Journal of Aesthetics & Culture最新文献

{"title":"“Kiss me with the hollow of your mouth” – imagining falling in love with Stense Andrea Lind-Valdan","authors":"Rune Gade","doi":"10.1080/20004214.2017.1385366","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2017.1385366","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The essay reflects upon the function of images within the love encounter, drawing on the personal experience of the author and his partner, visual artist Stense Andrea Lind-Valdan. Mixing personal experiences, diaristic notes and academic reflections, the essay moves beyond conventional scholarly style and experiments with more personal and anecdotal modalities, thus creating a text that re-enacts the fascination and imaginary entrapments involved in the love encounter while simultaneously reflecting upon these aspects of love.","PeriodicalId":43229,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aesthetics & Culture","volume":"10 1","pages":"14 - 8"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2018-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20004214.2017.1385366","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45684835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Repeat after me: the automatic labours of love","authors":"Lee Mackinnon","doi":"10.1080/20004214.2018.1438735","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2018.1438735","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Modern romantic love is contemplated in association with industrial forms of production and labour. Attention is paid to the ways in which women are industrialisation’s automatic operatives par excellence, as well as the subjects and objects of love.","PeriodicalId":43229,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aesthetics & Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2018-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20004214.2018.1438735","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46765426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"White guilt and racial imagery in Annette K. Olesen’s Little Soldier","authors":"Elisabeth Oxfeldt","doi":"10.1080/20004214.2017.1404890","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2017.1404890","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The article analyzes Annette K. Olesen’s Little Soldier (Lille Soldat, 2008), from the perspective of “white guilt” (or the “white man’s burden”) as it is thematized in the film. It furthermore critiques the film’s portrayal of the two female protagonists, Lotte and Lily, as racialized opposites. This is done from the perspective of postfeminism and critical race and whiteness studies. The readings include an evaluation of the film as a globalized, postfeminist version of Martin Scorcese’s Taxi Driver as well as an interpretation of the film as a national allegory. Overall, I argue that while the film contains many pertinent, well-chosen images and symbols of a destructive form of white guilt, it is ultimately based on two female figures whose opposite character traits come across as founded on, and thus also as perpetuating, stereotypical racial imagery.","PeriodicalId":43229,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aesthetics & Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2018-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20004214.2017.1404890","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42799873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"No country for old men: utopian stories of welfare society’s shortcomings in A Man Called Ove and The 100-Year-Old Man","authors":"Anders Marklund","doi":"10.1080/20004214.2018.1438732","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2018.1438732","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores the similarities between the two most successful Swedish films of the past years. Through a focus on the two elderly protagonists the article discusses how the films acknowledge challenges in these men’s lives and in both contemporary and past society, but effectively repackage any serious issue in a form that remains palatable to audiences in Sweden and internationally. Themes discussed include the Swedish welfare state, community and new families of choice, as well as aspects of globalization.","PeriodicalId":43229,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aesthetics & Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2018-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20004214.2018.1438732","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42176191","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Instagrammable humanitarianism and the politics of guilt","authors":"C. M. Reestorff","doi":"10.1080/20004214.2018.1438733","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2018.1438733","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article is based on a study of the collaboration between the Danish pop singer Medina and Act Alliance, the TV-program Medina and the Refugees—Access with Abdel and the harsh attacks on Medina and her humanitarian engagement on social media. The article follows three trajectories. Firstly, I suggest that Act Alliance uses celebrity advocacy in a mediatized campaign effort to mobilize young Instagrammers accustomed to peer-to-peer communication. Secondly, I suggest that Medina’s advocacy manifests as a particular form of politics of guilt, which on the one hand positions her as an “icon-body” that reproduces the classic distinction between active Westerners and passive sufferers and on the other hand challenges this distinction when her celebrity body becomes agentic. The politics of guilt is crucial because Medina and Act Alliance ask for recognition of a collective Scandinavian guilt, i.e. guilt about being on the receiving end of global inequality and consequently redemption through aid. Thirdly, I study the ways in which the politics of guilt is rejected when newspapers, bloggers and Facebook users cross-feed each other and affectively intensify a collective shaming of Medina. This kind of shaming, it is argued, is a way of rejecting guilt towards suffering others by shaming and denying Medina agency and insisting that she is merely an icon-body. Finally, while the article distinguished between politics of guilt and the shaming strategies directed at Medina, both work according to the logics of affective governmentality, seeking to govern who has agency and what the appropriate affects in the face of suffering might be. In this context, the analysis shows, shaming reflects a neoliberal and ethnocentric welfare-protectionism that conceals its own anti-refugee ideology.","PeriodicalId":43229,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aesthetics & Culture","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2018-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20004214.2018.1438733","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41943150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Outsiders and bystanders in Erik Skjoldbjærg’s The Pyromaniac (2016)","authors":"A. Gjelsvik","doi":"10.1080/20004214.2018.1438731","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2018.1438731","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article discusses the Norwegian film The Pyromaniac (Erik Skjoldbjærg 2016) as an artistic attempt to come to terms with terrorism, and as a cinematic treatment of the Norwegian terror attacks of 22nd of July 2011. The film is discussed in relation with several written accounts on 22nd of July and focus is on the role of the individual, the family and the society when it comes to guilt and shame following incomprehensible events.","PeriodicalId":43229,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aesthetics & Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2018-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20004214.2018.1438731","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42300177","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Negotiating privilege and social inequality in an alternative Sweden: Real Humans/Äkta Människor (SVT, 2012–2013)","authors":"Julianne Q. M. Yang","doi":"10.1080/20004214.2018.1438730","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2018.1438730","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article analyzes representations of privilege and social inequality in the science fiction TV series Äkta människor (Real Humans) (2012–2013), produced by Sweden’s national public TV broadcaster (SVT). Set in the near future or a parallel present, Real Humans explores an alternative version of Sweden in which more and more human workers are replaced by a type of humanoid robot called “Hubots”. Reviewers and scholars have interpreted the series in light of various contemporary social and political issues, many of which pertain to not only technology, but also social inequality amongst humans. This article connects Real Humans specifically to the recent increase in paid domestic labor in Scandinavia, and argues that the series deals with moral conflicts associated with being privileged and outsourcing household and care work. This is especially evident in the series’ representation of Inger Engman, a Swedish mother, wife, and full-time employee, and her ambivalent relationship to her household and care work Hubot Mimi. Through Inger and Mimi, Real Humans explores moral and affective dimensions of privilege, and brings to mind concerns expressed by parents in Scandinavia who employ domestic workers and au pairs. Inger’s conflicted relationship to Mimi also evokes the concept of maternal guilt. As I show, Real Humans is one of several contemporary Scandinavian narratives that use the au pair figure to comment on social and gender inequality in a globalized age, yet the series stands out in its debt to the science fiction genre. In sum, Real Humans is not only a rare and noteworthy example of a Scandinavian science fiction TV series—it also invites the viewer to reflect on the connections between privilege, social (in)equality, and work in contemporary Scandinavia.","PeriodicalId":43229,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aesthetics & Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2018-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20004214.2018.1438730","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45736909","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The semiotic impulse: experimenting with Peirce’s diagrammatic love","authors":"Chryssa Sdrolia","doi":"10.1080/20004214.2018.1435151","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2018.1435151","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores the relevance of Peirce’s cosmological concept of love for politics, focusing on its expression as an evolutionary process of semiosis. More specifically, it argues that in Peircean semiotics love becomes the impulse motivating the creation of signs but without resorting to a transcendental structure that would attribute the source of their meaning to the human subject. Rather, it is shown that if love is said to be creative at all, this is only to the extent that it is a metaphysical diagram by which nature signifies itself into manifold worlds. The first part of this paper traces the articulation of diagrammatic love in Peirce’s naturalised concept of the sign as part of his response to the dilemma between construction and reality concerning the interpretation of experimental phenomena. The metaphysical and methodological consequences of this response are then taken up in relation to a different articulation of the same dilemma, this time implying that in order for love to be political it would either have to lose its cosmic character or else its relevance for human concerns. As a conclusion, the paper explores the potential link between diagrammatic love as experimental ethics of semiosis with what has come to be known as the “cosmopolitical proposal”, exemplified in the work of Isabelle Stengers.","PeriodicalId":43229,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aesthetics & Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2018-02-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20004214.2018.1435151","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44809721","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Capitalocene, clichés, and critical re-enchantment. What Akomfrah’s Vertigo Sea does through BBC nature","authors":"J. Nilsson","doi":"10.1080/20004214.2018.1546538","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2018.1546538","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the montage of archival and original material that makes up John Akomfrah's three-channel video work Vertigo Sea (2015), the frequent use of footage shot by BBCs Natural History Unit (producers of series like Planet Earth) stands out as an unusual choice. This article explores aesthetic-political implications of how this material is subtly repurposed, with focus on one of the interconnected issues dealt with in the work: nature and the Capitaloscene. What does Vertigo Sea do to and through these BBC nature images? Which artistic strategies are involved and for which ends? Is the kind of ecological pathos already framing the original material itself critically transformed and if so in which senses? Does Vertigo Sea merely go for a reproduction of the natural beauty often attributed to original material, and as simply juxtaposed with terrible images, or does the repurposing also entail an alteration of the very notion of natural beauty? This article critically explores all these questions mainly through the frameworks of Situationist détournement, Deleuze's ideas about art and clichés, and Adorno's notions of authentic art, re-enchantment, and natural beauty—frameworks that are conversely critically discussed through Vertigo Sea. It aims to reveal Vertigo Sea as on the one hand an experiment in finding vital artistic strategies for re-enchanting (in non-idealizing ways) planetary nature in the Capitalocene, and as on the on the other hand a thematization of the difficulties in doing so. While appearing among a contemporary art scene increasingly concerned with local and/or global relations having to do with ecology in this new era, Vertigo Sea presents us with a highly original case primarily through its unusual choice of main source material and its complex treatment of this material.","PeriodicalId":43229,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aesthetics & Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20004214.2018.1546538","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44969785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Negotiating the past: addressing Sámi photography","authors":"S. Lien, H. Nielssen","doi":"10.1080/20004214.2018.1490137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2018.1490137","url":null,"abstract":"There is currently a growing worldwide interest in the Northern and Arctic areas in relation to natural resources, ecology and climate change. But the attention has also been directed towards the question of indigenous rights and the matter of preserving their culture. In June 2017, the National Assembly in Norway sanctioned the establishment of a Truth Commission in order to shed light on a difficult past, involving the oppression and injustices committed towards the Sámi and Kven populations. At the same time Sámi contemporary art attracts wide attention on important international arenas such as Documenta in Athens and Kassel. Negotiating the past is an integral part of ongoing political and cultural processes. Photography is in an important entrance to the past as well as the present. Hardly any cultural form has been more important than photography in the ways Sámi people have been perceived. This special issue of Journal of Aesthetics and Culture explores past and contemporary photography practices connected to the Sámi areas or Sápmi. It raises the following questions: What does the photographic legacy contain? How has it been formed and used? How have tensions between indigenous local agency and the gaze of dominant others been addressed both historically and in the contemporary society? Much of the photographic legacy related to Sápmi is coloured by the ways in which Europeans imagined the Sámi. In this sense it forms part of a NordicEuropean colonial visual culture and perceptual regime, and as such largely conforms to understandings of racial difference, ideas of cultural evolution, and the various agendas of the civilizing missions. The photographs manifest projects ranging from the development of racial typologies to ethnographic classification; they were tools of administrative control and surveillance; they formed part of arctic explorations and Christian missionizing and civilizing projects like education, health and hygiene; and they were distributed in the Western marked as exotica. The contributions to this special issue all address different perspectives related to historical and present uses of photography. Sigrid Lien discusses the nineteenth century photographic practices of scientific explorers travelling to the North, with a focus on the images from Sophus Tromholt and Roland Bonaparte’s expeditions in 1883 and 1884. The rather limited existing literature about these photographs is divided in two directions. One points to contemporary artistic reengagements as repatriation of visual heritage, while the other strives to articulate the various degrees of objectification of the Sámi sitters (individuality or typology). However, Lien argues that the photographs in question not only reflect the asymmetries between the photographer and the sitters. Situated in a larger visual economy of exploration, they also appear as identity performances of the academic male subjects who produced them—who made use of photography in order to s","PeriodicalId":43229,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Aesthetics & Culture","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/20004214.2018.1490137","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48462160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}