A Special Guest Of Text Matters. Mieke Bal: “Writing With Images”

A Conversation — Dorota Filipcza

Narrando comida, haciéndonos urbanos : Glub y la estética de lo cotidiano

Este ensayo ofrece algunas reflexiones sobre el aspecto estético de la ciudad de hoy en día, erigida sobre residuos, e incluso sobre basura. Retoma un primer acercamiento al tema, desarrollado en 2004, a través de un documental sobre el paisaje urbano berlinés bajo la influencia de la migración. La autora se detiene en la textura de la ciudad basada no tanto en las innovaciones tecnológicas que continúan usando energías fósiles, sino en los restos, en la "suciedad" de las costumbres que los migrantes traen consigo desde sus hogares. En particular, se interesa en la costumbre de comer semillas en espacios públicos, elaborando a partir de aquí una mirada a la cultura urbana "desde abajo" y que permite visibilizar otros tejidos sociales.This essay reflects upon the esthetic appearance of today's city, built on waste, and even garbage. It takes up and elaborates a previous approach to this subject in 2004, through a documentary on urban landscape, specifically, Berlin's, under the influence of migration. The author focuses on the texture of the city based not so much on the technological innovations that continue to spend fossil energies, as on the remainders, the "filth" linked to the customs migrants carry from their homes. Mieke Bal is interested, in particular, in the custom of eating seeds in public spaces, from which she develops a look on urban culture "from below", making visible other social textures.Aquest assaig ofereix algunes reflexions sobre l'aspecte estètic de la ciutat d'avui dia, fundada sobre residus i, fins i tot, escombraries. Reprèn un primer acostament al tema, desenvolupat el 2004, a través d'un documental sobre el paisatge urbà berlinès sota la influència de la migració. L'autora es centra en la textura de la ciutat basada no tant en les innovacions tecnològiques que continuen utilitzant energies fòssils, sinó en les deixalles, en la "brutícia" dels costums que els immigrants porten amb ells des de la seva llar. En particular, s'interessa en el costum de menjar llavors en espais públics, elaborant a partir d'aquí una mirada a la cultura urbana "des de sota" i que permet donar visibilitat a altres teixits socials

On Meanings and Descriptions

Although descriptive passages would appear to be of marginal importance in narrative texts, they are, in fact, of both logical and semantic necessity. Narratology, therefore, must take these segments into account. In this article, I shall survey the present situation in this field and compare rival points of view. I shall also offer several suggestions for analyzing descriptions. The following topics will be discussed: the nature of description as a specific type of discourse which makes it recognizable as such; the internal structure of description; the place and function of descriptions in the text as a whole. In the latter section, the semantic impact of descriptions in the overall meaning of narrative texts will be accounted for. This article is intended as a contribution to the theory of description as a part of narratology. It also has a didactic purpose, since it proposes a model for the analysis of texts which can be used for systematic text-study, both in a historical and a comparative perspective

The Point of Narratology: Part 2

Resisting the current fashion of calling everything, and ourselves as scholars, “post- ” something, as well as the unnoticed scholarly privileging of the present, or “presentism” that comes with it, I return in this article to an age-old novel, written by someone who was severely traumatized. Miguel de Cervantes Saveedra wrote his world-famous novel Don Quijote after having been held as a slave in Algiers. “Trauma” is a state of stagnation and the impossibility of subjective remembrance that result from traumatogenic events; not the events themselves; the distortion of time and its forms that result, rather than the violence that causes the trauma. This implies that the traumatic state challenges narratological concepts such as event, development, and other temporal categories. Therefore, I will concentrate my discussion on focalisation and temporality as both problematic as well as indispensable, and end up arguing that the traditional interpretation can also be reversed: the hero did not go mad because he read too much, but escaped in reading to evade the traumatizing reality. In this article I revisit the concept of focalisation, in its tight connection, but not identity, to related concepts such as the gaze, looking, and imagining. The hypothesis that readers envision, that is, create, images from textual stimuli, cuts right through semantic theory, grammar, and rhetoric, to foreground the presence and crucial importance of images in reading; of imaging as part of that activity

WAITING FOR THE POLITICAL MOMENT

The political moment: a moment when being in the world becomes being for the world. Strangely and painfully, it is like death: physically no longer in the world, the dead friend and colleague leaves the trace that is for the world, a gift, for us to do with what he wanted to do with but is now no longer able to. His work is a trace of the same order as the material images from the past the presence of which for the world is so important to us. José Luis Brea: an intellectual leader in visual studies in Spain and beyond, once given a limitation to his time in the world, decided to double his efforts and do three things that mattered to him

Zwarte Piet

Portraits of the historical figure of Black Pete who plays servant to Sinta Klaas in the Dutch Christmas myth. These startling portraits of velvet-clad white women and children blacked-up as Zwarte Piet playfully reveal an ambiguous character who sits uncomfortably in European history. Essay by Meike Ba

Sensing the Present: “Conceptual Art of the Senses”

After Rachel E. Burke briefly introduces the essays presented with a focus on our contemporary relationship to modern subjectivity, Mieke Bal will make the case for the sense of presentness on an affective and sensuous level in Munch’s paintings and Flaubert’s writing by selecting a few topics and cases from the book Emma and Edvard Looking Sideways: Loneliness and the Cinematic, published by the Munch Museum in conjunction with the exhibition Emma & Edvard. It is this foregrounded presentness that not only produces the ongoing thematic relevance of these works, but more importantly, the sense-based conceptualism that declares art and life tightly bound together. If neither artist eliminated figuration in favour of abstraction, they had a good reason for that. Art is not a representation of life, but belongs to it, illuminates it and helps us cope with it by sharpening our senses. As an example, a few paintings will clarify what I mean by the noun-qualifier “cinematic” and how that aesthetic explains the production of loneliness

Pensar em filme

MIEKE BAL investiga a relação entre visualidade, amor romântico e capitalismo em sua transposição audiovisual de trechos de Madame Bovary