Veranstaltungsart: Konferenz

What is the relationship between naming and touching? This symposium explores the haptic effects of names as well as the attempt to name haptic experience through the lens of anthropology, performance studies, philosophy, and psychoanalysis.

The experience of language, specifically of names, shapes subjectivity by impacting one’s relationship to one’s body and the bodies of others. Designators indexing race, class, gender, religion, and status configure haptic relations. How do given names affect the ways one is touched from infancy onwards? How are other names received throughout one’s life — such as nicknames, slurs, or praises — inscribed upon the skin? How do these names open up or constrain the kinds of haptic experiences one can have with other subjects or collectives?

Naming touch can bring visibility to different kinds of haptic experiences, presumably allowing for greater protection, knowledge, communication, and heightened sensations and emotions. Yet naming touch can also stigmatize, normalize, and suppress haptic desires and experiences. What is the effect of naming touch? Are there kinds of touch that evade being named, such as those related to violence, trauma, or intense pleasure? What does the attempt to translate these haptic experiences do to language itself?

With

Maria José de Abreu
Rachel Aumiller
Emma Bigè
Iracema Dulley
Ashwak Hauter
Lea Kieffer
Bara Kolenc
Rosalind Morris
Stefania Pandolfo
Aaron Schuster

How to Attend

• At the venue (registration required)

Conception: Susan Neiman, Potsdam
with Moshe Halbertal, Jerusalem; Stephen Holmes, New York; Peter Stephan Jungk, Paris; Ivan Krastev, Wien; Eva Menasse, Berlin; Jan Philipp Reemtsma, Hamburg; David Shulman, Jerusalem; James Wood, Cambridge/Mass.

No one wrote more profound or penetrating essays on survival in Auschwitz, torture, ageing, and suicide than Jean Améry, born Hans Mayer in Vienna. Yet along with the–often despairing–works that made him famous, he also wrote the 20th century’s most passionate defenses of the much-maligned Enlightenment. Are these works in conflict with each other, or must they be read in tandem? This conference will explore this question while focusing on those aspects of Améry’s work that have received scant attention.Veranstaltung in englischer Sprache

Conception: Susan Neiman, Potsdam
with Moshe Halbertal, Jerusalem; Stephen Holmes, New York; Peter Stephan Jungk, Paris; Ivan Krastev, Wien; Eva Menasse, Berlin; Jan Philipp Reemtsma, Hamburg; David Shulman, Jerusalem; James Wood, Cambridge/Mass.

No one wrote more profound or penetrating essays on survival in Auschwitz, torture, ageing, and suicide than Jean Améry, born Hans Mayer in Vienna. Yet along with the–often despairing–works that made him famous, he also wrote the 20th century’s most passionate defenses of the much-maligned Enlightenment. Are these works in conflict with each other, or must they be read in tandem? This conference will explore this question while focusing on those aspects of Améry’s work that have received scant attention.Veranstaltung in englischer Sprache

The 2022 conference Unsettling Archives focuses on the relationship between narrative and material accounts of the body and the frictions that unsettle and confirm gendered and racialized certainties about archival knowledge production. This includes work with material objects, classificatory orders, and the narrative, socio-material, spatial, and temporal constellations that configure archives and questions concerning memory. How do we deal with the upsetting and violent effects of archive formation and what are possibilities of rendering unstable, unsettling hegemonic archival practices? How can we re-imagine archival methodologies? Can we conceptualize the body as archive or architectures and spaces as unsettling actors of history and memory? What is the role of the personal in counter-archiving? Re-imagining here means reading both with and against the grain, focusing on the postcolonial entanglements and the sexual politics that any form of archiving entails.

Location: Senate Hall (Senatssaal), Main Building, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin,
Unter den Linden 6, 10117 Berlin

–> Registration <–

View the abstracts

See the program in the poster/flyer

Thursday, July 7th 2022
 

9:30	Coffee
10:00 – 10:30	Welcome and Introduction (Elahe Haschemi Yekani, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin / Silvy Chakkalakal, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin / Wallace Best, Princeton University)
10:30 – 11:30	Panel 1  Absence and Abundance in the Archive
	Agata Dziuban (Jagiellonian University) and Todd Sekuler (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)  The Politics of Absence: Withholding and withdrawing stories from the European HIV/AIDS Archive (EHAA)Pawel Leszkowicz (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań)  The Biggest Curatorial Challenge: Queering National MuseumsChair: Adela Taleb (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
11:30 – 12:00	Coffee break
12:00 – 13:30	Panel 2   Archived Bodies and Bureaucratic Governance
	Madison Wolfert (Princeton University)  Gendering “Improvement”: Race and Labor in the Early American ArchiveJasper Verlinden (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)  Suspicious Narratives: The Body as Archive in Edith Eaton’s WritingKiel Ramos Suarez (Linnaeus University/Lund University)  Colonial Archives and Philippine LGBTIQ History-WritingChair: Wendy Warren (Princeton University)
13:30 – 15:00	Lunch break
15:00 – 16:30	Panel 3  Architecture as Archive: Temporal Politics of Space
	Dennis Ohm (McGill University, Montreal)  Architecture and Queer Temporality on New York’s WaterfrontSina Holst (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)  More-than-ruins, less-than-buildings: On the more-than-human, material, and imaginative composition of architectural archivesImad Gebrayel (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)  When Shadowplays Shadow Place: Embodied Negotiations of Memories in SonnenalleeChair: Silvy Chakkalakal (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
16:30 – 17:00	Coffee break
17:00 – 18:00	Keynote Tavia Nyong’o (Yale University)  At the Utopian Margins of the Flesh: Nao Bustamante with Geo WyethIntroduction: Eva Boesenberg (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
18:00	Reception

Friday, July 8th 2022
 

10:00 – 11:30	Panel 4 Cripping Archival Experience, Cripping Experiential Archives
	Jiya Pandya (Princeton University)  Prosthetics, Petitions, and Paisa: Reading Transnational Disability Management Through the UN IYDPCatherine Clune Taylor (Princeton University)   Who Needs the Birth Control Pill? Intersex Women and Hormone Replacement Therapy Milena Bister (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)  Welfare Categories: Classification Processes and Their Effects on Shaping Experiences and Archives of Social InequalityChair: Beate Binder (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
11:30 – 12:00	Coffee break
12:00 – 13:30	Panel 5  Narrated Bodies and Autofictional Knowledge Production
	Alexis Ferguson (Princeton University)  Narratives of Sex: Reading Gender in 19th Century PhysiologyAnja Sunhyun Michaelsen (Braunschweig University of Art)  Her Shape and His Hand: Postcolonial Bodies in the Archive of Intercountry AdoptionChair: Elahe Haschemi Yekani (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
13:30 – 15:00	Lunch break
15:00 – 16:00	Panel 6  Archives of Abjection: Narrating Resistance Through Anger  and Disgust
	Anne Potjans (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)  Anger – Abjection – Empowerment: Archival Practices and Black Female Subjectivity in the Poetry of Wanda ColemanSusanne Klimroth (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)  Hans Henny Jahnn’s Medea Between Racist Misogyny and Empowerment – Corporal Disgust as Aesthetic Tilt FigureChair: Ulrike Vedder (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
16:00 – 16:30	Coffee break
16:30 – 17:30	Round table conference reflection Wallace Best and Tera Hunter (Princeton University), Silvy Chakkalakal and Elahe Haschemi Yekani (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
17:30 – 18:00	Strategic Partnership Meeting (non-public)

Saturday, July 9th 2022
 

15:00 – 16:30	Private guided tour at the SMU (Schwules Museum Berlin/Queer Museum) by Thao Ho Exhibition „Encantadas“ – Lützowstraße 73, 10785 Berlin
16:30 – 18:00	Panel 7  Archiving Queer BIPOC Histories (Public SMU Program)
	Roundtable with:  Peter Rehberg (SMU), Thao Ho (SMU), Tarek Shukrallah (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
18:00	Farewell

Organisiert von Caroline Adler (HU Berlin), Sophia Buck (Oxford/ZfL), Carolin Duttlinger (Oxford), Matthias Schwartz (ZfL)

Kontakt: Sophia Buck (Oxford/ZfL): buck@zfl-berlin.org; Caroline Adler (HU Berlin): caroline.adler@hu-berlin.de

In late and post-Socialist contexts in Eastern Europe, the works of Walter Benjamin—a historical materialist thinker who travelled to the young Soviet Union in the 1920s—have incited various theoretical transfers, artistic engagements, and political appropriations. Benjamin’s ‘afterlife’ before and after the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc offers the possibility to map out manifold trajectories and networks of reception—ranging from research groups, artistic movements, and conferences, to translations, and publishing houses. Investigating their interactions allows us to decentralize the Eastern European space in going beyond a Moscow-based perspective on ‘Benjamin in the East.’ Conflicting receptions of Benjamin need to be studied in their specific geo-cultural, historical, and political contexts in order to show affinities and differences not only across languages and cultures. Tensions also occur in a variety of translational processes—transfers between theory, cultural practices, political activism, disciplinary fields, and vice versa.

The conference brings together scholars, translators, artists, activists, and editors from across Europe to collaboratively historicize these transfers across Walter Benjamin’s works and their reception. In doing so, we will also reflect on real and imaginary constructions of the East/West divide. These are prevalent not only in European societies but can also be constitutive to specific Eastern/Western academic perspectives on Walter Benjamin as a disciplinary figure that crosses geo-cultural borders and boundaries.

The event is free of charge. Please register in advance and specify the panels or sections that you want to attend under anmeldung@zfl-berlin.org.

The conference is co-funded by the OX|BER Research Partnership, the ZfL Berlin, and the Research Training Group 1956 Transfer of Culture and Cultural Identity. German-Russian Contacts in the European Context.

Programm

Thursday, 7 Jul 2022

13.30

• Sophia Buck (Oxford/ZfL), Caroline Adler (HU Berlin): Introduction

14.00 BENJAMIN’S EAST

• Pavel Arsenev (University of Geneva): Benjamin’s Reception of the East (and then back again)
• Iacopo Chiaravalli (University of Pisa): Benjamin on Soviet Art – A Neglected Interview in Its Proper Context

16.00 VISIT TO THE WALTER BENJAMIN ARCHIVE

• Introduction by Ursula Marx (only for speakers)

19.00 KEYNOTE

• Sergej A. Romashko (Moscow): Walter Benjamin / Moskau – Zwei Flächen eines Kristalls

Friday, 8 Jul 2022

10.00 RECEPTON UNTIL THE 1990s

• Martin Küpper (CAU Kiel): Die Zertrümmerung der Aura als Moment der kommunistischen Revolution – Über Walter Benjamins Einfluss auf den ästhetischen Funktionalismus in der DDR
• Konstantin Baehrens (University of Potsdam): Lukács liest Benjamin – Zwischen formaler Distanzierung und kritisch-realistischem Ernstnehmen
• Gábor Gángó (University of Erfurt): Walter Benjamin and the Budapest School

13.30

• Anna Zsellér, Károly Tóth (Elte Budapest): Kritik und Resignation – Möglichkeiten und Missstände der Benjamin-Rezeption in Ungarn bis 1989
• Anna Förster (ZfL): “A rather secretive affair” – Walter Benjamin in 1970s Czechoslovakia

15.30 ARTISTIC RESPONSES UNTIL THE 1990s

• Isabel Jacobs (Queen Mary University of London): Unmaking Art – Walter Benjamin’s Resurrection in Yugoslavia
• Deirdre Madeleine Smith (University of Pittsburgh): The Influence of Benjamin on the New Art Practice of Socialist Yugoslavia

18.30 KEYNOTE

• Oxana Timofeeva (St. Petersburg): Translating Benjamin from Theory to Practice – Russian Edition

Saturday, 9 Jul 2022

10.00 ARTISTIC RESPONSES SINCE THE 1990s

• Bogdan Popa (Transilvania University of Brașov): From Historical Materialism to Cultural Studies – Walter Benjamin and his Late Revival in Romanian Film Theory
• Anna Migliorini (University of Florence): Radu Jude’s Movie(s) and Benjamin

13.00 RECEPTION SINCE THE 1990s

• Markus Bauer (Berlin): Mimetische Lektüren Europas – Walter Benjamin und Rumänien
• Adam Bžoch (Slovak Academy of Sciences): Spuren einer Apparition / auratische Netzwerke – Annäherungsversuche an Benjamin in der Slowakei um und nach der Jahrtausendwende

15.00 ROUNDTABLE | TRANSLATING (IN) THE EAST

• Kateryna Mishchenko (Ukraine)
• Adam Lipszyc (Poland)
• Christian Ferencz-Flatz (Romania)

17.00 CONCLUDING REMARKS

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Sergei A. Romashko, geboren 1952 in Moskau, ist Philologe, Übersetzer und Aktionskünstler. Von 1976 bis 2012 war er Mitarbeiter der Akademie der Wissenschaften der UdSSR/Russland, von 2004 bis 2021 Dozent am Lehrstuhl für Diskurs- und Kommunikationstheorie an der Staatlichen Universität Moskau. Seit den 70er Jahren beschäftigt er sich intensiv mit Walter Benjamins Nachlass; Anfang der 90er Jahre folgten zahlreiche Übersetzungen und Ausgaben der Texte von Walter Benjamin in Russland (u.a. das Moskauer Tagebuch, 1997). Seit Mitte der 70er Jahre experimentelle künstlerische Aktivität im Rahmen der Gruppe »Kollektive Aktionen«. Romashko ist Übersetzer philosophischer, wissenschaftlicher und dichterischer Werke von Martin Luther bis Franz Mon.

Oxana Timofeeva teaches philosophy at St. Petersburg, she is a member of the artistic collective “Chto Delat” (“What is to be done”), deputy editor of the journal “Stasis”, and the author of books Solar Politics (Polity 2022), How to Love a Homeland (Kayfa ta, 2020), History of Animals (Bloomsbury 2018), This is not That (In Russian, 2022), Introduction to the Erotic Philosophy of Georges Bataille (In Russian, 2009), and other writings.

ROUNDTABLE

Kateryna Mishchenko is a writer, curator and publisher. She was the editor of Prostory, a magazine on art, literature and social critique. She is co-founder and editor of the Ukrainian publishing house Medusa. Kateryna Mishchenko curated exhibitions in the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig (GfZK) and the Visual Culture Research Center Kyiv (VCRC). She is co-author of the book Ukrainian Night (with Miron Zownir). Her essays appeared in international journals as well as in an anthology on the Euromaidan at Suhrkamp-Verlag (Euromaidan: Was in der Ukraine auf dem Spiel steht, 2014). Together with Miron Zownir she published Ukrainian Night – Ukraïnska nich with Spector Books Leipzig in 2015. From April to June 2022 she was a fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Starting in July 2022, she will be a fellow in the program area World Literature at the ZfL.

Adam Lipszyc is the head of the Center for Psychoanalytic Thought based in the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He teaches in the Graduate School for Social Research and at the Franz Kafka University of Muri. In his work, he focuses on the philosophical implications of psychoanalysis, philosophy of literature, as well as on the 20th century Jewish thought. Most recently, he published (in Polish) a book on Freudian thought (Freud: the Logic of Experience, 2019) and a book on Herman Melville (Melville: The Mardi Gras of Identity, 2022).

Christian Ferencz-Flatz is a philosopher, working at the Alexandru Dragomir Institute for Philosophy. He also teaches at the National University of Theatre and Film in Bucharest. His works interweave phenomenology and critical theory with film- and media studies. He published numerous essays and research articles in philosophical and film scholarly journals and translated key theoretical works by Husserl, Heidegger, Adorno and Kracauer. He also translated into Romanian Walter Benjamin’s One Way Street (2014) and the critical edition of the Artwork essay (2015). He is currently preparing the Romanian edition of the Arcades Project.