Oct 29, 2016 | 2:40 PM - 4:10 PM | LOFT 2

Mr. Jacob Bermel, Master of Arts

“O disquisit book of marginalia”: Uncovering Lisa Robertson's Plastic Poetics in Debbie: An Epic

In her book Que faire de notre cerveau? (2004), Catherine Malabou explores the interstices of contemporary neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and political philosophy in order to close the discursive “gaps” that threaten the exclusion of traumas beyond the framework of traditional psychoanalysis. Central to Malabou’s philosophic project is the concept of “plasticity,” a term she borrows from Hegel that points to both the brain’s capacity to “take form (as in the plasticity of clay) and to give form (as in the plastic arts and plastic surgery)” (Change and Difference 75). Malabou’s delineation of the term moves swiftly beyond its etymological association with “molding,” however, through her association of “plasticity” with the explosive “plastique,” denoting what she describes as “an agency of disobedience to every constituted form” (Que faire 6).

Published in 1997, Lisa Robertson’s Debbie: An Epic refuses to submit to any constituted “form” of writing. Described by Christine Stewart as a text that “writes back to the Aeneid to retrieve previously unexpressed histories buried under old linguistic systems of power” (We Lunch 65), Robertson’s Debbie is constructed around the disobedient model of H.D.’s “palimpsest,” a recognition and embodiment of the phenomenal trace of women’s writing and its eventual resurgence through patriarchy’s discursive fissures. As a conscious textual re-mapping of patriarchal literary discourse, Robertson’s Debbie intricately weaves together threads from the Virgilian epic, the French Lettrist movement, and the deconstructive concerns of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets in order to contest the meaning of conventional poetic expression.       In this paper I argue for Robertson’s Debbie as indicative of a “plastic/plastique” poetics that contests language’s structural phallogocentrism. In doing so, Robertson’s text offers a revisionist history of repressed female literary expression that not only uncovers the sociopolitical trauma of patriarchal oppression, but figures its explosion and eventual reassemblage into a disobedient poetics of female embodiment.

Dr. Brent Oberholtzer, PhD

The chemistry of the conversations within organizations

Organizational Behavior: study of human factors that impact how individuals and groups respond and act in organizations; and how organizations manage their environments. This includes a complex set of human relationships interacting in many ways to include truth, lies, and manufactured memory.

Human Behavior: Doing something familiar and predictable? Often the desire to succeed or have our organization succeed overcomes truth telling or results in the manipulation of the truth for a perceived positive outcome response.

Chemistry plays a big role in this. When employees or leaders face criticism, rejection or fear change, when they feel questioned or their opinions minimized, their bodies produce higher levels of cortisol, a hormone that shuts down the thinking center of our brains and activates conflict aversion and defensive/protection behaviors. In some cases this becomes manipulated truth, lies, and manufactured memory. They become more reactive and resistant. They often perceive even greater judgment and negativity than actually exists. And these effects can last for 26 hours or more, imprinting the interaction on our memories and magnifying the impact it has on their future behavior. Cortisol functions like a sustained-release tablet – the more they ruminate about the fear, the longer the impact.

Positive comments and conversations produce a chemical reaction too. They spur the production of oxytocin, a feel-good hormone that elevates their ability to communicate, collaborate and trust others by activating networks in our prefrontal cortex. But oxytocin metabolizes more quickly than cortisol, so its effects are less dramatic and long-lasting. This chemistry of the conversations is why it’s so critical for –especially leaders to be more mindful about our interactions and outcome of discussions.

Another driver of interactions and the manipulation of the truth, lies, and manufactured memory is that uncertainty is the inherent state of nature in all organizations and decisions. Individuals have different tolerance levels for uncertainty based on a number of factors including truth, lies, and manufactured memory.

Biographies

Jacob Bermel

Jacob Bermel, BA (Hons.) and MA in English (Brock University), is a first year PhD student in English at York University. His recently completed MA thesis, entitled “Infinite Gestures: Militant Empathy and the Mitigation of Neoliberal Desire in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest,” explores the ontologization of tennis, the depressive subject, and the political efficacy of empathy/the empathetic subject in a “neoliberal” world. Central to this project is the question of whether literature (namely fiction) is able to restore the affective bonds between individuals and, in doing so, resist the solipsistic and divisive effects of Late Capitalism and its insistence upon the economization of the subject through a governing entrepreneurial rationality. His current research focuses on the formal, cultural, and ethical interstices of avant-garde/experimental poetry and film, Black Mountain poetry/poetics and its transnational influences, as well as neoliberal rationality/discourse and the textualization of depression in contemporary American fiction. In addition to these areas, Jacob is also actively interested in exploring the interstices of memory studies, trauma, and the gendered implications of poststructuralist thinking. Jacob is also an emerging poet who is currently working on a collection that examines notions of time, memory, nostalgia, and the ontological differences between words and images through an ekphrastic reading of Andrei Tarkovsky’s personal Polaroid photographs.

Dr. Brent Oberholtzer

I am an experienced and results-driven Organizational Development Executive. I have over 20 years of experience in organizational development; organizational design; and change management, workforce, and people analytics. This includes leadership development and organizational strategic planning and effectiveness. I have experience with various organizations including financial management, banking industry, international development, commerce/manufacturing and transportation industries.

Most recently I have worked with and led the government of Iraq through various organizational development interventions during the transitional phase into a democracy dealing with cultural and performance related challenges. The government of Iraq has evolved over millennia, with thousands of years of tyranny transitioning into a newly formed democratic republic in 2005. After years of dictatorship and oppression, it formed a multi-party system whereby the executive power is exercised by the Prime Minister of the Council of Ministers as the head of government, as well as the President of Iraq, and legislative power is vested in the Council of Representatives and the Federation Council. As a newly formed democracy it continues to have challenges that any new democracy or organization has.

The Organizational Design Challenges Resulting In Big Data Organizations, BDSP 2014: First IEEE International Workshop on Big Data Security and Privacy, October 2014, Washington, D.C. Covert Processes in Chaos and Complexity within Leadership, 3rd Annual International Conference on Chaos and Complexity, August 2014, San Diego, CA Keeping your Head Above Water in the Current Whitewater of Change, 21st Annual Government Financial Management Conference, August 2012, Washington, D.C. Barriers to Organizational Change on Projects, Annual Meeting of the Project Management Institute (PMI), June 2011, Baltimore, MD Chapter Covert Process: Hidden Barriers in Risk Management, International Contingency Planning and Management Conference, November 2011, New York, NY Exploring the Barriers to Organizational Change within Financial Management, 20th Annual Government Financial Management Conference, August 2011, Washington, D.C.