Alexandra Irimia
Western University
Host: Sarah Maaß
ALEKI - Arbeitsstelle für Kinder- und Jugendmedienforschung
Forschungsprojekt
The Administrative Grotesque: Affective Economies in Bureaucratic Fiction
Stories set in the bleak world of offices, cubicles, and institutional corridors have recently come back into fashion worldwide, on page and on screens. But what are the forces that fuel their rekindled popularity? Why do readers and audiences of different ages find them so captivating, given the monotony and the dullness often associated with bureaucracy? What do these stories have to say about the up-and-coming realities of office work?
The project is interested in a better understanding of the ways in which fictional representations and pop culture may depict – and also drive – social, technological, and political change. In order to do so, it explores the possibility of applying concepts related to “affective economy” to contemporary novels and films about bureaucracy.
Blending insights from cultural studies and social sciences into textual and visual analysis, the project goes beyond merely drawing connections across a transnational body of contemporary works that engage on an aesthetic level with “the administrative grotesque.” It also aims to encourage further critical explorations of these works, by situating them in the context of a broader tradition of fiction concerned with the production, circulation, and exchange of affects in the seemingly dispassionate world of administration.
Alexandra Irimia
Vita
Alexandra Irimia is currently completing a second PhD in Comparative Literature at Western University in Canada, writing about bureaucratic narratives in literary and cinematic fiction. She also co-edits a special issue on “Bureaucratic Cultures and their Aesthetics” for Administory: Journal for the History of Public Administration. Her first monograph, “Figures of Radical Absence: Blanks and Voids in Theory, Literature, and the Arts”, published in October 2023, is the result of her first doctoral project conducted at the University of Bucharest and at the Centre Figura in Montreal. Before joining the Erich Auerbach Institute, she has been a research fellow at the KWI in Essen. Interested in the comparative study of text-image relations, with a particular emphasis on negative regimes of figurability, her work has been published in edited volumes and journals including Discourse, The Comparatist, and Ekphrasis.
Forschungsschwerpunkt
- Comparative Literature
- Visual Studies
- Literary Theory
- French Literature
- Political Science
Publikationen (Auswahl)
Monograph
Articles and Book Chapters
“Bureaucratic Sorceries in The Third Policeman: Anthropological Perspectives on Magic and Officialdom,” in: Foster, J., Mills, E. (Eds.),The Parish Review: Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies 6.2 (2022), pp. 1-21.
“‘What Moves You?’ Georges Didi-Huberman’s Arts of Passage and Pittsburgh Stories of Migration,” in: Lien, S., Carville, J. (Eds.), Contact Zones: Photography, Migration, and Cultural Encounters in the United States, Leuven University Press 2021, pp. 205-230.
“Depicting Absence: Thematic and Stylistic Paradoxes of Representation in Visual and Literary Imagery,” in: Zocco, G. (Ed.), Volume 4 of the ICLA 2016 Proceedings - The Rhetoric of Topics and Forms, Berlin, De Gruyter 2021, pp. 533-544.
“Museums of the Void: The Exhibition Space as Empty Signifier,” in: Alonso Tak, A., Pazos-Lopez, A. (Eds.), Socializing Art Museums: Rethinking the Public’s Experience. Berlin, De Gruyter 2020, pp. 303-316.
“Matters of Time in László Krasznahorkai’s and Béla Tarr’s Satantango,” in: Ekphrasis: Images, Cinema, Theory, Media, 20.2 (2018), pp. 213-225.
“Paper-Cut: Figural Theatricality and Archival Practices in Geoffrey Farmer’s Sculptural Photo-Collages,” in: Marin, L., Băicoianu, A (Eds.), Usages de la figure, régimes de figuration, Bucharest University Press 2017, pp. 249-262.
Reviews
“Disformations, or How Affect Troubles Form,” in Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture, 44.2 (2022), pp. 272-277.
“Benjamin Lewis Robinson’s Bureaucratic Fanatics: Modern Literature and the Passions of Rationalization,” in: The Comparatist 45.1 (2021), pp. 389-39.
Science Communication
Research as Montage. Notes on a Georges Didi-Huberman Exhibition. On: KWI-BLOG, [https://blog.kulturwissenschaften.de/research-as-montage/], 02.10.2023
Running on Empty: Blanks and Voids in Academic Publishing. On: KWI-BLOG, [https://blog.kulturwissenschaften.de/running-on-empty/], 29.03.2023.
Auerbach Lecture
The Administrative Grotesque. Affective Economies in Contemporary Bureaucratic Fiction
Kontakt
Dr. Alexandra Irimia
Comparative Literature
Department of Languages and Cultures
Western University
1151 Richmond St., London, Ontario N6A 3K7
Canada
Erich Auerbach Institute for Advanced Studies
Aufenthalt: 01.11.2023-31.01.2024
E-Mail: i-koeln.de