CUTTING REMARKS: THINKING THE POETICS OF RUPTURE (CAESURA -CÉSURE - ZÄSUR)

In the uncanny grey-on-grey of the historico-political conjuncture in which we find ourselves within the Humanities—if not, more broadly, within western democratic polities—the three participants involved in this panel each propose to approach, scrutinize, and trouble the aesthetic, political and theoretical figure, or temporalities, of the rupture; of the potential modes of meaningfulness, the ways we might measure and make sense of that which is involved in the motif of the break — in the timing of pause and excess, of abeyances and enjambments, of contretemps and becomings. Each coming from a different methodological signature, ranging from critical theory and philosophy to poetics and literary criticism, we propose to mark this event with a thought about what might lay on the other side of the cut, what historical, political, linguistic, and conceptual forms might remain open to thought after the césure.