Critical and Cultural Studies Commons^™

Reading Liksom's Short Story "We Got Married" In A Cultural And Political Perspective, Erkki Vainikkala

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Reading Liksom's Short Story 'We Got Married' in a Cultural and Political Perspective," Erkki Vainikkala examines Rosa Liksom's short story as well as one reader's response to the text. In Vainikkala's analysis, the short story is described as a structure of inversions and reversals where sequences are opened and cut short, standpoints are offered and taken back immediately, and where the code of realism is suggested but not carried out as the development of the story lacks convincing motivation. The resulting effect of exhaustion, evident also in the manifestation of pathological narcissism in the story, is seen …

Reading Liksom's Short Story "We Got Married" In Post-Communist Estonia, Malle Järve

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Reading Liksom's Short Story 'We Got Married' in Post-communist Estonia," Malle Järve discusses the reception of Rosa Liksom's text in post-communist Estonia. After gaining independence, Estonians became exposed to varieties of literature including avant-garde texts which did not fit easily with the expectations and rules of interpretation developed during Soviet rule. Based on data collected in 1993 and 1998, Järve focuses on the cultural repertoire (discourses, stereotypes, values, literary expectations, etc.) used by readers while constructing meaning to the text, perceived predominantly as foreign/Other. Järve's objective is an attempt to explain: 1) who/what the Other in the …

Cultural Studies And Cultural Text Analysis, Urpo Kovala

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Cultural Studies and Cultural Text Analysis," Urpo Kovala discusses the role of textual analysis in cultural studies. He begins with a sketch of different conceptions of textual analysis within cultural studies by pointing to differences in the concepts of text and context themselves. Next, Kovala explores the reasons for including textual analysis as a category and method in cultural studies and in humanities and social sciences scholarship generally. Finally, Kovala sketches briefly a model for the cultural analysis of text where his main point is that the argument about the incompatibility of cultural studies and textual analysis …

Introduction To Cultural Text Analysis And Liksom's Short Story "We Got Married", Urpo Kovala

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Selected Bibliography Of Textual Analysis In Cultural Studies, Xianfeng Mou, Urpo Kovala

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Liksom's Short Stories And The Ironies Of Contemporary Existence, Chris Pawling

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Liksom's Short Stories and the Ironies of Contemporary Existence," Chris Pawling examines Rosa Liksom's short stories in her volume One Night Stands. Pawling proposes that Liksom's texts can be understood as postmodern pastiches (Jameson) of different literary voices which in turn are couched in an "affect-less" prose that attempt to inhabit the mental universe of the narrator/protagonist without necessarily endorsing any aesthetic or ethical point of view. Liksom's fictional universe is populated by individuals who are alienated from the life of predictable routines and are searching for "action" in scenes of low life in late-night city bars. …

Poe Translated By Baudelaire: The Reconstruction Of An Identity, Anne Garrait-Bourrier

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Poe Translated by Baudelaire: The Reconstruction of an Identity," Anne Garrait-Bourrier argues that Poe and Baudelaire seem to have developed what could be described as a father-son or teacher-student relationship. Baudelaire devoted half of his life to the translation into his mother tongue of Edgar Allan Poe's tales and the other half to the creation of poetry which was inspired, to say the least, by the American writer. Garrait-Bourrier proposes that the influence Poe exerted is undeniable and particularly manifest in Les Fleurs du Mal, so akin to Poe's spirit of "spleen" and the systematic deconstruction of …

Comparative Literature In An Age Of "Globalization", Lois Parkinson Zamora

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Lois Parkinson Zamora, in her paper "Comparative Literature in an Age of 'Globalization'," presents a definition of globalization and considers how its cultural and spatial displacements have, and might, change traditional disciplinary practices of comparative literature. Zamora discusses how contemporary Latin American writers dramatize and evaluate the forces of globalization in their fiction and she exemplifies her observations with texts by Carpentier, Borges, Paz, Fuentes, Puig, García Márquez, and Vargas Llosa. Further, the author proposes that the cultural specificity of fictions by contemporary Latin American writers may serve as an antidote to current processes of cultural homogenization.

The Memoir And Representations Of The Self: New Books By Vlasopolos And Picard, Ralph Freedman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Investigative Spaces In The Poetry Of Pierre Reverdy, Jules Supervielle, And Henri Michaux, Hugo Azérad

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Investigative Spaces in the Poetry of Pierre Reverdy, Jules Supervielle, and Henri Michaux," Hugo Azérad revisits the notion of poetic space and tries to re-examine it in a novel light. In so doing, Azérad re-adapts phenomenology, which tells us that space outreaches itself in the shape of an horizon of perception. But can we posit a space which would progressively do away with perceiver and perceived alike, a space which poetry (art?) can help establish? Azérad attempts to approach poetic space as if it were a utopian place of encounter, different from the physical or psychological dimensions …

In Conversation With Itamar Even-Zohar About Literary And Culture Theory, Dora Sales Salvador

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Dora Sales Salvador presents, in "In Conversation with Itamar Even-Zohar about Literary and Culture Theory," the text of an interview with literary and culture theoretician Itamar Even-Zohar (Tel Aviv University). In the interview, Sales Salvador discusses with Even-Zohar his polysystem theory, a framework that emerges from the wish to foster open dialogue between different trends in culture research. The discussion suggests that there are assumptions shared by practitioners of cultural studies and Even-Zohar's culture research framework he has been developing since 1993. At the same time, the discussion reveals that it is also necessary and perhaps much more important to …

Nolan's Memento, Memory, And Recognition, Adrian Gargett

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Adrian Gargett, in his paper "Nolan's Memento, Memory, and Recognition," analyses Christopher Nolan's film Memento. Gargett employs Deleuzian film theory in a general consideration of the relationship between thought and film. Gargett proposes that Memento acts as a type of intellectual stimulant that has the viewer deciphering a puzzle in process: what is identified in Memento is the way in which memory and the work of memory are presented in the film's narrative construct. In his analysis Gargett argues that memory is not added on; rather, it is already present, and that the Deleuzian abstract quality does not lie in …

'There Shall Be No Discernible Traces Left': The Invisible Butler In Ishiguro's "The Remains Of The Day", Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

This paper draws its title from an anecdote Stevens, the butler in The Remains of the Day (1989), recounts to illustrate the primary attribute for servants: the ability to perform duties without leaving any discernible traces. Mrs. D.C. Webster, an American married into British “old money,” expresses astonishment at the treatment of servants during an interview for the documentary, The Secret World of Fame and Fortune. Mrs. Webster “had a staff of twelve . . . They would do everything for you. If you took a sweater off, it would disappear. If they were too loud or if they were …

The Latin American Innovative Novel Of The 1920s: A Comparative Reassessment, Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "The Latin American Innovative Novel of the 1920s: A Comparative Reassessment," Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez examines four early twentieth-century novels from four different Latin American countries. Coonrod Martínez pays particular attention to their innovation and rebellious breaking with tradition in the attempt to create new narrative. The paper includes comparisons of Arqueles Vela, Roberto Arlt, Martín Adán, and Pablo Palacio, and their novels of the 1920s, with works by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, William Carlos Williams, Upton Sinclair, Ernest Hemingway, and Ezra Pound. In the paper, Coonrod Martínez also compares these early novels to celebrated novels of the …

Towards A Map Of The Current Critical Debate About Latin American Cultural Studies, Julio Ortega

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Towards a Map of the Current Critical Debate about Latin American Cultural Studies," Julio Ortega surveys the shifting disciplinary, critical, and methodological paradigms used to study Latin American culture in both the United States and Latin America. Describing the post-theoretical period as a moment when grand analytical models are abandoned in favor of microanalyses, Ortega sees great potential in this new paradigm shift. In his paper, Ortega pays particular attention to the ways that the field of cultural studies has emerged and transformed in Latin American academic inquiry and he considers the disavowal of master critical models …

The Villain At The Center: Infrapolitical Borges, Alberto Moreiras

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In "The Villain at the Center: Infrapolitical Borges," Alberto Moreiras revisits the Argentinian ideology of "emancipation of the fatherland" on the basis of a re-reading of Jorge Luis Borges's short-story "The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero." Moreiras begins by referring to Paul de Man's comment that Borges's essays were like PMLA essays. Moreiras suggests that, concerning essays, the more deceptive the more honest and less devious they are; and, therefore, the less devious the more devious. He then considers this notion as he surveys recent work on "The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero" by Josefina Ludmer, …

Anxieties Of Impotence: Cuban Americas In New York City, Christina Marie Tourino

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Anxieties of Impotence: Cuban Americas in New York City, " Christina Marie Tourino seeks a basis for comparison between Latin American literatures and Latino literatures of the United States. Such groups have rarely been compared in the past because they are considered part of the same literary "family." However, Tourino argues that owing to the flows of capital driven by global pressures, literatures between and among Latin Americans and Latinos hail from such culturally heterogeneous sites and are made over by so many relocations that they do call for comparative projects. Instead of comparing texts across national …

A Historical Account Of Difference: A Comparative History Of The Literary Cultures Of Latin America, Mario J. Valdés

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "A Historical Account of Difference: A Comparative History of the Literary Cultures of Latin America," Mario J. Valdés addresses the well-recognized limitations of literary history as historical research. Valdés outlines the theoretical thinking that has guided the editors of The Oxford Comparative History of Latin American Literary Cultures to plan, organize, and complete the first history of literary culture of Latin America. The project is comparative, recognizing the radical diversity of the continent while at the same time it is an open-ended history that informs but does not attempt to provide a totalizing account of more than …

Comparative Literature And Latin American Studies: From Disarticulation To Dialogue, Sophia A. Mcclennen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Comparative Literature and Latin American Studies: From Disarticulation to Dialogue," Sophia A. McClennen surveys the profound changes that characterize Latin American cultural studies today. McClennen reads these changes in light of recent transformations in the fields of comparative literature and cultural studies and suggests that scholars in these fields are now in a position to embark on productive dialogue and exchange. Before such interaction takes place, however, McClennen cautions, we should recall why there has historically been little intellectual exchange between comparatists and scholars of Latin American literature. Barriers to exchange between these areas have been: The …

Latin American And Comparative Literature, Roberto González Echevarría

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Latin American and Comparative Literature," Roberto González Echevarría asks whether comparative literature, a literary discipline dedicated to the proposition that linguistic boundaries must be transcended, can overcome the "cultural arrogance" of the "Eurocentrism" that he believes pervades it currently. González Echevarría argues that if it is to endure, comparative literature will have to undergo "a truly pitiless redefinition," one that effectively displaces "the hegemonic powers of nineteenth-century Europe" and that Latin American literature, by the nature of its historical development on the margins of these "hegemonic" texts and traditions, could -- and should -- play a central …

Latin American Studies: Literary, Cultural, And Comparative Theory, Román De La Campa

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In "Latin American Studies: Literary, Cultural, and Comparative Theory," Román de la Campa explores the post-1989 era of Latin American literary studies, particularly the way in which theoretical production has responded to the collapse of left-wing state projects and the growing influence of market forces in academia. De la Campa suggests that in this context it becomes even more important to study the different ways in which national and regional imaginaries continue to shape Latin American literary studies in both Latin America and the United States. He asks whether we are witnessing the onset of new paradigms better able to …

Introduction To Comparative Cultural Studies And Latin America, Sophia A. Mcclennen, Earl E. Fitz

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

The Canon Is El Boom, Et. Al., Or The Hispanic Difference, Gene H. Bell-Villada

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, Gene H. Bell-Villada's "The Canon is el Boom, et. al., or the Hispanic Difference," argues that the rich, globally acclaimed, foundational yet contestatory prose literature produced in Latin America allows teachers and scholars of Spanish to teach what is essentially the "canon" via work that is still fresh, yet historically provocative. Bell-Villada argues that in a time of reconsidering the importance of literature in literature programs, programs of Spanish language and culture should continue to teach this rich cultural legacy. The average U. S. student's condescension toward Spanish and Latin American culture can be transformed to respect …

First Peoples Of The Americas And Their Literature, Gordon Brotherston, Lúcia De Sá

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their paper, "First Peoples of the Americas and Their Literature," Gordon Brotherston and Lúcia de Sá turn their attention to the indigenous literature of the Americas. They point out that concerted attempts to edit, translate, and publish the main examples or "classics" of Native American literature began little more than a century ago. Since that time, more than a dozen major cosmogonies have appeared, some of them in editions, which seriously attempt to trace back to pre-Cortesian antecedents. Outlining key classics and the ways that these texts have been disseminated, Brotherston and Sá elaborate on how this rich tradition …

Spanish American And Brazilian Literature In Inter-American Perspective: The Comparative Approach, Earl E. Fitz

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Bibliography Of Scholarship In Comparative Latin American Culture And Literature, Sophia A. Mcclennen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Mechanical Angel: Carolyn Forché And The Material Projection Of Messianic History, Alan Clinton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The work of Carolyn Forché has always retained a political edge, with works such as the exploration of her Czech background in Gathering the Tribes (1976) and her account of visits to El Salvador in The Country Between Us (1981). Forché has been one of the leading poets who, in her own words, has combatted the self-censorship operative among American poets and writers that seemed to preclude writing about...historical events when those events were still unsafe (qtd. in Stein 147). Her third book of poems The Angel of History (published 13 years later), however, represents a new turn …

A Revaluation Of Pasolini's Salò, A. Robert Lauer

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his study "A Revaluation of Pasolini's Salò" A. Robert Lauer argues that in his last film, Salò o Le centoventi giornate di Sodoma, Pasolini deals specifically with Fascism as substance and system, as well as -- structurally and intentionally -- with the Sadeanism of Les 120 Journées de Sodome. Morever, as a self-consuming artifact, in Salò Pasolini condemns simultaneously the excesses and failures of the postmodern state and advances the concept of a new peratology based on a greater sense of personal and historical responsibility. To demonstrate his points, Lauer refers to four cinematographic techniques that …

Courting Desire And The (Al)Lure Of David E. Kelley's Ally Mcbeal, Kathleen Kelly Baum

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article"Courting Desire and the (Al)lure of David E. Kelley's Ally McBeal" Kathleen Kelly Baum compares the tropes of desire and the law in David E. Kelley's television series Ally McBeal with similar motifs extracted from Lacanian theory. In her study, Baum explores the psychological and social implications of thematic characterizations and situations from the television series' five seasons by engaging Lacan's premise that subjective identity results from an economic relation between self and other -- a relation that is continuously mediated by symbolization and governed by social mores and cultural imperatives. In addition, Baum traces ways in which …

Literary Translation In Britain And Selective Xenophobia, Eric Dickens

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Literary Translation in Britain and Selective Xenophobia," Eric Dickens discusses the fact that fewer translations of works of contemporary prose, poetry, and essays appear in Great Britain than perhaps anywhere else in Europe. Dickens attributes this shortfall to various factors, including poor language teaching and an indifference to foreign languages in general, but also to a degree of smugness with regard to literature written in English being "the best in the world." In his study Dickens covers such areas as the availability of literary translations in bookshops, the attitudes of publishers, and the effect of prizes on …