The Second Postgraduate Symposium of the Comparative Literature Association of Ireland builds on the success of last year's event. The conference is open not only to the broad community of postgraduate students in Comparative Literature, but also to all those who may be considering engaging in study or research in the field.
Presentations, in English, will last 20 minutes, with 10 minutes for discussion. PowerPoint facilities will be available.

To register (free of charge), please contact Marion Dalvai ( dalvaim@tcd.ie ) by Tuesday, November 24. REGISTRATION, AND THE OPENING 2 SESSIONS ARE IN THE SCHOOL OF NURSING, GAS COMPANY BUILDING, D'OLIER STREET, DUBLIN . SESSION 3 MOVES TO FOSTER PLACE (ENTRANCE BESIDE BANK OF IRELAND). THE SATURDAY SESSIONS ARE IN THE ARTS BUYILDING, TRINITY COLLEGE MAIN CAMPUS. See http://www.tcd.ie/Maps/

PROGRAMME & ABSTRACTS

FRIDAY 27 NOVEMBER 2009

2p.m.        Registration and welcome (Brigitte Le Juez)

2.30 – 4 p.m.    Parallel Session 1    Chair: Marion Dalvai

Sarah Gubbins Trinity College Dublin	Inheritance and innovation in Nerval's references to the visual arts
Elena Ciocoiu Paris IV – Sorbonne	Tracy Chevalier's poetics of detail in Girl with a Pearl Earring
Bevin Doyle Dublin City University	Visual art and mythology in John Banville's novels

2.30 – 4 p.m.    Parallel Session 2    Patricia Garcia

Charlene O'Kane University of Ulster Coleraine	Representations of Adolescence in Modern and Contemporary Literature
Mila Milani University of Manchester	Cesare Pavese's Translation of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Omar Baz Radwan Dublin City University	Rintrah meets the Madman: “Prophetic vision” and Social Satire in Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Gibran's The Madman

4-4.30 p.m.    Coffee break

4.30 – 5.30 p.m. Session 3      Chair: Michael Pyper

Zara Blake Dublin City University	The Symbiotic Relationship between Literature and the Arts in Pádraic Ó Conaire and Franz Kafka
Anat Danziger University of Jerusalem	Writing on the Flesh, the Allegorical Art: A New Perspective on Kafka's In the Penal Colony

SATURDAY 28 NOVEMBER 2009 - ROOM 4050B, ARTS BUILDING, TCD

9.30 – 11 a.m.    Session 4    Chair: Caitríona Leahy

Saima Khan University of Ulster Coleraine	Mysticism in Seamus Heaney's poetry
Alexandra Tauvry Trinity College Dublin	Trompe l'oeil in Paul Muldoon's poetry: From Ekphrasis to Catharsis
Vladimir Martinovski University of Skopje	Aspects of Ekphrastic Poetry in Baudelaire, Williams, Janevski, Urosevic, Ashbery and Bonnefoy

11 -11.30 a.m.    Coffee break

11.30a.m. -12.30p.m.    Session5    Chair: Jean-Philippe Imbert

Manya Elrick University of Ulster Coleraine	The Messianic Connection – An Exploration of the Levinasian intertext in the work of the poet Erich Fried
Gillian Thomson University of Ulster Coleraine	The Body

Manus O'Dwyer University of Santiago de Compostela

Making the Word Flesh: Emergence in Bio-Art and Poetry

12.30p.m. – 2p.m.    Lunch break

2p.m. – 3p.m.        Plenary   Chair: Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin

Joe McMinn University of Ulster Coleraine

Comparative Studies and Competitive Judgements: An Overview of Language and the Sister-Arts

3p.m. – 3.45p.m.         Workshop 1

Victoria Ríos Castaño University of Ulster, Magee Campus

How to get published

3.45 – 4.15p.m.         Coffee break

4.15 – 5p.m.        Workshop 2

Brigitte Le Juez Dublin City University

Methodology of Comparative research

 

ABSTRACTS OF CONTRIBUTIONS

Sarah Gubbins, Trinity College Dublin

Inheritance and Innovation in Gérard de Nerval's references to the Visual Arts

Nerval's writings present tensions between the exploitation of a literary and cultural heritage with which he identifies, and the necessity of transforming it in order to articulate his own experiences.   This is evident in the fusion and subversion of genres in his prose works.   This paper will examine the interplay between inheritance and innovation in Nerval's allusions to the visual arts.  

Some have argued that Nerval uses visual artworks as convenient stores of knowledge.   By referring to them, he can immediately conjure up an atmosphere, character or scene and avoid unnecessary description.   Such references draw on an inherited visual culture that was assumed to be common to all educated readers, and often contain clues that foreshadow future developments.   For example, in Corilla , when Marcelli compares the title character to Caravaggio's Judith , he hints at her dangerousness; she will eventually deceive both Fabbio and himself.  

Although Nerval draws on the descriptive and suggestive potential of inherited pictorial references, he also exploits the work of painters who questioned the boundaries of traditional genres, such as Watteau.   By combining elements of landscape and history painting, Watteau was instrumental in the gradual breaking down of the rigid divisions between genres that existed in France until the eighteenth century.   Voyage à Cythère , which is central to Nerval's Sylvie , is an example of a new genre of painting invented by Watteau, the fête galante .     I will discuss Nerval's references to Watteau's paintings in the context of his own undermining of traditional literary genres.   I will argue that in taking inspiration from Watteau, Nerval fuses his divergent impulses towards embracing past artistic traditions and interrogating their limits.

Elena Ciocoiu, Centre d'Étude de la Langue et de la Littérature Française des XVIIème et XVIIIème siècles-University Paris IV-Sorbonne

Tracy Chevalier's Poetics of Detail in Girl with a Pearl Earring

This paper aims at analyzing   Tracy Chevalier's poetics of detail in Girl with a Pearl Earring (London, HarperCollins, 2003) and at demonstrating that Daniel Arasse study Le Détail: Pour une histoire rapprochée de la peinture/Detail: For a Close History of Painting (Paris, Flammarion,1996) can be a very effective methodological tool when interpreting ekphrasis in literature.

In Tracy Chevalier's novel, ekphrasis , defined by Hermogenes of Tarsus as “an account in detail visible…bringing before one's eyes what is to be shown…” (Donald Lemen Clark, Rhetoric in Greco-Roman Education , New York, Greenwood,1957, p. 202), is not an ornamental or auxiliary trope, but a central one. Tracy Chevalier's poetics of detail in Girl with a Pearl Earring has a documentary value: Daniel Arasse explains the importance of details in the technique of 17 th century Dutch painters by referring to the socioeconomic status of painters (Arasse, p.185), to their interest in a scientific approach of reality (Arasse, p. 188). In Tracy Chevalier's novel, details are intimately invested (Arasse, p. 242) by Griet, the main character, who notices many iconic and pictural details. Iconic and pictural details (Arasse, p.11-12) are frequent in literary texts inspired by paintings. The fact that in Girl with a Pearl Earring details function not only as elements, but also as   a series of events, of moments of the paintings, as emblems of their creation and of their perception (Arasse, p.12-13), can help the comparative literature researcher to problematize the relationship between literature and painting; in 2003, in a interview (published on www.essentialvermeer.com) Tracy Chevalier said: “I would say the fundamental difference [i.e.between literature and painting] is temporal. A painting is about a moment, a book is about a sweep of time […] A painting is about what we see and how we respond to a moment. The power and beauty of Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring is that in a such a seemingly simple painting he has extended a moment so that we think about her long after we've stopped looking at her. She contains much more in her face that one single moment of time.

 

Bevin Doyle, Dublin City University

Visual art and Mythology in the novels of John Banville

Irish author John Banville makes extensive use of visual art in his work.   In The Newton Letter, first published in 1982, an engagement with visual art emerges in this author's work which continues unabated, up to and including his most recent novel, The Infinities.

Frequently, Banville evokes visual artworks not merely by referring to a painting, a sculpture, or an artist, but by means of the literary device of ekphrasis, thereby adding a considerable richness and depth to his appropriation of visual art.  

Very often, paintings that the author employs ekphrastically have a mythological theme.    In this paper, I examine how the mythological motifs in Banville's work are mediated through paintings and sculpture, and how the author merges classical mythology and the classical device of ekphrasis in his novels,   with particular reference to Athena and The Infinities.

Keywords: Painting; Sculpture; Ekphrasis; Mythology; Banville

Charlene O'Kane, University of Ulster Coleraine

Representations of Adolescence in Modern and Contemporary Literature

My research is concerned with the representation of adolescence in modern and contemporary literature. Broadly speaking, these representations of adolescence tend to be overtly negative and gender specific. Male adolescent characters for example, are often seen using violence as a means of obtaining power and control. Vernon God Little , Hey Nostradamus! and We Need to Talk About Kevin are just a few contemporary novels which depict violently disturbed adolescents involved in high school shootings. Female adolescents on the other hand, are commonly represented as sexually promiscuous, using their newfound sense of sexuality as a method of domination. I will argue that these young females are represented as being emotionally ill-equipped to adequately cope with their developing sexuality - and the subversion of this sexuality results in non-normative, socially destructive behaviour, in particular, incestuous relationships as seen in the novels The War Zone , Flowers in the Attic and The Cement Garden . Taking into account the various levels of consciousness at work in these novels (including character and author), my paper will ultimately argue that these commonplace representations of violent and destructive adolescents are resultant of a suppressed adult anxiety regarding the developing of the adolescent's autonomy.

Mila Milani, University of Manchester

Cesare Pavese, “visible” translator of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man during Fascism

1933 Pavese's translation of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man gets into the discussion on the dynamics between the regime's narrow nationalist agenda in force in italy in the ‘30s and the need for enlivening the Italian literary environment (Billiani 2007).

As stated by Venuti (Venuti 1995), as a matter of fact, the translation acquires not only a cultural value but it turns out to be a political practice as well, since it could either assert or break the discursive values of the target culture, according to “visible” or “invisible” translating choices.

The research carried out on both the publishing policies and the reception of the target text brings to the conclusion that choosing the Modernist innovations of Joyces' work, rejected by the Italian critics at that time, represents for Pavese the first step towards “visibility”.

From a thorough analysis of the translation, the hypothesis of Pavese being a “visible” translator is reinforced, then. He opts for non-standard solutions which provoke a sense of disorientation in the reader, especially when he translates slang terms. Pavese thus brings new stylistic patterns into the contemporary Italian prose, suggesting a real breach and broadening.

Therefore, far from being an “impolitical man”, Pavese appears instead to be a cultural operator attentive to the foreign literatures which could modernize the Italian literary outlook and committed in the Italian cultural issues, in order to break the nationalist rhetoric's. This is thus true not only as far as Pavese's interest in American literature is concerned, which critical literature has already deeply analyzed, but also for the less explored Anglo-Irish context of his translations, as I will explain.

Omar Baz Radwan, Dublin City University

Rintrah meets the Madman: “Prophetic Vision” and Social Satire in Blake's “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” and Gibran's The Madman

This paper analyses Kahlil Gibran's reception of William Blake's “Marriage of Heaven and Hell”, in his collection of poetry and parables The Madman (1918).   I will particularly focus on Gibran's use of Blake's philosophical ideas, and the impact they had in the construction of his poetry.

Both poets criticised social norms, both in their life and through their works. In this paper I investigate the concept of social satire and religious satire and their ramifications in the works of two poets from diverse cultural approaches. The concept of "social/religious satire" is analyzed from the different perspectives of the philosophical, poetic, artistic and religious apprehensions in the work and approach of both poets. In so doing, I will on the one hand specify the relevance, purpose, and role of satire in the works of Gibran and Blake, and on the other hand establish how it relates to poetry as an art form, both in terms of content and structure.

What the two men shared is not to be resolved or determined in a study of influence or literary indebtedness, but to be assessed in terms of the acute prophetic vision which they both had. Hage (2002) combines the nature of prophecy in each poet, the scope of the prophetic common grounds, and the realization of the prophetic vision. I will focus on the influence of prominent ideas of the time on both poets and on their work in which they attack the destructive forces of religious ideology of the time, the industrial revolution and social norms. I will show how both poets speak out against the teachings of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity in their work, and are influenced by the events of their time. Blake amongst other Romantic writers ‘saw the Revolution in France as a rising in support of Freedom, one of the most sublime ideals to which the human heart could aspire' (Cranston 1994 p51).   The Marriage is based on this revolutionary emphasis of change, symbolized by the French Revolution. Gibran, on the other hand, became more actively involved in the politics of the day, especially with the onset of World War I. His poems and parables in The Madman reflect Blakean influences and Gibran's ideals.

Zara Blake, Trinity College Dublin

The Symbiotic Relationship between Literature and the Arts in Pádraic Ó'Conaire's and Franz Kafka

Literature and the arts enjoy a symbiotic relationship. Poets and prose writers alike have borrowed from other forms of artistic expression in an effort to create something equally masterful. This can create a link between one kind of artist and another; an imagined, ethereal community is, perhaps, created for the lone poet or writer. As well as creating a sense of artistic heritage, allusions to the arts in literature can also serve as reflective exercise. By imaging an alien creative process, a writer may be afforded the opportunity to consider their own craft. This kind of reflection through another is, arguably, at the heart of comparative literature. By mirroring the literature and art of one culture onto another, new meanings and interpretations may be found within both cultures, creating a new, imagined community that permeates political, linguistic and cultural boundaries.

Irish language writings are rarely considered beyond the realms of national identity, patriotism and language preservation. However, many authors who selected the language as their chosen medium did not, necessarily seek validation for their work in similar terms. Like other European writers, Irish authors explored the merit of their work by drawing upon other forms of artistic expression that traversed cultural boundaries. An example of this is clearly seen in the works of Pádraic Ó Conaire, in particular ‘Ná lig sinn i gcathú' and Deoraíocht. Ó Conaire's decision to explore the art of sculpting and dramatics are unusual within the Irish context and pose perplexing questions surrounding his selection. Writing during the same period (and under similar conditions), Franz Kafka made unusual choices when he considered the artistic process and its effects in ‘Josefine, the Singer' and ‘The Hunger Artist'. By comparing these texts in light of the political and cultural backgrounds of the authors, we may gain a new understanding of the relationship between literature and the arts and find that the engagement with other art forms creates an essential community for authors marooned on the periphery of divergent cultures.  

Anat Danziger, University of Jerusalem

Writing on the Flesh, the Allegorical Art: A New Perspective on Kafka's In the Penal Colony

A significant part in Kafka's oeuvre is dedicated to ars-poetic questions about the essence of art and the role of the artist in the modern world. However, these questions only seldom arise in the interpretation and critique of In the Penal Colony (In der Strafkolonie) . This text is thought of either as an allegory about the law and its mechanisms; or as dealing with problems of suffering and the body in pain - especially after M. Norris' offer to dis-allegorize the text and locate it in the field of sadism and masochism.  

I suggest placing the theme of art and the artist figure at the center of a new reading. This perspective will be grounded by a critical return to allegory, as it is seen through the eyes of Walter Benjamin; as the sign of destruction and atrophy, a polyphonic grief over the lost harmony between function and meaning. In taking this hermeneutical turn, I summon a detail rarely discussed by commentators; the labyrinth, which appears in disguise, as an adjective to account for the difficulty of reading and understanding. Notwithstanding the tempting power of this grammatical guise, the labyrinth emblem takes us on a Theseus quest in between the lines of Kafka's masterpiece and to the depth of the written flesh - the complimentary visual-graphic masterpiece of the officer, Kafka's artistic doppelganger.  

Yet finally, what we shall find at the heart of the maze is not a harmonic metaphysical meaning as in the romantic symbol; not even the desperate but decipherable meaning of lack, of the absence of God or a proper transcendental replacement - an absence that stands at the core of modern artistic experience. At the core of the labyrinth, I argue, we shall discover a torn script, a Minotaur of piled words, the hybrid monster which is the sign of allegory. I will follow these drifted scripts with the Ariadne's thread of redundancy experience, as it is expressed in the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion, and will demonstrate how this experience links together the written body, the allegorical structure and postmodern artistic phenomena.

Saima Khan, Unversity of Ulster, Coleraine

Mysticism in Seamus Heaney's Poetry

The paper aims to draw a comparison between Heaney's transcendental approach and the Eastern mystical philosophy of Sufism. Though examples of comparative study in this field are very scant, it is clear that people with a knowledge of both areas, are beginning to see the connection. In 2002 for instance, in Journal of Consciousness Studies , R. Johnson in ‘Poetics of Emptiness' refers to the parallel areas between Heaney's poetry and the poetry of the twelfth century Sufi poet, Hafiz. In the book Risking Everything: 110 poems of Love and Revelation , published in 2003, Heaney's poetry appears alongside that of another famous Sufi poet, Rumi.

This paper will focus on Heaney's creative experiences which are interestingly very similar to the mystical experiences narrated by the Sufis and Sufi philosophers. Heaney's cognisance of a higher reality, magical and mysterious states of forgetfulness, expression of his humility, ideas of connectivity, all correspond to experiences narrated by the Sufis. Similarities can also be traced between Heaney's perception of the figure of the poet as a necessary redressive agent in his society and the Sufis' deep sense of civic duty and social responsibility. Sufi vision and the vision of the poet (as defined by Heaney in The Redress of Poetry ) also have a similar function in society.

  It is, however, by no means, the intention of this paper that Heaney's poetry is directly influenced by Sufi thought. There is no evidence that Heaney ever read Sufi poetry or philosophy in detail. His poetry is steeped in Catholic images and allusions. However, the paper will outline the possible, indirect sources through which the Sufi strain has reached his poetry. Among these the most important and significant source appears to be Dante's Divine Comedy which Heaney appears to have read thoroughly and which has very obvious similarities with the Sufi bent of mind.

Alexandra Tauvry, Trinity College Dublin

Trompe l'œil in Paul Muldoon's poetry: from ekphrasis to catharsis

The Northern Irish poet Paul Muldoon has always been a prolific writer and shelves of bookshops and libraries are covered with his books under the letter 'M'. Critics are constantly on the look out for some new 'Muldoonian material' synonymous with experimentation and verbal shrewdness.   His work ranges from poems to plays, librettos as well as books for children. His latest collection of poetry entitled Plan B is yet another genre that brings another dimension to his work, resulting from a collaboration with the Scottish photographer Norman McBeath. Does the title Plan B suggest an alternative to a former 'Plan A'? Has Paul Muldoon decided to direct his poetry towards more visual horizons? Is his poetry to be read or seen? These questions reveal the complexity of this hybridity. Muldoon, far from being a novice, has already experimented with the visual arts such as painting. My aim will be to focus on the interaction that takes place between his poems and paintings, whether these are in abstencia or in praesentia. The simultaneous and multiple readings of the poetic text tend to create an effet trompe l'oeil. Indeed, Muldoon's verbal mischief and encyclopaedic knowledge blur the thin line separating text and image. The poet engages in a subtle and clever dialogue with works of arts such as those of his fellow countryman, the Belfast-born painter, Dermot Seymour. Seymour's oblique and symbolical imagery - as well as the ubiquitous sectarian backdrop of Northern Ireland - are mirrored in the poet's skilful use of language. Nonetheless, the ekphrastic quality of some of Muldoon's poems goes far beyond the mere interaction text/image; it becomes a way of expressing past trauma. This cathartic effect enables the poet to verbalize some of his own obsessions by subverting language and by exceeding its inadequacy and limitations.

Vladimir Martinovski, University Ss. Cyril and Methodius, Skopje

Aspects of the Ekphrastic Poetry: C. Baudelaire, W. C. Williams, S. Janevski, V. Urosevic, J. Ashbery, and Y. Bonnefoy

From the most ancient monuments of literature to most recent, one finds the process of ekphrasis - description of real or imaginary plastic art works.

The main subject of our comparative study are the ekphrastic poetic works of six poets belonging to three linguistic zones and thus to three different literary traditions: the French poets Charles Baudelaire and Yves Bonnefoy, the American poets William Carlos Williams and John Ashbery and the Macedonian poets Slavko Janevski and Vlada Urosevic.

The aim of the research is not only to determine the dominant models of ekphrasis in their poetry, but also to clarify some theoretical aspects of the description of plastic art works: the generic statute of an ekphrastic text; the hermeneutic dimension of the ekphrasis and the intersemiotic, intertextual and metatextual communication/transposition. The semantics of the poetic text is inseparable from the bond with the works of fine arts, which represent the object of literary description.

Key words: ekphrasis, literature and arts, description, image, interpretation, intersemiotic transposition, inter-artistic relation

Manya Elrick, University of Ulster at Coleraine

The Messianic Connection - An exploration of the Levinasian intertext in the work of the poet Erich Fried

This paper correlates the work of Jewish-Austrian poet Erich Fried (1921-1988) and the French philosopher and Talmudic scholar Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995). Fried was born in Vienna to Jewish parents in 1921, took refuge in Britain in 1938 and lived there as a British Citizen until his death in 1988. He was mainly published in Germany, where he played an active public role during the 1960s and 1970s. Emmanuel Levinas was a Lithuanian-born Jew, who was naturalised in France in 1930, where his work in philosophy, phenomenology and ethics was received with widespread commendation.

The paper traces Levinasian intertext in Fried's literary oeuvre, particularly in relation to Fried's political poetry. The discourse of ethics serves as one of the meta-narratives in a number of Fried's poetry collections and essays, such as and Vietnam and. Fried's tendency to express political and moral issues through literary activism finds a fitting counterpart in Levinas's moral philosophy incorporating Jewish ethics and radical views on the responsibility to one's fellow beings (his 'phenomenology of the face'). Another point of similarity is the inclination of both authors to employ a diachronic perspective in their writings. Jewish spirituality and hermeneutics play a significant role both in Fried's engaged poetry and Levinas's philosophical writings. Fried's thirst for justice, in its fusion of morality and political engagement evokes a Levinasian attempt to permeate politics with a moral code, in an effort to impede politics giving in to tyranny in the absence of ethics.

Subsequently, as a point of divergence, it is suggested that Fried's work is formally dissimilar, since it broaches ethical concerns in verses, using documentary material and verbatim quotations. On the other hand, Levinas's musings on moral philosophy are presented in a series of theoretical works and confessional writings.

In conclusion, parallels are drawn between the origin of Fried's and Levinas's anxieties, the status of a witness they both claim in their oeuvre and moments of revelation saturated with an exigency that makes both Fried's and Levinas's ethical impulse unconditional.

Gillian Thomson, University of Ulster, Coleraine

The Body

Currently researching the women of the Beat generation, my paper draws from academic pursuits in areas such as corporeal feminism, poststructuralism, women's writing and post-war American literature. The paper examines specific female authors from the Beat generation, arguing that they were innovators of poststructuralist ideas before it came to the fore with the publications of theorists such as Judith Butler and Julia Kristeva. Male Beat authors such as Kerouac or Ginsberg are widely accredited, but few would recognise the works of Diane di Prima or Lenore Kandel. This paper addresses female authors of the Beat Generation and their significant, though often under-estimated, contributions to this distinctive genre of writing. Specifically, the title of the paper is 'The Body' and it looks at Western notions regarding the body, such as the idolisation of the phallus and the general air of mystery and uncertainty which governs the Western conception of the female body. It will be argued that the female Beats revise and indeed disrupt these Western tropes in various ways, displaying familiar poststructuralist 'traits' throughout their literature.

Manus O Dwyer, University of Santiago de Compostela

Making the Word Flesh: Emergence in bio-art and poetry

The concept of emergence, the question as to how emergent entities or substances arise from original fundamental entities is, to use Mieke Bal's terminology, a “travelling concept” that we use to think about the phenomenon of life. Within Christianity, emergence is understood in terms of the logos , the divine word made flesh in the mystery of the incarnation. This trope is echoed in the writing of Spanish poet José Ángel Valente and his desire to experience the origins of language in the “materiality” of the word. New “bio-art”, such as that of Eduardo Kac, also explores this idea. His piece from 1999, “ Genesis ” , is based on translating a biblical quote: “ Let man have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth ” (Gen. 1:28) into morse code and later into DNA base pairs. The resulting gene was then incorporated into bacteria and shown in a gallery- a literal incarnation of the word. Also “bio-artists”, The Tissue Culture and Art Project's angel wing sculptures, grown from pig cell tissue, remind us of the divine and point to a contextualisation of their work. The obvious imprint of human design on the natural fulfils what Eugene Thacker describes as bio-philosophy ' s desire to “ renew vitalism in order to purge it of all theology ” . If Carl Schmitt ' s conception of politics as secularised theology is valid, then the notions of origins and emergence implied in these works can be read in terms of their significance to contemporary bio-politics.