Dating back to classical Greek history and meaning ‘self’ and ‘soil,’ the concept of ‘autochthony’ promises the basic security of being rooted in the soil as a primordial form of belonging and therefore has great popular appeal in strikingly different situations, whether on the political agendas of several European countries or in the violent genocides sweeping across parts of Africa in the 1990s. In practice, however, its referents are in constant shift and there is always the danger of being unmasked as ‘not really’ belonging, a danger that can be taken quite literally, as in Geert Wilders’s “Polenmeldpunt,” or in the Vlaams Belang’s electoral pledge “Wij ruimen op.”

Reading Group | The seminar provides an opportunity for PhD students and others who do research in Media and Performance Studies to share extensive lectures of theoretical texts that touch upon key concepts and methodologies of the field

Crash Course | Cultural analysis is dedicated to the analysis of the specificities of divergent objects of culture, of whatever medium, genre, or age; whether high or low culture; whether banal or rarefied. Those objects are considered in close dialogue with socio-cultural contexts as well as theoretical frames—without, however, ever reducing the object to an example merely illustrating the explanatory power of the selected context or theory. Objects problematize rather than illustrate