Critical and Cultural Studies Commons^™

The Infinite Plasticity Of The Digital: Posthuman Possibilities, Embodiment And Technology In William Gibson's Interstitial Trilogy, Tama Leaver

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editors' Introduction]

Ever since William Gibson coined the term cyberspace in his debut novel Neuromancer, his work has been seen by many as a yardstick for postmodern and, more recently, posthuman possibilities. This article critically examines Gibson's second trilogy (Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow's Parties), focusing on the way digital technologies and identity intersect and interact, with particular emphasis on the role of embodiment. Using the work of Donna Haraway, Judith Butler and N. Katherine Hayles, it is argued that while William Gibson's second trilogy is infused with posthuman possibilities, the role of embodiment is …

The Fair City Production Line: An Examination Of Soap Opera’S Potential Contribution To The Public Sphere, Edward Brennan

Articles

Between December 2000 and February 2001 the Irish soap opera Fair City ran an unprecedented, risky and controversial abortion storyline. This came before a looming referendum on the legality of abortion. Here, Fair City was not just offering entertainment, but provoking debate and discussion on a divisive issue in Irish society. In this case, and many others, it appears that soap opera, by promoting such discussion, may contribute to the formation of public opinion in contemporary civil society. Heretofore, most academic studies have overlooked the possible consequences of soap opera for civil society, public opinion and the democratic process. This …

Of Technology And Apocalypse, Or Whose Independence Day?, Christopher Keep

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The scene is now familiar. The cities of the world are in ruins. The Empire State Building obliterated. The White House reduced to rubble. The remnants of humankind gather in the desert, scrounging together what remains of their air defence systems for one last effort to repulse the alien invaders. Haggard but determined, the last American President prepares to lead his motley crew of resistance fighters into the fray. He takes the hand mic, tests it once or twice, and his voice crackles over the speakers. In less than one hour, he announces, aircraft from here will join …

On Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Andrew Miles Jacobsen

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

No book since American Psycho has created as much of a scandal. And few books have been as misunderstood. In 1990, months before it was set to be released, certain violent passages were leaked to the press that, taken out of context, made the book seem like a depth-less celebration of sexual violence. Right after Simon & Schuster canceled the book, an employee of the publishing house said, The most unfortunate thing about this whole controversy is that the book is a piece of shit. It's hard when something like this becomes an issue of censorship, because you …

On Katherine Frank's G-Strings And Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars And Male Desire, Kristen Schilt

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Katherine Frank's book, G-Strings and Sympathy, provides an anthropological look into the fantasies of male strip club regulars in a Southern City she calls Laurelton. Turning the gaze onto the gazers, a group left unstudied in the majority of literature on sex work, Frank unpacks how trips to the strip club are closely linked with discourses about sexuality, consumption and masculinity. Through six years of participant observation at a variety of clubs in Laurelton and in-depth interviews with thirty self-professed strip club regulars, Frank delves into not only why these men attend strip clubs but how these visits …

时尚报刊、广告与当代中国消费意识形态, Qili Lei

Lingnan Theses

本论文针对 1990 年代以来中国社会在经济文化方面的巨大改变，归纳并指出一种新的“消费意识形态”在中国业已历史地形成并取代日渐式微的传统 意识形态，成为宰制当代中国社会的主导力量。论文批判地回顾了1949 年以后中国大陆语境中意识形态涵义的历史嬗变，以四个具有典型意义的时尚报刊和广告案例、广告事件为例，从不同侧面解析了广告形象以及广告产业如何作为 中介与以时尚报刊为代表的文化工业一起，参与当代中国“消费意识形态”建 构的社会过程。

论文通过对“消费意识形态”所遮蔽的当代中国社会问题的揭示，对“消费意识形态”在当代中国社会发生影响的深度和广度的阐释，回应了九十年代以来在中国思想界有较大影响的“后六·四”文化论争中的一些重要问题，展现了文化研究在中国大陆介入现实社会思考和批判的可能空间。

Solutions/Fixations: A Transformation, Davin Heckman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First two paragraphs]

As I write from the heartland, in a small rural town in Northwest Ohio, the world, with the help of my government, is undergoing a process of reorganization.

This has been going on for some time. Media and its various material incarnations have stumbled around the world and back, layering it with new meanings, creating new sites of production. Rays of feedback, echoes, have coated the world with a many-layered web of meaning.

The Electronic Polis: Media Democracy And The Invasion Of Iraq, Jeff Lewis, Kirsty Best

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The American-led victory in Baghdad was announced to the world with scenes of Iraqi citizens dragging down the statues of the deposed tyrant. Like the spectacle of World Cup Soccer or the Olympic Games, the image was transmitted live through the global media network to the billions of people who had been closely watching the three week invasion. President Bush shared in the celebration, announcing the dawn of a new age for freedom and democracy in the Middle East. This new democracy, the president proclaimed, would bring stability and prosperity to the region through the obliteration of terrorism …

Stuffed Animals And The Predicament Of Culture: Lost In The Bedroom Jungle, Walter Putnam

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

These preachings are from the gospel according to Reverend Billy, spiritual leader of the Church of Stop Shopping (qtd. in Kalb). For several years, Reverend Billy has been waging a guerilla war in Lower Manhattan against the likes of Starbucks and Disney, including agit-prop performances where he brandishes stuffed animals atop tall poles like skulls adorning savage palisades. His inversion and subversion of these multivalent emblems of consumer culture reinforce the anti-consumer message he delivers in our era of late capitalism and globalization. His conspicuous utilization of stuffed animals highlights the manner in which these ubiquitous and inconspicuous …

Fixations/Solutions, Matthew Wolf-Meyer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

When the idea of this issue’s theme came to me, I was standing in a crowd of my peers, members of my generation, listening to Godspeed You! Black Emperor. As with all concerts, the performers left the stage to signal their eventual encore, and when they returned, they returned with the announcement that the U.S. military had begun its bombing, and formal invasion, of Iraq. Whether the idea for the issue had come to me prior to this moment, or as a result of it, I am unsure; I had, however, earlier decided that the summer issue we …

Review Of Time For Revolution, By Antonio Negri, John Conley

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Review Of Subject, Society, Culture, By Roy Boyne, Michael Ian Borer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Queer/Crip: The First Queer Disability Conference, Walter (Peter) Penrose

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The Queer Disability Conference, the first conference of its kind ever, held on June 2 and 3 at San Francisco State University, began with great enthusiasm of the participants, many of whom identified as both disabled and queer in some fashion or another. The opening plenary included an intersex activist, who discussed feelings of not being safe in a world where binary notions of sex and gender make being intersex perilous, and hoping that s/he would feel safe at the conference. A diverse group of activists, academics, and disabled queers provided for an interesting mix of perspectives.

Autotopography: Graffiti, Landscapes, & Selves, Deirdre Heddon

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

For some time now I have been interested in autobiographical performance -- some form of the theatrical, in which performers explicitly use personal material in their work. Within this general field of autobiography and performance, one area of research concerns performances that are dependent on being located in personalised space -- what could be called, then, site-specific autobiographical performance. A recent example of this would be the performance Bubbling Tom (2000), by the UK based performer Mike Pearson, which saw Pearson return to the village of his childhood, to reflect upon and re-enact certain memories, events and persons …

Being-There And Being-From-Elsewhere: An Existential-Analytic Of Exile, Farhang Erfani

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragrap]

I find myself in an unsettling position, as I do not know where to begin to talk about a philosophically neglected topic: exile. I cannot hide behind the famous names of the tradition; I cannot speak through them about exile in order to make my inquiry sound more legitimate since most of them did not address the topic. Isn't it interesting though that my inability to know where to start and the lack of legitimacy that I feel are in themselves two typical symptoms of the exiled? In all fairness, exile has become a buzzword and is fashionable …

Rorty's Complicit American Neo-Pragmatism, Haidar Eid

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Despite the obvious French origin of poststructuralism, its paradigmatic resonance can be found in the American philosophical scene, an essential part of which is Richard Rorty's neo-pragmatism -- the theoretical basis of American (post)modernism. However, different from poststructuralism's apparent antagonism to the authoritarian establishments, Rorty adopts the Derridean poststructuralist motifs of the decentering of the subject, and the disappearance of meaning and truth in order to defend the establishment -- or rather, the status quo.

On Guillermo Gomez-Peña's El Mexterminator And Cyber Vato, Michael Benton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

While attending Bowling Green State University in 1997 I had an experience that changed my worldview. I was a teaching assistant in the Popular Culture department and part of my responsibilities included teaching Introduction to Popular Culture (POPC 100) and Introduction to Mass Media (POPC 165). I had been struggling to engage my students in examining the way in which social reality is represented to them through popular entertainments [2]. The majority of my students were white, middle class students from the surrounding Northern regions of Ohio. My students were well-versed in the ongoing controversy over whether or …

The Ruse Of The Social: Human Waste And The Gated Community, Liam Mcnamara

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

One of the central problems of contemporary society is that of “the social”: how it is defined, constituted, conjured into existence, and supported. Jean Baudrillard has employed the term “the social” in his work, but it is never explicitly defined; it is best understood as a form of simulation that has sprung into existence in the absence of symbolic social relations. The social is constituted of all the phenomena that are generally studied by sociology, so is therefore ideologically conceived of as an organic structure that is waiting for analysis. The “social” is society, both as it stands …

On Steven Duncombe's Cultural Resistance Reader (2002), Adam Reed

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

While the debates over the dis/connections between theory and practice have become essentially metaphysical, it is still useful to distinguish between micro, grassroots struggles and macro, ideological political agendas. In a world in which one of the Left's (old, new and contemporary) main achievements has been to merge the micro and macro in the popular imaginary, this distinction helps one appreciate the myriad of forces affecting social change that are condensed in primarily ideological narratives. A similar perspective is called for when one turns to cultural forms of resistance, which are usually erased by political narratives or mystified …

Ideology And Public Sphere: A Preliminary Bibliography, Giorgio Bertellini, C. Paul Sellors

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Bibliography accompanies Bertellini & Sellors article Breaking the Mimetic Contract: Notes on Ideology, Intersubjectivity, and Film Theory

Geek Culture: An Annotated Interdisciplinary Bibliography, William L. Svitavsky

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In recent years, there have been numerous studies on science fiction fans, role-playing games, comic book fans, and the culture of those strongly interested in computers. When a study profiles a group engaged in one of these activities, it is not unusual for the group's participation in the other activities to be mentioned as well. In popular culture (as opposed to studies of popular culture), this overlap has been recognized all along. Each of these groups has been ridiculed as geeks or nerds, and each has subverted those terms into proud self-identification. In his work on media fandom, …

From Johnson To Nixon: Narrative Shifts In Gay Male Pornography, Jeremiah Smith

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility, Michael Bronski argues that dramatic differences occurred in gay male pornographic magazines around the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City. With a sample of gay male print pornography my partner and I have collected, ranging from 1966 to 1970, this article will explore the differences proposed by Bronski and ultimately prove their truth. On the surface, it does appear that the magazines prior to 1969 attempt to masquerade their gay prurience while the artifacts published after 1969 had shed the shame and secrecy of the closet rejoiced in …

[Introduction To] Slippery Characters: Ethnic Impersonators And American Identities, Laura Browder

Bookshelf

In the 1920s, black janitor Sylvester Long reinvented himself as Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance, and Elizabeth Stern, the native-born daughter of a German Lutheran and a Welsh Baptist, authored the immigrant's narrative I Am a Woman--and a Jew; in the 1990s, Asa Carter, George Wallace's former speechwriter, produced the fake Cherokee autobiography, The Education of Little Tree. While striking, these examples of what Laura Browder calls ethnic impersonator autobiographies are by no means singular. Over the past 150 years, a number of American authors have left behind unwanted identities by writing themselves into new ethnicities.

Significantly, notes …

Institutional Language Of Control: Race, Class, And Gender Issues, Harry Morgan

Trotter Review

Controlling discourse is a common practice among colleges and universities, public and private schools, political parties, libraries, departments of government, and funding institutions, just to name a few. The control of discourse is essential for maintaining their power, status, and influence. The goals and missions of these institutions are shaped through conversations between individuals at various levels of power, status, and influence. The ongoing behavior of these institutions — as dictated primarily by those in positions of power, status, and influence — is reflected in discourse among and between themselves, and their counterparts in other institutions.

Spindrift Gazes, Ronald Charles Kurtenbach

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Spindrift Gazes is a collection of short stories that thematically relate to how human dignity is engendered and how that sense of dignity is challenged, undercut, and regained. These fictional constructions are particularly concerned with issues of transformation, how and why change takes place. Of particular emphasis is how differing kinds of human relationships are instrumental in the nature of those changes. Of fundamental concern is to give fictional form to human rights issues.

Advisor: Judith Slater

Sedition, December 4, 1972, Graphic Offensive

Sedition

Volume 2, Issues 6-7

Sedition, October 1972, Graphic Offensive

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Volume 2, Issue 3

Sedition, September 27, 1972, Graphic Offensive

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Volume 2, Issue 2

Sedition, September 11, 1972, Graphic Offensive

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Volume 2, Issue 1

Sedition, August 3, 1972, Graphic Offensive

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Volume 1, Issue 10