Frans Willem Korten is Senior Lecturer at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society in the Netherlands, where his teaching and research explore the intersections of reading, rhetoric, literature, politics, law and theatricality. He writes, “The pivotal points of connection between these forms of research are: the Dutch Republic as a proto-capitalist society; Spinoza and his distinction between power and the potential, on the basis of which he was reread in radical Italian political theories from the seventies and eighties, and by Gilles Deleuze and Rosi Braidotti; the issue of theatricality and dramatization in relation to the political and law; the relations between literature, art, sovereignty and justice; the conceptualization of history in relation to politics. My interest in the relation between law, justice and art brought me to have another view on cultural interactions and urban imaginations. These two might well be the points of interest in the coming years.” On the relation between literature, art, and justice, Korsten published Art as an Interface of Law and Justice: Affirmation, Disturbance, Disruption in February of this year with Hart Publishers.
PAPER: “Babylonian Arrogance in Vondel’s Mars Tamed: A Baroque Allegory Performing Contra-Diction”
OBJECT: Joost van den Vondel, De Getemde Mars: Aen onze vredevaders vaders des vaderlants de Heeren Burgemeesters van Amstercam (1648). [From the John Hay Library’s Starred Books Collection, Call No. PT5722 .G4]
An English translation of Vondel’s text has been generously provided by Prof. Korsten.