146 research outputs found
Ohio impromptu, genre and Beckett on film
No full textSamuel Beckett’s choice of the title Ohio Impromptu to name the play first performed to an audience of academics and scholars at Columbus Ohio in 1981 is one manifestation of its author’s interest in the question of literary genre; more generally, in Beckett’s dramatic works one encounters a meticulous attention to the activity of categorisation, even if the energy is often directed toward the creation of phantom genres for spectral exemplars. This essay concerns itself with Ohio Impromptu in particular because by means of elements specific to this play (including the context in which it was first performed) it comments upon its own very failure to occupy its designated genre co-ordinates (these include its identity both as a play and as an ‘impromptu’). This play, which is so apt to incorporate other genres, however, is presided over by a stage direction which locates it firmly in the theatrical context. It is in its deliberate failure to attend to this stage direction that the Beckett on Film version of the play goes beyond the mere treacherous fidelity that is inevitably a feature of any adaptation. In arguing this, the essay analyses the foregrounding in the play of questions that can be said to pertain to genre (in several senses). Its more specific intention is to suggest that, via a combination of casting and special effects, the adaptation succeeds not only in cancelling the critical reflection on the ‘genre gesture’ that is lodged in Ohio Impromptu, but also in eradicating the very disjunction between Reader and Listener upon which the play depends
From Murphy’s "microcosmopolitans" to Castro’s "micro-mensajes": metropolitan, national and ontological dislocations - with screening of Castro and interview with the director
No full textAt the very end of the closing credits of Alejo Moguillansky's film Castro (Argentina, 2009) we read 'Algunos episodios del film fueron inspirados libremente en 'Murphy' de Samuel Beckett' [Some scenes in the film were loosely inspired by Murphy by Samuel Beckett]. This almost occluded credit is emblematic of the film's own visibility. Castro has barely had any theatrical screenings in the UK; it is not available on DVD and has only had limited festival screenings in Europe. Aside from the fact it was inspired by Murphy, the film deserves wider recognition among Beckett scholars, as I set out to show. The inhabitants of the 'little world' in Murphy are named 'microcosmopolitans'. Murphy envies them their removal from the corpus of deterrents that is the Big World. In this context, then, the city beyond the walls of the MMM and adjacent to it (the latter being located in a suburb) is the 'macrocosmopolis' as much as it is the metropolis. Rather than a retreat into an architectural and institutional interior which would offer an alternative mode of habitation, and habit, with Murphy envying and to a certain extent mimicking the behavior of the inmates of the asylum, Castro presents that interior externalized on the streets. In this way the film might be said to turn inside-out the novel’s careful construction of space. The little world is externalized in Castro and coexists on the same plane as the metropolis. Under the figure of 'dislocation', I explore a variety of modes of relation between the locations, settings and spatial constructions of the novel and the film respectively, invoking classic conceptualisations of the experience of urban modernity as well as more recent theorisations of the architectural imagination.
This paper was preceded by a screening of Castro, followed by a live interview via Skype between Garin Dowd and the director of Castro Alejo Moguillansky
Carax and the Ambiguities - A Book That Needs To Fail, Perhaps, on Fergus Daly and Garin Dowd's Leos Carax
No full textFergus Daly and Garin Dowd
_Leos Carax_
Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2003
ISBN 0-7190-6315-9
188 pp
Abstract machines: Samuel Beckett and philosophy after Deleuze and Guattari
No full textWhat can philosophy bring to the reading of Beckett? Combining intertextual analysis with a ‘schizoanalytic genealogy’ derived from the authors of L’Anti-Œdipe, Garin Dowd’s Abstract Machines: Samuel Beckett and Philosophy after Deleuze and Guattari offers an innovative response to this much debated question. The author focuses on zones of encounter and thresholds of engagement between Beckett’s writing and a range of philosophers (among them Spinoza, Leibniz and Kant) and philosophical concepts. Beckett’s writing impacts in a variety of ways on Deleuze and Guattari’s thought, and, in particular, resonates with Deleuze’s contributions to the history of philosophy (in books such as Le Pli: Leibniz et le baroque), and his ‘critical and clinical’ approach to literature. Furthermore, the books co-written with Guattari, concerned as they are with the ‘molecularization’ of the discipline of philosophy in the name of ‘thinking otherwise’, reveal themselves in a new light when explored in conjunction with Beckett’s œuvre. With its arresting perspectives on a wide range of Beckett’s works, Abstract Machines will appeal to academics and postgraduate students interested in the philosophical aspects of his writing. Its engagement with alternative contributions to the question of Beckett and philosophy, including that of Alain Badiou, renders it a timely and provocative intervention in contemporary debates on the relationship between literature and philosophy, both within the field of Beckett studies and beyond
Apprenticeship. Philosophy and the "secret pressures of the work of art" in Deleuze, Beckett, Proust and Ruiz; or Remaking the Recherche
No full textIf Beckett’s study of Proust has belatedly received the criticisms its author no doubt anticipated, another influential study published a little over thirty years later has, like its predecessor, elicited, among others, the critical response that the author of the Recherche finds himself recruited to the self-serving project of the critic. Gilles Deleuze’s Proust is cast not as the pessimistic Schopenhauerian which Beckett makes of him, but rather, as a force of affirmation in the quasi-Nietzschean register of the ‘powers of the false’. Deleuze would studiously augment his 1964 study with two additions in an effort to improve it. The consequence of this is to render its textual genesis a testament to one of the themes, and for Deleuze the theme of the Recherche, namely, apprenticeship. Moreover, the ‘pedagogy’ to which Proust’s novel subjects the philosopher becomes itself an example of the ‘untimely’ operations of art upon what Deleuze calls the upright or dogmatic image of thought
Leos Carax
No full textThe key ingredients and influences of Carax's four films (including _Les Amants du Pont Neuf_ and _Pola X_) are examined here: Paris, pop music, flanerie and amour fou, mannerist and neo-baroque aesthetics, the "Nouvelle Vague" and contemporary naturalist cinema. The authors draw on a variety of intellectual sources, from Deleuze's philosophy of Cahiers-based film criticism to theories of art and literature, in order to disentangle the complex web of biographical mythology, formal and intellectual cinematic concerns, flamboyant imagery and intertextual references woven by Carax and his films in the last two decades of the 20th century. Daly and Dowd argue that critical instincts seeking the key to the visionary poetics of Carax's cinema can most profitably directed towards the recent history of maverick mannerist and baroque auteurs. From Ruiz and Rivette to Garrel and Techine, and their explorations of the "powers of the false", rather than Godard or the "cinema du look" fraternity of Besson and Beineix. Part of the "French Film Directors" series, this text should be of use to all fans and scholars of contemporary French cinem
List of herbariums in Russia, 2023
No full textIn 2022, we carried out the work on the next systematization and updating of information regarding the herbarium collections in Russia. The table shows the number of herbaria in various subjects of the Russian Federation and the number of samples in them as of January 2023. The subjects of the Russian Federation are given according to the text of the Constitution of the Russian Federation (2022). The data are ranked by the volume of the herbarium funds. The total number of herbaria in 89 subjects of the Russian Federation is 293, of which 144 herbaria have international indices; the total herbarium fund includes 21.34 million specimens. The distribution of collections by administrative regions is given on a separate sheet of the file. We also note that a significant part of the collections is located in universities - 124 herbariums, however, only 32.8% of all herbarium funds are located here. At the same time, 2/3 of the herbarium fund is located in the herbaria of the research institutes - 62.7%. In 69 herbariums of the reserves, 2.2% of herbarium sheets are concentrated, in 39 museums - 1.8%, in three private collections - 0.4%.The data presented is not final. The author will be grateful for additions and comments. Correspondence address: [email protected]*****В 2022 г. нами была проведена работа по очередной систематизации и обновлению сведений, касающихся гербарных коллекций России. В таблице представлено количество гербариев в различных субъектах РФ и количество образцов в них на январь 2023 г. Субъекты РФ приводятся по тексту Конституции РФ (2022). Данные ранжированы по объёму гербарного фонда. Общее количество гербариев в 89 субъектах РФ – 293, из них 144 гербария имеют международные индексы; общий гербарный фонд насчитывает 21,34 млн образцов. Распределение коллекций по административным районам приводится на отдельном листе файла. Отметим также, что значительная часть коллекций находится в вузах - 124 гербария, однако, здесь расположено только 32,8% всех гербарных фондов. В то же время 2/3 гербарного фонда расположено в гербариях НИИ - 62,7%. В 69 гербариях заповедников сосредоточено 2,2% гербарных листов, в 39 музеях - 1,8%, в трёх частных собраниях - 0,4%.Представленные данные не являются окончательными. Автор будет благодарен за дополнения и замечания. Адрес для корреспонденции: [email protected]
Carax - Philosophy in Film: On Daly and Dowd's Leos Carax
No full textFergus Daly and Garin Dowd
_Leos Carax_
Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2003
ISBN 0-7190-6315-9
188 pp
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