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Articles 31 - 60 of 431
Full-Text Articles in European Languages and Societies
The Brazilian System Of Television, Or How To Get A President, Tauan F. Tinti
The Brazilian System Of Television, Or How To Get A President, Tauan F. Tinti
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
The purpose of this essay is to draw attention to some perhaps unexpected affinities between a considerably expressive segment of the Brazilian culture industry that for several reasons seems to usually fly under most interpretive radars and a certain regressive frame of mind that is becoming increasingly manifest and now holds both considerable political power and a surprisingly firm grip over a portion of the population whose size is still unclear. The following remarks and associations gesture tentatively at what could be preliminarily defined as a constellation of cultural junk being outlined, its shape against the night sky sometimes resembling …
Introduction: A Return To The Bad Old Times, Fabio Akcelrud Durão, Fernando Urueta
Introduction: A Return To The Bad Old Times, Fabio Akcelrud Durão, Fernando Urueta
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided.
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 …
Socrates The Degenerate: Irony As Trope Of Decadence, Daniel R. Adler
Socrates The Degenerate: Irony As Trope Of Decadence, Daniel R. Adler
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Decadence is typically associated with a fall from, or an opposition to, ideals of civilization. Western Civilization traditionally traces its roots to the culture of Ancient Greece. While theorists of periodicity from Vico to Nietzsche and Deleuze, to Hayden White and other contemporary scholars, associate decadence with excess, artificiality and over-indulgence, they also recognize that decadence often incorporates pre-civilized, base or “Other” tendencies. Paradoxically, decadence as a degeneration of an original culture’s values can also rejuvenate that culture’s core values through mutation so that a new version of the original culture arises. In literature, degeneration has also been associated with …
Exploring The Margins Of Kotha Culture : Reconstructing A Courtesan’S Life In Neelum Saran Gour’S Requiem In Raga Janki, Chhandita Das, Priyanka Tripathi
Exploring The Margins Of Kotha Culture : Reconstructing A Courtesan’S Life In Neelum Saran Gour’S Requiem In Raga Janki, Chhandita Das, Priyanka Tripathi
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In their article, “Exploring the Margins of Kotha Culture: Reconstructing a Courtesan’s life in Neelum Saran Gour’s Requiem in Raga Janki,” Chhandita Das and Priyanka Tripathi discuss the invisible challenges in life of a famous courtesan Janki Bai Ilahabadi through close analysis of Neelum Saran Gour’s 2018 novel, Requiem in Raga Janki. In this novel, Janki belongs to the infamous kotha but she never fails to seek her subjectivity. This marginal place of Janaki’s belonging will be discussed by appropriating and the theoretical framework of Indian feminist Lata Singh’s (2007) for whom courtesans have been represented as “‘other’ …
Identity Reconfigurations, Memory And Personal History In Norman Manea And Saul Bellow’S ‘Spoken Book’, Simona Antofi, Nicoleta D. Ifrim
Identity Reconfigurations, Memory And Personal History In Norman Manea And Saul Bellow’S ‘Spoken Book’, Simona Antofi, Nicoleta D. Ifrim
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In their paper, “Identity Reconfigurations, Memory and Personal History in Norman Manea and Saul Bellow’s Spoken Book, ”Simona Antofi and Nicoleta Ifrim analyze the book of interviews Settling My Accounts Before I Go Away: A Words & Images Interview, a two-authored mirror-like writing in which two biographical courses and two scriptural identities engage in dialogue. Their aim is to define a double reading effect embedded into the self-oriented narrative: a collective history of the Jewish exile from the communist totalitarian space (Soviet and Romanian) towards the “promised land,” with literary, cultural and political insertions; then, the legitimation of an …
Representation Of Terror And Terrorism In Two Arab Films: Paradise Now (2005) By Hany Abu-Assad And Horses Of God (2012) By Nabil Ayouch, Mustapha Hamil
Representation Of Terror And Terrorism In Two Arab Films: Paradise Now (2005) By Hany Abu-Assad And Horses Of God (2012) By Nabil Ayouch, Mustapha Hamil
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Middle Eastern violence and terrorism are not novel subjects in world cinema, especially American cinema. The Arab or Muslim other in these films is always presented as someone who epitomises a culture of violence, directed mostly against innocent civilians. Against the backdrop of Hollywood’s stereotypical representation of Middle-Easterners as advocate of indiscriminate terror and terrorism, Arab filmmakers have turned in recent years to the representation of terror and religious extremism. Paradise Now (Abu Assad 2005) and Horses of God (Ayouch 2012) address the controversial issue of suicide bombing with the same motivation: to examine the choice of suicide bombing within …
Resisting Pacification: Locating Tension In G'Ebinyo Ogbowei's Poetry, Niyi Akingbe, Paul Ayodele Onanuga
Resisting Pacification: Locating Tension In G'Ebinyo Ogbowei's Poetry, Niyi Akingbe, Paul Ayodele Onanuga
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided.
Where Are The Women?: An Ecofeminist Reading Of William Golding’S Lord Of The Flies, Hawk Chang
Where Are The Women?: An Ecofeminist Reading Of William Golding’S Lord Of The Flies, Hawk Chang
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
The absence of female characters and their voices in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954) has been previously examined. On the surface, this fiction focuses on the struggle and survival of a group of boys who are left alone on a Pacific island against the background of nuclear warfare. The only presence of women in the story seems to be the aunt via a boy’s narration. However, when approaching the fiction through the lens of ecofeminism, we can find a range of feminized entities which are metaphorically embodied in the natural surroundings of the secluded island. The boys’ interactions …
‘Convicted Of Patricide?’: Robert Frost’S Nationalism In The Eyes Of Contemporary Arab-American Women Writers, Eman K. Mukattash
‘Convicted Of Patricide?’: Robert Frost’S Nationalism In The Eyes Of Contemporary Arab-American Women Writers, Eman K. Mukattash
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Given the culturally expansive nature of the American literary tradition of today, the question of the relevance of Robert Frost’s poetry to the poetry of contemporary Arab-American women writers is an issue worth digging into. Writing almost one hundred years ago does not make Frost’s poetry out of date. Frost’s poetry is as relevant to today’s America as it has been to the America of his days. And this can be ascribed to the multiplicity of perspectives he presents in his poetry as he examines crucial questions lying at the core of America’s “grand narrative of national development.” (Westover 2004: …
Time Decay: Assets, Authoritarianism, And Anxiety About The Future, Jack Davies
Time Decay: Assets, Authoritarianism, And Anxiety About The Future, Jack Davies
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
This article identifies a basic formula in the Freudo-Marxist take on twentieth-century authoritarianism. This is the incommensurability of inherited past development with the pace and demands of industrial social life, damming up a tremendous excess that seeks reactionary outlet. Authoritarianism, here, breeds in the contradiction between the symptoms of the Oedipal drama and the commodity form. The implicit “repressive hypothesis” for sexuality and developmentalist teleology make this theorization of authoritarian formations untenable today. This article, however, identifies moments of promise in this literature, and turns to materials available to these thinkers—specifically interwar psychoanalytic theory on anxiety and economic theory on …
Defending “Western” Values: Reactionary Neoliberalism In The Americas, Gabriela Segura-Ballar
Defending “Western” Values: Reactionary Neoliberalism In The Americas, Gabriela Segura-Ballar
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Right-wing populism and authoritarianism are on the rise globally after the financial crisis of 2008. This reactionary trend has widely channeled anxieties created by neoliberal insecurities into cultural and nationalistic backlash against the ostensible enemies of “Western” values (e.g., immigrants, racial and sexual minorities, feminists, and leftists). President Jair Bolsonaro’s “Brazil above everything, God above everyone” and President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” are the most conspicuous examples of the resurgence of a populist reactionary right in the Americas. This continental trend promotes ultra-nationalism and more coercive neoliberalization processes combined with a reactionary authoritarianism that celebrates essentialized “Western” values, …
Incipient Fascism: Black Radical Perspectives, Alberto Toscano
Incipient Fascism: Black Radical Perspectives, Alberto Toscano
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
The sordid twilight of the Trump presidency raised the stakes of the debate on fascism. While much of the discussion has been magnetised by the legitimacy of analogies with the 1930s, this article argues that a rich and complex tradition of Black radical critique of right-wing authoritarianism provides a vital resource for thinking through the problem of US fascism beyond analogy – beginning with the DuBoisian insight that a racial fascism forged by chattel slavery and settler-colonialism anticipated the ascendancy of European fascisms. The article homes in on Black radical theories of fascism developed in the wake of the movements …
Neo-Authoritarianism And The Contestation Of White Identification In The Us, Justin Gilmore
Neo-Authoritarianism And The Contestation Of White Identification In The Us, Justin Gilmore
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Justin Gilmore’s article "Neo-Authoritarianism and the Contestation of White Identification in the US" examines how the political forces around Donald Trump are often interpreted as an external attack on American democracy, and how the dynamism of these attacks is thought to emanate from various sites of white chauvinism. This article argues that such an interpretation is partial. The upsurge associated with “Trumpism” represents a distinctive contestation of an alternative type of white identity, one that has been elemental for a progressive form of neoliberalism. Although the neoliberal construction of white identification is distinctive, and indeed kinder, its material basis rests …
Neo-Authoritarianism Without Authority, Massimiliano Tomba
Neo-Authoritarianism Without Authority, Massimiliano Tomba
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
This article examines two aspects of neo-authoritarianism. The first is mainly diagnostic and concerns the nature of authoritarianism as a phenomenon of transition. The article investigates tensions and conflicts between temporalities. It pays attention to the asynchronous nature of change which, alongside the social structural level of changes, also the psycho-social level, intervene politically in different forms. There are social strata that are strangers in their own country and do not share the same present with others. For them, looking to the past is the only way to imagine a different future. If they are looking for values and authority, …
A Trumpian Mechanism, Emmett Peixoto
A Trumpian Mechanism, Emmett Peixoto
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In 2016, a liar made a hypocrite appear worse and thereby won the US presidency. How did a liar, which is traditionally deemed something worse than a hypocrite, manage to do this? This article offers an answer. It does so by uncovering a peculiar mechanism, a Trumpian mechanism, at the heart of Trump’s relations with his critics. The mechanism explains how Trump benefited from wrong-footing his critics and is thus essential for understanding Trump’s success. The article offers a few key examples of this mechanism working against Trump’s political opponents, e.g., Trump’s (first) impeachment. It then shows how the mechanism …
Authoritarianism And Ideology, Asad Haider
Authoritarianism And Ideology, Asad Haider
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In “Authoritarianism and Ideology,” Asad Haider approaches the problem of authoritarianism by considering the classical question of tyranny, as framed by Spinoza, and how this can be traced to the Marxist theory of ideology. A fundamental axis of the debate over ideology in twentieth century Marxism was the phenomenon of fascism, theorized in highly influential but also markedly different ways by figures like Wilhelm Reich and Theodor Adorno. A close reading of two major texts—Reich's Mass Psychology of Fascism and Adorno's contributions to The Authoritarian Personality—provides a basis for conceptually elaborating different directions that can be taken in the study …
Introduction: New Faces Of Authoritarianism, Asad Haider, Massimiliano Tomba
Introduction: New Faces Of Authoritarianism, Asad Haider, Massimiliano Tomba
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided.
Nationalist Allegories In The Post-Human Era, Siqi Zhang
Nationalist Allegories In The Post-Human Era, Siqi Zhang
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
As China’s expansion of influence now takes up the spotlight of the world stage, Chinese science fiction, a relatively little known genre, reaches a global audience. In 2015, Liu Cixin received the Hugo Award for Best Novel for his trilogy The Three-Body Problem, as the first Asian science fiction writer to receive the Hugo Award. A year later, Hao Jingfang’s Folding Beijing was awarded the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. The recent world-wide recognition of Chinese science fiction begins with English translation, U.S. publication and promotion. The New York Times cited The Three-Body Problem as having helped popularize Chinese …
From Franz Kafka To Franz Kafka Award Winner, Yan Lianke: Biopolitics And The Human Dilemma Of Shenshizhuyi In Liven And Dream Of Ding Village, Melinda Pirazzoli
From Franz Kafka To Franz Kafka Award Winner, Yan Lianke: Biopolitics And The Human Dilemma Of Shenshizhuyi In Liven And Dream Of Ding Village, Melinda Pirazzoli
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
To date, many studies have exhaustively explained how and why Yan Lianke deals with both the intimate relationship between disease and biopolitics and the relationship between utopia and dystopia. These are certainly the most important themes in Liven (2004) and Dream of Ding Village (2006). However, biopolitical discourses cannot fully account for the complexity, depth and humanity of these novels, which in addition to exploring the complex and protean meaning of life also represent shenshizhuyi, an expression coined by Yan Lianke to describe his human dilemma in representing the complex relationship between shen 神 (soul, spirit, mind and myths) …
Hanay Geiogamah’S Body Indian And Foghorn As “Plays With A Purpose”, Danica Čerče
Hanay Geiogamah’S Body Indian And Foghorn As “Plays With A Purpose”, Danica Čerče
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article, “Hanay Geiogamah’s Body Indian and Foghorn as ‘Plays with a Purpose,’” written against the backdrop of critical whiteness studies, Danica Čerče discusses how Geiogamah’s theatrical rhetoric intervenes in the assumptions about whiteness as a static, privilege-granting category and system of dominance. By focusing on various techniques and strategies mobilized to define and affirm Native Americans’ authentic rather than imposed identities, the article shows that humor is one of the prime textual devices in Geiogamah’s plays to renegotiate what Walter Mignolo calls “the racist structure of power.”
The Female Fantastic Vs. The Feminist Fantastic: Gender And The Transgression Of The Real, David Roas
The Female Fantastic Vs. The Feminist Fantastic: Gender And The Transgression Of The Real, David Roas
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Since Ann Richter coined the term “fantastique féminin” in 1977, many works in different languages have postulated a “female” way of writing fantastic texts, depending on the selection of themes, language, characters, supernatural elements, and the portrayal of the uncanny and the monstrous. This claim on the existence of a "female fantastic" reflects central issues in Feminist Literary Theory: on the one hand, the will to identify an aesthetic mode opposed to the dominant patriarchal discourse (female writing, the use of specific themes, etc.); on the other hand, the argument that there are marginal genres, forms and styles voluntarily removed …
Introduction: New Perspectives On The Female Fantastic, David Roas, Patricia Garcia
Introduction: New Perspectives On The Female Fantastic, David Roas, Patricia Garcia
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided.
Print Culture, Digital Culture, Poetics And Hermeneutics: Discussion With J. Hillis Miller, Liyuan Zhu
Print Culture, Digital Culture, Poetics And Hermeneutics: Discussion With J. Hillis Miller, Liyuan Zhu
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
This paper is a response to Hillis Miller’s query on the author’s essay “Hillis Miller on the End of Literature.” The author basically agrees with Miller’s view on the shift from print culture to digital culture, explaining the special cultural context under which Chinese scholars emphasize the visual turn. Based on the rapid development of Chinese online literature, the author points out that print culture does not rival but coexists with digital culture. On the other hand, drawing on Aristotle’s Poetics and insights of several leading figures of contemporary hermeneutics, the author contends that Miller’s dichotomy of poetics (form) and …
China Question Of Us-American Imagism, Qingben Li
China Question Of Us-American Imagism, Qingben Li
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
This paper investigates first the influences of ancient Chinese culture on Ezra Pound, and then Pound’s influence on the New Culture Movement of modern China (1917). It is a kind of circular journey of literary texts and theories from ancient China to the West and then back to China. This journey, or “circle model,” involves textual appropriation, variation, transformation and misunderstanding in every stage.
Western Theory And Historical Studies Of Chinese Literary Criticism, Zhirong Zhu
Western Theory And Historical Studies Of Chinese Literary Criticism, Zhirong Zhu
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
This paper examines the formation of modern historical studies of classical Chinese literary criticism in terms of its interaction with and transformation of western theory. The discipline emerged during the eastward movement of Western ideas in the early twentieth century, promoting the “scientific study” of classical Chinese learning, and instituting curriculum and textbooks in Chinese universities. The reception of Western concepts of “literature” and “literary criticism” in the early twentieth century, largely through Japan, laid the very foundation of historical studies of classical Chinese literary criticism as an independent subject of study. This paper argues that when adopting Western methods …
The Chuanyue (Traversing) Of Western Cultural Industry Theories In China, Hui Li, Naihai Zhai
The Chuanyue (Traversing) Of Western Cultural Industry Theories In China, Hui Li, Naihai Zhai
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
This paper discusses the reception and transformation of western theories of Culture Industry in China during the Reform Era (1978-present). It proposes the term 穿越 (chuanyue, traverse), rather than communication or traveling theory, in order to probe into the complexity of the interaction, modification and transformation of western theories of Culture Industry and creative industries in China. The paper focuses on 1) issues of time lag or disjunction, in that it took more than half a century for the critique of Culture Industry to enter China; 2) divergent interpretations of Culture Industry with a strong critical edge of …
Cinematic Representation Of Ethnic Minorities In Prc And Postcolonialism, Xinyu Lu
Cinematic Representation Of Ethnic Minorities In Prc And Postcolonialism, Xinyu Lu
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
This paper explores the notions of “Sinophone” and “Chinese-language cinema” under the rubrics of postcolonialism in Chinese film studies both in China and elsewhere around the world. The paper argues that these postcolonial-inspired notions misconstrue Chinese national identity building as imperialist/colonialist endeavours, and dichotomize Han and Chinese ethnic minorities. The paper offers its counterargument by examining cinematic practices of people’s cinema, minority nationality films and native-language films in the PRC.
“Western Marxism” In Mao’S China, Jun Zeng, Yichen Wang
“Western Marxism” In Mao’S China, Jun Zeng, Yichen Wang
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
China’s reception of “Western Marxism” is a critical part of the global history of Marxism. This paper examines three aspects of the reception of Western Marxism in literary and art criticism during the early years of Mao’s China (1949-65): the Western Marxist critique of surrealism, debates over Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, and Sartrean existentialism and Western Marxism. The impacts of Western Marxist literary thought upon Chinese literary studies during the early years of the PRC are discussed, along with the extensive influx of Western Marxism that began in the reform era of post-Mao China (1978- ) …
Late Postmodernism, Nicholas Brown
Late Postmodernism, Nicholas Brown
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
No abstract provided.