Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) Hamburg; Daniel Fliege and Jenny Körber (Univ. Hamburg), Annika Nickenig (Univ. Göttingen) (Web)

Time: 30.09.-02.10.2024
Venue: Hamburg
Proposals by: 31.03.2024

The transmission of love requires a materialisation in the form of a written artefact. Following Niklas Luhmann, love can be understood as a code of communication requiring a medium that he defines as informed material, e.g. an inscribed object. One obvious example is the love letter that might be seen as a handwritten artefact through which a lover expresses his or her affection. Since a letter serves to bridge a physical distance or substitute for an absence, the material quality of the letter is of particular importance. In addition to letters, numerous other forms of materialisation and inscription are used to convey emotions: one might think of love locks, testaments, farewell letters, carvings in bark, dedications, autographs, funerary spaces, poetry albums, friendship books or forms of ostentatious affective expression as in tattoos as inscriptions on the human body.
The workshop will hence focus on written artefacts that are supposed to express love for another person. The organizers deliberately leave the concept of love open, as it encompasses diverse meanings in different cultures and epochs; instead, they focus on practices that are intended to communicate love by inscribing a material object. The organizers want to explore if written artefacts, through their various forms of inscribed materiality, are historically, culturally or gender-specifically bound to certain practices, and represent closeness to a loved person. Rather than deciding whether an emotion expressed in an artefact corresponds to a “real” emotion, they want to analyse to what extent the expression of love is linked to certain practices of material authentication: this raises the question of the originality of the written artefact, which is particularly revealing when compared in a global perspective.
The workshop is organized within the framework of the Cluster of Excellence “Understanding Written Artefacts”, based at the Univ. of Hamburg, and is linked in particular to the two research fields of “Inscribing Spaces” and “Creating Originals” (Web).
Please send an abstract and a short CV until 31/3/24 to Jenny.Koerber@uni-hamburg.de

Source: HSozuKult