"The Other Side of Reason: the History of Madness Today," Humanities Institute, SUNY Buffalo, October 31-November 1, 2008.

Taking its inspiration from the recent publication of the complete English translation of Michel Foucault’s History of Madness, this conference aims to examine various histories of madness and what “madness” means today. Foucault reinvented history as a discourse capable of articulating the intimate yet hostile relationship between madness and reason, especially on the far side of the most ambitious attempts to uphold rationality as the basis of human institutions. The questions raised by History of Madness seem especially timely in an era that increasingly invokes “reason” to adjudicate unforeseen ethical and political crises. Yet the urgency of contemporary predicaments all too easily rationalizes the speedy elimination of “madness,” thereby prompting a return to forms of violent confinement—such as “indefinite detention”—that were the object of Foucault’s original critique. Mindful of this critique, our conference seeks to think through manifestations of madness that remain inseparable from its “others,” whether understood as reason, civilization, philosophy, normalcy, law, the university, and so on. . . . Conference Schedule: Friday, October 31 9:30 a.m. Registration, Center for the Arts, North Campus 9:50 a.m. Welcome, Tim Dean, Department of English, Director, Humanities Institute, UB and Bruce McCombe, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 10:00-11:30 a.m. Elizabeth Lunbeck Departments of History and Psychiatry Vanderbilt University "Narcissism Normalized: Heinz Kohut's Psychoanalytic Revolution" Moderator: Susan Cahn, Department of History, UB 11:45 a.m. - 1:15 p.m. Guy Le Gaufey Psychoanalyst, École Lacanienne de Psychoanalysis, Paris "Knitting Foucault, Purling Foucault" Moderator: Steven Miller, Department of English, UB 2:30-4:00 p.m. Benjamin Reiss Department of English , Emory University "Creative Writing and Psychiatric Surveillance: Virginia Tech and the Politics of Risk Management" Moderator: Carrie Tirado Bramen, Department of English; Executive Director, Humanities Institute, UB 4:15-5:45 p.m. Bruce Jackson Department of English , University at Buffalo "Out of Time and Doing Time: When Madness Became Criminal" Moderator: Lisa Szefel, Department of History, Pacific University Saturday, November 1 9:30 a.m. Registration, Center for the Arts, North Campus 10:00 a.m. - 11:30 p.m. Marjorie Garber Departments of English & American Literature; Visual & Environmental Studies Harvard University "Mad Lib" Moderator: Donald E. Pease, Humanities Institute Distinguished Scholar in Residence 11:45 a.m. - 1:15 p.m. Elizabeth Povinelli Department of Anthropology, Columbia University "The Exclusions of Reason: Ab-Original Truth, Rhetoric, Genealogy" Moderator: Ana Mariella Bacigalupo, Department of Anthropology, UB 2:30-4:00 p.m. Screening: Titicut Follies (1967) Frederick Wiseman's controversial documentary about the treatment of criminally insane inmates at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution. Moderators: Diane Christian and Bruce Jackson, Department of English, UB For further details, consult the conference homepage here: http://www.humanitiesinstitute.buffalo.edu/initiatives/annual-conference.shtml.