Novels of the Contemporary Extreme Colloquium at U of Rhode Island, USAThis Honors seminar, taught by Alain-Philippe Durand and Naomi Mandel at the University of Rhode Island, investigates an element that is currently emerging in contemporary literature across the globe: the contemporary extreme. Novels of the contemporary extreme are set in a world both similar to and different from our own -- a hyperreal, often apocalyptic world progressively invaded by popular culture, permeated with technology, and dominated by destruction, a reality in which time and space are zones to be inhabited, not obstacles to be overcome, and in which the subject is composed of fragments, dissected by difference, and evacuated by affect. In this world violence -- often the most stable element -- operates as ethos. In the course of this semester, we will read contemporary extreme novels from the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East. We will meet authors of these works, talk to scholars who write about them, and investigate some of the philosophical issues they engage.
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