Aesthetics in the 21st Century
University of Basel, September 13-15, 2012
Confirmed Speakers: Graham Harman, Iain Hamilton Grant, N. Katherine Hayles
Ever since the turn of the century aesthetics has steadily gained momentum as a central field of study across the disciplines. Even though these recent developments return to the work of the canonical authors, some contemporary scholars reject the traditional focus on epistemology (Baumgarten, Kant) and theorize sensation and the sensual encounter in terms of ontology instead (Harman, Shaviro). It is according to this shift that speculative realists have proclaimed aesthetics as ‘first philosophy’ and as speculative in nature. With speculative realism sensual encounter becomes an event that even no longer necessarily implies human agents. In this speculative realism has several important twentieth-century precursors, most notably Heidegger, Whitehead, Deleuze and Badiou with their respective concepts of event, (aesthetic) experience and encounter. This conference explores the resonances between these twentiethcentury thinkers and their concepts and the recently reawakened interest in aesthetics, especially in its speculative realist guise. Hosted by the University of Basel’s Department of English the conference is particularly interested in the possible implications of what could be termed the new speculative aesthetics for literary and cultural studies. Thus, the conference aims at staging a three-fold encounter: between aesthetics and speculation, between speculative realism and its (possible) precursors, and between speculative realism and art and literature.
Please send your 300-word abstracts and 150-word bios to: aesthetics-englsem@unibas.ch. The deadline for submissions is December 5, 2011. A selection of the papers given at the conference will be published as a special issue of Speculations: Journal of Speculative Realism.
For more information, visit the conference website http://aesthetics.englsem.unibas.ch/conference/