1,721,073 research outputs found
Heritage Practices Today. Shifts and Impacts
No full textUnderstanding the meaning of heritage through different perspectives is a challenging matter and demands a strong knowledge of recent academic literature. Recent trends focus on territories and communities rather than on punctual sites and works of genius and refer to dynamic concepts of landscape, itineraries, paths. The spotlight, also enhanced by the latest Unesco's guidelines, has moved thus from single to integrated heritage sites, in the form of regional, area, and transnational networks. Being very thought-provoking, the conceptualized sharp distinction in the heritage dichotomies cultural/natural is here brought to the fore and explored through examples related to the different territories presented in the volume
Virginia Woolf. In the nerves of writing
No full textBeyond genre- or rather inside and against genre- Woolf’s essays, short stories, novels, and diary-writing can be read as a different nuance of the same challenge: a ‘try’ overdrawing the boundaries of narrative conventions and testing the figures (the narrator, characters, voices) that structure the discourse within the text.
Rereading Virginia Woolf and embarking on a revised account of Woolf’s experience as a writer means facing a bewildering amount of critical commentary that copes with key issues related to “life” as a whole, and to the towering problem of “writing life”. “The nerves of writing” mentioned in the title mainly refer to what is acknowledged as the matrix-subject of Woolf's writing. “What is life”; what goes on in its name; which are its boundaries; how to cope with the “flickers” and signs we put into this ‘portmanteau’: these are facets of Woolf’s central obsession. And such obsession works as a major narrative magnet: it nourishes/feeds? a palimpsest of fiction and meta-fiction where self-scrutiny (steeped in autobiography) relates to the recognizance of the self (as an “I”, as a woman, as an Author), to the tunnelling within in search of one’s many selves, as well as to a psycho-collective history retrieved along pre-individual and trans-historical traces—as Deleuze’s concept of a “deterritorialised subject” has taught us to discern
Virginia Woolf in the garden of forms
Full text linkFor Virginia Woolf writing was always the site of a cognitive agone, which often appeared either in the guise of a perceptual euphoria or of a prostration. The agone is most than evident in the short stories, where traditional modes of narration implode under the strong metanarrative flavour and the struggle with the structure. The case of “In the Orchard”, an experimental writing developed under the fascination of pictorial form, is exemplary in this perspective. In strong dialogue with the Impressionist and Post-impressionist avant-guard, a number of short stories make evidence of Woolf’s obsession with visuality and form, with specific reference to this short story where a ‘self-reflected’ subject, in the guise of a young woman, occupies the foreground. The Miranda of “In the Orchard” is in fact surprised in its groping between the sphere of the intelligible and that of the optical reflection, scrutinised by a narrator who ‘freezes’ the scene into a repetitive writing writing, so as to let the reader look at it from different perspectives, with fresh eyes or even ‘eyeless’, recording ‘crises’ and ‘progress’ that are eventually shared by all the textual actors- author, character, narrator and reader
The London Spectacle. Poetics and Politics of the Urban Space
No full textAbstract. The image of the “Greater London”, capital of the Industrial Revolution, finds its visionary foundation in poetry, namely in William Wordsworth’s Prelude (1851). Foregrounded by the poet’s gaze (the verses devoted to the city- in the Book Seven- were completed by 1805), London emerges as a ‘spectacular city’, while a Victorian establishment was launching a urbanistic and architectural project to make London an “exhibition” to the multitude for the multitudes. The Imperial London was eventually made even more spectacular with the opening of collective and performing spaces that clearly embodied a ‘participant spectacular gaze’: according to a growing national ideology that reflected its power into a “progressive architecture”, conceived also to entertain, astonish and ‘control’ the urban masses. From the ‘astonished’ gaze of the proto-romantic flaneur to the Crystal Palace (the ‘wonderful’ glass structure that in 1851 hosted the first Great Exhibition), from the “pleasure gardens” to the grand glass and iron buildings conceived by the fin de siècle Victorian establishment, an impressive cultural and aesthetic discourse has constructed the image of London as the modern “City of Wonder” (competing with Paris, Chicago and New York, and in opposition to Rome, the Antique City). A ‘wonder’ that would soon become a global tourist attraction (“London. The Wonder City” was actually the title of a best selling tourist guide published in English in the beginning of the XXth century): a modern metropolis implemented by heritage attractions and ‘view points’ that are also gaze-devices for an urban community that has been investing emotions and money in making itself a world-show
Consumption and transgression. Rethinking the tourist practice
No full textMore than thirty years ago, Enzenberger complained that a culturally oriented “history of tourism is still to be written” : he then took some first steps towards a tentative “theory of tourism”, rejecting a too-easy anti-tourist attitude, as the combined effect of a surviving myth of the ‘true traveller’(rewritten by modernist and post-war intellectuals), and of that often simplistic critique (usually of Marxist matrix) which dismissed tourism as a ‘suspicious phenomenon’, linked to pleasure and leisure rather than to labour and social commitment. Enzensberger’s defense of the tourist appealed to the idea of a persistent ‘innocence’ and a subversive vitality, which were in themselves an interesting perspective. Enzensberger’s approach marks a turning point in the
critical debate on tourism, though his attitudes were ‘in the air’, scattered across in the discursive arena of the post-war, neocapitalist
world. From Benjamin to Barthes, from Baudrillard to Foucault, from Todorov to Eco, writing on modern travel, and on 'the tourist gaze', has been a surprisingly useful key to the Western way to modernity and identity, and to the strata of myths and stereotypes that sustain them. Signs and echoes of that crypto-critique are evident in the most interesting critical discussions of the last decade. Through foucauldian eyes, John Urry revisits “the tourist gaze” , trying to uncover the ideological and cultural dynamics that
nurture it. In Urry’s analysis, tourism, vacation and leisure are a distinctive product of Western modernity. Both an accomplice of and a dissident against the collective economy of ‘regular’ production and consumption, a fugitive who promises to come back, the tourist remains one of the most ambiguous icons of Western society. Urry’s point- all in all- gives back to tourism its
many faces (cultural, social, historical, economic), framing them in a social ‘economy’, a necessary system where desire is
definitively kept at bay by economic, functional, issues. And yet, in a global multicultural world run by post-capitalist and postcolonial
processes, tourism has ceased to be a Western behaviour and an ethnocentric tool, the peaceful face of Western hegemony, and has become a translatable code, a ‘reverse colonization’ accessible to any kind of mover and without boundaries of class, gender and race. Being a tourist is thus a characteristic condition of contemporary society, shared by different subjects around the world, which implies being regularly displaced around the world, at home on motorways and in airports no less than
‘at home’. The tourist paradox- in our opinion- might be usefully re-read in the context of the anti-economic discourses, tracing them back to some crucial issues about dépense and its domains: the idea of including tourism among those activities “lost to ends which can’t be subdued to any rational or accountable for logic” (Bataille),
based on 'waste'- of time, of labour, of time- which is in itself a subversive move and a vindication of sovereignity, sounds a very promising ground for the present analysis
I sensi del viaggio
No full textriflessione su spazio, viaggio e senso, in prospettiva storico-culturale e di critica del discorso, con particolare riferimento a testi generati in ambito occidentale, soprattutto anglosasson
La città e la messa in scena del moderno. Lo spettacolo di Londra
Full text linkEccitazione e spaesamento: sono questi gli stati d’animo che segnano l’incontro “a passo d’uomo” con le strade di Londra, quando la città, in piena Rivoluzione industriale, sta diventando metropoli: a condurci sulla scena del cambiamento è il padre del Romanticismo britannico — William Wordsworth — flâneur antelitteram a spasso senza meta nella prima capitale europea del moderno. Nel Prelude, lungo poema narrativo ‘on the road’ (“the growth of a poet’s mind”) scritto tra il 1798 e il 1805, il Libro Settimo — intitolato alla residenza londinese di un giovane scrittore — presenta una testura anomala per la tradizione poetica del tempo, fatta di immagini “istantanee” e di fratture ritmiche che bene restituiscono l’esperienza della passeggiata, del movimento circostante e della nuova ‘velocità’ che caratterizza la scena. A “pensare” e a trascrivere The Greater London (secondo la definizione data nella letteratura storica e urbanistica ottocentesca) è uno “sguardo che cammina”, un soggetto che è esso stesso strutturalmente moderno, incorporato dentro a una concentrazione collettiva nuova: una forma organica che impasta l’umano, l’animale e la suppellettile in un unico corpo sociale e politico ibrido — the roaring crowd. Ad incrementare e caricare di senso sublime lo spettacolo della città interviene anche la nuova arte dell’immagine — la fotografia — che con la proliferazione delle “vedute dall’alto” alimenta una “panoramania” — ereditata dal secolo precedente — ora resa possibile dalle tecnologie e dalle nuove macchine del volo (le mongolfiere, i dirigibili, le ruote panoramiche): un nuovo business sostenuto da press-networks e agenzie internazionali che si ispirano a uno stile già “globish” dell’immagine urbana.The image of the “Greater London”, capital of the Industrial Revolution, finds its visionary foundation in poetry, namely in William Wordsworth’s Prelude (1851). Foregrounded by the poet’s gaze (the poem was completed by 1805), London emerges as a ‘spectacular city’, while a Victorian establishment was launching a urbanistic and architectural project to make London an “exhibition” to the multitude for the multitude. The Imperial London was eventually made even more spectacular with the opening of collective and performing spaces that clearly emboded a ‘participant spectacular gaze’: according to a national ideology that reflected its power into a “progressive architecture”, conceived also to entertain, astonish and ‘control’ the urban masses. From the ‘astonished’ gaze of the proto-romantic flaneur to the Crystal Palace (the ‘wonderful’ glass structure that in 1851 hosted the first Great Exhibition), from the “pleasure gardens” to the grand glass and iron buildings conceived by the fin de siècle Western establishments, an impressive cultural and aesthetic continuity has constructed the image of London as the modern “City of Wonder” (competing with Paris, Chicago and New York). A ‘wonder’ that would soon become a global tourist attraction (London. The Wonder City was actually the title of a best selling tourist guide published in English in the beginning of the XXth century): a modern metropolis implemented by heritage attractions and ‘view points’ that are also gaze-devices for an urban community that has been investing emotions and money in making itself a world-show. And this would come to a climax with The London Eye, the gigantic post-modern copy of Vienna and Chicago Panoramic Wheels, that welcomes on board the globalized masses allowing them to embrace the Third Millenium metropolis, to peep from high in its remote nooks and angles and guess its exploding boundaries. You can see them from the many antic city corners, circling in the air as if themselves embraced to a luminous and light web
"Dal D(ecision) DAY al VE(Victory of Europe)DAY: la lunga fine della guerra"
No full textIl palinsesto narrativo- testi, iconografie, fotografie e immagini filmiche- della fine della seconda guerra mondiale, esplorato in prospettiva storico-culturale e narratologica, con particolare riferimento ai luoghi 'mitici' del conflitto (Normandia, Berlino, Parigi
Naturaleartificiale. Il palinsesto urbano. Introduzione
No full textAn artificial body engrafted in nature, made of elements both natural and artificial, a form in progress, that strata after strata results in a palimpsest : this is the city we had in mind working on the urban space in a interdisciplinary perspective: We assume here the idea of the city as a dense inscription, thus recollecting the ample debate on the city as text, with some perspective novelties that come from the recent criticism related to the "spatial turn", as devised by Karl Schlogel
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