Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

English Language and Literature Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences

James Madison University

Conference

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

“Now It’S All Simple:” Ideology And Solidarity In Mckay’S Romance In Marseille, Reilly Flynn Jun 2021

“Now It’S All Simple:” Ideology And Solidarity In Mckay’S Romance In Marseille, Reilly Flynn

MAD-RUSH Undergraduate Research Conference

Survival strategy, or an individual’s chosen method of living with dignity and security in an oppressive social order, can be viewed as a reflection of identity. Claude McKay’s recently published 1932 novel Romance in Marseille presents a wide variety of survival strategies practiced by many diasporic Africans. These characters hail from a variety of backgrounds, races, genders, sexual orientations, and disability statuses, but they are nevertheless united by common class conditions. Through this, solidarity and shared ideology emerge. Solidarity is crucially an important revolutionary force, but it is not infallible. With an eye on manifestations of ideology and identity in …


Blade Runner And The Divine Menace, Alexander W. Pickens Apr 2017

Blade Runner And The Divine Menace, Alexander W. Pickens

MAD-RUSH Undergraduate Research Conference

Following the decline of Christianity in mainstream Western culture, a void rose in the moral and societal code. Those writers that emerged presented alternate visions that worked their way into the literature of the 20th century. Karl Marx's interpretation of the structure of labor in capitalism presented a new societal hierarchy whose finer points have been worked out in the complex film Blade Runner. This dystopian nightmare, in which a Marxist interpretation of current society bogged down by the ennui of capitalist accumulation is confronted, describes a new religious order based upon this economic theory. Central to this reimagining …