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Trace(s)

Jun 29, 2016 - Jul 01, 2016
Sonja Hinrichsen “Snow Drawings 2009”, © Sonja Hinrichsen, www.sonja-hinrichsen.com

Sonja Hinrichsen “Snow Drawings 2009”, © Sonja Hinrichsen, www.sonja-hinrichsen.com

4th Annual Conference of the Collaborative Research Centre 980 Episteme in Motion at the Freie Universität Berlin

The idea of the ʻtraceʼ evokes a whole range of associations. Not only in everyday language, but also in the humanities does it occur in a bewildering number of varieties. Different theorists and movements in criticism, from Benjamin to Derrida, have given the term their various specific meanings. Traces have meaning because they refer not merely to the inevitable relationality of presence and absence, but rather embody this relationality while simultaneously appearing to be inscribing it with a temporal structure. After all, the entity to which the trace owes its existence in the first place is always already gone. At the same time, traces always require interpretation. Given the possibility of multiple and perhaps contradictory readings, the relationship between the trace and its referent is never unequivocal. By default, the act of reading a trace leads to the generation of new knowledge, or to a transfer of knowledge automatically involving an element of change. Thus, the retrospective quality of the trace cannot simply be taken for granted: On the one hand, the trace points towards the past. Yet, on the other hand, it also provides a context that motivates future actions. Especially in cases where the trace seems to reveal its origin, it often evokes a desire to return to this place of departure. Yet what appears to be a return inevitably leads directly into the future. Moreover, by connecting temporality and materiality the trace highlights the surface it has been inscribed onto. No trace can exist without a medium – its specific manifestation is ultimately the result of a dialogue with the surface or the object onto which it is inscribed.

With its 2016 Annual Conference, the CRC 980 Episteme in Motion extends an invitation to shed new light on the question of how materiality and temporality relate to each other in the context of the trace. In doing so, our objective is not merely to reiterate the manifold cultural connotations of the trace as a metaphor – instead, we seek to investigate the reflexive potential of this trope, especially in regard to the dialectics of materiality and temporality, of physical presence and history.

The attendance of the conference is free. Mandatory registration at: info@sfb-episteme.de

**** We offer a simultaneous translation for non-German speakers. ****

Programme

Wednesday, 29.06.2016

14.00

Registration    

14.30

Introduction
Gyburg Uhlmann, Spokesperson of the Collaborative Research Centre
Andrew James Johnston/Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Heads of the Concept Group „Zeit und Geschichtlichkeit“

15.00

Caroline Walker Bynum, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton:
The Need for Materiality: Christ’s Footprints and Other Absences That Act

16.00

Ananya Jahanara Kabir, King’s College London:Mojo and Mandinga: The Trace of ‘Africa’ as Episteme in Motion

17.00

Coffee break

17.30

Friedrich Vollhardt, LMU München:
Spuren in der Natur. Zur Signaturenlehre nach der Aufklärung (mit einem Exkurs zu Carlo Ginzburg)

18.30

Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, Freie Universität Berlin:
Heidegger, Derrida und die signatura rerum

19.30

Reception

 

 

Thursday, 30.6.2016

9.30

Ludger Lieb, Universität Heidelberg:
Der Spur folgen! Die Jagd, die Liebe und die materialen Spuren des Textes im Mittelalter

10.30

Claudia Reufer, Freie Universität Berlin:
Die Geste der Hand. Oberfläche und Werkprozess in den Zeichnungsbüchern Jacopo Bellinis

11.30

Coffee break

12.00

Georges Tamer, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg:
Zeitlichkeit und Geschichtlichkeit im Koran

13.00

Lunch

14.30

Nora Schmidt, Freie Universität Berlin:
Spuren verwischen: Israelitisches Gedächtnis im medinischen Koran und der Prophet als Medium der Übertragung

15.30

Kathleen Biddick, Temple University:
Freud and Mehmed II at Troy: Tracing Trauma

 

 

Friday, 01.07.2016

9.30

Richard Utz, Georgia Institute of Technology:
Tracing Residual Medievalisms

10.30

Andrew James Johnston, Freie Universität Berlin:
‘The Footprints of the Foe’: Tracks and Traces in Beowulf

11.30

Coffee break

12.00

Gyburg Uhlmann, Freie Universität Berlin:
Traces of Plato - On late Antique Commentators on Aristotle and Their Hermeneutics

13.00

Lunch

14.30

Edward Watts, University of California San Diego:
The Return of Happy Times. The Story of an Iconic Coin and a Career-Defining Panegyric

15.30

Closing discussion

Time & Location

Jun 29, 2016 - Jul 01, 2016

Harnack-Haus, Tagungsstätte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
Ihnestr. 16-20, 14195 Berlin-Dahlem