The Genetic Structuralism of Lucien Goldmann: The Status and Problems of Method

Unlike Theodor Adorno or Georg Lukacs, Lucien Goldmann did not write a systematic aesthetics. Instead, he left behind a number of heuristic categories, elaborated in several volumes of essays and scattered articles, in which, however, he believed he had provided for a genetic structuralist methodology. Most of those who have commented upon his work consider it eclectic and dismiss him as a mere disciple of Georg Lukacs, usually on the basis of his two most widely known, though not theoretically complete, books The Hidden God and Towards a Sociology of the Novel. Furthermore, their attention has been primarily drawn to his practical criticism rather than to his theoretical essays in which his attempts to construct a methodology for the sociology of literature are original and successful. This is only apparent after one has made a complete inventory of his work, after one has collected and assessed the essays in their entirety, a task which puts to light the homogeneous status of his categories. My essay and selection of translations are an attempt to re-contextualize Goldmann within his properly French, rather than German milieu (this latter being the source of the charges of eclecticism and of the dismissal of Goldmann as Lukacsian) and in relation to. the interactionist epistemology of Jean Piaget, with whom Goldmann studied for two years. The result of such a profiling is that his genetic structuralism, an original synthesis of categories, from Piaget, Lukacs, and Marx, is a formalized model as he had claimed it was

Hemingway, the Figure of the Bicycle, and Avant-garde Paris

Close analysis of Hemingway’s interest in and use of the bicycle as a representation of motion and speed to capture the fourth dimension. Connects this image to other contemporary avant-garde Paris intellectuals and artists, especially the futurists. Inventories Hemingway’s use of bicycles in various works, elaborating on bicycle racing in The Sun Also Rises, Nick’s ride across a battlefield in “A Way You’ll Never Be,” and German troops bicycling through a line of retreat in A Farewell to Arms

The Ordinary Pathos of Ethnic Fiction

La fiction ethnique contemporaine utilise une forme particulière du pathétique comme stratégie en vue de la connaissance ethnique. C’est un facteur majeur dans la construction de l’identité ethnique et l’identification d’une sémiotique basée sur la thématisation de la subjectivité. Légendes, culture populaire, quêtes généalogiques, scènes fondatrices suscitent un espace de solidarité communautaire visant à une prise de pouvoir dans une culture démocratique en proie au doute.There is in much contemporary ethnic fiction a peculiar form of pathos which functions tactically as a way to ethnic knowledge. This pathos has become a major factor both in the construction of ethnic identity and in the identification of a form of local semiosis based on the thematization of ethnic subjectivity. Through the use of legends, folk culture, visions, and genealogical inquiry into the past, this semiosis seeks to create a space of communal solidarity and empowerment within a disenchanted culture of democracy. More and more, ethnic fictions seem concerned with investigating scenes of origin and stories of foundations, and in doing so they systematically set about turning American literature into a haunted landscape. Ethnic fictions summon up ghosts in order to discover a cultural inside, a place of secrecy and refound identity. The pathos inherent in this practice of memory lies in the very form of return that defines ethnie intentionality as an imaginative project

Inventing America: the Culture of the Map

If America is largely the story of its own making, this axiom also informs the semiotic activity behind the mapping of America. Forced to change maps with journalistic frequency in order to keep up with thee latest, most accurate and comprehensive description of the New World, the 16th, 17th and 18th century viewer must have realized how rhetorical and self-conscious such cartographic enunciations were. In effect, they do draw as much attention to the artful play of cartographic semiosis as they do to a presumably more serious scientific content. In the beginning all of America was a cartographic reality ; its drawing, a rather conventional affair of the map's culture.Si l'Amérique est pour beaucoup l'histoire de sa propre découverte, cet axiome informe aussi l'activité sémiotique qui sous-tend sa mise en carte. Contraint, pour rester au fait de la toute dernière description du Nouveau Monde — la plus exacte, la plus exhaustive — de changer de carte avec une fréquence journalistique, l'usager des 16e, 17e et 18e siècles n'a guère pu rester aveugle au caractère rhétorique et autobiographique de ces énoncés cartographiques. De fait, ces énoncés attirent l'attention sur l'habileté de la sémiose cartographique autant que sur un contenu scientifique prétendu plus sérieux. Au commencement, l'Amérique tout entière était une réalité cartographique, et la dessiner mettait simplement en jeu une culture de la carte.Boelhower William. Inventing America: the Culture of the Map. In: Revue Française d'Etudes Américaines, N°36, avril 1988. Les lieux de la vie américaine. pp. 211-224

American Thresholds, the International Scene, and Bare Life in Ernest Hemingway’s \u3cem\u3eA Farewell to Arms\u3c/em\u3e

Not seen. ISBN: 9788888114804

THE GENETIC STRUCTURALISM OF LUCIEN GOLDMANN: THE STATUS AND PROBLEMS OFMETHOD

Unlike Theodor Adorno or Georg Lukacs, Lucien Goldmann did not write a systematic aesthetics. Instead, he left behind a number of heuristic categories, elaborated in several volumes of essays and scattered articles, in which, however, he believed he had provided for a genetic structuralist methodology. Most of those who have commented upon his work consider it eclectic and dismiss him as a mere disciple of Georg Lukacs, usually on the basis of his two most widely known, though not theoretically complete, books The Hidden God and Towards a Sociology of the Novel. Furthermore, their attention has been primarily drawn to his practical criticism rather than to his theoretical essays in which his attempts to construct a methodology for the sociology of literature are original and successful. This is only apparent after one has made a complete inventory of his work, after one has collected and assessed the essays in their entirety, a task which puts to light the homogeneous status of his categories. My essay and selection of translations are an attempt to re-contextualize Goldmann within his properly French, rather than German milieu (this latter being the source of the charges of eclecticism and of the dismissal of Goldmann as Lukacsian) and in relation to. the interactionist epistemology of Jean Piaget, with whom Goldmann studied for two years. The result of such a profiling is that his genetic structuralism, an original synthesis of categories, from Piaget, Lukacs, and Marx, is a formalized model as he had claimed it was

New Orleans in the Atlantic World: Between Land and Sea

The thematic project \u27New Orleans in the Atlantic World\u27 was planned immediately after hurricane Katrina and focuses on what meteorologists have always known: the city\u27s identity and destiny belong to the broader Caribbean and Atlantic worlds as perhaps no other American city does. Balanced precariously between land and sea, the city\u27s geohistory has always interwoven diverse cultures, languages, peoples, and economies. Only with the rise of the new Atlantic Studies matrix, however, have scholars been able to fully appreciate this complex history from a multi-disciplinary, multilingual and multi-scaled perspectivism. In this book, historians, geographers, anthropologists, and cultural studies scholars bring to light the atlanticist vocation of New Orleans, and in doing so they also help to define the new field of Atlantic Studies. This book was published as a special issue of Atlantic Studies.https://repository.lsu.edu/facultybooks/1361/thumbnail.jp

Symposium: Redefinitions of Citizenship and Revisions of Cosmopolitanism—Transnational Perspectives

The following set of essays consists of revised versions of contributions read at, or prepared for, a roundtable discussion at the 2009 convention of the American Studies Association in Washington, DC. The short contributions by the individual authors reflect on the boundaries, the perspectives, and the transdisciplinary dynamics of the field imaginary of transnational American Studies and the specific political role of new notions of citizenship and the parameters of a new cosmopolitanism beyond the limits of the Western tradition.</p