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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
The Extinction Race: Techniques Of The Human In Proust, Via Houellebecq, James Dutton
The Extinction Race: Techniques Of The Human In Proust, Via Houellebecq, James Dutton
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article, “The Extinction Race: Techniques of the Human in Proust, via Houellebecq” James Dutton “reads” identity and race from the point of view of technics. Namely, he does so through the work of two nominally “Eurocentric” authors, Marcel Proust and Michel Houellebecq, observing how familial and racial resemblance is a living inscription of “lost time.” This inscription comes about through the technical means available to and constitutive of the categories which bind them. Thus, instead of furthering unfinishable racial distinctions which only serve to support discourses of racism, this article follows assertions made in the novels of …
The Others (2001) By Alejandro Amenábar In The Light Of Valentinian Thought, Fryderyk Kwiatkowski
The Others (2001) By Alejandro Amenábar In The Light Of Valentinian Thought, Fryderyk Kwiatkowski
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
The article offers a Valentinian interpretation of the Hollywood film The Others (2001). A particular attention is paid to the ways in which cinematic motifs and narrative elements of the film draw on myths, ideas and symbolic imagery present in Valentinian works, especially in the Gospel of Truth (NHC I, 3) and the Gospel of Philip (NHC II, 3). In the course of the heuristic analysis, the paper argues that although the film employs Valentinian ideas, it depicts different understanding of the world. This issue is addressed in the last part of the article by situating the film within broader …
Enduring The Long Take: Tsai Ming-Liang’S Stray Dogs And The Dialectical Image, Louis Lo
Enduring The Long Take: Tsai Ming-Liang’S Stray Dogs And The Dialectical Image, Louis Lo
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
This essay attempts to show that Tsai’s Stray Dogs (2013) offers a social critique of Taipei as a neoliberal, global, consumer city, and by so doing establishes a cinema of contemplation through such cinematic devices as the sustained long-take and slow, virtually still cinematic images. By developing Walter Benjamin’s formulation of the dialectical image, this essay explores the extent to which Tsai’s cinematic aesthetics reveals an aspect of the city which cannot be shown otherwise. It argues that his slow cinema creates a potentially revolutionary awakening in an audience accustomed to an immersive mode of cinematic experience which turns the …
Mediating Suffering: Buddhist Detachment And Tantric Responsibility In Michael Ondaatje’S Anil’S Ghost, Justin M. Hewitson
Mediating Suffering: Buddhist Detachment And Tantric Responsibility In Michael Ondaatje’S Anil’S Ghost, Justin M. Hewitson
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In “Mediating Suffering: Buddhist Detachment and Tantric Responsibility in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost,” Justin Hewitson argues that the global mediation of suffering following human rights abuses creates the offender-victim binary. The way in which moral judgments drive urgent peacemaking is seldom connected to long-term victimhood narratives. This psychology can exacerbate cyclical patterns of anger, exploitation, and violence by deferring responsibility. Ondaatje’s controversial novel, Anil’s Ghost, which reflects these charged accusations, refuses to settle blame on any side of the Sri Lankan conflict; instead, it offers the troubling recognition that offenders, victims, and mediators are all causal agents. Hewitson …
Courage And Passion In The Reading Of The Later Foucault Of The Cynics, Inmaculada Hoyos Sanchez
Courage And Passion In The Reading Of The Later Foucault Of The Cynics, Inmaculada Hoyos Sanchez
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article “Courage and Passion in the Reading of the Later Foucault of the Cynics” Inmaculada Hoyos Sánchez aims to determine what role the passions played in the courage of the truth of ancient Cynicism, for which purpose she analyses the lectures Foucault gave at the Collège de France in 1984. The hypothesis put forward in this article is that what makes Cynic courage different from other manifestations of the courage of the truth, such as Socratic courage, is that it specifically involves the eradication of shame, a passion that is social and public in character, rather than an …
Of The Processes Of Subjectivation As A Subspecies Of The Event: The Deleuzian Reading Of The Later Foucault, Francisco J. Alcalá
Of The Processes Of Subjectivation As A Subspecies Of The Event: The Deleuzian Reading Of The Later Foucault, Francisco J. Alcalá
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article, “On the Processes of Subjectivation as a Subspecies of the Event: the Deleuzian Reading of the Later Foucault” Francisco Alcala discusses the well-known theoretical separation that occurred between Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault after the publication of The Will to Knowledge. Deleuze disagreed with the new function that Foucault attributed in this book to the apparatuses of power (to be constitutive of truth) because he considered that such an approach denied an inherent status to the phenomena of resistance, making all reality a truth of power. The aim of this paper is to analyze this controversy: …
Literature Of The Self In Foucault: Parrhesia And Autobiographical Discourse, Álvaro Luque
Literature Of The Self In Foucault: Parrhesia And Autobiographical Discourse, Álvaro Luque
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Literature of the Self in Foucault: Parrhesia and Autobiographical Discourse" Álvaro Luque Amo analyzes the framework of Foucault’s study of the technologies of the self. In his study, Michel Foucault analyses the practices of self-writing in the Graeco-Roman period. From this perspective, Foucault approaches the texts of classical authors to interpret what he calls a process of ethopoiesis, or construction of the subject: a subject who tells the truth about himself in the text. Foucault introduces concepts and ideas that are essential to understanding the evolution of autobiography and literature of the self. This article studies …
Jewish Mysticism From Borges To Cirlot: A Transatlantic Approach To The Possibility Of A Non-Subject Subjectivity, Erika Martínez
Jewish Mysticism From Borges To Cirlot: A Transatlantic Approach To The Possibility Of A Non-Subject Subjectivity, Erika Martínez
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article “Jewish Mysticism from Borges to Cirlot,” Erika Martínez discusses the form in which some Latin American and Spanish poets of the twentieth century have experimented, in a disruptive way, with the subjective possibilities of stillness and of time capable of overflowing. Foucault defended, in his last lectures, the construction of a new governmentality of self and of others. Among the many possible technologies to achieve it would be that of the writing of a poetry without words, knowing the insurrectional potentiality of silence. This provides us with a possible starting point for reading the post-secular revision of …
About The Concept Of "Gnosticism" In Fiction Studies, Fryderyk Kwiatkowski
About The Concept Of "Gnosticism" In Fiction Studies, Fryderyk Kwiatkowski
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
I In his article "About the Concept of 'Gnosticism' in Fiction Studies" Fryderyk Kwiatkowski notices that in the twentieth-century humanities the concept of Gnosticism has become a popular term for labelling tendencies in modernity and postmodernity. Kwiatkowski argues that the majority of scholars in fiction studies base their research on outdated methodologies. In consequence, Kwiatkowski presents an overview of contemporary approaches in Gnostic studies and discusses how they can be adapted in studies of literature, film, video games, comic books, etc. By outlining advantages and disadvantages of methodological approaches, Kwiatkowski posits that in studies of fiction with Gnostic components it …
Said And The Mythmaking Of Auerbach's Mimesis, Hyeryung Hwang
Said And The Mythmaking Of Auerbach's Mimesis, Hyeryung Hwang
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In her article "Said and the Mythmaking of Auerbach's Mimesis" Hyeryung Hwang revisits critical debates on Edward W. Said's unwitting participation in the mythmaking of Erich Auerbach's Mimesis and analyzes the degree to which critical discourse overlook what Said actually wanted to revive, namely the spirit of philological methodology. Hwang argues that before Said worked on Mimesis, the book already acquired a sort of myth. Hwang attempts to go beyond the commonly held understanding of philology and suggest it as a methodology for historical synthesis whose dialectical tension between texts and history amounts to the synthesis of "fact" …
Hesse's Steppenwolf As Modern Ethical Fiction, Michał Koza
Hesse's Steppenwolf As Modern Ethical Fiction, Michał Koza
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
In his article "Hesse's Steppenwolf as Modern Ethical Fiction" Michał Koza discusses the significance of "ethical fiction" in modern literature. Such fiction, according to Kant, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, are not only milestones of ethical thinking, but more importantly offer a narrative for self-creation as an ethical subject. Harry Haller, the protagonist of Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf, is a man living on the border of modern subjectivity embodying a cultural and existential crisis. Koza argues that "ethical reading" enables one to see the relation between philosophy and literature that not only enter in a dialogue with each other, but also share …