This article revisits Brechtian tragedy through a posthumanist reading framed through reference, particularly, to the work of N. Katherine Hayles, doing so in the context of broader questions about how genres decline (e.g. the pastoral, the georgic, the epic though not, inevitably, the tragic). The de-centring of humanistic assumptions and practices would seem to invite a re-visioning of the tragic, one shorn of traditional generic and affective certainties, and attentive to new technological imperatives.
{"title":"Back to the Future of Tragedy: Some Notes on Brecht's Reading of Shakespeare","authors":"N. Wood","doi":"10.3366/count.2022.0280","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/count.2022.0280","url":null,"abstract":"This article revisits Brechtian tragedy through a posthumanist reading framed through reference, particularly, to the work of N. Katherine Hayles, doing so in the context of broader questions about how genres decline (e.g. the pastoral, the georgic, the epic though not, inevitably, the tragic). The de-centring of humanistic assumptions and practices would seem to invite a re-visioning of the tragic, one shorn of traditional generic and affective certainties, and attentive to new technological imperatives.","PeriodicalId":42177,"journal":{"name":"CounterText-A Journal for the Study of the Post-Literary","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46864312","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":"Editorial","authors":"Ivan Callus, James Corby","doi":"10.3366/count.2022.0268","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/count.2022.0268","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42177,"journal":{"name":"CounterText-A Journal for the Study of the Post-Literary","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47185582","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 Unapproved History of Percival: A Creative-Critical Reading of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves","authors":"Emily Martins","doi":"10.3366/count.2022.0272","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/count.2022.0272","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42177,"journal":{"name":"CounterText-A Journal for the Study of the Post-Literary","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43380503","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 CounterText Interview: Yann Martel","authors":"Yann Martel, P. Malreddy","doi":"10.3366/count.2022.0269","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/count.2022.0269","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42177,"journal":{"name":"CounterText-A Journal for the Study of the Post-Literary","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42484616","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}
Artificial Intelligence, in the shape of stochastic machine learning models, has seen an increased use in artistic production in recent years. However, it makes an immense difference if such an ‘artistic Artificial Intelligence’ is conceived of as an autonomous agent or only as a tool in the context of a human-machine assemblage. This article introduces the distinction between a ‘ strong’ and a ‘ weak’ artistic AI, and suggests that each invites a specific aesthetic. The former is inherently anthropocentric, strives for the reduplication of existing artforms, and reproduces concepts of a postromantic tradition such as expression, genius, and creativity. The latter, on the other hand, allows for an experimental approach towards genuine artistic novelty unhampered by human models through, paradoxically, keeping a human in the loop. This point is illustrated by discussing Ahmed Elgammal’s ‘Creative Adversarial Network’ and the digital poetry of Allison Parrish and Zach Whalen.
{"title":"The Paradox of Anthroponormative Restriction: Artistic Artificial Intelligence and Literary Writing","authors":"Hannes Bajohr","doi":"10.3366/count.2022.0270","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/count.2022.0270","url":null,"abstract":"Artificial Intelligence, in the shape of stochastic machine learning models, has seen an increased use in artistic production in recent years. However, it makes an immense difference if such an ‘artistic Artificial Intelligence’ is conceived of as an autonomous agent or only as a tool in the context of a human-machine assemblage. This article introduces the distinction between a ‘ strong’ and a ‘ weak’ artistic AI, and suggests that each invites a specific aesthetic. The former is inherently anthropocentric, strives for the reduplication of existing artforms, and reproduces concepts of a postromantic tradition such as expression, genius, and creativity. The latter, on the other hand, allows for an experimental approach towards genuine artistic novelty unhampered by human models through, paradoxically, keeping a human in the loop. This point is illustrated by discussing Ahmed Elgammal’s ‘Creative Adversarial Network’ and the digital poetry of Allison Parrish and Zach Whalen.","PeriodicalId":42177,"journal":{"name":"CounterText-A Journal for the Study of the Post-Literary","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46654727","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":"Ulysses: A Portrait of the Artist on Fire (Selected Episodes)","authors":"Vikesh Godhwani, Emma Johnson","doi":"10.3366/count.2022.0273","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/count.2022.0273","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42177,"journal":{"name":"CounterText-A Journal for the Study of the Post-Literary","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49422305","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}
In 1927, the American collector Lt-Col. Ralph Heyward Isham arrived in New York with what he then thought was the entirety of the James Boswell Papers, which had been presumed lost by scholars since Boswell's death in 1795. Soon, Isham began the process of publishing them in a private-press edition limited to 570 sets, as Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle in the Collection of Lt-Colonel Ralph Heyward Isham. This essay explain the complicated beliefs about place, communication, and the meaning of paper that inhere in that seemingly simple title, arguing that the pursuit of manuscripts in a print culture represented an attempt to bring the unmappable world into the defined limits of the collector's home – an effort not at all unlike the big-game hunting for which Isham was also well known. This effort, the essay argues, has become impossible to conceptualise in a world of digital collecting.
{"title":"The Boswell Papers (1927–2021) and the Mediated Meaning of Place","authors":"Brian Glover","doi":"10.3366/count.2022.0271","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/count.2022.0271","url":null,"abstract":"In 1927, the American collector Lt-Col. Ralph Heyward Isham arrived in New York with what he then thought was the entirety of the James Boswell Papers, which had been presumed lost by scholars since Boswell's death in 1795. Soon, Isham began the process of publishing them in a private-press edition limited to 570 sets, as Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle in the Collection of Lt-Colonel Ralph Heyward Isham. This essay explain the complicated beliefs about place, communication, and the meaning of paper that inhere in that seemingly simple title, arguing that the pursuit of manuscripts in a print culture represented an attempt to bring the unmappable world into the defined limits of the collector's home – an effort not at all unlike the big-game hunting for which Isham was also well known. This effort, the essay argues, has become impossible to conceptualise in a world of digital collecting.","PeriodicalId":42177,"journal":{"name":"CounterText-A Journal for the Study of the Post-Literary","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44437431","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}
In this essay I address the problem of identity formation posed by our mimetic condition by considering the relationship between art, domination, and liberation. To better understand how the artistic gift can engender liberation, even if permanently at risk of being instrumentalised for domination, I propose an analysis of the differences between an artistic mask and a uniform. More specifically, I focus on how each of these mimetic forms mobilise different kinds of actions due to the different conceptions of identity that underlie them: the temporary result of an instance of identification among many others, in the case of the artistic mask, and a permanent stabilisation, in the case of the uniform. I ground this differentiation in an analysis of the film Der Hauptmann (2018) by Robert Schwentke and on readings of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy’s critique of ‘ The Nazi Myth’ (1990) constitutive of the mimetic turn.
{"title":"Between Mask and Uniform: The Undecidability of Mimesis","authors":"Sara Belo","doi":"10.3366/count.2022.0261","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/count.2022.0261","url":null,"abstract":"In this essay I address the problem of identity formation posed by our mimetic condition by considering the relationship between art, domination, and liberation. To better understand how the artistic gift can engender liberation, even if permanently at risk of being instrumentalised for domination, I propose an analysis of the differences between an artistic mask and a uniform. More specifically, I focus on how each of these mimetic forms mobilise different kinds of actions due to the different conceptions of identity that underlie them: the temporary result of an instance of identification among many others, in the case of the artistic mask, and a permanent stabilisation, in the case of the uniform. I ground this differentiation in an analysis of the film Der Hauptmann (2018) by Robert Schwentke and on readings of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy’s critique of ‘ The Nazi Myth’ (1990) constitutive of the mimetic turn.","PeriodicalId":42177,"journal":{"name":"CounterText-A Journal for the Study of the Post-Literary","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44303752","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}
This introductory essay articulates some of the theoretical and conceptual foundations internal to the post-literary mimetic turn. Drawing on an ERC-funded transdisciplinary project titled Homo Mimeticus, out of which this special issue on The Mimetic Condition emerged, the introduction furthers Gunther Gebauer and Christoph Wulf’s account of mimesis as a ‘human condition’ in order to propose a new theory of homo mimeticus for the post-literary age. This entails a paradigm shift from dominant translations of mimesis as realistic representation toward an embodied, immanent, and relational conception of subjectivity. This mimetic subject is neither limited by the sameness of mimetic desire nor by the difference of the linguistic sign dominant in the twentieth century but, rather, is attentive to both the pathological and patho- logical re-turns to homo mimeticus in the twenty-first century. The concepts of ‘mimetic pathos’, ‘pathos of distance’, the ‘mimetic unconscious’, and hypermimesis provide theoretical steps for rethinking the mimetic condition in the age of hypermimetic reproductions.
{"title":"Guest Editor's IntroductionThe Mimetic Condition: Theory and Concepts","authors":"N. Lawtoo","doi":"10.3366/count.2022.0254","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/count.2022.0254","url":null,"abstract":"This introductory essay articulates some of the theoretical and conceptual foundations internal to the post-literary mimetic turn. Drawing on an ERC-funded transdisciplinary project titled Homo Mimeticus, out of which this special issue on The Mimetic Condition emerged, the introduction furthers Gunther Gebauer and Christoph Wulf’s account of mimesis as a ‘human condition’ in order to propose a new theory of homo mimeticus for the post-literary age. This entails a paradigm shift from dominant translations of mimesis as realistic representation toward an embodied, immanent, and relational conception of subjectivity. This mimetic subject is neither limited by the sameness of mimetic desire nor by the difference of the linguistic sign dominant in the twentieth century but, rather, is attentive to both the pathological and patho- logical re-turns to homo mimeticus in the twenty-first century. The concepts of ‘mimetic pathos’, ‘pathos of distance’, the ‘mimetic unconscious’, and hypermimesis provide theoretical steps for rethinking the mimetic condition in the age of hypermimetic reproductions.","PeriodicalId":42177,"journal":{"name":"CounterText-A Journal for the Study of the Post-Literary","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43414273","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":"Editorial","authors":"Ivan Callus, James Corby","doi":"10.3366/count.2022.0253","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/count.2022.0253","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42177,"journal":{"name":"CounterText-A Journal for the Study of the Post-Literary","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45164917","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}