November 13, 2014
Kanost to present Modern Languages' Signatures Lecture on literary, linguistic and cultural matters
Laura Kanost, associate professor of modern languages, will present a Modern Languages' Signatures Lecture on literary, linguistic and cultural matters at 4 p.m. Friday, Nov. 14, in the Hemisphere Room of Hale Library.
The title of the lecture is "Mental Illness Through the Lens of Disability in 'El infarto del alma,' or Soul’s Infarct, 1994"
"El infarto del alma," by Diamela Eltit and Paz Errázuriz, Chile, 1994, has been interpreted both as an affirmation of solidarity that lends a voice to its disenfranchised mentally ill subjects and as a visual offering and a cultural product accessible only to the elite.
Influenced by the field of disability studies, this presentation examines "El infarto del alma" as a catalog of conventional, objectifying discourses of madness and the asylum: conflations of madness and love, madness and resistance, and the asylum and sociopolitical control. The lecture also will discuss the text's juxtaposition of these discourses in the context of broader issues of subjectivity and power in representations of marginalized others.