Maria Boletsi
Biographic Data
| ID | 876347 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Maria Boletsi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Maria |
| FAMILY NAME | Boletsi |
| SIGNATURE | BOLETSI M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Leiden University & University of Amsterdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0152-5127 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 17 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Politics of Weird Aesthetics
As public spheres today are dominated by securitization, biopolitical control, and authoritarian politics, this essay probes how fictionality is (re)entering public space through forms of protest that mobilize fictional modalities and what I call a weird aesthetics. The weird is a hybrid genre that uses speculative fiction, multiple scales, and human-nonhuman entanglements to ‘twist’ rationalism, realism, and normative constructions of common sen…
Literature and Public World-Making
This is the introduction to a special issue on Literature and Public World-Making, edited by Maria Boletsi, Marc Farrant, Divya Nadkarni and Marco de Waard
Greece and the Global South
This is the introduction to the special issue "Greece and the South: Grammars of Comparison, Protest, and Futurity," edited by the authors of the introduction
Barbarism and Its Discontents
Barbarism and civilization form one of the oldest and most rigid oppositions in Western history. According to this dichotomy, barbarism functions as the negative standard through which "civilization" fosters its self-definition and superiority by labeling others "barbarians." Since the 1990s, and especially since 9/11, these terms have become increasingly popular in Western political and cultural rhetoric—a rhetoric that divides the world into fo…
Languages of Resistance, Transformation, and Futurity in Mediterranean Crisis-Scapes
Recasting the indebted subject in the middle voice
This article traces the interrelation of two forms of debt - financial debt and the symbolic debt to the past - in order to propose a rethinking of the discourse of debt through the 'middle voice', understood both as a grammatical category and, more generally, as an expressive modality that can take shape through different media. Can we revisit discourses of debt through 'grammars' that could restore a form of agency to the 'indebted subject' and…
The Intellectual Landscape in the Works of J. M. Coetzee
Arguably the most decorated and critically acclaimed writer of today, J. M. Coetzee is a deeply intellectual writer. Yet while just about everyone who comes to Coetzee's writing is aware that the visible superstructure of his works is moved from below by a vast substructure of ideas, we are still far from grasping Coetzee's intellectual allegiances as a whole. This book sets out to examine these allegiances in ways not attempted before, by bringi…
From the subject of the crisis to the subject in crisis
As a grammatical mode in which the subject remains inside the action, the middle voice has been said to unsettle binary distinctions between active/passive, or perpetrator/victim. This article revisits theorizations of the middle voice by Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Hayden White, Dominick LaCapra and others, and explores its potential in fostering alternative accounts of the contemporary Greek subject against the backdrop of popular discours…
Barbarism Revisited
The figure of the barbarian has captivated the Western imagination from Greek antiquity to the present. Since the 1990s, the rhetoric of civilization versus barbarism has taken center stage in Western political rhetoric and the media. But how can the longevity and popularity of this opposition be accounted for? Why has it become such a deeply ingrained habit of thought that is still being so effectively mobilized in Western discourses? The twenty…
Thinking Barbarism Today
This chapter examines the current discursive landscape around culture, civilization, and barbarism in the turn it took after the Cold War and the collapse of communist regimes in Europe, and especially after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 in the United States. It presents examples from recent Western political rhetoric, especially the rhetoric of the U.S. government after 9/11, and considers some critical responses to this rhetoric. …
Afterword
Barbarism is a disruptive element within the self, one that disappropriates one's own language and culture in a potentially uncomfortable, even painful, manner. However, the concept of barbarism also offers a promise for discovering new ways of relating to one's home and cultural “belongings” in ways that are more inclusive, less focused on ownership and authority and more on acts of hospitality. Although the strategies, operations, and analyses …
New Barbarians
This chapter examines an artistic visualization of “new barbarians” by focusing on a number of photo-performances belonging to “The New Barbarians” project (2004–2006) by Mexican-born performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña and his troupe, La Pocha Nostra. Although Gómez-Peña's constructed barbarian personas appear to materialize the promise of the barbarians' arrival, these materializations falls short of the expectations of the civilized imagin…
Piecework
This chapter explores the critical thrust of barbarism and its relation to civilization through a close reading of Franz Kafka's short story “The Great Wall of China” (1931). It also discusses the link between barbarism's positive and negative aspects, along with its connection to epistemological and comparative questions. “The Great Wall of China,” which revolves around an unfinished wall, shows barbarism as a force that ruptures the epistemolog…
Barbarism and Its Discontents
Barbarism and civilization form one of the oldest and most rigid oppositions in Western history. According to this dichotomy, barbarism functions as the negative standard through which "civilization" fosters its self-definition and superiority by labeling others "barbarians." Since the 1990s, and especially since 9/11, these terms have become increasingly popular in Western political and cultural rhetoric—a rhetoric that divides the world into fo…
Barbaric Encounters
Barbarism and Its Discontents
Barbarism and civilization form one of the oldest and most rigid oppositions in Western history. According to this dichotomy, barbarism functions as the negative standard through which "civilization" fosters its self-definition and superiority by labeling others "barbarians." Since the 1990s, and especially since 9/11, these terms have become increasingly popular in Western political and cultural rhetoric—a rhetoric that divides the world into fo…
Barbaric Encounters
Barbaric Encounters
Thinking Barbarism Today
This chapter examines the current discursive landscape around culture, civilization, and barbarism in the turn it took after the Cold War and the collapse of communist regimes in Europe, and especially after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 in the United States. It presents examples from recent Western political rhetoric, especially the rhetoric of the U.S. government after 9/11, and considers some critical responses to this rhetoric. …
Afterword
Barbarism is a disruptive element within the self, one that disappropriates one's own language and culture in a potentially uncomfortable, even painful, manner. However, the concept of barbarism also offers a promise for discovering new ways of relating to one's home and cultural “belongings” in ways that are more inclusive, less focused on ownership and authority and more on acts of hospitality. Although the strategies, operations, and analyses …
New Barbarians
This chapter examines an artistic visualization of “new barbarians” by focusing on a number of photo-performances belonging to “The New Barbarians” project (2004–2006) by Mexican-born performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña and his troupe, La Pocha Nostra. Although Gómez-Peña's constructed barbarian personas appear to materialize the promise of the barbarians' arrival, these materializations falls short of the expectations of the civilized imagin…
Piecework
This chapter explores the critical thrust of barbarism and its relation to civilization through a close reading of Franz Kafka's short story “The Great Wall of China” (1931). It also discusses the link between barbarism's positive and negative aspects, along with its connection to epistemological and comparative questions. “The Great Wall of China,” which revolves around an unfinished wall, shows barbarism as a force that ruptures the epistemolog…
Barbarism and Its Discontents
Barbarism and civilization form one of the oldest and most rigid oppositions in Western history. According to this dichotomy, barbarism functions as the negative standard through which "civilization" fosters its self-definition and superiority by labeling others "barbarians." Since the 1990s, and especially since 9/11, these terms have become increasingly popular in Western political and cultural rhetoric—a rhetoric that divides the world into fo…
Barbarism Revisited
The figure of the barbarian has captivated the Western imagination from Greek antiquity to the present. Since the 1990s, the rhetoric of civilization versus barbarism has taken center stage in Western political rhetoric and the media. But how can the longevity and popularity of this opposition be accounted for? Why has it become such a deeply ingrained habit of thought that is still being so effectively mobilized in Western discourses? The twenty…
From the subject of the crisis to the subject in crisis
As a grammatical mode in which the subject remains inside the action, the middle voice has been said to unsettle binary distinctions between active/passive, or perpetrator/victim. This article revisits theorizations of the middle voice by Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Hayden White, Dominick LaCapra and others, and explores its potential in fostering alternative accounts of the contemporary Greek subject against the backdrop of popular discours…
The Intellectual Landscape in the Works of J. M. Coetzee
Arguably the most decorated and critically acclaimed writer of today, J. M. Coetzee is a deeply intellectual writer. Yet while just about everyone who comes to Coetzee's writing is aware that the visible superstructure of his works is moved from below by a vast substructure of ideas, we are still far from grasping Coetzee's intellectual allegiances as a whole. This book sets out to examine these allegiances in ways not attempted before, by bringi…
Recasting the indebted subject in the middle voice
This article traces the interrelation of two forms of debt - financial debt and the symbolic debt to the past - in order to propose a rethinking of the discourse of debt through the 'middle voice', understood both as a grammatical category and, more generally, as an expressive modality that can take shape through different media. Can we revisit discourses of debt through 'grammars' that could restore a form of agency to the 'indebted subject' and…
Barbarism and Its Discontents
Barbarism and civilization form one of the oldest and most rigid oppositions in Western history. According to this dichotomy, barbarism functions as the negative standard through which "civilization" fosters its self-definition and superiority by labeling others "barbarians." Since the 1990s, and especially since 9/11, these terms have become increasingly popular in Western political and cultural rhetoric—a rhetoric that divides the world into fo…
Languages of Resistance, Transformation, and Futurity in Mediterranean Crisis-Scapes
Greece and the Global South
This is the introduction to the special issue "Greece and the South: Grammars of Comparison, Protest, and Futurity," edited by the authors of the introduction
The Politics of Weird Aesthetics
As public spheres today are dominated by securitization, biopolitical control, and authoritarian politics, this essay probes how fictionality is (re)entering public space through forms of protest that mobilize fictional modalities and what I call a weird aesthetics. The weird is a hybrid genre that uses speculative fiction, multiple scales, and human-nonhuman entanglements to ‘twist’ rationalism, realism, and normative constructions of common sen…
Literature and Public World-Making
This is the introduction to a special issue on Literature and Public World-Making, edited by Maria Boletsi, Marc Farrant, Divya Nadkarni and Marco de Waard
History (8 works) · Art (7 works) · Archaeology (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Barbarism (5 works) · Civilization (5 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Literature (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works)