BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Sabre//Sabre VObject 4.5.8//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/Zurich X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/Zurich TZURL:http://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/Zurich BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0200 TZNAME:CEST DTSTART:19810329T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0200 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:CET DTSTART:19961027T030000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT UID:news1614@dslw.philhist.unibas.ch DTSTAMP;TZID=Europe/Zurich:20251030T163719 DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Zurich:20251104T130000 SUMMARY:"102 years of the Mourning/Melancholy Binary (1917-2019)" DESCRIPTION:What could it mean to mourn for the "loss of loss itself"? This peculiar and challenging idea\, briefly mentioned in Judith Butler's afte rword to the book Loss: The Politics of Mourning (2015)\, is the starting point of my doctoral research\, which encompasses Afro-diasporic literatur e and media\, psychoanalytically informed theories of the subject\, queer theory\, and postcolonial genealogies. My interest in such mourning is his toriographical as well as individual\; that is to say\, that I am just as interested in the conditions that have produced such unidentifiable losses as I am in the individual or collective processes that attempt to mourn f or them.\\r\\nIn this talk\, I will introduce my research question by elab orating upon what I consider to be the "102 year history" of the Mourning/ Melancholy binary in the (Anglophone) 20th century. I will begin with Freu d's seminal essay Trauer und Melancholie from 1917 and end up with Stephen Best's account of "impossible mourning" given in his 2019 publication Non e Like Us: Blackness\, Belonging\, Aesthetic Life. On the way\, we will en counter two other versions of Freud\, his most interesting and novel inter preters in Török and Abraham\, and Derrida's revisions and expansions up on the same in various essays\, books\, and eulogies. Following this\, I w ill discuss the dissemination of this Freudian-Derridean paradigm in the c ultural\, racial\, and gender theory of 1990-2000s America\, before coming to rest at this arbitrary – but nonetheless fruitful – marker of 2019 . My interest\, as ever in this project\, is to attempt to arrive within t he present moment\, or what David Scott has called the "postcolonial conte mporary": the historical condition within which this peculiar and challeng ing thesis of mourning for the "loss of loss itself" even becomes thinkabl e\, let alone achievable. Once (or if) that is achieved\, I will happily p rovide a gloss of the intellectual arc of my dissertation. X-ALT-DESC:

What could it mean to mourn for the "loss of loss itself"? Th is peculiar and challenging idea\, briefly mentioned in Judith Butler's af terword to the book Loss: The Politics of Mourning (2015)\, is the starting point of my doctoral research\, which encompasses Afro-diasporic literature and media\, psychoanalytically informed theories of the subject \, queer theory\, and postcolonial genealogies. My interest in such mourni ng is historiographical as well as individual\; that is to say\, that I am just as interested in the conditions that have produced such unidentifiab le losses as I am in the individual or collective processes that attempt t o mourn for them.

\n

In this talk\, I will introduce my research ques tion by elaborating upon what I consider to be the "102 year history" of t he Mourning/Melancholy binary in the (Anglophone) 20th century. I will beg in with Freud's seminal essay Trauer und Melancholie from 1917 and end up with Stephen Best's account of "impossible mourning" given in his 2 019 publication None Like Us: Blackness\, Belonging\, Aesthetic Life. On the way\, we will encounter two other versions of Freud\, his most i nteresting and novel interpreters in Török and Abraham\, and Derrida's r evisions and expansions upon the same in various essays\, books\, and eulo gies. Following this\, I will discuss the dissemination of this Freudian-D erridean paradigm in the cultural\, racial\, and gender theory of 1990-200 0s America\, before coming to rest at this arbitrary – but nonetheless f ruitful – marker of 2019. My interest\, as ever in this project\, is to attempt to arrive within the present moment\, or what David Scott has call ed the "postcolonial contemporary": the historical condition within which this peculiar and challenging thesis of mourning for the "loss of loss its elf" even becomes thinkable\, let alone achievable. Once (or if) that is a chieved\, I will happily provide a gloss of the intellectual arc of my dis sertation.

DTEND;TZID=Europe/Zurich:20251104T140000 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR