Editorial

172 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

Introduction: Analysing Emotion and Theorising Affect

by Peta Tait

Humanities 2016, 5(3), 70; https://doi.org/10.3390/h5030070 - 24 Aug 2016

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 5131

This discussion introduces ideas of emotion and affect for a volume of articles demonstrating the scope of approaches used in their study within the humanities and creative arts. The volume offers multiple perspectives on emotion and affect within 20th-century and 21st-century texts, arts [...] Read more.

This discussion introduces ideas of emotion and affect for a volume of articles demonstrating the scope of approaches used in their study within the humanities and creative arts. The volume offers multiple perspectives on emotion and affect within 20th-century and 21st-century texts, arts and organisations and their histories. The discussion explains how emotion encompasses the emotions, emotional feeling, sensation and mood and how these can be analysed particularly in relation to literature, art and performance. It briefly summarises concepts of affect theory within recent approaches before introducing the articles. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emotions and Affect in the Humanities, Creative Arts, and Performance)

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231 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Re-Affecting the Stage: Affective Resonance as the Function of the Audience

by Ana Pais

Humanities 2016, 5(3), 79; https://doi.org/10.3390/h5030079 - 20 Sep 2016

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 4313 | Correction

Abstract

This article uses an affect theory framework to show how the audience has the power to intensify the circulation of affect in the theatrical encounter, and to impact on the unique felt quality of the performance. Assessment is made of the vital function [...] Read more.

This article uses an affect theory framework to show how the audience has the power to intensify the circulation of affect in the theatrical encounter, and to impact on the unique felt quality of the performance. Assessment is made of the vital function of affect to performance through the images, sensations and expressions that performers use to describe audience engagement. Intermittently, from 2010 to 2012, the author embarked on practice-led research to find out how performers describe the experience of being on stage with regard to their engagement with an audience. Conversations were recorded with more than 50 performers (mainly actors and dancers) from the USA and Brazil, as well as Portugal and other European countries. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emotions and Affect in the Humanities, Creative Arts, and Performance)

213 KiB

Open AccessArticle

“Turtles All the Way Down”: Mind, Emotion and Nothing

by Ian Maxwell

Humanities 2016, 5(3), 78; https://doi.org/10.3390/h5030078 - 18 Sep 2016

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 4093

Abstract

This is an article in three movements. Each takes as its object a public phenomenon of emotion: first, the representation of human emotions as homunculi in a recent children’s movie; second, the performance of the Australian cricket captain at a press conference concerning [...] Read more.

This is an article in three movements. Each takes as its object a public phenomenon of emotion: first, the representation of human emotions as homunculi in a recent children’s movie; second, the performance of the Australian cricket captain at a press conference concerning the death, on the field, of a team-mate; and, finally, the mass contagion of public grief in response to that death. Using these three episodes, the article develops an understanding of Martin Heidegger’s thought in relation to, first, the “enframing” of human being within technology, in which the nothing from which being is brought into presence is concealed; second, the mood of anxiety in and through which Dasein—Heidegger’s term for the kind of being we “are”—asserts itself into that nothing; and, finally, the potential for post-aesthetic art to move beyond the logics of representation and subjectification, and in so doing, to reveal what Heidegger understands as the struggle between earth and world. The former refers to the “background” against and through which any particular “world” exists with the latter referring to a particular web of significances in which Dasein lives, and allowing truth to spring forth. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emotions and Affect in the Humanities, Creative Arts, and Performance)

219 KiB

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Porous Skins and Tactile Bodies: Juxtaposition of the Affective and Sentimental Ideas of the Subject

by Magdalena Zolkos

Humanities 2016, 5(3), 77; https://doi.org/10.3390/h5030077 - 08 Sep 2016

Viewed by 4620

Abstract

This article brings together two ideas that authors in theoretical humanities tend to consider in isolation—of affect and of sentiment—and investigates what conceptions or imaginaries of the subject these ideas have historically relied on and reproduced. When viewed from the lens of the [...] Read more.

This article brings together two ideas that authors in theoretical humanities tend to consider in isolation—of affect and of sentiment—and investigates what conceptions or imaginaries of the subject these ideas have historically relied on and reproduced. When viewed from the lens of the theory of subjectivation, the contemporary notions of affect and the modern sentiment tradition not only reveal significant conceptual, epistemic and ideational overlaps, but they are both kinds of critique of the liberal individualistic subject. Engaging the methodology of juxtaposition, I bring together the affective porous subject (drawing on the work of Teresa Brennan) with the modern sentiment idea of the sensible body, focusing in particular on the 17th- and 18th-century neurological discourses of sensibility in the work of Albrecht von Haller, Georg Ernst Stahl and others. I argue that the modern sentiment tradition forms part of the genealogy of affect in that its ideas of sensibility and sympathy foreground one of the tenets of affective subjectivity: namely, that the subject emerges through (rather than predates) ecological exposure, membranous permeability and nervous responsiveness. In this sense, both the sentimental and affective notions of the subject operate as forms of critique of the idea of Cartesian self and of the disavowal of relational and/or dialogical subject in Western philosophy. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emotions and Affect in the Humanities, Creative Arts, and Performance)

209 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Australian Modernists in London: William Dobell’s The Dead Landlord and Patrick White’s The Ham Funeral

by Denise Varney

Humanities 2016, 5(3), 76; https://doi.org/10.3390/h5030076 - 07 Sep 2016

Viewed by 4482

Abstract

When Patrick White was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973, it was primarily for his novels. Less well recognised is the significance of White’s dramatic literature and his involvement in the theatre. This article offers a new analysis of White’s first [...] Read more.

When Patrick White was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973, it was primarily for his novels. Less well recognised is the significance of White’s dramatic literature and his involvement in the theatre. This article offers a new analysis of White’s first notable breakthrough into theatre and drama, The Ham Funeral, which he wrote in postwar London and which was produced in Adelaide in 1961. This article argues that a modernist idiom of 20th-century Australian drama can be found in this play that laid the groundwork for a poetics of language, image and theatricality. The play’s aesthetic modernism is found primarily in the blend of expressionist and surrealist elements, the poetic language, the alienated creative subject and the representation of sexuality and the unconscious. White’s thematics also become political, concerned with power, masculinity and gendered assumptions about rationality and emotion, poetry and the body. Having lived in London during the interwar years, White was also part of the networks that included Australian-born artists, and he was exposed to influences from visual arts as well as theatre. Of these, the artist William Dobell was central to the genesis of The Ham Funeral, as was the Polish-born modernist artist S. Ostoja-Kotkowski, who was critical to the design of the brooding expressionist set that set the standard for subsequent stage realisations of the play. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emotions and Affect in the Humanities, Creative Arts, and Performance)

224 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Scripting Memory and Emotions: Female Characters in Iraqi Theatre about War

by Hadeel Abdelhameed

Humanities 2016, 5(3), 75; https://doi.org/10.3390/h5030075 - 07 Sep 2016

Viewed by 4113

Abstract

This article focuses on the emotional lives of, and interactions between, female characters in two plays about Iraqi wars: The Hymn of the Rocking Chair (1987) by Farouk Mohammed and A Feminine Solo (2013) by Mithal Ghazi. These plays show life in Iraq [...] Read more.

This article focuses on the emotional lives of, and interactions between, female characters in two plays about Iraqi wars: The Hymn of the Rocking Chair (1987) by Farouk Mohammed and A Feminine Solo (2013) by Mithal Ghazi. These plays show life in Iraq in times of war. The article argues that it is significant that Iraqi women are depicted in drama and theatre, during those times of war when extreme emotional suffering and trauma prevail, in the role of storytellers. In addition, societies at war present a methodological problem for research in that playscripts might not survive intact. This reveals another type of emotional loss through war—one that involves culture itself. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emotions and Affect in the Humanities, Creative Arts, and Performance)

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The Unmade City: Subjectivity, Buffalo and the Sad Fate of Studio Arena Theatre

by Julian Meyrick

Humanities 2016, 5(3), 74; https://doi.org/10.3390/h5030074 - 01 Sep 2016

Viewed by 4829

Abstract

This article is a reflection on the disjointed and submerged cultural consciousness of the city of Buffalo, New York. It outlines the concept of subjectivity as put forward by the philosopher Alain Badiou, and maps it onto the history of Studio Arena, Buffalo’s [...] Read more.

This article is a reflection on the disjointed and submerged cultural consciousness of the city of Buffalo, New York. It outlines the concept of subjectivity as put forward by the philosopher Alain Badiou, and maps it onto the history of Studio Arena, Buffalo’s main theatre company. Studio Arena Theatre (1927–2008) was one of the oldest and best known regional theatres in the USA. Its closure is a story fraught with conflict, misunderstanding and loss. That there has been no replacement theatre of comparable size and mandate says something about Buffalo’s diminished civic imaginary. While the link between the Theatre and the City is hard to formularise, it is a historically important relationship, going back to the time of Aristotle when theatre functioned as an informing resource for the lives of citizens. Those interested in urban renewal in Buffalo and other rust-belt US cities can profit not only from an understanding of Studio Arena Theatre’s history, but from a consideration of the kind of emotional engagement that this regional theatre represented. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emotions and Affect in the Humanities, Creative Arts, and Performance)

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Open AccessArticle

Surveillance and Social Memory: Remembering Princess Diana with CCTV

by Nicole Falkenhayner

Humanities 2016, 5(3), 73; https://doi.org/10.3390/h5030073 - 01 Sep 2016

Viewed by 7082

Abstract

Since the 1990s, surveillance camera images have experienced a function creep from their juridical uses into journalism and entertainment. In these contexts, the images have also become memory media. This article, for the first time, analyses CCTV images, meaning closed circuit surveillance camera [...] Read more.

Since the 1990s, surveillance camera images have experienced a function creep from their juridical uses into journalism and entertainment. In these contexts, the images have also become memory media. This article, for the first time, analyses CCTV images, meaning closed circuit surveillance camera images, as memory media and discusses the implications of our use of artefacts of control within a frame of mediated constructions of social memory. The article undertakes this work by analyzing remediations of the CCTV images of Diana Spencer and Dodi Al-Fayed in the Ritz Hotel in Paris on 30 August 1997 in television news and a documentary from 2007 and 2011, respectively. It is shown how social memory of Diana’s death is a contested site, in which the images play a specific role. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emotions and Affect in the Humanities, Creative Arts, and Performance)

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Open AccessArticle

Learning to Act: Tony Sheldon’s Emotional Training in Australian Theatre

by Anne Pender

Humanities 2016, 5(3), 72; https://doi.org/10.3390/h5030072 - 26 Aug 2016

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 5050

Abstract

This case study of Tony Sheldon considers how an actor develops versatility in emotional delivery and the capacity to work in all theatre genres. Sheldon is one of Australia’s best known and most successful stage actors. He has appeared in Shakespearean drama, cabaret, [...] Read more.

This case study of Tony Sheldon considers how an actor develops versatility in emotional delivery and the capacity to work in all theatre genres. Sheldon is one of Australia’s best known and most successful stage actors. He has appeared in Shakespearean drama, cabaret, musical theatre and contemporary plays written by Australian, British and American playwrights. He is one of a sizeable group of Australian actors of his generation to have learned to act ‘on the job’ with directors and other actors rather than undertaking formal qualifications in an institution or studio. This article examines Sheldon’s experience of learning to act, drawing on a life interview with the actor. It considers the opportunities and the difficulties Sheldon experienced in his early career in relation to boundary blurring and self-belief, trauma, directorial rehearsal styles, typecasting, comic acting in partnership and managing one’s character in long seasons. The article explores some of the problems that the actor has overcome, the importance of specific directors in his development, and the dynamics of informal training in the context of an overall ecology of theatre over half a century. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emotions and Affect in the Humanities, Creative Arts, and Performance)