This dissertation explores the ways in which affective responses to disabled bodies are represented and how this invites us to read these bodies aesthetically. I argue that this affective impact... Show moreThis dissertation explores the ways in which affective responses to disabled bodies are represented and how this invites us to read these bodies aesthetically. I argue that this affective impact can be understood as an affordance, a term I use to describe how the appearance of and interaction with disabled bodies produces affective responses such as fear, wonder, or disgust. I study the relationship between representation and affective reactions through literature and other art forms. Through close readings of literary texts and works of art, this dissertation offers an alternative to so-called model thinking—an approach that emphasizes categorization. Instead, I propose a reading that focuses on how bodily capacities are culturally and socially translated into (dis)abilities. Unlike taxonomic approaches that categorize and generalize, this method allows moving from the particular to the private. Works of art, although prone to generalization, emphasize their unicity and resist categorization. By analyzing how different art forms represent disabled bodies, the dissertation brings a new dimension to understanding our emotional responses and the aesthetic appreciation of bodily diversity. Show less
My project, Tracing Shumi: Politics and Aesthetics in Modern Japanese Literary Discourse and Fiction, traces the concept of shumi (趣味) in late 19th and early 20th century Japanese literary... Show moreMy project, Tracing Shumi: Politics and Aesthetics in Modern Japanese Literary Discourse and Fiction, traces the concept of shumi (趣味) in late 19th and early 20th century Japanese literary discourse and fiction. The word shumi was introduced in the 1880s as a translation word for the notion of 'taste'. However, my project aims to show how the word operated beyond a mere translation of an idea. Instead, I demonstrate how shumi was used to rhetorically frame the ways in which people were supposed to behave, sense, and consume and which actors and institutions benefited from such discursive frameworks. Yet at the same time, this dissertation argues that the language of shumi also undermined the very ideological structures it sought to engender. Ultimately, Tracing Shumi, sheds light on how modernity unfolds in the intersection of politics and aesthetics, beyond a limited imagination of politics entirely in terms of power and of aesthetics solely in terms of beauty, at a specific juncture in Japanese history. Show less
The article investigates urban gardening in Turin with ethnography, historical analysis and photography, using both the authors’ photography and sources from social media and private archives. The... Show moreThe article investigates urban gardening in Turin with ethnography, historical analysis and photography, using both the authors’ photography and sources from social media and private archives. The authors collaborate to analyse ‘community’ gardening through a critical anthropological perspective which centres on the hegemonic power of aesthetic assumptions about the urban green. As a post-industrial, multicultural city, Turin illuminates the dialectic of gentrification vis-à-vis socioeconomic and cultural diversity, which is a crucial dynamic of many urban renewal trends towards ‘green cities’. We highlight the homogeneity of an aesthetic regime vis-à-vis the diversity of ‘skilled visions’ of social actors and its restraining effects on participatory governance. We contribute to ongoing debates in urban anthropology and visual studies, concerned with urban regeneration agendas in the de-industrializing cities of the Global North. Show less
This dissertation deals with Hegel’s theory of the sublime (das Erhabene). I focus specifically on die heilige Poesie (sacred poetry), a form of art that he identifies with the Judaic Psalms and... Show moreThis dissertation deals with Hegel’s theory of the sublime (das Erhabene). I focus specifically on die heilige Poesie (sacred poetry), a form of art that he identifies with the Judaic Psalms and which I claim to be the core of Hegel’s approach to sublimity. I claim that Hegel’s apparent lack of interest in the sublime must be clarified and interpreted in the light of his comments on the heilige Poesie. But to fully elucidate this, it is necessary to move beyond the domain of Hegel’s aesthetics: we should turn to his early practical dispute, before 1800, with Kantian morality in order to reconstruct and fully elucidate Hegel’s attitude toward sublimity. Show less
Through my investigation, I expose the multiple layers of Kurdish cinema constructed by Kurdish films and directors, by academics working on Kurdish cinema, by Kurdish institutions, and by... Show moreThrough my investigation, I expose the multiple layers of Kurdish cinema constructed by Kurdish films and directors, by academics working on Kurdish cinema, by Kurdish institutions, and by contemporary artists. By employing a content analysis of films in Kurdish languages, identifying Kurdish directors as agents of history making, and investigating attempts to institutionalize Kurdish cinema, I address the Kurdish presupposition of equality to act in an aesthetic regime of art. I structure my research under three chapters: ‘A Foundation of Kurdish National Cinema’, ‘A Re-interpretation of Kurdish Trauma’, and ‘An Aesthetic Regime of Kurdishness’. Based on the detailed discussion, across these three chapters, of national cinema, the art of the un-representable, and digital revolution, I aim to reveal the necessity of exploring the aesthetics regime of Kurdishness in audio-visual terms, in order to articulate the subjectification processes leading to an ethical community in the name of Rancièrian democratic politics.I posit cinema as a home for the communicative act that will empower speech and thought for the Kurdish social body. It does so by folding the future into the present through an aesthetic regime of imperfect, mobile audio-visual assemblages. Show less
In this paper, I explore how, in the final scenes of the novel Jane Eyre, disability is a vehicle for the involved characters to be able to designate emotional states to themselves and the other... Show moreIn this paper, I explore how, in the final scenes of the novel Jane Eyre, disability is a vehicle for the involved characters to be able to designate emotional states to themselves and the other through performative emotional language usage, called ‘emotives’. Through examining this use, I argue that the exchange of emotives cannot fully alleviate the different emotional states designated through them, but rather allow for a prosthetic relation of co-dependency to form between the novel’s two main characters. Subsequently, I argue that the exchange of emotives and the use of language as prosthesis produces legible gaps in and between various performative speech-acts, which through this legibility may generate traceable patterns of affect. Show less
The sublime plays an important role in recent publications on Greek and Latin literature. On the one hand, scholars try to make sense of ancient Greek theories of the sublime, both in Longinus’ On ...Show moreThe sublime plays an important role in recent publications on Greek and Latin literature. On the one hand, scholars try to make sense of ancient Greek theories of the sublime, both in Longinus’ On the Sublime and in other rhetorical texts. On the other hand, the sublime, in its ancient and modern manifestations presented by thinkers from Longinus to Burke, Kant and Lyotard, has proved to be a productive tool for interpreting the works of Latin poets like Lucretius, Lucan and Seneca. But what is the sublime? And how does the Greek rhetorical sublime in Longinus relate to the Roman literary sublime in Lucretius and other poets? This article reviews James I. Porter, The Sublime in Antiquity: it evaluates Porter’s innovative approach to the ancient sublime, and considers the ways in which it might change our understanding of an important, but somewhat enigmatic concept. Show less
This chapter explores how algorithms produce aesthetic forms and dystopian configurations across Palestinian cyber and digital spaces. Through surveillance and erasure, algorithms operate as... Show moreThis chapter explores how algorithms produce aesthetic forms and dystopian configurations across Palestinian cyber and digital spaces. Through surveillance and erasure, algorithms operate as infrastructures of (in)visibility on social media, digital maps, navigation apps, and augmented reality video-games. On the one hand, they serve the Israeli system of control by making Palestinian users and contents hyper-visible to surveillance. On the other, by imposing (self-)censorship and erasure from digital representations, they ultimately purport to delete Palestine from cyber spaces. Acting at the threshold of the (in)visible, algorithms do not only enact control and surveillance, but they also inform the creation of an aesthetics of disappearance. In this light, this chapter problematizes the normative assumption equating invisibility – in the form of masking or disconnection – to freedom and emancipation by introducing the concept of aesthetics by algorithms as new canon and form of ordering of the colonial space. Show less
This article discusses the critical comparison (σύγκρισις) of the styles of Demosthenesand Cicero in Longinus, On the Sublime 12.4-5. Many readers have claimed that Longinushere presents... Show moreThis article discusses the critical comparison (σύγκρισις) of the styles of Demosthenesand Cicero in Longinus, On the Sublime 12.4-5. Many readers have claimed that Longinushere presents Demosthenes and Cicero as two different models of the sublime. A detailedanalysis of the passage, however, reveals that while the two are both creditedwith grandeur (μέγεθος), they are in fact not treated on a par with respect to sublimity(ὕψος). While the style of Demosthenes is described with keywords of Longinus’ conceptionof the sublime (ὕψος), Cicero’s style is consistently associated with the qualityof diffusion (χύσις), which is closely associated with amplification (αὔξησις). Longinus’discussion of Cicero may have pleased the Roman readers in his audience, as he ispresented as a canonical author of ‘great’ literature. We argue, however, that in the end,Longinus reserves the status of sublimity for his heroes of classical Greece. Show less
This paper presents an ethnographic study of a redevelopment controversy in Delhi's old city. It considers the perspectives of traders, hawkers, politicians and officials on the proposed revamping... Show moreThis paper presents an ethnographic study of a redevelopment controversy in Delhi's old city. It considers the perspectives of traders, hawkers, politicians and officials on the proposed revamping of the Meena Bazaar. The paper illustrates how hermeneutic and aesthetic dimensions suffuse public and political life in India. Specifically, sincere intentions, evoked in speech and performance, are seen as a prerequisite of public presentation and as a locus of interpretive scrutiny. In an ambiguous and indeterminate milieu, promises and motives are probingly assessed, often in ironic and dramaturgical form. The paper foregrounds the ‘hermeneutics of the bazaar’, an interpretive sensitivity to intentionality, and ‘structured sincerity’, the efficacy, and reflexive steering, of performed conviction. Show less
That art has some sort of relation to reality is an assumption underlying most of the past and the present discourse on and about art. The questions of what sort of relation, whether it is at all... Show moreThat art has some sort of relation to reality is an assumption underlying most of the past and the present discourse on and about art. The questions of what sort of relation, whether it is at all valid and specific (as opposed to science’s or philosophy’s relation to reality), however, are hardly ever addressed. In studying a relation between terms, one needs to be clear about the terms themselves: ‘Art’ is understood here in the sense of the notion that crystallized no earlier than the 18th century in Europe. That notion is, in its essential features, still valid today. ‘Reality’ tends to be understood as that what exists independently of us ‘out there’, but it can also be the inner world of feelings, perceptions and memories, which entirely depends on the individual. The former is best described by science whereas the latter is inaccessible for it. Then there is the reality of inter personal relations, like society, culture and language. The thesis examines art in relation to each of them, on the level of individual experience, on the level of social life, in historical perspective. Informed by all these different viewpoints it eventually addresses the question whether the making or the experiencing of art can lead to any knowledge.Concerning the illustrations 5, 9, 10, 11, 18, 19, 20, 21, 26, 27, 28, 34, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, and 49 of Chapter I, the illustrations 15, 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, and 31 of Chapter II, the illistrations 20, 21, 22, 23, 27, 28, 32, 33, 42, 45, 44, 45, 46 , 47, 48, 49, and 50 of Chapter III. the illustrations 4, 5, 8, 9, and11 of chapter IV, and the reproduction of a painting by Mondriaan on the cover the author does not own the copyright, Concerning this material the author has striven to ensure that in using the illustrations all legal rights have been taken into proper account. However, parties who believe they can claim legal rights are invited to apply to Leiden University, c/- Universiteitsbibiotheek, Afd. Acquisitie, Postbus 9501, 2300 RA Leiden, or to proefschrift@library.leidenuniv.nlMet betrekking tot de afbeeldingen 5, 9, 10, 11, 18, 19, 20, 21, 26, 27, 28, 34, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48 en 49 van het hoofdstuk (I.), de afbeeldingen 15, 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 en 31 van het hoofdstuk (II.), de afbeeldingen 20, 21, 22, 23, 27, 28, 32, 33, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49 en 50 van het hoofdstuk (III.), de afbeeldingen 4, 5, 8, 9, 11 van het hoofdstuk (IV.), en de afbeelding van het Mondriaan schilderij op de cover bezit hij geen copyright. Met betrekking tot dit beeldmateriaal heeft de promovendus ernaar gestreefd de rechten van de illistraties volgens wettelijke bepalingen te regelen. Degenen die desondanks menen zekere rechten te kunnen doen gelden, kunnen zich wenden tot de Universiteit Leiden, p.a. Universiteitsbibliotheek, Afd. Acquisitie, Postbus 9501, 2300 RA Leiden, of bij proefschrift@library.leidenuniv.nl Show less
