Filozofija Ne-ja. Predgovor. Filozofska misel in znanstveni duh

-

Monstrous Domesticity – Home as a Site of Oppression in Crimson Peak

This paper begins by offering a brief overview of the popular culture narrative Crimson Peak (2015), directed by Guillermo del Toro. The analysis focuses on the most compelling Gothic trope del Toro reintroduces, the proverbial mansion, simultaneously displaying Freud’s heimlich and unheimlich elements, oppressing and liberating its inhabitants. Since the narrative revolves around two female protagonists, Lucille Sharpe and Edith Cushing, the paper also refers to feminist socio-cultural perspectives on space, primarily Gillian Rose’s and Shelley Mallett’s, in order to understand the position of the two protagonists within the decidedly Gothic space. This paper aims to emphasize that Lucille’s liberation as the mistress of the house is illusory regardless of the fact that she is represented as the embodiment of domestic corruption. It is precisely because she is a sexually active woman and a disruptor of the patriarchal order that she must ultimately be punished. Even though del Toro subverts the traditional image of the madwoman in the attic by positioning her at the center of the narrative, Allerdale Hall does not reveal itself as a space of female empowerment

Unsatisfactory devices: legacy and the undocumentable in art.

Regarding perception of ephemeral artwork when lost to the fractures of time Peggy Phelan states “you have to be there.” For Phelan ephemera, specifically performance “become[s] itself through disappearance,” which draws empathy with Walter Benjamin’s notion of the “aura of the original.” In practice this a less than pragmatic account of the reality of experiencing such artworks, for how can they exist beyond the moment of making if not recorded, in order to map their histories? This essay interrogates the critical, sensitive and individualized distance necessary to archive transient artworks. Moving beyond the disciplinary ghettos of event and documentation, it interrogates how divergent and sympathetic modes of practice allow for a greater level of sustainable critique. This complex and problematic terrain is analysed in response to The Alternative Document, an exhibition I curated on the subject in 2016, and suggests archival possibilities beyond formal academic, artistic and museological conventions.University of Derb

Women and Haunted Houses in the Films of Jaume Balagueró: The Nightmares of Presence

Jaume Balagueró has developed a successful resumé of horror films that show a decided preference for the classic Gothic motif of the haunted house and the Gothic heroine who investigates its interior. This paper touches first on the Derridean concept of ‘dreams of presence’ (as theorized by cultural geographer Mitch Rose), in order to propose the ‘nightmares of presence’ in which the relationship, the call to care or commitment, between the subject and the space in which the subject dwells or moves is Gothicised but nonetheless remains to tie the subject to the space concerned. It then focuses on Balagueró’s Los sin nombre, Fragile and [REC] to consider three very different Gothic heroines: the mother of a dead daughter, a nurse in a children’s hospital, and a television reporter. The antagonistic call to care of the ‘nightmare of presence’ will be used to interrogate spatial aspects of the Gothic heroine. Keywords: Jaume Balagueró; haunted house; Spanish Gothic; Spanish horror; Spanish film Jaume Balagueró ha desarrollado un grupo de películas exitosas que demuestra una preferencia hacia el escenario clásico de lo gótico, la casa encantada tanto como la heroína gótica que la investiga. Este ensayo estudia en primer lugar el concepto derrideano de ‘los sueños de presencia’ (según la teoría de geógrafo cultural Mitch Rose), para proponer las ‘pesadillas de presencia’ en que el vínculo, la llamada a compromiso, entre el sujeto y el espacio en que se mueve o que habita, llega a ser gotizado; pero que fija al sujeto en el espacio relevante. El argumento se enfoca en Los sin nombre, Fragile y [REC] para considerar tres heroínas distintas: la madre de una hija muerta, una enfermera en un hospital para niños, y una locutora para un programa televisivo. La llamada antagonista de la pesadilla de presencia se usa para interrogar los aspectos espaciales de la heroína gótica

‘A Chain of Creation, Continuation, Continuity’ : Feminist dramaturgy and the matter of the sea

This article considers what remnants of the imaginary link established between the maternal and the sea might still be useful in feminist performance practice and theory. It does so by discussing a practice-as-research experiment that adapted strategies from Hélène Cixous’s écriture féminine–which performs a liquification of ordering structures in prose writing–into a dramaturgical form based on the logic of waves. The article goes on to suggest that such a dramaturgy recasts creation as a fluid state of becoming ex tempore, resisting the masculine-connoted vision of creation as an act of the singular genius ex nihilo. It further argues that drawing on a non-human phenomenon, the sea, to describe and theorise a type of dramaturgical composition might be read as a twofold attempt on the hegemony of patriarchal culture: through its associative link with the maternal body the creative potential of the feminine is revalued while at the same time the generative capacity of the non-human is recognised via Gaston Bachelard’s notion of the material imagination. The article concludes by proposing that the sea, together with its analogic association to the maternal, can be instated as a figure that gives temporary shape to an alternative vision of cultural production