UPDATE: Zones of Exception: Modernism & Sovereignty (4/8/05; MSA, 11/3/05-11/6/05)

-!-!-!-DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS EXTENDED TO 8 APRIL-!-!-!-

Modernist Studies Association 7th Annual Conference
Chicago, 3-6 November 2005

MSA Panel Proposal

"Zones of Exception: Modernism & Sovereignty"

We have noticed increasing theoretical and cultural interest in the concept of
sovereignty. If as Carl Schmitt puts it in Political Theology, "Sovereign is he who
decides on the exception," then we wish to ask if there are advantages to
understanding cultural modernity as constituted by "zones of exception." By
"zones of exception" we refer both to the general condition of modernity
outlined by philosophers such as Giorgio Agamben and to a modern world
organized by asymmetrical geographies of power. How do literary modernists
ranging from figures such as James Joyce and Ezra Pound to Aime Cesaire and
Mina Loy configure the sovereignty of the autonomous subject over and against
the national? Do these relations change in late modern and postcolonial
conjunctures? How in modernist culture is the normative defined by the
exceptional? Should sovereignty be thought as an abstract, philosophical
concept or, rather, in terms of the material realities of borders and military
bases?

We are especially interested in papers that discuss:

- 'Minor' cultures and the question of sovereignty
- "A poet is ordinarily an exception" (Kierkegaard): aesthetics as a zone of
exception
- The state of emergency
- The death of Imperialism and the rise of 'Empire'
- Sovereignty and theories of development
- Autonomy as sovereign and exception

Please send 1-2 page abstracts as Microsoft Word attachments to
<matthart_at_uiuc.edu> by 8 April, 2005.

Jim Hansen and Matt Hart
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champiagn

Matthew Hart
-----------------------------
Assistant Professor of English,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
208 English Building, MC-718
608 S. Wright St.,
Urbana, IL 61801
T: (217) 333-4774
F: (217) 333-4321
http://opensource.boxwith.com

         ==========================================================
              From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
                        CFP_at_english.upenn.edu
                         Full Information at
                     http://cfp.english.upenn.edu
         or write Jennifer Higginbotham: higginbj_at_english.upenn.edu
         ==========================================================
Received on Fri Apr 01 2005 - 04:10:27 EST