FKW // Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und visuelle Kultur
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Verheissungsvolle Berichte und suggestive Karten: Die englischen und niederländischen Nordostpassagen-Expeditionen des 16. Jahrhunderts zwischen Erfolg und Scheitern
Get PDFFrom a modern perspective, the English and Dutch expeditions into the northern seas in the 16th century that set out to discover new shipping routes from Europe to Asia have thoroughly failed: Neither of them ever reached their goal. All the alluring expectations of exotic goods and spices that would be easily imported into England and the Netherlands – thus winning the competition in global commerce against Spain and Portugal – were shattered in the perennial ice of the Arctic Sea. Nevertheless these expeditions resulted in travel reports that tell stories of threatening ice, sea monsters, and barbaric peoples. The documents though, also assure the reader of a successful crossing of the Arctic in a near future, highlight the enormous achievement and endurance of the ships’ crews and emphasize the increase in knowledge due to the expeditions, mainly the mapping of northern coastlines. These aspects of historical ‘reality’, imaginations and wishful thinking are also juxtaposed in a couple of extraordinary maps accompanying the reports. This essay will analyse how the travel narratives and their visualization in the maps blur our neat distinction between failure and success and how especially maps became the piece of evidence for every single fragment of achievement
Fortuna oder die Umstände von Erfolg und Scheitern in der politischen Theorie der Vormoderne
Get PDFThis article argues that early modern political thinkers did not think about "success“ and "failure“ in modern terms of material well-being or as results of individual action and self-actualisation. Focusing on the thought of Niccolò Machiavelli and Jean Bodin, two key thinkers of the early modern period, the article shows that two aspects were central to early modern thinkers but that tend to be disregarded in modern debates. Early modern thinkers put considerably more emphasis on the role of fortune, the unruly force which controling human actions, human success and human failure. And they emphasised the central role of the common good as the benchmark against which success needed to be measured
Die AG Postkolonial in Leipzig – Ein Bericht
Get PDFThe paper gives an insight into the multifaceted work and the sometimes striking experiences of the action group Postcolonial Leipzig, who explores and brings to light the past of German colonialism as it can be traced throughout the city. It also explains the problems and challenges the group is continuously confronted with, e.g. when cooperating with town officials. Making the colonial past visible, is the precondition for serious political and cultural debate, not its substitute
Afrikanismen als Deckerinnerungen. Zur Verwobenheit der postnationalsozialistischen und postkolonialen Erinnerung in bundesdeutschen Filmen der 1950er Jahre
Get PDFThe following essay takes as its starting point the observation that colonial/racist imagery, sounds, figures and metaphors can be found in many 1950s West-German films. Referring to the Freudian notion of screen memories, which can be understood as memories of a past that were never present, the essay asks how these filmic actualizations of africanist tropes established a vision of an unburdened past. By looking at three films the essay shows that actualizations of africanist – racist – imagery are key; not only for the transcription of the Nazi as well as the colonial past, but also for establishing a memory that allows for the construction of a self-image as re-covered and therefore no longer racist
Von Reitern und Scheitern - visuelle Ordnung, politische Figur und reiterliche Praxis in der Frühen Neuzeit
Get PDFThis paper explores the productive gap between riding as visual image of power and as a practical skill. By taking Sébastien Bourdon’s equestrian portrait of Queen Christina of Sweden as a starting point, I will try to set out the space for challenging (modern) presuppositions readily made about riding skills in pre-modern times. Christina of Sweden proves to be a case in point for a leading figure that used gendered visual imagery to create a complex compound of representational skills, practical competence and media knowledge. Riding, or rather the art of riding and horse-handling as culture equestre, became a most distinctive characteristic of early modern male nobility. Christina’s skilful deployment of contemporary political and visual means sets her off as what could be termed a female king. At the same time, riding was in Christina’s times surprisingly often the cause of severe accidents and untimely princely deaths. My argument is that these two dimensions of riding – as discursive and visual image of success on the one hand, and as practice competence prone to failure on the other hand – can be brought into fruitful tension
"I like America and America likes me": Joseph Beuys’ Selbstinszenierung als Schamane und Indianer im Kontext deutscher Erinnerungskultur
Get PDFIn 1974 Joseph Beuys staged his performance I like America and America likes me at the newly-opened René Block Gallery in New York. For three days he stayed in a small room together with a coyote. The performance has become widely known since then and particularly in recent years a film documentation has been shown in quite a number of exhibitions in Germany. My paper focuses both on the images of cultural difference that Beuys’ action provides and on the colonial fantasies that are produced or referred to through its reception within the art historical discourse. I will analyse how these images and fantasies are interwined with myths of the artist as sufferer and healer, and explore their specific function within German commemorative culture. In using Sigmund Freud’s concept of Deckerinnerung (screen-memory), I will argue that the images and fantasies of the Other which the performance produces and invokes, provide an opportunity for the German audience to deny and replace the problematic recent past – here: the history of National Socialism and of the Shoah – and to imagine themselves as victims