On_Culture
type: channel
description: On_Culture: The Open Journal for the Study of Culture is a biannual, peer-reviewed academic eJournal created and edited by doctoral researchers, postdocs and professors working at the GCSC (Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen). It provides a platform and forum for pursuing and reflecting on the study of culture. It investigates, problematizes and develops key concepts and methods in the field. More often than not, developing such new approaches and emerging topics is a collaborative and collective process. On_Culture is dedicated to fostering such collective processes and the cultural dynamics at work in thinking about and reflecting on culture. The journal consists of three sections: academic _Articles (double-blind peer review), _Essays and _Perspectives such as video clips, interviews and visual statements, which can be submitted on a rolling basis. On_Culture is the result of collaborative processes and emergent structures in the field of e-publishing. On_Culture puts new approaches and emerging topics in the (trans)national study of culture ‘on the line’ and, in so doing, fills the gap____ between ‘on’ and ‘culture’. There are numerous ways of filling the gap, and the plurality of approaches is something for which we strive with each new issue. The journal offers numerous opportunities to contribute: calls for abstracts released biannually seek contributors of peer-reviewed academic _Articles and (review) _Essays, while ideas for our shorter _Perspectives (textual, visual, graphic… you name it!) pertaining to any and all issue topics are welcome at any time.
publisher: International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC)
language: en
publication name: On_Culture
issn: 2366-4142
items: Notes Towards an Aesthetics of Celebration
items: The Limits of Celebration
items: Celebration
items: Absolutist Celebration in Late Ancien Régimes
items: Love, Later
items: Between Tulle and Tears
items: Ancient Roman Columns, Eagles, Sciences, and Other Representations
items: Coffee, Cocaine, and Roller Coasters
items: Black Joy as Cultural Resistance
items: Re-enactments and the Politics of Remembrance
items: Perrear hasta el piso or How to Dance Reggaetón in Germany
items: Las Fiestas Against Displacement
items: Disruption
items: Disrupted (Post)identities
items: Frames
items: Reframe
items: Of Sleeps and Cycles
items: Jerūiyq
items: Stickering through Grief
items: Multiple Frames
items: Geopolitical Frames, Bold Lines
items: Disruptive Paradox
items: Whose Heritage—Whose Narrative?
items: Disruptive Subjects
items: “The (In)Visible Man”
items: Grotesque, Absurdity, Cuteness
items: Rethinking the Good Life
items: From Imagined Communities to Cultures of Collectivization
items: Trash
items: Making Queer Content Visible

Notes Towards an Aesthetics of Celebration
type: item
description: This _Essay explores how the notion of celebration can reveal some aspects of the social life of literature that are rarely considered in literary theory. Defining celebration as the production of a festive and appreciative event by gathering together, it is argued that literature can accordingly be seen as a locus of celebration where different peoples’ lives cross and a sense of ‘we’ is negotiated and experimented. To make this argument, focus is shifted from individual texts to literature as an infrastructure for producing, circulating, and using texts, assembling writers, editors and critics, libraries and bookshops, discourses about literature, and the teaching of and research into literature. This infrastructure, it is argued, can instantiate a celebrative being-together due to three qualities: 1) Because it allows writers and readers take a reflective stance toward language, it endows literary language with the power to describe the word differently and to conjure imaginary universes and beings. 2) It installs an aesthetic relation between writer and reader where the reader puts her own sensibility in the service of realizing the potential offered by the literary work, making the life of literature into an exercise in being together, being interdependent and premised on one another. 3) We not only interact with literature; we also interact with each other about literature. Each of us have different capacities and capabilities when we use the affordances for imagination provided by the text, and we will realize a text’s potential using our imaginative powers each in our own ways. These three characteristics of the modern infrastructure of literature are indispensable components in experiencing literature as a celebration: it gathers us into a public and creates a common for our interaction.
subject: _Essays
  topic: section
subject: literary theory
  topic: keywords
subject: infrastructure studies
  topic: keywords
subject: interdependence
  topic: keywords
subject: aesthetic experience
  topic: keywords
creator: Frederik Tygstrup
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Frederik Tygstrup https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-05-31
publication date: 2026-05-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2026.1580

The Limits of Celebration
type: item
description: This _Essay challenges the taken-for-granted ‘celebratory paradigm’ that dominates scholarly understandings of national days. Drawing on comparative evidence from Central, Eastern, and Northern Europe, it argues that national days are frequently not occasions of unambiguous celebration but hybrid ritual formations that intertwine joy, commemoration, and mourning. To capture this ambivalence, the article advances the concept of commemobration, denoting national day rituals that blend celebratory performances of nationhood with solemn practices of remembrance and grief. The argument unfolds through a comparative analysis of national day ceremonies in Poland, Hungary, Finland, and the Baltic states. Particular attention is devoted to Poland’s Independence Day on 11 November, which exemplifies a conflicted commemobrative pattern shaped by historical trauma, political polarization, and the rise of illiberal populism. The analysis shows how state-centered commemorations coexist with, and are increasingly overshadowed by, nationalist counter-rituals such as the March of Independence, producing a ritual landscape marked by both heroic glorification and collective victimhood. By situating national days along a continuum ranging from celebration and commemoration to grief and mourning, the article reconceptualizes national days as complex ritual events. It concludes by arguing that national day studies should move beyond the sociology of celebration and nationalism studies to engage more systematically with memory studies and death studies.
subject: _Essays
  topic: section
subject: national days
  topic: keywords
subject: state rituals
  topic: keywords
subject: celebration
  topic: keywords
subject: commemoration
  topic: keywords
subject: mourning
  topic: keywords
creator: Mihai S. Rusu
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Mihai S. Rusu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-05-31
publication date: 2026-05-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2026.1577

Celebration
type: item
subject: _Editorial
  topic: section
subject: celebration
  topic: keywords
subject: anniversary
  topic: keywords
subject: birthday
  topic: keywords
subject: publishing
  topic: keywords
subject: celebratory practices
  topic: keywords
subject: ritual
  topic: keywords
creator: The Editorial Team
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 The Editorial Team https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-05-31
publication date: 2026-05-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2026.1576

Absolutist Celebration in Late Ancien Régimes
type: item
description: This _Essay aims to flesh out and systematize a series of reflections on the inversely proportional relationship between the eroding conceptual basis, in terms of legitimacy and sovereignty, of absolute rulership in the mid- to late eighteenth century, on the one hand, and the proliferation and growth of public celebrations thereof, on the other. The analysis is based on the life circumstances and ceremonial trajectories of empress Catherine II of Russia (r. 1762–1796) and king Gustav III of Sweden (r. 1771–1792). By offering an overarching typology of ruler celebrations and their attendant principles and patterns, the _Essay serves as a stepping stone towards a) systematic exploration of other eighteenth-century ruler-ruled equations in Europe and beyond, and b) connecting this burgeoning framework to an already existing apparatus for studying ‘ruler visibility’ and ‘popular belonging’ in nineteenth-century and later contexts globally.
subject: _Essays
  topic: section
subject: ruler visibility
  topic: keywords
subject: popular belonging
  topic: keywords
subject: theatricality
  topic: keywords
subject: ancien régime
  topic: keywords
subject: Catherine II
  topic: keywords
subject: Gustav III
  topic: keywords
creator: Darin Stephanov
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Darin Stephanov https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-05-31
publication date: 2026-05-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2026.1555

Love, Later
type: item
description: Looking for new love in later life has become more common, less stigmatized, and less sidelined in mainstream and academic conversations. Higher life expectancy, a rising standard of living, and cultural shifts such as the liberalization of women’s gender roles have created a climate ripe for kindling later-life romance across the West. Yet, there is still much more we can do—as researchers, policymakers, media producers and creatives, and society as a whole—to support and make space for later-life re-partnering. On one hand, popular culture has come to validate later-life romances through social media influencers, TV shows, and a marked expansion in online content. At the same time, social science research largely skirts acknowledgement of later-life sexuality. Drawing on in-depth interviews with new romantic partners aged 55+ and analyses of online content about new love in later life, this _Perspective explores the expansiveness and possibilities of loving again in midlife and beyond. It stresses the need to normalize new romantic relationships in later life, to not reduce these relationships to humorous tropes—despite some sensational influencers’ success in depicting the lighter side of senior romance—and recognize the parts we might play in a world where later-life recoupling is becoming common.
subject: _Perspectives
  topic: section
subject: love
  topic: keywords
subject: relationships
  topic: keywords
subject: sex
  topic: keywords
subject: later life
  topic: keywords
subject: dating
  topic: keywords
subject: qualitative research
  topic: keywords
creator: Sarah Knudson
rights: Copyright (c) 2020 Sarah Knudson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-06-24
publication date: 2026-06-24
doi: 10.22029/oc.2020.1554

Between Tulle and Tears
type: item
description: The question of appropriate clothing becomes especially significant on special occasions—particularly during rites of passage such as weddings. That the choice of a bridal gown is consistently at the center of attention is also reflected in diverse (social) media portrayals. The various levels of meaning and attributions of bridal fashion are expressed not only in the acquisition of a bridal outfit (including bridal insignia such as the veil, flower bouquet, etc.), but also on the wedding day itself. Furthermore, the elements of wedding fashion often function as objects of embodied memory, even years after the wedding. What kind of ritualized practices surrounding Westernized bridalwear can be currently observed? Which attributions of meaning—individual as well as medial—are recognizable, and what role does the bridal dress play as a vestimentary object within the broader context of the wedding? These research questions will be addressed through a multi-sited ethnographic approach. Augsburg in Germany lends itself as a focal point for research, not least due to its transnational ‘bridal fashion mile’ and its historical significance as a former center of the textile industry. The aim of this article is to highlight the specific value of bridal fashion as a (vestimentary) ritual practice. By interweaving empirically collected data with approaches from ritual and fashion theory, I will argue that ritual fashion practices are clearly distinct from those of everyday fashion.
subject: _Articles
  topic: section
subject: bridal gown
  topic: keywords
subject: wedding
  topic: keywords
subject: fashion
  topic: keywords
subject: ritual practice
  topic: keywords
subject: vestimentary objects
  topic: keywords
creator: Ina Hagen-Jeske
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Ina Hagen-Jeske https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-05-31
publication date: 2026-05-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2026.1547

Ancient Roman Columns, Eagles, Sciences, and Other Representations
type: item
description: During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe, the iconography and apparatus of dining on festive occasions—particularly the numerous elaborate centerpieces—served to narrate, enhance, and reiterate the occasion or aspects thereof. These functions, integral in shaping the participants’ understanding and experience of the celebration, were made possible through the ‘representational’ character of those objects. This paper aims to bring forward and discuss the reasoning behind the use of diverse iconographical elements in the centerpieces of the time for the purposes of meaning creation and the communication of ideas. Four cases of centerpieces from around Europe are discussed extensively towards this aim, as used in four distinctive but equally important spheres of the contemporaneous European societies: the celebration of a military victory at Versailles in 1674; an ecclesiastical jubilee of an abbot at the Zwettl Monastery in 1768; a secular wedding of a noble couple in the Kingdom of Naples in 1687; finally, a queen’s diplomatic visit to Venice in 1768.
subject: _Articles
  topic: section
subject: Early Modern Europe
  topic: keywords
subject: material culture
  topic: keywords
subject: feast
  topic: keywords
subject: dining
  topic: keywords
subject: centerpieces
  topic: keywords
creator: Panagiotis Doudesis
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Panagiotis Doudesis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-05-31
publication date: 2026-05-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2026.1545

Coffee, Cocaine, and Roller Coasters
type: item
description: In Colombia, where histories of colonial dispossession, civil war, and narco terror resist resolution, the theme park has emerged as an unlikely instrument of national memory-making. At two of Colombia’s most visited theme parks, Parque del Café in Quindío and Hacienda Nápoles in Antioquia, this _Article traces what happens when Colombia’s contested histories and mythologies are given gates, entrance fees, and roller coasters. At these parks, I argue that celebration works as a technology of historical resolution, producing and selling a coherent narrative scrubbed clean of complexity. Parque del Café freezes time, embalming a cafetero heritage built on colonial dispossession and celebrating a lifestyle it claims to honor even as it hastens its disappearance. Hacienda Nápoles, built from the ruins of infamous narcotrafficker Pablo Escobar’s estate, accelerates time, declaring narco terror transcended and the state triumphant. But in practice, buried violence and histories resurface through the very practices of celebration as visitors project their own desires, griefs, and fantasies onto curated space. Through historical analysis and participant observation in the parks and surrounding communities of Montenegro and Puerto Triunfo, combined with semi-structured interviews with visitors, workers, residents, and local experts, this _Article traces how celebration becomes not only the mode through which history is tamed, but the very arena in which the impossibility of its taming is revealed.
subject: _Articles
  topic: section
subject: celebration
  topic: keywords
subject: memory
  topic: keywords
subject: narcotourism
  topic: keywords
subject: heritage
  topic: keywords
creator: Sydney Coldren
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Sydney Coldren https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-05-31
publication date: 2026-05-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2026.1544

Black Joy as Cultural Resistance
type: item
description: This _Perspective explores Black Joy as a mode of cultural resistance and collective self-representation through a critical engagement with the 2024 exhibition When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting, held at the Kunstmuseum Basel. Framing celebration not as a passive emotion but as a political method, the piece moves through five thematic reflections: visual sovereignty, spatial presence, sensorial engagement, everyday vitality, and shared empowerment. Drawing on bell hooks’ “The Oppositional Gaze,” Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Stuart Hall’s writing on cultural identity, and Tina Campt’s Listening to Images, the essay situates joy as a curatorial strategy and relational force that exceeds representation. Through a blend of theoretical analysis and autoethnographic reflection, this _Perspectiveconsiders how the exhibition mobilizes joy not only through visual representation, but by crafting an immersive environment—through color palettes, spatial layout, soundscapes, and moments of embodied encounter—which invites visitors to feel, dwell in, and move with joy as a shared affective force. The result is a counter-archive of Black life that refuses trauma as its only frame. When We See Us offers a radically intimate vision of Black presence, where quiet pleasure, softness, and collectivity emerge as acts of aesthetic and political power.
subject: _Perspectives
  topic: section
subject: Black Joy
  topic: keywords
subject: visual representation
  topic: keywords
subject: affect
  topic: keywords
subject: exhibition space
  topic: keywords
subject: Pan-African art
  topic: keywords
subject: self-representation
  topic: keywords
creator: Serafina Andrew
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Serafina Andrew https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-05-31
publication date: 2026-05-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2026.1542

Re-enactments and the Politics of Remembrance
type: item
description: Forty years ago, on September 8th, 1985, Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta died after falling from the window of the 34th-floor Manhattan apartment she shared with her husband, the Minimalist artist Carl Andre. Andre was accused of murder but later acquitted in a highly publicized trial that split the art world. Born in Havana in 1948 and exiled to the United States at the age of twelve, Mendieta became a prominent voice of the 1970s feminist art movement. Her ‘earth-body art’ combined elements of ‘land art’ and ‘body art,’ transforming her experience as a woman into the central theme of her work. At the same time, she challenged Western conceptions of both ‘nature’ and ‘culture,’ drawing on pre-Hispanic cultures in Mexico and Cuba and asserting her identity as Other. For all these reasons, recent major exhibitions and scholarly debates on feminism and decoloniality have returned to Mendieta’s work with renewed attention. I take the fortieth anniversary of Mendieta’s death as an occasion to investigate the intersection of performance and remembrance. One way of considering this is by examining how various artists engage in reenactments of Mendieta’s work as acts of cultural memory and collective remembrance. My goal is to understand how these reenactments open up possibilities for affective, embodied modes of celebration.
subject: _Perspectives
  topic: section
subject: performance
  topic: keywords
subject: remembrance
  topic: keywords
subject: cultural memory
  topic: keywords
subject: embodied practice
  topic: keywords
subject: reenactments
  topic: keywords
creator: Fabrício Belsoff
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Fabrício Belsoff https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-05-31
publication date: 2026-05-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2026.1541

Perrear hasta el piso or How to Dance Reggaetón in Germany
type: item
description: This auto-ethnographic _Perspective reflects on reggaetón music, its festive experience, and the cultural changes it has undergone in the Latin migrant context. Two years ago, a collective of Latin American DJs founded La Casa del Perreo in Germany. Since then, they have hosted reggaetón parties in various European cities. The _Perspective traces the cultural meanings behind this music scene in the context of migration. These festive events become a space of socialization and celebration of Latin American culture. At the disco, reggaetón music and culture are showcased not only as a mainstream product, but also as a landscape within which the Latin American experience is performed and celebrated. Through my personal experience of attending various reggaetón parties in Germany, I explore the cultural significance of the reggaetón scene.
subject: _Perspectives
  topic: section
subject: reggaetón
  topic: keywords
subject: festiveness
  topic: keywords
subject: ritual
  topic: keywords
subject: celebration
  topic: keywords
subject: Latin America
  topic: keywords
creator: Miguel Ángel Castro Caballero
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Miguel Ángel Castro Caballero https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-05-31
publication date: 2026-05-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2026.1540

Las Fiestas Against Displacement
type: item
description: The region of Cholula, comprising the municipalities of San Andrés Cholula and San Pedro Cholula in Puebla, Mexico, has experienced rapid urban expansion and increased real estate development in recent decades. This transformation has led to an intensification of processes of commodification and demographic change. However, indigenous communities in San Andrés Cholula have persisted in their organization and sustenance of religious festivities that are deeply rooted in neighborhood-based structures, such as mayordomías. This _Article explores the function of these celebrations as forms of spatial appropriation and everyday resistance within the context of urban restructuring, emphasizing their role beyond mere expressions of cultural continuity. The study draws on long-term ethnographic research to analyze three key celebrations—Christmas Day, Candlemas, and the Feast of Santiago Xicotenco—in order to explore how ritual practices reinforce social networks, reproduce local authority, and sustain territorial belonging. The _Article’s argument is supported by theories of ritual, the production of space, and urban indigeneity. The institutionalization of social and cultural capital enables Indigenous residents to maintain their material presence and collective visibility in an increasingly commodified urban context. In this manner, they assert their right to remain and to define the social and spatial meaning of their city.
subject: _Articles
  topic: section
subject: San Andrés Cholula
  topic: keywords
subject: religious festivals
  topic: keywords
subject: urban indigeneity
  topic: keywords
subject: everyday resistance
  topic: keywords
subject: gentrification
  topic: keywords
creator: Adriana Armenta-Ramírez
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Adriana Armenta-Ramírez https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2026-05-31
publication date: 2026-05-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2026.1539

Disruption
type: item
subject: _Editorial
  topic: section
subject: post-concepts
  topic: keywords
subject: social change
  topic: keywords
subject: belonging
  topic: keywords
subject: identity
  topic: keywords
subject: resilience
  topic: keywords
subject: abjection
  topic: keywords
subject: disruption
  topic: keywords
creator: Farouk El Maarouf
creator: Anastasiia Marsheva
creator: Justus Grebe
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Farouk El Maarouf, Anastasiia Marsheva, Justus Grebe https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-10-31
publication date: 2025-10-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2025.1533

Disrupted (Post)identities
type: item
description: For a recent issue of the journal Dialogues in Human Geography, I was asked to write a response to an article that examined the use of the word ‘post’ as a heuristic to better understand places associated with ‘post’ ascriptions—in the case of the original article, post-apartheid (Houssay-Holzschuch, 2021). The post anchors a present-day entity to the past; it does so by opening and holding open a space of hope. This hopeful space is cruelly optimistic (cf. Berlant, 2011); it tethers identities to places and events of the past, while also carrying the promise of unattachment (Anderson et al., 2023). I concluded my response with a provocation drawn from Doreen Massey’s (1999) scholarship on the space-time regime, by asking: “Who uses that vocabulary most powerfully and to what effect?” (Drozdzewski, 2021: 5) Thoughts on that question comprise the subject matter of this _Essay—what can the ‘post’ do? To think-with the power and effect of the ‘post,’ I draw from a range of examples: (post)conflict, (post)war, (post)Socialist, (post)national, and (post)disaster. Then, using case study examples from Poland, Germany, and Australia, I explore the politics of identity, place, and memory across spatial and temporal contexts to show how the post functions powerfully as a lexicon, while being simultaneously sanguine and banal in its application.
subject: _Essays
  topic: section
subject: (post)
  topic: keywords
subject: identity
  topic: keywords
subject: discourse
  topic: keywords
subject: power
  topic: keywords
subject: language
  topic: keywords
subject: memory
  topic: keywords
creator: Danielle Drozdzewski
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Danielle Drozdzewski https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-10-31
publication date: 2025-10-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2025.1532

Frames
type: item
subject: _Editorial
  topic: section
subject: frames
  topic: keywords
subject: reframing
  topic: keywords
subject: schemata
  topic: keywords
subject: media framing
  topic: keywords
subject: stereotypes
  topic: keywords
subject: narrative
  topic: keywords
creator: The Editorial Team
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 The Editorial Team https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-05-31
publication date: 2025-05-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2025.1522

Reframe
type: item
description: This _Perspective in the form of a photo essay introduces Reframe, a documentary photography project that sought to challenge Western stereotypes and colonial narratives surrounding Namibia. Prompted by a viral image from 2016 and the problematic media responses it generated, the _Perspective traces how dominant representations of Namibia have historically erased its people in favor of empty, romanticized landscapes. Reframe responds by empowering Namibian photographers to document everyday life from the inside, culminating in exhibitions in Windhoek and Berlin. Through this exchange, the project constructed a decolonial visual practice and promoted a more complex and self-determined view of Namibia’s social realities.
subject: _Perspectives
  topic: section
subject: decolonization
  topic: keywords
subject: documentary
  topic: keywords
subject: Namibia
  topic: keywords
subject: photography
  topic: keywords
creator: Lisa Ossenbrink
creator: Julia Runge
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Lisa Ossenbrink, Julia Runge https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-05-31
publication date: 2025-05-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2025.1516

Of Sleeps and Cycles
type: item
description: This _Essay explores digital disruptions at the intersections of awakening narratives and historical revivals in the postdigital era. Characterized by the normalization of technology, the postdigital (as opposed to the hyphenated post-digital) invites critical reflection on the political, social, and cultural implications of digital infrastructures. While optimism surrounding digital advancements is often framed through the lens of apolitical affordances, this _Essay challenges that perspective by foregrounding the concept of cyclical time. The so-called ‘Arab Spring’ exemplifies that this temporal framework is used politically: the 2010–2011 uprisings in North Africa initially sparked hopes for liberation through technology (Spring/Awakening) only to be followed by disillusionment and despair (Winter/Sleep). These cycles highlight an apparent duality of digital affordances to both empower and constrain. Through the metaphor of biphasic pre-industrial sleeping patterns, this _Essay delves into the ideological underpinnings of digital disruptions and how they animate a contemporary return to imagined medieval fantasies. This resurgence reveals troubling overlaps between alt-right ideologies and digital culture. Ultimately, this analysis contends that the postdigital has become a fertile ground for rewriting and reimagining history, one that calls for selected knowledge seeking, and where the struggle for democratic rights continues amidst the spectre of reactionary forces.
subject: _Essays
  topic: section
subject: postdigital
  topic: keywords
subject: technological determinism
  topic: keywords
subject: cyberlibertarianism
  topic: keywords
subject: alt-right
  topic: keywords
subject: medievalism
  topic: keywords
creator: Cristina Moreno-Almeida
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Cristina Moreno-Almeida https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-10-31
publication date: 2025-10-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2025.1515

Jerūiyq
type: item
description: The Kazakhstan project at the 60th Venice Biennale (20 April 2024–24 November 2024) was titled Jerūiyq: Journey Beyond the Horizon. According to the curators, Anvar Musrepov and Danagul Tolepbay, it aimed to stimulate Kazakh decolonial futurism: “We wanted to create our own Wakanda, our post-nomadic essence, our ‘Kazakhness.’ Technology and the future are present in it, but they are not the primary focus. There is something beyond language, a spirituality, perhaps something connected to space and the landscape, our identity, which largely determines our way of thinking.” In these words we see how decolonial futurism functions as a creative disruptive fiction that mediates between forging spatial identity, geographical imagination, and decolonial indigeneity.
subject: _Perspectives
  topic: section
subject: decolonial futurism
  topic: keywords
subject: contemporary art
  topic: keywords
subject: geographical imagination
  topic: keywords
subject: art of Kazakhstan
  topic: keywords
creator: Nikolay Smirnov
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Nikolay Smirnov https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-10-31
publication date: 2025-10-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2025.1512

Stickering through Grief
type: item
description: Following the death of my close friend and artistic mentor Justin in 2021, my friends and I, connected by grief, embarked on a collective stickering project using Justin’s graffiti tag. This initiative, spanning across North America and Europe, was conceived as a tribute to honour Justin’s memory by occupying space and mapping our collective loss. The act of stickering emerged as a powerful medium for expressing collective grief, offering a form of affective mapping and anti-temporal mourning. This paper analyzes the stickering project to reveal how creative practices can function as a form of witnessing and transformation. It highlights the ways in which graffiti's autobiographical nature can evolve into a communal practice outside of its common subculture, pushing against the conventional cultural contexts within which graffiti typically operates. My analysis of this project draws on theoretical frameworks such as affective mapping, relationality, and testimony as developed by scholars including Dominick LaCapra, Kelly Oliver, Judith Butler, Leigh Gilmore, and Shelley Hornstein. Through this lens, the paper examines how the stickering project navigates the dynamic interplay between past and present, space and time, embodied experiences, and empirical knowledge. I attempt to further explore this anti-temporal dimension through the notion of ‘grief-time,’ modelled after ‘queer-time,’ as articulated by Jack Halberstam and Carolyn Dinshaw. This paper considers the transient nature of both graffiti and grief, underscoring the stickering project’s role in confronting and negotiating the temporal aspects of mourning. It demonstrates how artistic and communal expressions can offer new insights into the processes of memory-making, creating an active practice of remembrance. This exploration of our collective endeavor underscores the transformative potential of creative practices in the face of loss and the complex ways in which they interact with the cultural and temporal …
subject: _Perspectives
  topic: section
subject: cultural studies
  topic: keywords
subject: visual culture
  topic: keywords
subject: graffiti
  topic: keywords
subject: memory and place
  topic: keywords
subject: public mourning
  topic: keywords
subject: grief
  topic: keywords
subject: memorial
  topic: keywords
subject: queer theory
  topic: keywords
creator: Rachelle Sabourin
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Rachelle Sabourin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-10-31
publication date: 2025-10-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2025.1511

Multiple Frames
type: item
description: The paper attempts a preliminary framing of what we can understand by the work of ‘framing’ in the context of borders and migration and its inherent tensions. These are articulated in current biopolitics which are committed to life, care and humanitarian reason (Frame 1: Life). At the same time however, current biopolitics produce death zones. Therefore, the current politics in the Mediterranean are framed by what, following Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, Roberto Esposito calls thanapolitics and Achille Mbembe necropolitics (Frame 2: Death). These tense, overlapping and intertwined framings of migration and the discursive networks also refer to legal norms and norm-setting, the law and its violence, the right to life and the limits of current humanitarian law and Human Rights (Frame 3: Law).
subject: _Essays
  topic: section
subject: framing
  topic: keywords
subject: mobility/migration
  topic: keywords
subject: biopolitics
  topic: keywords
subject: thanatopolitics
  topic: keywords
subject: necropolitics
  topic: keywords
subject: human rights
  topic: keywords
creator: Heidrun Friese
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Heidrun Friese https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-05-31
publication date: 2025-05-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2025.1509

Geopolitical Frames, Bold Lines
type: item
description: In the _Essay, the author offers a reflective analysis and tracking of the needs, obstacles, and challenges of global solidarity for Ukraine, based on his work from 2022 to 2025 on building a popular rolling community “influencer feed” on the Twitter/X platform. At its height in July 2023, the digital coverage and data counter-disinformation project had nearly 35 million impressions per month, in over a hundred countries. As a resistance effort for the defense of literacy, education, and the integrity of expertise in Ukrainian culture, language, politics and policy, the ongoing February 24th Archive connects six main groups: (1) professionally trained field experts in Ukrainian Studies; (2) interested nonspecialists in and beyond European and North American academia; (3) leading journalists worldwide in over thirty languages; (4) OSINT amateurs and mapmakers cataloging war crimes to build evidentiary cases for international criminal prosecution; (5) diplomats and policymakers; and (6) most crucially, a voting protest citizenry that crosses ideological lines, hoping to ensure and raise literacy in their regional, national, and broader communities.
subject: _Essays
  topic: section
subject: digital literacy
  topic: keywords
subject: erasure
  topic: keywords
subject: maps
  topic: keywords
subject: social media outreach
  topic: keywords
subject: solidarity
  topic: keywords
subject: Ukraine
  topic: keywords
creator: Steven Seegel
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Steven Seegel https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-05-31
publication date: 2025-05-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2025.1508

Disruptive Paradox
type: item
description: Throughout art history, disruption has been a deliberate tool for conveying meaning. In architecture, deviations from norms provoke reflection and challenge principles like Vitruvius’ firmitas, utilitas, and venustas. From the 1980s on, deconstructivist architects systematically used disruption to express Jacques Derrida’s concept of deconstruction through form, space, and perspective. Though buildings are not texts, this movement questioned architectural and societal norms. This article explores how deconstructivist architecture functions as a reflective medium, radically challenging political, social, and aesthetic structures. Disruption, as theorized among others by Lars Koch and Tobias Nanz, acts as both a destructive and productive force. Architects like Peter Eisenman, Bernard Tschumi, and Daniel Libeskind integrated Derrida’s philosophy into their work, exposing architecture as the “last fortress of metaphysics”—an illusion of stability masking its own constructed nature. Their buildings reveal hidden structures and produce an ambiguity of many possible orders and norms without referring to one of them. By employing disruption as a subversive tool, deconstructivism bridged architecture and philosophy, provoking critical reflection on the built environment.
subject: _Articles
  topic: section
subject: philosophical methods
  topic: keywords
subject: concepts of architecture
  topic: keywords
subject: metaphysics
  topic: keywords
subject: deconstructive (re-)reading practices
  topic: keywords
subject: semiotics
  topic: keywords
creator: Jennifer Konrad
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Jennifer Konrad https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-10-31
publication date: 2025-10-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2025.1506

Whose Heritage—Whose Narrative?
type: item
description: The question ‘Whose heritage?’ is a central denominator when it comes to cultural heritage and the representation of the past in the present. It invites us to rethink who shapes heritage for whom, while simultaneously opening spaces for diverse actors to (re)-appropriate heritage and to disrupt its discourses and performances on different scales and scopes. Unsettled and governed by dissonances and controversies, the heritage pluriverse is a hugely diverse as well as competitive arena, that affects and is itself affected by disruptions and the positioning of alternative (counter-)narratives. This _Article argues that disruptions can hint at crucial issues in heritage spaces, such as the plurality of vested interests, as well as multivocality and individual affective responses. Through the example of St Paul’s Church in Frankfurt and the discourse surrounding sites of democratic history in Germany, it examines how different stakeholders in the heritage pluriverse put forward very different positionalities and argumentative patterns in order to narrate their version of a heritage site and draw associations with particular memories and identities. The _Article traces how counter-narratives form a substantial part of the heritage process and demonstrates how disruptions can become a productive lens for mediating and doing heritage in a diverse and complex world.
subject: _Articles
  topic: section
subject: heritage discourse
  topic: keywords
subject: politics of heritage
  topic: keywords
subject: democratic heritage
  topic: keywords
subject: post-heritage
  topic: keywords
subject: disruption
  topic: keywords
subject: ultra-heritage
  topic: keywords
creator: Sandra Engels
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Sandra Engels https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-10-31
publication date: 2025-10-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2025.1503

Disruptive Subjects
type: item
description: This _Article examines the role of disruption in two pivotal instances of subject formation in the late 1960s and 1970s Atlantic World: Operaismo (Workerism) and radical feminism in Italy and the United States. To do so, it traces the history of the self-creation of workers and women as political subjects. It underscores how this becoming-subject emerged, both conceptually and tactically, through the disruption of their assigned role, place, and function within society. It describes the autonomous, unruly, and unexpected subjectivities that emerged from this disavowal and the new forms of politics, praxis, history, being-with, and against that women and workers created. The conclusion discusses the fortunes of disruptive politics and subjectivity since the 1970s and what these historical struggles can say to the liberation struggles of our present.
subject: _Articles
  topic: section
subject: disruption
  topic: keywords
subject: social struggle
  topic: keywords
subject: radical feminism
  topic: keywords
subject: workerism
  topic: keywords
subject: operaismo
  topic: keywords
subject: subjectivity
  topic: keywords
creator: Mehmet Dosemeci
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Mehmet Dosemeci https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-10-31
publication date: 2025-10-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2025.1502

“The (In)Visible Man”
type: item
description: The (In)Visible Man film is an artistic extension of my ongoing doctoral project: “Submission Is Power: Remasculinization in Contemporary Asian American Literature.” Through a blend of abstract dance and fragmented diaristic dialogues, the film explores the complex struggles faced by Asian American men, whose masculinities have long been obscured by historical stereotypes that render them effeminate and submissive. It also visually captures Asian American men’s process of resistance to make visible and redefine their gender identities, challenging the pervasive invisibility of their masculinities. The film poses critical questions about certain aspects of the Asian American male identity such as power dynamics, body image, queerness and sexualities, as well as the relationship between masculinities and nature. Through an intersectional lens, the film delves into the intricate intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and power within Asian American masculinities, calling for a more nuanced understanding of gender dynamics and cultural identities.
subject: _Perspectives
  topic: section
subject: (in)visibilities
  topic: keywords
subject: men and masculinities studies
  topic: keywords
subject: Asian American studies
  topic: keywords
subject: genders and sexualities studies
  topic: keywords
subject: intersectionality
  topic: keywords
creator: Nhi Thao Do
rights: Copyright (c) 2022 Nhi Thao Do https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-05-26
publication date: 2025-05-26
doi: 10.22029/oc.2022.1501

Grotesque, Absurdity, Cuteness
type: item
description: This _Article explores the centrality of argumentative frames in shaping the abortion debate in Poland, focusing on their intersection with aesthetics and emotions. Drawing on framing theory, it examines how visual and rhetorical strategies are used to construct narratives, mobilize emotions, and influence public discourse. The analysis centers on three aesthetic framing techniques—grotesque, absurdity, and cuteness—as employed by anti-abortion and pro-abortion movements. Grotesque frames, characterized by graphic depictions of fetal remains and dystopian imagery, amplify moral shock to evoke fear and reinforce binary narratives of 'good versus evil.' In contrast, absurdity disrupts such frames through humor and incongruity, as seen in feminist parody campaigns which critique the artificiality of anti-abortion propaganda. Cuteness leverages the disarming and subversive qualities of pastel hues, glitter, and playful motifs to destigmatize abortion and promote resilience and solidarity. By exploring their cognitive, aesthetic, and emotional dimensions, this study highlights the transformative potential of frames in reproductive politics. It reveals how movements construct powerful narratives to challenge entrenched ideologies while navigating the risks of polarization and trivialization. This analysis thereby contributes to an understanding of the dynamic interplay between visual culture, emotional resonance, and political activism in shaping cultural and political contestations.
subject: _Articles
  topic: section
subject: argumentative frames
  topic: keywords
subject: political aesthetics
  topic: keywords
subject: (anti)feminism
  topic: keywords
subject: abortion
  topic: keywords
subject: Poland
  topic: keywords
creator: Agnieszka Balcerzak
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Agnieszka Balcerzak https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-05-31
publication date: 2025-05-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2025.1497

Rethinking the Good Life
type: item
description: This _Article examines the intersection of disruption, disability, and ‘post-’ concepts in the aftermath of Hong Kong’s 2019–2020 protests. Sparked by opposition to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance amendment, these protests escalated into a broader resistance movement against the erosion of civil liberties, which was eventually suppressed by the National Security Law, a lasting disruption to Hong Kong’s sociopolitical landscape. The _Article investigates how disability metaphors have been co-opted to uphold enforced optimism for Hong Kong’s neoliberal developmentalism under this new regime. A curative logic that positions health and stability as prerequisites for progress is used to justify the NSL, producing a ‘post-disruption’ identity marked by compulsory able-bodiedness and conformity to state norms. Turning to the surrealist short stories of Hong Kong writer Hon Lai-chu, the _Article explores how narratives of disabled lives critique and disrupt the affective politics of neoliberalism. Interpreted through the lens of crip critique, these stories expose the violent disruptions that challenge the neoliberal promise of progress. Drawing on Lauren Berlant’s concept of ‘cruel optimism,’ the _Articleargues that post-2019 optimism not only disrupts the lives it seeks to improve but also creates a fractured identity landscape where stability is illusory. This analysis deepens understanding of the ongoing effects of the 2019–2020 protests on Hong Kong’s identity and futurity.
subject: _Articles
  topic: section
subject: Hong Kong protests
  topic: keywords
subject: disability metaphors
  topic: keywords
subject: neoliberal developmentalism
  topic: keywords
subject: crip critique
  topic: keywords
subject: surrealist short stories
  topic: keywords
creator: Carissa Ma
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Carissa Ma https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-10-31
publication date: 2025-10-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2025.1496

From Imagined Communities to Cultures of Collectivization
type: item
description: This _Essay contributes to the issue of On Culture by asking how concepts like frame or schema could be used to analyze collectivity. It takes on a praxeological perspective which does not presuppose collectivities as given entities but as something that emerges from what we do: doing group, family, gender, nation. Part of these practices is an implicit and incorporated understanding or knowledge (i.e., culture) what it is that we are doing, how to collectivize and what for. These collectivization cultures—a conceptual extension of Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities—can be analyzed as consisting of frames or schemata. The _Essay draws on cognitive theories to distinguish collectivization scripts (e.g., frames of assembling, having dinner together) and collectivization themes (e.g., stereotypes, models of families, enterprises, nations). These again are interrelated, as are practices and practitioners, who carry collectivization experiences from one practice to another and frame nations as extended families or work teams as friendship circles.
subject: _Essays
  topic: section
subject: practice theory
  topic: keywords
subject: schema theory
  topic: keywords
subject: imagined community
  topic: keywords
subject: culture
  topic: keywords
subject: collectivity
  topic: keywords
creator: Jan-Christoph Marschelke
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Jan-Christoph Marschelke https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-05-31
publication date: 2025-05-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2025.1493

Trash
type: item
subject: _Editorial
  topic: section
subject: trash
  topic: keywords
subject: waste
  topic: keywords
subject: rubbish
  topic: keywords
subject: im_materiality
  topic: keywords
subject: Anthropocene
  topic: keywords
subject: value
  topic: keywords
subject: obsolescence
  topic: keywords
creator: Tobias Schädel
creator: Juliane Saupe
creator: Marco Presago
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Tobias Schädel, Juliane Saupe, Marco Presago https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-10-31
publication date: 2024-10-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2024.1491

Making Queer Content Visible
type: item
description: This _Perspective portrays the challenges and needs of the queer population in Serbian public discourse. Since the first Belgrade Pride in 2001, members of the LGBT+ community have encountered rejection from different sources. Although it is generally acknowledged that politics and mass media play an important role in the way that societies come to terms with queerness, there is little empirical knowledge about whether and how mass media actually contribute to the process of raising awareness and legitimation and increasing visibility. The study aims to assess changes in the online framing of the Serbian newspaper blic by analyzing the Belgrade Pride of each year from 2014 to 2024. The concept of media framing analysis is employed to elucidate the structural and dynamic interactions between the LGBT+ community and the (in)tolerant segment of the Serbian society. Furthermore, the aim of the analysis is to identify the various frames utilized in the media coverage, with a particular focus on the reporting and the actors that shape the discourse surrounding queerness. The primary argument is that, although the reporting has not resulted in significant shifts in framing, it provides a lens through which discussions about LGBT+ visibility and representation in Serbia can be conducted.
subject: _Perspectives
  topic: section
subject: Serbia
  topic: keywords
subject: Pride
  topic: keywords
subject: Prajd
  topic: keywords
subject: Parada Ponosa
  topic: keywords
subject: queerness
  topic: keywords
subject: media framing
  topic: keywords
creator: Ana Marija Spasojevic
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Ana Marija Spasojevic https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-05-31
publication date: 2025-05-31
doi: 10.22029/oc.2025.1482