Lecture

Jane Taylor is a South African playwright and critic, and a contributor to the Vera List Center’s book Considering Forgiveness. In her recent work, Taylor has focused on the history and theory of the performance of subjectivity; for this lecture, she will examine sincerity, drawing from her work with visual artist William Kentridge and her writings on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission proceedings.

For Taylor, the following question is central to the history of an idea of the sincere subject: Anywhere that sincerity names itself, it ceases to exist. It is a value that is vouched for through a circuit of social consensus, in which it cannot itself trade. Given this, my investigation of the concept sincerity is an attempt to determine how it was established as a valorized ideal within Western Protestant culture.

Taylor’s inquiry has a dual focus: on the one hand, she is interested in the long history of the idea through the religious wars of the Reformation where conversions, both forced and voluntary, are central to the history of the idea. On the other, she is exploring the implications of this for the media-saturated context of global justice and political renunciation.