Lecture: Claire Nouvet, "Annihilation Through Consumption: Dali’s Double Game" (3/2/2012, 3:00-4:30pm)

Claire Nouvet, "Annihilation Through Consumption: Dali’s Double Game"
Date: 03/02/2012
Time: 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
Location: 123 Folwell Hall
Cost: Free
Description:
Annihilation Through Consumption: Dali’s Double Game

Relentlessly and shamelessly, Dali claims to expose in his literary corpus all of his "secrets" which he "feeds," one by one, to his avid readers. One, in particular, will be exposed, most notably in La Vie Secrète de Salvador Dali: the vital role that Gala (his wife and muse) played in making any creative act possible. For all this exposure, the name of "Gala" will be shown to mark in fact the site of a secret that remains intractable. A maternal figure, Gala indeed stands in for an originary and annihilating experience of consumption that preempts self-constitution. And it is ultimately this annihilating consumption that Dali not only "feeds" to the oblivious consumers of his works, but also turns into a creative matrix of sorts.
Contact:
Name: Department of French & Italian
E-mail: frit@umn.edu
Phone: 612.624.4308
Sponsored by: French & Italian