Stephan Besser

Stephan Besser is Assistant professor of Dutch Studies (Moderne Nederlandse letterkunde). He was a staff member of the research project "Literatur- und Kulturschichte des Fremden" at Humboldt University (Berlin) and lectured at Amsterdam University College and the Departments of Media Studies and Literary Studies at the University of Amsterdam. His current research focusses on tropes and narratives of contemporary neuroculture.

Critical neuroscience

Parmentier "Neurocultuur"

Of we inderdaad ons brein 'zijn' is heftig omstreden, maar dat er tegenwoordig niet aan de hersenen  te ontsnappen valt, zal niemand tegenspreken. Met ongekende intensiteit en fascinatie wordt sinds een paar jaar in Nederland in de meest diverse contexten gesproken over de hersenen als biologisch substraat en ultieme bron van onze identiteit: van rechtsgeleerdheid tot politiek en van talkshows tot literatuur. De neurowetenschap lijkt daarbij de rol van master narrative te claimen dat een nieuw mensbeeld neerzet. Met dit dossier wil Parmentier een bijdrage leveren aan de verkenning van het politieke, sociale en literaire leven van de hersenen. Het dossier bevat bijdragen van Jan Slaby, Stephan Besser, Toine Hovers, Patricia Pisters, Flora Lysen, Jan Lauwereyns, Leo Vroman, Frank Keizer en Han van der Vegt.

 

Parmentier

Diaspora and Memory. Figures of Displacement in Contemporary Literature, Arts and Politics

Experiences of migration and dwelling-in-displacement impinge upon the lives of an ever increasing number of people worldwide, with business class comfort butmore often with unrelenting violence. Since the early 1990s, the political and cultural realities ofglobal migration have ledto a growing interest in the different forms of diasporic existence and identities. The articles in this book do not focus on the external boundaries of diaspora - what is diasporic and what is not? - but on one of its most important internal boundaries, which is indicated bythe second term in the title of this book: memory. It is not by chance that the right to remember, the responsibility to recall, are central issues of the debates in diasporic communities and their relation to their cultural and political surroundings.
The relation of diaspora and memory contains important critical and maybe even subversive potentials.Memory can transcend the territorial logic of dispersal and return, and emerge as a competing source of diasporic identity. The articles in this volume explore how, shaped by the responsibilities of testimony as well as by the normalizing forces of amnesia and forgetting and political interests, memory is a performative, figurative process rather than a secure space of identity.

Diaspora and Memory

Mit Deutschland um die Welt. Eine Kulturgeschichte des Fremden in der Kolonialzeit

In what sorts of ways did the "dark enticing world" inspire German imagination during the Imperial era? To answer this question the contributors to this volume travel to the scenes of imperial knowledge, cross-cultural contact and colonialviolence and re-examine the motifs of foreignness pervading early 20th-century German culture. 52 essays highlight significant events of German colonial history (such as the founding of the German `Weltpost` or the construction of the Baghdad railway) and cultural production inspired by (and simultaneously constructing) foreignness e.g. Carl Hagenbeck`s exhibitions on foreign peoples (the so-called Völkerschauen) or the exotic interior design of the famous Palace Hotel in Wiesbaden.

Publications (selection)

Diaspora and Memory. Figures of Displacement in Contemporary Literature, Arts and Politics. Ed. with Marie-Aude Baronian and Yolande Jansen. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006.

Several entries in Mit Deutschland um die Welt. Eine Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte des Fremden. Eds. Alexander Honold, Klaus R. Scherpe. Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler, 2004.

„Tropenkoller: The Interdiscursive Poetics of a German Colonial Syndrome.“ Framing and Imagining Disease in Cultural History. Ed. George S.Rousseau. New York:Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, 303-320.

„Mynheer Peeperkorn’s Fever.“ Cultural History: Straddling Borders. John Neubauer zum 70. Geburtstag. Ed. Mieke Bal and Jan van Luxemburg [= Arcadia, Volume 38, Number 2, 2003], 257-264.

„Germanin: Pharmazeutische Signaturendes deutschen (Post)- Kolonialismus.“ Kolonialismusals Kultur. Literatur, Medien, Wissenschaft in der deutschen GründerzeitdesFremden. Ed. Alexander Honold and Oliver Simons. Tübingen: Francke, 2002, 167-196.