Before the Aftermath: Emotion, Affect and Time

CLUE + & the The Amsterdam Centre for Cross-Disciplinary Emotion and Sensory Studies (Access)

invite you to a festive book launch and mini-colloquium:

Tuesday 23 October 2018, 16.00–17.00, drinks afterwards

VU University, Kerkzaal

Frans Willem Korsten and Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen (University of Leiden) will present their recent monographs A Dutch Republican Baroque: Theatricality, Dramatization, Moment and Event (Amsterdam University Press, 2017) and A Literary History of Reconciliation: Power, Remorse and the Limits of Forgiveness (Bloomsbury, 2018).

In their presentations, van Dijkhuizen and Korsten will focus on the relations between emotion, affect and time – crucial concepts in current debates in emotion history on which they will offer complementary perspectives.

Korsten’s book argues that the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic was fascinated by the idea that the existing world emerged from a moment at which for a split second, two or more possible realities are equally real – the course of history as yet undetermined  – and after which only a singular one is actualized. Korsten examines this fascination by drawing on a distinction between emotion and affect.

Van Dijkhuizen’s book examines literary representations of interpersonal reconciliation from the early modern era to the present era. It shows how literary writers imagine reconciliation as forever deferred, while presenting feelings of remorse over wrongdoing as never-ending. In the aftermath of grievous wrongdoing – with history having run its course – reconciliation seems to remain beyond reach.

The festive event will be illuminated by a “remorse/reconciliation poetry reading” & by a mini scent event.

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