Ulus Baker (1960 – 2007) was a Turkish-Cypriot sociologist, philosopher, and public intellectual. He was born in Ankara, Turkey in 1960. He studied Sociology at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, where he taught as a lecturer until 2004. Baker wrote prolifically in influential Turkish journals and made some of the first Turkish translations of various works of Gilles Deleuze, Antonio Negri, and other contemporary political philosophers. His profuse and accessible work and the novelty of the issues he enthusiastically introduced to Turkish-speaking intellectual circles, earned him a widely spread positive reputation in early age. He died in 2007 in Istanbul.The text in this edition is edited from essays and notes Ulus Baker wrote between 1995 and 2002. In these essays, Baker criticizes the sociological research turning into an analysis of people’s opinions. He explores with an exciting clarity the notion of ‘opinion’ as a specific form of apprehension between knowledge and point of view, then looks into ‘social types’ as an analytical device deployed by early sociologists. He associates the form of ‘comprehension’ the ‘social types’ postulate with Spinoza’s notion of ‘affections’ (as a dynamic, non-linguistic form of the relation between entities). He finally discusses the possibilities of reintroducing this device for understanding our contemporary world through cinema and documentary filmmaking, by reinstating images in general as ‘affective thought processes’.Baker’s first extensive translation to English provides us with a much-needed intervention for re-imagining social thought and visual media, at a time when sociology tends to be reduced to an analysis of ‘big data’, and the pedagogical powers of the image are reduced to data visualization and infographics.
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A short article reflecting on working with archives as an artist in a post-colonial setting.
Le chevalier délibéré by Olivier de la Marche is now largely forgotten. Immediately after its publication in 1483, however, it enjoyed great success. The text was disseminated throughout Europe and was held in particularly high esteem in the French-speaking parts of the Netherlands. Such was its popularity in this region that it came to have a profound effect on Dutch literature. The text was translated twice into Dutch, by Pieter Willemsz in 1492, as Vanden ridder welghemoet, and by Jan Pertcheval a year later as Den camp vander doot. Two very early editions offtie original French text were also published in the Netherlands. Moreover, wood cuts from the book were used in other volumes, and the first Spanish translations of Le chevalier délibéré were printed in Antwerp. Several Dutch authors were also directly inspired by this French poem, using it as the basis of their own work. Jan vaA den Dale and Jan Baptist. Hb,uwaer¥are particularly indebted to de la Marche. These writers were in turn highly successful, even if they have now lapsed into obscurity: Jan van den Dale was held in especially high regard, as his Wre vander doot was reprinted at least five times.
