ENTFÄLLT: GCSC Anniversary Lecture Series: Stefan Iversen: "The culture of inappropriateness: Value, affect, and narrative in contemporary rhetorical discourses"

ENTFÄLLT!

The GCSC Keynote Lecture Series is open to anyone interested in attending. To provide relevant topics for the diverse set of research interests pursued within the GCSC, the lectures in this series are positioned for an interdisciplinary spectrum of listeners and centred on current concepts, questions and theories within the study of culture. The lectures are oriented according to the research areas of the GCSC and deliver theoretical and methodological impulses.

Decorum, a key concept in rhetorical theory and practice, designates perhaps the most important lesson to any speaker: say what is appropriate in the situation. Appropriateness, however, only becomes visible when it is not adhered to. Decorum and with it the rules governing deliberative culture emerges through indecorum. This talk springs from the observation that the meanings of the decorous and the indecorous seem to be undergoing radical changes, changes that go beyond what Boltanski and others have investigated under the heading of “sociology of dispute”. Across discourse realms such as political rhetoric, art, literature, and branding/marketing, debates about as well as practices of the indecorous have taken on new forms and functions. By combining insights from postclassical narratology (Phelan, Altes, Nünning), rhetorical criticism (Jasinski), affect studies (Ahmed) and sociology (Boltanski, Latour), the aim of the talk is to characterize cultural artefacts marked by this obsession with the inappropriate in order to better understand our current struggles with understanding each other.