46 research outputs found
Perceptual fail: Female power, mobile technologies and images of self
Like a biological species, images of self have descended and modified throughout their journey down the ages, interweaving and recharging their viability with the necessary interjections from culture, tools and technology. Part of this journey has seen images of self also become an intrinsic function within the narratives about female power; consider Helen of Troy âa face that launched a thousand shipsâ (Marlowe, 1604) or Kim Kardashian (KUWTK) who heralded in the mass mediated âselfieâ as a social practice.
The interweaving process itself sees the image oscillate between naturalized âiconâ and idealized âsymbolâ of what the person looked like and/or aspired to become. These public images can confirm or constitute beauty ideals as well as influence (via imitation) behaviour and mannerisms, and as such the viewers belief in the veracity of the representative image also becomes intrinsically political manipulating the associated narratives and fostering prejudice (Dobson 2015, Korsmeyer 2004, Pollock 2003).
The selfie is arguably âa sui generis,â whilst it is a mediated photographic image of self, it contains its own codes of communication and decorum that fostered the formation of numerous new digital communities and influenced new media aesthetics . For example the selfie is both of nature (it is still a time based piece of documentation) and known to be perceptually untrue (filtered, modified and full of artifice).
The paper will seek to demonstrate how selfie culture is infused both by considerable levels of perceptual failings that are now central to contemporary celebrity culture and itsâ notion of glamour which in turn is intrinsically linked (but not solely defined) by the province of feminine desire for reinvention, transformation or âself-sexualisationâ (Hall, West and McIntyre, 2012). The subject, like the Kardashians or selfies, is divisive.
In conclusion this paper will explore the paradox of the perceptual failings at play within selfie culture more broadly, like âReality TVâ selfies are infamously fake yet seem to provide Debordâs (1967) illusory cultural opiate whilst fulfilling a cultural longing. Questions then emerge when considering the narrative impact of these trends on engendered power structures and the traditional status of illusion and narrative fiction
Exploring Written Artefacts
This collection, presented to Michael Friedrich in honour of his academic career at of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, traces key concepts that scholars associated with the Centre have developed and refined for the systematic study of manuscript cultures. At the same time, the contributions showcase the possibilities of expanding the traditional subject of âmanuscriptsâ to the larger perspective of âwritten artefactsâ
TextFrame: Cosmopolitanism and Non-Exclusively Anglophone Poetries
This project proposes a replacement for some institutional-archival mechanisms of non-exclusively anglophone poetry as it is produced under racial capitalism and archived via its universities and grant-bearing nonprofits. The project argues specifically for the self-archiving of non-exclusively anglophone poetry, and by extension of poetry, in a manner that builds away from US-dominated, nationally-organized institutions. It argues that cosmopolitanist norm translation, as advocated by various critics, can function as part of a critique of institutional value creation used in maintaining inequalities through poetry. The US-based Poetry Foundation is currently the major online archive of contemporary anglophone poetry; the project comprises a series of related essays that culminate in a rough outline for a collaboratively designed, coded, and maintained application to replace the Foundationâs website. Whatever benefit might result, replacing archival mechanisms of racial capitalism while remaining within its systemic modes of value creation is at best a form of substitution: it is not an actual change in relations and not a transition to anything. Doing so may, however, allow greater clarity in understanding how poetry is situated within US-based institutions, beyond the images and values that poets and critics in the US often help to maintain.
Chapter one, ââIndiannessâ and Omission: 60 Indian Poets,â reads the anthology 60 Indian Poets, published in 2008 in India and the UK (with US distribution), as argument about the contours of Indian Poetry in English and about the contours of Indiaâs relations in the world. It relates Rashmi Sadanaâs work on the meanings of English in India to decisions made within the anthology, and look further at Pollockâs conception of cosmopolitanism and vernacularity, particular as it applies to the Indian North-East and the poetry of Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih. The second chapter, âArchival Power: Individualization, the Racial State, and Institutional Poetryâ engages Roderick Fergusonâs concept of archival power to explain the 2015 âcrisisâ within contemporary US poetry driven by practitioners of conceptual poetry, and an attempted archival act with regard to the Black Lives Matter movement. The chapter ends with a fragment of Alexis Pauline Gumbsâs recent account of US university life as experienced by Black artists and scholars. That chapter is followed by âThe Poetry Foundation as Site of Archival Power,â which extends Jodi Melamedâs critique of US university value-creation mechanisms to Poetry magazine and the Poetry Foundationâs website. It argues that the Poetry Foundation functions as a de facto arm of the US university system as outlined in the previous chapter, and aids in capitalist value-creation. âTextFrame: An Open Archive for Poetry,â the fourth chapter, is an attempt to begin thinking a replacement for current mechanisms of archiving non-exclusively anglophone poetry. The fifth chapter, âNarayananâs Language Events as Free-Tier Application,â documents work imagined for TextFrame, as an application, that has actually already been built: the poet and scholar Vivek Narayanan adapted Robert Desnosâs Language Events for the classroom using a variety of discrete free services, and the present author collaborated with Narayanan in creating a stand-alone Web application.
Chapters six, seven, and eight function as case studies to be used in creating templates for providing context to specific poems within any built application. Both of the specific moments covered transmogrify the âanti-psychological.â The sixth chapter, âAn Unendurable Age: Ashbery, OâHara, and 1950s Precursors of âSelfâ Psychologyâ thus argues that an anti-psychological ethos is developed in Ashbery and OâHaraâs poems of that moment. It shows that Frank OâHaraâs âPersonism: A Manifestoâ (1959) is almost certainly a parody of Gordon Allportâs theory of Personalism, of related strands of 1950s American psychology, and of the poetry that developed alongside them in the 1930s. It follows other critics in looking at midcentury conceptions of schizophrenia as a specifically homosexual disease, and argues for the importance of contemporarily published examples of schizophrenic discourse, particularly those of Harry Stack Sullivan. It argues that Ashberyâs poem âA Boyâ can be read as directly engaging those ideas, and opposing them. The shorter discussions follow consider the affinities that Some Trees has with anti- or a-psychological theories of mind that were being developed at Harvard and MIT at the time that Ashbery and OâHara were in Cambridge, including generative grammar and critiques of philosophical analyticity. The eighth chapter, âBefore Conceptualism: Disgust and Over-determination in White-dominated Experimental Poetry in New York, 1999-2003,â highlights Dan Farrell and Lytle Shawâs very different uses of lyricâs peculiar staging of voice to foreground the multi-furcation of white identities and voice in response to state pressures.
The last two chapters take up two corollaries, or theoretical concerns that fell out trying to think a cosmopolitanist application. The first, âWhy Not Reddit?â examines existing commercial cosmopolitanist solutions for some of the functionality proposed for the application, and reasons for rejecting them. In doing so, it discusses Thomas Farrellâs construct of ârhetorical cultureâ in detail, and traces a theory of communication and authorship within a community, particularly with regard to thinking history. The last chapter (and second corollary) is titled âEthos in Pedagogy as a Limit on Norm Translation.â It establishes the Aristotelian concept of ethos as a pedagogical limit for norm translation. The studyâs governing interest is not the conflicts or differences between practitioners or tendencies that are detailed here, but their relative incomprehensibility of those differences outside of their formative contexts
Exploring Written Artefacts
This collection, presented to Michael Friedrich in honour of his academic career at of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, traces key concepts that scholars associated with the Centre have developed and refined for the systematic study of manuscript cultures. At the same time, the contributions showcase the possibilities of expanding the traditional subject of âmanuscriptsâ to the larger perspective of âwritten artefactsâ
ELO2019: Electronic Literature Organization Conference & Media Arts Festival, Programme and Book of Abstracts
The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) is pleased to announce its 2019 Conference and Media Arts Festival, hosted by University College Cork. The conference and exhibition will be held from July 15-17, 2019, on UCCâs campus in the heart of Cork city, Ireland. The theme for ELO2019 #ELOcork is âperipheriesâ: delegates are invited to explore the edges of literary and digital culture, including emerging traditions, indeterminate structures and processes, fringe communities of praxis, effaced forms and genres, marginalised bodies, and perceptual failings. ELO2019 #ELOcork will mark the first time that the ELO conference has been hosted by an Irish institution: join us for this momentous gathering
ELO2019 Programme & Books of Abstracts
ELO2019 Programme & Books of Abstracts, University College Cork, July 15-17, 201
Undergraduate course catalog (Florida International University). [2012-2013]
This catalog contains a description of the various policies, undergraduate programs, degree requirements, and course offerings at Florida International University during the 2012-2013 year.https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/catalogs/1070/thumbnail.jp
Pitch and Revelation
Pitch and Revelation is the first book-length study of the poetry, prose, and dramatic literature of the African American poet Jay Wright (1934â). The authors premise their reading on joy as foundational philosophical concept. In this, they follow Spinoza, who understood joy as that affect necessary for the construction of intellectual love of God, leading into the infinite univocity of everything. Similarly, with Wright, joy leads to a visceral sense of what the authors call the great weave of the world. This weave is akin to the notion of entanglement made popular by physicists and contemporary scholars of Science Studies, such as Karen Barad, which speaks of the always ongoing, mutually constitutive connections of all matter and intellectual processes.
By exhibiting and detailing the joy of reading Wright, Pitch and Revelation intends to help others chart their own paths into the intellectual, musical, and rhythmical territories of Wrightâs world so as to more fully experience joy in the world generally. Although the exhibitions of meaning making presented are instructive, but they do not follow the âdo as I doâ or âdo as I sayâ model of instructional texts. Instead,they invite the reader to âdo along with usâ as the authors make meaning from selections across Wrightâs erudite, dense, rhythmically fascinating, endlessly lyrical, highly structured, and seemingly hermetic body of work