57 research outputs found
Crying the Wrong Tears: Floral Tributes and Aesthetic Judgement
I am for the art of hearts, funeral hearts or sweetheart hearts, full of nougat...... I am for the art of slightly rotten funeral flowers...... (Claes Oldenburg)
Material practices concerning death and bereavement are changing. As Elizabeth Hallam and Jenny Hockey argue, what used to be ÃÂÃÂconfined within cemetery walls'- the laying of wreaths and flowers - can be seen increasingly to ÃÂÃÂspill out into public space. Occasioned usually by 'bad' deaths, floral tributes and shrines form an ever more established element in the popular repertoire of emotional expressiveness around traumatic loss. Jack Santino suggests that the spontaneous shrine constitutes something of a global phenomenon: as images of disaster sites are beamed around the world so too are the practices of vernacular commemoration. Events mediated by global communications technologies such as the Oklahoma City bombing, the death of Princess Diana, the events of September 11th are seen then as responsible in part for the spread of the localised action of placing flowers at the scene of road traffic accidents, murders, drownings and other violent deaths.
"Walking the Line": Kitsch, Class and the Morphing Subject of Value
Kitsch, once reviled as the enemy of art and friend of the fascist, has recently entered a new phase of its life-course. Its appearance in art galleries and upon metropolitan sideboards has led many to conclude that taste hierarchies have been undone and matters of aesthetic judgement relaxed. This article argues to the contrary, drawing attention to the subtle symbolic economic activity that attends kitsch in its rehabilitated state. Paying heed to the intricate manoeuvrings that help to stage and revalue certain kitsch objects is revealing of a set of obscured class actions, that are all the more powerful as a means of securing social distinction for remaining beneath notice.
'Uteis a si e a sociedade': creolisation and states of belonging among urban women in nineteenth-century Salvador da Bahia.
Recent scholarship from across the Americas has emphasized two general principles for framing interpretations about creolisation in the New World. First, is to understand creolisation as an uneven process of adaptation and change as opposed to a linear route to absorption and acceptance of Christian-European cultural hegemony. Second is the view that Africa was 'rediscovered' or 'recovered' by Africans (and their descendants) in the New World, as they inscribed (and then reinscribed) their own world view on a new and alienating environment. Within these frameworks analysis has addressed a range of issues about the mechanisms of creolisation (demographic, cultural and structural) as well as the pace and extent of creolisation.
Achille, ou du modele et de sa contestation. Dans les textes en francais de l'epoque de la Pleiade
2000-01-01
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