Making Sense

This volume of texts and images has evolved from papers given at the inaugural Making Sense colloquium, which was held at the University of Cambridge in September 2009. The chapters collected here reflect the multi-dimensional and interdisciplinary sense made at this event, which became something of an artistic installation in itself. The essay 'Making Sense' by Jean-Luc Nancy provided the grand finale for the colloquium and is also the culmination of the volume. The collection also includes articles that expound and critique Nancean theory, as well as those that provide challenging manifestos or question the divide between artist and artisan. The volume contrasts works that use texts to make sense of the world with performance pieces that question the sense of theory and seek to make sense through craft, plastic art or painting. By juxtaposing works of pure theory with pieces that incorporate poetry, prose and performance, the book presents the reader with a distillation of the creative act.

Lorna Collins is a PhD student in French philosophy at the University of Cambridge, where she is a Foundation Scholar at Jesus College. Her philosophical work develops the concept of Making Sense through the aesthetic theories of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancière and Bernard Stiegler. Elizabeth Rush is a PhD student in modern languages at the University of Cambridge. She is currently researching representations of care in Spanish and French fiction written between 1890 and 1930, focusing on J.K. Huysmans, André Gide, Ramón del Valle-Inclán and Gabriel Miró.

Contents: Lorna Collins: Introduction - Florian Forestier : Sens et composition : quelques remarques sur la pensée du sens et de l'art chez Jean-Luc Nancy - Ian James: Affection and Infinity - Ryosuke Kakinami: Making Sense of the Fragment: A Reading of The Literary Absolute - Christopher Watkin: Making Ethical Sense - Patricia Ribault: Making Makes Sense: Craft as an Exploratory Mode of Thinking - Hugues Azérad: Making Sense of Epiphanic Images - Faith Lawrence: The Art of Listening - Carol Mavor: 'Phantoms of the Past, Dear Companions of Childhood, Vanished Friends': Making Sense of Sally Mann's Trees - Benjamin Morris: On Bilingualism in English - Susan Sellers/Elizabeth Wright: Painting in Prose: Performing the Artist in Susan Sellers's Vanessa and Virginia - Jennifer Milligan/Jean-Luc Moriceau/Victor Bellaich: I Could Only Tell, by the Skin of my Body - Alice Shyy: Making 'Me' Things Makes 'You' - Caroline Rannersberger: The Sensation of Painting Country in Remote Northern Australia - Lorna Collins: Making Sense of Territory: The Painting Event - Laura McMahon: Passage of Sense: Anish Kapoor's Memory (2008) with Jean-Luc Nancy - Jean-Luc Nancy: Making Sense - Jean-Luc Nancy (translated by Emma Wilson): Making Sense (Translation).