Warriors and Mystics : Religious Iconography, Eroticism, Blasphemy and Gender in Punk Female Artists

This paper discusses the relationship between the use of religious iconography related to eroticism by Spanish punk artists, and the gender stereotyping that the appropriation of these symbols aims to destabilize. The desire to shock and disturb the audience places these artists in a position where they have to challenge established values, such as religious and identity ones. There are many examples of male punk bands that openly rebel against organized religion, but the critique of these bands is direct, whereas women use eroticism to expose the patriarchal strategies of the church, as well as to project an image of themselves that breaks all expectations. Religious iconography becomes the tool for the ironic reevaluation and eventual destruction of cultural and gender structures as part of their artistic program.Este artículo estudia la relación entre el uso de la iconografía religiosa y el erotismo en el punk español y los estereotipos de género que la apropiación de dichos símbolos busca desestabilizar. El deseo de epatar y desconcertar al público sitúa a estas artistas en una posición en la que pretenden cuestionar valores establecidos, principalmente religiosos e identitarios. Existen numerosos ejemplos de grupos de punk masculinos que se rebelan abiertamente contra la religión organizada; sin embargo, la crítica que hacen estas bandas es directa, mientras que las mujeres utilizan el erotismo para exponer las estrategias patriarcales de la Iglesia, así como para proyectar una imagen de ellas mismas que rompe las expectativas del público. La iconografía religiosa se convierte de este modo en una herramienta para la reevaluación irónica y la destrucción de estructuras culturales de género, como parte de su programa artístico

Guerreras y místicas: Iconografía religiosa, erotismo, blasfemia y género en las artistas punk

This paper discusses the relationship between the use of religious iconography related to eroticism by Spanish punk artists, and the gender stereotyping that the appropriation of these symbols aims to destabilize. The desire to shock and disturb the audience places these artists in a position where they have to challenge established values, such as religious and identity ones. There are many examples of male punk bands that openly rebel against organized religion, but the critique of these bands is direct, whereas women use eroticism to expose the patriarchal strategies of the church, as well as to project an image of themselves that breaks all expectations. Religious iconography becomes the tool for the ironic reevaluation and eventual destruction of cultural and gender structures as part of their artistic program.Este artículo estudia la relación entre el uso de la iconografía religiosa y el erotismo en el punk español y los estereotipos de género que la apropiación de dichos símbolos busca desestabilizar. El deseo de epatar y desconcertar al público sitúa a estas artistas en una posición en la que pretenden cuestionar valores establecidos, principalmente religiosos e identitarios. Existen numerosos ejemplos de grupos de punk masculinos que se rebelan abiertamente contra la religión organizada; sin embargo, la crítica que hacen estas bandas es directa, mientras que las mujeres utilizan el erotismo para exponer las estrategias patriarcales de la Iglesia, así como para proyectar una imagen de ellas mismas que rompe las expectativas del público. La iconografía religiosa se convierte de este modo en una herramienta para la reevaluación irónica y la destrucción de estructuras culturales de género, como parte de su programa artístico

Manipulative rhetoric in 17th and 18th century sermons: aporia, the borders of reason

It is my aim in this paper to explore the role of aporia as a rhetorical instrument that is used in religious sermons in order to manipulate the audience and try to convince them of a truth derived from the textual evidence of the Bible. In this context, aporia appears as a rhetorical figure by which the speaker expresses to be in doubt about a question, or presents an insoluble paradox or contradiction in the text’s meaning. I believe that the function of aporia in religious sermons has never been analysed as yet. To that extent, I will illustrate my thesis with three examples by John Donne, Jonathan Edwards and Laurence Sterne, three preachers who, faced with an insurmountable border – the necessity of explaining rationally the ineffable – recur to aporia in their discourses. It is my contention that the three sermons that I will discuss here exemplify what Derrida called the “plural logic of aporia” and show different ways in which the ministers can manipulate their audience to make them reach a certain truth, by convincing them of the impossibility to have access to that truth by themselves, therefore relying on the final authority of the Bible

Indestructible Pasts and Paranoid Presents: Jonathan Frazer against Active Forgetting in "Purity"

Remembering and forgetting are linked as inevitably as life and death. Sometimes, forgetting is motivated by a biological disorder or brain damage, or it may be the product of an unconscious desire deriving from a traumatic event (psychological repression). But in some cases, forgetting can be consciously motivated (thought suppression). It is through the conscious repression of memories that we can find self-preservation and move forward, although this may mean, as Nietzsche suggests in his essay “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” (1997), that we create a fable of our lives. In Jonathan Franzen’s novel Purity (2015), forgetting is an active and conscious process; the characters choose to forget certain episodes of their lives so as to be able to construct new identities. Their erased memories include murder, economic privileges following from illegal or unethical commercial procedures, and dark sexual episodes. Their obsession with forgetting the past links the lives of the main characters, and it structures the narrative of the novel. The motivated erasure of memories thus becomes a means by which the characters are able to to survive and confront their present according to a (fake) narrative that they have constructed. But is motivated forgetting possible? Can one completely suppress facts in an active way? This paper analyses the role of forgetting in Franzen’s novel in relation to the need in our contemporary society to deny, hide, or erase uncomfortable data from our historical or personal archives; the need to make disappear stories which we do not want to accept, recognize, and much less make known to the public. This is related to how we manage information in the age of technology, to the “selection” of what is to be the official story, and to how we rewrite our own history

Hacia una estética poliglósica de constructos heteroglósicos: literatura comparada e interculturalidad

The definition of what comparative literature is remains, after many years of discussion, an unsolved problem, more urgent than ever in a time of multiculturalism, (post)colonialism, (post)ethnicity and the rise of cultural studies. In this paradoxical condition, the apparently inevitable globalization of all knowledge clashes with the focus on the local and arguments of essential values collide with the decentralization of any unified system. Faced with this situation, the scholar who practices a comparative approach is torn out between the origins of the discipline, with its focus on the Western canon, more often as the result of an experience of exile, and the urge to popularise and open up the field. Thus, this paper explores the most recent discussions around this debate. Aware of the impossibility of fencing in the many and diverse elements that conform the field, these pages will try to expose the present state of affairs in the study of comparative literature

Interview with Lenny Kaye

Lenny Kaye has been Patti Smith’s long term guitarist, friend and collaborator, ever since they first began together in the early 1970s. He grew up between New York and New Jersey, graduating in American History from Rutgers University, where he later taught a course in the Department of American Studies on the History of American Rock, which became famous because of the large number of students who wanted to enroll in it. A very prolific writer and musician, he has produced an important number of records, as well as collaborated with numerous music magazines. He is the author of two books, Waylon Jennings: An Autobiography (1996) and You Call it Madness, The Sensuous Song of the Croon (2004). Nuggets (1972), his anthology of 60s garage music, is famous for defining the genre. This interview took place when he was visiting Spain in November 2012 with the Patti Smith Group. In it, we discussed the New York scene of the 70s, music, literature, drugs, politics, and many other things