Lecture
Tuesday, 31 May 2022, at 7 p.m.
Filodrammatica (Korzo 28/1, Rijeka)
Video of the lecture
On Tuesday, 31 May, 2022, cultural studies scholar and writer Aljoša Pužar will give a lecture entitled Winsome new world. Starting at 7 p.m., the lecture will be held at the large hall of Filodrammatica (Korzo 28/1, Rijeka).
Foto: Tanja Kanazir / Drugo more (Flickr galerija)
The lecture will tackle the phenomenon of cuteness, winsomeness, or “honeyedness”, as the aesthetical but also political and ethical category. Social processes of sweetening are an evermore neglected but important aspect of contemporary capitalism, politics, and social life in general.
Photo: Aljoša Pužar
From the aestheticization of helplessness to the mimicry of the infantilized power there is just a step. The lecture will offer a theoretical ground and will exemplify it with Korean, American, and Slovenian examples spanning from Donald Trump’s small hands to the lucrative chirping of K-pop idols.
The lecture will be in Croatian and English.
Aljoša Pužar (Ph.D. Rijeka, Ph.D. Cardiff) is a cultural studies scholar and writer born in Rijeka. From 2007 to 2016 he studied and worked in South Korea as Assistant Professor of Urban Anthropology, Cultural Geography and Gender Studies at the Graduate School of International Area Studies, Yonsei University and Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul. From 2001-2004 he was an adjunct professor at the University of Trieste (Italy). He is the co-author of the first full BA and MA program in cultural studies in Croatia (University of Rijeka) where he lectured until 2007. He has published six books and other publications regarding minority cultures, border studies, cross-cultural literary history, transitional cultural policy, comparative gender studies, feminist ethnographies, youth studies, Korean studies, popular culture, and the theoretical inquiry into and conceptual modeling of liminal phenomena. Currently lives in Ljubljana and works at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, and Berlin University of Arts (UDK).
