On_Culture’s 12th Issue: Ambiguity: Conditions, Potentials, Limits

On_Culture: The Open Journal for the Study of Culture, the online academic journal by the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC), just announced the publication of its 12th issue entitled “Ambiguity: Conditions, Potentials, Limits.” Issue 12 seeks to explores perspectives on ambiguity as a cultural phenomenon in its historical situatedness and political dimensions.

What unites all authors is an attitude of ambiguity tolerance and/or affinity for ambiguity, in that they understand ambiguity as an intellectual challenge. Noticing ambiguous phenomena in culture, politics and everyday life is thus not the end, but rather the starting point of their interpretive discussion and engagement with a research object. The issue, therefore, aims to engage in an interdisciplinary dialogue and intends to look closely at the contexts in which ambiguity occurs from a variety of academic backgrounds.

Contributions explore ambiguity by means of graphic narrative studies/contemporary modern fiction studies, comparative literature studies, feminist social theory, and anthropology. The issue’s featured essay explores how the notion of ambiguity fulfills a double function in queer theory, underlining ambiguity’s livability and explaining its political potential.