Dear colleagues,
we are very excited to announce the publication of On_Culture's 12th issue entitled “Ambiguity: Conditions, Potentials, Limits.” Issue 12 seeks to explores perspectives on ambiguity as a cultural phenomenon in its historical situatedness and political dimensions.
What unites all authors is an attitude of ambiguity tolerance and/or affinity for ambiguity, in that they understand ambiguity as an intellectual challenge. Noticing ambiguous phenomena in culture, politics and everyday life is thus not the end, but rather the starting point of their interpretive discussion and engagement with a research object. The issue, therefore, aims to engage in an interdisciplinary dialogue and intends to look closely at the contexts in which ambiguity occurs from a variety of academic backgrounds.
_Article contributions explore ambiguity by means of graphic narrative studies/contemporary modern fiction studies (Barlow), comparative literature studies (Schöfberger), feminist social theory (Gekle), and anthropology (Spyropoulou).
The issue’s featured _Essay explores how the notion of ambiguity fulfills a double function in queer theory, underlining ambiguity’s livability and explaining its political potential (Engel).
A creative approach to ambiguity is offered in the _Perspectives featuring a trilogy of poems of the divine as non-binary in Hinduism (Biswas) as well as a multi-voiced contribution, which critically investigates the potentials and limits of ambiguity as an analytical tool from various disciplinary backgrounds (Klaassen with the collaboration of Aranke, Beckmann, Cooper, Claus, Getsy, Kargin, Rand, Schorstein, Sexon, Simmons, Sorokin, and Töpfer).
Read the entire issue here: https://www.on-culture.org/journal/issue-12/
With best wishes,
The Editorial Team
Editorial
The Editorial Team: “Editorial: Ambiguity: Conditions, Potentials, Limits” <https://www.on-culture.org/journal/issue-12/editorial-ambiguity/>
Articles
Amy Barlow: “Victims or Perpetrators? Uncovering the Nuances of Perpetrators in Graphic Narratives” <https://www.on-culture.org/journal/issue-12/victim-or-perpetrator/>
Riccardo Schöfberger: “‘Polimorfi e poligami e un po’ anche polipi.’ Representations of Ambiguous Masculinity in Late 1970s Bologna” <https://www.on-culture.org/journal/issue-12/polimorfi-e-poligami-e-un-po-anche-polipi/>
Lea Gekle: “How to Get Over ‘Ambiguity Intolerant’ Approaches to Social Theory: A Feminist Critique of Adorno’s Theory of Knowledge as Social Theory” <https://www.on-culture.org/journal/issue-12/how-to-get-over-ambiguity-intolerant-approaches-to-social-theory/>
Despoina Spyropoulou: “(Repatriat)Able Bones: Tales of Ambiguity in the Repatriation Nexus” <https://www.on-culture.org/journal/issue-12/repatriatable-bones/>
Essay
Antke A. Engel: “A_Sociality as a Model Figure of Ambiguity” <https://www.on-culture.org/journal/issue-12/a_sociality-as-a-model-figure-of-ambiguity/>
Perspectives
Pooja Mittal Biswas: “The Divine as Non-Binary: The Ambiguous Transpoetics of Three Trans, Genderfluid and Genderqueer Figures from Hindu Mythology” <https://www.on-culture.org/journal/perspectives/the-divine-as-non-binary/>
Oliver Klaassen with the collaboration of Sampada Aranke, Marie Sophie Beckmann, Ashton Cooper, Jakob Claus, David J. Getsy, Fatma Kargin, Erica Rand, Tillmann Schorstein, Sophie Sexon, William J. Simmons, Siim Sorokin, and Lukas Mathis Töpfer: “(Re-)Negotiating Ambiguity’s (Added) Value(lessness)” <https://www.on-culture.org/journal/perspectives/re-negotiating-ambiguitys-added-valuelessness/>