American Military Cemeteries: Temples of Nationalism and Civic Religion

Beginning with the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg and the address given by Abraham Lincoln, American military cemeteries would have a dual objective to honor nationalism and expand civic religion. Military cemeteries have been on the leading edge of accomplishing ideals such as equality during their construction, implementation, and development. As military cemeteries were created both domestically and on foreign soil between 1860-1960 they became temples to honor nationalism and civic religion

A study of the narrative of death in Canadian thanatography (1997-2017)

Cette étude explore la représentation de la mort dans une sélection de thanatographies canadiennes. Elle explore les manières dont la peur de la mort et le deuil sont présentés dans les récits. En littérature, la peur de la mort et le deuil de la mort d'êtres chers exprimés par le biais du langage permettent de mettre en lumière les mécanismes de défense face à cette angoisse et les expressions du deuil dans les textes narratifs. Le corpus est composé de douze textes autobiographiques canadiens publiés entre les années 1997 et 2017, qui sont répartis en trois catégories : récits de la maladie, récits maternels et récits du vieillissement. Cette étude commence par une introduction à l'écriture intime, à l'importance des récits sur soi à notre époque, au sous-genre de la thanatographie et à la hausse de leur popularité au cours des dernières années. Ensuite, elle étudie la tradition des études sur l'écriture autobiographique au Canada, où l'étude de l'écriture de la mort fait défaut. Cette recherche se divise en trois chapitres principaux. Le premier chapitre examine la complexité de la narration de la mort dans les textes intimes. Dans la première partie du chapitre un, l'histoire de la temporalité est exposée puisque plus tard dans le chapitre, l'importance de la temporalité narrative est étudiée en détail. Dans la deuxième partie du chapitre un, le développement de la théorie narrative est exploré. Les théories narratives de Mieke Bal, Roland Barthes et Jean Genette ainsi que la théorie de la temporalité narrative de Paul Ricoeur sont les principaux cadres théoriques à partir desquels le récit de l'auto/thanatographie est analysé. Dans la troisième partie du premier chapitre, les notions littéraires de point de vue et de temps verbal sont étudiées dans le récit de la thanatographie afin de mesurer leurs rôles dans le développement de l'intrigue. En ce qui concerne le point de vue, la façon dont les écrivains choisissent de s'impliquer dans la narration et l’importance donnée au défunt sont révélateurs et révélatrices déterminant la signification de la perte et du deuil. En outre, les tentatives inconscientes des auteurs de manipuler le contenu de leurs récits, grâce au point de vue adopté, permettent de saisir la signification du deuil, du vieillissement, de la maladie et de la mort. Une autre technique, celle du temps verbal, est employée afin de créer des intrigues linéaires et non linéaires. La théorie de la temporalité narrative de Ricœur est la lentille à travers laquelle la structure du récit de la perte et du deuil est analysée. La mort, qui marque habituellement le dénouement de l'intrigue, échappe à son organisation traditionnelle ; elle est donc toujours placée au début de la narration, suivie d'une myriade d'ellipses, de prolepses et d'analepses. Cette technique est également étudiée dans la narration afin d'analyser la volonté inconsciente des auteurs de manipuler les histoires et de décrypter la perte et la mort. Le deuxième chapitre, axé sur l'idée de pureté et de saleté en relation avec la mort, retrace la représentation de l'abject dans le récit de la thanatographie. L'abjection, qui est représentée sous diverses formes dans les récits du vieillissement, de la maladie et les récits maternels, est une autre caractéristique commune aux récits de la mort, dont les répercussions sont explorées dans la deuxième section du chapitre. Dans les textes narratifs sur la maladie, l'abject est présenté à travers un excès dans le corps. Le traitement et les soins prodigués aux malades perpétuent l'abjection inhérente à la maladie physique et mentale. Pour mener à bien cette étude, les théories de Susan Sontag sur l'abject et la maladie sont utilisées. Dans la deuxième catégorie, celle du récit maternel, l'abjection adopte une forme plus complexe, définie par la relation entre la mère et l'enfant. La théorie de l'abjection de Julia Kristeva est utilisée afin de délimiter le développement psychologique de l'enfant et sa tentative d'établir une identité indépendante en abjectant la mère, une tentative de devenir un autre moi. Les récits du vieillissement présentent l'abjection d'une manière différente. Les signes révélateurs du vieillissement, qui annoncent la mort, ne sont pas acceptés par le sujet, qui les considère comme les facteurs de définition de l'identité nouvellement acquise et socialement acceptable et d'un sens naissant de soi, qu'il faut parfois adopter ou auquel il faut résister ; par conséquent, le traitement de ce dernier groupe est également modifié dans la société. Outre l'étude de l'abject, les récits de conformité ou de résistance des écrivains sont décrits dans le contexte des grands récits canadiens sur le vieillissement et la maladie. De plus, et surtout, l'abjection est étudiée en relation avec le cadavre, le signe ultime de l'abjection, qui a appartenu/était un être cher, ce qui entraîne un désarroi pour les personnes en deuil. Dans le chapitre trois, nous étudions un autre mode de représentation de la mort, essentiel dans le corpus de cette étude, à savoir les photographies. Qu'il s'agisse des récits du vieillissement ou des récits de deuil, les photographies sont publiées à côté du récit dans le but de renforcer, de compléter ou de contredire la narration. La mort étant une notion abstraite qui échappe à la description, c'est par l'image qu'elle est le mieux présentée et qu'elle est rendue la plus sensible. Il existe deux types de photographies publiées dans les récits : l'une appartenant au défunt et l'autre montrant le narrateur vieillissant ou malade. La première partie de ce chapitre est consacrée aux théories de la photographie proposées par Roland Barthes, André Bazin et Susan Sontag, qui sont les principaux cadres théoriques sur lesquels repose l'étude de la signification et de l'implication des arts visuels. La deuxième partie de ce chapitre développe la métaphysique de la présence de Jacques Derrida, introduite dans son opus magnum, De la grammatologie. La troisième partie de ce chapitre, en appliquant les idées de Derrida aux photographies, étudie le rôle de ces dernières dans la présentation de la mort, c'est-à-dire de l'absence. L'idée de la photographie, qui immortalise les morts, est l'une des méthodes employées par les écrivains pour faire face au deuil. La présentation de l'absence par la présence de photographies, et parfois même de mots, fonctionne à travers un signifié présent, indépendant de son signifiant absent ; cette logique, défiant la structure binaire même du langage, aide les endeuillés - et parfois les plus perdus - à mieux comprendre la mort. Le chapitre de conclusion, en plus de rappeler les principales caractéristiques de la thanatographie, évoque également la notion de nationalité et la représentation du cadre des récits, à savoir le Canada, dans la création et la redéfinition de la signification socialement acceptable de la mort, du deuil, du vieillissement et de la maladie. Ce chapitre de conclusion propose l'étude du cadre et de la représentation de la mort tels qu'ils apparaissent dans les récits d’auteurs appartenant à diverses classes culturelles, raciales, économiques, etc. dans le cadre de recherches ultérieures.Abstract: This study explores the representation of death in selected Canadian thanatography. It explores the manners in which the fear of death and grief are presented in narrative. In literature, the fear of death and grieving the death of loved ones expressed through the medium of language sheds light on narrative defense mechanisms and grief expressions. The corpus is comprised of eleven Canadian memoirs published between the years 1997 and 2017, which are divided into three categories: memoirs of illness, narratives of motherhood, and memoirs of aging. This study begins with an introduction to personal writing, the importance of memoirs in our age, the subgenre of thanatography, and the rise in its popularity in recent years. Afterward, it examines the tradition of personal writing studies in Canada, arguing that there is a lacuna in the study of death writing, which this thesis addresses. This research is conducted in three main chapters. The first chapter examines the intricacies of the narrative of memoirs in representing death. In the first part of Chapter One, the history of temporality is laid out, since later in the chapter, the importance of temporality in the plot is studied in detail. In the second section of Chapter One, the development of narrative theory is explored. Mieke Bal, Roland Barthes, and Jean Genette’s narrative theories and Paul Ricoeur’s theory of temporality in the plot are the main theoretical frameworks upon which the narrative of auto/thanatography is analyzed. In the third part of Chapter One, the literary characteristics of point of view and verb tense are studied in the narrative of thanatography in order to delineate their roles in bestowing meaning to the plot. Regarding the point of view, the extent to which writers choose to implicate themselves in narration and the agency they bestow on the deceased is revealed, further determining the meaning of loss and mourning. Furthermore, the memoirists’ unconscious attempts at manipulating the content of memoirs, through the adopted point of view, shed light on the meaning of mourning, aging, sickness, and death. Another technique, verb tense, is employed differently in order to create linear and nonlinear plots; the theory of plot temporality by Ricoeur is the lens through which the structure of the narrative of loss and mourning is analyzed. Death, which usually marks the denouement of the plot, escapes its traditional organization. Therefore, it is always placed at the beginning of the narration, followed by an ellipsis, prolepsis, and analepsis. This technique is also studied in narration in order to analyze the memoirists’ unconscious attempt at manipulating stories and deciphering loss and death. The second chapter, with a focus on the idea of purity and pollution in relation to death, traces the representation of the abject in the narrative of thanatography. Abjection, which is portrayed in various forms in memoirs of aging, illness, and narratives of motherhood, is another common characteristic among narratives of death, the traces of which are explored in the second section of the chapter. In memoirs of illness, the abject is presented through an excess of bodily tissue, which is sometimes excised. The treatment and care offered to sick patients further perpetuate and distinguish the abjection embedded in physical and mental illness. In order to conduct this study, Susan Sontag’s theories of the abject and illness are employed. In the second category, which is the narrative of motherhood, the abject adopts a more complicated form, defined through the relationship of the mother and the child. Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject is employed in order to delineate the psychological development of the child and its attempt at establishing an independent identity through abjecting the mother, an attempt to become me-other. The memoirs of aging present abjection differently. The telltale signs of aging, foreboding mortality, are unwelcomed by the subject, who regards them as the defining factors of the newly acquired, socially acceptable identity and a nascent sense of self, which must be adopted or resisted at times; consequently, the treatment of the latter group is also altered in the society. Besides the study of the abject, the writers’ conforming or resisting narratives are delineated in the context of Canadian grand narratives of aging and illness. Moreover, and most importantly, the abject is studied in relation to the corpse, the ultimate sign of abjection, which once belonged to/was a loved one, resulting in bewilderment for the mourners. In Chapter Three, another prevalent method of representing death, that is photography, found irrevocably in the corpus of this study, is examined. From memoirs of aging to narratives of grief, photographs are published alongside narratives in an attempt to strengthen, complement or contradict narration. Death, being an abstract notion evading description, is best presented and mourned through pictures. There are two main types of photographs published in memoirs: images of the deceased and images displaying the aging or ill narrator, whether in their prime or when they were ill-stricken. The first part of this chapter employs theories of photography proposed by Roland Barthes, Andre Bazin, and Susan Sontag. The second part of this chapter elaborates on Jacques Derrida’s metaphysics of presence, introduced in his magnum opus, Of Grammatology (1997). The third part of this chapter, through the application of Derrida’s ideas on photographs, examines the latter’s role in representing death, that is, absence. The idea of photography in immortalizing the dead is one of the methods that the writers employ to deal with grief. The presentation of absence through the presence of photographs, and sometimes even words, works through a present signified, which is independent of its absent signifier; this logic, defying the very binary structure of language, helps the mourners grasp a better understanding of death. The concluding chapter, besides reiterating the main characteristics of thanatography, also briefly elaborate on the concept of nationality and the representation of the setting of the memoirs, that is Canada, in creating and redefining the socially acceptable meaning of death, grief, aging, and illness. This concluding chapter proposes the study of the setting and the representation of death as shown through narratives of memoirists belonging to various cultural, sexual, racialized, and social classes in further research

Not Just Pretty Clothes: Fashion\u27s Progressive Operationalization as Seen in Baudelaire and Benjamin; Addendum: Anna Karenina\u27s Appropriation of her Mortality Through Dress

Throughout this double thesis, the author investigates the philosophical significance of fashion. Through her pursuit, she works through the reformulations of the experience of the beautiful as constructed by French poet Charles Baudelaire, then expands her findings with insights from Walter Benjamin and Georg Simmel in their fashion theories. In working through these conceptualizations, as analyzed by fashion and philosophy scholar Philipp Ekardt, fashion\u27s mechanics emerge as a model for time, history, and the human life. To more deeply understand these insights, and for a more insightful reading of Leo Tolstoy\u27s famed novel, the author applies her analysis to the titular character in Anna Karenina. With such a philosophical foundation, a close reading of Anna\u27s vestimentary choices reveals intricacies of her psychological unfolding throughout her turbulent plotline

VR Storytelling

The question of cinematic VR production has been on the table for several years. This is due to the peculiarity of VR language which, even if it is de ned by an image that surrounds and immerses the viewer rather than placing them, as in the classic cinematic situation, in front of a screen, relies decisively on an audiovisual basis that cannot help but refer to cinematic practices of constructing visual and auditory experience. Despite this, it would be extremely reductive to consider VR as the mere transposition of elements of cinematic language. The VR medium is endowed with its own speci city, which inevitably impacts its forms of narration. We thus need to investigate the narrative forms it uses that are probably related to cinematic language, and draw their strength from the same basis, drink from the same well, but develop according to di erent trajectories, thus displaying di erent links and a nities

Diversity and Otherness

This book critically examines multiple ways in which cultural diversity is, and has been represented and handled. It questions the construction of differences in doing culture while emphasizing the fluidity of cultural entanglements. It is an invitation to re-think norms, practices and negotiations of diversity and otherness, to distinguish emancipatory from standardizing approaches and to “transculturalize” the study and the politics of culture

The Afterlife of the Shoah in Central and Eastern European Cultures

The Afterlife of the Shoah in Central and Eastern European Cultures is a collection of essays by literary scholars from Germany, the US, and Central Eastern Europe offering insight into the specific ways of representing the Shoah and its aftereffects as well as its entanglement with other catastrophic events in the region. Introducing the conceptual frame of postcatastrophe, the collected essays explore the discursive and artistic space the Shoah occupies in the countries between Moscow and Berlin. Postcatastrophe is informed by the knowledge of other concepts of "post" and shares their insight into forms of transmission and latency; in contrast to them, explores the after-effects of extreme events on a collective, aesthetic, and political rather than a personal level. The articles use the concept of postcatastrophe as a key to understanding the entangled and conflicted cultures of remembrance in postsocialist literatures and the arts dealing with events, phenomena, and developments that refuse to remain in the past and still continue to shape perceptions of today’s societies in Eastern Europe. As a contribution to memory studies as well as to literary criticism with a special focus on Shoah remembrance after socialism, this book is of great interest to students and scholars of European history, and those interested in historical memory more broadly

Diversity and Otherness

This book critically examines multiple ways in which cultural diversity is, and has been represented and handled. It questions the construction of differences in doing culture while emphasizing the fluidity of cultural entanglements. It is an invitation to re-think norms, practices and negotiations of diversity and otherness, to distinguish emancipatory from standardizing approaches and to “transculturalize” the study and the politics of culture

The Afterlife of the Shoah in Central and Eastern European Cultures

The Afterlife of the Shoah in Central and Eastern European Cultures is a collection of essays by literary scholars from Germany, the US, and Central Eastern Europe offering insight into the specific ways of representing the Shoah and its aftereffects as well as its entanglement with other catastrophic events in the region. Introducing the conceptual frame of postcatastrophe, the collected essays explore the discursive and artistic space the Shoah occupies in the countries between Moscow and Berlin. Postcatastrophe is informed by the knowledge of other concepts of "post" and shares their insight into forms of transmission and latency; in contrast to them, explores the after-effects of extreme events on a collective, aesthetic, and political rather than a personal level. The articles use the concept of postcatastrophe as a key to understanding the entangled and conflicted cultures of remembrance in postsocialist literatures and the arts dealing with events, phenomena, and developments that refuse to remain in the past and still continue to shape perceptions of today’s societies in Eastern Europe. As a contribution to memory studies as well as to literary criticism with a special focus on Shoah remembrance after socialism, this book is of great interest to students and scholars of European history, and those interested in historical memory more broadly

Invoking Flora Nwapa

"By invoking Flora Nwapa, this monograph draws attention to Nigerian women writers in world literature, with an emphasis on femininity and spirituality. Flora Nwapa’s Efuru (1966) was the first internationally published novel in English by a female African writer. With the establishment of Tana Press in 1977, Flora Nwapa also became the first female publisher in Africa. Although Flora Nwapa has been recognized as the ‘mother of modern African literature’, she is not sufficiently acknowledged in world literary canons or world literature studies, which is something this monograph aspires to redress, with the help of earlier studies, especially Nigerian scholarship. Drawing on the Efuru@50 celebration in Nigeria in 2016, this book explores the revival of Flora Nwapa’s fame as the pioneer of African women’s literature. Using an ethnographic rather than biographical approach, it captures Flora Nwapa’s literary practice in the context of the Nigerian literary scene and its interlinkages with world literature. The ethnographic portrayal of Flora Nwapa is complemented with an exposé of a select number of contemporary Nigerian women writers, based on interviews during fieldwork in Nigeria. The book uses concepts like creolized aesthetics and womanist worldmaking to advance scholarly understandings of world literature, which is conceived here as a pluriverse of aesthetic worlds. Exploring experimental ethnographic writing, the book combines the genres of creative non-fiction, descriptive ethnography and scholarly analysis, in an effort to make the text more accessible to academic as well as non-academic readers. Through travel notes the experience of fieldwork is shared in a candid manner. Detailed ethnography from the Efuru@50 literary festival is presented to show the expansion of Flora Nwapa’s fame. In-depth analyses of Flora Nwapa’s literary works and the cultural context of her literary practice cover a wide range of themes, from feminine storytelling and children’s literature, to publishing and digitalization. The theoretical discussion draws on anthropological, literary and African womanist theory to contextualize and explore the central themes of femininity and spirituality in world literature. Inspired by the social change perspective of African womanism and critical decolonial theory, the book makes a contribution to current efforts to explore a more socially just and environmentally sustainable world of many worlds. Paying close attention to gender complementarity and sacred engagements in Flora Nwapa’s literary worldmaking, it shows how world literature can help us create other possible worlds of human, spiritual and environmental coexistence.