marieke winkler – letterkundige, criticus en onderzoeker

Categorie: onderzoek

  • the public circulation of knowledge

    Exactly one week ago, the 9th Making of the Humanities conference kicked off. What followed were three days of excellent panels and lectures under the theme ‘Unfolding Disciplines’.

    Scholars of the Lund Center for the History of Knowledge invited me to join their panel on ‘The humanities and the public sphere in post-war Western Europe’. While the history of the modern humanities traditionally focuses on the university and academic disciplines – and, increasingly, on interdisciplinary constellations – this panel set out to investigate the public circulation of knowledge, that is: the way humanistic knowledge functions outside the university and in interaction with press, radio, television and the wider book market.

    Anton Jansson spoke about the way humanistic knowledge was shaped in educational initiatives of the Swedish Labour Movement in the postwar years, Ragni Svensson took us to several independent Scandinavian socialist book cafes from the 1970’s and high lightened these places as ‘alternative knowledge sites’, and in my own lecture I took the opportunity to look at the literary magazine Merlyn (1962-1966) which was an important mediator for New Critics’ insights into Dutch literary studies and in a way illustrates the process of knowledge transfer from the public to the university (stimulated in that time by the rise of paperbacks). Finally, Johan Östling introduced the concept of a ‘public arena of knowledge’ and analyzed the broadcasting show ‘Ask Lund’ arguing that in the newest form of media (in this case: television) classical humanistic knowledge could thrive.

    Studying these examples of public knowledge circulation poses important questions on the way the societal relevance of the humanities can be studied. To mention just a few of the questions that came up during the panel: What are the public spheres of relevance in the postwar years and how did they develop? What are its gatekeepers, both visible and invisible? What is the role of alternative sites of knowledge (then and now), how do they interact with academic disciplines and vica versa? And… when does humanistic knowledge actually stop to be part of the humanities?

    I’m looking forward reading more on the public circulation of knowledge and the concept of ‘knowledge arena’s’ in the upcoming issue of History of Humanities guest edited by Östling and colleagues!

  • CfP special issue ‘Narratives & Climate Change’

    Following up on our workshop ‘Narratives & Climate Change’ of June 2020 we are composing a special issue together with the peer-reviewed, international and multilingual online journal Interférences litteraires/literaire interferenties.

    Thematic focus and key questions:

    Within the current debate on the societal and environmental impact of climate change scientists and policymakers as well as artists stress the importance of producing compelling narratives to envision a safe future society. Especially speculative fiction – the genre that explores possible futures – plays an important, integrating role in imagining and engaging with the implications of climate change: not only do fictional narratives offer a great opportunity to engage readers on a personal level with the complexities and scale of climate change, they also prove to be productive in policy making practices and in mediating calculated, data-driven climate scenarios (Hajer 2005; Hulme 2009; Thomas 2013; Moezzi a.o. 2017; Johns-Putra 2016 and 2019).

    This special issue sets out to investigate the integrative power of speculative fiction, focusing in particular on the intersection between literature and environmental sciences by focusing on the following key questions:

    1. How to conceptualize the role that narratives play in bringing the global scale of climate change into the realm of the personal?
    2. How do fictional narratives co-produce reality and contribute to the public debate, to governance or vice versa to (environmental) science? Are narratives indeed to be understood as means (‘productive fictions’) to encourage awareness and even foster behavioral change (‘risk related affect’, learning)?
    3. What narrative techniques (e.g., the use of metaphors, allusion or extrapolation) are used in both scientific and artistic discourse to envision the consequences of climate change? How do they differ in use, where do they overlap? How do both utopian and dystopian storylines relate to ‘eco-anxiety’ and the wish to go beyond eco-paralysis? How and why do utopian or dystopian future scenario’s manifest themselves within approaches from the different fields of study?

    Practicalities:

    Interférences litteraires/literaire interferenties (ISSN 2031-2970) is a peer-reviewed, international and multilingual online journal (DOAJ) devoted to the interaction between literature and cultural and societal practices. For more information see: http://www.interferenceslitteraires.be/index.php/illi/index.

    Researchers from literary and cultural studies with a focus on environmental humanities and sciences are invited to contribute full-length articles of approximately 8-10.000 words incl. footnotes and references. We particularly promote diversity in terms of theoretical frameworks and geographical contexts. We especially encourage non-English contributions (e.g. French, German, Spanish).  

    If you are interested in contributing, please send an email to ClimateNarratives@ou.nl by April 16th, 2021 including an abstract (ca. 250-500 words) and a short bio (max. 200 words). The outcome of the selection process will be communicated before May 9th, 2021. We are expecting completed contributions by December 1st, 2021 after which the journal’s peer review procedure will start. The issue is planned for Spring 2022.

    Editorial note:

    The proposal for this issue follows up on the international workshop ‘Narratives & Climate Change’ held online on June 25th-26th, 2020 (Open University). The workshop is part of the research network project ‘Imaginaries of the Future City: Envisioning Climate Change and Technological Cityscapes through Contemporary Speculative Fiction’. More information on the network project is to be found on our webpage: https://www.ou.nl/en/the-safe-city-imaginaries-of-the-future-city

    References:

    Hajer, M.A. (2005). ‘Rebuilding ground zero. The politics of performance’. Planning theory & practice, 6(4), 445-464.

    Hulme, Mike. (2009). Why we disagree about climate change. Cambridge University Press. 

    Johns-Putra, A. (ed.) (2016). Climate and Literature. Cambridge Critical Concepts Series. Cambridge University Press.

    Johns-Putra, A. (2019). Climate Change and the Contemporary Novel. Cambridge University Press.

    Moezzi, Mithra, Kathryn B. Janda, Sea Rotmann. (2017). ‘Using stories, narratives, and storytelling in energy and climate change research’. Energy Research & Social Sciences, Vol.31, 1-10.

    Thomas, P.L. (ed.) (2013) Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction. Challenging genres. Sense Publishers, Rotterdam/Boston. 

  • In press:

    It was exactly 3 years ago, on the 25th of January 2018, that the international conference ‘The Icon as Cultural Model’ kicked off with a wonderful key note lecture by prof. Ann Rigney (Utrecht University). What followed were two inspiring days, during which a diversity of speakers presented many interesting examples of, and approaches to, the modelling function of the icon as an artistic, religious, political and commercial symbol.

    The Icons-conference feels like yesterday and at the same time half a lifetime away, because in 2018 we could not imagine that a global pandemic would inflict the world as it does now, nor would we even think about organizing such an event wholly online – as was the case last week, with the Open University’s follow-up conference ‘Cultural Perceptions of Safety’.

    Today, I am more than happy to announce that the conference proceedings, entitled The Construction and Dynamics of Cultural Icons, are to be published by Amsterdam University Press very soon.

    The volume offers a comprehensive overview of the existing conceptualizations of the icon and demonstrates how the concept can be fruitfully applied in cultural studies’ research. It includes chapters on, in the Western world, well-known media icons such as Brigitte Bardot, on political icons such as Lenin and on iconic national objects such as the Japanese tea bowl. There is a chapter on ‘iconic city cinema’ and how to use movies to encode geopolitics, and another one on what we can call a ‘subsequent icon’, the chest-nut tree in the garden of Anne Frank, that became an icon on its own, thus renewing the memory of the icon Anne Frank itself. But also chapters that focus more on processes of iconization: such as the role of museum exhibits in the construction of the ‘narrative’ accompanying the image and the complex question how, within the rather fixed, static iconic representation, there can be made room for new perspectives and meanings.

    The volume is part of AUP’s Heritage and Memory Series and can be pre-ordered via their website.   

  • terugkijken

    De avond over klimaatfictie in Spui25 is nu terug te zien op YouTube:

    En ook het interview met serious fiction auteur Sonja van der Arend van 22 oktober jl. staat online:

  • Burgers, buurt en toekomstbeelden

    Op donderdagochtend 22 oktober liep ik door een uitgestorven Utrecht, van Springweg via de Oude Gracht naar Paushuize waar het symposium ‘Burgers, buurt en toekomstbeelden‘ om 10:00 zou beginnen. De dag stond in het teken van ‘De Veilige Stad’, het interfacultaire onderzoeksprogramma dat sinds twee jaar loopt aan de Open Universiteit.

    Verschillende onderzoekers binnen het project gingen in gesprek met mensen uit het werkveld, zo spraken collega’s Frank Inklaar en Imke Smulders met coördinator buurtbemiddeling Marianne Grooten, ging collega Jasper Bongers in gesprek met Hans Spekman (PvdA, Jeugdeducatiefonds) over Hoog Catharijne en drugsproblematiek en nodigde collega Jilt Jorritsma, Sophie Moinier van Deltares uit om te spreken over de terugkeer van de natuur in de stad. Zelf had ik een leuk en boeiend gesprek met Sonja van der Arend, auteur van o.a. de waterkwaliteitsroman Een otter in Brussel (2013).

    Van der Arend gebruikt fictieschrijven als een manier om meer inzicht te krijgen in complexe (beleids)vraagstukken zoals – in het geval van Een otter in Brussel – de implementatie van de Europese Kaderrichtlijn Water. Fictie past, volgens haar, veel beter bij de beweeglijkheid en complexiteit van beleid dan de formats van academisch proza. Bovendien is het uitermate geschikt om de inzichten verkregen uit onderzoek toegankelijk te maken voor een breder publiek. Het fictieschrijven is daarbij allerminst een solipsistische aangelegenheid; het verhaal ontstaat in samenspraak met anderen, betrokken burgers, beleidsmakers, gemeenteraadslieden, eventueel Haagse of Brusselse politici. ‘Samen bedenken we de hoofdpersonages, hoe zien die eruit, wat zijn hun werkomstandigheden, wat is hun thuissituatie, maar ook de plotwendingen, welke tegenspelers kom je tegen, welke bezwaren en obstakels, welke openingen’.

    Het levert herkenbare protagonisten op (althans voor milieubeleidsmedewerkers) en (voor iedereen) herkenbare en vaak komische kantoorsituaties. Ook brengen haar romans zeer gespecialiseerde kennis, zoals bijvoorbeeld over de aquatische ecologie, op een toegankelijke manier voor het voetlicht.

    Vanuit literatuurwetenschappelijk perspectief biedt haar werk een totaal nieuw want andersoortig voorbeeld van wat we doorgaans onder ‘klimaatfictie’ verstaan, veelal dystopische romans bevolkt door piekerende hoofdpersonages die zich een wereld voorbij de mens proberen voor te stellen. Van die dystopische tendens moet Van der Arend niet zoveel hebben. Het brengt ons niet veel verder, want versterkt alleen maar gevoelens van schaamte en schuld, vanuit die gevoelens wordt handelen erg moeilijk.

    Het symposium was de wandeling door de veilige ‘onveilige’ stad meer dan waard. Ik hoop dat we nog eens spreken.

    Wordt vervolgd…

    Jilt Jorritsma in gesprek met Sophie Moinier, 22 oktober 2020

  • CfP Narratives & Climate Change

    future city

    Imaginaries of the Future City: Envisioning Climate Change through Contemporary Speculative Fiction Call for Proposals – International workshop 25-26 June 2020 in Utrecht, The Netherlands and a subsequent special issue on Narratives & Climate Change

     

    Narratives & Climate Change

    Within the current debate on the societal consequences of climate change, environmental scientists, cultural scholars and artists from different scientific disciplines stress the importance of producing compelling narratives and scenario’s to envision the safe city of the future. Especially speculative fiction – the genre that explores possible futures – is considered a powerful tool that plays an important, integrating role in imagining and engaging with the implications of climate change.

    Not only do narratives offer a great opportunity to engage readers on a personal level with the complexities of climate change, they also play a productive role in policy making practices as well as in mediating calculated, data-driven climate scenarios.

    Connected by the productive power of speculative fiction and narratives, this workshop brings together some 20-25 scholars from different fields of study, such as environmental sciences, psychology and literary studies in order to foster a better and more integrated analytical discussion on the role of narratives in envisioning the societal, psychological and cultural consequences of climate change.

    We invite researchers from environmental sciences, psychology and literary studies working in multidisciplinary teams to present a draft paper in June and discuss theoretical, methodological or empirical standpoints on the specific nature, functioning or effect of climate change narratives. Both existing multi-disciplinary teams are invited to participate, as well as individual scientists who are open to work in such a team. Based on research field and expertise, and research ideas, the aim of the organizing committee is to bring together individual participants in order to enhance multi-disciplinary research teams. The aim of the workshop in June is to publish the draft papers, subject to normal review procedure, as a special issue in a highly ranked scientific journal or edited book on ‘Narratives & Climate Change’.

     

    Topical Themes 

    The workshop is open to a broad variety of interpretations of the relationship between narratives and climate change, but we strongly encourage submissions on the following themes:

    • How to conceptualize of and empirically understand the role that narratives play in bringing the global scale of the climate crisis into the realm of the personal, and what narrative techniques (e.g., the use of metaphors, allusion or extrapolation) are used to grasp the complexity of the climate debate? How do these narrative techniques function within lived experiences of climate change? How do they influence daily routines and practices (for instance individual, household, company, community but also government decision making)? How do narratives co-produce reality and contribute to the public debate, to governance or vice versa to (environmental) science?
    • Which narrative techniques can be discerned and which ones are used to grasp the complexity of the climate debate? How and why do either utopian or dystopian future scenario’s manifest themselves within approaches from the different fields of study? How do both utopian and dystopian schemes relate to ‘eco-anxiety’ and the wish to go beyond eco-paralysis?
    • Are narratives to be understood as means (‘productive fictions’) to encourage awareness and even foster behavioral change (‘risk related affect’, learning), and if so how can this be understood and what is empirically known about the way this affect is accomplished? Concomitantly, how do narratives co-produce reality and contribute to the public debate? What is the relation between fictional elements and non-fictional or realistic data in future scenario’s?

     

    Practicalities and submission deadlines

    Interested participants (individually or already teamed up) are encouraged to submit 500 word proposals plus bibliography, accompanied by a short biography (max. 200 words) by January 31, 2020. Please send your proposal to FutureCities[a]ou.nl.

    Participants will be notified of acceptance/rejection by February 28, 2020.

    Those selected to contribute are expected to submit a draft paper by June 1, 2020 as these will be distributed to all workshop participants beforehand.

    The draft papers will be intensively debated at the workshop and full papers should tentatively be submitted by November 2020.

    Authors with questions are encouraged to contact FutureCities[a]ou.nl.

     

    Organisation

    Prof. Dr. Brigitte Adriaensen, Dr. ir. Raoul Beunen, Prof. Dr. Stefan Dekker, Dr. Marjolein van Herten (coordination), Dr. Andries Hof, Prof. Dr. Dave Huitema, Jilt Jorritsma MA, Prof. Dr. Lilian Lechner, Evelien van Nieuwenhoven MA (coordination), Prof. Dr. Paquita Perez Salgado, Dr. Marieke Winkler (coordination).

     

    Website

    https://www.ou.nl/the-safe-city-imaginaries-of-the-future-city

     

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    Afbeelding: Alexis Rockman, Manifest Destiny (2004)

  • Imaginaries of the Future City

    Amsterdam onder water

    In september is het onderzoeksproject ‘Imaginaries of the Future City: Envisioning Climate Change and Technological Cityscapes through Contemporary Speculative Fiction’ van start gegaan. Speculatieve fictie vormt hierin het uitgangspunt om samen met milieuwetenschappers en psychologen na te denken over de verschillende manieren waarop fictieve verhalen de verbeelding van de toekomstige stad vormgeven.

    Op 13 december presenteerden Marjolein van Herten en ik de eerste bevindingen tijdens het congres ‘(Un)Fair Cities: Equity, Ideology, Utopia in Urban Texts‘ (Limerick).

    Abstract

    How does narrative fiction function as an integrating discourse in constructing and shaping (collective) imaginations of a safe future city? This is the departing question of the interdisciplinary research project ‘Imaginaries of the Future City. Envisioning Climate Change and Technological Cityscapes Through Contemporary Speculative Fiction’ of the Open University of the Netherlands. In this project, researchers of different fields of study – literary studies, environmental studies and psychology – cooperate to investigate their use of narratives in thinking about and conceptualizing the future city. Our focus lies with the impact of climate change and technological developments on future city-life. In this paper we would like to share the first findings of our interdisciplinary research group, focusing in particular on the field of literary studies. The notion of ‘speculative fiction’ links to literary narratives that shape and constitute imaginations of the future city and society. In these narratives, cityscapes play a central role: they represent nodal points in which the anxiety surrounding contemporary urban problems and their impact on individuals, societal groups and their environment, are projected. For example, in the Dutch speculative novel De goede zoon (2018) the predominantly grey cityscape has infiltrated ruthlessly into rural areas; even when the protagonist finds himself ‘in nature’ the landscape is highly artificial (the dears in the forest turn out to be robots). Hence, the author confronts the reader with the question of the impact of urban planning in a globalizing world just by imaginatively ‘extrapolating’ present day developments. Even when not explicitly moralizing, the narratives produced within the framework of contemporary speculative fiction show a profound dystopian point of view raising the question to what extend they contribute to productive awareness. By analysing the way speculative fiction represents the future city this paper addresses the question to what extent speculative fiction can contribute to productive awareness of the impact of climate change and technology. Also, it offers reflection on the importance of narrative analysis in contemplating and conceptualizing the future safe city in other fields of study such as environmental studies and psychology.

     

    Het project ‘Imaginaries of the Future City’ wordt gefinancierd door het universiteitsbrede onderzoeksprogramma De Veilige Stad van de Open Universiteit.

     

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    Afbeelding: Waterlicht, installatie door Daan Roosegaarde.

  • NorLit 2019

    This picture was taken at Copenhagen University where, on August 14th until August 16th the Nordic Association for Literary Research (NorLit) held its 2019 conference. This year’s edition was dedicated to the theme: ‘Money and Literature: Wealth, Finance, Aesthetics’ and explored the complex relations between literature, culture and economics in both a contemporary and a historical perspective. During NorLit 2019, Lina Samuelsson (Mälardalen University) and I took the opportunity to present the first findings of our project ‘The Crisis of Criticism Compared: Journalistic Literary Criticism in Sweden and the Netherlands (2007-2017)’. See the abstract of our presentation below or visit the website of Copenhagen University for a full description of the conference.

    How much does good criticism cost? – Economic and Aesthetic Statements in Journalistic Literary Criticism in the Netherlands and Sweden (2007–2017)

    Traditionally, in modern culture artistic and commercial values have a troubled relationship. For example, in regard to the literary field Pierre Bourdieu has pointed out that in order to gain ‘symbolic capital’ (artistic prestige) participants structurally conceal the economic dimension of literary production. In the case of literary criticism the tension between artistic and economic value becomes visible in the way critics reflect upon their profession, namely as either part of the artistic domain (‘criticism as an art form’) or the commercial domain (‘criticism as consumer information’). At the same time, due to digitalization (changed material conditions, amateur book bloggers, unpaid consumer reviews online) economic factors also seem to gain symbolic value, for example when payment as a demarcating criteria for professional criticism becomes a nodal point of discussion.

    In this paper we will reflect on the above mentioned tensions in relation to the outcomes of our project ‘The Crisis of Criticism: A Comparative Perspective’ in which we have analyzed meta-critical statements on book reviewing in public print media from Sweden and the Netherlands for the period of 2007-2017. It is striking that, while in Sweden the economic and material conditions of literary criticism are a recurring topic, this reflection is less explicit in the debate on Dutch journalistic criticism. Why is money such an important topic of reflection for the Swedish critic and less so for the Dutch? This question is analyzed in the light of the different views on the nature of criticism and the reviewing traditions in Sweden and the Netherlands.

    The Nordic Association for Literary research is a Nordic organization for literary research in all relevant disciplines such as comparative literature, the disciplines of language and cultural studies. Every second year the organization holds a conference devoted to the interdisciplinary research of literature.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Toekomstliteratuur

    toekomstliteratuur

    Hoe geven auteurs narratieve vorm aan het beeld van de toekomst en hoe kunnen wij die verhalen bestuderen? Deze vraag staat centraal tijdens het seminar ‘Toekomstbeelden in de literatuur’ dat op 17 mei a.s plaatsvindt in Utrecht, met gastlezingen van prof. Rein de Wilde, auteur van De voorspellers: een kritiek op de toekomstindustrie (2000) en Thomas Pierrart (KU Leuven) over zijn onderzoek naar Nederlandstalige toekomstromans.

    Deelnemende studenten werken met speciaal voor dit thema ontwikkeld studiemateriaal in het digitaal laboratorium voor literatuuronderzoek LitLab. Dit materiaal, dat ik ontwikkelde in samenwerking met student-assistenten Tessa van de Warenburg en Evelien van Nieuwenhoven van de Universiteit Utrecht, is nu voor iedereen online te vinden op https://litlab.nl/veld/toekomstliteratuur/.

    Meer informatie over het seminar is hier te vinden.