English abstracts #91:

LINE KELLER OTTOSEN: VOICES OF POWERLESSNESS: EXPERIENCING THE DANISH PSYCHIATRIC INSTITUTIONS IN THE ASYLUM ERA 1852-1920

Historical insights into the experiences of past psychiatric patients can broaden our perspectives on the current polarized Danish debates on psychiatry and the present-day patients’ experiences with institutions. This article examines letters, complaints, and public critiques written by patients admitted to the psychiatric institution Jydske Asyl from 1852 to 1921. An analysis of patient experiences reveals how patients expressed experiences of powerlessness within the asylum and sought to regain control by involving their relatives, state authorities, and the public. By articulating their experiences of powerlessness, patients indirectly negotiated state responsibilities and shaped the development of psychiatric institutions during the asylum era. This article thereby highlights the often overlooked role of patient experiences in the history of psychiatry in Denmark.

Keywords: History of psychiatry, patient experience, powerlessness, conflict, negotiation

BEN DITTMANN: THE AMOROUS (TELEPHONE-)CONVERSATION: THE INESCAPABILITY OF POWERLESSNESS IN THE FACE OF MEDIALITY IN JEAN COCTEAU’S LA VOIX HUMAINE

The article examines how Jean Cocteau’s La voix humaine (1929) illustrates mediainduced powerlessness as technology intervenes human communication. Through an intellectual history analysis of the telephone’s role in the play, the article demonstrates how technologically mediated conversations alter the subject’s agency, perception, and use of language. The telephone’s structural conditions reinforce a sense of existential and communicative powerlessness. The article explores how Cocteau’s text reflects on the inescapability of mediality as one of the dimensions of powerlessness in the 20th century.

Keywords: Media-induced powerlessness, Jean Cocteau, La voix humaine, intellectual history of media, telephone

MIKKEL BOLT: THE AVANTGARDE OF DESTITUTION. TH ANTI-ARTISTIC AVANT-GARDE MOVEMENTS’ DESTITUTIVE GESTURE

The article presents a reading of the (anti)artistic avant-garde movements, with a particular focus on Dada, Surrealism and the Situationist International and the way these groups in the interwar period and the 1960s attacked the art institution and traditional notions of artistic practice without establishing a new position of power (in art or outside). The avant-garde project did not aim to gain hegemonic power as a new artistic style or practice, the project was to destroy the separation between art and everyday life in order to integrate art as an extended creative activity in a revolutionised society. Whereas most revolutionary political movements of the 20th century, from Bolsheviks to Maoists, all operated with a notion of taking power - ‘workers must take control of the economy’, ‘we must socialise production’ - the avant-garde refused to develop a plan for how a new society was to be established.

Keywords: Situationist International, Paris Commune, avant-garde, revolution, destitution

ANTON SYLVEST LILLEØR: THE RIGHT NOT TO VOTE – A HISTORY OF THE ”COUCH VOTERS” IN DANISH POLITICS

This article examines the interpretation and portrayal of voting abstention in Denmark from 1939 to 1974. It focuses on the concept of “couch voters”, which was introduced in 1939 and made abstaining voters the object of considerable interest. The article shows how campaigns, journalism and scientific studies often depicted “couch voters” as a powerful group capable of deciding elections and undermining the legitimacy of the political system. Voting abstention could result from a feeling of powerlessness, understood as inability to change the current state of affairs, yet at the same time it was portrayed as a potentially transformative act, offering a way out of the feeling of powerlessness. A key point of contention was whether the power of the “couch voters” was democratic. While a broad consensus emerged after 1943 that voting was a key democratic act, there were actors both before and after who saw the relationship between democracy and voting differently and asserted abstention as a democratic act. For some, “couch voters” were the enemies of democracy, while for others they were the friends of democracy.

Keywords: Elections, voting, democracy, power, powerlessness.

MATHIAS RØLLE: THE IMPOTENCE OF POWER AND THE POWER OF IMPOTENCE

This article investigates the relation between power and powerlessness through an interpretation of Aristotle’s concept of dunamis (power/possibility/potency) as read by Giorgio Agamben and Martin Heidegger. Then the concept is compared with the psychoanalytic connection between violence and powerlessness/impotence, especially with regards to Jacques Lacan’s notion of passage à l’acte. Lastly, it is shown through an analysis of Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung how violent outbursts of impotence can contain a power capable of exposing an existing power’s impotence – the impotence of power and the power of impotence.

Keywords: Dunamis, potentiality, powerlessness, Aristotle, Giorgio Agamben.

ALBERTE BOVÉ RUD & ERIK SPORON FIEDLER: FAMILY LIFE OR WORK LIFE? FRA THE BIG NO OF HISTORY TO THE SMALL NO OF THE INDIVIDUAL

The article examines the Danish debate on work ethics through two ideal-typical positions: “state raison” and “the family-oriented work rebellion.” The former, represented by Kaare Dybvad Bek’s Arbejdets land (2023), views full-time employment as a civic duty essential for the welfare state’s sustainability. In contrast, Maj My Humaidan’s Ærømanifestet (2023) challenges labor market structures. The article explores how labor resistance aligns with theories of destitution. A comparison with the Italian debate highlights national and gendered perspectives. The conclusion argues that the work rebellion is not merely a rejection of state demands but an assertion of autonomy through a quiet refusal.

Keywords: Work refusal, work ethic, welfare, theory of destitutive power, family life.

MIKKEL NØRREGAARD JØRGENSEN: FORMS OF POWERLESSNESS: CRISIS-PERSPECTIVES IN LONE ABURAS’ DEN SORTE BOG AND MOMTAZA MEHRI’S BAD DIASPORA POEMS

This article examines how two contemporary poetry collections perform an act of poetic resistance based on a negation of power. This resistance, I argue, takes form against the current crisis rhetoric applied to refugees and migrants through selfcritical and powerless-based gestures that relate to the authors implication in the current crisis by critiquing the power of language as such. By analyzing the different self-critical strategies, the article concludes that the powerless engagement with language opens a critique of the crisis that is founded on a solidarity with people who seek to break with the reproduction of the dominant political power.

Keywords: Poetry, crisis, refugee literature, border aesthetics, political aesthetics.