Mieke Bal

Mieke Bal (1980)

Mieke Bal (born March 14, 1946 ) is a Dutch literary scholar , cultural and art historian . From 1991 to 2011 she was professor of literary theory at the University of Amsterdam and from 1993 founding rector of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, Theory and Interpretation, ASCA.

biography

In 1977 she received her PhD in French and Comparative Literature at the University of Utrecht . From 1987 to 1991 Mieke Bal worked as a comparative literary scholar and director of the graduate program at the Institute for Foreign Languages, Literatures and Linguistics at the University of Rochester (New York). From 1991 to 1996 she worked there as a visiting professor for visual and cultural studies, but since 1991 mainly as a professor for literary theory at the University of Amsterdam.

Her fields of study include literary theory, semiotics , visual arts, cultural studies , post-colonial and feminist theory, studies of French literature and culture, the Old Testament, contemporary culture and that of the 17th century . Bal's works are influenced by Judith Butler , Julia Kristeva , Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak , Gilles Deleuze , Jacques Derrida and Homi Bhabha , among others .

Since the publication of the programmatic work The Practice of Cultural Analysis: Exposing Interdisciplinary Interpretation (1999), Bal has also been an advocate of a reform of the humanities in the sense of a new type of cultural analysis that should continue to proceed in an interdisciplinary manner , but with certain arbitrariness, flattening (cf. Short-term studies) and avoid methodological intransparency of cultural studies. The book presents both theoretical concepts and practical application examples (model analyzes) of cultural analysis. In 2000 a German translation of some of Bal's essays was published; Her work has also been translated into Spanish and Chinese. Mieke Bal's approach was partially welcomed, but received rather skeptically by some critics.

Between 2004 and 2005, Mieke Bal produced a series of videos on the subject of migration in collaboration with the artist Shahram Entekhabi : Glub, Road Movie, Lost in Space, eye contact.

In 2003 Mieke Bal was also involved in the production of a film about Arab migrants in France . In 2016 she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lucerne .

Cultural analysis and narratology

Bal understands cultural analysis as an activity of in-depth engagement with cultural objects ; Observers found some similarities to the aesthetics of reception , to phenomenology and to the " dense descriptions " of ethnomethodological analyzes. However, critical tendencies towards anthropological pantextualism are also noted, Bal insists on the stubbornness of visual perception.

Each time the aim is to use a "close", penetrating analysis of cultural objects, often also from a comparative perspective, to explore the subjectivity contained and shaped in them in their temporal, social and cultural framework and in their particularity. (Werner Nell)

The cultural scientist does not strive for a final and objectively reconstructed meaning of the analyzed art or cultural objects.

Bal published early treatises on narrative theory or narratology , meanwhile she understands the “science of narration” no longer just as an analysis of certain literary genres, but as a “cultural force”: narratives are the most everyday constructions of meaning ... worldviews are constantly produced in narration which one can of course take as valid when speaking, just not as the last word.

For Bal, culture simply includes the "exposed", i.e. everything that people present as meaningful. A far-reaching definition that includes more marginal things like graffito, yet elegantly draws attention to classic examples from Rubens to Bill Viola . According to this “expository concept of culture”, the cultural no longer belongs to the object like the color to an oil painting . Rather, culture arises in the tension between maker, work and viewer, a productive relationship that Bal's main interest is. She analyzes what happens when we walk through a museum , for example : the ever-new creation of meaning and aesthetics in the viewer. (Wilhelm Trapp)

Bibliography (excerpt)

• Lexikon der Kulturanalyse (2016), English: Lexicon for cultural analysis. (Short version, 2013)
• Cultural analysis (edited and provided with an afterword by Thomas Fechner-Smarsly and Sonja Neef, 2000, 2002)
• The Practice of Cultural Analysis: Exposing Interdisciplinary Interpretation (Editor, 1999)
• Quoting Caravaggio : Contemporary Art, Preposterous History (1999)
• Hovering between Thing and Event: Encounters with Lili Dujourie (1998, German edition: Hovering between object and event: Encounters with Lili Dujourie [1998])
• The Mottled Screen: Reading Proust Visually (1997)
• Double Exposures: The Subject of Cultural Analysis (1996)
• Reading ' Rembrandt ': Beyond the Word-Image Opposition (1991, 1994)
• Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories. (1987)
• Murder and difference: gender, genre, and scholarship on Sisera 's death. (1987)
• Femmes au risque d'une narratology critique. (1986)
• De theory de vertellen en behavior: inleiding in de narratologie. (1986)
• En Sara laughed in hair tent--: patriarchaat en verzet in bijbelverhalen. (1984)
• Inleiding in de literatuurwetenschap. (with Jan Van Luxemburg and Grietje van Ginneken, 1981)
• Literaire genres en hun gebruik. (1981)
• The theory of vertellen en behave. (1980), English: Narratology: introduction to the theory of narrative. (1985, 1997)
• Canteens van papier: over personages in de literatuur. (1979)
• Narratology: essais sur la signification narrative in quatre romans modern. (1977)
• La Complexite d'un Roman Populaire: ambiguite dans “ La Chatte ”. (1974)

Web links

• Literature by and about Mieke Bal in the catalog of the German National Library
• Official site (English)
• Bal review in "Zeit"