FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & the Arts
Not a member yet
346 research outputs found
Sort by
Timeless and (Un)original : the Role of Gossip in R.K. Narayan\u27s The Man-Eater of Malgudi and The Painter of Signs
Get PDFTropes of gossip underline much of R.K. Narayan\u27s work and they assume particular significance, I shall argue, in The Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961) and The Painter of Signs (1977), in which they interleave with, and describe an oppositional paradigm to, the processes of printing and sign writing
Politics of Play: Situationism, Détournement, and Anti-Art
Get PDFIn addition to contributing crucially to the philosophy that fuelled the student revolts of France in 1968, the Situationist International (SI) sought to undermine the use of spectacle as a commercialised tool of capitalism. Blending their interpretations of Marxism with that of the historical avant-garde, the situationists went to war with the institutions of art and academia. In 1956, Guy Debord proclaimed that “every reasonably aware person of our time is aware of the obvious fact that art can no longer be justified as a superior activity” (Debord, A User’s Guide to Détournement 1). What was their method of attack on this world of bastardized, commercialized spectacle? Quite simply, it was play. Although subversion through theatre and play is hardly a novel idea, the situationists employed play in ways that had never been taken to such extremes. They propagated play without spectacle, or even play as anti-spectacle and anti-art. The term itself, ‘situationism’ refers to the anti-art they created; or, in other words, the un-commodified, anti-spectacular human situations, through which, as Sartre claimed, one could gain freedom (Plant 20). Through these situations, the SI was determined to subvert the institutional uses of language and art using what they termed détournement, or “the use of old material for new ends,” (Puchner 224). What this amounts to is play in a unique form: play is used to undermine the very institution of language, and therefore both social order and authoritative control. As a result, the SI’s influences extended beyond their specific time and place by instigating a re-evaluation of the very relationship between art and politics; a re-evaluation still in process today
Apparitions
Get PDFThere are only apparitions. There have always only been apparitions.Apparition names the complex and unstable coming to appear, the very arising or emergence of what appears and the thing\u27s appearing. The eidos and the phantasm find their mutual source in the apparition of a phantasma.The other [l\u27autre] never appears as such, it appears as an apparition: its appearance is in disappearing, it dis-appears in its appearance.There will have been haunting-before life and before death
The Shoah Simulacrum: postmemory and spectral homecoming in Maxim Biller’s novella “Harlem Holocaust”
Get PDFIn the context of the current German memory discourse, the age-old question of the interplay of remembrance and effacement has been revived. This article proposes to shed light on some of its ramifications through the prism of Maxim Biller’s novella Harlem Holocaust. Biller, born 1960 in Prague, is a German-Jewish short-story writer, novelist and newspaper columnist. Initially known for his incisive articles in the quasi legendary Tempo magazine and now for his satirical column “Moralische Geschichten” in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Biller writes on socio-political, cultural and personal issues, touching on German reunification, American literature, latent anti-semitism and convoluted love relationships. His novels and short stories are highly. A close reading of his novella Harlem Holocaust in the light of Marianne Hirsch’s notion of postmemory and Jean Baudrillard’s concept of the simulacrum facilitates the comprehension of how the German discourse on memory has slowly been hollowed out, persisting nowadays as pure form engaged in a spectral homecoming. Indeed, old memories – distorted through the manipulation as much as through the natural erosion of the past – are returning to haunt the present, oblivious that they are only spectres
The Ludic Parody of Terry Pratchett
Get PDFThis paper will look at how Pratchett’s universe creates a ludic parody through its use of juxtaposition, puncturing and awareness of stereotypes. I will also show through an analysis of some of Pratchett’s characters how narrative conventions are undermined. Finally, I will show how Pratchett, by using the Discworld as a background for more specific parody, manages to avoid Bakhtin’s charge of modern parody as narrow ridicule
Violence as Surrealist Play in Angela Carter\u27s Shadow Dance
Get PDFHoneybuzzard, one of the main characters of Angela Carter’s début novel Shadow Dance (1966), has been described by one critic as playing like a big cat, tirelessly and cruelly; “anything and anyone is fair game” (Sage 11). Honeybuzzard has organised his life completely in accordance with the play impulse, and he is not interested in anything structured by rational behaviour, work or profit. He is engaged in a constant process of making the Pleasure Principle triumph over the Reality Principle as he acts according to his capricious desires, which will turn increasingly violent and destructive as the narrative spirals towards its transgressive dénouement.Honeybuzzard’s violence can possibly be read as “a kind of (anti-)morality play which aims to undermine through exaggeration” (Gamble 54), but I think this reading does not fully acknowledge the subversive potential of his playful behaviour. In this paper, I propose to read Honeybuzzard’s nihilist play through the prism of surrealism – a movement itself known for its proliferating playfulness as well as its self-professed subversive aims
The Performance of Digital Play
Get PDFTo date, games studies (the academic field that analyses videogames from a humanities perspective) has drawn from the fields of play theory, psychology, sociology, film studies, cyber culture, literary and media theory as well as visual anthropology to map its roots. This paper adds the field of performance theory to this family of disciplines in order to better understand the emergent and interdisciplinary field of games studies. These disciplines have hinted at the connection between the discourses surrounding play and aspects of performance and performativity. However, scholars have been less forthcoming in acknowledging the role of performance in play as a subject in its own right, worthy of study.As a starting point to frame the phenomenology of digital play it is useful to look to core elements of a play experience. On the highest level these can be understood as the game object (which consists the game world and its rules), the player subject and the play act (the unifying action that creates a particular performance)
“Desiderio in Search of a Master”: Desire and the Quest for Recognition in Angela Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
Get PDFThis essay examines the manner in which desire and Hegelian recognition intersect in Angela Carter’s 1972 novel, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman. After providing a brief description of Hegel’s famous account of the interaction between the lord and the bondsman, the essay goes on to discuss the manner in which the novel invests the figure of the love-object with the potential to become an ideal master. The image of the reflecting eye, which recurs throughout Carter’s text, is then analyzed as an enactment of, and a commentary upon, the desiring gaze
Hopkins’s Confessional Notes and Desire: A Reconsideration
Get PDFSince their publication in 1989, the confessional notes Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) kept as an undergraduate have been a major influence in shaping criticism of his work. The sexual indiscretions and longings the confessional notes record have been central to recent studies of eroticism in Hopkins’s poetry, corroborating the suggestion that his poems allowed for the homoerotic expression his religious vocation denied him. While not questioning the seriousness of Hopkins’s attraction to other men, this article seeks to establish the broader moral scrupulousness the confessional notes evidence. As well as recording lapses in sexual propriety, the notes reveal the startling range of what Hopkins considered to be failings in need of repentance. They are the product of a curious moral fastidiousness, which recorded the killing of insects or indulgence in eating biscuits with apparently the same concern as when registering sexual excitement at the crucifixion scene. One prominent aspect of the confessional notes is the frequency with which sinful behaviour is initiated by reading or writing. In this the notes provide early indications of Hopkins’s doubts over the legitimacy of writing poetry, which grew more explicit once he had joined the Jesuits. Any interpretations of his work which see Hopkins as displacing sexual desire into his writing should also recognise the very real qualms the confessional notes show him entertaining about poetry itself
Playing Before God: Theology and Play in Dialogue
Get PDFThe Christian Church’s sometimes hostile relationship to any form of play has often been noted. The Scottish singer/songwriter Michael Marra has observed that in Scotland today there are still communities that chain up swing-sets on Sunday—a practice which implies that playing can be sinful, at least if done on the most theological day of the week. Play likewise often returns the insult by making religion a frequent object of satire and ridicule, as for example with Moliere’s Tartuffe, Monty Python’s Life of Brian, and frequent episodes of popular shows like The Simpsons and South Park. But is the relationship between theology and play really as troubled as a first glance might indicate? A closer look at both play and theology might, I want to suggest, reveal some surprising affinities, and putting the two in dialogue with one another might just provide both with helpful correctives