Propagation of Error!

Wat was het toch een Schit-te-ren-de revolutie, die Franse! Ik lees net dat in 1793, de resten van de beschermheilige van de Stad Parijs (Sainte-Genevieve) zijn opgegraven en dat ze moesten verschijnen voor een revolutionaire rechtbank. De resten werden veroordeeld vanwege hun bijdrage in 'Propagation of Error' (terecht, lijkt me), en voor straf werden ze verbrand & uitgestrooid in de Seine. De aan haar geweide kerk (waar ze hiervoor begraven lag), werd het Pantheon.

't Opgraven en herbegraven komt natuurlijk veel voor, maar een formele rechtszaak tegen een hoopje botten? 't Geeft ook weer aan hoe moeilijk het is om volledig seculier te zijn. De veroordeling was (natuurlijk) terecht: het relikwie droeg bij aan de 'propagation of error' (i.e. het katholicisme) - maar door de veroordeling daarvan in een (wereldlijke) rechtszaak wordt deze 'error' eigenlijk alleen maar nog verder voortgezet, omdat het a.h.w. ongewild 'agency' toeschrijft aan een relikwie. En dat is precies de katholieke 'error' waar de revolutie zich van wou bevrijden! 

Call for Papers mini-conference 22-23 Feb Leiden - Legal Bodies

 

CALL FOR PAPERS

 

LEGAL BODIES: CORPUS / PERSONA / COMMUNITAS

22-23 February 2014 (saturday & sunday) – Leiden

 

Two-afternoon conference / musical event

In May 2013 LUCAS (Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society) and Cultuur?Barbaar! (Leiden platform for art, music and cultural theory), will host a three-dayinternational conference on the various ways in which literary and artistic texts have represented, interrogated or challenged juridical notions of ‘personhood.’ (More detailed information on the topic can be found in the Call for Papers)

A two-day conference in February, devoted to the same topic, will precede the conference. The aim of this event is to offer students and young scholars an opportunity to present their ideas on this topic to an audience in a 10 minute paper. Participating is a significant opportunity to gain experience in preparing and presenting a paper in the context of an academic conference. It is also a pleasant way to meet kindred spirits.

The conference itself is organized as a cooperation between the University of Leiden and the Leiden cultural initiative “Verrassend Winkelweekend.” The conference will take place in several small shops in the shopping area of Leiden and will be interspersed with musical performances by several local singer/songwriters and experimental artists. The purpose of this conference is to take academic discussion outside the university walls and to offer a more general interested audience the opportunity to participate in the discussion.

All speakers of the conference will be invited to the Cultuurbarbaartje pre-party on the evening of the first day (Saturday 22^nd of February): a mini-festival that serves as a teaser for the major Cultuur?Barbaar! festival in May 2014, and about which more information will appear on the website soon.

MA-students of Literary Theory and other relevant studies are enthusiastically invited to send in a 300 word abstract for a 10 minute presentation to Gerlov van Engelenhoven and Looi van Kessel (LUCAS/C?B!): cultuurbarbaarfestival@wordpress.com

For more detailed information about the topic of the conference, see here

Deadline: 3 February 2014

Legal Bodies (CFP)

Legal Bodies: Corpus / Persona / Communitas

CFP

15-16-17 May 2014

LUCAS (the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society) will host a three-day conference on the various ways in which literary and artistic texts have interrogated, historically and/or conceptually, the modes of juridical ‘personhood’.  The guiding assumption behind our conference is that ‘personhood’ is not a (biologically) given property of human beings, but that it is produced, assigned or codified by various discursive regimes, such as those of law, medicine, politics, religion, and education. During the conference we will study how literature, art and culture form domains in which the implications and scope of legal questions of personhood can be thought through or challenged.

The symposium broaches the question of personhood on three different levels, or with regard to three themes: those of the body, of the legally defined individual, and of forms of ‘corporate-ness’ or community (city, monastery, company, corporation, etc.).

For the first theme, questions to be addressed include: From which discourses did notions of bodily integrity emerge, and which social and political phenomena challenged these notions? Can we still think of the body in terms of property? Can we still think of bodies as separate entities, or unified wholes?

As for the second theme, questions include: What literary and rhetorical figures made it possible to think of legal personhood in antiquity, the middle ages and the modern era? How do these relate to modern forms of subjectivity? Can they relate to animal subjectivity, or biotechnological forms of subjectivity?

As for the third theme questions include: How did art and literature represent legal entities such as the medieval city, the seventeenth century trade company or the nineteenth century corporation? What is the conceptual development that can be traced in the history of, for instance, corporate personhood? Are there moments of rupture, where the notion changes radically or fundamentally?

Our explicit purpose is to work diachronically and to use the three themes to establish a cross-disciplinary dialogue.

The conference will be organized in cooperation with NICA (the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis) and was made possible by LUCAS, the Leiden University Fund and NICA.

For more information on LUCAS and NICA, see

http://www.hum.leiden.edu/lucas/

http://www.nica-institute.com/

http://hum.leiden.edu/lucas/news-events/legal-bodies-corpus-persona-communitas.html