We discuss Mieke Bal's Moments of Meaning-Making: On Anachonism, Becoming, and Conceptualizing, published by Valiz.

Mieke Bal (1946) is a Dutch theorist, video artist, and a well-known writer and feminist. She has been a Professor in Literary Theory (University of Amsterdam). In 1994 she was a co-founder of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA). Bal has been teaching at many institutes and universities in Europe, US, and beyond. She is known for her specific ways of ‘deep-reading’ artworks (e.g. Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Louise Bourgeois, Nalini Malani), and intertwining her research with various disciplines, such as contemporary and nineteenth-century literature, psycho-analysis, gender studies, philosophy, bible studies. Bal also works as a video artist, which she approaches as a specific form of cultural analysis.

Now that Mieke Bal is getting older —being very active and involved in many art and research projects—she has been ruminating on how to reflect on a full life with different roles and experiences. She did not want to write a navel-staring autobiography and came up with an ABC of Memories, and the concepts these have generated: key terms that have a specific value to her, that interlink as a mesh of meaning, weaving together daily experiences and teaching, her know-how to art making, to the core concepts of her analytical work.

This is my substack: https://marioveen.substack.com/

You can now order my Dutch language book about Plato's allegory of the cave: https://noordboek.nl/boek/hoe-plato-je-uit-je-grot-sleurt/ (also available as e-book)

My previous interview with Mieke Bal is Episode 21: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2nJr0OdC11WiZVcvAcVCOR?si=LSKWhfz5Sq-fuBLtK_KfDw

We discuss Turning the arrow: education after the age of the world-view by Gert Biesta: https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/507626803/BiestaAPJE2025TurningTheArrow.pdf

Gert Biesta is Professor of Public Education in the Centre for Public Education and Pedagogy at Maynooth University, Ireland, and Visiting Professor of Education at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL). Until July 2025 he was Professor of Educational Theory and Pedagogy at the Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh. He publishes on the theory of education and the philosophy of educational research, with a particular interest in teaching, teacher education, curriculum, citizenship education, arts education and religious education. So far, his work has appeared in 21 different languages. His most recent monograph, World-Centred Education: A View for the Present, was published by Routledge in 2022.

This is my substack: https://marioveen.substack.com/

You can now order my Dutch language book about Plato's allegory of the cave: https://noordboek.nl/boek/hoe-plato-je-uit-je-grot-sleurt/ (also available as e-book)

My previous interview with Gert Biesta is Episode 22: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Ios0v1c7SvA5Q3vLRSfMr?si=T8H28-TNSWKFKsNvaYw9Yw

And my interview with Ginie Servant-Miklos about Pedagogies of Collapse: https://open.spotify.com/episode/07p0xx2mRBeQaa0KxSFRjv?si=7QK0hOj-QradM2R4Kg4QIA

We discuss Herald of a Restless World: How Henri Bergson brought philosophy to the people - The first English-language biography of Henri Bergson, the French philosopher who defined individual creativity and transformed twentieth-century thought. Emily Herring is a writer based in Paris. She received her PhD in the history and philosophy of science from the University of Leeds, and her writing has appeared in Aeon and the Times Literary Supplement.

You can read the latest installment of my new series Challenging Time: Reading Against Climate Madness here: https://futurebased.org/climate-madness/turning-to-stone-what-is-it-like-to-be-a-planet/ - the installment about Herald of a Restless World will appear here when it's online

I hope you enjoy the episode! Mario http://lifefromplatoscave.com/

I'd love to hear your questions or comments:

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Illustration © by Julien Penning, Light One Art: https://www.instagram.com/light_one_art/