Encountering Infancy: The Infant Figure in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and
Philosophy.
Emory University, Atlanta, GA USA
March 21-22, 2003
Keynote Speakers:
Christopher Fynsk (SUNY-Binghamton)
TBA
"Let's baptize it infantia"
- Jean-François Lyotard, Lectures d'enfance
Infancy, as an object of knowledge, has been described by many disciplines as
an enigma. What always seems to be in dispute, according to Freud and others,
is precisely the significance of the infantile. Compounding the problem, the
term 'infancy' has come to mean not only a biological stage of development
before speech, but also, especially after Jean-François Lyotard, something that
haunts all discourse regardless of age, a kind of silence that distends speech.
How then to speak about a figure that, etymologically speaking, does not speak
(the in-fans)? How to address infancy if infancy is always what resists any
kind of address?
The "Encountering Infancy" conference invites papers that seek to read the
intractable figure of infancy, to 'hear' the enigmatic silence of the infant
figure. The papers may take any of several forms: a close reading of a
specific figure of the child (e.g., in Wordsworth or José Martí); an analysis
of narratives of infancy (e.g., in Benjamin or Augustine); a more general
approach to the problems associated with infancy (e.g., in Klein, Agamben, or
Lyotard, in writings on education such as Rousseau's Emile). We welcome
abstracts that focus on any literary, psychoanalytic, or philosophical text
from any historical period that deals with the figure of infancy or the infant
figure.
Possible topics include:
- infancy and beginnings
- figures of the infant in psychoanalytic theory; primary or primal structures
- infancy and the in-fans (that which does not speak -- silence, 'chatter',
stuttering)
- stories of infancy in autobiographical or biographical writings
- infancy and education; educating an infant; education as infancy
- the event of infancy; infancy as an event or interruption that disrupts
development
- infancy and play, the infant at play
- infancy and the (narrative of the) Enlightenment
- what is children's literature?
- infancy and creativity
Abstracts should be no longer than 500 words. Please send the proposal by
Monday, January 27, 2003, to the contact person, David Kelman, by email
dkelman@learnlink.emory.edu (no attachments please) or by post to the following
address.
David Kelman
Program in Comparative Literature
Emory University
N101 Callaway Center
Atlanta, Georgia 30322
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