Rhetoric, Politics, Ethics

Terrorism, Rhetoric, and the Empathetic Imagination: Ian McEwan’s Black Dog

Power and EmpriseRector Blanquaert

Dieter Lesage (chair) — RITS/ Erasmushogeschool Brussels

Marc Redfield — Claremont Graduate University

War on Terror

Steven Vervaet — Leuven University

Don Moore — McMaster University

Ethics in Empire: The Human Subject after 9-11

The Other Half: History and the Logic of Not–All

From One to None: Politics and Rhetoric of the Lacanian SubjectGele Zaal

Gil Chaitin (chair) — Indiana University, Bloomington

Carbonell, Neus — Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Elmer, Jonathan — Indiana University, Bloomington

The Not One and the One One: Identification and the Signifying Cut of Native American Sovereignty

O’Neil, Joseph — Indiana University, Bloomington

The Death of the Subject and the Limit of the Political in Kant, Arendt, and Lacan

The Rhetorics of Identification and Disidentification in W.E.B. Du Bois’ Dark Princess

Ethnicity, Race and IdentityDormitoriumzaal

Philippe Codde (chair) — Ghent University

Winfried Siemerling — Université de Sherbrooke, Canada

Thomas Newman — University College London

Ethical Aporias and Rhetorical Solutions in George Jackson and Jean Genet

Tatjana Jukic — University of Zagreb

A Post-Socialist Angel of History: Danilo Kis as a Figure of Critical Prospecting

The Resistance to Definition: Towards a Metaphorology of the Novel

The Ethics of GenrePersconferentie

Benjamin Biebuyck (chair) — Ghent University

Koenraad Heyerick — Ghent University

Grazia Berger — Antwerp University

Ethos- und Ethikkonzeptionenen in deutschsprachigen, politischen Theaterstücken zur Französischen Revolution zwischen 1835 und 1938 (von Georg Büchner bis Gertrud Kolmar

Afsaneh Amirmoez — University of Limoges

The Merging of Genres: Stream of Consciousness Technique in the Nouveau Roman

Melissa De Bruycker — Ghent University

Isotopy and Deictic in Modern German Poetry

L’automne du Moyen Age’: Johan Huizinga et Henri Pirenne ou ‘plusieurs vérités pour la même chose’

Communicating Truth and HistorySacristie

Marnix Beyen (chair) — Antwerp University

Marc Boone — Ghent University

Sis Matthé — Ghent University

Language, Subject and Truth in History

Fiona McIntosh — University of Lille III

Compilers and the status of 18th century history: of the meaning and success of “second-hand” narratives

The Rhetoric of Individualist Anarchism: The Undoing of Theory in the Pages of the Individualist Anarchist Weekly ‘Der Einzige’

Communality, Singularity, AlterityPriorzaal

Sascha Bru (chair) — Ghent University

Constantin Parvulescu — University of Minnesota

Jaroslav Kušnír — The University of Prešov, Slovakia

Aesthetics, Ideology, and Postmodern Literature

Ben Clarke — Leader University, Taiwan

Orwell and Common Sense

15:30 – 16:00 || Coffee Break

16:00 – 17:45 || Het Pand

Sessions 2

"Fail better": Beckett’s Attempts to Eff the Ineffable

Nothing Succeeds Like FailureRector Blanquaert

Dominic Rainsford (chair) — Aarhus University

David Martyn — Macalester College

Ethics of Failure

Dirk Van Hulle — University of Antwerp

Kathrin Thiele — SUNY Buffalo / Viadrina Frankfurt-Oder

Ethics of (In)capacity: Becoming

John Wrighton — University of Wales, Aberystwyth

The Ethicist-Aesthetic Practice of Modern and Contemporary American Poetics

"Words From My Eyes Did Start": John Clare's ‘First Love’

The Language of LoveGele Zaal

Ortwin De Graef (chair) — Leuven University

Sigi Jöttkandt — Ghent University

Dominiek Hoens — Jan van Eyck Academy

Love and Metaphor

Kate Lilley — University of Sydney

Bastard Lines: Prosopopoeia and the matter of love in Mary Wroth's Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (1621)

Justin Clemens — Deakin University, Australia

Ending Love

Gambling on the Past, Gaining the Present: Religio-Political Rhetoric in Medieval Islamic Spain

Conceptions of Rhetoric in Medieval CultureDormitoriumzaal

Joris Reynaert (chair) — Ghent University

Heather Keaney — American University in Cairo

Peter Van Nuffelen — Leuven University

“The Unstained Rule”: Ethics and Rhetoric in Late Antique Panegyric

Mostafa Younesie — Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran

Farabi: Logic, Rhetoric, Politics and Ethics

The Competing Rhetorics of Justice and Identity in Modern Productions of Ancient Greek Tragedy

Intersections and RewritingsPersconferentie

Freddy Decreus (chair) — Ghent University

Lorna Hardwick — Open University, UK

Miriam Leonard — University of Bristol

Historicizing Antigone: Derrida and the Politics of Reception

Jaime Gonzalez-Ocana — Université de Caen

The ancientness of modern and future wars

Alexandra Lianeri — Darwin College, Cambridge University

Democratic Rhetoric: Greek History and Modern Political Theory

Naming Taiwan: Democracy and Transitional Identity in Post-War Taiwan Presidential Inaugural Addresses

Direct AddressSacristie

Michael Dorland (chair) — Carleton University

Jonathan Benda — Tunghai University, Taiwan

Maria Boletsi — University of Amsterdam

The War of Words: When Butler’s Excitable Speech Meets Injurious Speech in Greece (A Case Study)

Fernand Vandamme — Ghent University

Knowledge and Content Management: Its relevance for Rhetoric, Politics and Ethics

Olaf Du Pont — Hogeschool Ghent

But we’re American… The Renewed Vigour of American Exceptionalism and its Presence in Speeches by George W. Bush

Waiting for the ‘Thou’ of Lyric: Apostrophe, Ethics, Politics

The Moral PositionPriorzaal

Robert Eaglestone (chair) — University of London

Mark J. Smith — York University

János Barcsák — Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Hungary

The Archetype of the Other: Reading Genesis 2

Char Roone Miller — George Mason University

‘I Have Presumed to Speak’: Hospitality and Reading

17:45 – 19:00 || Het Pand

Reception

Friday, April 22nd

8:30 – 9:00 || Het Pand

Registration

9:00 – 10:00 || Het Pand Refter

Plenary

Gert Ueding: Rednerisches Ethos und Charisma in Politik und Gesellschaft

10:00 – 11:00 || Het Pand Refter

Plenary

Derek Attridge: Performing Metaphors: On the Ethics of Literary Reading

11:00 – 11:30 || Coffee Break

11:30 – 13:15 || Het Pand

Sessions 1

"These are my jewels": Unto this Last and Ruskin's Parables

Ideas of Form/Objects of CalculationRector Blanquaert

Marc Redfield (chair) — Claremont Graduate University

A. C. Goodson — Michigan State University

Hypotyposis from Kant to R. Gasché

Sheila Teahan — Michigan State University

Shadowy Figures

Celine Surprenant — University of Sussex

Moral and Rhetorical Calculation

Jan Bleyen — Leuven University

‘Difficult Freedom’: Levinas, Rhetoric, and the Politics of Suffering

Levinas and RhetoricGele Zaal

Richard Glejzer (chair) — North Central College

Richard Glejzer — North Central College

Levinas and the Ends of Rhetoric

Michael Bernard-Donals — University of Wisconsin, Madison

David Metzger — Old Dominion University

Levinas’ Reading of the Pentateuch and The Paradoxes of Prophetic Sociality

Readerly Being, Self-Renunciation, and the Ethics of Interpretation In William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury

Du (renoncement au) renoncement à soi-même: A deconstructive approachDormitoriumzaal

Derek Flack (chair) — York University, Toronto

Derek Flack — York University, Toronto

Emile Fromet de Rosnay — Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario

Mallarmé’s “Acte” as Impossible Sacrifice

Catherine Dhavernas — Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario

Du rire du renoncement, or The Art of Art as Art

Agnès Conacher — Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario

Is it enough simply to renounce?

The language of the Nazi concentration camps: issues in rhetoric, politics and ethics

Space of the ExceptionPersconferentie

Bart Keunen (chair) — Ghent University

Michael Dorland — Carleton University

Deborah Pike — University of Paris VII

Sharon’s Wall and the dialectics of inside/ outside

Devika Sharma — University of Copenhagen

Carceral Aesthetics: Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections

The Wolf-Man: Paradigmatic Shifts into the Narrative Fantastic

His Master's Voice: Authority, Ethics, DesireSacristie

Jürgen Pieters (chair) — Ghent University

Joshua Gooch — University of Iowa

Kris Pint — Ghent University

From Fantasy to Synax: Roland Barthes’ Ethics of Desire

Tom Van Imschoot — Ghent University

Authority, Experience, Communication

“Your Life Didn’t Belong to You”: Jealousy in Almodóvar’s Carne Trémula

Film, (Counter-)Memory, PracticePriorzaal

Ian Balfour (chair) — York University, Toronto

Lo, Wai Chun — University of Hong Kong

Peter Verstraten — Leiden University

“When you can't see them, you are looking at them”: the Ethical Failure of “Going Native” in Run of the Arrow

Tom Cohen — SUNY Albany

The Biopolitics of the Cinematic: Hitchcock's Bird Wars

Karyn Ball — University of Alberta

Primal Returns Between Freud, Bloch and Hitchcock

13:15 – 14:45 || Het Pand

Lunch (for pre-paid registrants)

14:45 – 16:30 || Het Pand

Sessions 2

Wordsworth, Coleridge and the State of Addiction

Romantic ImperativesRector Blanquaert

Tilottama Rajan (chair) — University of Western Ontario

Andrea Timár — Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest

Ian Balfour — York University, Toronto

Schiller's Obsession with Freedom and the (Hollow) Ethics of the Sublime

Tom Toremans — Brussels University (KUB)

Poor Readers: Marx after de Man after Derrida

Patience Moll — University of California, Irvine

Hegel and the Physiognomic Predicament

Figuring Trauma, Traumatic Figures: ‘Living On’ in Henry James and Maurice Blanchot

After BlanchotGele Zaal

J. Hillis Miller (chair) — UC Irvine

Allison Weiner — Yale University

Shari Goldberg — SUNY Albany

The Interruption of Sin: Kafka and the Impossibility of Reading One’s Work

Benjamin Bishop — University of California, Irvine

Seeing, Touching, Reading: Blanchot’s Aminabad

Jeremy Tambling — University of Hong Kong

Blanchot, James, and the Secret

The Traumatic Gift: Ethics and Impossibility in the Work of Emmanuel Levinas

Levinasian EthicsDormitoriumzaal

Michael Bernard-Donals (chair) — University of Wisconsin

Jennifer Yusin — Emory University

Dominic Rainsford — Aarhus University

Forked Animals

Rares Moldovan — Cluj University, Romania

Broken Necks and Blank Faces: the Ethical and the Inhuman

Elke D'hoker — Leuven University

The Other I: Ethics and Story-telling in First-person Narratives

Slippery Contenders: Circumcision, Excision, Mutilation

Body CulturesPersconferentiezaal

Gert Buelens (chair) — Ghent University

Chantal Zabus — Paris XIII

Priscilla Walton — Carlton University, Canada

Extreme Makeovers: Critiquing Cosmetic Cultures

Erin McCarthy — St. Lawrence University

Corporeal Cues East and West: Ethics and the Body

Karlyn Koh — LaGuardia Community College, CUNY

Glove’s Dream

The Uses of Irony: Aesthetic Education as a Contribution to an Ethics for Contemporary Culture

EdificationSacristie

Sheila Teahan (chair) — Michigan State University

Liesbeth Korthals Altes — University of Groningen

Brian McGrath — Emory University

Gambling with Reading and the Future of Politics: Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sonja Tanner — New School for Social Research / LaGuardia College, CUNY

Getting Carried Away in Plato's Phaedrus

Tom Jacobs — New York University

History from Things: Museums and the Rhetoric of Materiality

There Is No Ethics of the Real: A Critique of a Common Misreading of Lacan’s Ethics Seminar

Lacanian EthicsPriorzaal

Paul Verhaeghe (chair) — Ghent University

Marc De Kesel — Nijmegen University/Jan van Eyck Academy

Vicky Palmans — Ghent University

Anti-psychiatry and the Call for Science: History Repeats Itself

Frédéric De Clerq — Ghent University

Research that Searches and Research that Finds: a Question of Ethics

16:30 – 17:00 || Coffee Break

17:00 – 18:00 || Het Pand Refter

Plenary

Carol Jacobs: Subversion: the Rhetoric of the Political in Plato's Republic

19:30 – 23:00 || Het Pand Kapittelzaal

Banquet

Saturday, April 23rd

9:00 – 9:30 || Het Pand

Registration

9:30 – 10:30 || Het Pand Refter

Plenary

Friedrich Kittler: Das Ende des Dichtens und der Anfang der Rhetorik - oder umgekehrt

10:30 – 11:00 || Coffee Break

11:00 – 12:45 || Het Pand

Sessions 1

Continental Philosophy and Literary Theory: the Image of Life

Life, Science, the InstitutionRector Blanquaert

Tom Cohen (chair) — SUNY Albany

Claire Colebrook — Edinburgh University

Robert Eaglestone — University of London

Rhetoric and ethics in ‘Popular Science’

Gary Hall — Middlesex University

IT, Again: The Future of the Humanities in a Virtual World (or How to Build an Ethical Institution)

Joanna Zylinska — Goldsmiths College, University of London

The Secret of Life: Bio-ethics between Corporeal and Corporate Obligations

Negotiating the Moral Value System: Crime Fiction in a Period of Penal Reform

Pulp PoliticsGele Zaal

Hans Bertens (chair) — Utrecht University

Kathrin Lang — Free University of Amsterdam

Melissa Hardie — University of Sydney

What Gives: The Pursuits of Hannibal Lecter and Paul de Man

Michael Butter — University of Bonn

Hitler and the Rhetoric of the War on Terror

"Let's Get Out of Here": A Rhetoric of Laughter

Alternative PersuasionDormitoriumzaal

Jeremy Tambling (chair) — University of Hong Kong

Anca Parvulescu — University of Minnesota

Agnes Kovács — University of Szeged

Is There a Life After Speech? -- on the Jamesian ethics of manners

Eluned Summers-Bremner — University of Auckland

Love for the Lost: The Peculiar Ethics of Sleeping and Reading

Greg Zacharias — Creighton University

Henry James’s Touching Gesture

The Prison-house of Discourse: Remarks on the Generic Pluralism of Althusser's L'Avenir dure longtemps

Mehrlust and Other Event(u)al GainsPersconferentie

Dominiek Hoens (chair) — Jan van Eyck Academy

Koenraad Geldof — Leuven University

Jason Barker — Unaffiliated philosopher/worker

To Have Done with the Other

Oliver Feltham — Jan van Eyck / American University of Paris

The Language of Change: Austin and Badiou

Filip Buekens — Tilburg University

Baroque Politics: The Unjustifiability of Lacanianism and the Boundaries of Theory

Investigating the Relation between Original and Interpretation: Deconstruction and Ethical Reading

Hoc Est Enim CorpusSacristie

David Clark (chair) — McMaster University

Gerold Sedlmayr — University of Passau

Kuisma Korhonen — University of Helsinki

Personification of Texts, or The Night of the Living Dead

Luc Herman — Antwerp University

Reading Pynchon Rewriting

Topography of the Border: Derrida rewriting transcendental aesthetics

Ethics and Transcendental AestheticsPriorzaal

A. C. Goodson (chair) — Michigan State University

Joanna Hodge — Manchester Metropolitan University

Megan Becker-Leckrone — University of Las Vegas, Nevada

The Feminine Figure in Contemporary Discourses on the Sublime

Marcus Coelen — University of Munich

Schematologies

Sympathetic Identification and the Ethics of Writing in J.M. Coetzee’s Fiction

Sympathy and Catharsis in CoetzeeRefter

Stef Craps (chair) — Ghent University

Gilbert Yeoh — National University of Singapore

Gert Buelens — Ghent University

Citationality and Responsibility in Disgrace

Liselotte Vandenbussche — Ghent University

‘The Very Limit of Human Reason’: Tracing the Ethical Dimensions of Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals

Yianna Liatsos — Rutgers University

The Ethic of Visitation in J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace

12:45 – 14:15 || Het Pand

Lunch (for pre-paid registrants)

14:15 – 16:00 || Het Pand

Sessions 2

The Golden Bowel: Freud's Alchemy of Anal Character Formation

Desiring EconomiesRector Blanquaert

Sigi Jöttkandt (chair) — Ghent University

David Bennett — University of Melbourne

What Is Libidinal Economy?

Thomas Albrecht — Tulane University

Claire Potter — Paris VII

Reading it Letter by Letter: Lacan’s la femme n’existe pas

Phyllis Van Slyck — LaGuardia Community College, CUNY

‘The Most Polished of Possible Mirrors’: Representing Subjectivity in Henry James

Ethical Dimensions in Recent Poetry? Reading of De aantochtster, Timiditeiten and Varkensroze ansichten

(From) Resistance to CommitmentGele Zaal

Jaroslav Kušnír (chair) — The University of Prešov, Slovakia

Odile Heynders — Tilburg University

Gaston Franssen — Utrecht University

Naming Silence: Tropological Strategies, Aesthetic Autonomy and Political Commitments in (the interpretation of) the Poetry of Gerrit Kouwenaar

Bart Eeckhout — Ghent University

But is it Politics? Or Ethics? Rhetoric, Topography, and Context in Wallace Stevens’ ‘The Idea of Order at Key West’

The Concept of Double Death, Or the Religious Valences of Propriety

The Ethics of the ProperDormitoriumzaal

Matthew Biberman (chair) — University of Louisville

David Clark — McMaster University

The Palestinians, living among us: Kant’s Neighborhoods

Aaron Jaffe — University of Louisville

Phantasmallegoresis: Walter Benjamin and his Props

Simon Malpas — Edinburgh University

Naming Names: the Politics of Lyotard's Literary Aesthetics

Fahrenheit 9/11 and the Demands of Media and Cultural Pedagogy

Anachronicles of TerrorPersconferentiezaal

Jason Barker (chair) — unaffiliated philosopher/worker

Richard Cante — University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Carolyne Lee — University of Melbourne

Building Brand Terror: An Analysis of the Rhetorical Strategies Used, and Some Notes Towards Ethical Responses Possible

Rasmus Øhlenslæger Madsen — University of Copenhagen

Knowing Bodies: Authority in Contemporary Critical Essays

Sjoerd Van Tuinen — St. Lawrence University

Obscene Politics: The Convergence of Terrorism, Porno and Postpolitics in the Political Analyses of Baudrillard, Zizek and Sloterdijk

‘Shift the Accent’: Political Agency in the Field of Melancholic Realism

Figurations of ViolenceSacristie

Oliver Feltham (chair) — Jan van Eyck / American University of Paris

Lisa Carstens — Virginia Wesleyan College

Spencer Wolff — Yale University

The Institutionalization of Violence: Violence as Lebensstil and Fascism as a Fusion of Arendt’s Categories of ‘Power’ and ‘Violence’

Victor Li — University of Toronto

Violence and Irony in Habermas’s Verständigung Thesis

The Two Cultures: Ambiguity and Approximation in Literature and Science

Discursive Cultures and the End of TechnéPriorzaal

Ginette Verstraete (chair) — University of Amsterdam

Ala Alryyes — Yale University

Mary Helen Kolisnyk — New York University

Description as Death Drive and the Accession of the Mediatic Voice

Ralph Kuschke — Humboldt University Berlin

Closed Circuit: Technological Ethic

Bio-Power and Language: Coetzee’s Disgrace and the Limits of Humanity

Allegory and Embodiment in CoetzeeRefter

Derek Attridge (chair) — University of York

Wei Wei Yeo — National University of Singapore

The Rhetoric of Bodies in Age of Iron

J. Paul Narkunas — Pratt Institute

Bishupal Limbu — Northwestern University

Performing the Impossible: Reading Otherwise in Coetzee and Benjamin

Pamela Brown — Yeshiva University

How?: Michael K and the Question of Art’s Face

16:00 – 16:30 || Coffee Break

16:30 –18:15 || Het Pand

Sessions 3

The State of Exception and the Rhetoric of Politics in Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas

Economical With JusticeRector Blanquaert

Justin Clemens (chair) — Deakin University

Christiane Frey — University of Bonn

Adam Kelly — University College, Dublin

Society, Justice and the Other: E.L. Doctorow’s The Waterworks

Tilottama Rajan — University of Western Ontario

Phrasing Justice: Godwin’s Political Justice as Deconstruction

Fascism and the Rhetoric of Action in the Romanità

Translatio ImperiiGele Zaal

Richard Cante (chair) — University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Jan Nelis — Ghent University

Freddy Decreus — Ghent University

‘Aesthetics, Ideology and Discourse’: Creation and contestation of the aesthetic aspects of a national identity: Phidias vs. Kiefer

Patrick Eiden — University of Constance

Res republica litterarum, civitas litteratorum: Literature and Reproduction in ancient Rhetorical Education

Bourdieu and Rhetorical/Academic Education in AntiquityDormitoriumzaal

Freddy Mortier (chair) — Ghent University

Yanick Maes — Ghent University

Wim Verbaal — Ghent University

The Birth of Academic Reproduction and the Sacrifice of Freedom of Thought: The Council of Sens (1141) according to Pierre Bourdieu

Alexander Roose — Ghent University

Against "Common Sense"? On a Heterodox Use of a Conservative Notion

Language and its Materialisation: Does Imaginary Discourse Undermine Democracy?

Democracy, Ideology and LanguagePersconferentiezaal

Koen Geldof (chair) — Leuven University

Wim Weymans — Leuven University

Raf Geenens — Brussels University (KUB)

Democracy and the argumentum ad baculum

Andreas Hetzel — University of Darmstadt

Rhetorical Acosmism and Radical Democracy

Noureddine Bakrim — Université de Limoges

Langue, écriture et identité berbères: sur un semi-symbolisme en acte

It's Not Enough to Die, One Must Learn to Disappear

War and LyricSacristie

Bart Philipsen (chair) —

Christian Schlðsser — Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Diederik Oostdijk — Free University of Amsterdam

The Rhetoric of Poetry and Silence: Howard Nemerov’s Troubled Wartime Memory

Arne De Winde — Leuven University

Es Existiert Ein “Kriegs-‘virus’”: Memory and the Eternal Recurrence of War in Reinhard Jirgl’s Prose

Jan Ceuppens — Leuven University/Vlekho, Brussels

Exercises in Destruction: The Illegibility of Ruination in W.G. Sebald

"Thy Father Lies": Freud and Shakespeare on the Death of the Father

Acts of LanguagePriorzaal

Zachary Sng (chair) — Brown University

Zachary Sng — Brown University

Patrick Greaney — University of Colorado

The Power of Address

Jan Plug — University of Western Ontario

Shame, on Robert Walser

Hao Li — University of Toronto

Contesting Ethics: The Rhetoric of Contingency in Victorian England