Program
LaConference 2018 ~ Lacan and the Environment
All talks & events take place in the Grand Luxe Hall at the Western Front, 303 East 8th Ave., Vancouver
April 6-7, 2018
Western Front, Vancouver, British Columbia
LaConference 2018 is presented by Lacan Salon; organizing committee: Clint Burnham, Paul Kingsbury. Many thanks to Simon Fraser University’s Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology ~ Faculty of Environment ~ Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences ~ Department of English ~ Department of Geography for their generous support, and to the Western Front for hosting. LaConference 2018 takes place on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
The event is free and no registration is required.
FRIDAY, April 6
7 p.m. Opening remarks: Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun
Introduction: Clint Burnham
Roundtable: What does the environment want?
Moderator: Paul Kingsbury
Participants: Todd McGowan, Cindy Zeiher, Matthew Flisfeder, Alessandra Capperdoni, Clint Burnham
Roundtable 7-9 p.m., followed by cash bar
SATURDAY, April 7
doors open 9:00: coffee & snacks
9:30 – 11:00 a.m.: Theory
chair: Clint Burnham
Paul Kingsbury: The supernatural fort-da of UFOs
Alma Krilic: The formula 'I would prefer not to' and Enjoyment in Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street”
Alois Sieben: The Land-guage of Throat Singing
Cindy Zeiher: Reversing Interpassive Environments: Neighbour as Social Gesture and Enemy as Social Duty
11:15 a.m. – 12:45 p.m.: Lack of Knowledge
chair: Hilda Fernández Alvarez
Chelsea Birks: Lovers in a Dangerous Time: A Cinematic Ethics for the Anthropocene
Juan Luis de la Mora: In Defense of the Subject
Oliver Keane: Science or pseudoscience? A Lacanian journey into Sasquatch investigation
Sasha Langford: The Psychotopology of Climate
12:45 p.m. – 2 p.m.: break for lunch
2 – 3:30 p.m.: Eco-Ideal
chair: Alma Krilic
Alessandra Capperdoni: Does the Animal Desire? Or, the Animal Question and the Lacanian Subject
Hilda Fernández Alvarez: Aokigahara Forest: An aesthetic space of the residual
Miguel Rivera: “Some people like…”: Misapprehension and Effacement of Jouissance in the Environment of Capitalism
Christine Evans: Partial Views: Cinematic Fantasies of Ecology
3:45 – 5:15 p.m.: Apocalypse
chair: Paul Kingsbury
Tamas Nagypal: Man and His World Frozen: The Feminine Topology of the Snowpocalypse in Robert Altman’s Quintet
Calum Matheson: Desiring the End: Environmental Apocalypse and a Sense of the Real
Nathan Gorelick: Psychoanalysis at the End of the World
Matthew Flisfeder: From the Sublime to the Hysterical: Reading the “End of the World” Thesis Against the “General Intellect”
6 p.m.: Keynote address by Todd McGowan: Self-Destruction and the Natural World
introduced by Clint Burnham