods, and Avatars: the Primordial and the Posthuman"
I am organizing a conference seminar (9-12 papers) for the 2003 ACLA
Conference and am inviting brief proposals for papers. The Conference,
focusing on various types of "crossing over," will be hosted by Cal State-San
Marcos, just north of San Diego, from April 4-6 2003. Further information
about the conference is available at http://lynx.csusm.edu/acla2003/
This seminar session will examine fault lines and conjunctions between
narratives of the posthuman and those that are often associated with
pre-modern societies such as myth, fable, dream, fairy tale, and the like.
Ghosts, gods, and avatars, however, are all active figural categories in
video games, film, literature, scientific narratives, academic disciplines,
and other forms of contemporary cultural production. What needs and desires
do such "uncanny" figures serve? What has happened to the Enlightenment ideal
of reason that wants to "tame" such discourses and imaginings? If one version
of the posthuman is of the meeting of the most primordial human wishes-for
immortality, for example-with the highest of high technology, how can we
interpret this encounter of the most ancient with the most modern? What does
it indicate about our current cultural situation and what types of responses
might serve us the best as we make the crossing into the era of the posthuman
that is redefining all the old boundaries between the animate and the
inanimate, the so-called material and the so-called spiritual, texts of
fantasy and texts of the "real"?
This session seeks a broad range of papers, or other forms of presentation,
that seek to define, critique, or expand these topics. They may range from
ancient mythology to Bruno Latour; from Vedic texts to Virilio. One of our
goals will be to reflect upon and facilitate contact between eras, texts,
media, methodologies, or authors that are not usually brought into
conjunction with one another, and to talk together about how we might invent
the discourse of the posthuman.
Please send 500 word abstracts (or any questions you might have) to:
Gray Kochhar-Lindgren
Department of English Language and Literature
Central Michigan University
Mt Pleasant, MI 48859
kochh1gm@cmich.edu
The deadline for proposals is October 1, 2002.
Please note that all participants in the annual meeting must be members of
the ACLA. Membership forms are available at http://www.acla.org/gen_join.html
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