Mina KARAVANTA

Cycle de 3 séminaires : “American Theory”

Les mardis 14, 21 & 28 mars, 16h00-18h00 | Salle Celan, 45 rue d’Ulm

Le terme de « French theory » est bien connu pour désigner un ensemble de textes philosophiques et théoriques français qui ont eu un très grand retentissement aux États-Unis à partir des années 1970, alors que leurs auteurs, parmi lesquels Hélène Cixous, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida ou Michel Foucault, étaient relativement marginalisés en France. Lus et relus par les Américains, ces textes sont le terreau dans lequel ont pu s’enraciner nombre de réflexions que l’on examine dans ce séminaire : la « théorie américaine » reste encore assez méconnue, mais a recueilli une attention croissante ces dernières années. L’introduction à une diversité d’auteurs permet de repenser les enjeux de courant de pensée tels que les études culturelles, les études postcoloniales et post-postcoloniales, les études de genre, au prisme de la crise intellectuelle américaine contemporaine.

Au mois de mars, le séminaire accueille Mina Karavanta (Université nationale et kapodistrienne d’Athènes) pour 3 séances:

• 14 mars : Postcolonial Theory (after) Spivak
• 21 mars : Carte blanche to Mina: « The Coloniality of Being »
• 28 mars : Theories of Empire: about Edward Said

Conférence publique :
Migrations of the Human: Apropos the “Community of the World” and Democracies-to-Come

Lundi 20 mars, 17h00-19h00 | Amphithéâtre Jaurès, 29 rue d’Ulm | Vidéo

In Traité du Tout-Monde, Édouard Glissant draws on Caribbean poetics and his philosophy of relation to affirm the coming into being of the world as a “Chaos-monde” (Chaos-world), which arises from the explosion of “numerous cultures coming together, opposing each other, disappearing and yet surviving” thus giving shape to a “Tout-Monde” [All-World] that, while growing, is never complete (my translation; 22). In a world that appears as the “Tout-monde” of cultures, at times embracing and at other times opposing each other (Glissant 22), living with the foreigner, the stranger, the other who arrives unexpectedly, uninvited and unwelcome, and crosses borders, seas and lands, constitutes the political task of democratic politics in the present. Against the neoliberal politics that regulates the mobility and trafficking of goods and human beings by trying to appropriate the singularity of all forms of life in order to consolidate a globality of “human-consumers” [“l’humain-consomateur”] (Chamoiseau 50), a reality of a world made of numerous worlds emerges. The “Tout-monde” is made of concurrently developing collectivities and communities that resist their dispossession by remaining irregularly mobile and unaccountable to the power of state laws that often impinge on, even abrogate, basic human rights. Glissant’s “Tout-monde” (Glissant) shares eclectic affinities with what Jean-Luc Nancy and Jacques Derrida have called the “community of the world” (Nancy, “Being-in-Common” 6; Derrida, The Beast & the Sovereign II 8-9) and Achille Mbembe has identified as the “planetary entanglement”  (Out of the Dark Night). 

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Mina KARAVANTA is Associate Professor of Theory, Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, and Global English Literatures in the Department of English Language and Literature, School of Philosophy, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English Language and Literature (Arista/Distinction), National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, a Master’s degree and a Doctoral Degree in Comparative Literature, State University of New York at Binghamton. She was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship (1995); the Papadaki Fund from the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens (1995-1999); a full scholarship, Department of Comparative Literature, SUNY at Binghamton (1995-1999); the Dissertation Year Fellowship (1998-1999) and the University Award for Excellence in Research (1998-1999) from the SUNY at Binghamton.

She specializes in postcolonial and decolonial studies, critical theory, gender studies, comparative literature and Global English Literatures, and has published numerous articles in international academic journals such as boundary 2, Callaloo, Feminist Review, Modern Fiction Studies, Mosaic, Symplokē, Journal Of Contemporary Theory. Her work has also appeared in edited volumes abroad and in Greece. She has co-edited Interculturality and Gender, with Joan Anim-Addo & Giovanna Covi, (London: Mango Press, 2009) and Edward Said and Jacques Derrida: Reconstellating Humanism and the Global Hybrid, with Nina Morgan (London: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008). She has translated George Steiner’s Heidegger into Greek (Athens: Patakis, 2009), and Haris Vlavianos’s poetry into English, Affirmation: Selected Poems 1986-2006 (Dublin: Dedalus: 2007). She teaches in the undergraduate and graduate programs of the Faculty of English Language and Literature and the Interdepartmental Postgraduate Translation Program of the School of Philosophy of the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens. She has also been invited to teach in the UK, the US, France, Grenada in the Caribbean and Cyprus. From 2009 to 2014 she was a member of the interdisciplinary research group Travelling Concepts (ATHENA, European Thematic Network) and a co-ordinator of the research subgroup Interculturality and Gender. From 2011 to 2014 she was a research participant in “Behind the Looking-Glass: ‘“Other”-Cultures-within’ translating cultures,” an interdisciplinary network funded by the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Grant) and co-ordinated by Professor Joan Anim-Addo (University of London, Goldsmiths).

She is a founding member and co-editor of the peer-reviewed electronic journal Synthesis: An Anglophone Journal of Comparative Literary Studies that promotes transcultural and interdisciplinary research and features international Editorial and Academic Boards (https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/synthesis/). She has participated in international conferences and given invited talks in the US, Europe, the Caribbean and Australia.