"The Event of War:

American Interventions in the 20th and 21st Centuries"

November 5-7, 2004, Emory University; Atlanta, GA

Keynote Speaker:

Robert Jay Lifton M. D., author of the Superpower Syndrome

Centuries of wars -- world wars, wars of liberation, civil wars,
religious wars, the Cold war -- the 20th century has raised urgent
questions concerning the adequacy of responding to aggression, the limits
of human action, the dangers of technological development, and the status
of the human. How can the humanities respond to the recent shifts in
interventionist policies that threaten the self-determination and
political stability of foreign nations? What responsibility do
intellectuals have in this context?How can approaching war as an event impel us to read it differently?
The event has been defined, according to Lyotard and others, as radically
singular. Its moment of "happening" does not disclose its "true meaning"
but rather the unique presentation of its occurrence. The event of war
comes as a surprise and as such breaks continuity, producing, in the
language of psychoanalysis, a trauma. In fact, it is possible to view our
state of "normalcy" as impossible without the event or threat of war to
preserve it. For example, as was the case of "911", an event "sparks" a
war and represents a symbolic culmination of events that create the
possibility and putative necessity for war.

What political, rhetorical and legal transformations have emerged as a
consequence of justification of foreign intervention? How is the event of war
an interruptive force in language, psychoanalysis and philosophy and how can it
be represented in literature and media? We welcome papers that address this
shift in traditional warfare and account for the uniqueness of war in the 21st
century from literary, philosophical, political, ethical and religious points
of view.

Possible topics include:

-- American interventions in the 20th and 21st centuries

-- phenomenology and the event of war

-- rhetoric and war (the war on "terrorism")

-- war and the media ("live coverage," "embedded" journalism)

-- conceptions of good and evil

-- deferred peace (preemptive and "preventive" wars)

-- wartime and sacrifice

-- ideology and self-determination (democracy, "liberty")

-- psychoanalytic responses to violence (death anxiety and the survivor
experience)

-- war narratives and history (mythology of the war hero, epistolary texts,
speeches)

-- war and technology

-- law, human rights and the representation of the "other"

-- questions of territory and the nation state

-- memory and war (war memorials, testimony)

-- protest and revolution

-- war and the university (intellectual responsibility)

Abstracts should be no longer than 500 words. Please submit a proposal by May
31, 2004 by email (jsellou, attach Microsoft Word documents) or by
post to:

Jessica Demetra Sellountos

Program in Comparative Literature

Emory University

N101 Callaway Center

Atlanta, Georgia 30322