scholarly journals Writers and politics: Gisèle Sapiro’s advances within the Bourdieusian sociology of the literary field

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridget Fowler
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Sociology Of Literature ◽  
World War ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
Potential Force ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Universal Structure

AbstractThis article undertakes a critical analysis of the work of Gisèle Sapiro, with reference to sociology of literature. From 1999 (Sapiro, 2014a), Sapiro has developed the Bourdieusian research tradition, amplifying especially Bourdieu’s theory of crisis. Focusing on the antagonisms between literary “prophets” and “priests”, she has drawn on a rich sample of 184 writers to elucidate the struggles inherent in World War II between writers from different field positions and literary habitus. Further, her historical analyses of the ethical commitments of nineteenth century writers via a fresh microsociology of literary trials (Sapiro, 2011) has reminded us of the importance of popular poets in articulating the suffering of the subordinate classes. Her most recent book (Sapiro, 2018) has expanded on her earlier themes, whilst identifying the recuperation of certain 1930s’ fascist worldviews within contemporary literature. This article notes that there is a telling divergence between Bourdieu and Sapiro on the issue of interests behind disinterestedness, exemplified in the case of Zola. On this issue, Sapiro’s reading (Sapiro, 2011) is found convincing. Finally, the dialectic of avant-garde consecration and routinisation is questioned as a universal structure. It is suggested that certain avant-garde – the Harlem Renaissance, for example – did not undergo swift consecration or routinisation, although this contention deserves greater research. The paper concludes by showing that Sapiro’s conception of writers’ responsibility owes its origins less to Sartre than to the Durkheimian/ Bourdieusian notion of the expertise of the “specific intellectual”. It welcomes Sapiro’s concern for literature as a potential force for social change.

Fragments of the Holocaust

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Duindam
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Museum Studies ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
World War ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Holocaust Memorial ◽  
Memorial Museum ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
A Site

Why do we attach so much value to sites of Holocaust memory, if all we ever encounter are fragments of a past that can never be fully comprehended? David Duindam examines how the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a former theater in Amsterdam used for the registration and deportation of nearly 50,000 Jews, fell into disrepair after World War II before it became the first Holocaust memorial museum of the Netherlands. Fragments of the Holocaust: The Amsterdam Hollandsche Schouwburg as a Site of Memory combines a detailed historical study of the postwar period of this site with a critical analysis of its contemporary presentation by placing it within international debates concerning memory, emotionally fraught heritage and museum studies. A case is made for the continued importance of the Hollandsche Schouwburg and other comparable sites, arguing that these will remain important in the future as indexical fragments where new generations can engage with the memory of the Holocaust on a personal and affective level.

Overview: Toward a Better World for Our Grandchildren

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Hamburg ◽  
Beatrix A. Hamburg
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
First Century ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
The Internet ◽  
World War ◽  
Small Arms ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Killing Fields ◽  
The World ◽  
Prime Problem

The growing destructive capacities of humanity make this the prime problem of the twenty-first century. How we cope with this problem will have a profound bearing on the world of our grandchildren. The twentieth century was the bloodiest ever. World War II caused at least 50 million deaths. Six million died in the Holocaust. At Hiroshima, one bomb caused 100,000 deaths. Now thousands of such bombs (smaller and more conveniently transportable tactical bombs) are housed in Russia. Many are poorly guarded, susceptible to theft and bribery. Others may be made elsewhere. Danger increases with the number of such weapons existing in the world.Why? There is a greater chance of error, theft, and bribery—and ultimately their use in war or terrorism. Therefore, we should diminish the numbers as much as we can and secure responsible stewardship for those that remain. Moreover, there are still thousands of nuclear weapons that are far more powerful than the smaller tactical weapons. Biological and chemical weapons are easier to make than nuclear warheads and therefore have special appeal to terrorists. Small arms and light weapons now cover the world wall-to-wall. They include highly lethal machine guns, mortars, automatic rifles, and rocket launchers. Altogether, the destructive capacity of humanity is almost beyond imagination. Moreover, there is an exciting effect of today’s vast weapons on political demagogues, religious fanatics, and ethnic haters—and plenty of them exist in the world. Incitement to hatred and violence can occur with radio, TV, the Internet, and many other media. Thus, we can more powerfully incite violence, utilize more lethal weapons, and do much more damage than ever imaginable before. No group is so small or so far away as to prevent it from doing immense damage anywhere. The time has come to move beyond complacency, fatalism, denial, and avoidance. We must urgently seek to understand and strengthen an array of institutions and organizations that have the capacity to use tools and strategies to prevent deadly conflict. The first author (D.A.H.) considered many such possibilities in his recent book, No More Killing Fields: Preventing Deadly Conflict. Overall, this gives humanity a greater range of possibilities than ever before for building a system for preventing war and genocide. It will not be easy.

Gutai

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neilton Clarke
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Technological Advancement ◽  
World War ◽  
Modus Operandi ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
The World ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Gutai Art Association

Gutai Art Association [Gutai Bijutsu Kyōkai] [具体美術協会] was an influential post-World War II Japanese avant-garde collective with an outward-looking mindset. Founded in 1954 in Ashiya, near Osaka, by Japanese artist Jirō Yoshihara (1905–1972), it had fifty-nine members over the course of its eighteen-year lifespan. Gutai—meaning ‘‘embodiment’’ and ‘‘concreteness’’—saw its artists engage a plethora of media and presentation contexts, often beyond gallery walls and frequently with more emphasis upon process than on finished product. A unifying factor among its multifarious tendencies was a spirit of adventure, exemplified by Yoshihara’s oft-cited call to ‘‘do what no one has done before.’’ Embracing performance, theatricality, and outdoor manifestations, with a characteristic impromptu modus operandi, Gutai’s experimental tendencies and liberal ideals breathed new life into art and into a society remaking itself following the cataclysm and repressions of World War II. As Japan entered the 1960s, consolidating its economy and engagement with the rest of the world, the decidedly offbeat stance of Gutai’s earlier years assumed a cooler demeanor, due in part to nation-wide technological advancement, growing internationalism, and an evolving audience base and receptivity. The Gutai group disbanded following Yoshihara’s passing in 1972.

scholarly journals View Magazine and the Mass Visual Culture of World War II

Arts ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Gregory Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Visual Artists ◽  
World War ◽  
American Government ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Corporate Advertising ◽  
War Effort ◽  
The Media

Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, the American government impressed upon the media industry and corporate advertising the cooperative need to boost morale and enlist nationalist support for the war effort. Public opinion was shaped through an active campaign of visual propaganda and media censorship in which the social trauma of war, in particular, representations of death and destructive disorder, was erased from official news reports. However, avant-garde art and writing in View magazine during the early 1940s can be analyzed as a radical form of counter-discourse that challenged the media’s representation of the war. View had been founded in 1940 by the poet Charles Henri Ford, who vowed to create a magazine devoted to what he called the “new journalism”, a form of international reporting by poets and visual artists that would provide visionary critical insight on the forthcoming political catastrophe in Europe. Lacking their own publishing forum, a number of Surrealist émigrés and American adherents of Surrealism gravitated towards View. As this article will examine, Surrealist imagery and prose in View evoked a profound sense of the bodily trauma and physical destruction omitted from mass media, subverting the government’s highly sanitized and ideologically manipulated representations of World War II.

Homage to Robert Aron, 1898—1975

1977 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-139
Author(s):  
Annabelle Henkin Melzer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Alfred Jarry ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Louis Aragon ◽  
Tristan Tzara ◽  
Philippe Soupault ◽  
Young Wife ◽  
French Communist Party

I went to see Robert Aron in the summer of 1972. He was then seventy-four years old, a tall, striking man in an apartment of stuffed furniture overrun by books. In all my meetings that summer with former surrealists, people who had made avant-garde theatre in Paris in the 1920s, there was always a sense of trembling at reaching out to touch cobwebbed memories. Forty-five years had passed since the events we talked about. Tristan Tzara, recalled by Gide as a charming man with a young wife who was ‘even more charming’, had since fought with the French Resistance during World War II and later joined the Communist Party. André Breton, when he died in 1966, was accompanied to his grave by ‘waves of young men and young girls often in couples, with arms entwined’. They had come from all over France to pay him tribute. Philippe Soupault is a respected editor, critic and radio commentator, Louis Aragon is at the forefront of the French Communist Party and dislikes talking about his days as a Surrealist, Roger Vitrac is an acknowledged and produced playwright while Artaud is a cult figure. There are moments when in looking back, the whole Dada-Surrealist performance world looks like some great Dada swindle perpetrated on the only too fallible researcher and critic. Robert Aron does nothing to dispel this feeling. The man who sent a telegram to Breton warning him that he would stop at no measures to keep the fervent Surrealist claque from disturbing the performance of Strindberg's A Dream Play at the Théâtre Alfred Jarry, was elected a member of the French Academy before his death.

Machina ex homine, homo ex machina

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio I. M. Poppi
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Japanese Society ◽  
Japanese Culture ◽  
Conceptual Representation ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Deviance ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Social

Abstract In this article, I identify and describe multimodal hybrid metaphors—the conceptual representation of two elements represented as merged into a new single ‘gestalt’—represented by the machine and human body domains in “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” (鉄男: Tetsuo), a Japanese avant-garde film. Since “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” portrays the genesis of a man whose body becomes a human-machine hybrid, I explore to what extent this film can act as an example of how hybrid metaphors are conveyed. In line with the ideological function of metaphors, where the use of alternative metaphors may produce different meanings and potentially have different effects on the recipient, I also try to interpret how these hybrid metaphors reveal information about the contemporary Japanese society. Specifically, the ideological analysis considers how the notion of ‘artificial’ and the social phenomena of misogyny, homophobia and social deviance are held to characterise the post-World War II Japanese culture.

Representation of the Eastern and Southeastern Provinces in the Turkish Parliament during the National Struggle and Single-Party Era (1920–1946)

2011 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 73-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmet Demirel
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
World War ◽  
Electoral Process ◽  
Biographical Information ◽  
The World ◽  
Economic Background ◽  
Bureaucratic Representation

AbstractThis article examines the socio-economic background of the parliamentary deputies serving during the years of the national struggle (1920–1922) and the single-party era (1923–1946) and provides new statistical data collated from recently published, detailed biographical information. I will provide a critical analysis of the socio-economic background of the deputies elected to represent the eastern and southeastern regions of Turkey and offer localism—defined as being born in the and from the constituency one represents—as a key concept to allow a better understanding of the nature of the electoral process at that time. Although localism—which can be regarded as one of the important indicators of authentic representation—was extensive during the years of the national struggle, it was replaced by bureaucratic representation during the single-party era, especially starting with the 1927 elections held right after the Sheikh Sait Rebellion. The article relates the Kurdish rebellions to the problem of representation in parliament and shows that in the rebellions' aftermath the number of the local representatives rapidly decreased. It further documents that, with the introduction of multi-party politics and democratic, free, competitive elections after the World War II, a return to localism can be observed for the eastern and southeastern provinces of Turkey.

scholarly journals Transatlantic crossing in the 1920s and 30s – the trajectories of the European poetic and scientific avant-garde in Brazil

Gragoatá ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (41) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Spielmann
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Sao Paulo ◽  
São Paulo ◽  
World War ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Blaise Cendrars ◽  
The University ◽  
Fernand Braudel

This article focuses on four paradigmatic cases of travelers. The central part concerns Dina Lévi-Strauss who gave the first course on modern ethnography in Brazil. She transfered the very latest: her projects include the founding of an ethnographic museum modeled on the “Musée de l`Homme”. Claude Lévi-Strauss and Fernand Braudel traveled to São Paulo as members of the French mission, which played an important role in the founding of the University of São Paulo. For political reasons Claude Lévi-Strauss’ contract at the University was not renewed in 1937. Blaise Cendrars was already a famous poet when he crossed the Atlantic in 1924. Fascism in Europe and World War II interrupted the careers of these four travelers as well as their interchanges with Brazil and their Brazilian friendships. But Brazilian experiences of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Braudel are crucial for their successful careers, after 1945.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Travessia transatlântica nos anos 1920 e 1930: as trajetórias da vanguarda poética e científica europeia no BrasilO artigo trata de quatro casos paradigmáticos de viajantes. A parte central está dedicada a Dina Lévi-Strauss, quem ministrou o primeiro curso de etnografia moderna no Brasil, apresentando nele o que havia de mais recente em sua época; seus projetos ainda incluíam a fundação de um museu etnográfico concebido a partir do modelo do “Musée de l’Homme”. Por sua vez, Claude Lévi-Strauss e Fernand Braudel viajaram a São Paulo como membros da Missão francesa, que teve um papel importante na fundação da Universidade de São Paulo, mesmo que, por razões políticas, o contrato de Claude Lévi-Strauss não tenha sido renovado pela Universidade em 1937. Antes deles, Blaise Cendrars era já um poeta famoso quando cruzou o Atlântico em 1924. O fascismo na Europa e a Segunda Guerra Mundial interromperam as carreiras destes quatro viajantes tanto quanto seus intercâmbios com o Brasil e com seus amigos brasileiros. Contudo, as experiências que Claude Lévi-Strauss e Braudel levaram a cabo no Brasil foram cruciais para o sucesso de suas respectivas carreiras após 1945.---Artigo em inglês.

scholarly journals The Act of Slavery in 20th Century as Reflected in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

2022 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-72
Author(s):  
Nur Fadillah ◽  
Burhanuddin Arafah ◽  
Herawaty Abbas
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Sociology Of Literature ◽  
World War ◽  
Class Society ◽  
Waiting For Godot ◽  
Qualitative Descriptive ◽  
Descriptive Method

This study aims to analyze the act of slavery that happened in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The characters that are involved are Pozzo as the master and Lucky as his slave. By analyzing how Pozzo oppresses Lucky, it reflects the act of slavery that also happened in reality in the 20th century when the story was written. This study is a qualitative descriptive method using the sociology of literature approach to reveal the connection between the situations in the play with the situations of the world in the 20th century. The data of this research are collected from the utterances and dialogues of the characters in the text play Waiting for Godot. The result showed that the act of slavery acted by Pozzo and Lucky also happened in the 20th century before, during, and after World War II in the 1940s. An upper-class society would enslave and oppress a lower-class society at the time because they had power and money.

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