Essays in Migratory Aesthetics

This volume addresses the impact of human movement on the aesthetic practices that make up the fabric of culture. The essays explore the ways in which cultural activities'ranging from the habitual gestures of the body to the production of specific artworks'register the impact of migration, from the forced transportation of slaves to the New World and of Jews to the death camps to the economic migration of peoples between the West and its erstwhile colonies; from the internal and external exile of Palestinians to the free movement of cosmopolitan intellectuals. Rather than focusing exclusively on art produced by those identified as migrant subjects, this collection opens up the question of how aesthetics itself migrates, transforming not only its own practices and traditions, but also the very nature of our being in the world, as subjects producing, as well as produced by, the cultures in which we live. The transformative potential of cultures on the move is both affirmed and critiqued throughout the collection, as part of an exploration of the ways in which globalisation implicates us ever more tightly in the unequal relations of production that characterise late modernity. This collection brings academic scholars from a variety of disciplines into conversation with practising visual and verbal artists; indeed, many of the essays break down the distinction between artist and academic, suggesting a dynamic interchange between critical reflection and creativity. Contributors: Mieke Bal, Sudeep Dasgupta, Sam Durrant, Isabel Hoving, Graham Huggan, Catherine Lord, Lily Markiewicz, Sarah de Mul, Griselda Pollock, Ihab Saloul, Joy Smith, Wim Staat, Judith Tucker.ContentsSam DURRANT and Catherine M. LORD: Introduction: Essays in Migratory Aesthetics1. Practices within PracticesMieke BAL: Lost in Space, Lost in the LibraryLily MARKIEWICZ: No Place ? Like HomeCatherine M. LORD: In the Cooler2. Pasts in the PresentJudith TUCKER: Painting Places: A Postmemorial Landscape?Joy SMITH: Diasporic Slavery Memorials and Dutch Moral GeographiesSarah de MUL: Travelling to the Colonial Past as Migratory Aesthetics: Aya Zikken's Terug naar de atlasvlinder3. Displaced Aesthetics/The Aesthetics of DisplacementIhab SALOUL: ?Exilic Narrativity?: The Invisibility of Home in Palestinian ExileGraham HUGGAN: Unsettled Settlers: Postcolonialism, Travelling Theory and the New Migrant AestheticsSam DURRANT: Storytellers, Novelists, and Postcolonial Melancholia: Displaced Aesthetics in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall ApartWim STAAT: Transgression of Everydayness in Heddy Honigmann's P?IVE: A Dutch Case Study in Stanley Cavell's Film Ethics4. Relations, Conflations and TraumasIsabel HOVING: Between Relation and the Bare Facts: The Migratory Imagination and RelationalitySudeep DASGUPTA: Running A(g)round: Migratory Aesthetics and the Politics of TranslationGriselda POLLOCK: Daydreaming Before History: The Last Works of Sigmund Freud and Charlotte SalomonThe ContributorsIndexDurrant, Sam is the author of 'Essays in Migratory Aesthetics', published 2007 under ISBN 9789042022362 and ISBN 9042022361.