Search results for "Literary Studies"

The Biopolitical Logics of Settler Colonialism and Disruptive Relationality

2016

This essay argues that the biopolitical logics of settler colonialism function according to a naturalization in Western thought of politics as a project of hierarchically ordering life in relation to the sphere of politics. Significantly, such a mode of thinking discredits socio-political orders that operate on the basis of a non-hierarchical place-based relationality of all life forms including the land. Through a reading of Foucault and Agamben in their use of Aristotle, I want to show how hierarchy as a principle of the political is already implemented in the premise they draw upon for analyzing the biopolitical. In the same way it remains unrecognized in their analysis of biopolitics, …

Reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Bewilderment Trilogy” as Bildungsromane

2018

Abstract In this essay, Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Bewilderment Trilogy” is read as a series of Bildungsromane that test the limits of that genre. In these thematically unrelated novels, characters reach critical points in their lives when they are confronted with the ways in which their respective childhoods have shaped their grownup expectations and professional careers. In each, the protagonist has a successful career, whether as a musician (The Unconsoled), a detective (When We Were Orphans), or a carer (Never Let Me Go), but finds it difficult to overcome childhood trauma. Ishiguro’s treatment of childhood in these novels foregrounds the tension between individual subjectivity and the formal st…

Post memory and cinematic affect in The Midwife

2017

The Second World War has proved a rich source of inspiration for fiction films worldwide. The Finnish fiction film The Midwife (Kätilö, Antti J. Jokinen, 2015) is aimed at an international audience with a story that takes place in the context of the Lapland War in Finland in 1944. The film tells of a romantic relationship between a local woman and a member of the German army, in a highly affective manner. This article argues that the film downplays elements that might have interested the national, or local, audience, and that it privileges affect over knowledge. To bring out the film’s transnational character, the article begins by analysing it in the context of national, or local, and glob…

Decolonising European minds through Heritage

2019

By analysing three museums exhibition, this article investigates how the history of European colonialism is approached in an attempt to identify potential for decolonising European minds. The case studies consist of a temporary exhibition (2016–2017) concerning German colonialism at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin; the permanent exhibition of the House of European History in Brussels and the permanent exhibition of the Sagres Promontory (Portugal), a heritage site related to the conquest of the Americas. The analysis will focus on three aspects: 1) acknowledgement of connections between colonial histories and their contemporary influences in and for Europe; 2) the role of histor…

Symmetry and equality: Bringing Rancière into the classroom

2018

Jacques Rancière’s sophisticated critique of critical theory is the first step in his call for a renewal of a theory of emancipation. In the first part of the article, the authors outline this critique. Rancière combines pedagogy, art and policy in his attempt to develop a new understanding of equality and emancipation. The authors try as conscientiously as possible to present this argument in the second part of the article. Social and cultural inequalities are increasing in Western societies and have become inconspicuous in schools, and it is against this backdrop that a theory of equality and emancipation is important in regard to early childhood. How can equality be unfolded and interpre…

The energy communities in Greece

2020

Grecia ha dado un importante impulso a la Economía Social y Solidaria a partir de 2011 con la aprobación de diversas normas que regulan este sector. Entre otras, y siguiendo de cerca los trabajos llevados a cabo por las instituciones europeas, Grecia ha regulado por vez primera en Europa, las comunidades energéticas. Estas se definen como cooperativas civiles que tienen como objeto exclusivo promover la economía social y solidaria y la innovación en el sector energético; la lucha contra la pobreza energética y la promoción de la energía sostenible, la producción, almacenamiento, autoconsumo, distribución y suministro de energía; aumentar la autosuficiencia energética y la seguridad en los m…

Geography of Emotions Across the Black Mediterranean: Oral Memories and Dissonant Heritages of Slavery and the Colonial Past

2019

AbstractThis contribution is dedicated to analysing oral memories about the Black Mediterranean through interviews with people from or culturally linked to the Horn of Africa. The aim is to consider how the interviewees make use of archives to voice their feelings about the past and present in Africa and Europe. I introduce the concept of a “geography of emotions” as a set of different perceptions of Europe and its past. The mobilization of these memories in new interpretative perspectives is part of a dissonant heritage which is actively working inside the European borders in order to produce new cultural identities, to reiterate forms of belonging to black diasporic communities, and to in…

Jason Arthur, Violet America: Regional Cosmopolitanism in U.S. Fiction since the Great Depresssion (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2013, $39.95…

2016

To Be Continued: Serial Narration, Chronic Disease, and Disability.

2019

This article explores the representation of Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease in the television series The Good Wife and The Michael J. Fox Show. We suggest that serial narration offers intriguing ways to rethink the function and meaning of narratives in health contexts, and that the episodic narrative form of television series may afford insights into the structure of medical encounters. Specifically, we examine to what extent serial narration, with its focus on continuity and repetition, might help reimagine the typical narrative of decline, which is implicit in the terminology of neurodegeneration, as well as the narrative of (premature) closure or finitude that often accompanies a di…

Le genre des bris de machines : violence et mécanisation à l’aube de l’ère industrielle (Angleterre-France, 1750-1850)

2013

Les bris de machines constituent un type de violence recurrent en Angleterre et en France au debut de l’ere industrielle. Ce type de violence contestataire a ete peint essentiellement sous les traits d’une pratique masculine, impliquant le triomphe d’une conception virile des rapports sociaux et des conflits du travail. Loin d’etre marginales ou invisibles, les femmes sont pourtant bien presentes dans ces conflits, a la fois comme auxiliaires des hommes mais aussi comme actrices de plein droit insurgees contre les machines qui portent atteinte a la production domestique et a leur mode de vie. En examinant le genre des bris de machines, il s’agit a la fois de suivre comment les machines requ…