[MGSA-L] Princeton Hellenic Studies Workshop: December 4, 2015

[Dimitri H. Gondicas]

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies



Workshop


'Deconstructing' Christianity in Fin-de-siècle Poetry: Cavafy and Rimbaud

Vasiliki Dimoula
vasiliki at princeton.edu<mailto:vasiliki at princeton.edu>
Open University of Cyprus
Stanley J. Seeger Visiting Research Fellow, Hellenic Studies



Respondent: Effie Rentzou, French and Italian


This paper places fin-de-siècle poetry in dialogue with philosophical insights that suggest, from a variety of perspectives, a distinctive connection between Christianity and the flesh, 'touch' and enjoyment (Hegel, Nancy, Esposito, Lacan, Foucault, Rancière, Didi-Huberman). My major points of reference will be C.P. Cavafy and Arthur Rimbaud. The distinctively modern poetics of (homo)sexuality and Christian allusions in Cavafy's work have usually been discussed as parallel questions in scholarship.  The suggested reconsideration of the 'religious problem' in Cavafy establishes a connection between the two. In both Cavafy and Rimbaud, Christianity plays an unsettling role in the elaboration of physical pleasure, in texts where the affect of 'disgust' expresses at once the Christian legacy of guilt and the urge to overcome it from within. Albeit in different ways, both poets effect a 'deconstruction' of Christianity which does not exclude the flesh, as in the relevant philosophical project developed mainly by Jean Luc Nancy, but implies its redefinition in ways that are relevant to society and politics. Allusions to early Christian texts in my presentation will uncover a Christian genealogy of this notion of the flesh.
Vasiliki Dimoula received her first degree in Philology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (2002) and her MA (2004) and PhD (2008) at King's College London (Department of Comparative Literature). She has been awarded scholarships from the State Scholarships Foundation of Greece, the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation and the Fulbright Foundation. In 2011-2012 she worked as a visiting lecturer at the University of Cyprus and was an adjunct lecturer at the Open University of Cyprus from 2012 to 2015. She is currently affiliated as a postdoctoral fellow at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Her academic interests include classical reception, the history of medicine and the intersections of psychoanalysis, literature and culture. A revised and expanded version of her thesis (Human and More than Human: The Problematics of Lyric Poetry, Ancient and Modern) was published in English by the Kostas and Helen Ouranis Foundation (Athens, 2014).


Friday, December 4, 2015

1:30 p.m.

Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103





Supported by The Christos G. and Rhoda Papaioannou Modern Greek Studies Fund
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