Dr. Maja Figge
Dr. Maja Figge
Short Bio
Maja Figge is currently research associate for film studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Her main research interests are transnational screen cultures, film and media aesthetics and theory, postcolonial critique and decolonial thought, gender / queer studies. Prior, she was interim full professor of Media Culture Studies at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (2020/2021), interim professor of Media Studies at the University of Art in Braunschweig (Spring/Summer 2020) and Visiting Professor of Media Theory at University of Arts Linz (2017/2018). In 2019 she was a visiting scholar at the Program in Literature at Duke University, Durham. 2017–2021 she was postdoctoral fellow at DFG research training group “The Knowledge of the Arts” at Berlin University of Arts. She received her PhD in Cultural History and Theory from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin – her dissertation was funded by an Elsa-Neumann Grant by the state of Berlin. Her first book Deutschsein (wieder-)herstellen. Weißsein und Männlichkeit im bundesdeutschen Kino der fünfziger Jahre (2015) was published in the series „Post_koloniale Medienwissenschaft“ at transcript. Her second book with the working title Black (Post-)Cinemas is also under contract with transcript and to be published by the end of 2023. She was a member of the steering committee of the German Association for Media Studies (GfM, 2017-2021) and since 2019 is a member of the editorial board of Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft. She is also part of the DFG research network “Gender, Medien und Affekt”. Forthcoming ob e edited volume Künste dekolonisieren. Ästhetische Praktiken des Lernens und Verlernens (transcript 2023, ed. with Julian Sverre Bauer, Lisa Großmann, Wilma Lukatsch).
Selected Publications
- Künste dekolonisieren? Ästhetische Praktiken des Lernens und Verlernens, Paderborn: Fink Verlag [Ed. with Julian Bauer, Lisa Großmann, Wilma Lukatsch] (ob e published 2023)
- Verstricken als Methode. Eine Skizze zur komplexen Untersuchung von Differenz/en im Film, in: Nach dem Film, Nr. 20 (Juni 2022): Einen Unterschied machen, https://nachdemfilm.de/issues/text/verstricken-als-methode
- Towards a Caring Gaze. Aesthetics of Decolonization in Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga, in: Revista de Comunicação e Linguagens, Nr. 54 (Spring/Summer 2021): Gendering Decolonizations: Ways of Seeing and Knowing, S. 158-175, https://rcl.fcsh.unl.pt/index.php/rcl/article/view/124
- Postkolonialismus (Rey Chow), in: Ivo Ritzer (Hg.): Schlüsselwerke der Medienwissenschaft, Wiesbaden: Verlag Springer VS 2020, S. 137-156
- Postkoloniale Filmtheorie: „Drittes Kino“ und kulturelle Differenz, in: Bernhard Groß/Thomas Morsch (Hg.): Handbuch Filmtheorie, Wiesbaden: Springer VS 2019, 363-380
Project Description
During the fellowship I will contribute to the annual theme of “spatialities” by focusing on the notion of circulation. I will do so by looking at the transtemporal bonds between militant African cinemas and Afro-diasporic post-cinemas, which will contribute to my current book project, a collection of essays to be published under the title “Black (Post-)Cinemas: Genealogies, Practices, Aesthetics”. In this book I take the coincidence of the recent proliferation of artistic and scholarly work on and with the archives of the militant cinemas of the 1960s and 1970s (motivated by present political urgencies) and the discourse on post-cinema as a starting point to explore the centrality of circulation for both (Steyerl 2008, Eshun/Gray, Hagener/Hediger/Strohmaier 2016, Larkin 2019). With reference to John Akomfrah’s notion of “digitopic yearning” as a perspective on Black cinema’s concern to overcome the medium’s inherent racism, I argue that contemporary Black post-cinematic practices should be considered to be genealogically linked with the practices – circulations and networks – established in anti-colonial African cinemas, as well as with their quest of decolonizing (not only) the screen (Akomfrah 2011, Akomfrah/Eshun/Sager 2020). Thereby I not only intend to explore different but linked approaches to decolonial film aesthetics but also to de-center the notion of post-cinema itself. During the fellowship I will revise the essays/ chapters, write the introduction, and prepare the manuscript for English publication.