In a get-together recorded as a podcast (with video) in the new collection presentation of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, renowned cultural theorist Mieke Bal took part in a conversation about interdisciplinary research on the basis of the concepts of narratology, migratory aesthetics, and politics versus the political.
A first disclaimer for those who wish to listen to the podcast (with video): The conversation does not offer a close reading of artworks. Rather, it aims to explore frameworks for looking at art through conversation, in other words: looking at art while thinking and talking about art. The first of these frameworks is cultural analysis. As Bal explains, cultural analysis is the comparative and interdisciplinary study of culture (in all its forms and expressions) from a broad perspective of the humanities.
Following the introduction of the notion of cultural analysis, the conversation touches upon narratology: the study of how stories are forged and their effect on readers or viewers. Originating from literary theory and semiotics, Mieke Bal’s study of narrative structures departs from the idea that narratives are found and communicated through a wide variety of media. As she explains in her books, narratology is a perspective on culture (Bal 1985, fourth edition 2017; 2021). Beyond the traditional relation between a text and the act of reading — or in other words, the artwork and the act of analyzing an artwork — Bal enables the differentiation of the location in which a narrative can unfold. Narratology allows a close analysis of not only texts, but also various other forms of cultural expression, such as art objects, artefacts and events.
Mieke Bal’s thinking highlights the significance of movement, mobility and direction. She points out during the conversation, for instance, that if we forget or fail to acknowledge that reading direction can be from left to right as well right to left, we allow one tradition to become dominant at the expense of the other. The point provides a segue into migratory aesthetics a term that leans on the physical changed look of public space under the impact of traces of migration (not migrants). Bal puts the focus on aesthetics, as a means to evoke desire or to make someone feels something – and compares this to the experience of artworks evoking an emotion. She uses migratory aesthetics as a metaphor for something that is sense-based, rather than as a direct representation of migration itself (Bal 2008, 2021).
Against the backdrop of the video installation Utopia (1969-76) by Nalini Malani, the conversation circles back to the necessity of founding the ASCA with the intent to include social and political analyses in all its activities. Mieke Bal explains the difference between politics and the political with reference to political theorist Chantal Mouffe: Politics refers to official party politics, whereas the political refers to the domain in which discussion and disagreement is allowed to thrive. (Mouffe, 2005) The conversation concludes with Bal stressing the importance of dialogue and debate, so as to avoid the repetition of existing ideas. She notes that research includes repetition by default, but without subsequent discourse to extend the boundaries of research, there is no point to the activity in the first place.
This talk was organized as a closed session owing to Covid restrictions on public events. But we invite you to send any questions you may have about the talk to [email protected] between now and the end of the research log series (1 January, 2023)
Mieke Bal
Mieke Bal and Miguel Á. Hernández Navarro
Chantal Mouffe
