Historical Consciousness, the Cultural Imaginary and Postcolonial Subjectivity in Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being

Historical Consciousness, the Cultural Imaginary and Postcolonial Subjectivity in Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being PDF Author: Cassandra S. Curatolo
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Culture in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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Book Description
This project fuses personal narrative and literary criticism, as it excavates Ruth Ozeki's representations of Japanese culture in the novel A Tale for the Time Being. I argue that her use of stereotype unsettles popular images of Japan by constructing characters who challenge the hegemonic gaze of the Western cultural imaginary. My reading connects continuing investment in these stereotypical representations to the postmodern epoch, where individuals and society as a whole have become incapable of dealing with the past. I explore the links between postmodern amnesia, the disappearance of a multiplicity of perspectives in history and the inclination of Western mass media and popular culture to reproduce stereotypes. I suggest that Ozeki's novel reveals that we continue to rely on stereotypes to understand the world around us, particularly when we seek to know other people and other cultures. Ultimately, I find that Ozeki encourages her reader to develop a historical consciousness, as locating ourselves within the complex web of time, history and politics allows us to better negotiate the narratives and images that inform particular postcolonial subjectivities.

Historical Consciousness, the Cultural Imaginary and Postcolonial Subjectivity in Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being

Historical Consciousness, the Cultural Imaginary and Postcolonial Subjectivity in Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being PDF Author: Cassandra S. Curatolo
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Culture in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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Book Description
This project fuses personal narrative and literary criticism, as it excavates Ruth Ozeki's representations of Japanese culture in the novel A Tale for the Time Being. I argue that her use of stereotype unsettles popular images of Japan by constructing characters who challenge the hegemonic gaze of the Western cultural imaginary. My reading connects continuing investment in these stereotypical representations to the postmodern epoch, where individuals and society as a whole have become incapable of dealing with the past. I explore the links between postmodern amnesia, the disappearance of a multiplicity of perspectives in history and the inclination of Western mass media and popular culture to reproduce stereotypes. I suggest that Ozeki's novel reveals that we continue to rely on stereotypes to understand the world around us, particularly when we seek to know other people and other cultures. Ultimately, I find that Ozeki encourages her reader to develop a historical consciousness, as locating ourselves within the complex web of time, history and politics allows us to better negotiate the narratives and images that inform particular postcolonial subjectivities.

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki PDF Author: Khadija Caffoor
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 11

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Book Description


Atomik Aztex

Atomik Aztex PDF Author: Sesshu Foster
Publisher: City Lights Books
ISBN: 087286846X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
In the alternate universe of this glitteringly surreal first novel, the Aztecs rule, having conquered the European invaders. Zenzontli, Keeper of the House of Darkness, is visited by visions of a parallel world run by the Europeans, where consumerism reigns supreme. Aztecs armed with automatic weapons, totemic powers and blood sacrifice conquer and colonize 1940s Europe, as ghosts of the world wars emerge to haunt contemporary Los Angeles. Atomik Aztex is a hilarious read. A potent concoction, with influences from graphic novels, along with Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo, the paranoia of Philip K. Dick and William Burroughs, and an outrageous cyber-Aztlán mix reminiscent of Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Sesshu Foster is the author of the critically acclaimed City Terrace Field Manual.

All Over Creation

All Over Creation PDF Author: Ruth Ozeki
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 1782111174
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
Twenty-five years after running away from her family’s farm in Idaho, Yumi Fuller returns home to care for her ailing parents and to confront her best friend and her conflicted past. She finds a world changed beyond recognition; and with the arrival of a group of young anti-GM activists, she finds herself caught up in a new revolution. All Over Creation is an exploration of the dichotomies of love and responsibility and a celebration of the capacity for renewal that resides within us all.

The Difference Aesthetics Makes

The Difference Aesthetics Makes PDF Author: Kandice Chuh
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478002387
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
In The Difference Aesthetics Makes cultural critic Kandice Chuh asks what the humanities might be and do if organized around what she calls “illiberal humanism” instead of around the Western European tradition of liberal humanism that undergirds the humanities in their received form. Recognizing that the liberal humanities contribute to the reproduction of the subjugation that accompanies liberalism's definition of the human, Chuh argues that instead of defending the humanities, as has been widely called for in recent years, we should radically remake them. Chuh proposes that the work of artists and writers like Lan Samantha Chang, Carrie Mae Weems, Langston Hughes, Leslie Marmon Silko, Allan deSouza, Monique Truong, and others brings to bear ways of being and knowing that delegitimize liberal humanism in favor of more robust, capacious, and worldly senses of the human and the humanities. Chuh presents the aesthetics of illiberal humanism as vital to the creation of sensibilities and worlds capable of making life and lives flourish.

Doing Literary Criticism

Doing Literary Criticism PDF Author: Tim Gillespie
Publisher: Stenhouse Publishers
ISBN: 1571108424
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
One of the greatest challenges for English language arts teachers today is the call to engage students in more complex texts. Tim Gillespie, who has taught in public schools for almost four decades, has found the lenses of literary criticism a powerful tool for helping students tackle challenging literary texts. Tim breaks down the dense language of critical theory into clear, lively, and thorough explanations of many schools of critical thought---reader response, biographical, historical, psychological, archetypal, genre based, moral, philosophical, feminist, political, formalist, and postmodern. Doing Literary Criticism gives each theory its own chapter with a brief, teacher-friendly overview and a history of the approach, along with an in-depth discussion of its benefits and limitations. Each chapter also includes ideas for classroom practices and activities. Using stories from his own English classes--from alternative programs to advance placement and everything in between--Tim provides a wealth of specific classroom-tested suggestions for discussion, essay and research paper topics, recommended texts, exam questions, and more. The accompanying CD offers abbreviated overviews of each theory (designed to be used as classroom handouts, examples of student work, collections of quotes to stimulate discussion and writing, an extended history of women writers, and much more. Ultimately, Doing Literary Criticism offers teachers a rich set of materials and tools to help their students become more confident and able readers, writers, and critical thinkers.

Tactical Biopolitics

Tactical Biopolitics PDF Author: Beatriz Da Costa
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262514915
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 535

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Book Description
Scientists, scholars, and artists consider the political significance of recent advances in the biological sciences. Popular culture in this “biological century” seems to feed on proliferating fears, anxieties, and hopes around the life sciences at a time when such basic concepts as scientific truth, race and gender identity, and the human itself are destabilized in the public eye. Tactical Biopolitics suggests that the political challenges at the intersection of life, science, and art are best addressed through a combination of artistic intervention, critical theorizing, and reflective practices. Transcending disciplinary boundaries, contributions to this volume focus on the political significance of recent advances in the biological sciences and explore the possibility of public participation in scientific discourse, drawing on research and practice in art, biology, critical theory, anthropology, and cultural studies. After framing the subject in terms of both biology and art, Tactical Biopolitics discusses such topics as race and genetics (with contributions from leading biologists Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins); feminist bioscience; the politics of scientific expertise; bioart and the public sphere (with an essay by artist Claire Pentecost); activism and public health (with an essay by Treatment Action Group co-founder Mark Harrington); biosecurity after 9/11 (with essays by artists' collective Critical Art Ensemble and anthropologist Paul Rabinow); and human-animal interaction (with a framing essay by cultural theorist Donna Haraway). Contributors Gaymon Bennett, Larry Carbone, Karen Cardozo, Gary Cass, Beatriz da Costa, Oron Catts, Gabriella Coleman, Critical Art Ensemble, Gwen D'Arcangelis, Troy Duster, Donna Haraway, Mark Harrington, Jens Hauser, Kathy High, Fatimah Jackson, Gwyneth Jones, Jonathan King, Richard Levins, Richard Lewontin, Rachel Mayeri, Sherie McDonald, Claire Pentecost, Kavita Philip, Paul Rabinow, Banu Subramanian, subRosa, Abha Sur, Samir Sur, Jacqueline Stevens, Eugene Thacker, Paul Vanouse, Ionat Zurr

The Poetics and Politics of Hospitality in U.S. Literature and Culture

The Poetics and Politics of Hospitality in U.S. Literature and Culture PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004408045
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
The Poetics and Politics of Hospitality in U.S. Literature and Culture explores hospitality in literature, language and cinema from a variety of methodological perspectives that illustrate the richness of American hospitality.

Multidirectional Memory

Multidirectional Memory PDF Author: Michael Rothberg
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804762171
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
Multidirectional Memory brings together Holocaust studies and postcolonial studies for the first time to put forward a new theory of cultural memory and uncover an unacknowledged tradition of exchange between the legacies of genocide and colonialism.

Ecocriticism on the Edge

Ecocriticism on the Edge PDF Author: Timothy Clark
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474246303
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
The twenty-first century has seen an increased awareness of the forms of environmental destruction that cannot immediately be seen, localised or, by some, even acknowledged. Ecocriticism on the Edge explores the possibility of a new mode of critical practice, one fully engaged with the destructive force of the planetary environmental crisis. Timothy Clark argues that, in literary and cultural criticism, the “Anthropocene”, which names the epoch in which human impacts on the planet's ecological systems reach a dangerous limit, also represents a threshold at which modes of interpretation that once seemed sufficient or progressive become, in this new counterintuitive context, inadequate or even latently destructive. The book includes analyses of literary works, including texts by Paule Marshall, Gary Snyder, Ben Okri, Henry Lawson, Lorrie Moore and Raymond Carver.