“Style in Theory/Styling Theory” was the title of an international conference organised by the University of Malta’s Department of English last November at the Old University Building in Valletta.
The conference, which was supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport and co-ordinated by Professor Ivan Callus, Dr James Corby and Professor Gloria Lauri-Lucente from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Malta, was the inaugural event of the “International Literary Criticism and Theory Conference Series”. This conference was the first of two high-profile conferences that the Department of English has organised this year; the next conference, the International Association of University Professors of English meeting in Malta for its Triennial Conference under the coordination of Professor Peter Vassallo, will be held in July.
‘Style in Theory/Styling Theory’ brought together academics from a variety of fields related to literary theory, namely, literary criticism, philosophy and cultural studies. More than 50 speakers from major universities around the world presented their paper in one of the 18 parallel sessions, while there were also eight keynote addresses by internationally renowned academics.
Literary theory may be described as a practice that discusses literature through insights derived from philosophy, politics, linguistics and a range of other disciplines. Specifically, the conference focused on notions of style, which has arguably been an under-represented topic in literary theory for the last two decades. The conference was therefore able to investigate, critique and respond to that under-representation, and the publications which will emerge from the event will surely help to further address that issue.
Two of the keynote speakers, Professor Catherine Belsey (Swansea) and Professor Stuart Sillars (Bergen), approached the subject from perspectives within literary criticism that uphold its integral and constituting relation with meaning. Prof. Belsey asserted that style and substance are ‘inseparable’ and that style cannot be discussed in isolation. Thus, style is to be understood as an aspect of coherence, where all the aspects of a text are seen to be integrated within a whole, determined by their inter-relations. Prof. Sillars, on the other hand, focused on the dissonance – rather than the integration – that might be created through style. He spoke about style in Shakespearean soliloquy and highlighted the specific problems that arise from a discussion of style in drama, where traditional definitions of style as signature are suspended by the interaction of a multiplicity of character voices. He argued that in a Shakespearean soliloquy one often perceives several interplaying voices and the artificiality of style that characterises some of these passages undermines the possibility of linking style to characterisation.
Dr Stefan Herbrechter (Coventry), Dr Laurent Milesi (Cardiff) and Prof. Jean-Michel Rabaté (Pennsylvania) explored the role of style in literary theory. A willingness to argue for the inseparability of style and content could be seen in Herbrechter’s paper, which focused specifically on the performative role of style. His was a virtuoso performance in the style of theory, an enactment or performance of its understanding of style. The paper proved, through the way it was written and delivered, that ‘the medium is the message’ and that a ‘style-less’ theory cannot be configured. Milesi, after undertaking a comprehensive critical overview of historical theories of style, showed how Jacques Derrida’s ‘deconstruction’ problematises the understanding of style as a reflection of the individual identity of the writer. Demonstrating an equally comprehensive approach and drawing his examples from both literature and theory, Prof. Rabaté presented a fascinating excursus around the conference title, ‘Style in Theory – Styling Theory’. Rabaté, who referred to Jacques Lacan, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Roland Barthes, James Joyce, Wolfgang Iser, Marcel Proust, Thomas Carlyle, and Gustave Flaubert, among others, reflected about a number of issues that are central in discussions of style, such as, the overwhelming presence of metaphors in the rhetoric of style theories (for instance, ‘style as garment of thought’ and ‘style as body’).
The keynote addresses by Dr Fiona Hughes (Essex) and Dr Douglas Burnham (Staffordshire) were representative of the significant presence of philosophical approaches at the conference, which reflected the demand in the Call for Papers for responses to Jean-Luc Nancy’s disingenuous statement, ‘truth is a laborious science without style’. Dr Hughes explored the role played by style within communication and, through a discussion of the stylised performances and Parangolés of Hélio Oiticica, she spoke of style as a ‘form of communication’ or ‘mode of being in the world’. Building on the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hughes defined style as opening the space for communication. Burnham’s paper, while focusing on the importance of style in Friedrich Nietzsche’s work, also reflected on metaphors of style that turn on the human body and human essence.
Another keynote speaker was Prof. Simon Critchley (New School), who participated in the conference with a well-received teleconference interview conducted by James Corby. Prof. Critchley suggested ways of talking about style that in many ways went against the grain of many papers in the conference. He spoke of how theory may, occasionally, ‘betray an object through a “supermarket” approach’. Theory, for Critchley, may be sometimes guilty of reducing the particular to a pre-established framework. This suggested the possibility of discussing style in relation to singularity and hence broaching the issue of how to read in an ethical way. In his interview, Prof. Critchley also spoke of the calmness of late style, an issue which is currently important in theory as shown by the subject being discussed by a number of other delegates at the conference, including Ivan Callus, who spoke about aspects of late style in the work of Edward Said and Jacques Derrida.
A definite strength of the conference was its comprehensiveness and range, as shown by the topics of the themed parallel sessions: ‘Inceptive Styling’, ‘Style and the Nineteenth Century’, ‘Style and Modernism’, ‘Style, Theory, Philosophy’, ‘Style and Play’, ‘Reading Theory’s Styles’, ‘Style and Quiescence: Literature after the Death of Death’, ‘Style, Politics, History’, ‘Style and Transformation’ and ‘Style and Mathematics’.
Amidst this variety, a number of recurrent themes seemed to arise across the different sessions. One of them was the problem of defining style. It was clear that this is still an irresolvable task. Gloria Lauri-Lucente’s paper on ‘Petrarch and the Birth of Style’, like several others at the conference, worked through the possibility of thinking style in terms of ‘imitation’ or ‘the imitable’. Speakers taking a phenomenological approach generally defined style as a ‘way of being in the world’ or a ‘cut within a structure’, while another common definition of style was that of ‘style as man’, that is, as an expression and mark of individuality.
The conference also included a number of papers analysing the style of particular philosophers or writers, such as Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, Friedrich Nietzsche and Homi Bhabha, and showed that style is not simply decorative ornamentation but a fundamental way of enacting thought, of making thought and meaning possible.
Considering the profile of the speakers and papers at the conference and the undoubted success and reach of this event, future conferences to be organised by the Department of English as part of the ‘International Literary Criticism and Theory Conference Series’ promise to become important dates for literary criticism and theory, thus enhancing Malta’s position as an emerging centre in the field.