{"id":121,"date":"2024-07-01T17:17:46","date_gmt":"2024-07-01T21:17:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/?page_id=121"},"modified":"2024-12-20T15:45:14","modified_gmt":"2024-12-20T20:45:14","slug":"beyond-utility","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/news-and-events\/impoverished-aesthetics-2022\/ia-abstracts\/beyond-utility\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Utility: Paradoxes of Knowledge Acquisition in the Aeneid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Rebecca Moorman (Providence College)<\/strong><br \/>\nThis paper examines three impoverished affects \u2014 anxiety, horror, and sovereignty, or Bataille\u2019s notion of the momentary dissolution of knowledge into nothingness \u2014 to argue for a Roman model of knowledge acquisition paradoxically premised on &#8220;non-knowing,&#8221; or a state of cognitive lack. I develop this model using one representative passage, Aeneas&#8217; violation of Polydorus&#8217; grave (<em>Aen<\/em>. 3.13-68). In the passage, horror and anxiety grant Aeneas insight through opposite means of proximity and distance (Kristeva 1980; Ngai 2005), an impossible simultaneity of &#8220;towards&#8221; and &#8220;away from&#8221; that creates a moment of aporetic suspension. Aeneas&#8217; cognitive capacity dissolves into nothingness, a &#8220;sudden opening beyond&#8221; knowledge and the work this entails (Bataille 1991). Momentarily delivered from his work of <em>pietas<\/em>, Aeneas enters a suspended state of &#8220;non-knowing&#8221; which eventually leads to the revelation of Polydorus (41-46). I conclude by considering how this model might inform readings of other passages of questionable knowledge-seeking in Latin literature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rebecca Moorman (Providence College) This paper examines three impoverished affects \u2014 anxiety, horror, and sovereignty, or Bataille\u2019s notion of the momentary dissolution of knowledge into nothingness \u2014 to argue for a Roman model of knowledge acquisition paradoxically premised on &#8220;non-knowing,&#8221; or a state of cognitive lack. I develop this model using one representative passage, Aeneas&#8217; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23724,"featured_media":0,"parent":103,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/no-sidebars.php","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23724"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":645,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/121\/revisions\/645"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}