CFP: Impasse and Ambivalence: Re-defining Ethics (12/15/06; 4/6/07-4/7/07)
updated:
Monday, November 13, 2006 - 4:45am
Acacia Conference
This conference seeks to address the myriad definitions of ethics and how it
is represented in literature and other texts. The moment of ethical
decision often occurs at the point of impasse, of dilemma, of crisis that
springs from the space between two opposing ideas, when an easy or
prescriptive decision is not possible. Rather, each impasse requires an
ethical, scriptive fluidity whose focus is social as well as personal;
ambivalence, therefore, emerges as an ethical response to such a crisis. To
be sure, though, this space is difficult to occupy, much less sustain. In
Gayatri Spivak's words, "ethics is the experience of the impossible." What