Egalitarian Strangeness

Egalitarian Strangeness PDF Author: Edward J. Hughes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1800348428
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
The formulation 'egalitarian strangeness' is a direct borrowing from Courts voyages au pays du peuple [Short Voyages to the Land of the People] (1990), a collection of essays by the contemporary French thinker Jacques Ranci�re. Perhaps best known for his theory of radical equality as set out in Le Ma�tre ignorant [The Ignorant Schoolmaster] (1987), Ranci�re reflects on ways in which a hierarchical social order based on inequality can come to be unsettled. In the democracy of literature, for example, words and sentences, he argues, serve to capture any life and to make that available to any reader. The present book explores embedded forms of social and cultural apportionment' in a range of modern and contemporary French texts (including prose fiction, socially engaged commentary, and autobiography), while also identifying scenes of class disturbance and egalitarian encounter. Part One considers the 'refrain of class' audible in works by Claude Simon, Charles P�guy, Thierry Beinstingel, Marie Ndiaye, and Gabriel Gauny. It also examines how these authors' practices of language connect with that refrain. In Part Two, Hughes analyzes forms of domination and dressage with reference to Simone Weil's mid-1930s factory journal, Paul Nizan's novel of class alienation Antoine Bloy� from the same decade, and Pierre Michon's Vies minuscules [Small Lives] (1984) with its focus on obscure rural lives. The reflection on how these narratives draw into contiguity antagonistic identities is extended in Part Three, where individual chapters on Proust and the contemporary authors Fran�ois Bon and Didier Eribon demonstrate ways in which enduring forms of cultural distribution are both consolidated and contested.

Egalitarian Strangeness

Egalitarian Strangeness PDF Author: Edward J. Hughes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1800348428
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Get Book Here

Book Description
The formulation 'egalitarian strangeness' is a direct borrowing from Courts voyages au pays du peuple [Short Voyages to the Land of the People] (1990), a collection of essays by the contemporary French thinker Jacques Ranci�re. Perhaps best known for his theory of radical equality as set out in Le Ma�tre ignorant [The Ignorant Schoolmaster] (1987), Ranci�re reflects on ways in which a hierarchical social order based on inequality can come to be unsettled. In the democracy of literature, for example, words and sentences, he argues, serve to capture any life and to make that available to any reader. The present book explores embedded forms of social and cultural apportionment' in a range of modern and contemporary French texts (including prose fiction, socially engaged commentary, and autobiography), while also identifying scenes of class disturbance and egalitarian encounter. Part One considers the 'refrain of class' audible in works by Claude Simon, Charles P�guy, Thierry Beinstingel, Marie Ndiaye, and Gabriel Gauny. It also examines how these authors' practices of language connect with that refrain. In Part Two, Hughes analyzes forms of domination and dressage with reference to Simone Weil's mid-1930s factory journal, Paul Nizan's novel of class alienation Antoine Bloy� from the same decade, and Pierre Michon's Vies minuscules [Small Lives] (1984) with its focus on obscure rural lives. The reflection on how these narratives draw into contiguity antagonistic identities is extended in Part Three, where individual chapters on Proust and the contemporary authors Fran�ois Bon and Didier Eribon demonstrate ways in which enduring forms of cultural distribution are both consolidated and contested.

On Both Sides of the Tracks

On Both Sides of the Tracks PDF Author: Morgane Cadieu
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226830357
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
An analysis of social mobility in contemporary French literature that offers a new perspective on figures who move between social classes. Social climbers have often been the core characters of novels. Their position between traditional tiers in society makes them touchstones for any political and literary moment, including our own. Morgane Cadieu’s study looks at a certain kind of social climber in contemporary French literature whom she calls the parvenant. Taken from the French term parvenu, which refers to one who is newly arrived, a parvenant is a character who shuttles between social groups. A parvenant may become part of a new social class but devises literary ways to come back, constantly undoing any fixed idea of social affiliation. Focusing on recent French novels and autobiographies, On Both Sides of the Tracks speaks powerfully to issues of emancipation and class. Cadieu offers a fresh critical look at tales of social mobility in the work of Annie Ernaux, Kaoutar Harchi, Michel Houellebecq, Édouard Louis, and Marie NDiaye, among others, shedding fascinating light on upward mobility today as a formal, literary problem.

The Politics of Bodies

The Politics of Bodies PDF Author: Laura Quintana
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538143585
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Is it due to lack of critical agency that precarious persons opt, time and again, for political views that contribute to their marginalization? How should we understand that alleged loss of critical agency and how could it be countered? Influential perspectives in critical theory have answered these questions by highlighting how certain ideological mechanisms, incorporated thoughtlessly by the most vulnerable bodies, function to obscure their interests and the causes of the condition they find themselves in. Through an original interpretation of Jacques Rancière’s thought, but also going beyond it, The Politics of Bodies establishes a different horizon of reflection. Laura Quintana’s main hypothesis is that the lack of critical agency today has more to do with a loss of the desire for transformation, fostered by neoliberal consensual dynamics, than with techniques of deceit and manipulation. In developing her interpretation of Rancière’s thought, Quintana provides an analysis of certain aesthetic-political and socioeconomic conditions of the historical present, anchored mainly in Latin America. Thus, she addresses the corporeal transformations produced by emancipatory practices, the ways in which they affect configurations of power, and the manner in which they can be disseminated in and, in turn, alter the political landscape.

Transpositions

Transpositions PDF Author: Alison Rice
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1800345526
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This publication benefited from the support of the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at the University of Notre Dame. This collective volume concentrates on the concept of transposition, exploring its potential as a lens through which to examine recent Francophone literary, cinematic, theatrical, musical, and artistic creations that reveal multilingual and multicultural realities. The chapters are composed by leading scholars in French and Francophone Studies who engage in interdisciplinary reflections on the ways transcontinental movement has influenced diverse genres. It begins with the premise that an attentiveness to migration has inspired writers, artists, filmmakers, playwrights and musicians to engage in new forms of translation in their work. Their own diverse backgrounds combine with their awareness of the itineraries of others to have an impact on the innovative languages that emerge in their creative production. These contemporary figures realize that migratory actualities must be transposed into different linguistic and cultural contexts in order to be legible and audible, in order to be perceptible—either for the reader, the listener, or the viewer. The novels, films, plays, works of art and musical pieces that exemplify such transpositions adopt inventive elements that push the limits of formal composition in French. This work is therefore often inspiring as it points in evocative ways toward fluid influences and a plurality of interactions that render impossible any static conception of being or belonging.

Autofiction

Autofiction PDF Author: Antonia Wimbush
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1800859910
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Autofiction: A Female Francophone Aesthetic of Exile explores the multiple aspects of exile, displacement, mobility, and identity as expressed in contemporary autofictional work written in French by women writers from across the francophone world. Drawing on postcolonial theory, gender theory, and autobiographical theory, the book analyses narratives of exile by six authors who are shaped by their multiple locales of attachment: Kim Lef�vre (Vietnam/France), Gis�le Pineau (Guadeloupe/mainland France), Nina Bouraoui (Algeria/France), Mich�le Rakotoson (Madagascar/France), V�ronique Tadjo (C�te d'Ivoire/France), and Abla Farhoud (Lebanon/Quebec). In this way, the book argues that the French colonial past continues to mould female articulations of mobility and identity in the postcolonial present. Responding to gaps in the critical discourse of exile, namely gender, this book brings genre in both its forms - gender and literary genre - to bear on narratives of exile, arguing that the reconceptualization of categories of mobility occurs specifically in women's autofictional writing. The six authors complicate discussions of exile as they are highly mobile, hybrid subjects. This rootless existence, however, often renders them alienated and 'out of place'. While ensuring not to trivialize the very real difficulties faced by those whose exile is not a matter of choice, the book argues that the six authors experience their hybridity as both a literal and a metaphorical exile, a source of both creativity and trauma.

Jean-Claude Charles: A Reader’s Guide

Jean-Claude Charles: A Reader’s Guide PDF Author: Martin Munro
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1802070699
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Despite being a major figure of Haitian literature, Jean-Claude Charles (1949-2008) has received relatively little scholarly attention to date. The present volume seeks to serve as an introduction to the work and universe of this unique and capital writer to an English-language readership. The essays in the collection are organized along three major axes: contextual articles, placing Charles’ work within the larger Haitian literary landscape, punctual articles, addressing specific themes in a selection of Charles’ books, and author testimonials, attesting to Charles’ work’s importance both to his contemporaries and to a new generation of writers. With the ongoing republication of Charles’ work by Mémoire d’encrier in Montreal, and the increasing interest in the author, the proposed volume is timely and necessary, and is in large part a critical accompaniment to the republishing programme. Described by Dany Laferrière as “most brilliant Haitian author of his generation,” Charles has until recently remained largely unread and little understood. As the various chapters in the volume show, Charles is an author for now, and the collection will accompany readers seeking strikingly original insights on issues such as race, migration, and exile, and the role of the author and literature in times of crisis.

Twenty-First-Century Symbolism

Twenty-First-Century Symbolism PDF Author: Nikolaj Lübecker
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1802070680
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
How do the writings of Verlaine, Baudelaire, and Mallarmé speak to our time? Why should we continue to read these poets today? How might a contemporary reading of their poetry differ from readings delivered in previous centuries? Twenty-First-Century Symbolism argues that Verlaine, Baudelaire, and Mallarmé prefigure a view of human subjectivity that is appropriate for our times: we cannot be separated from the worlds in which we live and evolve; human beings both mediate and are mediations of the environments we traverse and that traverse us, whether these are natural, urban, linguistic, or technological environments. The ambition of the book is therefore twofold: on the one hand, it aims to offer new readings of the three poets, demonstrating their continued relevance for contemporary debates, putting them into dialogue with a philosophical corpus that has not yet played a role in the study of nineteenth century French poetry; on the other, the book relies on the three poets to establish an understanding of human subjectivity that is in tune with our twenty-first century concerns.

The Aesthetics of Strangeness

The Aesthetics of Strangeness PDF Author: W. Puck Brecher
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824839129
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Eccentric artists are “the vagaries of humanity” that inhabit the deviant underside of Japanese society: This was the conclusion drawn by pre–World War II commentators on most early modern Japanese artists. Postwar scholarship, as it searched for evidence of Japan’s modern roots, concluded the opposite: The eccentric, mad, and strange are moral exemplars, paragons of virtue, and shining hallmarks of modern consciousness. In recent years, the pendulum has swung again, this time in favor of viewing these oddballs as failures and dropouts without lasting cultural significance. This work corrects the disciplinary (and exclusionary) nature of such interpretations by reconsidering the sudden and dramatic emergence of aesthetic eccentricity during the Edo period (1600–1868). It explains how, throughout the period, eccentricity (ki) and madness (kyō) developed and proliferated as subcultural aesthetics. By excavating several generations of early modern Japan’s eccentric artists, it demonstrates that individualism and strangeness carried considerable moral and cultural value. Indeed, Edo society fetishized various marginal personae—the recluse, the loser, the depraved, the outsider, the saint, the mad genius—as local heroes and paragons of moral virtue. This book concludes that a confluence of intellectual, aesthetic, and social conditions enabled multiple concurrent heterodoxies to crystallize around strangeness as a prominent cultural force in Japanese society. A study of impressive historical and disciplinary breadth, The Aesthetics of Strangeness also makes extensive use of primary sources, many previously overlooked in existing English scholarship. Its coverage of the entire Edo period and engagement with both Chinese and native Japanese traditions reinterprets Edo-period tastes and perceptions of normalcy. By wedding art history to intellectual history, literature, aesthetics, and cultural practice, W. Puck Brecher strives for a broadly interdisciplinary perspective on this topic. Readers will discover that the individuals that form the backbone of his study lend credence to a new interpretation of Edo-period culture: a growing valuation of eccentricity within artistic and intellectual circles that exerted indelible impacts on mainstream society. The Aesthetics of Strangeness demystifies this emergent paradigm by illuminating the conditions and tensions under which certain rubrics of strangeness— ki and kyō particularly—were appointed as aesthetic criteria. Its revision of early modern Japanese culture constitutes an important contribution to the field.

Sex, Sea, and Self

Sex, Sea, and Self PDF Author: Jacqueline Couti
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1800857268
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Sex, Sea, and Self reassesses the place of the French Antilles and French Caribbean literature within current postcolonial thought and visions of the Black Atlantic. Using a feminist lens, this study examines neglected twentieth-century French texts by Black writers from Martinique and Guadeloupe, making the analysis of some of these texts available to readers of English for the first time. This interdisciplinary study of female and male authors reconsiders their political strategies and the critical role of French creoles in the creation of their own history. This approach recalibrates overly simplistic understandings of the victimization and alienation of French Caribbean people. In the systems of cultural production under consideration, sexuality constitutes an instrument of political and cultural consciousness in the chaotic period between 1924 and 1948. Studying sexual imagery constructed around female bodies demonstrates the significance of agency and the legacy of the past in cultural resistance and political awareness. Sex, Sea, and Self particularly highlights Antillean women intellectuals’ theoretical contributions to Caribbean critical theory. Therefore, this analysis illuminates debates on the multifaceted and conflicted relationships between France and its overseas departments and expands ideas of nationhood in the Black Atlantic and the Americas.

The Topographic Imaginary

The Topographic Imaginary PDF Author: Ari J. Blatt
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1800855567
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Since the early 1980s, art photographers from metropolitan France have been training their lenses on ordinary landscapes throughout the country they call home. The Topographic Imaginary is the first book to study this important and flourishing trend. It examines work by artists who meld documentary and creative modes to attune viewers to places that mainstream culture tends to tune out, but which, as Ari J. Blatt argues, are in fact more meaningful than they initially appear. From views of building sites in Paris, peri-urban edgelands, or a tangle of trees in a forest, to those that ponder the play of light and shadow on roadside fields in Normandy or the tacky colors painted on dated village shopfronts, images that signal the emergence of a “topographic turn” in contemporary French photography constitute new ways of seeing and sensing France’s diverse national territory. As Blatt suggests, they also represent a visual laboratory through which to investigate how landscape “scapes” our understanding of French culture. In their efforts to reimagine a more traditional and time-worn idea of France’s shared common space, topographic photographs animate conversations about capital and class; cities and their peripheries; the politics and impact of development; migration and borders; memory, history, and affect; empire and postcolonialism; national identity; and the changing environment. The Topographic Imaginary thus reveals how attending to place in pictures provides valuable insight into the disposition of a nation in flux.