SEM VALE général: 20/03/2025: Liliane Campos, « Microcosmic matter in contemporary fiction”
20 mars - 17 h 30 min - 19 h 00 min
Nous avons le plaisir d’accueillir notre collègue Liliane Campos (Sorbonne Nouvelle) lors de la prochaine séance du séminaire VALE qui se tiendra jeudi 20 mars à 17h30 à la bibliothèque de l’UFR d’études anglophones de Sorbonne Université (1, rue Victor Cousin, escalier G, 2ème étage). Vous trouverez sa bio ainsi qu’un résumé de sa communication intitulée “The infant planet and the iron sphere: microcosmic matter in contemporary fiction”ci-dessous.
Sujet: Séminaire VALE 20.03.2025
https://zoom.us/j/95071584132?pwd=YaPbHgLf1TjFHS4lZSUogwDaemplpC.1
ID de réunion: 950 7158 4132
Code secret: 374864
Liliane Campos (Sorbonne Nouvelle), « The infant planet and the iron sphere: microcosmic matter in contemporary fiction »
This talk will examine the haunting presence of miniature planets in recent works of ecofiction. Microcosmic poetics, I suggest, are a key mode of literary engagement with the Anthropocene, which allow characters and readers to encounter the damaged planet they inhabit. These miniature Earths can be read as allegorical figures, which enable response-ability across scales. Yet the encounters mediated by these entities are also material and sensual events, where the human subject not only faces, but also touches the earth, iron, stone and plastic that make up the Earth. This talk asks what new forms of ecological awareness are enabled by such microcosmic matter, in contemporary novels by N. K. Jemisin, Ali Smith, Jeanette Winterson, A. S. Byatt and Karen Tei Yamashita. Drawing on the scale-critical strand of environmental humanities, and particularly the concepts proposed by Timothy Clark, Bruno Latour and Peter Sloterdijk, I read these figures as sites of ethical demands, epistemic challenges, and ontological trouble.
Liliane Campos is a Lecturer in English and Theatre Studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University and a Fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France. Her research explores the role of science in theatre and literature. She recently edited Life, Re-Scaled: The Biological Imagination in Twenty-First-Century Literature and Performance (Open Book Publishers, 2022, open acess) with Pierre-Louis Patoine. Liliane directs the BioCriticism webinar ( https://biocriticism.hypotheses.org ).