September 14th 2012 Henriette Thune defends her thesis about Mikhail Bakhtin’s aesthetic object at the University of Stavanger, Norway. Opponents and members of the dissertation committee are Professor Galin Tihanov, University of London and Associate Professor Lilian Munk Rösing, University of Copenhagen. The thesis’ full title is
Mikhail Bakhtin’s Aesthetic Object
Adaptation Analysis of Sara Stridsberg’s Novel The Dream Faculty and its Theatre Adaptation Valerie Jean Solanas will be President of America
Thune’s dissertation presents and discusses Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the aesthetic object, understood as the meaning produced between an author/artist and a reader/spectator in contemplation of a given work of art. From this Thune develops a method for analysing how aesthetic form is linked to ideological meaning production. The method is tested by way of an analysis of what takes place when Sara Stridsberg’s novel The Dream Faculty (2006) is adapted to the theatre performance Valerie Jean Solanas will be President of America (2009). Through her analysis, Thune also develops and tests out a method for analysing how some representations of perceptions in art evoke bodily-emotional more than intellectual responses, and others not.
Thune’s thesis may contribute to aesthetic research, including ideologically interested approaches such as for instance gender studies, by proposing tools for more systematically and verifiably investigating and understanding how meaning is produced in different ways through different media, in meetings with different recipients.
Before the thesis defence Thune will give a trial lecture on the by the dissertation committee announced theme: ‘A Bakhtinian Analysis of August Strindberg’s En dåres försvarstal (The Defence of a Fool) as an Aesthetic Object’
