CFP: The Contractual Imperative in 18th Century Britain (9/15/05; ASECS, 3/30/06-4/2/06)
This panel will explore the ways in which the logic of contract and the
rhetoric of promise permeate and organize British culture in the eighteenth
century. Victoria Kahn's Wayward Contracts is one of the more noteworthy
recent studies that interpret the ways in which this logic and rhetoric
contribute to cultural formation. Her formulation of contract as a "new
poetics of the subject" is one of many possible engagements with this
theme.
In the past decade the cultural, marriage, mimetic, sociable, social and
racial contracts have received comment and analysis.
This panel welcomes one to two page proposals that address the history and