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Representation of Aloneness in Forever Alone Guy Comic Strips
Get PDFThis study aims to discuss the representation of aloneness in Forever Alone Guy comic strips. The purpose of this research is to find out how the meaning of aloneness is constructed in the representation of Forever Alone Guy through the theory of representation described by Stuart Hall (1997, 2013). In the theory suggested by Hall, it is described that there are two ways to be done in creating representation. Those ways are through language/sign and mental representation. The mental representation is the only way used in this research with a reason that this analysis focuses to the stigmas attached to the concept of aloneness. The analysis shows that the construction of meaning is done through embedding clusters of negative stigmas to the three entities: single, alone and lonely. Thus, through the analysis, it can be concluded that the dominant meaning which represents being single and alone as the ‘imperfect’ condition plays an important role in the construction of the meanin
A Comparison of Obama’s 2007 and Hillary Clinton’s 2015 Bids for Presidency Speeches
Get PDFThe article sought to study Barack Obama’s 2007 bid for the presidency in his Announcement Speech and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2015 bid for the presidency in her Campaign Launch Speech. It focused on how both candidates used the central ideas and their development into the main ideas of the speeches to declare their bids for President of the U.S.A. The research raised some questions regarding whether the two speeches had similarities, as both politicians were running in the presidential race on the Democratic Party’s path. The research method employed qualitative content analysis to study the core meaning of the speeches based on new analytical narratives viewed in terms of specific rhetorical strategies. Subsequently, the study interpreted the underlying thought behind the speeches by focusing on the central ideas and their elaboration into the main ideas. The article showed that Obama and Clinton shared some similarities as they attempted to earn the support of Americans of all backgrounds. They defended the cause of the middle-class economy. Obama focused more on a coalition of Americans of diverse background and change, whereas Clinton focused more on furthering the middle-class economy
A thematic analysis of Palahniuk’s fiction in light of Epicureanism
Get PDFChuck Palahniuk is a contemporary American writer whose novels have been adapted into acclaimed Hollywood motion pictures. Palahniuk’s literary style is often branded as modernist with nihilistic undertones. In spite of such views, in this article, we argue that through a close reading of Palahniuk and a critical interpretation of the recurrent themes in his novels, one can find traces of Epicurean philosophy echoed through the ages. Though different in means, both Palahniuk and Epicurus seem to highlight the importance of and the strive for achieving a state of ataraxia through overcoming fear and aponia through transcending physical pain and torment. After providing an introduction to Epicurean thought and Palahniuk’s style and works, connections will be established between the various shared elements and theme
Ahmad Tohari’s The dancer: Revisited
Get PDFAs with many post-colonial countries, Indonesia has suffered from a long conflict between the military and civil society since its independence in 1945. This struggle is reflected in Ahmad Tohari’s novel entitled The dancer (2012), which has been largely credited as being critical towards the military regime. Using the theories of depoliticisation, I argue that the novel is 1) largely supportive of the military regime due to the oppressive situation as well as the author’s own political line, and 2) influenced by other powers besides the government. The fact that the novel dares to touch the once suppressed subjects of the Indonesian Communist Party (the arch enemy of the regime) and the anti-communist persecution shows a drive for politicisation. Nevertheless, further analysis shows that, by portraying it as highly political, The dancer actually depoliticises the party in that it only reinforces what has been said of the party and removes any alternative points of view. It also represses and depoliticises the military’s persecution and killing of the suspected communists through the pretexts of self-defence, ignorance, and guilt
The Omnipresence of Television and the Ascendancy of Surveillance/Sousveillance in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451
Get PDFThis paper is an attempt to analyze Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451(1953) under the light of Jean Baudrillard’s notions on the media and the influences it exerts on people’s daily lives, and with an eye to Michel Foucault’s surveillance as well. The title-mentioned work, it is suggested, portrays a representative sample of a culture where different fields including books, education, and history fall under the influence of the media. Bradbury presents a society in which its inhabitants are bombarded with excessive data transmitted through television most of which is detrimental and not reliable. It is concluded that the presented culture in the novel is a microcosm of contemporary societies where authorities keep their subjects under control, engendering an atmosphere of anxiety, trepidation and apprehension for subversive forces and therefore preclude any disturbance on the part of the
A New Historical Reading of the Subversion of the Patriarchal ‘Juridico-Discursive’ Power in Victorian Period: Elizabeth Robins, Suffrage Drama, and the Concept of 'New Women'
No full textIn this research, we employ a socio-historical examination of the subversion of the ‘juridico-discursive’ power in the late Victorian period in order to examine the rise of the British Suffrage Movement and specifically ‘suffrage drama’. we demonstrate how ordinary women and women artists, here in case of Elizabeth Robins, moved against the patriarchal artistic hegemony. The term ‘artistic hegemony’ is utilized here as a parallel term for ‘cultural hegemony’. In Marxism, and specifically in Gramscian theories, cultural hegemony refers to the domination of socio-cultural norms imposed by ruling class (bourgeoisie) on a society. These ideological norms are usually practiced through sets of diverse apparatuses commensurate with different social-class statutes. How this process (consciously or unconsciously, deliberately or accidently) occurred in the English Victorian society is not of concern in this study; however, we depict how marginalized groups, women in general, challenged the dominant overpowering apparatuses, whose power Michel Foucault believed to be ‘juridico-discursive’. We study how women, from the margins of the British society, challenged British ruling patriarchal foundations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and put an end to its negative up-to-down ‘juridico-discursive’ power. As one of the controlling apparatuses of the ruling class is always art and literature, we discuss how dramatic literature and theatre, specially through the concept of ‘suffrage drama’, as a ‘place of tolerance’ in a Foucauldian term, function as antitheses to the mainstream theatre in the setting of suffrage movement
The Ideological Questions of Marriage in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure
Get PDFAs one of the prominent ideologies of the nineteenth-century— in a complex interrelation with other contemporary ideological discourses particularly femininity and marriage—religion adopts a critical stance in Hardy’s presentation of characters. Breaching the religio-conventional image of femininity as “Angel in the House” and “Cow Woman,” Hardy’s Jude the Obscure (1895) is indeed deemed to be his milestone in presenting his anti-Christian attitudes towards the contemporary religion. This study aims to present Hardy’s outright hostility towards the nineteenth-century Christianity through his creation of non-conformist characters, necessitating a parallel study with other contemporary discourses regarding marriage and femininity, and conflict with the religion of the time. Hardy’s magnum opus, the work on which he was to stake his final reputation as a novelist, was clearly Jude the Obscure which as a noticeable socio-religious experimentation of the late nineteenth-century, reveals Hardy’s perception of new ideas about femininity and marriage by presenting the hot contemporary issues of “New Woman” and “Free Union” through the development and presentation of Sue Bridehead and her free union with Jude, respectively. Hardy’s presentation of Sue Bridehead as a “New Woman,” and employing the “Free Union” in marked contrast with the nineteenth-century convention of marriage as a “Bonded Pair” is Hardy’s closing upshot of his final novelistic attempt. The non-conformist Jude and Sue are presented as figures touching the Victorian Christian standards of morality, while, the final tragic destiny of Jude and Sue’s helplessness attest to the writer’s substantial contribution as a Victorian male novelist to the ideologies circulating at the time
The Investigation of Identity Construction:A Foucauldian Reading of Sam Shepard's Buried Child
Get PDFShepard is peculiarly powerful in his symbolic family problem plays: True West, Buried Child and Curse of the Starving Class. He allegorizes the American experience and undermines the myth of America as the New Eden.
The present study seeks to critically explore Sam Shepard's Buried Child in terms of Foucauldian conception of identity construction. Shepard is depicting a dystopian world with its bewildered characters; however he has still got a romantic view of individuals trying to grapple with the society in order to get unity and order. This Shephardian attitude towards human beings is seemingly a free agent that overlaps the Foucauldian view which establishes a philosophy focusing on the relationship between the self and the society. The present essay attempts to demonstrate the complicated relationship between the self and the opposing forces.
Key Words: Family problem plays, Technologies of power, Power/knowledge, Subject.
 
"Following the Traces of Feminine Writing in Adrienne Rich"
Get PDFThe phallogocentric stucture of language privileges the male in construction of meaning throughout the patriarchal society which allows no place for feminine writing. Opposing what Lacan calls as phallogocentric discource, poststructuralist feminists exhort to what Cixous terms as "ecriture feminine" as the inscription of female diffence in language and text. Therefore, viewing women's difference as a source (of imagery) rather than a point of inferiority to men, Adrienne Rich redescovers female experiences in her poems through using "ecriture feminine" and thus exhbits the productiviy and plurality of women's language. Hence, the present study looking from the perspective of Cixous's "ecriture feminine," aims at analyzing female modes of writing in Rich's poems. The main finding of the research is that, through using female forms of expession as opposed to phallogocentric structure of expresson, Rich brings into being the symbolic weight of female consciousness, illustrating the oppressive forces that obstruct female expression
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar: a Mirror of American Fifties
Get PDFWith its portrayal of a talented yet frustrated young American woman in the 1950s, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (1963) depicts the experiences of a nineteen-year-old girl before her mental breakdown. Benefitting from a Friedanian second wave feminism, this paper aims to trace the root of disappointment and identity crisis in Plath's heroine, Esther Greenwood. It is understood that besides being a personal issue, her frustration is the outcome of sociocultural factors. The lack of role models and the contradictory messages sent by the media lead to her anxiety, disillusionment, and uncertainty. The Bell Jar proposes a solution: it is indeed possible for a woman to hold a fulfilling career and at the same time be a caring wife and a loving mother. And this is the answer Esther tries to figure out at a time when the boundaries between the domestic sphere and the outside world are clearly defined for women