FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & the Arts
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“Narrative Truth and Historical Identity”: Identifying as Choctaw and Irish in LeAnne Howe’s novel Shell Shaker
Get PDF“Narrative Truth and Historical Identity” examines the complex relationship between poststructuralism, marginalization, language empowerment, and constructions of historical knowledge and truth. Employing the ideologies of both Derrida and Foucault, the article proposes and outlines the concept of literary discourse communities as one means of negotiating truth in a culturally diverse society. The article then provides an example of the potential for discourse and knowledge/truth construction through literary discourse communities by applying the concept to an interpretation of Choctaw author LeAnne Howe’s novel, Shell Shaker
‘Wheels of Tragedy’: Death on the Highways in Carnival of Souls (1962) and the Highway Safety Film
Get PDFThis article argues that Carnival of Souls (1962), is a foundational text in the ‘Highway Horror’ sub- genre. It directly confronts one of the most pervasive taboos in modern American life: the horrific death toll associated with mass automobility. In Herk Harvey’s cult film, the protagonist is killed but finds herself unwilling to accept her fate. As in the many similar films that followed, the highway becomes a purgatorial space between life and death. The blindness of the protagonists is linked to society’s collective willingness to overlook (or tolerate) the devastating frequency of the fatal car crash. The article also discusses the highway safety films of the 1950s and 60s.
Massacre and the Masses: Mark Twain, the Press, and the Reinvention of the Self
Get PDFThis article examines Mark Twain’s newspaper hoax “A Bloody Massacre Near Carson” (1863) and its resulting controversy alongside Twain’s comments on the press. By examining Twain’s early journalism, I hope to demonstrate how his comments on the press, when viewed together, questioned the journalist’s ability to report objective truths
Poetry in the Post-Truth Era: Formal Structures in Claudia Rankine\u27s Citizen: An American Lyric
Get PDFIn the unbridled relativism of this post-truth era, poetry seems more out of place than ever before. In particular, works with an impulse towards fiction are perceived as incapable of participating in the non-fictional world at large. Yet, writers like Claudia Rankine still return to the poetic form to confront the issue of race in an America that sees itself as post-racial. Rather than contest such existing claims of “truth” with one of her own, Rankine, in Citizen: An American Lyric, chooses instead to examine what it means to be a “citizen” as an African-American. Through a self-reflexive mode of inquiry, she provokes readers to consider the state of race-relations within America. This article thus argues that poetry can have a stake in our reality not merely in spite of, but precisely because of the dissonance arising out of so many competing “truths”
Perspective in Australia’s Outback: Travel and Truth
Get PDFThis paper explores the blurred genre of travel writing and the obligation placed on the traveller to provide an authentic, truthful tale. Using their own perspectives and cultural biases to describe the Australian Outback, the three discussed travel writers cross the line between non-fiction novel and fictional memoir
Towards a Marginal History of Reading the Geneva Bible
Get PDFHistorian and divine Thomas Fuller’s comparison of the Geneva Bible’s marginal annotations to "spectacles" has proved captivating for critics. However, despite fitting neatly within a hermeneutic understanding of scriptural study in which readers search for "inner truths" inside a postlapsarian structure of signs and symbols, this figuration fails to encompass either the ambivalence of Fuller’s full appraisal or the various, complex ways through which readers came to encounter and comprehend their Bibles. This article proposes a new artefactual study of the Geneva Bible’s printed marginalia and their position within early modern reading practices. It demonstrates how the Geneva Bible\u27s (para-)textual apparatuses existed in multiple unstable forms across the life of the translation, charting how different notational formulae impacted upon mise-en-page and, ultimately, upon exegetical praxis
“You’re either with us, or you are with the terrorists” – Juxtaposed Ideologies in the War on Terror
Get PDFA recent British government policy document has attempted to tackle the various guises of extremism by outlining definitions and proposed solutions for a structural approach to the threat of terror. In doing so, the command paper characterises the relationship between Britain and Islamic terrorists as one of an ideological conflict playing out between Western powers and Muslim fundamentalists. In exaggerating the apparent polarisation necessary for an ideological conflict, I will demonstrate how the text locks us into certain narratives that filter out historical contexts in favour of a binary rhetoric aimed at furthering conflicts based on ideology as natural conclusions, rather than the constructions and manipulations of policy
The Editorial Beginnings of the First Chemical Journal
Get PDFThe academic journal is a central instrument of scholars and scientists alike, yet we know surprisingly little about its historical development. This paper focuses on the foundation of the first scientific journal devoted solely to chemistry. It introduces the editorial strategies and policies behind the periodical, and briefly describes the role it played in the process of establishing chemical knowledge during the last decades of the eighteenth century. More generally, it sheds light on the socio-cultural identity of the editor located between the two professionalising fields of science and journalism and the epistemological consequences of his editorial work
The Problem of Ideology
Get PDFThis article discusses the role of ideology in International Relations. It seeks to rectify potential weaknesses in any ideological analysis using two approaches. Firstly, applying a more thorough and precise definition of ideology. Secondly, identifying the historicity and complexities within an ideology, distinguishing between core and peripheral principles, and their shifting interaction over time
Virtual Playgrounds: Electronic Literature’s Challenge to Authorship
Get PDFThis paper explores authorship and readership in two works of electronic literature: The Virtual Disappearance of Miriam (2000) and Tramway (2009). It argues for a broadened understanding of reading as potentially authoring and offers an expansion of what it means to read an electronic literary text in the twenty-first century