WEDNESDAY 20 FEBRUARY: IRENA ARTEMENKO (WADHAM COLLEGE) AND SARA-LOUISE COOPER (BRASENOSE COLLEGE)

JOINT SESSION

CONFERENCE ROOM @ TS ELIOT THEATRE, MERTON 

17:00 - 18:30

DRINKS AND NIBBLES PROVIDED

Irena Artemenko (Wadham College)

Emmanuel Levinas: Being, Death and Infinity

Abstract

The truism of no contact between life and death implies that it is impossible for us to experience our own death and that the only relation we can have with death is built out of emotional and intellectual repercussions after the death of the other and provides a rich matrix for a philosophical reflection on the role of ethics in the quest for meaning.  Emmanuel Levinas notes that we gain knowledge about death from experiencing and observing the behaviour of others near death or simply the behaviour of others as mortals who are aware of their finitude and oblivious to it at the same time.  But the consciousness of one’s finitude implicates the idea of time, which leads Levinas to pose a question about the function and significance of time in one’s being - now from the vantage point of the involvement of the self with the other.  Because, for Levinas, if the only way one can be affected by death is through the death of the other, the notion of finitude translates into the realisation of time not as the limitation or annihilation of one’s own being but, first and foremost, into the understanding of time as the experience that is attainable solely through the other and, only then, as the context within which the relationship of the self with the other unfolds.  Should we accept this proposition, it does not matter whether time indeed organises, totalises or gives continuity and meaning to our own finite existence as long as it allows us to exit our self-centred, self-enclosed being and try to aim beyond it – at infinity.

Sara-Louise Cooper (Brasenose College)

‘Une assise prismatique de l’être’: Spectra in Patrick Chamoiseau’s Une enfance créole

Abstract

In this paper, I show how the fluidity of the spectrum and its capacity to bring together seemingly separate phenomena allows Chamoiseau to re-establish the linguistic, temporal and spatial continuities he knew as a child and which were broken upon his entry into the adult world.

The schooling system Chamoiseau experiences institutes a vertical, hierarchical relationship between French and Créole, whereas before he had not realised there was any distinction between the two languages. The association of French with learning and the dismissal of Créole as backward installs a separation between the young Chamoiseau’s intellectual life and his bodily life, his lived worlds and his learned worlds. The adult Chamoiseau comes to see this separation as damaging, so his autobiography emphasises the porous boundaries between mind, body and world. He wishes to convey that his pre-school freedom from colonial hierarchies is not irrevocably lost to him and to do this he must demonstrate how past and present are not sealed off from each other, but are joined in constant interaction on a temporal spectrum.

Une enfance créole is generically situated between fiction, autobiography, and theoretical work, as the author uses his childhood to make political points, meditates on the structures of memory, and slips seamlessly from historical fact to fantastic and dream-like episodes. This exploration of the generic spectrum lets Chamoiseau show how memory, invention and political action are bound up with each other.