Keynote III. Arks at Sea, Arcs of Time (William E. Connolly)

What adjustments in established debates about the character of time, culture/nature relations and mimetic processes are suggested when you treat the evental register of time to be a fundamental feature of time itself? Michel Serres, Joseph Conrad and Nidesh Lawtoo are drawn upon to help explore time as a multiplicity, thinking time to be composed of multiple temporalities moving at different speeds and on different trajectories

Conrad and the Planetary (with William Connolly)

In this online dialogue on Conrad and the Planetary (Sept. 9. 4pm CET) HOM PI Nidesh Lawtoo and political theorist William Connolly join forces to reflect on the role of reading fiction in general and Conrad’s tales of catastrophe in particular, to face planetary challenges in the Anthropocene. More information here.

Mimetic Resonances

In this Alpine talk Nidesh Lawtoo outlines critical and theoretical resonances between sound theory and mimetic theory. From Heart of Darkness to the origins of music to the sound of the heartbeat, Lawtoo outlines the duplicity of mimetic resonances from the all-too-human vulnerability to (new) fascist leaders whose voice is hollow at the core to counter-movements of anti-fascist solidarity like BLM, while situating these mimetic resonances in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic–from an Alpine distance.

Reading Conrad in Catastrophic Times: The Mimetic Turn

In this video presentation for the 2020 Joseph Conrad Society (UK) Annual Meeting shot on the Furka Pass (Swiss Alps), ERC grantee Nidesh Lawtoo introduces the relevance of Conrad’s mimetic turn to face contemporary catastrophes like (new) fascist politics, viral pandemics, and climate change in the Anthropocene. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321…

Conrad’s Shadow Wins Adam Gillon Award

We’re pleased to announce that Nidesh Lawtoo’s book Conrad’s Shadow: Catastrophe, Mimesis, Theory (MSU P, 2016) wins the Adam Gillon Award in Conrad Studies for best book of 2015-2017 (co-winner), a prize delivered by the Joseph Conrad Society of America. You can read the introduction here.