Stephan Besser is Assistant professor of Dutch Studies (Moderne Nederlandse letterkunde). He was a staff member of the research project "Literatur- und Kulturschichte des Fremden" at Humboldt University (Berlin) and lectured at Amsterdam University College and the Departments of Media Studies and Literary Studies at the University of Amsterdam. His current research focusses on tropes and narratives of contemporary neuroculture.

OUT NOW: Pathographie der Tropen. Literatur, Medizin und Kolonialismus um 1900

This study analyses the imagination of the tropics as a space of disease, madness and infection in German colonial culture around 1900. It introduces the notion of the dispositive of tropical medicine (tropenmedizinische Dispositiv) in order to describe the construction of disease entities such as Tropenkoller (tropical frenzy), tropical neurasthenia  and tropical fever as the result of interdiscursive exchanges between medicine, psychiatry, literature and various other discourses. The case studies include detailed analyses of the poetics of Tropenfieber in works by Robert Koch and Thomas Mann, the semantics and materialities of tropical neurasthenia and vitalist constructions of the tropics in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and in expressionist poetry. Special attention is given to the discursive nexus of malaria, race and immunity in German tropical hygiene at the beginning of the 20th century. Methodologically, the study combines David Arnold's notion of 'tropicality' with insights from postcolonial studies and recent approaches to the poetics of knowledge. 

• Pathographie der Tropen

Parmentier "Neurocultuur"

Of we inderdaad ons brein 'zijn' is heftig omstreden, maar dat er tegenwoordig niet aan de hersenen  te ontsnappen valt, zal niemand tegenspreken. Met ongekende intensiteit en fascinatie wordt sinds een paar jaar in Nederland in de meest diverse contexten gesproken over de hersenen als biologisch substraat en ultieme bron van onze identiteit: van rechtsgeleerdheid tot politiek en van talkshows tot literatuur. De neurowetenschap lijkt daarbij de rol van master narrative te claimen dat een nieuw mensbeeld neerzet. Met dit dossier wil Parmentier  een bijdrage leveren aan de verkenning van het politieke, sociale en literaire leven van de hersenen. Het dossier bevat bijdragen van Jan Slaby, Stephan Besser, Toine Hovers, Patricia Pisters, Flora Lysen, Jan Lauwereyns, Leo Vroman, Frank Keizer en Han van der Vegt.

• Critical neuroscience

• Parmentier

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