Since the new millennium, installation art has been at the heart of Chinese contemporary art. It enables Chinese artists to create ‘transcultural’ and ‘dialectic’ spaces, and deconstruct essentialist approaches between ‘East’ and ‘West’ that are present in contemporary art discourse. Installations have also been adopted to explore art and traditional and ancient Chinese thought. Some Chinese artists have conquered the international art scene through some monumental installations in renowned exhibitions. Born in the Western world, installation art emerged in China in 1985. Its history has been eventful, depending on the political and economic context. Installation art has a particular place in Chinese art because some of its founding principles, which were defined during the 1960s in the United States, resonate with those of Chinese literati painting. The development of installations in China leads to discussions about the encounters between the Occidental world and Chinese world. Today many artists use artistic approaches of ‘self-cultural appropriation’ via internationally celebrated installations. What have been the consequences of the introduction of installation art – arising from the West – in China? To what extent has this artistic practice been considered as a liberating influence? What are the issues inherited by today’s Chinese installations? To answer these questions the history of installation art in China will be recounted, then resonances between installation art and literati painting will be enunciated, and finally some recent installations will be identified to reveal similarities amidst their diversity. Abstraite Depuis le nouveau millenaire, les installations en art contemporain sont situees au coeur de l’art contemporain chinois. Elles permettent aux artistes chinois de creer des espaces « transculturels » et « dialectiques » et de deconstruire les approches essentialistes entre « Orient » et « Occident » presentes dans les discours de l’art contemporain. Les installations ont egalement ete largement adoptees pour explorer l’art et la pensee traditionnelle et antique chinoise. Des artistes chinois ont conquis la scene artistique internationale a travers des installations monumentales dans des manifestations de renom. Les installations, issues du monde occidental, ont emerge en Chine en 1985. Leur histoire a ete mouvementee au gre du contexte politique et economique. Elles ont une place particuliere dans le monde chinois artistique car certains de leurs principes fondateurs, definis dans les annees 1960 aux Etats-Unis, resonnent avec ceux de la peinture chinoise lettree. Le developpement des installations en Chine mene a des discussions sur les rencontres entre monde occidental et monde chinois. Aujourd’hui, de nombreux artistes emploient des demarches artistiques d’« auto-appropriation culturelle » par le biais d’installations qui sont appreciees a l’echelle internationale. Quelles ont ete les consequences de l’introduction des
进入新千年以来，装置艺术一直是中国当代艺术的核心。它使中国艺术家能够创造“跨文化”和“辩证”的空间，并解构当代艺术话语中存在的“东方”和“西方”之间的本质主义方法。装置也被用来探索艺术和中国传统和古代思想。一些中国艺术家通过在著名的展览中展出一些不朽的装置作品，征服了国际艺术舞台。装置艺术诞生于西方世界，1985年在中国兴起。它的历史是多事之秋，这取决于政治和经济背景。装置艺术在中国艺术中有着特殊的地位，因为它的一些基本原则与中国文人绘画产生了共鸣，这些原则是在20世纪60年代在美国确定的。中国装置艺术的发展引发了关于西方世界与中国世界相遇的讨论。今天，许多艺术家通过国际知名的装置使用“自我文化挪用”的艺术方法。来自西方的装置艺术在中国的引入带来了什么后果?这种艺术实践在多大程度上被认为是一种解放的影响?今天的中国装置艺术继承了哪些问题?为了回答这些问题，本文将叙述装置艺术在中国的历史，然后阐述装置艺术与文人绘画之间的共鸣，最后将识别最近的一些装置，以揭示它们在多样性中的相似之处。“新千年”，“当代艺术装置”，“当代中国艺术中心”。艺术家的渗透，中国艺术，空间艺术，跨文化艺术，对话艺术，解构艺术，本质主义，东方艺术，西方艺术，当代艺术的话语。小型装置和大型艺术品，如“探索者”、“艺术”、“传统”、“古董”等。“中国艺术家之旅”是“国际艺术之旅”，“艺术之旅”是“艺术之旅”，“艺术之旅”是“艺术之旅”。这些装置，西方世界的问题，直到1985年才出现在中国。历史是政治和经济背景下的运动。我们有一个特别的地方，那就是世界上的中国艺术，特别是一些欧洲原则的奠基人，定义了世界上的中国艺术，1960年的欧洲文化，中国文化的共鸣。中国经济的发展与西方世界和中国世界的讨论是不一样的。Aujourd ' hui, de nombreux艺术家使用des demarches艺术手法和“自动挪用文化”、“艺术装置”和“国际一级”的鉴赏者。“西方世界的中国起源”的“引进”的后果是什么?《巴黎协定》衡量的是一种独特的艺术风格，而不是一种被认为是“影响自由主义”的风格。在中国的一些艺术作品中，你可以欣赏到这些艺术作品。请回答以下几个问题:“中国艺术装置的历史”、“中国艺术装置的历史”、“中国艺术装置的历史”、“中国艺术装置的历史”、“中国艺术装置的历史”、“中国艺术装置的历史”、“中国艺术装置的历史”、“中国艺术装置的历史”、“中国艺术装置的历史”、“中国艺术装置的历史”、“中国艺术装置的历史”、“中国艺术装置的历史”、“中国艺术装置的历史”、“中国文化的多样性”。
{"title":"Installation Art in China from 1985 to Today: Appropriation Processes between the Western World and Chinese World","authors":"Sorann Micollier","doi":"10.16995/olh.436","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.436","url":null,"abstract":"Since the new millennium, installation art has been at the heart of Chinese contemporary art. It enables Chinese artists to create ‘transcultural’ and ‘dialectic’ spaces, and deconstruct essentialist approaches between ‘East’ and ‘West’ that are present in contemporary art discourse. Installations have also been adopted to explore art and traditional and ancient Chinese thought. Some Chinese artists have conquered the international art scene through some monumental installations in renowned exhibitions. Born in the Western world, installation art emerged in China in 1985. Its history has been eventful, depending on the political and economic context. Installation art has a particular place in Chinese art because some of its founding principles, which were defined during the 1960s in the United States, resonate with those of Chinese literati painting. The development of installations in China leads to discussions about the encounters between the Occidental world and Chinese world. Today many artists use artistic approaches of ‘self-cultural appropriation’ via internationally celebrated installations. What have been the consequences of the introduction of installation art – arising from the West – in China? To what extent has this artistic practice been considered as a liberating influence? What are the issues inherited by today’s Chinese installations? To answer these questions the history of installation art in China will be recounted, then resonances between installation art and literati painting will be enunciated, and finally some recent installations will be identified to reveal similarities amidst their diversity. Abstraite Depuis le nouveau millenaire, les installations en art contemporain sont situees au coeur de l’art contemporain chinois. Elles permettent aux artistes chinois de creer des espaces « transculturels » et « dialectiques » et de deconstruire les approches essentialistes entre « Orient » et « Occident » presentes dans les discours de l’art contemporain. Les installations ont egalement ete largement adoptees pour explorer l’art et la pensee traditionnelle et antique chinoise. Des artistes chinois ont conquis la scene artistique internationale a travers des installations monumentales dans des manifestations de renom. Les installations, issues du monde occidental, ont emerge en Chine en 1985. Leur histoire a ete mouvementee au gre du contexte politique et economique. Elles ont une place particuliere dans le monde chinois artistique car certains de leurs principes fondateurs, definis dans les annees 1960 aux Etats-Unis, resonnent avec ceux de la peinture chinoise lettree. Le developpement des installations en Chine mene a des discussions sur les rencontres entre monde occidental et monde chinois. Aujourd’hui, de nombreux artistes emploient des demarches artistiques d’« auto-appropriation culturelle » par le biais d’installations qui sont appreciees a l’echelle internationale. Quelles ont ete les consequences de l’introduction des ","PeriodicalId":43026,"journal":{"name":"Open Library of Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43384743","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 article explores the role of ‘colonial common sense’ (Stoler, 2008) in racialising men of colour in capital cases in twentieth-century England and Wales. Following the First World War psychiatric and psychological discourses became more prominent in both the criminal justice system and the wider culture, but were not the primary means through which race was constructed in capital trials. Rather, colonially informed common sense understandings of racial difference were more significant and were themselves an aspect of medical expertise, such as prison medicine. The article discusses cases such as Djang Djin Sung, the first man of colour to be executed in England after the First World War, Lock Ah Tam, who was hanged in 1926 despite benefiting from a well-funded insanity defence and Eric Dique, who murdered his girlfriend in 1956. Analysis of cases of men of colour sentenced to death in this period contributes to uncovering the history of racism in the criminal justice system.
{"title":"Race, Racialisation and ‘Colonial Common Sense’ in Capital Cases of Men of Colour in England and Wales, 1919–1957","authors":"L. Seal, Alexa Neale","doi":"10.16995/olh.471","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.471","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the role of ‘colonial common sense’ (Stoler, 2008) in racialising men of colour in capital cases in twentieth-century England and Wales. Following the First World War psychiatric and psychological discourses became more prominent in both the criminal justice system and the wider culture, but were not the primary means through which race was constructed in capital trials. Rather, colonially informed common sense understandings of racial difference were more significant and were themselves an aspect of medical expertise, such as prison medicine. The article discusses cases such as Djang Djin Sung, the first man of colour to be executed in England after the First World War, Lock Ah Tam, who was hanged in 1926 despite benefiting from a well-funded insanity defence and Eric Dique, who murdered his girlfriend in 1956. Analysis of cases of men of colour sentenced to death in this period contributes to uncovering the history of racism in the criminal justice system.","PeriodicalId":43026,"journal":{"name":"Open Library of Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42339662","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}
What does it mean that Pride was released in 2014, 30 years after the formation of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) and the same year in which a Conservative government made same-sex marriage a legal reality in the UK? In this article, I explore the narrativising of LGSM’s story, in order to consider how nostalgia operates in the film. Chiefly, I consider the choices that the screenwriter, Stephen Beresford, made in reconstructing the story of LGSM, and examine what these choices reveal about the changes that have taken place in the political landscape of gay Britain over the last 30 years. Through an analysis of these choices, I argue that Pride offers contemporary audiences a story of radical LGBTQ activism that they can enjoy and celebrate, while side-stepping uncomfortable questions regarding identity politics, single issue politics and the demise of collectivist politics.
{"title":"‘No politics … We’re a Mardi Gras now’: Telling the story of LGSM in 21st-Century Britain","authors":"Sharif Mowlabocus","doi":"10.16995/olh.323","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.323","url":null,"abstract":"What does it mean that Pride was released in 2014, 30 years after the formation of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) and the same year in which a Conservative government made same-sex marriage a legal reality in the UK? In this article, I explore the narrativising of LGSM’s story, in order to consider how nostalgia operates in the film. Chiefly, I consider the choices that the screenwriter, Stephen Beresford, made in reconstructing the story of LGSM, and examine what these choices reveal about the changes that have taken place in the political landscape of gay Britain over the last 30 years. Through an analysis of these choices, I argue that Pride offers contemporary audiences a story of radical LGBTQ activism that they can enjoy and celebrate, while side-stepping uncomfortable questions regarding identity politics, single issue politics and the demise of collectivist politics.","PeriodicalId":43026,"journal":{"name":"Open Library of Humanities","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67506520","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}
The charters of pardon or ‘remission letters’ granted by the king of France and the duke of Burgundy in the late Middle Ages have often been interpreted as a valuable source material to access to the lives, memories, and even the ‘voices’ of the ordinary people who did not produce any other writing. The preamble of each letter was indeed a copy of the supplication submitted by the future pardon beneficiary, in which he narrated his crime and begged for the sovereign’s mercy. However, as with many other documents preserved in court and chancery records, remission letters engage historians with a series of methodological questions due to the nature of the documents and the context in which they were produced. Because they hoped to be granted the monarch’s mercy, petitioners used a series of legal and rhetorical techniques to describe themselves and elaborate their narrations, following the advice of the clerks and lawyers who helped them to compose their petitions. This article explores some of these strategies used by French and Burgundian pardon beneficiaries and compares them to those found in English petitions for pardon. It argues that rather than being considered as an obstacle to accessing to the truth behind the sources, these strategies should be analysed as the testimony of the legal and administrative practices of the time.
{"title":"‘En nous humblement requerant’: Crime Narrations and Rhetorical Strategies in Late Medieval Pardon Letters","authors":"Quentin Verreycken","doi":"10.16995/olh.389","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.389","url":null,"abstract":"The charters of pardon or ‘remission letters’ granted by the king of France and the duke of Burgundy in the late Middle Ages have often been interpreted as a valuable source material to access to the lives, memories, and even the ‘voices’ of the ordinary people who did not produce any other writing. The preamble of each letter was indeed a copy of the supplication submitted by the future pardon beneficiary, in which he narrated his crime and begged for the sovereign’s mercy. However, as with many other documents preserved in court and chancery records, remission letters engage historians with a series of methodological questions due to the nature of the documents and the context in which they were produced. Because they hoped to be granted the monarch’s mercy, petitioners used a series of legal and rhetorical techniques to describe themselves and elaborate their narrations, following the advice of the clerks and lawyers who helped them to compose their petitions. This article explores some of these strategies used by French and Burgundian pardon beneficiaries and compares them to those found in English petitions for pardon. It argues that rather than being considered as an obstacle to accessing to the truth behind the sources, these strategies should be analysed as the testimony of the legal and administrative practices of the time.","PeriodicalId":43026,"journal":{"name":"Open Library of Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46902137","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}
The accuracy and relevance of United States print news media has been called into question at increasing rates in the post-truth era. Conservatives, in particular, have long expressed concerns that mass and digital media censor conservative as well as Christian viewpoints while promoting a progressive and, more recently, pro-Muslim, platform. They have increasingly turned to alternative-right and alternative right-wing sources for news and discussion within what they deem to be unfiltered and unbiased networks. This article employs a mixed method approach of content and discourse analysis of sources from 1 January to 15 May of 2019 pertaining to discourse concerning the relationship between Christianity and Islam within and in response to articles in three such sources: Breitbart, The Federalist, and FrontPage Magazine. The role of these three websites is considered in the radicalization of those who aim to defend a monolithic form of Christianity rather than a particular Christian denomination or belief.
{"title":"Islamophobia in Reactionary News: Radicalizing Christianity in the United States","authors":"K. Montalbano","doi":"10.16995/olh.473","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.473","url":null,"abstract":"The accuracy and relevance of United States print news media has been called into question at increasing rates in the post-truth era. Conservatives, in particular, have long expressed concerns that mass and digital media censor conservative as well as Christian viewpoints while promoting a progressive and, more recently, pro-Muslim, platform. They have increasingly turned to alternative-right and alternative right-wing sources for news and discussion within what they deem to be unfiltered and unbiased networks. This article employs a mixed method approach of content and discourse analysis of sources from 1 January to 15 May of 2019 pertaining to discourse concerning the relationship between Christianity and Islam within and in response to articles in three such sources: Breitbart, The Federalist, and FrontPage Magazine. The role of these three websites is considered in the radicalization of those who aim to defend a monolithic form of Christianity rather than a particular Christian denomination or belief.","PeriodicalId":43026,"journal":{"name":"Open Library of Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43934173","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 article applies an energy lens to Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker (2010) and ‘The Calorie Man’ (2005), relying on contemporary environmental readings of Marx to explore their unsustainable metabolic relationship with nature. Situating these texts as critical dystopias, this article maps the dystopian and utopian extrapolations Bacigalupi deploys in his future post-oil society, specifically relating to the infrastructure of late energy transport and energy-related commodities. While Bacigalupi utilises ecologically-oriented genetic and industrial technologies in these texts, his work emphasises that technological solutions alone will not be able to heal our unsustainable metabolism of nature. Bacigalupi enters into cultural debates on the Anthropocene and the Great Acceleration by cognitively estranging animal and human labour, ecological ships, and genetically modified crops, while simultaneously highlighting the exploitation of both people and the environment in late capitalism. This article also explores the resultant metabolic rifts evident in both texts, drawing specific attention to the destabilised aspects of nature that elude capitalistic control and trouble spaces of production and profit, including genetically modified creatures like cheshires, and more ‘natural’ elements like storms and sea-level rise due to global warming. The article ultimately seeks to prove that Ship Breaker and ‘The Calorie Man’ mobilise a dystopian framework to highlight the imbalanced metabolism of energy production under capitalism, moving the reader towards a more realisable social, as opposed to technological, change.
{"title":"Oil and Calories: Energy Paradigms in Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker and ‘The Calorie Man’","authors":"Karl Kristian Swane Bambini","doi":"10.16995/olh.119","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.119","url":null,"abstract":"This article applies an energy lens to Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker (2010) and ‘The Calorie Man’ (2005), relying on contemporary environmental readings of Marx to explore their unsustainable metabolic relationship with nature. Situating these texts as critical dystopias, this article maps the dystopian and utopian extrapolations Bacigalupi deploys in his future post-oil society, specifically relating to the infrastructure of late energy transport and energy-related commodities. While Bacigalupi utilises ecologically-oriented genetic and industrial technologies in these texts, his work emphasises that technological solutions alone will not be able to heal our unsustainable metabolism of nature. Bacigalupi enters into cultural debates on the Anthropocene and the Great Acceleration by cognitively estranging animal and human labour, ecological ships, and genetically modified crops, while simultaneously highlighting the exploitation of both people and the environment in late capitalism. This article also explores the resultant metabolic rifts evident in both texts, drawing specific attention to the destabilised aspects of nature that elude capitalistic control and trouble spaces of production and profit, including genetically modified creatures like cheshires, and more ‘natural’ elements like storms and sea-level rise due to global warming. The article ultimately seeks to prove that Ship Breaker and ‘The Calorie Man’ mobilise a dystopian framework to highlight the imbalanced metabolism of energy production under capitalism, moving the reader towards a more realisable social, as opposed to technological, change.","PeriodicalId":43026,"journal":{"name":"Open Library of Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42746725","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 paper develops a take on the cultural moment of the long energy crisis (1973–1992) through two popular science-fiction texts. It divides the period in two: ‘oil shock’ and ‘oil glut’. Further periodizing Fredric Jameson’s intervention into the discussion of postmodernism and his successive naming of postmodernism as the cultural logic of late capital within this framework of crisis, I ask what might be said about postmodernism in light of this moment of fossil-fuelled turmoil in the global system. My essay has two poles each located in a text from the period: Isaac Asimov’s essay ‘The Nightmare Life without Fuel’ (1983) and William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984). From oil shock to oil glut, this paper uses Patricia Yaeger’s and Graeme Macdonald’s work on the concept of an energy unconscious in order to begin elaborating the cultural logical of late fossil capital.
{"title":"Neuromancer: The Cultural Logic of Late Fossil Capital?","authors":"B. Bellamy","doi":"10.16995/olh.150","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.150","url":null,"abstract":"This paper develops a take on the cultural moment of the long energy crisis (1973–1992) through two popular science-fiction texts. It divides the period in two: ‘oil shock’ and ‘oil glut’. Further periodizing Fredric Jameson’s intervention into the discussion of postmodernism and his successive naming of postmodernism as the cultural logic of late capital within this framework of crisis, I ask what might be said about postmodernism in light of this moment of fossil-fuelled turmoil in the global system. My essay has two poles each located in a text from the period: Isaac Asimov’s essay ‘The Nightmare Life without Fuel’ (1983) and William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984). From oil shock to oil glut, this paper uses Patricia Yaeger’s and Graeme Macdonald’s work on the concept of an energy unconscious in order to begin elaborating the cultural logical of late fossil capital.","PeriodicalId":43026,"journal":{"name":"Open Library of Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48080539","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 article reintroduces readers to the science fiction novel The Absolute at Large (1922) by Karel Capek, one of the most influential but largely unacknowledged voices in early twentieth-century literature. I frame The Absolute at Large as a narrative about ‘free energy’, a term I have proposed to examine a range of relationships implicated in speculation about super-abundant or ‘virtually-limitless’ energy sources. I argue that Capek’s commentary emerges in the double meaning of the titular ‘Absolute’—a reference to both free energy and the divine—which foregrounds an inherent indeterminacy folded into the promise of abundance. This reading is made by examining Capek’s serious engagement with the philosophy of pragmatism, which has been consistently misrepresented in the existing literature on Capek’s legacy.
{"title":"The Absolute Indeterminacy of Karel Čapek’s Science Fiction","authors":"Lynn Badia","doi":"10.16995/olh.130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.130","url":null,"abstract":"This article reintroduces readers to the science fiction novel The Absolute at Large (1922) by Karel Capek, one of the most influential but largely unacknowledged voices in early twentieth-century literature. I frame The Absolute at Large as a narrative about ‘free energy’, a term I have proposed to examine a range of relationships implicated in speculation about super-abundant or ‘virtually-limitless’ energy sources. I argue that Capek’s commentary emerges in the double meaning of the titular ‘Absolute’—a reference to both free energy and the divine—which foregrounds an inherent indeterminacy folded into the promise of abundance. This reading is made by examining Capek’s serious engagement with the philosophy of pragmatism, which has been consistently misrepresented in the existing literature on Capek’s legacy.","PeriodicalId":43026,"journal":{"name":"Open Library of Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44502496","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 article isolates an overlooked preoccupation in 1930s African American literature with America’s emergent energy system and a literary history of power indispensable to understanding today’s energy crisis as a social crisis. For George Schuyler, the physical power of a recently gridded America exposes the intractability of a racial politics from the inequalities accelerated in the nation’s new energy infrastructure. Schuyler’s Black Empire (1938 [1991]) contributes to the literary history of energy by turning the specifically aesthetic qualities of energy into a source of resource radicalism—what anthropologist Dominic Boyer calls ‘energopower’—exposing the two sides of power and the narrative shape of an energy system to come.
{"title":"Resource Radicalism and the Solar System of Black Empire","authors":"J. Diamanti","doi":"10.16995/olh.96","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.96","url":null,"abstract":"This article isolates an overlooked preoccupation in 1930s African American literature with America’s emergent energy system and a literary history of power indispensable to understanding today’s energy crisis as a social crisis. For George Schuyler, the physical power of a recently gridded America exposes the intractability of a racial politics from the inequalities accelerated in the nation’s new energy infrastructure. Schuyler’s Black Empire (1938 [1991]) contributes to the literary history of energy by turning the specifically aesthetic qualities of energy into a source of resource radicalism—what anthropologist Dominic Boyer calls ‘energopower’—exposing the two sides of power and the narrative shape of an energy system to come.","PeriodicalId":43026,"journal":{"name":"Open Library of Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44854365","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}
By situating De Witt Douglas Kilgore’s understanding of ‘astrofuturist’ American SF within the context of the postwar ‘Great Acceleration’ and petromodernity, this article reads astrofuturism’s extraterrestrial frontier as an energy frontier. Building on Jason Moore’s world-ecological understanding of the history of capitalism’s recurrent expansions as being dialectically tied to its demand for new sources of energy, the article suggests that a pervasive sense of ‘energy-angst’ underlies the more obvious tensions mobilising Cold War astrofuturism. This angst, prior to the emergence of ‘peak oil’ discourse by the mid-1970s, proleptically recognises the finitude of the ‘American Century’s’ petroculture. By imagining the exploration and colonization of extraterrestrial planets upon which crude has never formed, and travel through outer space in which internal combustion engines do not work, astrofuturism is, of necessity, a post-oil imaginary. Tracing the fissures and slippages within and between the optimistic imaginaries of two key texts, Farmer in the Sky (1950) and Destination Moon (1950), the article argues that astrofuturism’s energy frontiers contain as much potential for powered-down imaginaries as the more obvious powered-up visions suggested by high-energy rocket and terraforming technologies. Read in the context of today’s precarious petroculture, these texts, in their static perfectionism, invite us to consider how post-oil imaginaries can assist the project of sustainable and equitable energy transition.
{"title":"Cold War ‘Astrofuturism’ and ‘Energy-Angst’ in Destination Moon and Robert Heinlein’s Farmer in the Sky","authors":"Tomasz Lűbek","doi":"10.16995/OLH.121","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/OLH.121","url":null,"abstract":"By situating De Witt Douglas Kilgore’s understanding of ‘astrofuturist’ American SF within the context of the postwar ‘Great Acceleration’ and petromodernity, this article reads astrofuturism’s extraterrestrial frontier as an energy frontier. Building on Jason Moore’s world-ecological understanding of the history of capitalism’s recurrent expansions as being dialectically tied to its demand for new sources of energy, the article suggests that a pervasive sense of ‘energy-angst’ underlies the more obvious tensions mobilising Cold War astrofuturism. This angst, prior to the emergence of ‘peak oil’ discourse by the mid-1970s, proleptically recognises the finitude of the ‘American Century’s’ petroculture. By imagining the exploration and colonization of extraterrestrial planets upon which crude has never formed, and travel through outer space in which internal combustion engines do not work, astrofuturism is, of necessity, a post-oil imaginary. Tracing the fissures and slippages within and between the optimistic imaginaries of two key texts, Farmer in the Sky (1950) and Destination Moon (1950), the article argues that astrofuturism’s energy frontiers contain as much potential for powered-down imaginaries as the more obvious powered-up visions suggested by high-energy rocket and terraforming technologies. Read in the context of today’s precarious petroculture, these texts, in their static perfectionism, invite us to consider how post-oil imaginaries can assist the project of sustainable and equitable energy transition.","PeriodicalId":43026,"journal":{"name":"Open Library of Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2019-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44860988","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}
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