Gaston Franssen
Gaston Franssen is full professor of Dutch Literary Studies and Intermediality at the University of Amsterdam. His research interests include authorship, celebrity, narrativity, intermediality, and health humanities.
In 2008, he defended his PhD thesis gerrit kouwenaar en de politiek van het lezen (Nijmegen: Vantilt). In 2016 and 2017, he edited the academic volumes Celebrity Authorship and Afterlives in English and American Literature (Palgrave Macmillan) and Idolizing Authorship: Literary Celebrity and the Construction of Identity, 1800 to Present (Amsterdam University Press). He has published on literary celebrity (Journal of Dutch Literature), on literary fan culture (Spiegel der Letteren), on celebrity health narratives (European Journal of Cultural Studies), on celebrity politics (Celebrity Studies), and on narratives of health and illness (Nederlandse letterkunde, Frontiers in Psychiatry, Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology).
Franssen is editor of Nederlandse letterkunde, section editor of Celebrity Studies, and affiliated researcher at the Verhalenbank Psychiatrie.
Phone: 0031 20 525 2569
Address: Spuistraat 134
1012 VB Amsterdam
THE NETHERLANDS
In 2008, he defended his PhD thesis gerrit kouwenaar en de politiek van het lezen (Nijmegen: Vantilt). In 2016 and 2017, he edited the academic volumes Celebrity Authorship and Afterlives in English and American Literature (Palgrave Macmillan) and Idolizing Authorship: Literary Celebrity and the Construction of Identity, 1800 to Present (Amsterdam University Press). He has published on literary celebrity (Journal of Dutch Literature), on literary fan culture (Spiegel der Letteren), on celebrity health narratives (European Journal of Cultural Studies), on celebrity politics (Celebrity Studies), and on narratives of health and illness (Nederlandse letterkunde, Frontiers in Psychiatry, Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology).
Franssen is editor of Nederlandse letterkunde, section editor of Celebrity Studies, and affiliated researcher at the Verhalenbank Psychiatrie.
Phone: 0031 20 525 2569
Address: Spuistraat 134
1012 VB Amsterdam
THE NETHERLANDS
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Books by Gaston Franssen
ToC:
Idolizing Authorship: An Introduction
Gaston Franssen & Rick Honings
Part 1: The Rise of Literary Celebrity
1 The Olympian Writer: Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832)
Silke Hoffmann
2 The Dutch Byron: Nicolaas Beets (1814-1903)
Rick Honings
3 Enemy of Society, Hero of the Nation: Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
Suze van der Poll
Part 2: The Golden Age of Literary Celebrity
4 From Bard to Brand: Holger Drachmann (1846-1908)
Henk van der Liet
5 In the Future, when I Will Be More of a Celebrity: Louis Couperus (1863-1923)
Mary Kemperink
6 À la Recherche de la Gloire: Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
Sjef Houppermans
7 The National Skeleton: Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
Peter Liebregts
Part 3: The Popularization of Literary Celebrity
8 Playing God: Harry Mulisch (1927-2010)
Sander Bax
9 Literary Stardom and Heavenly Gifts: Haruki Murakami (1949)
Gaston Franssen
10 Sincere e-Self-Fashioning: Dmitrii Vodennikov (1968)
Ellen Rutten
11 The Fame and Blame of an Intellectual Goth: Sofi Oksanen (1977)
Sanna Lehtonen
Introduction: Starring the Author
Franssen, Gaston & Honings, Rick
A Friendly Return of the Author: John Keats (1795–1821)
Eisner, Eric
Hero of Horror: Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
Leeuwen, Evert Jan
Victorian Iconoclast: Eliza Cook (1812–1889)
Easley, Alexis
The Daguerreotype Devil: Herman Melville (1819–1891)
Hayes, Kevin J.
The Art of Creating a Great Sensation: Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
Mayer, Sandra
Production and Reproduction: Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
Rosenquist, Rod
The Silence of the Celebrity: J.D. Salinger (1919–2010)
Franssen, Gaston
Public and Private Posture: Zadie Smith (1975)
Heynders, Odile
Inhoudsopgave Spiegel der Letteren 56, nr. 3 (2014): Gaston Franssen & Rick Honings, Literaire fancultuur in Nederland / Lotte Jensen, Lange leve de dode dichter! Schrijversherdenkingen en literaire fancultuur rond 1800 / Rick Honings, ‘Mijn heer, ben jy die groote poëet!’ Literair toerisme in de vroege negentiende eeuw / Judith Jongsma & Jan Rock, Verheerlijken, kraken en verguizen. Burgerlijke en antiburgerlijke fans rond het Amsterdamse standbeeld van Vondel tussen 1867 en 2010 / Edwin Praat, Intellectueelders en bloembolteelders. Gerard Reve en de dichotomische representatie van het culturele veld / Gaston Franssen & Zosha de Rond, De culturele economie van literaire fantijdschriften. Fanzines en distinctielogica’s in de moderne Nederlandse literatuur / Thomas Vaessens & Lara Delissen, #DasMag. Het literaire tijdschrift als community
Media appearances by Gaston Franssen
Papers by Gaston Franssen
Literary memoirs of illness are often invoked as valuable sources of medical and psychological insight. The epistemological value of such 'autopathographies', however, remains a matter of dispute in extant research: do these text adequately convey patients' experiences, or are they literary, artificial constructs , whose value and meaning remain indeterminate? In this contribution, we focus on one such memoir, Heden ik (My Lot Today, 1993) by Renate Dorrestein, describing her struggle with myalgic encephalomyelitis/ chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). As ME/CFS is generally considered to be an enigmatic illness, an analysis of Heden ik offers the opportunity to map the presupposed values as well as the limitations of autopathography. First, we map the academic debate on the epistemological value of illness narratives. Second, we chart the contours of the discussion on ME/CFS in the early 1990s, whilst demonstrating how the reception of Heden ik highlights the book's perceived values and limitations. Finally, we offer a 'double reading' of Heden ik: a medical reading and an autopathographical reading (acknowledging its literary qualities). In our conclusion, we suggest that the inherent indetermi-nacy of autopathographical writing might be, in fact, an important quality contributing to a deeper understanding of a chronic, medically unexplained illness such as ME/CFS. Reading autopathographies as literary narratives, we argue, can reveal the rhetorical and cultural dimensions as well as the ambiguities and uncertainties of illness experiences.
ToC:
Idolizing Authorship: An Introduction
Gaston Franssen & Rick Honings
Part 1: The Rise of Literary Celebrity
1 The Olympian Writer: Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832)
Silke Hoffmann
2 The Dutch Byron: Nicolaas Beets (1814-1903)
Rick Honings
3 Enemy of Society, Hero of the Nation: Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
Suze van der Poll
Part 2: The Golden Age of Literary Celebrity
4 From Bard to Brand: Holger Drachmann (1846-1908)
Henk van der Liet
5 In the Future, when I Will Be More of a Celebrity: Louis Couperus (1863-1923)
Mary Kemperink
6 À la Recherche de la Gloire: Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
Sjef Houppermans
7 The National Skeleton: Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
Peter Liebregts
Part 3: The Popularization of Literary Celebrity
8 Playing God: Harry Mulisch (1927-2010)
Sander Bax
9 Literary Stardom and Heavenly Gifts: Haruki Murakami (1949)
Gaston Franssen
10 Sincere e-Self-Fashioning: Dmitrii Vodennikov (1968)
Ellen Rutten
11 The Fame and Blame of an Intellectual Goth: Sofi Oksanen (1977)
Sanna Lehtonen
Introduction: Starring the Author
Franssen, Gaston & Honings, Rick
A Friendly Return of the Author: John Keats (1795–1821)
Eisner, Eric
Hero of Horror: Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
Leeuwen, Evert Jan
Victorian Iconoclast: Eliza Cook (1812–1889)
Easley, Alexis
The Daguerreotype Devil: Herman Melville (1819–1891)
Hayes, Kevin J.
The Art of Creating a Great Sensation: Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
Mayer, Sandra
Production and Reproduction: Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
Rosenquist, Rod
The Silence of the Celebrity: J.D. Salinger (1919–2010)
Franssen, Gaston
Public and Private Posture: Zadie Smith (1975)
Heynders, Odile
Inhoudsopgave Spiegel der Letteren 56, nr. 3 (2014): Gaston Franssen & Rick Honings, Literaire fancultuur in Nederland / Lotte Jensen, Lange leve de dode dichter! Schrijversherdenkingen en literaire fancultuur rond 1800 / Rick Honings, ‘Mijn heer, ben jy die groote poëet!’ Literair toerisme in de vroege negentiende eeuw / Judith Jongsma & Jan Rock, Verheerlijken, kraken en verguizen. Burgerlijke en antiburgerlijke fans rond het Amsterdamse standbeeld van Vondel tussen 1867 en 2010 / Edwin Praat, Intellectueelders en bloembolteelders. Gerard Reve en de dichotomische representatie van het culturele veld / Gaston Franssen & Zosha de Rond, De culturele economie van literaire fantijdschriften. Fanzines en distinctielogica’s in de moderne Nederlandse literatuur / Thomas Vaessens & Lara Delissen, #DasMag. Het literaire tijdschrift als community
Literary memoirs of illness are often invoked as valuable sources of medical and psychological insight. The epistemological value of such 'autopathographies', however, remains a matter of dispute in extant research: do these text adequately convey patients' experiences, or are they literary, artificial constructs , whose value and meaning remain indeterminate? In this contribution, we focus on one such memoir, Heden ik (My Lot Today, 1993) by Renate Dorrestein, describing her struggle with myalgic encephalomyelitis/ chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). As ME/CFS is generally considered to be an enigmatic illness, an analysis of Heden ik offers the opportunity to map the presupposed values as well as the limitations of autopathography. First, we map the academic debate on the epistemological value of illness narratives. Second, we chart the contours of the discussion on ME/CFS in the early 1990s, whilst demonstrating how the reception of Heden ik highlights the book's perceived values and limitations. Finally, we offer a 'double reading' of Heden ik: a medical reading and an autopathographical reading (acknowledging its literary qualities). In our conclusion, we suggest that the inherent indetermi-nacy of autopathographical writing might be, in fact, an important quality contributing to a deeper understanding of a chronic, medically unexplained illness such as ME/CFS. Reading autopathographies as literary narratives, we argue, can reveal the rhetorical and cultural dimensions as well as the ambiguities and uncertainties of illness experiences.
[Draft version: please refer to the published version of this chapter in Gaston Franssen & Rick Honings (eds.), Idolizing Authorship: Literary Celebrity and the Construction of Identity, 1800 to the Present (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2017, pp. 217-237).]
http://celebritystudiesconference.com/ | #celebritystudies2020 | celebritystudies@gmail.com
Sponsored by the Culture-Media-Text Research Centre , Faculty of Arts, University of Winchester.
Routledge and the University of Winchester are delighted to announce Transformations in Celebrity Culture: The Fifth International Celebrity Studies Journal conference.
Keynote speakers (confirmed) :
● Dr. Nandana Bose, FLAME University, India.
● Dr. Anthea Taylor, University of Sydney, Australia.
● Prof. Brenda R. Weber, Indiana University Bloomington, USA.
● Dr. Milly Williamson, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.
Gaston Franssen, Assistant Professor Literature & Diversity, University of Amsterdam
gaston.franssen@uva.nl
Abstract: Over the last decades, there has been an ongoing, productive dialogue between the humanities on the one hand and psychosomatic and psychiatric research on the other hand. Using insights from the work of philosophers and scholars with a background in the humanities, several researchers have argued that psychosomatics and psychiatry should take the subjective and narrative aspects of psychopathology into account. Here one can think of Hermans & Van Kempens’ publications on the dialogical self (1993), White’s narrative therapy (2007), or McAdams’ (1995), Habermas & Bluck’s (2000) publications on narrative identity and life story schemas. From the perspective of these researchers, a ‘healthy’ self-understanding should be viewed as a flexible, coherent, intersubjective narrative of and on the self, with firm roots in daily reality.
This implementation of insights stemming from the humanities into self-experience research, however, tends to be selective. Taking a (often undertheorized) notion of ‘healthy’ self-understanding as a starting point, it acknowledges narrative aspects such as coherence, an empirical understanding of mimesis, and intersubjective knowledge, but it excludes more problematic, yet inevitable, narrative aspects such as figural undecidability, fragmentation, and fictionality. Yet the latter are precisely the aspects that are of particular interest to psychiatric research and therapy. Patients suffering from mental disorders struggle with narrative disruptions of self-experience and self-understanding: individuals with depression or schizophrenia, for example, develop self-narratives that are considered to be inflexible, fragmented, fictional, or incoherent (Komiyama 1989; Lysaker & Lysaker 2002; Thornton 2003). Though the self-understanding of such individuals maybe problematic, it is a self-understanding that needs to be properly understood.
The dialogue between the humanities and research into psychopathology, therefore, needs to be continued and intensified. The philosophy of Paul Ricoeur offers a promising perspective to do so. Ricoeur (1984-1988) outlines a view of the relation between self and narrative that allows for a rethinking of disorders of the self. In this presentation, I explore how Ricoeur’s notions of narrative self-understanding, the ‘healthy circle’, configuration and refiguration contribute to a renewed understanding of psychosomatic and psychiatric issues. Reconceptualizing disorders of the self through Ricoeur’s philosophy, I argue, may not only offer productive insights in the understanding of these disorders, but also contribute to effective therapeutic strategies. Ricoeur’s thinking, therefore, points to a future of the humanities in a field that may be easily overlooked – that of actual health care.
Keywords: Narrative, Self-Experience, Mimesis, Fiction, Disorders of the Self, Psychosomatics and Psychiatry.
References:
Habermas, T., & Bluck, S., Getting a Life: The Emergence of the Life Story in Adolescence. Psychological Bulletin, 2000, 748-69.
Hermans, H.J.M, & Van Kempen, H.J.G., The Dialogical Self: Meaning as Movement, San Diego: Academic Press, 1993.
Lysaker, P.H., & Lysaker H.T., Narrative Structure in Psychosis: Schizophrenia and Disruptions in the Dialogical Self, Theory and Psychology, 2002, 207-20.
Komiyama M., Fictionality of Schizophrenic Delusions, Japan Journal of Psychiatry Neurology, 1989, 13-8.
Lysaker, P.H., & Lysaker H.T., Narrative Structure in Psychosis: Schizophrenia and Disruptions in the Dialogical Self, Theory and Psychology, 2002, 207-20.
McAdams, D., What Do We Know When We Know a Person? Journal of Personality, 1995, 365-96.
Ricoeur, P., Time and Narrative [3 vols.], Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984, 1985, 1988.
Thornton, T., Psychopathology and Two Kinds of Narrative Account of the Self, PPP, 2003, 361-67.
White, M. Maps of Narrative Practice. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007.
A first observation to be made here is that autobiographical hoaxes demonstrate the incompatibility of the autobiographical pact (Lejeune) and the willing suspension of disbelief (Coleridge). Apparently, such texts are read either in the key of fiction, or in that of non-fiction: alternating between these two is no option. A second observation is that the readers’ affective investments are founded on a performative act (Searle): the author ‘promises’ to tell the truth. And a third observation relates to the emotional efficacy of the texts, for the readers’ willingness to emotionally invest is often stimulated by fictional techniques.
To explore the ties between these observations, I combine insights from literary theory, trauma studies, and speech act theory. By analyzing several case studies, I argue that the scandal of the autobiographical hoax points to a typically modern fear – the fear that the world as we perceive it is, in fact, a fiction.
Maar een auteur is méér dan abstracte opvattingen alleen. Hij is ook een economisch en sociaal bepaald individu – en die bepaaldheid wil wel eens botsen met een modernistisch georiënteerde poëtica. Een auteur is immers evengoed onderhevig aan de wetten van de markt en de media. Afhankelijk van de vorm van zijn succes, beperkt óf vergroot de markt zijn bewegingsvrijheid; en door toedoen van de media, die inzetten op human interest en herhaalbare sound bites, wordt de auteur een populaire figuur, gedwongen tot zelfherhaling. De hedendaagse modernistische auteur moet dus in pourparlers treden, wil hij zijn literaire opvattingen verenigen met een praktijk die draait om branding en bestsellers.
Deze lastige onderhandelingspositie van de ‘literaire bestsellerauteur’ staat centraal in mijn presentatie. Mijn stelling is dat werk, posture en receptie van dit type auteur gekenmerkt wordt door continue bemiddeling – tussen hoog en laag, publiek en privé, profijt en prestige. Dit illustreer ik aan de hand van het auteurschap van Connie Palmen, die zich manifesteert als klassiek-modernistische, maar desondanks beroemde en succesvolle auteur. Aan de hand van deze casus verkrijgen we inzicht in het literaire bestsellerauteurschap – én in de literaire cultuur van vandaag.
Panel abstract: Performances of Celebrity and Authenticity: Literary Authors as Public Intellectuals
Key words: authenticity, literary authorship, public intellectuals, performance, negotiation
This panel will consider ways to think of and discuss issues of authenticity related to celebrity authorship and public intellectuals in a public space that is transforming due to mediatization and digitalization. While addressing different ways of defining authenticity in various contexts of the production and reception of literary texts, the panelists will examine what roles the concept of authenticity plays in (identity) politics and public interventions. Main questions are: In what ways do texts, authors and readers portray or perform authenticity? What are the tensions between the production of celebrity authorship and the performance of authenticity? What is the potential of literature (narrative devices; aesthetization of voice; suspension of disbelief) in these contexts?
Gaston Franssen | Assistant Professor Literature & Diversity | University of Amsterdam | gaston.franssen@uva.nl |
Since the seventeenth and eighteenth century – when literary discourse started to be endowed with an “author function” (Donoghue 1996, Foucault 1998), which attributes a corpus of texts to a specific author – writers have enjoyed reputation and fame. Literary fame, nonetheless, has changed drastically with the mediatization and commercialization of the literary market, which took a flight during following centuries. Today, the name of a successful author can be said to have become a commodity in itself – that is, no longer an index of a body of work or specific literary qualities, but a brand name, which is associated with the attitudes, opinions and characteristics of the author’s persona. To a certain extant, in other words, authors have become celebrities (Marshall 1997, Moran 2000).
Literary celebrity has transformed the traditional notions of authorial subjectivity. In contemporary society, the author as a public figure is constructed first and foremost by media appearances and media coverage of his statements and actions: Barthes (1977) observes that “the image of literature to be found in ordinary culture is tyrannically centered on the author, his person, his life, his tastes, his passions” and Deleuze (1977), likewise, argues that the author function is reconstituted “by means of the radio, the television, in newspapers, and even in cinema”. As a result of this, interviews with authors become centered around the life of the author ‘behind’ the work, or turn out to be a form of PR and marketing.
It is therefore hardly surprising that the literary interview, to some authors, has become an uneasy, even precarious event. After all, the media attention directed at the biographical particulars of the writer and the need to ‘sell’ him to the audience take the attention away from the literary work in itself. This situation is clearly at odds with the still dominant discourse on modernist authorship (Franssen 2010), which requires the literary author to resist commercialization, take an impersonal approach to literature, and privilege literary quality. For many authors, therefore, the authorial interview provides a space of negotiation: it becomes a performative site, in which authors have the possibility to work through the tensions, pressures and needs that literary celebrity imposes on them.
In my paper, I analyze the strategies used by three highly successful authors attempting to come to terms with celebrity: I describe the highly commercial self-presentation of Dutch author and teen idol Jan Cremer (1940), the anxious love-hate relationship with the media that haunted the American ‘Gonzo’-journalist Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005), and the seemingly impossible attempt at reclusiveness by the media-shy novelist J.D. Salinger (1919-2010). Their individual relationships to success and fame differ greatly, but the strategies they deploy will turn out to be highly similar – and will provide surprising insights in the construction of modern authorship.
References
Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’. In: S. Heath [ed.], Image-Music-Text. London 1977: 142-148.
Gilles Deleuze, Dialogues. Paris 1977.
Frank Donoghue, The Fame Machine. Book Reviewing and Eighteenth-Century Literary Careers. Stanford 1996.
Michel Foucault, ‘What is an Author?’ In: J.V. Harari [ed.] Textual Strategies. Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism. Ithaca 1979:141-160.
Gaston Franssen, ‘Literary Celebrity and the Discourse on Authorship in Dutch Literature’. In: Journal of Dutch Literature 1, nr. 1 (Dec 2010): 91-113.
P. David Marshall, Celebrity and Power. Fame in Contemporary Culture. Minneapolis 1997.
Joe Moran, Star Authors. Literary Celebrity in America. London 2000.