In a Rut closes our year-long discussion of being out of control, initiated last November with Losing It: Families, Chaos, and the Arts of Attention, and continued in February with Rolling the Dice: The Art of Chance. In a Rut focuses on manifestations of non-sovereignty that take the form not of disorder but of a felt excess of order, particularly in the repetition of ordinary actions and events. We ask: When and how is ordinariness or even roteness deadening and when and how is it a source of novelty or buoyant excess? Must critical work always stake out a position of antagonism to the given? How is ritual repetition and mimesis productive of novelty, excitement, feeling? What are the different ways of inhabiting habit, or of routing routine? What are our ruts contingent upon, how do they continually get re-dug as the same? Are they ever really the same?
Conference Curators:
- Judith Farquhar, University of Chicago
- Joseph P. Masco, University of Chicago
- Pathcen Markell, University of Chicago
9:30am — Coffee, Continental Breakfast
10:00am — Welcome and Introductions
Patchen Markell, Joe Masco, Judith Farquhar
10:30am — “On Being Rutted”
Joe Masco
11:00am — “Enchanting Catastrophe: Slow Disaster at the Digital Edge”
Jackie Orr
12:30pm — Lunch
1:30pm — “Climbing Jacob’s Ladder”
Judith Farquhar
2:00pm — Diane Nelson
3:30pm — Break
4:00pm — “In a Groove”
Patchen Markell
4:30pm — “Against Creativity”
Kennan Ferguson
6:00pm — Reception
