Proconnesian Halbfabrikate: Prefabricated Emotions or Blank Feelings? (20 min)

Presenters

Annetta Alexandridis, Cornell University

Abstract

The depiction of mythological narratives or figures on funerary containers in the Roman Empire proved an effective means to convey emotions such as grief, desperation, anger, or hope: building bridges to the real world and thus sublimizing said emotions, it offered consolation; the stock iconography on sarcophagi from the Roman East has been related to cultural memory during the Second Sophistic, or read in allegorical or heterotopic ways. But what about the numerous funerary containers that were left unfinished such as the so-called Proconnesian Halbfabrikate? These very popular funerary containers (sarcophagi and ostothekai) were not only sold, but also used in roughed-out state, a fact that has usually been understood in simple economic terms. The unfinished faces of portrait busts on sarcophagi instead have given rise to a sophisticated debate about their possible meaning in relationship to death and erasure. Can we apply these ideas to iconographies that do not involve the human figure? Even in their abstraction, the contours of the Proconnesian stock decorative elements are still recognizable: garlands, heads of rams or bulls, grapes etc. What kind of emotions could unfinishedness and prefabrication have evoked in this case? Building on Judith Butler’s ideas on the dynamics of performative repetition, this paper investigates various layers of the emotional power of templates.

  AIA-3B