| The general purpose of this research is to investigate the various sociocultural processes that constitute human beings as embodied subjects, differentiated along the lines of i.a., gender, sexuality, race, class, and age. The project thus theoretically situates itself deliberately in the "postmodern condition" of the historical present. The direct focus, however, is on imperial Rome, more specifically, on the productive role of artistic representations of successive emperors in the construction of ancient spectatorship from the age of Augustus (27 BCE - 14 CE), whose reign initiated the principate with its highly influential imagery, to that of Constantine (306 - 337 CE), whose conversion to Christianity marks a profound shift in Roman thought and a socio-political change with decisive consequences for the course of Western history. The central enquiry is directed to the meaning-effects of the imperial statues in relationship to ancient spectatorship, in terms of subjectivity and embodiment. The project thus hopes to offer a significant contribution to the development of a theoretical framework against which to analyse the constitutive function of artefacts generally in realizing embodied subjectivity within specific networks of power-relations. As critical elements in the operation of imperial power politics, artistic representations of Roman emperors will be analysed in the significatory effects they have on their spectators as individual human beings, not only differentiated in gendered, sexual and ethnic terms, but also assuming their social positions as either free citizens, freed(wo)men, or slaves. Particular attention will be directed to the ethical dimension of these images, on both the micro-level of everyday experience, and within the larger field of state power and political ideologies. In studying these diverse materializations of imperial ideology, an interdisciplinary theoretical perspective is assumed. Concrete analyses are largely informed by the traditional disciplines of archaeology, anthropology and art-history on the one hand, and, on the other, more recently developed critical traditions such as post-processual archaeology, ethnic studies, feminist and/or gender studies, sexuality and/or queer studies and various forms of the "new body theory." The indisputable materiality of imperial representations, as well as their symbolic and ritual significance, suggests an active function of actual artefacts in the largely unconscious processes of subjective embodiment within shifting networks of power-relations. Careful analyses of the meaning-effects of imperial art will help to clarify the realization of the specific ethical paradigms in which both state-political power and body/subjects obtain. |
