Fiction and Other Minds: Rita Felski on Literature and Lifeworlds: Szabo, Schutz, Habermas
The idea of the lifeworld seems especially well-suited to capturing the sense of life as it is lived. After looking at theories of the lifeworld in Schutzand Habermas, I turn to The Door, a prize-winning novel by Magda Szabo about the ties of love, anger, and misunderstanding that bind a novelist and her housekeeper. How might Szabo's novel enrich existing theories of everyday life? And how are intellectuals seen by those who cook their meals and sweep their floors?
Professor Rita Felski is John Stewart Bryan Professor at the University of Virginia. Her current research centres on aesthetics, method, and interpretation. The Limits of Critique (Chicago UP, 2015), on the role of suspicion in literary criticism, was widely reviewed and the subject of forums in PMLA, Religion and Literature, and the American Book Review. Similar issues are explored in an edited collection, Critique and Postcritique, co-edited with Elizabeth Anker (Duke University Press, 2017). Hooked: Art and Attachment, which asks how and why we get stuck to works of art, will be published by Chicago UP in fall 2020. She is writing a new book on the contemporary Frankfurt School and its relevance for literary studies. She also has longstanding interests in feminist theory, modernity and postmodernity, genre (especially tragedy), comparative literature, and cultural studies.
The seminar is convened by Professor Ben Morgan (ben.morgan@worc.ox.ac.uk) and Dr Naomi Rokotnitz (naomi.rokotnitz@worc.ox.ac.uk).
As always, the talk will be followed by drinks for all attendees.
About the Seminar Series: The Fiction and Other Minds seminar series showcases current research in the Cognitive Humanities by hosting scholars working at the interface between literary studies, visual and performance art, phenomenology, philosophy, and the cognitive sciences. The seminars explore how features investigated by the cognitive sciences can be tested and expanded across different cultural contexts, media, and artistic genres. In particular, we explore how literary texts often challenge and differentiate theoretical insights-especially through their attention to the culturally situated aspects of cognition-and how cognitively informed approaches to literature can deepen our understanding of the embodied and affective processes that underpin meaning-making, including literary reading. For more information, please see the Fiction and Other Minds research strand page.
