Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Discourse in the Shorter Fiction of Joseph Conrad

Cultural difference is a major preoccupation of Joseph Conrad's fiction. This may be related to Conrad's own experience of foreignness in Britain. Whatever the possible influences of Conrad's life upon his work, attempts at communication and positive intercultural exchange on the part of Conrad's fictional characters of different cultures, races and ethnic backgrounds, most often fail. Misunderstanding, fear of the foreign and the unfamiliar, intolerance, ignorance of other cultures, and the supremacist assumptions of the colonizing nations, these barriers to any meaningful communication often also lead, ironically, to the loss of cultural identity for individual characters, even to alienation and the inability to survive. Cultural difference and failed intercultural bonding also contribute to the development of other themes in Conrad's fiction, especially that of self-recognition. The isolation of characters in unfamiliar surroundings brings them face to face with themselves, stripped of all cultural trappings and support systems. Some seek self discovery in exotic worlds where the romantic notion of the 'mirror of the other' is revealed to be yet another cultural mindset that closes the door on alternative perspectives. Conrad's own inherent romanticism is offset by his strong sense of moral and creative responsibility and his awareness of the snare of romantic exoticism in which several of his characters become entangled. Although some reference is made to the novels, this study centres around the shorter fiction, concentrating on the less frequently discussed short stories. The multiplicity of viewpoints and voices in Conrad's narrative method resembles, and often matches in its ultimate function and purpose, the presentation of different cultural viewpoints and perspectives in his characterisation. Conrad reveals through his fiction that the most tolerant person cannot be rid of all cultural prejudice, which is a limitation imposed by the inevitable social construction of individual identity. In some cases cultural prejudice relates more closely to class distinctions than to ethnic background. Whatever its source, Conrad embraces every opportunity to challenge that prejudice, whether directly or by quietly undermining its underlying assumptions. He remains aware to the last that the problems it raises are greater when disregarded, that they cannot be considered defeated and should never be laid to rest

'Tout est romanesque dans la Révolution de la France.' : a study of French prose fiction of the years 1789-1794

This thesis has three main aims to give information about the prose fiction of the period 1789-1794, to situate these works in their historical and social background, and to compare different categories of prose fiction in an attempt to gauge their effectiveness, their qualities, and their failures. The study points out the previous lack of worthwhile criticism, shows how some authors attempt to shake off the chains of moral servitude, and introduces the difficulties of a practical nature that beast writers during the Revolution. The second chapter discusses writers' adherence to the moral cliché- that virtuous conduct will lead to happiness - and examines ways in which authors attempt to vary their instructive process. The third and fourth chapters’ trace the technical progression of this process; the third, concentrating on licentious novels, concludes that the cliché retains its force, while the fourth, itself divided into three main sections, examines pornographic works that are written, 1) because sex is a saleable product, 2) because the description of the excessive sexual appetites of important figures questions their ability to govern, and 3) because pornography represents a means of portraying both a political faith and a personal dilemma. The fifth chapter shows how fiction incorporates real (i.e. historically verifiable) elements for the purpose of propaganda. Here the manner of the description determines the political interpretation. In contrast, the next chapter introduces allegorical and mock Oriental stories where lightly-veiled fiction consents on the revolutionary situation by drawing obvious parallels. A chapter on Republican fiction shown how writers used the pastoral (itself a form of allegory) to popularise the principle of An II republicanism, virtue. A concluding section on Restif de Ia Bretonne illustrates how one author attempted each of the options open to the fiction of the period

Film Front Weimar: Representations of the First World War in German Films from the Weimar Period (1919-1933)

This first book-length study shows how Germany tried to reconcile the horrendous experiences of the FirstWorld War through the films made in 1919-1933. Drawing on the analysis of twenty-five such films, and covering a wide range of documentaries as well as feature films on the reasons for the outbreak of the war, life at the front,war at sea and the home front, the author sketches out the historical and cultural context, including reviews and censors' reports, in which these films were made and viewed

Imagining the Unimaginable: Psychopathy, (Un)Criminality and the Body

Many scholars have noted that representations of crime and criminality cannot be divorced from considerations of power relations, especially in the way that they often reproduce derogatory and stereotypical images of socially marginalized individuals and groups. By extension, scholars have also analyzed how these images affect how socially normalized subjects are represented as pre-emptively innocent, normal, unimaginably criminal or un-criminal. In such instances, normalized subjects who commit violent crimes are often pathologized in the news. This dissertation departs from these observations and joins this conversation by exploring how the unimaginable criminality of the normalized subject becomes imaginable through psychopathy. Scholars in the area of critical psychopathy research and those who study the intersections between crime, identity/difference and representation have not explored how the logic of psychopathy complements and aligns with cultural imaginings of (un)criminality in the contemporary context. This is my contribution to these areas. Historical researchers of psychopathy have noted that psychopathy was imagined in relation to the body, identity and the normative social order (e.g. Rimke 2003; 2005; Lunbeck 1994). Drawing on their methodologies and insights, I explore this relationship in the contemporary context by analyzing the news representations of five Canadian criminal casesthe cases of Russell Williams; Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka; Lisa Neve; Robert Pickton; and, Charles Kembo. Using a Foucauldian discourse analysis and Alison Youngs (1996) imagination approach to crime and criminality, I demonstrate that psychopathy is amenable to representing the otherwise unimaginable criminality of the normalized subject because of the way that psychopathy is conceptualized through duality: the psychopath appears to be normal which hides their underlying pathology/transgressiveness (e.g. Hare 1999; Rhodes 2002; Weisman 2008). I also make the related argument that representations of psychopathy are bound to a series of interlocking bodily contingencies (e.g. identity and difference), relating to both offenders and their victims. These contingencies affect the work that psychopathy does in constructing criminality, as well as the work that it does not need to do as exemplified by its absence. I conclude by detailing the implications of this study and avenues for future research