Frans-Willem Korsten

Lessen in literatuur

Sovereignty was a key issue in the baroque, and especially in the Dutch Republic with its incredibly complicated political organisation. Consequently, sovereignty was explored in and through Joost van den Vondel'S theatre plays. Vondel sensed a fundamental problem in the construction of Europe'S politico-cultural 'House'. The questions he asked with respect to that construction concerned the relationship between theology and politics, including in terms of gender and culture. Because these questions could barely be considered explicitly, let alone actually discussed, they had to be presented through literature theatre. A close reading of a number of plays reveals not only a pivotal discussion that concerns Vondel'S own times, but also an on-going struggle in the European exploration of sovereignty. In that context, power and potency a distinction made by Spinoza determine the status of sovereignty that any body can acquire.

Vondel's Theatrical Explorations in the Dutch Republic

Sovereignty as Inviolability

This study offers a new and systematic approach towards the interactions among the notions of theatricality, dramatisation, moment, and event

A Dutch Republican Baroque

This book looks at the way in which the 'call for justice' is portrayed through art and presents a wide range of texts from film to theatre to essays and novels to interrogate the law. 'Calls for justice' may have their positive connotations, but throughout history most have caused annoyance. Art is very well suited to deal with such annoyance, or to provoke it. This study shows how art operates as an interface, here, between two spheres: the larger realm of justice and the more specific system of law. This interface has a double potential. It can make law and justice affirm or productively disturb one another. Approaching issues of injustice that are felt globally, eight chapters focus on original works of art not dealt with before, including Milo Rau's The Congo Tribunal, Elfriede Jelinek's Ulrike Maria Stuart, Valeria Luiselli's Tell Me How It Ends and Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives. They demonstrate how through art's interface, impasses are addressed, new laws are made imaginable, the span of systems of laws is explored, and the differences in what people consider to be just are brought to light. The book considers the improvement of law and justice to be a global struggle and, whilst the issues dealt with are culture-specific, it argues that the logics introduced are applicable everywhere.

Affirmation, Disturbance, Disruption

Art as an Interface of Law and Justice

Jan Bloemendal

Both historically and theoretically this book deals the work and the life of Joost van den Vondel, the most famous and controversial Dutch playwright in the Dutch Republic. Over twenty-five of his tragedies are analyzed, offering an overview of different theoretical approaches. Historically, Vondel is situated in his own times and in the present.

Dutch Playwright in the Golden Age

Joost Van Den Vondel (1587-1679)

Sjef Houppermans

Joost de Bloois

A bilingual collection of essays on the aesthetics of Gilles Deleuze, Discern(e)ments highlights what is at stake in Deleuzian philosophy of art. It traces the reception of Deleuzian thought in a broad range of disciplines and gauges its use-value in each of them. Following the dynamics between structure and becoming that punctuates Deleuzian aesthetics, Discern(e)ments sketches and erases boundaries between methods and traditions in philosophy and art theory, as well as in literary, performance and film studies. Offering both numerous case-studies as well as theoretical outlines, Discern(e)ments engages faculties, disciplines and criticisms not in a mere exchange of points of view, but in heterogenesis mapping out further discernments in Deleuzian aesthetics.

Frans-Willem Korsten

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