17h : Berny Sèbe (Birmingham University, UK)
"Cross-cultural memory in post-colonial contexts: European imperial heroes in twenty-first century Africa”
18h : Tanguy Harma (Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK)
The Figure of Thanatos: Processes of Self-creation and Self-destruction in Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg
"Cross-cultural memory in post-colonial contexts: European imperial heroes in twenty-first century Africa”
17h : Berny Sèbe (Birmingham University, UK)
"Cross-cultural memory in post-colonial contexts: European imperial heroes in twenty-first century Africa”
Responsables : Marc Lenormand et Anne-Marie Motard
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/french/sebe-berny.aspx
Bio:
Dr. Berny Sèbe is Senior Lecturer in colonial and post-colonial studies at the University of Birmingham. His research interests revolve around the colonial and post-colonial encounters between European and non-European worlds, in particular in the cultural and political realms. His recent works look at the making of imperial heroes in Britain and France since the era of 'New imperialism' (second half of the nineteenth century), the history of the conquest and decolonization of the Sahara, Franco-African relations since the Second World War as well as the 'Echoes of Empire' which resonate in the European project. He also engages regularly in comparative studies of French, British and Spanish imperialisms.
The Figure of Thanatos: Processes of Self-creation and Self-destruction in Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg
18h : Tanguy Harma (Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK)
The Figure of Thanatos: Processes of Self-creation and Self-destruction in Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg
Responsable : Judith Misrahi-Barak
Bio:
Born and educated in Montpellier, Tanguy graduated in English studies at the Université Paul Valéry, where he wrote his MA dissertation on Jack Kerouac. He was then offered a position as a French language assistant at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, before relocating to London to start a PhD programme. Now a graduate tutor on the ‘Approaches to Text’ seminar and PhD candidate at the department of English and Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London, Tanguy is currently writing up his PhD thesis under the supervision of Dr Caroline Blinder. It focuses on selected writings of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg; using theoretical frames ranging from the Sublime to Existentialism and the Transcendentalist tradition, the thesis examines the paradoxical ways in which Kerouac and Ginsberg explored the creative potential of strategies of destruction and death in their writings.
Résumé :
This presentation will offer a brief overview of my research project, which is a literary, philosophical and aesthetic exploration of two novels by Jack Kerouac (Tristessa, 1960 and Big Sur, 1962), and one long poem by Allen Ginsberg (‘Howl’, 1956). It focuses on Thanatos, a conceptual figure that will allow us to decipher the paradoxical interplay of creative and destructive strategies in the texts.
In a first part, I will use a theoretical framework that combines the precepts of Existentialist theory with the essentials of American Transcendentalism, a tradition heavily referenced throughout the primary texts. This framework will enable us to apprehend the figure of Thanatos through the interactions between nothingness, processes of alienation and forms of engagement in the texts, which will be transposed within an American context.
In a second part, I will scrutinise the convergence of beauty and death in Kerouac’s Tristessa to illuminate another facet of Thanatos. Through a Kantian definition of the Sublime, I will elucidate the contradictory movement of construction and glamorisation of narrative forms, and their subsequent revocation and annihilation in the novella.
This analysis will give way to an innovative reflection on a few idiosyncratic traits that Kerouac and Ginsberg convey through their respective works.
