Professor
French Literature
Tamkang University, Taiwan

Curriculum Vitae

In the theory of the screen (1864), Zola developed the notion of “Nature” in terms of “modes of natures perceived,” and the role of the artist as translator who renders “the sense of the real” by way of his “personal expression” merged with the “milieu” as the “condition of the production of meanings.” Based on Zola’s letters and essays concerning the discussion of “naturalism,” we will examine the mobility of the concept by putting into play Deleuze’s elaboration of the notion.  My inquiry into the mobility of “human condition” will inevitably entail the question of the “unknown,” a factor much pondered on in both Zola and Deleuze’s formulation of “naturalism.” From Zola to Deleuze, the mobility of the “becoming” in response to the “void” does not point to metaphors or identification of characteristics, but to the dispositif of constituting elements of bodies without organs and the spatial distribution of nomad. The focal point of my proposal is to address the notion of subjectivity or rather, “subjectivation” as the “becoming” of different modes of existence, and then the “prise de conscience” of the modes of existence as the process of “materialization” or “translation” into work of art and literature.

Shuling Stephanie Tsai, currently teaches as associate professor in the French department of Tamkang University in Taiwan. She chaired the department from 2001-2006 and established in 2001 a master program in French contemporary thoughts. She obtained the Ph.D degree in French Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with dissertation entitled “L’expérience de l’absence chez Maurice Blanchot: l’approche de l’ éloignement,” and taught, from 1986-90, as graduate teaching assistant (French 101-204). The major themes of her research have been anchored around the construction of subjectivity and the notion of “modernity”. Her research interest covers the most influential contemporary French theories and writers, such as Blanchot, Levinas, Deleuze, Kristeva and Duras. And her recent studies also inquire into the reception and the translation of French theories in Chinese.

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