scholarly journals Materiality and Classics: (Re) Turning to the Material

2019 ◽  
Vol 139 ◽  
pp. 222-232
Author(s):  
Lilah Grace Canevaro
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Art History ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Material Object ◽  
Material World ◽  
New Directions ◽  
New Materialisms ◽  
The World ◽  
Material Turn

AbstractIn this article I review 11 books published since 2010 that bring the ‘material turn’ to classics. Some start from emic ancient perspectives on matter and materiality; others take their cue from current theoretical models such as those of the new materialisms. All offer new insights into our relationship with the material world and consider the material object as active within different paradigms. In reviewing these important volumes together, I question entrenched boundaries: from those between (sub-)disciplines to those between human and non-human agents. I explore the material turn not as an isolated phenomenon, but, first, as a cyclical ‘re’-turn and, second, as an integrated set of ideas incorporating (to name but a few strands) aesthetics, cognitive humanities, embodiment, affect and the senses. The books reviewed range from literary studies to archaeology to art history to material culture to heritage. Taken together, they set new directions for classics, and indeed for our thinking about our place in the world.

scholarly journals Return and Repetition: Methods for Material Culture Studies

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-59
Author(s):  
Kate Smith ◽  
Leonie Hannan
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Art History ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Material World ◽  
Material Culture Studies ◽  
New Research

Repetition has long been an important tool in such fields of humanities research as literary studies and art history, in which scholars repeatedly return to texts and images to develop critically engaged understandings. Historians also need to adopt repetition as a distinct methodology, particularly in relation to the material world. Repetitive engagement with the material world has the potential to open up new research avenues for historians, through a greater awareness of the questions prompted by things. It also provides a means of developing much-needed material literacies and extending and expanding modes of attention.

scholarly journals BUILDINGS, LANDSCAPES AND REGIMES OF MATERIALITY

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 135-148
Author(s):  
William Whyte
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Similar Process ◽  
Material World ◽  
Single Generation ◽  
The World ◽  
Material Agency ◽  
Material Turn ◽  
Distinguished Scholar

ABSTRACTBeginning with a surprisingly exuberant response to the landscape recorded by a distinguished scholar, this paper explores the agency of things and places though time. It argues that the recent ‘material turn’ is part of a broader re-enchantment of the world: a re-enchantment that has parallels with a similar process at the turn of the nineteenth century. Tracing this history suggests that within the space of a single generation the material world can be enchanted or disenchanted, with things and places imbued with – or stripped of –agency. In other words, different periods possess what we might call different regimes of materiality. Any approach which assumes the existence of material agency throughout history, or which imports our assumptions into a period which did not share them, will necessarily fail. Before we look at the material world, therefore, we need to examine how the material world was looked at, how it was conceptualised and how it was experienced. We need to apprehend its regime of materiality.

Egypt in Roman Visual and Material Culture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caitlín Eilís Barrett
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Art History ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Intercultural Exchange ◽  
Material Turn

This review article addresses current controversies and opportunities in research on the roles, uses, and meanings of “Egypt” in ancient Roman visual and material culture. Accordingly, the article investigates problems of definition and interpretation; provides a critical review of current scholarly approaches; and analyzes the field’s intersections with current intellectual developments in the broader fields of archaeology and art history. It is argued that research on Roman Aegyptiaca can gain much from, and is poised to contribute substantially to, (1) 21st-century archaeology’s “material turn”; (2) the construction of new interpretive frameworks for cross-cultural interactions and “hybridization”; and (3) increased attention to the relationships among artifacts, contexts, and assemblages. Roman visual representations of Egypt provide a rich testing ground for research on intercultural exchange, the lived experience of empire, and the complex entanglement of people, things, and images.

More than a Body

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lambros Malafouris ◽  
Maria Danae Koukouti
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Material Engagement Theory ◽  
Material World ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Engagement Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Material Engagement ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Way

Merging notions of materiality and intercorporeality is becoming increasingly important in archaeology and anthropology, as material culture has brought the materiality of bodies and the materiality of things back to the center of attention. Material Engagement Theory (MET) offers a new approach to the study of the nature of interactions and relational transactions of people and things as well as understanding their role in shaping the mind. Using the example of pottery making, this paper explores how the material world now becomes an inseparable component of the way we think; mind and matter are one and must be studied as such. This is a new emphasis on the priority of material engagement as a prereflexive, preverbal capacity for basic thought through, with, and about things which emerges from our bodily engagement with the world. It resonates, extends, and complements the concept of “intercorporeality” (intercorporéité) as advanced by French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

New Materialisms

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liedeke Plate
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Theory And Criticism ◽  
New Materialisms ◽  
Material Turn ◽  
Death Of The Author ◽  
Empirical Approaches

New materialism (and new materialisms) is part of the material turn currently sweeping through the humanities and social sciences and entails a paradigm shift toward a more material(ist) understanding of social and cultural life. From new materialist thinking, new (empirical) approaches, methods, methodologies and objects of study ensue. The new materialisms emerge from feminism, philosophy, and science and technologies studies and critique the foundational binaries of modern thought, especially the nature/culture, object/subject, human/thing dualisms, whose anthropocentric biases are seen to have led to the current ecological and civilizational crisis and the incapacity to think through and adequately engage with them. Proposing to give things their due, new materialisms are interested in “the force of things” and debate “the agency of things.” The post-anthropocentric interest in the vitality of things parallels the non-dualist modes of thinking of indigenous ontologies on which some new materialisms may in fact be based, but whose influence has so far insufficiently been acknowledged. At its most radical, new materialism is posthumanist, part of the nonhuman turn. A number of scholars have sought to bring the insights and concerns of new materialism(s) into the fields of literary theory and criticism, developing “thing” or “stuff” theory and seeking to conceptualize and operationalize a new literary materialism. For this, they draw on insights from a range of disciplines, including material culture studies, book and print culture studies, and comparative textual media studies. Given the importance attached to the linguistic turn as the cultural moment and textual approach in relation to which new materialists agonistically construct the newness of their material(ist) endeavors, the publication context of Roland Barthes’s famous essay “The Death of the Author”—the multimedia magazine in a box Aspen 5+6—is highlighted as an important site for critiquing a nonmaterial approach.

scholarly journals The materiality or ‘thingness’ of words and their effects: Some examples from the Book of Proverbs

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hendrik Viviers
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Art History ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Reference List ◽  
Textual Studies ◽  
Semantic Meaning ◽  
Ultimate Source ◽  
Material Turn

Words are more than vehicles for semantic meaning; they can also be regarded as ‘things’ with an ‘agency’ of their own. This happens when they are seen (iconic to legitimise) or heard (performative to inspire). According to S. Brent Plate, a key researcher on materiality (see reference list) ‘words are bodies, full of power’. Words, along with many ‘things’ (fetish, ritual, book, nature, place, etc.) mediate between the material known and the immaterial unknown; they make the invisible visible or experienceable. Birgit Meyer , the pioneer of the so-called material turn in the study of religion, says, words ‘effect the transcendental’ for the initiated. Not inherently potent but through ascribed or endowed meanings they in turn affect their creators. The so-called material turn in the study of religion has rediscovered that matter or ‘things’ really ‘matters.’ Words as powerful ‘things’ or agents are also attested to in Proverbs. When wisdom words are externalised (e.g. through ornaments, Pr 1:8–9), they legitimise their users; when they are internalised (in the heart or mind, Pr 2), they persuade almost like ‘powerful personae’ to follow the wise lifestyle; and when they are personified (Pr 8), they become the ‘mediatrix’ to the thought-world of wisdom, and its ultimate source, Yahweh.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The material turn in the study of religion (anthropology) emphasises the appreciation of materiality or ‘things’. It questions an exclusive mentalistic or inward approach in cognate disciplines, such as Religious Science, Theology and Old Testament and New Testament textual studies. It also stimulates a dialogue with other humaniora such as philosophy, psychology, literary studies, media studies and art history.

scholarly journals Peirce’s semeiotics: a methodology for bridging the material–ideational divide in IR scholarship

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alena Drieschova
Keyword(s):  
Social Convention ◽  
Material Constitution ◽  
Material World ◽  
Linguistic Model ◽  
The People ◽  
Material Reality ◽  
New Materialisms ◽  
The World ◽  
Systematic Methodology

The New Materialisms in IR scholarship seek to transcend the divide between matter and ideas, with among others such concepts as practices, or artifacts. This paper makes a start in developing a systematic methodology for the New Materialisms. It proposes Peirce’s semeiotics as one way to unpack how practices and artifacts are ideational and simultaneously material. Peircean semeiotics is a semeiotics of materialism, which creates room for material constitution and analyses practices and artifacts as signs. Peircean semeiotics acknowledges that many signs are objects and practices in the material world, and therefore underlie material constraints, while they also limit and enable the possibilities for action upon the world. Simultaneously though, as signs they convey a particular meaning to the people who surround them, not always by intent. Just as language, material things can signify by arbitrary social convention, but they can also signify by resembling the object they represent, or by being causally related to it. The linguistic model is thus incomplete to study the significative role of material reality. I will illustrate the use of Peircean semeiotics on an analysis of GDP as an inscription device and a complex sign.

Matter Nature “Matters” Ultimately: A Material Ecological Reflection on Psalm 65

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hendrik Viviers
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Material World ◽  
Material Turn ◽  
Material Things ◽  
Material Religion ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Fertile Land

Modern insights in philosophy, anthropology, psychology, communication studies, religion studies and art history (to name but a few), exemplify the so-called material turn in the study of religion, of how matter “matters,” even ultimately. Contributions in the recently founded journal, Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief, highlight these insights. Humans animate material “things” (e.g., land, nature, temples, shrines) with meaning, and they in turn become “agents” to mediate the meaningful world they stand for. Humans and matter become co-constitutive in this dynamic. Our senses and sensibilities play a crucial role in this “world making” endeavour, when interacting with the material world around us. Ecological hermeneutics concurs, regarding Earth as a “subject” in her own right. This study found that an ancient poem, Psalm 65, resonates with these modern insights. The psalm expresses a skilful interconnectedness in its composition, but moreover, it interconnects temple(-goers; vv. 2–5), the orderly cosmos (vv. 6–9) and the fertile land (vv. 10–14) in unified and thankful song towards their creator and sustainer. The sensual experience of the “goodness” in the temple in Zion, the awe-inspiring cosmos, and the “goodness” of the fertile land, realises this “world of bliss.”

Incomplete

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doug Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Art History ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Holes are paradoxes of visual culture and human behavior. Difficult to define, alive with consequence, holes affect behavior in significant ways. This chapter examines holes as slippery, elusive, material, always absent, and as parasites (to surfaces). Starting with the author’s excavation of 8,000-year-old pit-houses from the Neolithic site at Măgura (Romania), this chapter investigates the complexities of holes and surfaces as philosophic entities, and then examines the cutting work of the late twentieth-century artist Gordon Matta-Clark. The approach taken is to juxtapose otherwise disparate examples and analyses from within archaeology, art, and beyond. Though immaterial objects, holes have relations and properties. They disrupt at subconscious levels, altering understandings of our place(s) in the world, and our relations with other people, objects, and institutions. By unpacking and closely redefining holes, one gains new perspectives and analytic tools for the study of human behavior, and the traces it leaves behind, that are applicable across the humanities and social sciences, from archaeology to art history, from anthropology to design and material culture studies.

scholarly journals American Art Matters: Rethinking Materiality in American Studies

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-84
Author(s):  
Erika Doss
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Technological Process ◽  
Art History ◽  
American Studies ◽  
American Art ◽  
Keynote Lecture ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Material Turn ◽  
American Art History

Abstract The “material” turn has steadily gained currency in cultural studies and the humanities, with scholars increasingly attentive to theorising things and examining their presence, power, and meaning in any number of fields and disciplines. This essay stems from the keynote lecture given at the conference MatteReality: Historical Trajectories and Conceptual Futures for Material Culture Studies, held on March 23, 2017, at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Freiburg. Focused in particular on the meaning of materiality in American art history and American Studies today, it opens with an examination of the factors of monetisation and mobility and segues to a consideration of more efficacious ways to assess, theorise, and critique the material turn. Two areas that are particularly relevant in terms of rethinking, and mediating, materiality in American art and American Studies are those of technological process and affect: how things are made and how things make us feel.

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