[csaa-forum] CCLCS Research Seminar Wednesday 24 March

[Andrew Milner]

Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
Monash University
Melbourne

RESEARCH SEMINAR

Wednesday 24th March, 3.00 to 5.00 pm, Room W710, Menzies Building
(Building 11), Monash University, Clayton Campus.

COMPETENT FICTIONS: ON BELIEF IN THE HUMANITIES

Peggy Kamuf

Peggy Kamuf is Marion Frances Professor of French and Comparative
Literature at the University of Southern California. Her publications
include Fictions of Feminine Desire: Disclosures of Heloise (1982),
Signature Pieces: On the Institution of Authorship (1988), A Derrida
Reader: Between the Blinds (1991), The Division of Literature: Or the
University in Deconstruction (1997), Book of Addresses (2005) and
Derrida’s Gift (2006).

Abstract

This paper reconsiders the term “fiction” not as something demonstrably,
avowedly false or counter-factual, but rather, as an operation of
“reference without referent” — that is, without a producible,
verifiable, provable, or knowable referent. This revised understanding
of fiction displaces the conventional opposition between the humanities
and the discourses of science and practical knowledge, thus putting in
question beliefs about competence, and perhaps even about the condition
of belief in general. The paper then juxtaposes analyses of an essay by
Derrida on total nuclear war, No Apocalypse, Not Now, and Henry James’s
short story, Owen Wingrave, in order to demonstrate how the demand for a
referential proof that would put an end to fiction leads to nihilistic
consequences — the catastrophic replacement of living uncertainty with
dead proof.

ALL WELCOME

For further details contact Professor Andrew Benjamin
<Andrew.Benjamin at arts.monash.edu.au>