Introduction: Space and the Sixties

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Yasmine Ramadan
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
The Political ◽  
Spatial Representations ◽  
Spatial Turn ◽  
Critical Moment ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
Egyptian Literature ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Sixties Generation ◽  
Egyptian History

The first part of the chapter presents the members of the sixties generation, telling the story of their emergence onto the cultural scene in Egypt. It outlines the socio-economic and political context of which they were both a part and an expression. Who are these writers? When and how did they emerge? What is significant about their work? Why did they appear at such a critical moment in Egyptian history? What are the sources of literary and aesthetic inspiration? This chapter draws on an array of primary material from the journals of the time whose pages were filled with discussions about this emerging generation. This presentation of the sixties generation is undertaken with an attention to the broader context of the literary sphere in Egypt, what Bourdieu calls “the field of cultural production.” The second part of the chapter focuses on the theoretical arguments for the examination of space in literature, examining the broader “spatial turn” in the humanities and social sciences, engaging this approach within the context of modern and contemporary Egyptian literature. A focus upon spatial representations expands our analysis of the work of the sixties writers, bringing together the thematic, the aesthetic, and the political.

Maoist Laughter

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
The Political ◽  
Proper Position ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Political Expression ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Inner Contradictions ◽  
Mao Era

This volume aims to restore laughter to its proper position in the Mao-era culture. The Mao era was actually a period when laughter was bonded with political culture to an unprecedented degree. Spurred by dynamic political exigencies, many cultural products sought to utilize laughter as a more pliable form of political expression. Laughter was used to highlight antagonisms or downplay differences, to expose and ridicule the class enemy, or to meliorate and conceal contradictions; it could be ritualistic or heartfelt, didactic or cathartic, communal or utopic. In Maoist culture, laughter became a versatile discourse that brought together the political, the personal, the aesthetic, the ethical, the affective, the physical, the aural, and the visual. Therefore, the art of laughter was carefully moderated and regulated for political ends. Maoist laughter reveals the diversity, complexity, dynamics, and inner contradictions in the cultural production and reproduction in Mao’s China.

scholarly journals Uma odisséia de vanguarda: internacionalismo e resistência no projeto português da poesia experimental

2005 ◽  
Vol 25 (34) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Rogério Barbosa da Silva
Keyword(s):  
Great Part ◽  
Experimental Poetry ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Debate ◽  
Concrete Poetry ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
The Aesthetic

<p>O presente trabalho estuda a construção do movimento da Poesia Experimental Portuguesa, que teve um papel importante na renovação estética na literatura dos anos 60, contribuindo para um debate internacional em torno dos movimentos de poesia experimental e, a partir deste mesmo debate, propondo um caminho de liberdade criativa, frente ao quadro político reinante em Portugal. Destacamos, neste contexto, a importante participação da Poesia Concreta brasileira como estímulo a esta abertura estética.</p> <p>This work studies the construction of the Portuguese Experimental Poetry that had a great part in the aesthetic renewal in the literature of the sixties, contributing to an international debate around the movements of experimental poetry and, because of this, proposing an opening for the creative freedom, in the presence of the political and cultural situation in Portugal in these years. We highlighted, in this context, the important participation of the Brazilian Concrete Poetry as incentive for this aesthetic opening.</p>

Dante Alighieri

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Bartoloni
Keyword(s):  
Dante Alighieri ◽  
The Political ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Artistic Process ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
The Aesthetic

The Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) is invoked several times in the work of Giorgio Agamben, often in passing to stress a point, as when discussing the political relevance of désoeuvrement (KG 246); to develop a thought, as in the articulation of the medieval idea of imagination as the medium between body and soul (S, especially 127–9); or to explain an idea, as in the case of the artistic process understood as the meeting of contradictory forces such as inspiration and critical control (FR, especially 48–50). So while Agamben does not engage with Dante systematically, he refers to him constantly, treating the Florentine poet as an auctoritas whose presence adds critical rigour and credibility. Identifying and relating the instances of these encounters is useful since they highlight central aspects of Agamben’s thought and its development over the years, from the first writings, such as Stanzas, to more recent texts, such as Il fuoco e il racconto and The Use of Bodies. The significance of Agamben’s reliance on Dante can be divided into two categories: the aesthetic and the political. The following discussion will address each of these categories separately, but will also emphasise the philosophical continuity that links the discussion of the aesthetic with that of the political. While in the first instance Dante is offered as an example of poetic innovation, especially in relation to the use of language and imagination, in the second he is invoked as a forerunner of new forms of life. Mediality and potentiality are the two pivots connecting the aesthetic and the political.

Class, Control, and Classical Music

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Bull
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Music Ensembles ◽  
The Aesthetic

Through an ethnographic study of young people playing and singing in classical music ensembles in the south of England, this book analyses why classical music in England is predominantly practiced by white middle-class people. It describes four ‘articulations’ or associations between the middle classes and classical music. Firstly, its repertoire requires formal modes of social organization that can be contrasted with the anti-pretentious, informal, dialogic modes of participation found in many forms of working-class culture. Secondly, its modes of embodiment reproduce classed values such as female respectability. Thirdly, an imaginative dimension of bourgeois selfhood can be read from classical music’s practices. Finally, its aesthetic of detail, precision, and ‘getting it right’ requires a long-term investment that is more possible, and makes more sense, for middle- and upper-class families. Through these arguments, the book reframes existing debates on gender and classical music participation in light of the classed gender identities that the study revealed. Overall, the book suggests that inequalities in cultural production can be understood through examining the practices that are used to create a particular aesthetic. It argues that the ideology of the ‘autonomy’ of classical music from social concerns needs to be examined in historical context as part of the classed legacy of classical music’s past. It describes how the aesthetic of classical music is a mechanism through which the middle classes carry out boundary-drawing around their protected spaces, and within these spaces, young people’s participation in classical music education cultivates a socially valued form of self-hood.

Post-Mass-Media and Participation

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Research Group ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
New Generation

Three decades after Félix Guattari introduced the concept of "post-mass-media" as a necessary condition of media participation, it is by no means self-evident that his reaction to events leading up to 1989 would still attract a new generation of scholars today. Yet, the concept continually reappears to address the role of technology in democratic participation and the relation between the aesthetic and the political. Originating in discussions of the DFG research group Media and Participation, this issu

scholarly journals Out of Bounds: Confronting War Crimes and the Breakdown of Justice with Contemporary Art

2021 ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Catherine Bernard
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
The Political ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
International Conflicts ◽  
Administration Of Justice ◽  
Collective Remembering ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
Marc Quinn ◽  
The Aesthetic

Recent art has turned to judiciary and extra-judiciary practices, specifically in the context of international conflicts, in order to assert art’s political accountability and relevance to our capacity to historicise the present. The war in Iraq inspired works that directly address issues of representation and remediation, such as Marc Quinn’s Mirage (2008), in which the aesthetic experience opens onto an ambiguous experience of the breakdown of justice. Other works have chosen to turn carceral space itself into the site of a collective remembering that harnesses affect to a critical reflection on the administration of justice, on assent and dissent. This article will turn to key works by Marc Quinn and Trevor Paglen that confront extra-judiciary malpractices, but also to recent collective art projects involving an interdisciplinary take on the experience of imprisonment, such as Inside. Artists and Writers in Reading Prison (2016), in which artists of all backgrounds responded to Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis on the very premises of Wilde’s incarceration, as well as the work of 2019 Turner Prize co-recipient: Jordanian sound artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan whose recent works rely on testimonies from Syrian detainees and probe the political pragmatics of aural art. All these works have turned to the document—literary, visual, aural—to reflect on the process of experiential mediation. How does the experience of imprisonment, or extra-judiciary malpractices, come to the spectator? How are they read, heard, interpreted, remediated? The article ponders the remediation and displacement of aesthetic experience itself and the “response-ability”—following Donna Haraway’s coinage—of such a repoliticised embodied experience. It will assess the way by which such interdisciplinary works rethink the poetics of the documentary for an embodied intellection of justice—and injustice—in the present.

scholarly journals “Guardianes de la tradición” Resistencias al cambio político y socio-cultural del tardofranquismo y la Transición en Andalucía oriental = “Guardians of tradition”. Resistances to the political and socio cultural change during the late Francoism and the transition to democracy in Eastern Andalusia

2020 ◽  
pp. 344
Author(s):  
Gloria Román Ruiz
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
San Jose ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Town

Resumen: El artículo se interroga por la naturaleza y la intensidad de las resistencias que algunos grupos sociales plantearon al proceso de transformación política y socio-cultural que comenzó a finales de los años sesenta y se extendió a lo largo de los setenta. Presta atención a aquellos sujetos que alzaron su voz en defensa de la tradición y en contra de la modernidad, así como a la incidencia que tuvieron sus acciones y comportamientos de oposición sobre el proceso de democratización. En primer lugar, el texto se detiene en las acciones de resistencia protagonizadas por feligreses conservadores que abrigaban actitudes políticas aquiescentes con la dictadura y acudían a escuchar misa a una parroquia regentada por un cura progresista. En segundo lugar, atiende a las resistencias expresadas por la comunidad parroquial de la iglesia de San José de Estepona (Málaga) ante el proyecto para la instauración de un complejo nudista en la localidad en 1978.Palabras clave: tardofranquismo, transición, democratización, resistencias al cambio, conservadurismo.Abstract: The article wonders about the nature and the intensity of the resistances set in motion by some social groups against the process of political and socio-cultural transformation that began at the end of the sixties and extended throughout the seventies. It pays attention to those subjects who raised their voice in defence of the tradition and against the modernity, as well as to the impact of their actions and opposition behaviours on the process of democratization. In the first place, the paper deals with the actions of resistance activated by the conservative parishioners who had acquiescent political attitudes towards the dictatorship and who attended to a parish ruled by a progressive priest. Secondly, it focuses on the resistances expressed by the parochial community of the San José church (Estepona, Málaga) caused by a nudist project in the town in 1978.Keywords: late Francoism, transition to democracy, democratization, resistances to change, conservatism.

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