Giant, Whale and the Last Judgment:The Antwerp Festival Culture of the Early Modern Period as a Socio-Cultural Dispositif
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Riese, Walfisch und das Jüngste Gericht:Die Antwerpener Festkultur der Frühen Neuzeit als soziokulturelles Dispositiv
This paper focuses on selected objects of the early modern festive culture in Antwerp, that is on objects which served – according to the guiding idea of the following considerations – as specific agents but also intermediaries for religious, social, political and economic discourses. Due to their elaborate aesthetics, their semantic range and specific handling, they became – last but not least – clearly identifiable figures for an aesthetic reflection on urban history. This came to fruition primarily during performative acts und thus could serve as one of the main points of reference for the formation of an Antwerp collective identity.