Marko Juvan at the colloquium Policing Literary Theory in Osaka

From 6 to 8 April 2014, the Committee on Literary Theory of the International Comparative Literature Association (AILC/ICLA) held its annual colloquium entitled Policing Literary Theory. The event was hosted by Takayuki Yokota Murakami at the University of Osaka. Fifteen participants from Japan, North America and Europe discussed how literature and literary theory respond to policies of maintaining order and control (policing); how the literary and theoretical discourses are embedded in these mechanisms; what is, within literature and theory, the relationship between authority and subversion; and in what respect epistemology is political, transgressive or policed. With his paper ‘The Charisma of Theory’, which outlined the predicament of academic theorists caught between their disciplinarity and the position of intellectuals in the period from socialism to global capitalism, Marko Juvan concluded his last term as a Committee member.