For more updated information and upcoming events, please check www.miekebal.org
Mieke Bal is Professor of Theory of Literature and a founding director of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA).
Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen
(Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences)
Professor Bal (1946) has been awarded an Academy Professorship
for her original contributions to narratology and to her
application of the principles of literary theoryto the
visualarts. A prime example of her contributions in the field
of narratology is her trilogy on the bible from a feminist
perspective. Her application of the principles of literary
theory to the visual arts is highly innovative, bold and
imaginative. In the broad field of cultural analysis Professor
Bal is both widely respected and highly admired.
Click the link below to directly access Mieke Bal's work in
the Digital Academic Repository at the University of
Amsterdam
N.B. full-text coming soon
theoretical :
cultural analysis; critical semiotics; feminist theory;
relations between verbal and visual arts; transcultural theory;
anthropology; narratology; psychoanalysis; methodology of
interdisciplinary approaches; museology
analytical :
contemporary literature; French and English nineteenth-century
literature; Hebrew Bible; seventeenth-century art (Rembrandt);
popular culture; language and science
From previous projects, four strands remain active:
- Narratology Between the Disciplines
My ongoing interest in the revision of the nature, modes,
functions and forms of narrativity incontemporary culture led
to the thoroughlyrevised andexpanded version of my handbook
Narratology (1997; or. Dutch 1979, Eng. 1987). However, I am
not satisfied that the book as it now stands can remain valid
for much longer. I envisage a completely new version, perhaps
as a follow-up book, perhapsas a replacement. The intentionwill
be tofully integrate the interdisciplinary perspective that I
have developed over the past decade.
- Travelling Concepts
This project results from my intense involvement with PhD
training, both in the context of the ASCA Theory Seminar and in
a large number of individual PhD projects. Through these
pedagogical activities - traditionally and oddly credited as
"research", not asteaching, in the Netherlands - I have
developed insight into the indispensable contribution that can
be expected to be made from reflecting on and deploying
concepts in interdisciplinary cultural analysis. I am currently
writing a book, contracted with the University of Toronto Press
(the publisher of my previous pedagogically oriented work),
which consists of an argument in favour of this view. Four case
studies demonstrate the consequences of replacing paradigm- and
discipline-based methodologies with an open re-examination of
concepts that have a history of "travelling" between
disciplines, historical periods and contexts,and even
cultures.
- In Time: Between Performance and Performativity
Performance is not; it occurs. It happens and takes time; it
has a past and a future, and hence, a present. From linguistics
and the philosophy of language, we take the notion that
utterances do something: they perform an act that produces an
event. From theatre, we borrow the notion of role-playing,
which can be extended to include social role-playing, then
restrict it to that aspect of playing that is effective in that
it affects the viewer. From anthropology, we take the idea that
the performative speech actin the extended sense requires the
participation, in the productionof meaning, of the
ethnographer's partner, that is, of the people belonging to the
culture studied. In art, this entails the indispensable
participation of the visitor to the museum or the viewer of the
work, without whom the artwork is simply nothing, just adead
object.In thisproject, then,due to this triple allegiance, the
notion of "performance" must be taken in all its ambiguity. The
term encompasses "performativity" as opposed to being distinct
from it. I have tentatively worked with this cluster of aspects
of the two terms in several recent articles on contemporary art
not bound to specific traditional media. I would like to turn
this into a book project, grounding it theoretically and using
literary terms.
- Preposterous History
This term was central to one of my recent books, but I am not
satisfied I have fully grounded or exploited the underlying
idea. Under the heading "indispensable anachronism" (Damisch),
others have elaborated it differently. I am interested in
joining this inquiry with current concerns about tradition,
both cultural and academic, and with methodological issues of
distance and proximity (Phillips), the place of the archive and
museum presentations.