[SydPhil] University of Wollongong Agora Seminar Series: P. Kishore Saval (ACU)

[Elena Walsh]

Dear all,



The third seminar in this semester's Agora series
<https://url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/m_KNCZY1NqiokDnWYTzf4cBs-hp?domain=uow.edu.au>
will be:


*Dr. P. Kishore Saval** (ACU)*

*The Observed Observer: Hamlet and Merleau-Ponty*


Thursday, March 27, 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm

The University of Wollongong, Keiraville campus


Building 20, Room 4



*Abstract:*

Ophelia calls Hamlet “Th’observed of all observers” (3. 1. 156).  Ophelia’s
line may mean that Hamlet is the most observed of all those who observe.
Or it may mean that all observers observe him.  But this remark interests
me because of a phenomenological problem: that all observers are observed,
even when they are alone.  In fact, it is more precise to say that there is
no such thing as observation at all, if by “observation” we mean a neutral,
disinterested form of attention that does not partly constitute, and is not
partly affected by, that upon which it attends. This simultaneous capacity
to affect and be affected is actually a kind of divergence that opens the
observer in two.  In Hamlet, observers are divided from themselves because
they are tangible from where they touch, visible from where they see, and
hearable from where they speak. Although these reversible dimensions of our
experience necessarily envelop one another, they can never coincide with
one another.  In this regard, Hamlet has an unexpected affinity with the
thinking of Merleau-Ponty, whose entire later philosophy is dedicated to
exploring “the coiling over of the visible upon the seeing body, of the
tangible upon the touching body, which is attested when the body sees
itself, touches itself seeing and touching the things, such that,
simultaneously, as tangible it descends among them, as touching it
dominates them all and draws this relationship and even this double
relationship from itself, by dehiscence or fission of its own mass.” In my
talk, Merleau-Ponty reads Hamlet, and reversibly, Hamlet reads
Merleau-Ponty, in order to explore what it means to make seeing visible.



*Bio:*

Kishore Saval is Senior Lecturer in the Western Civilisation Program at
Australian Catholic University.  Formerly, among other appointments, he was
Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at Brown
University.  He has a J.D. in law from the University of California at
Berkeley School of Law, and a Ph.D in English Literature from Harvard
University.  In addition to other publications, he is the author of two
books: *Reading Shakespeare through Philosophy *(Routledge, 2014), and
*Shakespeare
in Hate *(Routledge, 2016).


All are very welcome and there is no need to register. This is an in-person
event.


Best wishes,

Elena

-- 

*Dr. Elena Walsh*

Lecturer

School of Liberal Arts

Faculty of the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities | 94.19

University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia

*T *+61 2 4220 5692

*W *elenawalsh.squarespace.com
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