Author: sophushelle

Danish. The peer review system is collapsing: editors find it increasingly difficult to secure the reviewers needed to ensure academic quality control. The root of the problem is a tension between the gift economy of mutual obligations on which the academic system is founded and the capitalist logic of resource extraction by which the big publishing houses operate: the latter’s exploitation of academic labor is pushing academia to a breaking point. The article includes interviews with Anders Bjarklev, Maja Horst, Randi Starrfelt, and Anna Rogers.

“Den store udmattelse” (“The great fatigue”), Weekendavisen (23 June 2023). Link.

Danish. There is much to be worried about when it comes to AI, but one scenario I do not find concerning is the “technological singularity,” in which AI becomes self-aware and destroys humankind. To me, this fantasy is more easily explained by a recurrent trope articulated in Aristotle’s Poetics, which has shaped such sci-fi tales as Frankenstein, Westworld, and I, Robot: the confluence of anagnorisis (self-recognition, here AI achieving self-awareness) and peripeteia (a dramatic turn in the narrative, typically for the worse, here AI declaring war on humanity).

“Digitale grundmyter” (“Founding myths of the digital age”), Weekendavisen (23 June 2023). Link.

Danish. In a review of Felix Riede’s study of the interaction between climate change and culture throughout ancient Danish history, I argue that he masterfully balances an understand of climactic impact with the recognition that cultures react differently to the same crisis, according to their social structure and the strategies they adopt. Unfortunately, the badly edited prose of this otherwise urgently necessary book makes its argument difficult to follow.

“Spydtid, sværdtid, ulvetid, vindtid” (“Time of spears, time of swords, time of wolves, time of wind”), Weekendavisen (16 June 2023). Link.

Danish. The subtitle “and the Making of the Modern World” has become an obsession for publishers of popular history books, being applied to everything from Gengis Khan to dynamite and the year 1946. The compulsive repetition of the subtitle—I list 33 examples shows us two things about the popular notion of history: a widespread disagreement about what “modernity” means, and a widespread agreement about the purpose of history, namely using the past to understand the present.

“Den moderne verdens mange, mange tilblivelser” (“The many, many makings of the modern world”), Weekendavisen (9 June 2023). Link.

Danish. In a review of Kåre Johannessen’s book about leisure and amusement in the European Middle Ages, I argue that Johannessen’s fascination with play is an example to be emulated. Historians often explain premodern diversions in instrumental terms—as physical training or forms of subtle social control—but this reading of fun and games as always being “work in disguise” itself reveals our modern, capitalist, post-protestant work-bias, a bias we must set aside if we are to understand Medieval peoples on their own terms. Play can be its own purpose.

“Fritid er sit eget formål” (“Leisure is its own goal”), Weekendavisen (5 May 2023). Link.

Danish. Weighing in on the controversy surrounding the 2023 Netflix docudrama about Queen Cleopatra, I briefly trace the history of her malleable, adaptable image, arguing that the queen’s legacy became a confluence of contradictions: she gathers in one figure East and West, sex and death, power and decline, excessive masculinity and excessive femininity. Talking about Cleopatra has always been a way to talk about the relation between women, ethnicity, and power, but when will we stop reducing her to her body—whether her skin or her sex life—and focus instead on her complex achievements and afterlife?

“Hvornår bliver vi klar til Kleopatra?” (“When will we be ready for Cleopatra?”), Weekendavisen (5 May 2023). Link.