Organizer: Abigail RayAlexander
Contact the Seminar OrganizersWhat are the symptoms of being late-stage? What do we reflect upon, appreciate, fear, endeavor to do, and look forward to during such times?
One arena of late stages involves political and social economics. Victor Hugo’s poem “Vingtième siècle” clears the stage of the 19th Century’s shipwrecked remains before envisioning the 20th Century as an idealistic airship soaring above the political and social shortcomings of its precedent. This kind of late stage posits a future conditioned upon an end that hasn’t yet arrived, making it utopian in the strict sense. Such visions can have great utility and can alternatively serve as pessimistic and/or satirical critiques.
In Capital, Karl Marx described what has since been coined “late-stage capitalism,” now a popular Subreddit and forum for analysis of present-day conditions of oppression. What happens when a late-stage system seems to refuse to end, holding its subjects hostage on an ever-crumbling precipice? In this form of a late stage, we recognize impending collapse but are unable to see when and where the end will come.
On the other hand, we sometimes struggle to recognize that we have already moved from a late-stage into a new era. This may currently (and constantly) be the case thanks to recent developments in artificial intelligence. Recognizing this form of late stage implies a presence of a future wherein an end has occurred so that the lateness of the stage has been assessed. Being late-stage is a liminal rather than definite qualification. Its temporal situation is the future anterior, hinging upon an ending that has not yet occurred. And when exactly will we have identified something as a late stage? We can say that the Roman Empire has fallen, but we debate about when exactly the late stages of that fall began and ended. There is no end to our classification of that which precedes the end. What we do have is an outpouring of post-s. Where do concepts like post-structuralism, post-historicism, post-truth, etc. fit into this equation?
Another realm of potential inquiry into late stages centers around physical and mental health. When signs indicate an inevitable end, the approach to care changes. One may think of the Romantic heroines whose deaths span hundreds of pages. How can a work of literature, media, etc. care for its dying and help its readers process loss, grief, relief, and change? Some works, like Michael Schur’s television show The Good Place, shift the zone of late-stage conditions beyond the realm of life into death. In this type of late stage, the totality of the process is known, and the ending is identifiable, but those pinpointing a late stage and an ending are still relegated to a similar process within their present system.
This seminar aims to address questions concerning the symptoms, treatment, classification, and function of late stages in literature, media, theory, cultural studies, etc.
One arena of late stages involves political and social economics. Victor Hugo’s poem “Vingtième siècle” clears the stage of the 19th Century’s shipwrecked remains before envisioning the 20th Century as an idealistic airship soaring above the political and social shortcomings of its precedent. This kind of late stage posits a future conditioned upon an end that hasn’t yet arrived, making it utopian in the strict sense. Such visions can have great utility and can alternatively serve as pessimistic and/or satirical critiques.
In Capital, Karl Marx described what has since been coined “late-stage capitalism,” now a popular Subreddit and forum for analysis of present-day conditions of oppression. What happens when a late-stage system seems to refuse to end, holding its subjects hostage on an ever-crumbling precipice? In this form of a late stage, we recognize impending collapse but are unable to see when and where the end will come.
On the other hand, we sometimes struggle to recognize that we have already moved from a late-stage into a new era. This may currently (and constantly) be the case thanks to recent developments in artificial intelligence. Recognizing this form of late stage implies a presence of a future wherein an end has occurred so that the lateness of the stage has been assessed. Being late-stage is a liminal rather than definite qualification. Its temporal situation is the future anterior, hinging upon an ending that has not yet occurred. And when exactly will we have identified something as a late stage? We can say that the Roman Empire has fallen, but we debate about when exactly the late stages of that fall began and ended. There is no end to our classification of that which precedes the end. What we do have is an outpouring of post-s. Where do concepts like post-structuralism, post-historicism, post-truth, etc. fit into this equation?
Another realm of potential inquiry into late stages centers around physical and mental health. When signs indicate an inevitable end, the approach to care changes. One may think of the Romantic heroines whose deaths span hundreds of pages. How can a work of literature, media, etc. care for its dying and help its readers process loss, grief, relief, and change? Some works, like Michael Schur’s television show The Good Place, shift the zone of late-stage conditions beyond the realm of life into death. In this type of late stage, the totality of the process is known, and the ending is identifiable, but those pinpointing a late stage and an ending are still relegated to a similar process within their present system.
This seminar aims to address questions concerning the symptoms, treatment, classification, and function of late stages in literature, media, theory, cultural studies, etc.