Reading and Re-reading Bergson

This weekly seminar is modeled after the sort of student-led seminars regularly held in the sciences to deal with particular contemporary issues. It will concentrate on the close reading and re-reading of two of Bergson's major works, Matter and Memory and Creative Evolution in order to confront principle issues in Bergson studies in the aftermath of Gilles Deleuze's Bergsonism. Collateral readings in other contemporary critics of Bergson will also feature in seminar discussions. Students taking the course for credit will write a detailed critique of one of Bergson's other books. Such a paper should be written as if it were a chapter in an anthology entitled, Understanding Bergson, which it may well become.

Recording of S. E. Gontarski's presentation entitled "There is No outside the Image: Bergson on Movement, Multiplicity, and Representation."

Recording of Laci Mattison's presentation entitled "The Metaphysics of Flowers in The Waves: Virginia Woolf's 'Seven-Sided Flower' and Henri Bergson's Intuition."

The following book grew out of the Henri Bergson Reading group:

Understanding Bergson, Understanding Modernism. Eds. S. E. Gontarski, Laci Mattison, Paul Ardoin. Continuum, 2012.