Matter(s) of Fact
The call for papers for the 20th annual graduate conference in Comparative Literature, Hispanic Studies, and Theory and Criticism at Western is now open! This special edition of the conference is […]
DISABILITY’S ‘PINOCCHIO STORY’: A MODERN CRISIS OF THE DISABLED IDENTITY
“Disability’s `Pinocchio Story`: A Modern Crisis and How to Begin its End” will express an understanding of the disabled identity as internally and eternally schismatic and suggest the disabled occupy a fascinating position of alterity. Like Pinocchio, however, the desire to be something other than what we are, as disabled, is continually threatening our future as an identity group. Part of this threat arrives from inside ourselves, and another hails from technological innovation in a digital world. These threats are expressed in the desire to `pass` or hide our disabled reality in both online and personal spaces, as well as in the question of birthing ethics and designer children. As such, this paper will complicate a recent study on the capacity for disability to be minimized or hidden online (by Bowker and Tuffin) while interrogating whether or not this tendency ought to be viewed with positivity. It will also offer a view of the disabled future that faces potential deletion via technological change. After clarifying this modern crisis, this work will seek to offer a different entry point into understanding the disabled identity which may summon new forms of empowerment. By utilizing analysis of James Burger’s notions on the relationship between disabled birth and identity catastrophe, this paper will work to embrace the unique position of the disabled as that which already faces ends, decay and damage and rises up from it rather than stealing away from its realities. Additionally, utilizing notions of the body helmed by Gilles Deleuze, as well as an understanding of exilic experience brought on by Mimi Thy Nguyen, I will come to the conclusion that the disabled identity has the capacity to operate from positions of damage, exile and potential deletion to advance powerful philosophical conceptions of the self.
“SILENCE: ON JOUAL!”: LITERARY VIOLENCE IN AN OTHERWISE ‘QUIET’ REVOLUTION
Behaviors toward language and language users – by which is meant a wide range of gestures, actions or value judgments made towards a variety of language or its speakers, from violent assault to demeaning joke and everything in between – are not just headline material, they are also the spark from which originate many political fires. Language is more than a way to communicate with other human beings; it is a matter of cultural survival, of life and death.
The Canadian province of Québec provides a clear example of how behaviors toward language and language users can be recuperated extra-linguistically to support a larger social or ideological discourse. There, language has been a cornerstone of a national and individual identity in perpetual construction since the very beginning of European settlement. The most intense linguistic debate to take place in Québec occurred in the 1960’s, a period of enormous and uncharacteristically fast political and social changes. This debate focused almost exclusively on the slang of poor, uneducated French-Canadians, commonly known as joual, which quickly became conceptualized as a dual linguistic entity that was both the symptom of a cultural oppression and a potential tool to destroy this very oppression. This period also marked the first use of joual in the literary field as part of a political and stylistic movement aiming at creating a true “littérature québécoise”. The theorizations of joual by its enemies and supporters, in both literary and political works, has contributed to the larger discourse and praxis of cultural change that was affecting Québec society during the so-called Quiet Revolution.
STUDYING OUTSIDE THE LAW: KAFKA AND THE QUESTION OF BENJAMIN’S POLITICS
This essay will develop an important thread in Benjamin’s work, namely, a conception of politics capable of resisting the mythical foundation of the authority (or the law). This will be done by arguing that an affinity exists between his early writings on politics and violence (1920-21) and his 1934 essay on Kafka (“Franz Kafka: On the 10th Anniversary of his Death”)—an essay generally not considered relevant in considerations of Benjamin’s political theory. It will be shown that Benjamin reads Kafka as descriptive of the ‘mythical’ foundation of authority, while also elaborating possible modes of resistance to such a foundation. This will be shown as a fusing of theological and materialist domains, more generally a gesture at the heart of Benjamin’s thinking. This can be expressed as a certain ‘cunning of theology’: a ‘practical’ theology by which one is able to reclaim a sense of the political in the present moment, allowing for the ability to ‘study’ or act beyond the law. As will be demonstrated, this relates to Benjamin’s broader attempt to employ theology to political ends, or rather to fuse the influence of Scholem with that of Brecht.
REPRESENTATIONS OF THE DYSTOPIAN OTHER(NESS) IN MARGARET ATWOOD’S ORYX AND CRAKE
Being different marks distinctiveness in plurality, especially in a homogenous society. But can this hypothetic difference operate on an internal level? Can the subject perceive a distinctive “I” in the own sense of self? The figurative implications behind these initial assumptions and rhetorical questions about otherness and selfhood signal a concetual shift to the sphere of philosophy. Emphasizing the philosophical repercussions of the concept of Otherness, this paper focuses on exposing the meanings of the notion in connection with identity and selfhood. Accordingly, the critical skeleton of the paper is delineated by Emmanuel Levinas’ analytical thinking and ethical remarks on the notion of Otherness. Starting from the rimbaudian philosophy of the “other” (“I is an Other”), the focus will be on the different connotations on the self in contemporary ethics. Following Levinas’ and other theoreticians’ lines of thought, the focus gradually shifts to the applicability of their theories to the concrete textual dimension. As for Oryx and Crake, in order to better understand the rise of the dystopian fiction and its significance, an insight into the theoretical conventions of Postmodernism is necessary. Contrasting the Postmodern worldview with the Modernist poetics, the change of perception on the issue of the Otherness becomes clearly perceivable. Concepts and phrases such as “defamiliarization”, “dedublation”, “self-transcendence”, “artificiality”, “digital clones”, “denied Other”, “technological apocalypse” occupy a crucial role in deciphering Atwood’s otherness(es). More specifically, using these concepts, I will argue that there are three main manifestations of Otherness in the novel: the Other as doppelganger, the denied Other, and the digitalized embodiments of Otherness. All these variations reflect a peculiar aspect of the dystopian narrative. Therefore, uncovering the mystery of Otherness in Atwood’s masterpiece also becomes a personal journey towards understanding the aesthetics of atypicality in dystopian fiction.
Thesis Bites >> PARADISE LOST: ASTRONOMY, SKEPTICISM, PERSPECTIVE
From “PARADISE LOST: ASTRONOMY, SKEPTICISM, PERSPECTIVE,” Chapter 1 For my purposes in this chapter, I would like to dwell a bit longer on Leonard’s and Danielson’s emphases on ‘the […]
DEATH BY HANGING CONTRA THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS BY WAY OF RANCIÈRE
In this essay I examine the status of political representation in Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (La bataille d’Alger, 1966, ITA) and Nagisa Oshima’s Death by Hanging (Koshikei, 1968, JAP) through the political theories of Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Rancière. Death by Hanging, I argue, is a direct response to the aestheticizing of politics in The Battle of Algiers, a film that Oshima provocatively called a “trashy” melodrama. The two films present radically different ways of approaching political subjectivity and alterity, thus both works take “fight or flight” as a central theme. Within the films, terms such as “criminal,” “terrorist,” “Korean,” “Algerian,” “citizen,” and “nation” are uttered, performed, and explored to uncover the ways each word produces conflicting meanings and effects dependent upon the spaces in which protagonists appear. Ultimately my analysis finds that Habermas’s approach to politics falls short of its lofty ideals. Habermas’s political theory does not aid the protagonist of Algiers in his fight against colonialism. Rather, by placing Algiers against Oshima’s absurdist film, and finding the latter’s parallels in Rancière’s theory, I uncover new ways to cinematically represent individuals who have no formal role to play in state politics.
REFUGE AND SUBTERFUGE: THE AMBIVALENCE OF MIGRANT IDENTITY IN THE MEXICAN-AMERICAN ROAD MOVIES LA MISMA LUNA AND SIN NOMBRE
In Patricia Riggen’s film La misma luna (2007) and Cary Joji Fukunaga’s film Sin nombre (2009), the road is not depicted as a place of escape that represents the freedom of the road often seen in traditional North American road movies; rather, the road in these films becomes a means of escape towards the ideal of freedom that lies across the United States border. In each of these films, crossing the border from Mexico becomes an objective for the protagonists that hope for a future filled with economic stability and political equality. This is, however, an ‘American dream’ that can never be fully realized across the border when a tragic loss of home, family, and belonging has been manifested on the southern side. The following article reveals how the identities of these migrants are caught between the acts of subterfuge and the desires of refuge, creating an ambiguous formation of cultural identity different from that which is established in their homeland. The road, in this way, creates new hybrid identities that illustrate well the modern Latin American condition of cultural mobility across borders.
SPECTRES OF MEMORY AND LANGUAGE IN THE POETRY OF PAUL CELAN
The poetry of Paul Celan revolves around a constant, intimate play of remembrance and oblivion, repeatedly unfolding an unrepeatable past. Following the lines of interpretation proposed by Jacques Derrida in Sovereignties in Question, by Anne Carson in her Economy of the Unlost, and by Edward Casey’s phenomenology of remembering, the present article aims to describe how Paul Celan’s poetic images generate and surround the void, abandon themselves to self-effacement and oblivion, while retracing an abstract practice of remembrance and inscribing memory into language.
ALL THE DANGEROUS STUFF IS ON TOP: HELEN’S QUILT AS EKPHRASIS IN THOMAS KING’S TRUTH AND BRIGHT WATER
The description of Helen’s quilt in Thomas King’s novel Truth and Bright Water is a reinterpretation of ekphrasis that shows the potential for collective healing and support among Indigenous communities offered by artistic endeavours that validate Indigenous peoples’ lived experiences. Focusing on the similarities between the quilt and two famous examples of ekphrasis from Homer’s Iliad, this paper argues that King’s novel has repurposed ekphrasis in a way that makes room for the narratives of Indigenous people by describing works of art that double as works of healing and resistance for their creators.
The Scattered Pelican 