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Abstraction as Strategy for Worldmaking
Full text linkOne of the cognitive strategies scientists use in their modelling practices is abstraction. In recent philosophy of science, abstraction is commonly understood as the ‘omission’ of the irrelevant features of a represented phenomenon. This essay criticizes this characterization, with the help of an example from oceanography and insights drawn from abstract art. In contrast, I propose to highlight the worldmaking potential of abstraction, insofar as it involves a creative act of ordering and establishing previously unseen connections between relevant features of the world
Crises in Modelling:Articulations of the Romanian Labour Market in the Long 1990s
Full text linkThis chapter argues that there are cases in which the reference point used by economists for constructing models is not the self-interested, fully informed agent of neoclassical economics, with the capacity to make rational decisions and to maximize utility. Sometimes, economists see Homo economicus as a real historical figure, one that emerges only in relation to a fully functional market
Modelling Institutions, Instituting Models:The Juridification of Politics and the Performative Power of Naming
Full text linkStarting from Deleuze’s claim that institutions perform a social activity of creating and imposing models of conduct, the chapter analyses the various ways in which this modelling activity has been conceptualized in political theory. It identifies three main paradigms of the performativity of institutions available in the literature: the sovereign, the subversive, and properly instituting performativity. The chapter argues that the latter, wherein models are construed as previsions of the world, enables a better understanding of the current juridification of politics
What Is a ‘Single-axis Analysis’?
Full text linkThe concept of ‘intersectionality’ has completely transformed a wide range of disciplines over the last few decades. From literary study to sociology, intersectional approaches—approaches that demand that scholars and activists look at the interplay of multiple social identities and locations in order to understand social life—have importantly become routine. But much less attention has been given to what intersectionality was introduced to help correct: the idea of a ‘single-axis analysis’, or an approach that putatively focuses on a single dimension of social life. Instead scholars have tended to take it for granted that they know what this means: that is, a ruinous distortion of the complexity of the social world and something that should be avoided. At the same time, and in some instances departing from intersectionality, influential scholars in recent years have again deployed ideas about the singularity of foundational social formations, particularly in order to understand Blackness and Indigeneity. Focusing on Euro-American scholarly frameworks for studying gender and sexuality, this talk will turn attention to the many functions and purposes of single axis analyses in order to complicate understanding of such frameworks and to develop literacies around their various meanings. Ben Nichols is a lecturer in gender and sexuality studies at the University of Manchester since 2021. Before this, he held a fellowship at the ICI Berlin and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. He completed his PhD in English at King’s College London. His research focuses on the intellectual histories of feminist, queer and trans studies. His monograph – Same Old: Queer Theory, Literature, and the Politics of Sameness (2020) – rethinks the deeply embedded aversion to categories of ‘sameness’ across queer studies.00:00 Introduction by Claudia Peppel08:34 Talk by Ben Nichols1:09:09 Discussio
Ambiguity of Scale:Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain — an Anthropocene Novel?
No full textThomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain is obsessed with questions of scale. Whether in its incessant reflection on days, weeks, months, years, minutes, or depths of fathoms and meters of altitude, the novel is driven by questions of the measurability of time and space. At the same time, one would hardly want to speak of measurability with regard to The Magic Mountain, either in terms of time or space. What, then, is this obsession with scale? The Magic Mountain, Strowick will argue, generates literary scales beyond measurability that address what the novel calls the ‘dual nature’ [Zwienatur] of time and space. The talk will explore this ambiguity of scale and its consequences for the question of narrative and the form of the novel. About 100 years after the publication of Thomas Mann’s novel, questions of scale are often discussed in theories of the Anthropocene. In fact, ‘scale critique’ is one of the most promising ways to analyse the Anthropocene. Is The Magic Mountain a setting for ‘scale critique’, an Anthropocene novel avant la lettre? Elisabeth Strowick is a Professor of German in the Department of German at New York University. Before joining NYU, she was Professor of German and Humanities, Chair of the Department of German and Romance Languages and Literatures, and Co-Director of the Max Kade Center for Modern German Thought at Johns Hopkins University. Elisabeth Strowick has held numerous academic positions, including visiting professorships, at universities in the United States, Germany (FU Berlin, Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin, University of Hamburg), and Switzerland (University of Zurich, University of Basel). She was awarded a Feodor Lynen Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Yale, Johns Hopkins, 2004-2006). Her areas of expertise are German literature, culture, and thought from the 19th century to the present, with special emphasis on literary theory, psychoanalysis, aesthetics, the poetics of knowledge, and ecocriticism. She is the author of Passagen der Wiederholung: Kierkegaard — Lacan — Freud (Metzler, 1999), Sprechende Körper — Poetik der Ansteckung (Fink, 2009), Gespenster des Realismus. Zur literarischen Wahrnehmung von Wirklichkeit (Fink, 2019) and has (co-)edited numerous volumes and special issues of peer-reviewed journals. Elisabeth Strowick is currently working on a book on ‘Literary Scale Critique: The Anthropocene as Deep War Time’.00:00 Introduction by Claudia Peppel07:29 Talk by Elisabeth Strowick1:09:48 Discussio
La Bibliographie de Salò
No full textSalò o le centoventi giornate di Sodoma (1975) débute par un intertitre inhabituel : une bibliographie d’auteurs français célèbres ayant écrit sur Sade. La présente étude tente de prendre en considération la réalité complète de cette image immédiatement offerte au spectateur : en tant que bibliographie ; en tant que plan de cinéma ; en tant que liste de quatre hommes et une femme ; en tant que concaténation de lettres noir sur blanc
A World of Possibilities:The Legacy of <i>The Undivine Comedy</i>
No full textPublished in 1992, Teodolinda Barolini’s The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante was a clarion call for a paradigmatic shift in reading Dante’s Commedia. Bringing together an international cadre of scholars, A World of Possibilities: The Legacy of ‘The Undivine Comedy’ illustrates the generative influence that Barolini’s approach has exerted across continents, disciplines, and generations. It testifies to the variety of interpretations that originate in her method, and opens new perspectives on Dante’s oeuvre and the significance of literature.Introduction | KRISTINA M. OLSON | 1-11ON METHODPossible Worlds and Reading Dante’s Commedia: Suspension of Disbelief (Coleridge, Horace, Tolkien, Cecco d’Ascoli) and the Solvents of Narrative and History | TEODOLINDA BAROLINI | 15-47I. DETHEOLOGIZE TO NARRATIVIZEThe Intricate Weaving of The Undivine Comedy | H. WAYNE STOREY | 51-63The Undivine Comedy: Dante One and Multiple | ROBERTO ANTONELLI | 65-98Reasoning between Possibility, Fictional Reality, and Actuality: A Case Study in Detheologizing the Commedia’s Conditionals | LAURA DINARDO | 99-122II. DETHEOLOGIZE TO HISTORICIZEDetheologize to Historicize | NASSIME CHIDA | 125-133Teodolinda Barolini and the Signs of Newness in The Undivine Comedy | ALBERTO CASADEI | 135-148Dante’s War: Exiles, carestia, and Conflict in the Florentine Countryside, 1301–1304 | GEORGE DAMERON | 149-179III. DETHEOLOGIZE TO RETHEOLOGIZEDante’s Lucy in the Canon Law of Consent | GRACE DELMOLINO | 183-208Prophetic Models and Structures in an Undivine Comedy | GIUSEPPE LEDDA | 209-221Divining The Undivine Comedy: Reflections and Recollections | ZYGMUNT G. BARAŃSKI | 223-242IV. DETHEOLOGIZE TO DRAMATIZEDante and ‘visibile parlare’ | LINA BOLZONI | 245-259Ovidio senza Dio: Ovidian Myth and Sexual Violence in the Commedia | JULIE VAN PETEGHEM | 261-283In Praise of Detheologizing | ELENA LOMBARDI | 285-298Heavenly Paradoxes and Their Pleasures | MANUELE GRAGNOLATI | 299-314V. DETHEOLOGIZE TO MODERNIZEThe Role of the Reader in Actualizing the Commedia | F. REGINA PSAKI | 317-337From Detheologizing to Decolonizing: Toward a Reading of Dante and Alterity | AKASH KUMAR | 339-347Translating The Undivine Comedy | ROBERTA ANTOGNINI | 349-366EPILOGUEOn Reading The Undivine Comedy Thirty Years Later | JOAN FERRANTE | 369-370ReferencesNotes on the ContributorsInde
