Vigilanzkulturen / Cultures of Vigilance

A strict hierarchy with a powerful person at the top: German theaters are still heavily based on the century-old figure of the Intendant or artistic director, a profession that took on some of its present character in the 1920s. This volumes examines the example of the Bavarian State Theater to ask how this role developed in the Weimar Republic and where early alternatives to the model of the "autocrat" can be found.

Since antiquity, doctors have always been required to be "vigilant" (i.e., extremely attentive), particularly when it comes to any symptoms exhibited and/or complained of by the patient. As outlined in the Hippocratic Oath since antiquity, a doctor’s primary mission is to ensure the patient’s well-being and recovery, irrespective of their social status. However, loyalty to the patient was explicitly subordinated whenever the patient performed an action deemed suspicious or even detrimental to society’s best interests. The goal of this book is, therefore, to delve deeper into the multivalent role and attitude of physicians and surgeons as "experts" in how to interpret symptoms, and how this, in turn, influenced their relationship with their patients, especially when the latter were considered to be "dangerous individuals". This analysis does not seek to further explore Foucault’s concept of the "disciplinary" nature of medicine, but rather uses it as a starting point for analyzing the complex and, so to speak, "ambiguous" nature of the doctor-patient relationship in the early modern period, one which oscillated between cooperation and conflict. To deepen these aspects, this analysis will consider the role and tasks of a figure often neglected by historiography: the galley doctor.

Theater censorship was legally abolished during the turbulent transition from the German Empire to the Weimar Republic in 1919, after which theater productions were accompanied by unusually frequent scandals. This study looks at examples of theater scandals in Munich, asking to what extent "unofficial censorship" continued in the form of disruptions to and the banning of productions, and what role the public sphere played in this.

In an age where science and technology hold sway and the humanities face a crisis, this book explores the evolving role of literature. It delves into how American self-help culture shapes contemporary ideals of success, mindfulness, and happiness, with a particular focus on its influence in science communication, notably in TED talks. Moreover, it underscores the enduring relevance of literature in the digital era by analyzing speculative novels that challenge established norms, including those propagated by TED. These novels include Richard Powers’ Generosity: An Enhancement, Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy and Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story. They question the Western preference for visual perception, which perpetuates a human-centric worldview. By focusing on literary synesthesia in the readings, this book emphasizes sensory experiences and human-nonhuman interactions. It adopts the concept of research as assemblage and uses a diverse range of theories and approaches, while it foregrounds critical posthumanism and new materialism. Ultimately, it advocates for a less anthropocentric approach to reading and presents literature as a "transdisciplinary life science" capable of fostering a "kinship of posthumanity."

The chapters in this volume ask how texts written in scholarly Latin and the vernacular provided instruction on staying attentive during devotions and prayer, and how they explained the necessity of attention and attentiveness, or warned of the dangers of diversion and distraction. It focuses on the practices and semantics of attention in the monastic context as well as on the field of private lay piety.

In the wealth of early modern portrayals of the devil as a fear-inducing monstrosity, narrative realizations that take a strangely different path stand out. This includes the staging of the diabolical enemy as a latent danger. This study examines the function of image-text combinations that sought to increase their impact in terms of the vigilant observation of the devil through their specific design.

Throughout history, many states have attempted to harness the attention of their populations for their own ends. This study argues that the Assyrian Empire in the year 672 BC is such a case.

In 672 BC, Esarhaddon, King of Assyria, imposed a succession covenant (adê) on his subjects, the inhabitants of the Assyrian Empire. This covenant required the empire’s population to monitor one another, and themselves, for signs of disloyalty to the monarch and his chosen successor, Ashurbanipal. This study examines the aims and outcomes, desired and undesired, of imposing this duty of vigilance across the Assyrian Empire.

To consider the presentation and implementation of this duty of vigilance, the study draws largely on evidence supplied by the covenant and other royally-commissioned texts. To examine the outcomes of the covenant’s enactment, meanwhile, it explores cuneiform sources, such as letters to the crown, private legal documents, and literary compositions, as well as the Aramaic Story of Ahiqar and the biblical Book of Deuteronomy.

By providing a sustained analysis of the real-world implications and outcomes of the covenant, this book sheds new light on a text that fundamentally altered the political makeup of the Assyrian Empire.

This book focuses on the connection between vigilance and the plague in France throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. For more than three centuries, between the middle of the 14^th century up until circa 1670, the prevalence of the plague in France was said to be endemic, before it then vanished from French territory. The Great Plague of Marseille (1720-1722, which also impacted the rest of Provence, the County of Venaissin and Languedoc) proved to be an exception. During that period, the fight against the plague was deemed a top-priority along the French coast, and health institutions, called bureaux de la santé, were developed. Contributions to this book primarily focus on health vigilance from the standpoint of how to prevent an epidemic and how to respond to a declared epidemic. Among the salient themes addressed are: communications between health and different state actors, prevailing religious and political norms, and the popular participation in the fight against the plague. The use of the concept of vigilance enables the mobilisation of often rather distant branches of history, namely institutional. social, religious history, the history of communication and the history of public health.

This book addresses the question of vigilance in the face of an epidemic at the beginning of the 18th century, based on the example of the fight against the plague in the French Mediterranean. Because of its trans-Mediterranean trade, this region was particularly exposed to the risk of plague so that it sought to protect itself with concrete measures such as quarantine.

Watchfulness shapes many Chicanxs’ and other People of Color’s everyday lives in San Diego. Experiencing racist discrimination can lead to becoming vigilant, which frames their subjectivity. Focusing particularly on Chicanxs, we show how they seek to intervene against structural inequalities and threats in their lives, such as by re-claiming space, consciousness raising, participating in protests, and healing practices. We argue that contestations surrounding belonging create particularly watchful selves and that this is a significant aspect of borderland lifeworlds more broadly.

The book advances the Anthropology of borders, coloniality, subjectivity, and race, as well as contributing to Chicano and Latino Studies, and Urban Studies. Pushing the boundaries of conventional approaches, this book is methodologically innovative by including team fieldwork, digital ethnography, and illustrative work by a local artist. It fills a gap in Security Studies by examining peer-to-peer vigilance beyond top-down surveillance and bottom-up "sousveillance," and expanding previous understandings of watchfulness as an ambivalent practice that can also express care and contribute to community building, as well as representing a "way of life."

This volume examines the linguistic dimension of vigilance in different contexts. The focus is on the social potentials, normative and regulative effects of languages as well as their use for marking dangers and orienting attention. This shows that language can be both an object and an instrument of vigilance and can itself become a medium of reflection of vigilance.

While God looks directly into people’s souls as inspector cordium, the relationship of observation between man and the devil appears as an immanent and indirect, lateral and potentially reciprocal one. The contributions in this volume describe how late medieval and early modern stories narratively modeled such constellations of attention, thereby negotiating mechanisms of social control together with forms of vigilant self-observation.

Tasso and Marino acted in strictly normative contexts, both in the poetic and religious worlds they lived in. However both authors developed evasive strategies (e.g. paratextual allegories) enabling them to circumvent censorship and to write about love and enchantment.