Browsing by Author "Goedhart, Jeani Margje"

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    In memory of votive time: a new perspective on votive anatomicals from the Asklepieion of Corinth.
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2024-03) Goedhart, Jeani Margje; Masters, Samantha; Nitschke, Jessica; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Ancient Studies.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Anatomical votives are body part models, which were dedicated in thanks of, or in request for, healing. In the ancient Greek context, such objects were prominently associated with the healing sanctuaries (Asklepieia) of the god of medicine, Asklepios. Central to the scholarship on these objects is the attempted mind-shift from medical representation to lived experience. This mind-shift is problematic since it follows from a suppliant-centred approach, which implies that the votive’s meaning, as a memory object, relates to it being a material record of the suppliant’s healing/disease experience. This is not, however, how this mnemonic process plays out in the votive ritual since the concept of memory, which the suppliant applies to the anatomical votive, changes when the object, and by extension the memory applied to it, is transferred into the god’s ownership. In this thesis, the relations and non-relations between memory and ownership, with regard to how these concepts change throughout the course of the anatomical votive’s life-history, are studied and developed into a new theoretical approach termed ‘votive time’. The corpus of anatomical votives from the Asklepieion at Corinth are employed as a case study for the application of votive time since it is by far the largest corpus in the ancient Greek context. The methodology employed to develop and apply the theory consists of two parts. In the first part, a religio-historical context is configured for votive time, which provides the basis for the second part. The second part involves arts-based thought experiments in which Art-analogues are used to fill gaps in the context. As a method invented for this thesis, Art-analogues are artworks featuring visual interpretations of body parts that mimic how votive time can be interpreted. The same research questions asked about votive time, when applied to the anatomical, can be asked of the art-analogue. In the thesis, three of Joel-Peter Witkin’s still life prints are used as analogues. Through the applicatory medium of collage, the analogue becomes a comparative research tool through which the theory of votive time can be finalized and applied to the corpus as a new approach. The study finds that the approach of votive time illuminates previously unstudied aspects of votive-related memory and its role in the Asklepieion scenario. These aspects include the roles of the different variables of the god’s acquisition of memory: following a latent-to-active process of the votive changing into a final product of god-owned memory within its sanctuary-defined roles. insightful finding involves the state of memory after deposition, when the object had been dispossessed of its prior god-owned status in the sanctuary, and what this implies for the memory-ownership relation attached to both its individual and collective life-history.