The title “The Arts of Autonomy” overturns the familiar dictum of “The Autonomy of Art” and seeks to address a number of recent and pervasive transformations both in the philological humanities and in the European and American public spheres. In recent years, the concept of autonomy has benefited from a spectacular surge of interest both within the social and political sciences and in European and American political discourse. While, by and large, the humanities tacitly subscribe to the horizon of democratic political participation, attempts at a more concrete definition of the modes of such a participation remain allusive at best. In contemporary political discourse, on the other hand, the term autonomy has been drawn upon to vindicate several, sometimes mutually exclusive endeavors: territorial independence, direct democracy, the privatization of human resources management in the public sector, the nationalization of tertiary services, the divestment of core banking services from finance corporations, the enactment of a European educational ideal along the lines of Kantian “Autonomie,” and the self-governance, that is, neo-liberalization of institutions of higher education.

This project sets out to examine current claims for political “autonomy” with the tools of literary theory and philology. For historical and theoretical reasons, contemporary conceptions of political autonomy routinely draw upon notions and argumentative patterns first developed as either aesthetic or philological categories. This project hence asserts that the philological humanities can play a central role in the elaboration, historicization, critique and support of political autonomy currently prevalent in the public sphere. This project takes seriously the premise of an identifiable discursive order that is prevalent in claims for autonomy, and proposes to test the tools of the philological humanities within the framework of contemporary debates around the legitimacy of popular attempts to secure sovereignty.

This event is open to all and free to attend, booking is not required.