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Recent Submissions
- ArticleActivist Citizenship, Film and Peacebuilding: Acts and Transformative PracticesRadovic, Milja (2016)In this article I explore film as a socio-political and artistic-transformative cultural prac-tice through which acts and activism are performed. I am interested in how film em-beds acts of peacebuilding and how this scene of imagery/imaginary is transformed by those acts, with the filmmakers transformed into activist citizens whose activism questions ideologies that surround them. I argue that acts of citizenship and activ-ism, as a creative practice, do not solely involve the analysis of how activism has been represented in films, but also the understanding of what is beyond these representa-tions and narratives. I look at a) how film auteurs emerge as activists through the narratives and the created scenes 1 in film; b) how these acts consequently represent the “answerability to Others” 2 and c) the link between (cinematic) performativity and activism.
- ArticleEditorialHöpflinger, Anna-Katharina; Ornella, Alexander D. (2016)
- ReviewElijah Siegler, Coen. Framing Religion in Amoral Order. Baylor University Press, 2016Wessely, Christian (2016)
- ArticleImages of the Muslim Woman and the Construction of Muslim Identity: The Essentialist ParadigmManea, Elham (2016)This article argues that much of the postmodern discourse on the Muslim woman and her veil is symptomatic of what I call the “essentialist paradigm”. The world is seen through the prism of a group’s religious/cultural identity and eventually constructs a Muslim identity – and with it an image of the Muslim Woman. The image of the op-pressed veiled Muslim Woman and the treatment of a piece of cloth as synonymous with her whole identity and being are products of this paradigm of thought. Using an interdisciplinary approach that combines discourse analysis and a case study of the construction of the British Muslim community, this article argues that the essentialist paradigm ignores the context of its subject matter with all its accompanying power structures, political and social factors, and the roles played by both the state and fun-damentalist Islam in constructing a Muslim identity and with it the Muslim Woman and her dress code.
- ReviewMatthew Rindge, Profane Parables. Film and the American Dream. Baylor University Press, 2016Heimerl, Theresia (2016)
- ArticleThe Body and Voice of God in the Hebrew BibleStiebert, Johanna (2016)This article explores the role of the voice of God in the Hebrew Bible and in early Jew-ish interpretations such as the Targumim. In contrast to the question as to whether God has a body, which is enmeshed in theological debates concerning anthropomorphism and idolatry, the notion that God has a voice is less controversial but evidences some diachronic development.
- ArticleThe Pedigree of Dualistic and Non-Dualistic Media: Grasping Extramedial MeaningsSorgner, Stefan Lorenz (2016)The article provides suggestions concerning the cultural relevance and embeddedness of dualist and non-dualist media and demonstrates that the presence or absence of certain types of media has extra-medial relevance that can contain ethical, political, and social meanings. When I am talking about these kinds of dualities I am referring to distinctions like the one between good and evil, mind and body, culture and nature, the material and the immaterial or the organic and the inorganic. The contemporary examples I mention paradigmatically represent the phenomenon in question. However, several other artists, composers and designers are central figures, too, e.g. Patricia Piccinini, Eduardo Kac, Stelarc.
- ArticleVoicing the Technological Body: Some Musicological Reflections on Combinations of Voice and Technology in Popular MusicHeesch, Florian (2016)The article deals with interrelations of voice, body and technology in popular music from a musicological perspective. It is an attempt to outline a systematic approach to the history of music technology with regard to aesthetic aspects, taking the iden-tity of the singing subject as a main point of departure for a hermeneutic reading of popular song. Although the argumentation is based largely on musicological research, it is also inspired by the notion of presentness as developed by theologian and media scholar Walter Ong. The variety of the relationships between voice, body, and technology with regard to musical representations of identity, in particular gender and race, is systematized alongside the following cagories: (1) the “absence of the body,” that starts with the establishment of phonography; (2) “amplified presence,” as a signifier for uses of the microphone to enhance low sounds in certain manners; and (3) “hybridity,” including vocal identities that blend human body sounds and technological processing, where-by special focus is laid on uses of the vocoder and similar technologies.
- Article“This Voice Has Come for Your Sake”: Seeing and Hearing in John’s GospelSetzer, Claudia (2016)The gospel of John confronts the problems of human finitude and separation from God and others. Its theological innovations push at the boundaries of time and space, invoking the senses as vehicles for healing separation. The act of hearing is particularly significant and draws on biblical and rabbinic concepts. Perception, couched in the sense organs, is the source of understanding God. Philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Henri Bergson consider the role of sense-perception in understanding the self in relation. Transhumanism promotes the extension of sense-capabilities of hearing and seeing. Enhancement of the senses allows greater capacity for the self to develop, re-duces alienation, and provides the possibility, in secular terms, of what John promised in religious terms, “more abundant life” (John 10:10).