Adam Phillips’ recent book On Giving Up comes at a moment of widespread exhaustion. Whether the latter is measured in terms of depression diagnoses, symptoms of cultural-aesthetic stagnation, political despair, the falling rate of profit, or the draining of natural resources to the point of biospheric collapse, ours is a time in which the (terrible, enticing) thought of “giving up” looms large. Yet giving up is an ambivalent gesture, as Phillips points out: it is “a sign of the death of a desire” but also a “critical moment,” “a prelude, a precondition for something else to happen, a form of anticipation, a kind of courage […] It can make room for other desires.” This, even as it remains “a risk and prediction” that may prove catastrophic.

Taking a page from Phillips’ work, this seminar aims to provoke discussion on “giving up,” attending both to its productive potential and nihilistic temptations across various contexts and analytic scales. “What,” asks Phillips, “does real hope or real despair require us to relinquish?” More narrowly, we might ask ourselves: What does giving up look like today? Who has given up, on what, and to what end? Who should (and should not)? Which texts, authors, genres, forms, concepts, and critical paradigms might we consider giving up? What political projects, ideals, and organizational forms? What expectations as literary scholars, teachers, workers, consumers, and citizen-subjects of the capitalist state? What unspoken desires are revealed by contemporary forms of giving up?

We are looking for papers that engage with these and related questions, whether they focus primarily on specific literary works, literary-critical controversies, or politico-philosophical impasses. The discussion of non-contemporary works, problematics, and historical contexts is encouraged, provided that panelists attempt to connect their topic to some aspect of our present situation. We also welcome papers that make a case for not giving up on something along the lines just mentioned, even if this requires giving up on something else.

Possible lines of inquiry include, but are not limited to:

• Literary representations of giving up, letting go, moving on, or the failure/inability to do so


• The philosophical, psychoanalytic, or broadly critical resonances of giving up


• Un(der)articulated or repressed desires reflected in perceived instances of giving up


• Texts that purport to help readers give something up (e.g. how-to manuals for quitting addictions, guides for processing grief, religious tracts, contracts)


• Played-out or otherwise over-extended ideas, terms, texts, conceptual formations, methodologies, and ways of seeing


• Hopes, expectations, myths, critical habits, and intellectual dependencies that we should consider giving up on


• Political projects, theories, institutions, strategies, slogans, principles, and organizational forms that we need to abandon for the sake of an alternative future