MC: Frans Willem Korsten: History, theatrical politics and the dramatically political (GCSC)

In the last decades many have participated in debates concerning the nature and qualities of democracies in a globalised, terrorised, capitalized world. To many it appeared, and appears, that the true political force in democracy is nigh dead. In this context a question that was perhaps less prominently in the limelight was what the status and quality of history is in current circumstances. Who or what can (still) be considered as the viable subject of history, and of its being made? 

  We will approach the entanglement of the political nature of democracy and the making of history generically; though not by focusing on the common tool of power when it comes to the fabrication of history: narrative. Instead we consider the intrinsic relations between the openness or closed-ness of history with two different modes of acting; the theatrical and the dramatic.

  In the process we will try to gain maximum clarity about distinctions such as those between stage and podium, perspective and light, moment and event, plot and action, affect and emotion; and we will discuss the coincidence of freedom with contingency. We will also discuss why the generic models of spectacle and game are incompatible with the idea of the political. And as is the case with all matters of political relevance: we will deal with the issue theoretically and practically.

//Prof. Dr. Frans-Willem Korsten (Leiden University, Netherlands)

Professor chair by special appointment ‘Literature and Society’ at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (ESHCC, Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Associate Professor at the department of Film and Literary Studies, Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS, Leiden University)