‘Global’ Identity or the (Ir)Reducible Other: The Cultural Logic of Global Identity in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Man with the Twisted Lip

Author(s): Jin Lee / Language(s): English / Issue: 27/2016

After the Syrian civil war, deaths of those fleeing crisis areas have tragically become a regular news item. Not new to the world, however, such crises emerge from tensions between identity and difference as codified in international politics, whereby refugees and migrants become the Other and subject to unyielding universals, such as the law or narrow concepts of what is right. Indeed, the cultural logic of “global identities” informing the current refugee and migrant crisis seems recurrent, as exemplified in the recent cases of the Tamils from Sri Lanka and the Somalis. The cultural logic of global identity is also reflected in the popular nineteenth-century novella by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Man with the Twisted Lip, in which the main character disguises himself as a professional beggar to appeal to middle class values in order to incite their guilty consciences. Drawing on Ian Baucom, Marc Shell, and Jean-Joseph Goux, this article argues that the main character’s actions reflect and embody the cultural logic of the global politico-economy in late nineteenth century London. As such, Doyle’s novella illustrates the Derridean notion of hospitality by revealing that “identity and difference are mutually constitutive” (Baker 109) and offers insightful commentary on the current refugee and migrant crisis.

‘IN DRAG’: PERFORMATIVITY AND AUTHENTICITY IN ZADIE SMITH’S NW

Author(s): Beatriz Pérez Zapata / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2014

Zadie Smith’s latest novel, NW, presents a multiverse in which multiplicity is driven into homogeneization by the forces of those dominant discourses that attempt to suppress the category of the “Other.” This paper focuses on the development of the two female protagonists. Their opposing attitudes towards motherhood, together with their confrontation with their origins, bring to the fore the performativity found in the discourses of gender, sexuality, class, and race. Thus, this paper will explore authenticity and performativity in a contemporary context, where patriarchal and neocolonial discourses still apply.

“BAŞKA” HAYVAN BAŞKA DİL: BİLGE KARASU YAZININDA TEMSİL SORUNU

Author(s): Adem Gergöy / Language(s): Turkish / Issue: 27/2019

Bilge Karasu has a unique position in Turkish literature due to the forms of representation he developed for animals. In these texts, tools such as metaphor, symbol and allegory are seen as an issue due to their human-centered structure, and the ways of representation that can highlight the "otherness” of animals are sought. This article investigates the functioning of this literary language for animals based on Bilge Karasu's “Yengece Övgü” and Kılavuz texts. These texts are discussed in the light of the concepts that Jacques Derrida put forward in the framework of the “animal question.“ According to Derrida's new approach, language is central to the epistemology of ethical and political problems in the context of human-animal relationships. The main reason for this is that language is fed from the humananimal distinction and carries this distinction to the cultural ground. Thus, language opens the door to two complementary problems in the human-animal relationship: One cannot imagine animals as they are because of the reductive nature of language. This obstacle throws animals out of life and opens endless ways of exploitation against them. Representation tools such as metaphor, symbol and allegory form the scope of this problem in the literary field. So, is it possible to speak of a literary language that can represent animals in a non-metaphorical way? Karasu's interest in the representation of animals in the fictional text shapes certain aspects of its aesthetic organization such as language, narrative, fiction and readers. The study suggests that Karasu constructs animals on a ground that does not center human beings and tries to design an “exemplary reader” for this. Accordingly, animals have the opportunity to be represented in the fictional universe by means of techniques such as "metafiction ,” “irony." As a result, a face-to-face, direct encounter area is created between the animal and the reader.

“Bread and circuses”: The Spectacular Technology of Bare Life in "The Hunger Games"

Author(s): Fran Cettl / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2014

I will argue in this essay that the political universe depicted by The Hunger Games and the biopolitical theories of Giorgio Agamben—for which he takes his cue from Michel Foucault—can mutually inform one another. In other words, I will try to read the two film sequels The Hunger Games (2012) and Catching Fire (2013), adapted from the novels (and with two more sequels announced that will cover the narrative of the final novel in the trilogy) from a biopolitical perspective. I will follow Agamben’s understanding of biopolitics as a political decision through which sovereign power decides which life can be killed and thus manages life/death, as linked historically both in Agamben and The Hunger Games to the sovereignty of the modern nation-state. Relatedly, modern science and technology come to play a crucial role in deciding on life/death, and therefore in the second part of the essay, I will look at how in Agamben and the Hunger Games political universe we can associate the management of death with a particular modern technological development—technology of the “spectacle”, as a certain management of attention.

“Brevity is the soul of wit”: Ian McEwan’s Short Prose

Author(s): Monica Cojocaru / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2017

Though often relegated to ancillary scholarly inquiry and overshadowed by the popularity of the novel typically at the centre of academic consideration and appreciation, short prose has captured the attention of contemporary critics who have rehabilitated it as a living form of literature and a valid subject for academic debate. Making his literary debut with two collections of short stories largely regarded as ‘shock lit,’ Ian McEwan has staged repeated comebacks to short prose throughout his career, a form that he has remodelled and refined in different manners and contexts. Centring on the writer’s early short stories as well as his more ‘mature’ novellas and his integration of the short story form into his lengthier works, my article discusses McEwan’s career-long interest in the short form and the ways in which he handles the genre, evolving from his initial shocking tales devoid of all morality to more ethically infused and self-reflexive renditions of short fiction.

“C’est la vie, c’est la narration”: The Reader in Christine Brooke-Rose’s Textermination and David Lodge’s Small World

Author(s): Corina Selejan / Language(s): English / Issue: 26/2016

This article considers two metafictional academic novels from the reader’s point of view. It argues that this critical vantage point is suggested (if not imposed) by the fictional texts themselves. The theoretical texts informing this reading pertain either to reader response or to theories of metafiction, in an attempt to uncover conceptual commonalities between the two. Apart from a thematic focus on academic conferences as pilgrimages and the advocacy of reading as an ethically valuable activity, the two novels also share a propensity for intertextuality, a blurring of the boundaries between fictional and critical discourse, as well as a questioning of the borderline between fiction and reality. The reading of fiction is paralleled to the reading of (one’s own) life and self-reflexivity emerges as crucial to both types of literacy.

“Children are the Most Ridiculous Things Ever Invented:” Jeanette Winterson’s Tanglewreck

“Children are the Most Ridiculous Things Ever Invented:” Jeanette Winterson’s Tanglewreck

Author(s): Papatya Alkan-Genca / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2018

Tanglewreck (2006) is Jeanette Winterson’s second book for children, the first being King of Capri (2004). It is a rich blend of fact and fiction, different writing modes such as the realistic and the fantastic, different genres such as detective fiction and fairy tale, and different epistemological domains such as literature and science. It follows various familiar tropes of children’s literature: an orphaned kid suffering at the hands of a terrible adult until one day he/she, through a series of adventures, reaches a happy resolution. Although Tanglewreck employs these tropes, it also departs from conventional children’s literature in several respects. Therefore, this article looks into the ways Winterson installs and deviates from tropes and motifs of children’s literature, and it argues that this deviation is most evident in two aspects: the novel’s incorporation of scientific knowledge through which the text becomes a host of themes that are traditionally associated with adult literature, and its abundant intertextual references which situate Tanglewreck within a postmodern mode of writing.

“IN HIS BLOOD THE PLUNGE AND RISE OF ELEVATORS”: POSTHUMAN MANHATTAN IN STEVEN MILLHAUSER'S MARTIN DRESSLER

Author(s): Anamaria Schwab / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2016

In his novel Martin Dressler (1997), contemporary American author StevenMillhauser writes an alternative, fictional history of urban development in 19thcentury Manhattan to resettle the perceived boundaries between the human and thenon-human. More precisely, Millhauser explores the relationship between humanbeing and artefacts in the metropolis, to reflect the increasing reification of theindividual in the context of modern excessive production. As I shall argue in thepresent essay, the novel adopts a subtle yet convincing posthuman perspective, whichhe inscribes into the context of 19th century Manhattan to suggest that the exhaustionof the human started occurring already more than a century ago. Sinceposthumanism is associated especially with the end of the 20th century, what thenovel represents is, I argue, a form of avant la lettre posthumanism that revealsthe embryonic stage of the more recent phenomenon of reification.The essay is divided into two halves that each deals with the trajectory of the titlecharacter. The first half discusses Martin Dressler’s spectacular material and classascendancy from his humble beginnings, and the second one, his descendanttrajectory. Martin’s ascendancy is connected with his efforts to reorganize andredefine a chaotic, modern Manhattan from an architectural point of view, at theend of the 19th century. His descendant trajectory results from his failure to do so.Apart from the issues of spatiality, temporality plays a key role in the novel,considering the impermanent nature of both Manhattan and modernity itself. Theimpossibility of a transhistorical human essence is also seen in relationship withthe posthumanist approach to the novel.

Њемачка књижевност у босанскохерцеговачким књижевним часописима Нада (1895–1903) и Зора (1896–1901)

Author(s): Ljiljana S. Aćimović / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 19/2019

This paper explores and analyses the extent to which German literature is represented in the literary journals of Nada and Zora published in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The reason the author decided on these two journals was the fact that both of them were published at the turn of the century: Nada was published in Sarajevo in the period of 1895-1903, while Zora was published in Mostar from 1896 to 1901. Given the fact that the reasons for starting each of them were diametrically opposed, the analysis of the representation of German literature in both is a very interesting issue, with the reception of these texts explored on a separate basis. This encompasses the translation of lyric and prose texts, as well as notes, reviews, essays, critical accounts, and pieces of information on German literature. In the final section of the paper, the author, by means of the comparative method, draws a parallel between the two journals, along with providing judgement on the role and significance of the German literary texts reviewed within them.

Фэнтези как жанрово-тематический канон массовой литературы в России

Author(s): Lisa Demidova / Language(s): Russian / Issue: 6/2016

The purpose of this article is to identify a fantasy literature in terms of the Russian literary tradition. This research contains the analysis of scientific points of view on this issue. The article also raises a question about a definition of the genre and the fiction (popular literature). The main results of our study is the fact that the Russian fantasy literature is the one of genre-thematic canons.

Хамбург по време на „корона“

Author(s): Lyubomir Georgiev / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1 (11)/2020

Ханиф Курейши – раси, класи, секс и фарс

Author(s): Vesela Katsarova / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 3/2015

The contemporary British novelist of Pakistani descent Hanif Kureishi (1954), a highly prolific writer, expresses his artistic credo through a character, a theatre producer, who claims that an artistic work can be successful if it discusses the topical issues of race, class and sex through farce. Kureishi’s seven novels deal with these problems in varying degrees. His best novel so far, The Buddha of Suburbia (1990), encompasses them all in a very impressive way. By focusing on the topical issue of race in present-day Britain Kureishi enriches contemporary British fiction.

Хенри Дейвид Торо между

Author(s): Plamen Antov / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 2-3/2017

This essay situates H. D. Thoreau in a row of large cultural aporiae. The author argues an uncommon approach to Thoreau, not in the Kantian key of Transcendentalism, but as situated at the midpoint where Transcendentalism meets its antipode corporeality and reality: the author views the gesture Walden as a hidden expression of the kind of activeness that is of the essence of modern bourgeois-capitalist aggression against nature.Thoreau is seen as an American proto-philosopher who revolts against the European Cartesian metaphysization of philosophy, a trend whose ultimate manifestation is precisely Kant. Thoreau is seen as restoring the primordial totality of philosophy, similarly as the ancient philosopher who, in order to refute the assertion of his opponent that there is no motion in the world, simply stood up and took a few steps. – The gesture Walden is interpreted as an attempt to walk back those steps. As an attempt to restore the reality of the world, which has been lost in the course of civilization (seen as a process of increasingly dense veiling of reality under a network of symbols-simulations). Walden is at the center of this plot, personified by two mutually contrary cultural myths – the “European” Hamlet and the “American” Robinson Crusoe.Thus, on the other hand, Thoreau is seen as situated at the beginning of American Pragmatism considered as a philosophy of the “lower part” of the body (Bakhtin), of the thinking stomach. This fundamental non-metaphysicality of the American cultural genotype (world view) – the domination of bodily activity over reflection – has been paraphrased by a number of US presidents in the 20th and 21st century as the maxim “Bomb first, seek arguments later”. Yet at the same time, precisely in moving away from the European tradition, Thoreau finds himself at the point where the East begins. In Thoreau’s gesture Walden, the author finds and interprets the potential of this whole complex of dialectically “sublating” aporiae (at the core of which is the radical anti-cultural gesture, which is also a radical cultural gesture).

Християнско смирение и гражданска непримиримост в детското творчество на Константин Величков

Author(s): Ognyana Georgieva-Teneva / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 5/2019

The article discusses two key messages of the children‘s works of Konstantin Velichkov: of Christian humbleness and civic implacability. Considering the fact that these values combine relatively rare both in real life and literature, the paper supports the view of the semantic passability at the border between religious-theme poems, presenting man in a silent dialogue with himself and with God, and fables whose allegories refer to the need for an active stance on the socio-institutional status-quo. The analysed texts are interpreted in the paradigm of the modern idea of the Orthodox theology of participation, according to which true humanity implies not only meekness but also benevolence towards the community and disagreement with political autocracy.

ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННАЯ АНТРОПОЛОГИЯ ДОСТОЕВСКОГО

Author(s): Vladimir Nikolaevich Zakharov / Language(s): English,Russian / Issue: 1/2013

Dostoyevsky proposed a new conception of Man in the world literature. Critics have described such psychological discoveries of the writer as irrationalism, dualism, and underground. Many aspects of his Christian anthropology remained beyond the attention of the researchers. In his conception of Man there are such essential concepts as the common pseudo-human (obshchechelovek) and the panhuman (vsechelovek). The common pseudo-human is a special type of a Russian man that appeared after the reforms of Peter the Great. Unlike the British, the Germans, the French, who maintain their nationality, the Russian “common pseudo-human” strives to be anyone but Russian. Being a common pseudo-human is to be an abstract European without roots and soil. Vsechelovek is a rare word in the Russian language. Nikolai Danilevsky used this word with a capital letter to call Christ (1869). Dostoyevsky used the word pan-human without capitalization to denote a perfect Christian. It expressed the inner sense of his Pushkin Memorial speech. It was Dostoyevsky who introduced the word panhuman in Russian literature and philosophy. Konstantin Leontiev did not understand the meaning of this word. He represented “the terrible, in his opinion, pan-human” as a common pseudo-human, European, liberal, and cosmopolitan. This mistaken substitution (obshchechelovek instead of vsechelovek) is typical for Russian literary and philosophical criticism of the 20th century. For Dostoevsky, each person carries the image of God. The verbs obrazit' (to restore the image) and obozhit' (to divinize) imply the restoration of the image of God and thereby the humanization of a person. To be Russian is to become pan-human (vsechelovek), Christian. Dostoyevsky’s hero carries all possible completeness of the Creator and the Creation.

Художественная картина мира В. Белова

Author(s): Kadiša Rustembekovna Nurgali / Language(s): Russian / Publication Year: 0

The terms “the world of a piece of fiction”, “literary world”, “world view” in literary criticism and criticism are often used interchangeably, which characterizes the entire set of elements that make up a work of literature. The study of the world of works of literature has its roots in D. S. Likhachev’s works who first spoke of “the inner world of a work of fiction”. To date, in literary criticism there is no definite list of those “elements” that make up the literary view of the world. Thus, according to V. A. Halizev, the world of a piece of fiction includes the psyche of human beings, their consciousness, and makes up both reality “thingish” and “personal” reality. M. L. Gasparov proposed including in the concept “Literary world” a list of events that are reflected in the work of literature, the socalled “catalog of images”. At the same time the term “literary view of the world is relatively new, having come in the literature of linguistics. Thus, the artistic picture of the world” of the writer seems to be a phenomenon that is “narrower” than the literary world. The view of the world of the writer is a set of specific identifiable components that make up the basis of the visual world, while the literary world represents a collection of all the elements that make up a work of literature.

ЦРТАЧИ

За ненаписану причу

Author(s): Jovica Aćin / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 528/2021

ЧОВЕК КОЈИ НИЈЕ ВОЛЕО СВОЈ ПОСАО

Author(s): Olga Tokarczuk / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 531/2021

Эга-дакумент як камунiкатыўная падзея ў лiтаратурным працэсе (на прыкладзе аўтабiяграфiчнай аповесцi Алеся Адамовiча “Vixi”)

Author(s): Wolga Gubskaja / Language(s): Belarussian / Issue: 13/2021

The article uses narrative techniques to explore the role of a fact in literary works. A. Adamovich’s autobiographical novel “Vixi” that serves as illustrative material has been analyzed. The purpose of the article is to examine a literary work at several textual levels: “event – naration – discourse”, “events in the novel – historical context (internal and external chronotope)”, the relationship of “author – narator – reader”. It is argued that the fact in the process of a narrative story cannot remain unchanged – a subjective interpretation of the writer expressed by narrator’s words changes it explicitly. It is emphasized that the fact can be used as a trigger for deploying the main action or changing the style of writing. For A. Adamovich self-reflection as the way of understanding reality is a means to create the world model which represents clear polarization.

Этнамаркiраваная лексiка беларускай мовы ў перакладах на англiйскую

Author(s): Światłana Padabiedawa / Language(s): Belarussian / Issue: 10/2018

The article discusses the problem of translation of ethno-marked Belarusian vocabulary into English on the example of the novel by V. Karatkevich “King Stakh’s Wild Hunt”. Ethno-marked vocabulary is a special layer of the Belarusian language, which reflects people’s world view and their way of life. The text contains names of dishes, food and beverages, names of clothes and decorative elements, names of dances, songs, celebrations and games, and names of mythical creatures. The author identifies transliteration/transcription, combined translation, descriptive translation, adaptation and dropping which help to establish equivalence of translation from Belarusian into English.