In the last century, phenomenology enriched the development of aesthetic and literary theories in how one can understand the interaction between the artwork as an intentional aesthetic object and consciousness, or more specifically in literary studies, the text and the reader. These theories such as hermeneutics, deconstruction, and reader-response theories further yield new understandings of literary texts. In the late 1960s, the Yale school of deconstruction influenced a generation of Romanticist scholars by drawing their attention to the unstable relationship between the signifier and the signified. Given the inspiration of Modernist writers for phenomenologists such as Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, articles and monographs on modernism and phenomenology are published every year. One of the most recent examples is the volume Understanding Merleau-Ponty, Understanding Modernism (2018) edited by Ariane Mildenberg, which includes articles written by both philosophers and literary scholars. On the other hand, scholars also turn to previously unploughed field such as Husserl’s idea of literature, and a collected volume Phenomenology to the Letter: Husserl and Literature is forthcoming (2020). In order to reflect on and evaluate the recent interdisciplinary interaction between phenomenology and literary studies, the workshop will cover the following three main areas:
The Phenomenological Tradition: The workshop addresses the philosophy of aesthetics in both classical phenomenologists, such as Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, and more contemporary ones, such as Michel Henry, Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Jean-Luc Marion. Phenomenologists also attend especially to aesthetic experience and investigate the interaction between the perceiving subject and the aesthetic object. The notable example is Husserl’s student Roman Ingarden, who employs the phenomenological concept of intentionality to argue that the literary work is a “purely intentional object” in his influential The Literary Work of Art: An Investigation on the Boderlines of Ontology, Logic, and Theory of Literature. Mikel Dufrenne in The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience further probes into the sense and the sensuousness of aesthetic objects. Phenomenology in addition gives rise to reader-response theories, which explicate the hermeneutical activity between the text and the reader in works by E. D. Hirsch and Wolfgang Iser. Speakers interested in this area can delineate and evaluate the phenomenological tradition in philosophy of aesthetics and literary theories.
Phenomenological Moments: From a historical perspective, the workshop also traces the legacies of aesthetic movements in phenomenology. Considering the influence of Modernist writers such as Rilke, Proust, Mallarmé, and Valéry on Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, the connection between phenomenology and Modernism is by no means an unfamiliar topic for scholars. The workshop however invites further reflection on the parallels between phenomenological thinking and Modernist thought in relation to their historical, social, cultural, and philosophical contexts. In doing so, the workshop intends not only to expound on the intertextuality of phenomenological texts and modernist writings but also to expand the corpus of modernist works whose understanding can be renewed through phenomenology. In addition to Modernism, the workshop also welcomes phenomenological readings of Romantic and Victorian literature so as to discover the proto-phenomenological thoughts in earlier periods. Deconstruction dominated the Romantic scholarship in the late 1960s but Derrida’s early engagement and struggle with Husserl’s phenomenology still awaits more acknowledgement in literary criticism in addition to Tilottama Rajan's Deconstruction and the Remainders of Phenomenology. Romantics’ attention to the interaction between the poet’s mind and the world manifests a phenomenological way of thinking, as Wordsworth in “Tintern Abbey” writes, “of all the mighty world / Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create, / And what perceive.” Heidegger, for instance, is the inspiration for Geoffrey Hartman’s seminal works on Wordsworth and Jonathan Bate’s The Song of the Earth. On the other hand, the materiality and the adoration of sensuous experience in Victorian culture and literature can be pivotal places for a phenomenological analysis of embodied experience. Research on this historical gap of literary studies can shed light on the lineage of phenomenology in the twentieth century.
Methodology: Following Arthur Danto's reflection in his speech "Philosophy as/and/of Literature," the workshop also aims to offer an occasion for scholars from two disciplines to discuss the role of phenomenology in literary studies and vice versa with regard to their own disciplinary concerns and interests. This area considers whether phenomenology is best understood as one theory among others, a method, a practice, or even a commitment.
We invite postgraduate students and early career researchers to submit proposals for 15-minute papers for presentation at the workshop. In view of the current travel restriction in many countries and the regulations of large gatherings at the university, the workshop will be held online. Please submit your 250-word proposal with a short bio as a Word document to phenopoetics2020@gmail.com by 31 August 2020. The proposal should be headed with the paper title, your name, your affiliation, and your email address. There will be breakout sessions for researchers with similar interests to discuss their projects in small groups. Applicants will be notified of the result shortly after the deadline.
Speakers can consider the following topics:
Literature in Phenomenology
Phenomenology in literature
Phenomenology as Literary Practice
Literariness of Phenomenology
Phenomenology and Rhetoric
Phenomenology and Romanticism
Phenomenology and Victorian Literature
Phenomenology and Modernism
Phenomenology and Literary Theories
Phenomenology and Aesthetics
Phenomenology and Textuality
Affordances of Texts
Phenomenologist-Writers
Phenomenological Rereading
Reading and Intentionality
Reading Phenomenology