We are inviting the first round of submissions to the newly founded Belvedere Research Journal (BRJ), a peer-reviewed, open access e-journal. We seek articles that shed new light on the visual culture of the former Habsburg Empire and Central Europe broadly defined from the medieval period to the present day. We especially welcome contributions that situate Austrian art practices within the broader international context. Moreover, we are interested in innovative approaches to art history, such as the decentralization of established narratives or the investigation of transnational transfers that reveal the interconnected and cross-cultural character of the art world.

Silence (tacere or Schweigen) has been considered by Franz Rosenzweig among others as a subversive act or defiant stance of the tragic hero against overwhelming power mechanisms of necessity, i.e., totalization and universality. It has also, however, been regarded as an epiphenomenon (or a result) of marginalization and oppression by postcolonial theorists. The latters’ understanding marks silence as an end, a potential violent effect of the logics of exclusion and marginalization by “signifying machines”. The former understanding marks silence as a means of rendering mechanisms of powers inoperative.