5 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
Critical enchantments: reading fictionality in the contemporary novel
This thesis examines the resurgence of an enchanted idiom in the contemporary novel and shows how it frames questions about the type of enchantment that reading fiction can lay claim to, ranging from unresolved mysteries to authors who call themselves mediums. With reference to novels by J. M. Coetzee, Toni Morrison and Ali Smith, Critical Enchantments makes an intervention into the study of contemporary writing by reinstating the importance of the distinction between âthe novelâ and âfictionâ at a time when the critical and political function of fictionality is deeply contested.
In the introduction I delineate the logic that enchantment and fictionality share â their invitation to recognise artifice and yet maintain a readerly investment in the artwork. The project is then organised around three lines of enquiry. Chapter one surveys the recent re-enchantment of literary reading practices: through a discussion of the recent work of critics such as Rita Felski and Timothy Bewes (and their Ricourean, LukĂĄcian forbears), I locate an idiom of mystery and magic that structures Smithâs experiments with the idea of too-close reading as surveillance. The second chapter appraises the construction of fictional âbeliefâ that figures centrally both in Coetzeeâs late fiction and, with recourse to novel and narrative theories of fictionality (particularly Catherine Gallagherâs), illustrates how concerns about belief find articulation in Coetzeeâs recurring figure of the secretarial reader. The final chapter reads Morrisonâs fiction alongside the reflexive critical trends that have formed in response to her creative and critical corpus; reversing my previous focus on fictional readers, I demonstrate the enchanting effects that Morrisonâs extra-fictional anticipation of being read has on her readers.
Taken together, these scenes of critical enchantment tell a story about how the contemporary novel trades on the genreâs tradition of engaging with the mystifying effects of fiction on both readers and writers, and reveals how this mystification is indexical to a performance of authorship that anticipates critically adept readers
Continuity in language: styles and registers in literary and non-literary discourse
Praca recenzowana / peer-reviewed paperIntroduction: "Linguistic diversity captured with the terms style and register is of interest
to literary theory and to linguistic theory, as both are concerned with how
individuals and the multiple social groups and networks that they can simultaneously be members of articulate themselves and how they distinguish
themselves from others, the reasons that speakers/writers may have for their
choice of linguistic forms, the ways in which these linguistic forms can be
creatively exploited in particular contexts as well as with the effects that
the choices and departures from norms or conventions of use may have on
the hearers/readers. Among the issues of common interest to literary and
linguistic theory are the formal, cultural, historical, axiological, moral, ideological, social, psychological, hermeneutic, and other aspects of the structure, production and perception of language.
These aspects are traditionally
studied in relation to general concepts of convention and creativity, literalness and fictionality, objectivity and subjectivity, politeness and power, consensus and conflict, class and stigma, affect, personal identity and allegiance,
and many others."(...
Risky Beeswax: Artistic Responses to the Biopolitics of HIV/AIDS
In my dissertation, I examine risk in relation to HIV/AIDS and queer art and sex; and the problem that industrial mitigations of risk pose to sexually active queer men living with HIV, the kinds of sex they want, and the people they fuck in the era of AIDS industry. I explore this problem through four themes that emerged during my interviews with artists whose practices respond to AIDS and/or queer sex: 1) risking the personal; 2) (radical, ludic, and risky) sexual ecologies; 3) AIDS, its intersections and risky representations; and 4) the role of risk in art and artistic practice. I also use methods of participant comprehension, sensory ethnography, participant sensing, and artistic practice. The role of the interviews in helping me select the themes shaped my theoretical conversation and the three interventions that comprise my dissertation: audio, video, and written. Industrial mitigations of risk fetishize HIV status and HIV criminalization in ways that stigmatize queer and HIV-positive sexual practices, communities, and cultures. Riskas idea and practiceis multidimensional and has been important in HIV/AIDS art/activism since long before AIDS industrialization. I talk about biopolitics and respond to disciplinary- and bio-power through Foucaults concept of pastoral power and his politics of aesthetic self-creation. I understand (and use) risk as a response to hetero- and homo-normative codes, laws, and imperatives.
As a ludic counternarrative to homonormativity, I explore constellations of risky sexual and artistic practices as sites of self-creation through the concept of a dynamic continuum of risk that documents, across four decades of AIDS, the outlaw risky sex practices (anonymous, bathhouses, cruising, public sex) that have thrived in every era. I use this concept as a way to understand a collection of practices that argue against industrial mitigations of risk and the normative and gentrifying impacts these mitigations produce: communities of banality and compliance. Through examination and material production of art that responds to risk in AIDS and queer creative and sexual practices, I conclude that practices and processes of making and responding to art create an escape from the precarity of sexual marginalization, homonormativity, and gentrification
Proceedings of the 21st International Congress of Aesthetics, Possible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Media
The Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade and the Society for Aesthetics of Architecture and Visual Arts of Serbia (DEAVUS) are proud to be able to organize the 21st ICA Congress on âPossible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics: Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Mediaâ.
We are proud to announce that we received over 500 submissions from 56 countries, which makes this Congress the greatest gathering of aestheticians in this region in the last 40 years.
The ICA 2019 Belgrade aims to map out contemporary aesthetics practices in a vivid dialogue of aestheticians, philosophers, art theorists, architecture theorists, culture theorists, media theorists, artists, media entrepreneurs, architects, cultural activists and researchers in the fields of humanities and social sciences. More precisely, the goal is to map the possible worlds of contemporary aesthetics in Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa and Australia. The idea is to show, interpret and map the unity and diverseness in aesthetic thought, expression, research, and philosophies on our shared planet. Our goal is to promote a dialogue concerning aesthetics in those parts of the world that have not been involved with the work of the International Association for Aesthetics to this day. Global dialogue, understanding and cooperation are what we aim to achieve.
That said, the 21st ICA is the first Congress to highlight the aesthetic issues of marginalised regions that have not been fully involved in the work of the IAA. This will be accomplished, among others, via thematic round tables discussing contemporary aesthetics in East Africa and South America. Today, aesthetics is recognized as an important philosophical, theoretical and even scientific discipline that aims at interpreting the complexity of phenomena in our contemporary world. People rather talk about possible worlds or possible aesthetic regimes rather than a unique and consistent philosophical, scientific or theoretical discipline