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<title>"Competent Fictions: On Belief in the Humanities"</title>
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<p class=MsoPlainText align=center style='text-align:center'><b><font size=2
color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext;
font-weight:bold'>"Competent Fictions: On Belief in the Humanities"<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText align=center style='text-align:center'><font size=2
color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>Peggy
Kamuf<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText align=center style='text-align:center'><font size=2
color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>Public
lecture<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText align=center style='text-align:center'><font size=2
color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText align=center style='text-align:center'><font size=2
color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>Friday
19 March, 6.00pm<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText align=center style='text-align:center'><font size=2
color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>Edmund
Barton Room<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText align=center style='text-align:center'><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName
w:st="on"><font size=2 color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
color:windowtext'>Sydney</span></font></st1:PlaceName><font color=black><span
style='color:windowtext'> <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Grammar School</st1:PlaceName></span></font></st1:place><font
color=black><span style='color:windowtext'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText align=center style='text-align:center'><font size=2
color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>College
St, Darlinghurst<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 color=black face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 color=black face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>Professor Kamuf's lecture 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. Kamuf 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.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 color=black face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 color=black face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>RSVP essential to </span></font><a
href="mailto:writing@uws.edu.au">writing@uws.edu.au</a><font color=black><span
style='color:windowtext'> for catering purposes<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 color=black face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 color=black face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>---<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 color=black face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>Peggy Kamuf is the Marion Frances
Chevalier Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType> of <st1:PlaceName
w:st="on">Southern California</st1:PlaceName></st1:place>, and the 2006 winner
of the René C. Wellek Prize for Literary and Cultural Theory from the American
Comparative Literature Association for "Book of Addresses" (Stanford,
2005). Her publications include "Signature Pieces: On the Institution of
Authorship" (Cornell UP, 1988), "A Derrida Reader: Between the
Blinds" (with Derrida; Columbia UP, 1991), "The Division of
Literature: Or the University in Deconstruction" (University of Chicago
Press, 1997), and "Derrida's Gift" (with Naomi Schor and Elizabeth
Weed; Duke UP, 2006). Her visit to <st1:City w:st="on">Sydney</st1:City> is
co-sponsored by the <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">School</st1:PlaceType> of <st1:PlaceName
w:st="on">Humanities</st1:PlaceName> and Languages and the Writing and Society
Research Group at the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType>
of <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Western Sydney</st1:PlaceName></st1:place>.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 color=black face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 color=black face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;color:windowtext'>All welcome. RSVP/info </span></font><a
href="mailto:writing@uws.edu.au">writing@uws.edu.au</a><font color=black><span
style='color:windowtext'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt'><a
href="http://www.uws.edu.au/writing_society/writing_and_society">www.uws.edu.au/writing_society/writing_and_society</a></span></font><font
color=black><span style='color:windowtext'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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