The Department of English, along with the Department of History and the Center for the Advancement of the Humanities, will host a talk from Dr. Ramzi Fawaz, professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, on Thursday, Nov. 7, from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. in Marquette Hall 100.
Fawaz will explore how the fundamental qualities of the psychedelic experience —including heightened affective intensity, the dissolution of the ego, and a sense of cosmic interconnectedness with the universe — offer a hopeful alternative to the politics of the present.
Fawaz argues that, in a painful paradox, the unyielding attachment to cultural identity as the vehicle for articulating marginalized subjects’ bids for political freedom often masks the underlying desire to commune freely across our differences. Against this logic, Fawaz turns to the distinctly psychedelic animated films, “Spider-Man Into the Universe” and “Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse” (2018-2023), which use the titular superhero’s signature “webbing” as a visual theory of affiliation that conceptually bridges the distance between a near-infinite array of differences.
