0000000000056276
AUTHOR
Susanne C. Ylönen
Sublime and grotesque:exploring the liminal positioning of clowns between oppositional aesthetic categories
The horror clown is a potential rooted in the liminalities that are an integral part of the clown figure per se. Drawing on anthropological work and the study of popular culture, this paper argues that clowns can be placed between different dualistic frames such as the sacred and the profane, the sublime and the grotesque, and fear and disgust. This positioning and the ways in which clowns operate between these categories are transmitted aesthetically. In this paper the dualistic aesthetics and violent potential of clowns is examined through three different clown examples: the ritual clown, the circus clown and the horror clown. Field observations made by Keisalo of the Chapayeka rituals cl…
Conclusions and Suggestions for Improving European Education Policies
In the concluding chapter, we draw together the main arguments and results of the research, highlighting the differences and similarities between the education policy documents produced by the European Union and the Council of Europe. We also provide suggestions for improving future education policies to better encompass the concerns about the lack of dialogue in a diversified but also polarized Europe. Education policy documents dealing with intercultural dialogue act as important guidelines for tackling racism, chauvinism, xenophobia, homophobia, and other forms of prejudice in Europe. As policies function as ‘actants’ that create webs of meanings and action, it is crucial that policy doc…
Analysing Intercultural Dialogue Through Conceptual Densities
In this chapter, we exemplify our methodological approach to analysing ‘densities’ of interrelated concepts in European education policy documents. We scrutinize instances where many of the core concepts of intercultural dialogue appear in the documents at the same time. Four core educational themes and four longer excerpts from the selected policy documents are examined in more detail. The chosen documents deal especially with multilingualism, migration, history teaching, and lifelong learning. The analysis of the conceptual densities in the chosen excerpts indicates how the meanings of intercultural dialogue are constructed through the conceptual frameworks and co-occurrences of their cor…
‘Childish’ beyond Age
This chapter explores the concept of ‘aesthetic sublation’ – a performative mode of meaning making that seeks to degrade its object (; ). Here, the phenomenon of aesthetic sublation is discussed as a form of resistance. Moreover, it is related to intergenerational negotiations through cases in which the labels of ‘childish’ and ‘horrific’ or ‘nasty’ converge. The chapter offers a review of how resistance is conceptualized in, for example, childhood studies, aesthetics and research on popular culture and it asks what can be gained by reconceptualising these instances as aesthetic sublation. peerReviewed
A Sociocultural Approach to Children’s Visual Creations
AbstractThis chapter locates the book within the research on children’s art. It explores interpretations of children’s visual creations throughout the twentieth century and situates the approach of the book within the research landscape. The authors take developmental psychological, educational, and aesthetic approaches to form a sociocultural view of children’s art, challenging many of the previous research assumptions. Through adopting the paradigm of the sociocultural approach, the authors embrace its view of children as competent cultural actors and active participants in cultural production. Thus, the discussion focuses on meaning-making: the authors analyze visual artifacts made by st…
Sublime and grotesque : exploring the liminal positioning of clowns between oppositional aesthetic categories
The horror clown is a potential rooted in the liminalities that are an integral part of the clown figure per se. Drawing on anthropological work and the study of popular culture, this paper argues that clowns can be placed between different dualistic frames such as the sacred and the profane, the sublime and the grotesque, and fear and disgust. This positioning and the ways in which clowns operate between these categories are transmitted aesthetically. In this paper the dualistic aesthetics and violent potential of clowns is examined through three different clown examples: the ritual clown, the circus clown and the horror clown. Field observations made by Keisalo of the Chapayeka rituals cl…
Schlock horror and pillow punches
As an introduction to this special themed journal issue on violent clowns, this paper provides an overview of the 14 contributions that examine the comic appeal of violence in culture. It also ties...
Intercultural Dialogue in the European Education Policies : A Conceptual Approach
This open access book analyses intercultural dialogue as a concept, policy and ideal in European education policy documentation. The core European transnational organizatons – the Council of Europe and the European Union – have actively promoted policies to engender inclusive societies and respond to challenges that diversification may entail. This book, in turn, offers suggestions for improving education policies in super-diversified Europe and beyond, where there is an increasing need for cultural understanding and constructive dialogue. The authors utilize concept analysis to reveal how these organizations seek to deal with dialogue between cultures, as well as weight given to cultural d…
Multimodality: Art as a Meaning-Making Process
AbstractThe authors of the book see multimodality as intrinsic to human communication and texts, and as consisting of a multiplicity of signs. This chapter discusses how this applies in educational settings, to examine how different modes of communication are intertwined and utilized in learning, including children’s creative learning practices. In this, the authors use the semiotic concepts that operate in all communicative contexts: Field, tenor, and mode. Through them, the authors view the CLLP as a space that enables social activities, exploration of cultural, social, and societal contents and topics, and the development of social relationships. All this occurs through various communica…
Introduction: What Is Intercultural Dialogue and Why It Is Needed in Europe Today?
The authors introduce the concept of intercultural dialogue and how it has been utilized as a policy by the Council of Europe and the European Union since the early 2000s. First, we explore intercultural dialogue’s relation to and differences from other concepts commonly used to describe different stances in the governance of diversity, ranging from assimilation to integration and from multiculturalism to interculturalism. These different conceptual stances are contextualized by exploring the recent transformations in Europe and their impact on the political aims, goals, and discourses of the Council of Europe and the European Union. Second, we review the previous research on the concept of…
Definitions and Contexts of Intercultural Dialogue in European Policy Documents
In this chapter, we analyse how the concept of intercultural dialogue is both explicitly and implicitly used in European education policy documents. First, we explore how the concept is explicitly dealt with in the documents and how its meanings are produced in relation to other concepts and terms, such as culture, cultural heritage, identity, inclusion, empathy, tolerance, multiculturalism, citizenship, participation, and social responsibility. We pay special attention to the values and ideals conveyed by the education policy documents in general and these concepts in particular. Second, we discuss the thematic overlap of these concepts and how different concepts, terms, and conceptual exp…
Cultural Literacy During COVID-19
AbstractAs implementation of the CLLP was challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic, the DIALLS project included in the program an additional lesson in which children reflected on its impact on their social environment. In this chapter, the authors analyze how the children’s artifacts express their understanding of the COVID-19 situation, including themes such as care and protection. The chapter focuses on how the students address empathy, tolerance, and inclusiveness under pandemic conditions. It starts by contextualizing the artifacts with international COVID-19 imagery and nationally similar or differing COVID-19 circumstances. Then, it analyzes the artifacts and their textual narratives.
Conclusions: Cultural Literacy in Action
AbstractIn this chapter, the authors emphasize how even very young children can deal with complex and abstract ideas and emotions through creative practices and how the differences between people are not an issue for children. The analysis indicates that children have a multifaceted capacity for empathy. The authors stress that image-making is an important mode of communication through which children and young people shape their understanding of the world. This is a constructive and dialogic process of thinking in action. It allows children and young people to develop their imagination, emotional responses, personality, and position in the community, in relationship with others, and with th…
Producing Disgust : Profanation, the Carnivalesque, and Queering as Keys for Understanding the Unsettling Pop Cultural Performance of Die Antwoord
This chapter looks at the terminology that we have for discussing deliberate disgust production. Terms such as profanation, the carnivalesque and queering describe processes that attack, highlight, and possibly question a society’s norms and power relations by portraying something that might otherwise be sacred or conventional in an inappropriate, parodic or weird manner. Since norm violations may induce disgust, these terms may be considered as engaging with disgust. Yet the aims and outcomes of the engagement that they describe seem different. Via a case study of the irritating, disgust inducing performances of the South African rap rave trio Die Antwoord, I show how these terms provide d…
Introduction: Cultural Literacy and Creativity
AbstractThe introductory chapter explains the core concepts of the book: Cultural literacy and creativity. Cultural literacy is defined as a social practice that is inherently dialogic and based on learning and gaining knowledge through emphatic, tolerant, and inclusive interaction. Creativity is seen as stimulating cultural literacy learning through openness and curiosity to test and develop something new or imaginative. The chapter introduces the Cultural Literacy Learning Programme (CLLP) and the research data: 1906 works created by 5–15-year-old children and young people who participated in the program in 2019 and 2020 in Cyprus, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, Spain, Portugal, and the UK. …
Tolerance, Empathy, and Inclusion
AbstractIn this chapter, the authors analyze the artifacts in which the students explore the key attitudes of cultural literacy within the CLLP: Tolerance, empathy, and inclusion. The chapter introduces each attitude with critical discussion of its meanings, connections, and relations to other key concepts of cultural literacy, such as diversity, equality, and democracy. The authors explore how the program addresses these attitudes and the cultural texts it includes. The analysis of the artifacts reveals the variety of ways in which children give meanings to tolerance, empathy, and inclusion, such as helping others. In this meaning-making process, the students draw from their own experience…
Affective Rhetoric and ‘Sticky Concepts’ in European Education Policy Documents
Concepts carry not only meanings but also affective associations and cultural connotations. In this chapter, we elaborate on the affective dimensions of European education policy documents. Many of the conceptual densities discussed in this book form affective peaks or rhetorical pinnacles that transmit the idea of intercultural dialogue—and the values attached to it—more effectively than the definitions of the concept alone are able to do. Drawing on theories of affect, we trace the affective transmission of ideals and values in the education policy documents and examine what kind of affects and affective connotations ‘stick’ to the concept of intercultural dialogue. We suggest affective r…
Data and Methods: A Conceptual Approach to Intercultural Dialogue
In this chapter, we discuss the constructivist perspective on concepts and explain how we utilize this in our analysis of concepts used by the Council of Europe and the European Union in their education policy documents. In this perspective, political language and administrative documents not only describe the reality of administrated issues but also participate in their construction and meaning-making. The authors emphasize the performativity of language and discuss its significance for political rhetoric. Besides the theoretical and methodological frameworks, we describe the data and elaborate on the genre of education policy documents. We also provide an overview of the development, cont…
Kauhu ja lukijuus lastenkirjallisuudessa
Erilaiset pelot ovat osa lapsen normaalia kehitystä, mutta lapsuusajan pelkoihin suhtaudutaan usein vähättelevästi. Lasten- ja nuorten kauhukirjallisuuden kautta työstetään kuitenkin sekä kehityksellisiä pelkoja että eettisiä kysymyksiä. Esimerkiksi näin keskustelevat Susanne Ylönen ja Päivi Heikkilä-Halttunen dialogimuotoon kirjoitetussa katsauksessaan kauhusta ja lukijuudesta lastenkirjallisuudessa. Kauhu pitää varpaillaan niin lapsilukijat kuin varsinkin heidän lukukokemuksiaan vartioivat aikuiset. Ylönen ja Heikkilä-Halttunen marssittavat keskustelussaan lukijan eteen kummituksia, mörköjä, vampyyreita ja muita hämärän, pimeän ja pelon hahmoja.
Arvot ja affektit kulttuurienvälisen vuoropuhelun kehystäjinä eurooppalaisissa koulutuspoliittisissa asiakirjoissa
2000-luvulla kulttuurienvälinen vuoropuhelu on syrjäyttänyt monikulttuurisuuden käsitteen eurooppalaisissa moninaisuuspolitiikkaa käsittelevissä asiakirjoissa. Artikkelimme tarkastelee kulttuurien välisen vuoropuhelun ilmenemistä eurooppalaisissa koulutuspoliittisissa asiakirjoissa keskittyen erityisesti arvoihin ja niiden välittämiin tunteisiin ja tuntemuksiin. nonPeerReviewed
Belonging and Home
AbstractIn this chapter, the authors discuss artifacts in which children explore belonging and home. The chapter defines the sense of belonging as a core feature of humanity and living together. The feeling of having a home and being at home is both an intimate and a socially shared aspect of belonging. The children expressed belonging to a wide range of spaces in their artifacts. This spatial span extends from macro to micro scale and indicates belonging based on spaces, social relations, and materiality. Even very young children can see and depict their belonging as multiple and including spatial and social dimensions. The analyzed artifacts reveal both concrete and symbolic approaches to…