Vitalism in Literature and Culture from the Twentieth Century to the Present (NeMLA)
Pittsburgh, PA
Organization: NeMLA
Event: NeMLA
This year’s conference theme invites participants to reflect on “regeneration in the sense of bringing forth… a new entity that is more powerful, vigorous, efficient, and healthier.” This selection of terms immediately evokes vitalism—a philosophy of regeneration centered on dynamism, productivity, energy, life force, creativity, and strength. Vitalism emerged in response to mechanistic and materialist accounts of life; though often dismissed by the end of the nineteenth century as a pseudo-science, vitalism has endured as a complex and influential philosophical framework from the twentieth century to the present. Authoritarian regimes in the early twentieth century appropriated vitalist ideas and imagery in support of fascism. Yet vitalism has also animated democratic and progressive thought, as reflected in the work of Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, and others. More recently, posthumanist thinkers such as Jane Bennett have engaged vitalism for its potential not just to support liberatory politics but also decenter the human and expand notions of agency to other-than-human beings.
This panel invites papers that explore how vitalism imbues the politics and aesthetics of literature and culture from the twentieth century onward. What are the possibilities—and limits—of vitalist thinking for emancipatory politics? How do literary forms realize, complicate, or critique vitalist ideas? How do authors from diverse backgrounds and ideological commitments engage vitalism? The panel especially welcomes work on the relationship between nature, culture, and the human.
https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/21789
Anthony Shoplik