Pivot: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies and Thought
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Speculations on the Mediterranean Borderscape: Le Baiser de Lampedusa
Get PDFAuthors of academic research on globalization often employ watery metaphors -fluidity, circulation, flows - in attempt to analyze the unlimitedness of movements of capital, commodities, ideas, and people. The frictionless sea has thus come to be the metaphor of circulation par excellence. Yet, in the last two decades, the hardening of migration policies all over Europe and beyond EU borders, which has aimed at strengthening a water-barrier between Europe and its “southern beyond”, compels for a consideration of the maritime space, the Mediterranean Sea, as b/order space(s). Through a geo-literary analysis of the novel Le Baiser de Lampedusa (2011) by Mounir Charfi, I will focus my attention on the ways in which the Mediterranean Sea is rendered, modeled and reflected as a b/order space in and through literary representation. The author through the close association of the ordinary and the fantastic, and employing a narrative mode that undermines realism, creates an alternative description of the Mediterranean borderscape in which basic assumptions of referentiality do not hold anymore. In fact, throughout the narrative, the notion of the Mediterranean sea is challenged and its visual appearance becomes blurred and disappears. As a consequence of its disappearance, continents shift and geographic regions are subverted. What emerges is first that the understanding of the Mediterrannean Sea as a b/order is put into question, and secondly, that geopolitical delimitations are not only arbitrary but also flexible. Therefore, the following article deals with the realm of counterfactual geography in border fiction
Decolonizing the Cosmopolitan Geospatial Imaginary of the Anthropocene: Beyond Collapsed and Exclusionary Politics of Climate Change
Get PDFThis paper extends Tariq Jazeel’s argument on cosmopolitanism to the Anthropocene. Jazeel argues that cosmopolitanism should be thought of geospatially, as a geographic analysis reveals that cosmopolitanism cannot escape its own historically Western spatial imaginary, ultimately collapsing difference and universalizing humanity (77). In reaction against suggestions that cosmopolitanism is a more ethical and socially responsible approach to changing environments, I maintain instead that the Anthropocene already operates within a cosmopolitan geospatial imaginary, which not only collapses blame and responsibility in the face of global environmental crises but also silences and erases the historical contexts of exploitation and extraction that follow within north-south lines of coloniality. Therefore, a decolonization of the cosmopolitan geospatial imaginary of the Anthropocene requires, in order to situate continued coloniality in environmental geopolitics and international relations, looking at the frameworks of both the nation-state and cosmopolitanism. The sections follow a critique of this proposed dialectic working within systems of exclusionary politics of the nation-state and the collapsing politics of cosmopolitanism
Unlovely Seeds: Human/Nature/Wilderness in Isabella Valancy Crawford’s Winona; or, The Foster-Sisters
Get PDFIn 1872, Isabella Valancy Crawford answered a call printed in George-Édouard Desbarats’s weekly story paper the Hearthstone seeking: “narratives, novels, sketches penned by vigorous Canadian hands, welling out from fresh and fertile Canadian brains, thrilling with the adventures by sea and land, of Canadian heroes” (Early and Peterman 25). Crawford’s winning submission to the Hearthstone's call, Winona; or, The Foster-Sisters, reaps the materials for its narrative from “inexhaustible fields” of both “fact and fancy” of a burgeoning Canadian national imagination (25). This paper is interested in exploring the specifically Canadian anxieties expressed by the novel, as this paper examines the manner in which the displaced occupants of the novel’s Howard lodge act as uncanny avatars of the natural world and of a wilderness as they resist (or, are denied) a place in the domestic space established by the “national family” (167). In this paper, I argue that Crawford’s Winona, with its attention to both domestic and natural spaces, provides a productive site through which to interrogate the vexed relationship of a newly Confederated country with its own “native materials” (Johnson 7; Early and Peterman 10)
Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping: Sylvie’s Fundamental Mentorship through New Western Historicism and Ecofeminist Criticism
Get PDFIn the novel Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson discusses main character, Sylvie’s, relationship with nature in a way that revises what many New Western historians view as the Old West’s destructive ideology toward nature. Sylvie lives in opposition to what is seen as the aggressive mannerisms of Old Western males, individuals who have attempted to conquer both women and nature through their disregard for the female histories of the Old West as well as through their degradation of the faultless Western land. An effort that brings together both of these ideas, a concept that connects the maltreatment of women as well as of nature throughout history, ecofeminist philosophies are, in turn, relevant to a discussion of Robinson’s Sylvie and her New Western principles. Both viewpoints express a historical overlap of women and nature; therefore, Sylvie’s actions, which contradict the conquering mentalities of the Old West, also align with fundamental ecofeminist principles. Her actions throughout the novel possess an understanding and admiration of nature’s character as well as a voice that disagrees with the mistreatment that it receives
Shattered Masculinity and Violence in Walker Percy's Lancelot: Apocalypse Now
Get PDFAlthough it is not one of Walker Percy’s most popular novel, Lancelot is certainly one of his most complicated. Critics like Vaulthier and Hebert have discussed the masculinity of protagonist Lancelot Lamar in depth, building on theories linking Lamar’s shattered masculinity with male homosocial behavior, particularly homosocial relationships between Lamar and Merlin and Lamar and Percival. Critical discussions leave out, however, an exploration of the violence that pervades the entire text. This is problematic because Lamar’s dissatisfaction with the homosocial roles in the triangulated relationships created by his wife’s affair is what sparks his obsession with violence as a cleansing act. His wife’s lover is not manly enough for Lamar, shattering Lamar’s sense of masculinity and enraging him. As the narrative progresses, it becomes filled with his vision for the future—a world brought on by apocalypse where the women are sexually pure and the men are “pure in heart.” Lamar clearly regards violence as the only way to restore the patriarchal order that his experience of triangulated relationships has thwarted.
Picking Up the Pieces: Embodied Theory in Bessie Head’s A Question of Power
Get PDFThis article approaches Bessie Head's nove A Question of Power as a work of vernacular theory engaged with the interactions between power, identity, goodness and suffering. The text's difficulties are seen, first, as characterstics of embattled theory, in which there is no possibility of safe remove or calm reflection. Further, these difficulties are read as tactical, engaging the text and its reader in a form of madness which destablizes the realities formed by power. A fundamental tenent of Head's theory, 'be ordinary', is interrogated: how can ordinariness be disentangled from conformity? Being ordinary may be understood as becoming everyone--a process through which Elizabeth's identity is shattered. Schizophrenic breakdown becomes, then, a position from which Elizabeth can theorise the repressive operations of identity and the intimate functionings of power
In Search of the "Telling Detail": Ian McEwan, Briony Tallis, and the Demands of Authorship
Get PDFMuch scholarly interest surrounding Ian McEwan's Atonement has focused on the abrupt shift that occurs in the novel's final section, "London, 1999." This essay argues that this section makes it clear that the main story of the novel is not Briony, Robbie, and Cecilia's entanglement due to Lola's teenaged rape but Briony's development as a writer, her kunstlerroman. As such, it is crucial to the novel, not simply a metafictional ploy, because it illuminates the lengths she has gone to in writing her final book and fulfilling her youthful promise. McEwan's response to a real-life plagiarism accusation reinforces his depiction of Briony as an author who searches for "the telling detail," as opposed to one who sticks to verifiable, historical accuracy
Shattered Encounters: From My Father's House (1947) to My Father's House (2008)
Get PDFIn the aftermath of World War II, approximately 500,000 Holocaust survivors immigrated to Israel. The complex experiences of this shattered group and their encounters with Israeli society were reduced to a series of superficial representations in Israeli feature films. In films produced both in pre-state Israel, and in the early decades of the fledgling state, Holocaust survivors were depicted as traumatized individuals saved by other Jews and transformed into active, strong, healthy civilians in the new land. By the late 1970s, however, Israeli society had changed, as did the cinematic representation of the encounter between native Israelis and the Holocaust survivors. A shift to a dystopian depiction took place, in which a traumatized group of people, neglected by veteran Israelis, were relegated to the margins of society. This article will analyze the profound change that took place between earlier and later representations. It will discuss the motivating factors and cinematic depictions through the lenses of two films which tell the same story, but from completely different perspectives: My Father's House (Herbert Klein, 1947) and My Father's House (Danny Rozenberg, 2008). While sharing the same title, these films were produced in different eras, and thus, shed light on different depictions of similar encounters