The DeRoy Lecture Series 2009 presents:
Friday April 10, 3pm
English Dept Seminar Room (10302)
Wayne State University
5057 Woodward
Detroit
Charles Altieri
“Why Modernist Claims for Autonomy Matter”
Charles Altieri teaches in the English Department at the University of California — Berkeley. That privilege has allowed him to write several books, the most recent of which are The Particulars of Rapture and The Art of Modernist American Poetry. He is working on a book on Wallace Stevens and a sequel to Particulars.
I hope you give us as good a summary of Altieri as you did of Hardt.
Altieri can be sagacious, and open up real problems, and give real indications of how to think better. I love that guy. I sure wish I could hear him speak. I saw and heard from him too little at the UW because he was already transitioning to Berkeley, but I remember many of his acute remarks, and they still echo in my head.
Does he mean for the autonomy of art? I really hope so.
From The Minnesota Review with Michael Hardt:
Smith: Just this morning Enrico showed me the dedication page, and I was startled to see the name of my undergraduate advisor, Charles Altieri, along with Negri’s name. It would have been really difficult for me to see his hand or his way of thinking in anything that you’d done. At least, I wouldn’t have seen it until now. I might begin to see Deleuze, Negri, Altieri as a tripartite genealogical tree for you, Altieri being the one who’s interested in poetics, and who brings you somewhere like the Duke Literature Program instead of a Political Science or Philosophy program. What do you remember about working with Altieri?
Hardt: I’m extremely fond of him. He’s one of these generous thinkers who’s actually interested in other people’s ideas. You find out, little by little, it’s pretty rare for people to be interested in other people’s ideas. He admires clear thinking. He was a wonderful advisor, in part because he let me do what I wanted. I was the kind of student who had my own criteria, and I wasn’t as tied to the graduate student experience as some others. I was much more involved in political things, and then I went to Paris after the exams. I remember when I showed him the first chapter of what was going to be the dissertation, about Deleuze and Bergson, and his response was, “It’s all wrong, it’s completely all wrong, but it’s very smart and that will be fine.” I’m sure other people can better imitate his manner of speaking, of which I’m also extremely fond.
http://www.theminnesotareview.org/journal/ns61/hardt.htm
It’s funny that Charlie realized that it was all wrong, but let it through on the account of its intellectual energy. I wonder what Altieri thinks of the Duke 88, and that whole scene with the lacrosse players. I would love to hear his take. He had a hilarious voice that would go way way high. The only voice I’ve ever heard go that high (man’s voice) was Corso’s. They were both Italian Catholics from NYC. I don’t know if Altieri had ever read much of Corso. To me, they were made from the same cloth.