Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)

• Conference: 55th NeMLA Convention 
• Conference Theme: Surplus
• Location: Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Abstract Deadline for Paper Proposals: 30th September 2023
• Conference Date: 7-10th March 2024

Panel: Half Knowledge: Identity, Philosophical Difficulty and the Remains of Value 

Chair(s): Leo Kadokura (University of Oxford)

This panel will look at what is left over in discussions of identity by placing literature in dialogue with the philosophical discussion of modern identity. Central to this thinking is what Cora Diamond describes as ‘the difficulty of reality’, that which remains outside of or surplus to the ways in which we attempt to organise and understand our personal and communal experiences. This discussion thereby seeks to reorientate the ways in which we approach the relationship between philosophy and literature on the question of identity, and to discuss how literature might give access to a phenomenology of value that more wholly describes the difficulty of our experiences of identity which continually elude and exceed our forms of half-knowledge. 

The panel invites papers on any topic that explores the relationship between philosophy and literature on the question of identity, and asks that submissions consider how that relationship might (or might not) engage with this notion of difficulty.  

**Abstracts should be submitted through the NeMLA Portal on the conference website.** More information on the submission procedure is available here: https://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention.html

Each abstract submission must include:

• A title of no more than 80 characters
• An abstract of 200 to 300 words
• A brief bio
• Membership is not required to submit an abstract.

CfP on conference website (there is also a submit abstract button available here): https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/20672