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The cultural sublime and the temporal dimension of media

The case of child murderer Marc Dutroux

Utrecht University, The Netherlands, R.H.Leurs{at}uu.nl

The responses to the escape of child murderer Marc Dutroux are on the one hand characterized by bewilderment concerning his horrific actions and on the other hand by relief on his renewed imprisonment. The initial response of bewilderment can be considered an `interruption' of the process of making meaning: it is a temporary state of inability to give meaning to news reports. With this line of approach, this article emphasizes the temporal dimension of identity constructions. This is of importance to cultural studies, which has paid a lot of attention to spatiality (`spaces of belonging', etc.) but would be better served with more instruments for analysing temporal structures. To understand bewilderment and the temporal dimension of identity construction this article makes use of Kant's and Lyotard's theory on `the sublime': central to the sublime is the experience of the limits of our ability to comprehend. It will become evident that the responses of bewilderment to Dutroux's escape can best be understood with Kant's modernistic theory of the sublime rather than with Lyotard's postmodernist version. This makes it possible to use theories on the sublime to examine both the modernist versus postmodernist nature of our society, and an important part of the temporal dimension of identity constructions (namely responses to events causing bewilderment). It is appropriate to rename the (Kantian) aesthetic sublime, which has a singular cause, as the cultural sublime: the cultural sublime is the consequence of coherent texts and images, in other words: of media discourses.

Key Words: controversy • cultural studies • cultural sublime • Dutroux • Kant • Lyotard • media • media theory • moral panic • shock • sublime • time • temporality

International Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 12, No. 4, 395-414 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1367877909104245


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