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This paper starts from the assumption that there are no affects unless one experiences the opacity of the world. Opacity is the concept designating that what transcends transparency, the insensible, the ineffable, the desire, the parallel spaces, the uncertainty, the gloom, the black matter and the vital abyss. All these parameters are specific to contemporary art production, a sensible field, traversed by floating, vibrant, yet distinctive objects and bodies. This is the context in which “affectology” develops, because one is affected by one’s surrounding world while simultaneously affecting it through one’s own subjective self. This process is best portrayed through scenographic, theatrical, choreographic and videographic performances, as well as through art installations, and presupposes the capturing of forces that transcend shapes and artistic devices; the movement of obscure images (Ackerman), uncertain spectra (Ceylan), medium swirls (Munoz), violent emotions (M. Stuart, J. Fabre) and radical incongruity (Gombrowicz, Castelluci) represent aesthetic, social and existential models of a sensitive war machine set in a global standardization of perceptions and affections.Consequently, this article formulates a singular anthropology built through resonances and reverberations and which is regarded as a method of restoring a paradoxical aesthetic of contemporary world.
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The question of “actuality” of Roland Barthes' writings presupposes an investigation into their emotional expression, the ways in which it interacts with the readers who make this time “ours”. It is through Japan's “textualization” and the increasingly obvious reserve towards the role of intellectual that he was still fulfilling that Barthes raised the question of his own assent to the world in which he lived in the 1970s. Rereading, re-visiting his doubts would allow us to better understand his current aura today.
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In his novel Running Away (a part of his “Cycle of Marie”, the other three being Making Love, The Truth about Marie and Naked), Jean-Philippe Toussaint offers an unconventional narrative treatment of the affective dynamics. The narrator-protagonist informs the reader that the novel is about his attempted separation from Marie. He leaves to China. The plot comprises several episodes which are not directly linked to the affects, offering a roman noir pattern of sorts. However, the affective canvas is overwhelming: although hardly articulated, the affects inundate the text by their silent presence. We intend to demonstrate that by using the verbs of movement which create distance between each other (leave, run, move, abandon, disappear, etc.) the narrator underlines Marie’s omnipresence, although she actually appears in the last section of the novel. Her absence translated into her presence articulates the paradoxical nature of the affects which cannot be dominated by a rational decision and which defy the very narrative’s linearity. Following Roland Barthes’ arguments in his essay A Lovers’ Discourse: Fragments, we aim to underline the paradoxical narrative strategy which confirms the predominance of the affects using the imagery of emptiness, void and escape.
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In this paper I intend to show how affects that come to the surface in Ciantar’s writings mark the relations between the sexes and account for the characters’ controversial bent on how they spend their energy. Finally, the text reveals a clash between the urge to join the crowd and the call of the Bohemian way of life. Ciantar’s novels reveal the age gap between a man and a woman forming a couple and stress acute differences in their social status. In the Jacques Vorageolles trilogy, on two occasions, the protagonist ends up with an older female partner and earns the reputation of being a gigolo. Vorageolles’ brief experience of fatherhood is cut short due to the passing away of his prematurely born child. In order to recover, , the male protagonist in Ciantar’s texts remains a bachelor, takes part in orgies and, childless, faces courageously the onset of old age. Gambling is practiced as a profession by the author and comes to the fore in the later texts. While still an adolescent, Vorageolles joins first the SFIO, then a Trotskyite group, before heading for Barcelona at the outbreak of the civil war where, soon, reality dampens his revolutionary enthusiasm. As from now on, Ciantar turns his back to the crowd, preferring definitely to stroll endlessly along the Paris boulevards: an activity which is equivalent to Foucault’s technique of the self.
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The present study aims to explore the articulation of feelings from Mircea Cărtărescu’s early poetry. The new type of poetics representative of Generation ’80 in Romanian poetry, as well as of the volumes signed by the young poet, created innovative expressive means in Romanian literature within the postmodern vision of a crisis of language and under the cultural pressure of preexisting models. How can one express genuine love when the words are stale? How can one encapsulate the enormity of an experience in a spoiled language? The poetic resources of Mircea Cărtărescu’s poetic experiment have impacted on the tastes and sensibility of the new generations of readers.
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The physical as well as the psychological suffering is an omnipresent theme in the work of Marie NDiaye. The writer insists notably on increasing the physical discomfort of his characters in close connection with their love disappointment. The pain is lived intensely by the characters that are described through their bodies, surface of capture of the surrounding world and emotional abyss. It will therefore be in the context of this article to detect affective expressions and to study the mechanisms of emotional language. We will also see how the affect shapes the ndiayien character's journey and how it models his narrative environment.
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The Romanian literature and culture at the beginning of the 20th century is marked on the level of affective configurations by two imports: (1) philosophy, as a science of the soul, and (2) Marcel Proust, as an analyst of inner life. Starting from a general frame of viewing emotions in relation to an effort of descent into spiritual world, we will investigate the role of influence in the development in Romanian interwar literature of a vocabulary of affects, taken from the French space through these two aforementioned means of import. We define the influence as a “diffuse, almost indiscernible, often unconscious” phenomenon (Maxime Decout, Qui a peur de l’imitation), which requires from the reinterpreting author an import, a selection and, finally, an adaptation, and we relate it to Maurice Halbwachsʼ theory of emotions, that are described as an instrument for ensuring the cohesion of the group and, at the same time, the preservation of society (L’expression des émotions et la société), and to Frédéric Lordon’s theory, where affects are seen as the effect of the structure in which the individual is involuntarily constrained (La société des affects).
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This proposal aims to investigate the emotions, affects and sensibilities typical to the erotic novel of the Romanian literature between the World Wars, as revealed when adopting a quantitative viewpoint. By means of a comparative type of approach, the paper addresses both novels that have entered what we call a canonical selection and novels that are considered to belong to minor literature, but which have gained popularity over the years. The main purpose of this research is to reveal, through big data analysis, the successful networks of emotions that have contributed to the value of certain novels or literary formulas, but also the shortcomings of those networks that have failed to provide a functional affective pattern for the erotic narratives. As for the selection process, the paper analyzes the novels of Camil Petrescu, Anton Holban, Gib Mihăescu and Garabet Ibrăileanu, since they each successfully represent their subgenres. By analyzing them with Morettian methods, the research seeks to reveal the inner workings of the “winning” sensibilities, thereby testing the viability of the Romanian critical discourse that has placed these novels on different axiological levels.
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Max Blecher’s decade-long illness permeates his literary oeuvre much like an incontestable biographical truth. Documented in his correspondence with some prominent Romanian intellectual friends, the writer’s life as a patient of tuberculosis sanatoria and his prolonged agony could be assumed as the dominant background of his works. I intend to argue that Blecher’s exploration of the body as the object of medical investigation projects a particular regime of affective expression. Blecher’s fiction of the body favors a double approach to the issue of identity and self, as revealed throughout his work: the intimacy of suffering is a potent coagulant that favors the illusion of a coherent of identity, mediated by the body, while medical intervention reveals its objectification and foreignness. My analytical endeavor intends to identify the connections between affective discourse, in the context of Blecher’s real relationships (as proved by his correspondence) and his fictional ones (as outlined mainly in his two novels Scarred Hearts and The Lightened Burrow, concerning the body, illness and medical intervention). I would also highlight the periphery as an amplifier of isolation and suffering, revealed through his native city of Roman, where he spent his last years, and the sanatorium, where he sought treatment, and which is also the topos of his last two novels. Sickness and medical aid are minimally present Max Blecher’s debut novel, Adventures in Immediate Irreality, as the experiences of the protagonist are mainly metaphysical and erotic. Deepening the perspective, his other two novels, Scarred Hearts and The Lightened Burrow are brutal confessions of the pain and physical deterioration caused by disease. Blecher’s protagonists, obvious auctorial alter-egos, are entrapped (literally and metaphorically) in shell-like bodies, enduring exhausting, unbearable pain and desperately seeking sexual relief. In language and in narrative, medicine reveals its potential as an agent of hope, emotion, despair and, at times, of the promise of death. Fueled by the conscience of imminent demise, laced with harsh existentialism and forged by the Powerful, surreally calibrated awareness of his biological vulnerability, Blecher’s dreamlike, visionary prose is a defining instance of a reunion between fiction and biographical affective contexts expressing medical trauma and bodily breakdown.
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At the same time a writer and a videographer, Valérie Mrejen is an artist who explores the stories of self and others. Thus she associates authentic words and narrative inventions, recorded pictures and fabricated images, in order to manufacture, even to interlace the acts or to play their offsets. However, if her first works are taken to the source of autobiographical dialogues or have reappropriated the vocabulary and the methods of communication, in recent years, Valérie Mréjen is more dedicated to video portrait. It is therefore through the memory and introspection, or by the enchanted narrative of a relation to everyday life, that she renews the figures inherent of the small and large stories, and proposes, with delicacy and humor, an experience of the intimate to share with another who is still located in reflexive position. Finally, Valérie Mréjen ask a question that may seem simple and easy, but witch is in reality very complex, because she demands who – from the artist or the people who compose the work as a speech – is the storyteller of the story? If we refrain from arbitrarily answering this question, we have the choice to be able to resolve the problem and the impact of the “vis-à-vis” that we can see.
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In her seminal work devoted to totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt notices that “normalizing” ways of life was not possible in either the Fascist or the Communist states. Through their nature, the totalitarian states eschew the stabilization of collective forms of life as well as the constitution of ethnic mannerisms, that is, a series of features that could define a community’s life. What needs to be emphasized here is the fact that, in the same sphere of the social domains affected by the totalitarian regime, Arendt also includes the legal regulations and the juridical system that are meant to ensure the social order. The same mechanism that destabilizes simple ways of life also affects – in the totalitarian context – the Law. Departing from the case of Nicolae Steinhardt (1912- 1989), who is a Romanian author with a bi-focal education (as a jurist and as a literary man), the present paper analyzes the link between the society’s constitutional ground and the forms of life unfolded during the Communist regime. Reading his texts on both constitutional and literary matters, before and after the establishment of the totalitarian regime in Romania, one can notice a high correlation between juridical thought and conceptualizations of ordinary life. Especially during the Communist regime when Law is seriously endangered, this correlation can be testified in Steinhardt’s great effort to transfer a principle of responsibility from the realm of Law (grounding the Constitution) to the realm of forms of life (as discipline)
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Due to the generous support of the “Sextil Puşcariu” Institute of Linguistics and Literary History (Cluj-Napoca), who provided us a part of Pușcariuʼs correspondence – unfortunately, not put into value until now –, we offer to those interested some letters that reconfirm – if needed – T. Maiorescuʼs exceptional teaching skills. Three substantial missives (dating from 1905, 1907, respectively 1911) and several smaller graphical artifacts (visiting cards) signal the presence of the mentor of the cultural society “Junimea” in the proximity of Sextil Puşcariu, only a young promising philologist at the beginning of the XXth century, whose research efforts benefit from Maiorescuʼs reputable and trusted guidance. We attach to these texts some historical-literary notes indispensable to the understanding of the cultural context of the time.
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The Anglo-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh is an intriguing and much discussed phenomenon in contemporary drama, who provokes comments not only with his plays, but also with his statements, interviews, and behaviour in public events. The paper analyses the manner in which McDonagh represents himself as an individual and as an author, both in his public appearances and in his opus, and the research will be based upon views of postmodern theorists such as Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson, and Linda Hutcheon. The paper aims to demonstrate that McDonagh should not be classified as a postmodernist dramatist solely because of the topics he deals with in his plays, but also because by his public statements he transforms both his opus and himself as a public persona into a brand which draws equal attention of critics and audiences.
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/ Поэзия Бранислава Петровича занимает очень интересно место в истории сербской литературы. Его отношение к творчеству нам открыло специфический феномен в етой поэзии – феномен движения. Так, с точки зрения феномена поэтического движения, образованном в качестве механизма который устроит свет и песню в их проницаемости, поэт меняет как поэтический поступок от сбора Сил речи и далее, также и поэтические предметы и герои. Створая точку, из которой можно увидеть творческий эксперимент, песник сделал опыт, охвативший внешнее движение (мотивы путешествия, движения и др.), так и внутренние преобразования (поэтические смешание как новое образование песни которые включает тоже и язычные движения).
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As we read the works of Nićifor Ninković (My Chronicles), Prota Matija Nenadović (Memoirs), and Aleksandar Piščević (My Life), we may observe numerous similarities between them. The literary and life destinies of Ninković and Nenadović stand in a particular correlation, as the authors share a common historical moment and space. On the other hand, Piščević belongs to a generation born and raised in Russia. Pointing out the similarities and differences between the mentioned works is of crucial importance, as the comparative analysis includes the father motif, which is vital for this paper. We shall present how fathers are represented in the listed works, the relationship between the heroes and their fathers in Nenadović’s and Piščević’s works, as well as the type of relationship which Ninković develops with his children and the sort of pillar of the family that he stands for. We shall determine the role and significance of the father in the process of personality formation, the impact of fathers on the later lives of their children, and which of the represented fathers correspond to the demands of the traditional father figure.
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This paper analyzes Poems of Dubrovnik, the poetic cycle written by Jovan Dučić. We examine the problem of genre in individual poems of this poetic cycle, as well as Dubrovnik’s social community, which is simultaneously aristocratically sublime and festively ordinary. Poems are interlinked with the common motif of Dubrovnik, but there are also motifs such as love, death, female beauty, sadness for the transience of youth, and festive atmosphere of balls and carnivals. We emphasise the narration and rich fabula as important qualities that helped Jovan Dučić to show different situations or characteristics of Dubrovnik’s community in his poems. The main goal of this paper is to collect all the excerpts that can be found in poems and to reveal the whole portrait of the baroque Dubrovnik.
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In this paper, we will present the way in which Aleksandar Popović uses the culture of folk laugh in the farce Ljubinko and Desanka. We start from the con- text in which literary criticism usually places Aleksandar Popović’s opus, because that is the best way to reach the folklore culture in this play. We will determine the role of carnivalization, grotesque realism, and street speech in the play and then see how Popović uses them based on the examples from the text. We will explain the importance of the form used by the author - the farce - because it is the most suit- able form of expressing the elements of folk culture, and it additionally opens other possibilities for reading the text.
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The paper aims to explore the ideological aspects in the novel The Sun of This Day: A Letter to Andrić by Vladimir Pištalo. Defining it as the work of the post- modern poetics modus characterized by critical self-awareness and the principle of engagement, the paper indicates the central points of the novel. From the perspective of Ivo Andrić’s literary topics, through the historical past, the paper also examines the plane of current events and the circumstances of the peoples in the Balkans during the 21st century. Starting from Pištalo’s interpretation of the national identities of Andrić’s literary heroes, through the question of „violent gratification” of colonial Bosnia and fascism arising from the consciousness of the petty-minded, the paper strives to point out the ideological codes that have been activated with the aim of af- fecting the current moment. Considering that the discourse of the novel is determined by the idea of every ideology as inadequate and disastrous, Pištalo’s ideological code, provided in the form of instructions for overcoming the state of general degradation of values, is found in art as the bearer of the principle of humanity.
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