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Call for papers : “Microscopic Imaginaries in 20th- and 21st-Century Literature” (Paris, 24/11/23)

When Ronald Ross discovered the protozoan responsible for malaria in 1897, he wrote a poem addressing “million-murdering Death” whose “cunning seeds” he had found. Ross’s poem remains famous, but how has his hope that art and science would walk “hand in hand” fared in the following centuries? Over the 20th century, microscopy was revolutionised by UV, phase contrast, and electron technology. The circulation of microscopic images increased exponentially with the arrival of television, internet and digital photography. While visualisations of atomic physics were influential for modernist writers, genetic engineering and microbial agency have become key ingredients of 21st-century crime fiction and science fiction, as well as inspirations for ecopoetry, molecular poetics and experiments in living poetry. This symposium aims to identify the microscopic imaginaries that appeared over this period, and the turning points that structured literature’s engagement with microscopy. We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers in English, on any written literary genre, particularly around the following topics:

– the epistemic dimensions of literary form

– the aesthetics of scale

– the role of literature in changing scopic regimes

– ethical and political dimensions of microscopic imaginaries

– conceptual shifts provoked by microscopic perspectives, around notions such as community, agency, subject, or environment

– relations between microscopic imaginaries and movements such as modernism, naturalism or new materialism

– authorial postures and reader expectations created by microscopic perspectives

– relations between scientific imagination, popular science imagination and literary imagination

 – how scientific and literary discourses have shaped each other over this period 

Proposals should be sent in Word or PDF documents by the 31st of May 2023 to the organisers: liliane.campos@sorbonne-nouvelle.frcaroline.pollentier@sorbonne-nouvelle.frsarah.montin@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr and sarah.bouttier@polytechnique.edu

Answers will be sent out by the 9th of June. The symposium will be held at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, Maison de la Recherche, 4 rue des Irlandais, in Paris. A second symposium will be organized in 2024 on microscopicimaginaries in theatre and performance: a separate call for papers will be issued for that event. 

Performing Microbiomes – April 21st

Please join our next webinar to discuss microbiology in performance and installation art. Professor François-Joseph Lapointe will present his artistic work inspired by microbiome research. His respondent will be Doctor Eric Bapteste.

BioCriticism – 21st April 2023 – 2 pm CET

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84636633099?pwd=STVWMEwyT3l2b3REeUVzNXkwNFJvdz09

Meeting ID: 846 3663 3099

Passcode: 192264

François-Joseph Lapointe: “Me, myself and my microbiome”

Abstract: My current scientific research focuses on the microbiome of endangered animal species, the transmission of the microbiome from mother to her newborn during a cesarean delivery, or even on the necrobiome of decomposing corpses for forensic purposes. Quite naturally, my practice of bioart has followed this trend by integrating bacteria into my artworks and performances. If the discovery of the human microbiome has revolutionized the way philosophers define our species, it has also upset the concept of identity. If it is true that the majority of our cells are not human cells, how are we still human? What remains of Homo sapiens? As an artist, my approach questions the limits of our own flesh in constant interaction with the bacterial world that surrounds us. Is my microbiome affected by my behaviors? Does my microbiome change based on the people I meet? How does this microbiome transform my relationship to the outside world? Who am I without my microbiome? As part of experimental performances or performative experimentation, I collect microbiome samples in order to show all the diversity attesting to the perpetual transformation of my bacterial identity. In more recent projects, I produce installation pieces using microbiome samples collected on others.

François-Joseph Lapointe is a bio-artist and professor of biological sciences at the Université de Montréal. He holds a PhD in evolutionary biology and a PhD in danse and performance. For his scientific research, he is interested in phylogenetics, systematics, metagenomics and population genetics. His artistic work uses biotechnology for creative purposes, and has been exhibited at the Musée de la civilisation (Québec), the Transmediale festival (Berlin), the SciArt Center (New York), the Ars Electronica Center (Linz), the Medical Museion (Copenhagen), the Science Gallery (London) and the Centre Pompidou (Paris).

Dr. Eric Bapteste is a CNRS Research Director at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie. He holds a PhD in evolutionary biology and a PhD in the philosophy of biology. He co-directs the AIRE team, which develops new methods and new concepts, in particular related to networks, in order to study evolution and ageing. His publications include Les gènes voyageurs : l’odyssée de l’évolution (Belin), Conflits intérieurs : fable scientifique (Editions Matériologiques), Tous entrelacés ! Des gènes aux super-organismes, les réseaux de l’évolution (Belin), and two books for young readers: Tout se transforme ! Comment marche l’évolution (Circonflexe) and Le monde surprenant des microbes (Circonflexe).

Theatre and Biology 10th March

Please join our next BioCriticism webinar, on the 10th of March, to discuss biology in contemporary theatre. Theatre director Frédérique Aït-Touati (CNRS) will present her work on the Terrestrial Trilogy, which can be viewed online. Her respondent will be Anna Street (Le Mans University).

BioCriticism – 10th March 2023 – 2 pm CET

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82317272444?pwd=NDBkbVBnNmFiUTIwdUVMQjNEQ3JJUT09

Meeting ID: 823 1727 2444

Passcode: 685742

Theatre director Frédérique Aït-Touati (CNRS) will discuss the role of biology in her Trilogie Terrestre (Inside, Moving Earths and Viral), created in collaboration with Bruno Latour. Her respondent will be Anna Street (Université du Mans).

The « terrestrial trilogy » started in 2016 with the INSIDE performance conference, followed in 2019 by Moving Earths and in 2020 by Viral. The whole project is a reflection on the need for a profound renewal of our representations of the terrestrial world, biotic and abiotic. INSIDE explored visual alternatives to the haunting and deceptive image of the “Globe”; Moving Earths immersed us in the experience of a moving, reactive earth; VIRAL is an exploration of contagion as an essential process of our closed world, and the political consequences of this expanded definition of life. The three lectureperformances are the result of a singular process of creation and long term research developed at the Théâtre Nanterre Amandiers, where the philosopher Bruno Latour and the director Frédérique Aït-Touati make the stage a place for “scenic essays” and philosophical experimentation. Recordings can be viewed in English or French online: https://www.zonecritiquecie.org/captations.

Frédérique Aït-Touati is a historian of science and literature, a theatre director, and a CNRS Research Fellow at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Her work explores connections between the sciences and the arts. Her books include Fictions of the Cosmos (2011), Histoires et savoirs (2012), Le Monde en images (2015), Terra Forma, manuel de cartographies potentielles (B42, 2019 / MIT Press, 2021), Le Cri de Gaïa (2021), Trilogie Terrestre (2022).She is the director of the Experimental Programme in Political Arts (SPEAP) at Sciences Po. With Bruno Latour and her theatre company Zone Critique she has created plays and performances, including Gaia Global Circus (2013-2016), Make it Work/The Theatre of Negotiations (2015), INSIDE (2016-2018), Moving Earths (2019-2020) and VIRAL (2021).

Anna Street is Lecturer in Theater and Performance Studies at Le Mans Université. Translator of ten volumes in Les Petits Platons collection, her publications also include the co-edited volumes Inter Views in Performance Philosophy (Palgrave 2017), Genre Transgressions: Dialogues on Tragedy and Comedy (Routledge forthcoming), articles on comedy and philosophy and, more recently, immigrant and refugee theatre. Her current research focuses on the role of non-human agency in art and performance, notably that of water.

BioCriticism seminar launch – 24th February 2023 

2 pm Central European Time, in person and online

https://meet.google.com/znk-xpjc-cef

Salle du Conseil, Maison de la Recherche, 4 rue des Irlandais, Paris.

Guest speaker: Lisa B. Keränen (Colorado University): 

“Biocriticism as inventional practice: The case of global health security”

Respondent: Catherine Bernard (Université Paris Cité)

Abstract: This talk outlines a proposal for connecting disparate areas of inquiry under the umbrella of biocriticism and traces its linkages to an emerging transdisciplinary field called the rhetoric of health and medicine. After enumerating possible definitions, goals, and applications, it offers an example of how biocriticism can increase understanding of the relations between bios and nomos, life and politics. By tracing the emergence of the concept of “global health security” and associated terms across WHO and US policy rhetoric in the mid-2000s, it reveals how bios and nomos were reconfigured in the wake of concerns about emerging infectious disease. It concludes by speculating on the promise and challenges of conceiving of biocriticism as an effort that links interdisciplinary practices concerned with the co-evolution of life and politics.

Lisa Keränen is Associate Professor and Chair of Communication and Affiliate Faculty of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado Denver | Anschutz Medical Campus in Denver, Colorado, USA. Her research and teaching concern the rhetoric of health and medicine and biosecurity. Her first book, Scientific Characters: Rhetoric, Politics, and Trust in Breast Cancer Research, received the Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Public Address. Her current book project, under contract with Johns Hopkins University Press, is Envisioning Viral Apocalypse: Rhetorics of Risk, Biosecurity and Resilience from Anthrax to Covid. She is a past President of the Association for the Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine (ARSTM).

Catherine Bernard is Professor of British literature and visual studies at Université Paris Cité. Her research hinges on the politics of form, from Modernism to contemporary aesthetics. She has published extensively on modernist and contemporary visual culture and art (from the Bloomsbury group, to Gillian Wearing or Rachel Whiteread). Among her recent publications, one can mention the edited journal issue: “Ubiquitous Visuality: Towards a Pragmatics of Visual Experience,” InMedia. The French Journal of Media Studies, 8.1, in collaboration with Clémence Folléa, 2020. https://journals.openedition.org/inmedia/. Her latest monograph was published with Sorbonne University press: Matière à réflexion. Du corps politique dans la littérature et les arts visuels britanniques contemporains (Presses de l’Université Paris Sorbonne, 2018). She is currently working towards a monograph turning to the politics of embodiment in contemporary fiction and visual arts, specifically in relation to Covid and its representations.

BioCriticism – Programme 2023 – “Through the microscope”

  • February 24th, 2 pm Central European Time, in person and online

Communication scholar Professor Lisa B. Keränen (Colorado University) will discuss “Biocriticism as inventional practice: The case of global health security”. Her respondent will be Literature scholar Professor Catherine Bernard (Université Paris Cité)

  • March 10th, 2 pm CET, online

Theatre director Frédérique Aït-Touati (CNRS) will discuss La Trilogie Terrestre (created with Bruno Latour)

  • April 21st, 2 pm CET, online

Professor François-Joseph Lapointe (Université de Montréal) will discuss microbiology in his artistic practice

  • May 12th, 2 pm CET, online

Artist-designer Marie-Sarah Adénis will discuss microbiology in her artistic practice

  • June 9th, 2 pm CET, online

Literature scholar Dr Lara Choksey (University College London) will discuss epigenetics, poetics, and atmosphere

Please contact Liliane Campos for information and links: liliane.campos@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr

BioCriticism is organised with the support of PRISMES EA4398 and the Institut Universitaire de France