CLCS Event Examines 'The Turn to Ethics'

A distinguished group of scholars gathered to discuss the renewed interest in ethics at a recent two-day conference organized by the Center for Literary and Cultural Studies.

The colloquy, entitled "The Turn to Ethics," took place on April 4 and 5, and presented thirteen national and international speakers from diverse fields such as history of science, literature, medicine,

philosophy, and political science. The speakers were Homi K. Bhabha, Allan M. Brandt, Lawrence Buell, Judith Butler, Nancy Fraser, Marjorie Garber, John Guillory, Beatrice Hanssen, Barbara Johnson, Perri Klass, Chantal Mouffe, Elaine Scarry, and Doris Sommer. The event drew such huge crowds that the venue for the plenary lectures was eventually split between the Thompson Room at Barker Center, and Emerson Hall.

The conference created a forum for public debate, in which the audience and participants vigorously discussed the many turns the "turn to ethics" itself could take: from aesthetics and justice,

multiculturalism as "multi-ethics," antagonism or deliberation, the

rhetoric of ethnic particularism, and how to read ethically as a pedagogical practice, to the crucial bio-ethical questions we all face as we are heading for the 21st century. Despite the variety of examples, which reflected the fact that the revived interest in ethics has been manifested in both academic and popular discourse, each of the invited speakers addressed certain common concerns. How, for example, did our ideas of ethics come to be shaped? How can we understand "ethics" today, when the very notion of a common standard may be seen to be under question? Must the "turn to ethics" involve a turn away from something else, or is ethics inevitably intertwined with other concerns? Papers were

followed by lively question periods, and the event as a whole produced an extended, coherent, and sustained conversation among the participants.

The conference organizers - Marjorie Garber, Beatrice Hanssen and Rebecca L. Walkowitz, all of Harvard University - expressed their pleasure in the success of the event, which, they said "provided the forum for a vital, nuanced, cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural exchange of views about this most pressing of topics."