18/11/2017
Rita Felski gave a brilliant talk 'Art and Attunement' to the assembled Postcolonial seminar on Thursday in which she thought aloud about using actor-network theory to try to account for moments when an art work (Matisse, a Joni Mitchell song, a cat video, a poem) grabs us in a way we weren't grabbed before. Why is that? how do we become attuned? An unprecedentedly large audience came to hear her and engage in a lively Q and A about elitism, cultural difference, and the logic of capitalism, among other topics. What a fitting close to the academic strand of the Writers Make Worlds series which has explored the different ways in which we turn to books, a paper on engagement that was itself incredibly engaging! Chaired by Elleke Boehmer, photo credit Ankhi Mukherjee.