Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies
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The Flow of Narrative: Misleading Structures and Uncertain Faiths in Wieland
Full text linkA lingering question in criticism of Wieland asks why the narrator, Clara, uncharacteristically withholds knowledge of events and perpetrators—a decision making for exciting reading but showing a baffling artifice. Why does this traumatized protagonist spend so much time imparting her past ignorance when the eventualities are known to her at the time of her writing? Some suggest that Clara withholds the facts in an attempt to impart a feeling to readers, enlisting their sympathy and casting Carwin as the villain. Others read Clara's narrative strategies as a product of mental instability, perhaps even insanity. But there exists another possibility: I suggest that Clara's narrative logic is part of a larger theory of causality, accepted with complete faith by Clara and her companions, and characterized most often by a conceptualization of “flow” in the text.
This term flow, and related ones like “chain” and “train”, are used with almost neurotic constancy to describe the connections between precedents and antecedents, defining the actions of the present in terms of past inertia and predicting the future with prophetic surety. Likewise, these terms feature heavily in the long, pregnant passages regarding the drift of consciousness in the interior life of the narrator. Clara's retention of the eventual facts need not be read as an artificial device of story-telling, nor a manipulative tool in the prosecution of Carwin, but instead as emblematic of the novel's interrogation—and ultimate critique—of Enlightenment faith in perfect continuity, a faith which would justify Clara's dogged commitment to revealing events only in their original sequence. Ultimately, I argue that Brown's novel gestures toward the possibility of a more open Gothic model of events and thoughts, which could address the problematic ambiguities that remain despite Clara's attempt to impose a rigidly causal and chronological narrative
“Into a Horizon I Will Not Recognize”: Female Identity and Transitional Space Aboard Nair’s Ladies Coupé
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Critical Psychosis: Genre, Détournement, and Critique in Mr. Plinkett’s 'Star Wars' Reviews
No full textWhen Harry S. Plinkett uploaded a review of Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace to YouTube in 2009, he became a brand of internet celebrity. It is difficult, however, to detach “review” from rather large scare quotes. Plinkett is a fictional character (an insane, wheelchair-bound centenarian), voiced by independent filmmaker Mike Stoklasa and produced by Stoklasa’s Milwaukee-based RedLetterMedia. This essay situates Plinkett within various cultural reactions to the Star Wars prequels, then puts his reviews in dialogue with emerging internet genres such as mash-up and video essay. By recontextualizing behind-the-scenes footage and other materials, the Plinkett reviews are a subversive response to an overcommoditized film industry. Ultimately, because Plinkett is depicted as insane, the essay argues that his psychosis becomes the basis for both catharsis and critique—a parody of hyperbolic fanboy film reviews, but at the same time a détournement of cultural texts which problematizes the logic of consumerism
Pussy Riot vs. Civil Obedience: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Two Texts
Full text linkIn February 2012, less than two weeks before that year’s presidential elections in Russia, a two-minute video of young women in brightly colored masks and short dresses was uploaded to YouTube. The video featured four members of the Pussy Riot punk feminist band performing a wild dance in front of the altar of Russia’s main Orthodox temple, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. Lip-syncing to a song, which they called a punk prayer, they beseeched the Virgin Mary to “drive” Vladimir Putin, then the prime minister and a presidential candidate, “away.” After generating scads of international publicity, the case ended with the three band members being sentenced to prison for two years on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.
The clearly provocative nature of the performance – with costume changes mid-scene and anti-government, anti-Church protest slogans set to the music of a sacred Orthodox song – made the Pussy Riot case a springboard to discussion of the acceptability of religiously contextualized political speech in contemporary Russia. Through a critical discourse analysis of the original lyrics of the punk prayer and the report from the psychological and linguistic experts that formed the basis of the prosecutor’s case, this article explores the discursive devices and rhetorical strategies employed in these texts to challenge or sustain the existing power relations in Russia. As the analysis makes clear, while the punk prayer criticizes State and the Russian Orthodox Church as oppressive and corrupt by disrupting and denaturalizing the images typically associated with their rituals and spaces, the report normalizes conformity, depoliticizes Pussy Riot critique, and delegitimizes public political protests by pushing them beyond the boundaries of socially acceptable forms of citizens’ civic participation
