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Articles 1 - 17 of 17
Full-Text Articles in European Languages and Societies
Poetic Explorations In Bill F. Ndi’S Worth Their Weight In Thorns: (De)Constructing Hegemonic National Integration And Debating Francophonecentric National Governance., Hassan Mbiydzenyuy Yosimbom
Poetic Explorations In Bill F. Ndi’S Worth Their Weight In Thorns: (De)Constructing Hegemonic National Integration And Debating Francophonecentric National Governance., Hassan Mbiydzenyuy Yosimbom
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
This paper explores “hegemonic national integration” and “Francophonecentric national governance” in The Cameroons (TC) poetic scape. The former refers to La République du Cameroun (LRC)-British Southern Cameroons (BSC) or Southern Cameroons (SC) interconnectedness dominated by Francophones. The latter is governance that promotes a Francophone cultural superiority that refuses to see the Cameroonian world through Southern Cameroonians’ eyes. Cameroonians live in a time of enormous fragmenting “Francophonizing” and “Anglophonizing” processes. To flesh this argument out, this paper borrows critical perspectives from Benhabib’s “democratic iterations” and “deliberative democracy” and Rosenau’s “six-governance typology’ as requisites for good governance. It contends that …
Trans-Atlantic Interrogation: Fabienne Pasquet’S La Deuxième Mort De Toussaint Louverture, Mariana F. Past
Trans-Atlantic Interrogation: Fabienne Pasquet’S La Deuxième Mort De Toussaint Louverture, Mariana F. Past
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In “Trans-Atlantic Interrogation: Fabienne Pasquet’s La deuxième mort de Toussaint Louverture,” Mariana Past situates the Haitian-Swiss novelist’s understudied narrative within the context of Caribbean letters and the Haitian literary tradition, then discusses the broader, intertextual implications of Toussaint Louverture’s “second” death for Haiti and the trans-Atlantic world. To what end does Pasquet deploy the aged ghost of a Haitian revolutionary icon being invoked by German Romantic writer Heinrich von Kleist in the Fort de Joux castle-cum-prison within France’s remote, mountainous Jura region? What is at stake when the diasporic writer reincarnates a legendary German poet as protagonist, placing him …
Chase Riboud’S Hottentot Venus (2003) And The Neo-Victorian: The Problematization Of South-Africa And The Vulnerability And Resistance Of The Black Other, Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz
Chase Riboud’S Hottentot Venus (2003) And The Neo-Victorian: The Problematization Of South-Africa And The Vulnerability And Resistance Of The Black Other, Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
This article touches upon issues of captivity, suppression, misrepresentations and exclusion of black people from a historical and cultural point of view through the analysis of Chase-Riboud’s neo-Victorian novel Hottentot Venus (2003). It also focuses on the implications and consequences for contemporary South Africa of situations of slavery and exploitation of African descended peoples. Notions of identity and moral and legal inclusion of black women into past and contemporary societies and communities will be also discussed from the point of view of postcolonial and gender and sexuality studies. The complexities of blackness and the violation of human rights as a …
Introduction, Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz, Manuela Coppola
Introduction, Maria Isabel Romero Ruiz, Manuela Coppola
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
This special issue addresses contemporary representations of “vulnerable” bodies in transit in Anglophone literature and culture and explores their strategies of resistance. The use of the expression “bodies in transit” in this issue has to be understood both as a reference to the materiality of diasporic, exiled, migrating, trafficked bodies, and as an allusion to the metaphorical transition of these marginalized subjects from alienation to regeneration in multiple contexts. The interdisciplinary contributions in this special issue tackle vulnerability as a marginal(ized) and potentially enabling condition entailing the crossing of bodily, sexual, mental, ethical, cultural, and national borders. Ranging from literature …
More Migrants With Nowhere To Go?, Mary E. Theis
More Migrants With Nowhere To Go?, Mary E. Theis
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In "More Migrants with Nowhere to Go?” Mary Theis reframes the stories of the Tai Dam and discusses this group of people, who migrated from Vietnam and Laos to Thailand and then to Iowa in 1975 after the wars in Southeast Asia when they virtually had nowhere to go. It is based on interviews with some of the 1,200 Tai Dam who were invited by Governor Robert Ray to resettle in Des Moines, Iowa, and nearby cities. The stories are contextualized by research on U.S. policies on immigration and the current precarious fates of other migrants in the United States …
Changez/Cengiz's Changing Beliefs In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Valerie Kennedy
Changez/Cengiz's Changing Beliefs In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Valerie Kennedy
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article, “Changez/Cengiz's Changing Beliefs in The Reluctant Fundamentalist” Valerie Kennedy analyzes the interrelation of individual subjectivity and global capitalism and the conflict between two belief systems in Mohsin Hamid’s novel. These are, first, a neoliberal system that sees individuals as rationally self-interested, mobile, economic units, and, second, a system based on a humanist definition of individuals as defined by nation, family, and tradition. Changez, the novel’s protagonist, initially endorses the first, but later rejects it for the second, due to his growing awareness of the impact on Pakistan of American geopolitics after 9/11. The essay also examines …
The Maze Of Shanghai Memory In Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans, Biwu Shang
The Maze Of Shanghai Memory In Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans, Biwu Shang
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "The Maze of Shanghai Memory in Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans" Biwu Shang analyzes the memory writing of the novel by combining current memory studies with narratology. The paper pursues three major goals. First, it delves into the maze of Shanghai memory embedded in this novel, which is typically formulated by two contrasting aspects: Christopher Banks's naïve and beautiful childhood memory of Shanghai, and his unhappy adulthood memory of it. Second, it explores how memory plays a dual function of deception and decoration. That is to say, Christopher deliberately uses his memory to create positive …
Curricular Requirements, Critical Traditions, And Adaptation In The Paratext Of Chinese And American School Editions Of Robinson Crusoe, Haifeng Hui
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Curricular Requirements, Critical Traditions, and Adaptation in the Paratext of Chinese and American School Editions of Robinson Crusoe" Haifeng Hui analyses a Chinese new curricular edition and an American common core edition of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe to reveal how the paratext can be utilized to reveal different ways of understanding in different educational cultures. He argues that the paratext powerfully exerts the publisher's authority over the text and the reader, thus shaping readers' interpretation of the story in the service of fulfilling specific national curricular needs. The Chinese edition aims more at how Crusoe's story should …
Adoption, Cynical Detachment, And New Age Beliefs In Juno And Kung Fu Panda, Fu-Jen Chen
Adoption, Cynical Detachment, And New Age Beliefs In Juno And Kung Fu Panda, Fu-Jen Chen
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Adoption, Cynical Detachment, and New Age Beliefs in Juno and Kung Fu Panda" Fu-Jen Chen situates his study within today's prevailing climate of global consumption to argue that the 2007 film Juno—featuring an unconventional portrayal of the adoption triad and a cynical detachment from public values—not only trivializes and depoliticizes the practice of adoption but also serves as an ideological supplement to today's global capitalism. Furthermore, Kung Fu Panda 1 & 2 (2008; 2011) provide two ideological messages of contemporary New Age spirituality—"the belief in nothing" in part I, and "the attitude of inner peace" …
The Cultural Translation Of Ginsberg's Howl In Turkey, Erik Mortenson
The Cultural Translation Of Ginsberg's Howl In Turkey, Erik Mortenson
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "The Cultural Translation of Ginsberg's Howl in Turkey" Erik Mortenson examines three Turkish translations of Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl in order to explore the ways in which Ginsberg's poem becomes redeployed in new cultural contexts. Orhan Duru and Ferit Edgü's 1976 translation presents a more politicized Ginsberg that draws on his anti-establishment credentials as a social activist. This comes as little surprise, since in pre-1980 coup Turkey rebellion was thought in purely political terms of right verses left. Hakan Arslan's 1991 update provides a less political and more familiar Ginsberg, in keeping with a society that left …
Theories Of Opiate Addiction In The Early Works Of Burroughs And Trocchi, Richard English
Theories Of Opiate Addiction In The Early Works Of Burroughs And Trocchi, Richard English
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Theories of Opiate Addiction in the Early Works of Burroughs and Trocchi" Richard English discusses William S. Burroughs's and Alexander Trocchi's representations of opiate addiction with special reference to their early writings. English examines the concept of homo heroin that can be attributed to Burroughs and lists and expounds its qualities. Among these are: immorality, criminality, mono-objectuality, self- and other-indifference, and, most importantly, the radical physical transformation into a new species, which Burroughs extends in Naked Lunch. English shows how homo heroin relates to Trocchi's conception of a heroin addict, which serves to illustrate that homo …
Introduction To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke
Introduction To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided for the introduction.
Thematic Bibliography To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke
Thematic Bibliography To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided.
Staging Famine Irish Memories Of Migration And National Performance In Ireland And Québec, Jason King
Staging Famine Irish Memories Of Migration And National Performance In Ireland And Québec, Jason King
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In "Staging Famine Irish Memories of Migration and National Performance in Ireland and Québec" Jason King examines recent community theater productions about the Irish Famine migration to Québec in 1847. King explores community-based and national ideas of performance and the role of remembrance in shaping and transmitting the diasporic identities of Québec's Irish cultural minority. While most of the plays re-enact French-Canadian adoptions of Famine orphans as spectacles of Irish integration in Québec, David Fennario's Joe Beef: (A History of Pointe Saint Charles) (1984, published 1991) rehearses the history of the Canadian/Québec nation in terms of recurrent labor exploitation epitomized …
Franco-Maghrebi Rap And Benyoucef's Le Nom Du Père, Keith Moser
Franco-Maghrebi Rap And Benyoucef's Le Nom Du Père, Keith Moser
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Franco-Maghrebi Rap and Benyoucef's Le Nom du père" Keith Moser discusses Messaoud Benyoucef's controversial play Le Nom du père and rap as a hybrid art form that has been (re)-appropriated by disenfranchised minorities from all corners of the planet. Exploited and ignored by those at the top of the social ladder, rappers express their anxiety concerning the present situation of inequality in contemporary consumer society. The rending melodies or portraits of human anguish created by rappers give testament to the fact that the interconnected processes of urbanization and globalization have not benefited everyone. In Le Nom …
Is First, They Killed My Father A Cambodian Testimonio?, John Maddox
Is First, They Killed My Father A Cambodian Testimonio?, John Maddox
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Is First, They Killed My Father a Cambodian testimonio" John T. Maddox discusses aspects of the testimonial. Dialoguing with leading Latin Americanists, Maddox argues that Cambodian writer Loung Ung's First, They Killed My Father (2000) challenges this uniqueness and opens studies on the testimonio to new possibilities for intellectual reflection and political activism. In Maddox's view, the continued use of the term testimonio would serve as a reference to this long-standing tradition of writing and thinking about political violence in Latin America. After a discussion of the debate of the definition and function of testimonio and …
Racism And Identity In Onwueme's Riot In Heaven, Onyeka F. Iwuchukwu
Racism And Identity In Onwueme's Riot In Heaven, Onyeka F. Iwuchukwu
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "Racism and Identity in Onwueme's Riot in Heaven" Onyeka Iwuchukwu explores Tess Osonye Onwueme's acclaimed play in the context of the Black diaspora in the U.S. Iwuchukwu posits that because of Onwueme's exploration of the theater of the absurd in the play, audience's attention is directed to the illogical presentation of dialogue and action. However, the technique with textual properties suggesting unmotivated and meaningless references in fact carries profound meaning. Further, the said "absurd" presentation and narration results in a strong ideological and political message akin to the practice of littérature engagée. Iwuchukwu's analysis of …