Dr Patricia Novillo-Corvalán from the Department of Comparative Literature is to talk at a conference in Argentina entitled ‘Ciencia, cultura y modernidad en América Latina’ [Science, culture and modernity in Latin America]. The conference, organised by the University of Oxford and University of Cambridge, takes place from 8-9 April 2016 at the Casa Nacional del Bicentenario in Buenos Aires, with Patricia’s talk taking place on 9 April.
Her talk, entitled ‘Borges and Ramon y Cajal: Explorers of the Human Brain’ investigates the literary and scientific nexus between the Spanish writer-physician and Nobel laureate, Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934) and the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986). In the first part, Patricia will explore the complex interplay between art and medicine in the work of Cajal by examining his ground-breaking scientific research vis-à-vis his artistic and literary production. In the second part, she will focus on Cajal’s science fiction story ‘The Corrected Pessimist’ (1905) and Borges’s celebrated ficción ‘Funes the Memorious’ (1942), arguing that both tales yield provocative hypotheses based on the creation of characters simultaneously gifted and afflicted with superhuman powers of vision and memory respectively that eventually render their lives unbearable. This line of enquiry seeks to show that Cajal and Borges apply analogous philosophico-scientific premises to their fictions and reach parallel conclusions. Their compelling fictional narratives reveal an epistemological preoccupation with what Oliver Sacks has defined as the ‘neurology of identity’, particularly the way in which sensory perceptions and memory determine our understanding of the world and shape our notion of the self.
Further details of the conference and the full programme can be found at: www.latin-american.cam.ac.uk/science-text-culture/buenos-aires