This Thursday and Friday, I’m participating in a symposium on The Ethics of Literary Autonomy organized by Wilbert Smulders and Frans Ruiter at the University of Utrecht. The description of the event is here in Dutch; the full program is in English (pdf). I’m giving a lecture on Friday morning which I’m calling “Autonomy without Ethics: Strangers in the Literary Metropolis.” It’s based on my work in Fictions of Autonomy with some bonus material on G. V. Desani, because Desani.
Given that my principal theoretical claim is that artistic autonomy is always defined in relation to particular social and historical contexts, I’m particularly pleased to be discussing autonomy in contexts that will be quite new to me. I’ll try to post some notes on the symposium here after I return next week.
And if you’re in Utrecht, stop by…