The time of the annual workshop of the Research Committee on Literary Theory of the International Comparative Literature Association is fast approaching. This year’s workshop, “Tropes of Theory”, is taking place in Berlin during 20-21 October 2023 and it is hosted by Zaal Andronikashvili (ZfL) and Susanne Strätling (FU Berlin) in cooperation with EXC 2020 “Temporal Communities. Doing Literature in a Global Perspective.”

Venue: Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL), Pariser Str. 1, 10719 Berlin.

Programme

October 20
10:00 Welcome
10:15-12:15 Panel I: Figuring Theory
Chair: Susanne Strätling
Robert Young (New York University): Theory as Trope
Divya Dwivedi (Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi): Theory and the Trope of Reading
Rok Benčin (ZRC SAZU Ljubljana): The Miracle of Analogy and the Displacement of Concepts
Robert Stockhammer (LMU Munich): Synecdoche and Representative Anecdote (Kenneth Burke) in Theory
12:15 Lunch

13:30-15:30 Panel II: Mining the History of Tropology
Chair: Natalya Bekhta (Tampere University)
Amy Li Xiaofan (University College London): Illumination: The Solar Trope in Literary Theory from a Comparative Perspective
Susanne Strätling (FU Berlin): Poetics as Energetics? Trajectories of Modern Literary Theory
Anne Duprat (Université de Picardie-Jules Verne): Elegance, or: How Stylish Can Literary Theory Be?
Maya Kesrouany (NYU Abu Dhabi): Figural Hauntings in Contemporary Arabic Literary Theory
15:30 Coffee break

16:00-17:30 Panel III: Reading Tropes
Chair: Maya Kesrouany
Stefan Willer (HU Berlin): Ties: Metaphors of Postcritique
Woosung Kang (Seoul National University): Reading Freud Reading: How Blindness Drives Theories
Marco Caracciolo (Ghent University): Tropes for Complexity in Literary Theory

October 21
10:00-11:30: Panel IV: Politics of Tropes
Chair: Anne Duprat
Ivana Perica (ZfL): Polysemy of ‘the Political’
Davide Giuriato (Universität Zürich): Drastic: Breakdown of Tropes? (Jankelevitch, Abbate, Dath)
Zaal Andronikashvili (ZfL): Small and Minor: Figures of Minority in the System of World Literature
11:30 Closing remarks
12:30-13:30 Business meeting