Ross Chambers Seminar TODAY 1-3pm

R O S S C H A M B E R S

Seminar
April 26th

Tuesday, April 26th, 1-3 p.m
SEMINAR with Ross Chambers
on his most recent book,Untimely Interventions: AIDS Writing, Testimonial,
and the Rhetoric of Haunting (University of Michigan Press, 2004)
French Department Library, 4229 Dwinelle
Reception to follow

In Untimely Interventions, Ross Chambers argues that a culture makes itself
civilized by denying the forms of collective violence and other traumatic
experience that it cannot control. In the context of such denial, personal
accounts of collective disaster can function as a form of counterdenial.

Chambers investigates a range of writing on AIDS, the First World War, and
the Holocaust, and explores the rhetorical effect of haunting, the sign of
counterdenial, that this writing shares. Chambers goes on to propose that
culture can be understood as a set of genres, which he defines as a set of
expectations that guide social interaction. Testimonial writing, he argues,
appropriates these genres as it evokes for readers the reality of those
experiences that their culture renders unspeakable.

Readings for Tuesday's seminar will be available in the French &
Comparative Literature Department main office, 4125 Dwinelle by April 18
and will be accessible on the French department website shortly thereafter,
at http://french.berkeley.edu.

SPONSORED BY THE PAJUS ENDOWMENT IN FRENCH STUDIES, WITH THE SUPPORT OF THE
DEPARTMENTS OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE, RHETORIC & THE CENTER FOR THE STUDY
OF SEXUAL CULTURE.

Comparative Literature and French Administrative Unit
4125 Dwinelle Hall # 2580
Berkeley, CA 94720-2580

510.642.2712

http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/complit/
http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/French/

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