scholarly journals Towards a Universal Language of Theatre

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 32-49
Author(s):  
Diana Cozma
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Empty Space ◽  
Homogeneous Group ◽  
Universal Language ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
The Invisible

Abstract The ways of approaching, treating and interpreting the theatre underwent major changes in the second half of the twentieth century. As Peter Brook’s research contributes decisively to changing the perspective of understanding the nature and the meanings of theatre, the present paper aims to highlight and briefly analyze the most relevant stages of his research. His studies focused on identifying a universal language of theatre reveal key concepts and notions such as the empty space, the visible and the invisible, the holy and the rough in the immediate, the diversity, the homogeneous group, the storyteller with many heads in which still nowadays theatre scholars and practitioners are interested. At the same time, certain results of his research are exploited in his performances in which the emphasis is placed on the scenic presence of the actor, and which denote both a continuous experimentation of scenic forms and a personal way of speaking about truth in the theatre.

scholarly journals The visit of Comenius to London in 1641-1642 and its bearing on the origins of the Royal Society

1940 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-160 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Great Society ◽  
Invisible College ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Important Stage ◽  
Universal Language ◽  
John Wilkins ◽  
The Invisible

Miss Dorothy Stimson, Dean of Groucher College, U.S.A., in an article in Isis for 1 September 1935, tried to traverse the view stated in the Introduction to my Comenius in England (Oxford University Press (1932)), pp. 6-7, that the visit of Comenius (Komensky) to London in 1641-1642 marked an important stage in the development in England of the idea of a great society for scientific research which resulted in the organization of the informal ‘Invisible College’ by Theodore Haak and others in 1645, and prepared the way for the foundation of the Royal Society in 1662. She was however unable to explain away the fact that Theodore Haak, who was one of the most active supporters of Komensky’s plan for a Scientific College in 1641, was in 1645 the virtual founder of the informal ‘Invisible College,’ the precursor of the Royal Society. Miss Stimson stresses the contrast between the universal speculative plan of Comenius as outlined in his Via Lucis (1642), and the empirical and specialized activities of the Invisible College. Miss Stimson however has completely overlooked the fact that John Wilkins (1614-1672), Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, whom she rightly regards as one of the most active members of the Invisible College, held views very similar to those of Comenius on scientific method and on the desirability of a universal language.

Introducing Modes of Production in Archaeology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Rosenswig ◽  
Jerimy J. Cunningham
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Structure Analysis ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Original Writings ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Mode Of Production

Many readers (and especially those English-speakers under ~50 years of age) primarily employ secondhand knowledge of the writing of Marx and Engels. Basic Marxist concepts that structure analysis (such as mode of production) have been filtered through the writings of anthropologists and understood under different names and are now attributed to scholars of the second half of the twentieth century. We therefore begin by reviewing key concepts from Marx and Engels’ original writings and define basic Marxist terms.

Insurrection as theory, text, and strategy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Loadenthal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Subsequent Chapter ◽  
The Invisible

This chapter continues the genealogical account of illegalism, propaganda of the deed, revolutionary warfare, and post-millennial, insurrectionary networks of attack. To this end, the chapter explores the strategy of Paris communard Louis Auguste Blanqui, the contribution of ‘classical anarchists’ and the twentieth century, the influence of European theorists such as Alfredo Bonanno, Tiqqun and The Invisible Committee, and the contributions anonymous thinkers who have frequently authored key texts. In the latter portion of the chapter, the focus shifts towards the contributions of Queer insurrectionary praxis and the experience of rejectionist, anti-assimilationists. Finally, the chapter revisits the question of canonization in preparation for the subsequent chapter, which outlines the insurrectionary tendency discursively.

Hannah Arendt, the Jews, and the Labor of Superfluity

PMLA ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 127 (4) ◽  
pp. 800-808
Author(s):  
Dorian Bell
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Historical Reflection

Perplexity has often greeted hannah arendt's decision to place an extended historical reflection on anti-Semitism at the beginning of The Origins of Totalitarianism, her doleful 1951 postmortem chronicling Europe's twentieth-century descent into the abyss. Seyla Benhabib proposes that to “appreciate the unity of the work as Arendt herself intended it to be read” (64), one must begin not with part 1 (“Antisemitism”) but rather with the chapter in part 3 (“Totalitarianism”) about the extermination and concentration camps. Another of Arendt's best commentators, Margaret Canovan, observes that Arendt's arrangement is “not a very helpful one” because, among other reasons, Arendt's discussion of anti-Semitism deploys key concepts like “imperialism” whose particular meanings to Arendt are only later defined. Canovan chalks up Arendt's organizational decision to “her own initial preoccupation” with anti-Semitism, as well as to “reasons of chronology” (28-29).

scholarly journals Intersecting heritage, milieu and environment. The concept of Nordic museology in the early 1990s

1970 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mattias Bäckström
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Museum Studies ◽  
Natural Heritage ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
New Museology ◽  
Century Idea ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Point Of Departure

In this study, I investigate the concept of Nordic museology in the early 1990s. Per-Uno Ågren’s programmatic article about museology and cultural heritage, published in 1993 in the first ever issue of the journal Nordic Museology, is the point of departure for my historiographic investigation. Ågren’s article is firstly contextualized within the international museological discourse of the 1980s and early 1990s, secondly within a late twentieth-century idea milieu in Umeå where curators and researchers received, revised, shaped and used a variety of concepts and practices. The key concepts include traditional museology, new museology, museum studies and heritology as well as idea milieu and life milieu, total heritage, environmental heritage, idea heritage, cultural heritage and natural heritage. What were the specifics of Ågren’s concepts of museology and cultural heritage in relation to the adjacent concepts in the international museological discourse and the idea milieu in Umeå? How did Ågren and his colleagues formulate the concept of Nordic museology?

10. Postcolonial and decolonial approaches

2019 ◽  
pp. 160-176
Author(s):  
Meera Sabaratnam
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Approaches To Studying ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
The World ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Similarities And Differences

This chapter looks at postcolonial and decolonial approaches to studying world politics, arguing that these are multilayered and diverse. These do not constitute a single ‘theory’ of the international but rather a set of orientations to show how to think about it. The chapter starts by separating a number of different elements involved in theorizing the world, and how postcolonial and decolonial approaches look at them. These include questions of epistemology, ontology, and norms or ethics. It then examines the historical context in which postcolonial and decolonial approaches arose, showing that there was a dynamic relationship between political struggles for decolonization and the development of different intellectual arguments. It considers where postcolonial and decolonial approaches have emerged and where they depart from each other in terms of analysis and focus. Having traced these traditions through the twentieth century, the chapter describes the key concepts used in postcolonial and decolonial thought across different disciplines, before looking at their impact on the field of international relations (IR). The chapter also explores the similarities and differences between different approaches and other theories in the field of IR. Finally, it contemplates the on-going popularity of postcolonial and decolonial approaches in the present day.

scholarly journals The Risky In-betweenness of Performing Audiences

2013 ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Carmela Maria Laudando
Keyword(s):  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Empty Space ◽  
Cultural Milieu ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
Literary Heritage ◽  
Between The Acts ◽  
Gender And Nation ◽  
The Invisible

The paper focuses on the powerful interrogation of the audience’s agency as staged in two very different works that, despite their distance in terms of genre and cultural milieu, both call into question essentially normative notions of gender and nation: Between the Acts (1941) by Virginia Woolf and England (2007) by Tim Crouch. In Woolf’s last novel, the process of writing and reading ambiguously frames the fragmentary staging of an eccentric village pageant on Englishness and its literary heritage. Indeed, the equivocal mise en scène of characters as readers/actors/spectators in the crucial ‘interval’ between the two world wars lends itself well to an inter-disciplinary investigation of the critical predicament underlying those slippery and delusive participatory claims. Crouch’s acclaimed piece England is instead strategically positioned at the intersection of multiple ‘ways of seeing’ and multiple ‘ways of doing things with words’ by conflating the ‘site specifics’ of visual arts with the ‘empty space’ of theatrical experience. As such it urges the audience to ‘see’ the dubious ties between local, ‘g/local’, and globalised spaces and thus to face the invisible national, sexual and socio-normative ‘scripts’ that condition their responses at large.

scholarly journals (De)colonization of the digital environment: The internet and new(er) media as places of contemporary anthropological research and how to approach them ethnographically

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 419-438
Author(s):  
Sonja Radivojevic
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Digital Environment ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Anthropological Research ◽  
Digital Environments ◽  
Different Cultures

The last decades of the twentieth century brought several twists and turns in anthropological practice and theory. New constellations of geo-political and social circumstances on a global scale have also reshaped the terrain landscapes traditionally visited by anthropologists of the classical epoch, exploring distant, other, and different cultures. Bringing anthropology home, by shifting the focus of interest from traditional to contemporary societies and cultures, has opened new terrains which can also be digital. Marked as places where meaningful human activities take place, with consequences and responses to them, we can move through digital environments, we can spend time wandering or exploring, talking, getting to know each other, loving and being, experiencing them as an integral part of our world. With that in mind, in this paper, I will present the development of the idea of places in the digital environment as the terrain of contemporary anthropological research. By defining key concepts and contextualizing them, I will seek to outline the landscape and features of the new(er) media universe, which the internet and social media are a part of, and which make up the digital environment. Then I will present the path of (de)colonizing the digital, reflected in its becoming a real anthropological terrain, which can be explored by multi-sited ethnography, and the settlement of the digital environment, i.e. by designating them a social space.

Cinematic Vitalism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inga Pollmann
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
French Film ◽  
Movie Theater ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Philosophical Texts ◽  
The One

This book argues that there are constitutive links between early twentieth-century German and French film theory and practice, on the one hand, and vitalist conceptions of life in biology and philosophy, on the other. By considering classical film-theoretical texts and their filmic objects in the light of vitalist ideas percolating in scientific and philosophical texts of the time, Cinematic Vitalism reveals the formation of a modernist, experimental and cinematic strand of vitalism in and around the movie theater. The book focuses on the key concepts including rhythm, environment, mood, and development to show how the cinematic vitalism articulated by film theorists and filmmakers maps out connections among human beings, milieus, and technologies that continue to structure our understanding of film.

scholarly journals The Medieval Space: Early Medieval Documents as Stages

2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle A. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Bertolt Brecht ◽  
Empty Space ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Performance ◽  
Theatrical Space ◽  
Postwar Europe ◽  
Peter Brook ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
And Performance

Peter Brook begins the second chapter ofThe Empty Space,“The Holy Theatre,” with a lament for the loss of sacred approaches to theatre; approaches that satisfy a community's need to make visible its identity, its hope, and its history. In describing the vacuum within the modern theatre once occupied by ceremony—what he defines as the importance of a noble aim for theatre—Brook critiques hollow and backward attempts to fill new and grand spaces with old and meaningless ritual. In postwar Europe, he saw a need for new spaces that “crie[d] out for a new ceremony, but of course it is the new ceremony that should have come first—it is the ceremony in all its meanings that should have dictated the shape of the place.” Brook's assessment of postwar European bourgeois theatre and its search for new and meaningful agendas is framed by conceptions of space as antecedent to action, requiring only performer and audience in order for theatre to occur, and for a space to be called a theatre. Indeed, theatrical space is always a product of well-established cultural performance conventions—a phenomenon common throughout history. Brook's critique focuses on the conventions of theatrical space that developed from the romantic dramas and spectacle-driven performances of the late nineteenth century and continued well into the twentieth century. Echoing Bertolt Brecht, Brook rejected theatres that predetermined the limits of drama and performance, arguing that it was necessary to strip them of conventional expectations in order to lay bare their potential. Essentially, he asks: When and how does a space become a theatre?

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document