17 research outputs found
Identity and consumption practices of Northamptonshire Caribbeans c.1955-1989
No full textThe objective of this thesis is to delineate and analyse Northamptonshire Caribbeans' consumption c.1955-1989. Author-collected and other oral histories alongside complementary primary and secondary references dovetail to unearth and analyse aspects of Post-War Caribbean consumption in a British provincial location that have been significantly unexplored previously. Central to the argument is the contention that identity is fundamentally significant in comprehending and analysing Northamptonshire Caribbeans' consumption. Various conceptualisations of identity facilitated development of consumer materialisations and aspirations. This thesis explores how multiple forms of identity as Caribbean, Black and British people were significant in shaping local Caribbeans' consumption. The succeeding pages address and analyse how these multiple identities influenced consumption and how provincial consumer behaviour was shaped by Caribbeans' relative co-ethnic isolation in Northamptonshire. Chapter 3 delineates and analyses consumer practices and practicalities of Northamptonshire Caribbeans. Integral within these consumer practices and practicalities are changes in consumption over time, intergenerational differences in consumption, as well as aspects of consumption that could be considered 'typical' and/or 'atypical' Northamptonshire Caribbean consumption; all of which are incorporated within this chapter. Chapter 4 connects identity and consumption through enhancing understanding of Northamptonshire Caribbeans' consumer networks. These networks interacted with the combination of identities local Caribbeans psychologically felt part of within various Caribbean, Black and British permutations. Furthermore, such identities varied more widely amongst the younger generation than their co-ethnic elders, a concept which is also addressed. Education and cultural currency are two novel strands through which to analyse connections between consumption and identity. The final two chapters deploy these concepts in an innovative manner creating and developing greater understanding of Northamptonshire Caribbeans' consumption. Chapter 5 expounds on the concept that education can be used as consumption whilst shaping future consumer behaviour, both ideas significantly under-explored previously. Chapter 6 introduces the theory of cultural currency, the idea that aspects of culture have finite, but changing, values and must be shared to have value similar to monetary currencies having exchange values for other monetary currencies. This chapter demonstrates how Northamptonshire Caribbeans shared aspects of Caribbean culture as cultural currency, fostering co-ethnic strength whilst gaining inter-ethnic respect for Caribbeans. Through comprehending Caribbean identity, correlations between empirical and social history, local consumption, as well as educational and cultural circumstances that stimulated and inspired Northamptonshire Caribbeans, this thesis distinctively illuminates how local Caribbeans' consumption interacted with various permutations of Afro-Caribbean, Black and/or British identities whilst representing idiosyncratic local nodes within these larger amalgamations
The fuzzy theory and women writers in the late eighteenth century
No full text'Fuzzy Theory and Women Writers in the Late Eighteenth Century' contends
that women writers require more careful critical treatment, and suggests that critics
are still bound by the outdated logic of the Law of the Excluded Middle. This law,
first formulated by Aristotle, and developed by Gottfried Leibniz in the early
eighteenth century, indicates that where there are two contradictory prepositions, one
must be true and the other false; a female writer must, therefore, either be feminine or
masculine, conservative or radical. The twentieth century concept of Fuzzy logic,
however, helped mathematicians and engineers to manage reasoning that was only
approximate, rather than exact. Borrowing from this, the thesis will employ the
Fuzzy Set Theory, which permits the gradual assessment of elements in a set, rather
than relying on elements that are assessed in binaric terms (the principle of bivalence,
or, contradiction). Put simply, the Fuzzy Set Theory does away with binaries, the Law
of the Excluded Middle, and the Law of Contradiction, allowing subjects to be
imprecise, and changeable. Thus, each chapter will construct a Fuzzy Set by which a
variety of eighteenth century debates, with which women writers engaged, can be
examined. The thesis will show that all such concepts are subjective and unstable—
changeable and open to personal interpretation, and will discuss such writers as Mary
Wollstonecraft, Catherine Macaulay, Charlotte Smith, Anna Letitia Barbauld, Mary
Hays, Lucy Aikin, Hannah More and Joanna Southcott
The intimacy which is knowledge : female friendship in the novels of women writers
No full textThe thesis offers a historical account of the
representation of friendship in the novels of English
women writers from the nineteenth century to the
present. Questioning the prevalent understanding of the
history of women's friendship in terms of a single major
rupture, from nineteenth-century 'innocence' to
twentieth-century 'guilt', the thesis identifies
narrative configurations which recur throughout this,
period, and which define friendship as a formative
learning experience integrally related to the
acquisition of gendered identity. It concludes that
there can be no final and 'perfect' representation of
friendship, since the nature of the "knowledge' shared
has continually shifted in relation to changing
understandings of femininity.
Chapter 1 identifies the origins and nature of the
Victorian concept of the "second self", in which the
friend acts as the mirror of, and means of access to, an
idealised female subjectivity. Chapter 2 analyses the
ways in which this concept informs the narrative
patterns and rituals in Victorian fictions of
friendship. Chapter 3 offers a new reading of novels by
Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot and Charlotte Bronte, in
which the conventions identified in Chapter 2 are
adapted to question the existing boundaries of feminine
identity. Chapter 4 examines the impact of changes in
women's education upon the representation of friendship
in turn-of-the-century feminist and anti-feminist
novels, and in a new genre, the school story for girls.
Chapter 5 shows that the scientific construct of
lesbianism produced a new distinction between the
'healthy' and the 'unhealthy' relationship, but that the
terms of this distinction were contested; in
twentieth-century novels of the 'gyriaeceum', the
tradition continues, but is newly eroticised. Chapter 6
looks at friendship as 'revision' in recent English and
American novels, in which earlier configurations are
redeployed in the light of contemporary feminist concern
to recuperate and re-imagine the past
Masculinity on the run: history, nation and subjectivity in contemporary mainland Chinese cinema
No full textThe study investigates representations of masculinities in modern Mainland Chinese cinema from the early reform period to the year 2000. It argues that masculinities from this era are `on the run'; that is, male protagonists' ambiguous relationships with dominant discourses of nation, history and new formulations of subjectivity cause them either to flee from Maoist collective identity categories or more actively to move towards discourses of the sovereignty of the individual brought into China with the `opening up' policies enacted after the Chairman's death. The social and cultural upheavals represented in these films create an atmosphere of uncertainty in which little is solid or settled: for example, although filmmakers may represent their male protagonists rushing from ideas of Maoist manhood, these ambitions and identity figurations, active in the public imagination for so long, still structure male identity, and even male rebellion, acting as reins pulling at the individual agency male filmmakers may try so hard to trace on screen. The result is a recent history of
representation in which male characters stand as symbols for their nation's central dilemma, as it wavers between a collective past and an unknown (both exciting and threatening) future.
Whereas images of women have been analysed (especially those in the Fifth Generation cinema of the 1980s and 1990s), their male counterparts on the Chinese cinema screen have been largely ignored. This study redresses this imbalance and interprets the representation of men on screen through gender theory, cultural studies, and sources on Chinese society. The main chapters of the study concentrate on versions or expressions of masculinities, reflecting a society that has expressed its revolutionary aims through human models. The introduction to each chapter provides a contextualisation of the manner in which masculinities have been configured in other contemporary representational fields and will explain the relevance of the discussed ideas of masculinity in China's recent past. This study contributes both to conceptions of film and gender in China, and will widen the scope of cross-cultural
theorisations of masculinities
Modernism, antisemitism and Jewish identity in the writing and publishing of John Rodker
No full textThis thesis examines the relationship between the English Jewish writer and publisher John Rodker and the modernism of the Pound circle. Previous considerations of the antisemitism of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot have either
ignored or cited in their defence their Jewish friends and acquaintances. This thesis shows that the modernist interest in the figure of `the Jew' took effect not only in
their poetry and social commentary but also in the social grouping which they formed in order to produce and circulate this writing. Rodker was both a necessary
figure to Pound's theory and practice of modernism, but one who had to be kept on the margins. This resulted in his being able to articulate certain aspects of his
experience as an assimilated Jew-loss, disconnection, feeling out of place place-while excluding any other possible aspects, including naming himself as Jewish.
Chapter 1 shows that Pound and Eliot's antisemitic statements and poetry functioned as part of the formation of the `men of 1914', and as a means of shocking their audience through a poetry of ugliness. Chapter 2 considers a printing error in Rodker's Ovid Press edition of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and reads it as a sign of Pound's failure to carry out his social and poetic project, a failure which he blamed on Jews, but, because this failure was inevitable, part of the task for carrying the project out was assigned to Jews. Chapter 3 reads Rodker's volume
of poetry Hymns (1920), and traces how his marginal position within modernism resulted in a poetry which did not directly address Jewish issues, but was affected
by his Jewish social position. Chapter 4 considers Rodker and two other Jewish writers, Carl Rakosi and Louis Zukofsky, who Pound published in The Exile (1927-
28), showing that Pound's interest in these writers was combined with an unease with them that played out in editorial decisions and means of framing their work.
Chapter 5 examines Rodker's Memoirs of Other Fronts (1932). His selfdescriptions of himself as a foreigner are shown to be still influenced by the Pound circle's ideas of Jews, but also reworked through his increasing interest in
psychoanalysis
The films of Chantal Akerman : a cinema of displacements
No full textThis thesis attempts to broaden the critical boundaries within which the films of
Chantal Akerman have been discussed. First, it extends analysis from Akerman's
70s to her 80s and 90s films. Second, it argues that as well as her gender and
aesthetic identities, Akerman's Belgian and Jewish identities should be
acknowledged. Finally, it suggests that each of these four identities: woman,
independent film-maker, Belgian and Jewish allow her a position of marginality,
figured in her films through the trope of 'displacement'.
The structure of the thesis is two-fold: it extends discussion of Akerman's cinema to
films not previously considered, and through this extension engages with
contemporary issues in film and cultural theory such as female authorship,
independent and national, and marginal cinemas. Chapter one `Woman' and chapter
two `Independent' extend the reading of gender and sexuality and formal and
aesthetic innovation in Akerman's cinema. In the first chapter this is done through
consideration of the films Golden Eighties (1986) and Nuit et jour (1990), while in
the second her short films, video work and work for television are examined.
My third and fourth chapters offer areas of Akerman's work which have not
previously been studied. Chapter three, `Belgian', considers the significance of
Akerman's nationality for her film-making while engaging with theories around
national cinema. It examines the possibility of a `Belgian national cinema' and the
intersections which arise between this and Akerman's cinema, especially around
Toute une nuit (1982). Finally, in my fourth chapter, `Jewish', I use Histoires
d'Amerigue (1989) and D'Est (1993) to argue that Akerman's is a `wandering'
cinema, in which she is constantly examining the homelessness and displacement
that her Jewishness engenders
The Narrative Creation of Self in the Fiction by African-American and African-Caribbean Women Writers.
No full textThis study entails an examination of the works of six authors (Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor and Simone Schwarz-Bart) whose works are shaped by values and perceptions influenced by their experiences of sexual, racial and social marginalization. While I acknowledge differences in origin, beliefs and personality, I explore the common ground which unites them, and more specifically the complex ties that bind their individual writing I with their environment-- communitas, to use Victor Turner\u27s term. This study is also an exploration of the modes in which these six writers create their idiosyncratic selves out of the continued tension between the writer\u27s I and the communitas to which she claims to belong. Furthermore, while addressing the links that connect these authors\u27 works with larger literary categories (i.e, the novel, autobiography, African-American and Caribbean literary traditions, literature written by women), I distinguish what is specific to each of these narratives in their affirmation of distinct black female selves. In my first chapter, I investigate the social and historical strictures that have governed the development of both specific black narrative traditions in the New World and of the so-called black female literary tradition since the publication of Harriet Jacobs\u27s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Following my initial discussion of the trope of confinement in works by black women, in my second and third chapters I explore the diverse representations of place and time within black cultures from Africa and the diaspora. In chapter IV, I discuss the particular constraints that determine the construction of specifically female identities in the texts by these six authors. This discussion takes into account: the role of female-male relationships, the retention of strong African-centered traits concerning maternal roles and mothering; and the crucial part played in most of these texts by same-sex bonding and identification. In the fifth chapter, I study more closely two autobiographies (Lorde\u27s and Angelou\u27s) and show how they partake of the self-genesis of black women\u27s selves in America and the Caribbean. Finally, to avoid the essentialist fallacy, my conclusion is open-ended; I demonstrate how these six authors\u27 narrative techniques and uses of voices re-affirm the constant need to merge the individual and the communal voices in an ultimate celebration of identity and continued survival against all odds. Throughout this study, my intention is to show that each author\u27s definition of an idiosyncratic female--or male--self depends in part on spatial, temporal and social paradigms of blackness and femaleness. These individual definitions serve as a chronicle of the way in which multiple social, cultural, historical and linguistic factors create ever-expanding black female literary traditions in the Americas
The Booster/Delta nexus : Henry Miller and his friends in the literary world of Paris and London on the eve of the Second World War.
No full textA sojourn in Paris 1824-25: sex and sociability in the manuscript writings of Anne Lister (1791-1840)
No full textThis thesis examines the day to day practices that constituted Anne Lister's (1791-1840) sexuality and sociability within the range of her writings, as well as her society. Anne's writings were a detailed account, spanning her lifetime, of her own love and relationships with the 'fairer sex' (Whitbread 1988, 145). Anne's sociality, seen in her correspondence and plain handwritten journal entries, has been explored by Muriel Green in Miss Lister of Shibden Hall and Jill Liddington in Female Fortune and Nature's Domain (Green 1992; Liddington 1998; 2003). As a gentlewoman of adequate means, Anne has garnered some attention from women's historians interested in her agency within an early nineteenth century social and historical context. Anne's sexual identity has been extensively analysed over the past nearly twenty years by lesbian feminists, queer theorists, women's historians and historians of sexuality concerned with the history and development of modern Western female homosexuality and gender. The source for theorising Anne's sexuality has been the edited selections of the crypted journal entries, published by Helena Whitbread in I Know My Own Heart and No Priest but Love (Whitbread 1988; 1992). However, many analyses deal either with the theorisation of Anne's sexuality or her sociality; the theoretical difficulty with reconciling these categories has troubled the analysis of her complex subjectivity. Drawing upon the archival materials, I have used an interdisciplinary feminist approach to analyse the sexual and social processes of Anne's everyday interactions in her writings. Taking the seven month period of the sojourn to Paris in 1824-25, I have focused upon Anne's textual practices within her journal volume and letters during her residence in Paris, her social practices with the other guests at the guesthouse 24 Place Vendome and her sexual practices with her lover, the widow Mrs. Maria Barlow. The journal volumes and correspondence are a valuable historical record of one gentlewoman's engagement with early nineteenth century British culture
Dress, Distress and Desire: Clothing and Sentimental Literature.
No full textPhDThis study explores representations of the adorned female body in sentimental
literature. In particular, it addresses the intersection of the discourses of dress, fashion
and sensibility and the political anxieties such intersections expose. These concerns are
located within current critical debate upon the implications of the feminine sentimental
ideal for women readers and writers. Building upon recent scholarship, the introduction
argues that sensibility was predicated upon a concept of the body as an index of feeling.
This argument is subsequently complicated, through a reading of More's `Sensibility'
(1782), which points to the potential of dress to function as both an extension of the
corporeal index and metaphor for sensibility's propensity to lapse into affectation. Dress,
as More implies, not only exposed but embodied the paradox status of sensibility as a
symbol of selfhood externally expressed, and possibly affected mode of display. The
opening chapters explore, in greater depth, the perceived antagonism between dress and
the sentimental body. Chapter One centres on Pamela (1740) and the heroine's
contentious appearance in her homespun gown and petticoat. Chapter Two explores
textual representations of dressmakers and milliners, whose damning association with
fashion ensured that they became personifications of and further justifications for
critiques of dress as a form of social and moral encryption. Subsequent chapters on
ladies' magazines and Fordyce's Sermons to Young Women (1765) discuss how writers,
across various genres, responded to this antagonism by suggesting ways in which the
adorned female body might become a synecdoche of sentimental virtue. Such texts,
however, reveal the fault line upon which they and, by extension, sensibility rest. In
analogising appearance and worth, writers had to uncomfortably acknowledge that, once
outlined in print, such ideals became accessible to readers, potentially rendering virtue as
easy to put on as a gown or petticoat. The final chapter addresses the escalating
synonymy of fashion and sentiment in the 1790s, as critics argued that the distinction
between genuine feeling and its performance had blurred to obscurity. Edgeworth's
Belinda (1801) is read, in this context, as a counter-sentimental novel, which attempts to
divorce the two through the rehabilitation of the woman of fashion as a woman of `true'
sensibility: a wife and mother
