scholarly journals ‘Burn the Witch’: Decadence and the Occult in Contemporary Feminist Performance

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-302
Author(s):  
ADAM ALSTON
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
First Century ◽  
Aesthetics And Politics ◽  
Feminist Performance ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Witch

This article introduces and theorizes ‘decadence’ as a key feature of Lauren Barri Holstein's performance Notorious (2017). The decadence of Holstein's work is approached in light of two main considerations: the spectacular presentation of witchcraft as an occult practice, and what Holstein ‘does’ with the staging of witches and witchcraft. Situated in light of performances associated with the neo-occult revival (Ivy Monteiro and Jex Blackmore), and a recent strand of feminist performance that revels in an aesthetics of trash, mess and excess (Ann Liv Young and Lucy McCormick), the article offers a close critical analysis of Notorious as a work that addresses and seeks to subvert gendered inequalities and forms of productivity in twenty-first-century capitalism. I argue that Holstein's overidentification with exertion and exhaustion as much as the subversive potentialities of witchcraft results in a decadent aesthetic, that her staging of the witch as a persecuted but powerful emblem of the occult sheds valuable light on the aesthetics and politics of decadence in performance, and that the subversive qualities of decadence emerge particularly strongly in its ‘doing’ as an embodied and enacted practice.

Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Trilogy

2018 ◽  
pp. 107-128
Author(s):  
Mingwei Song
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Main Part ◽  
First Century ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Aesthetics And Politics ◽  
Chinese Science ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Three Body ◽  
Fiction Writer

This chapter introduces the life and work of Liu Cixin, a Chinese science-fiction writer who has played a major role in reviving the genre in twenty-first-century China. The chapter discusses Liu’s work in the context of the genre’s history in China. Liu and other writers belonging to the same generation have created a new wave, in which the genre has gained unprecedented popularity in China. The main part of the chapter analyzes several major works by Liu and attempts to theorize the aesthetics and politics of the new wave as represented in Liu’s stories and novels. The new wave makes visible the hidden dimensions of Chinese science fiction, together with the darker side of reality that it speaks to.

Post-Horror

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Church
Keyword(s):  
Political Identity ◽  
First Century ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Popular Film ◽  
Ghost Story ◽  
Horror Genre ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Witch ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Entertainment Value

Horror’s longstanding reputation as a popular but culturally denigrated genre has been challenged by a new wave of films mixing arthouse minimalism with established genre conventions. Variously dubbed “elevated horror” and “post-horror” in popular film criticism, texts such as The Babadook, It Follows, The Witch, It Comes at Night, Get Out, The Invitation, Hereditary, Midsommar, A Ghost Story, and mother! represent an emerging nexus of taste, politics, and style that has often earned outsized acclaim from high-minded critics and populist rejection by wider audiences. Post-Horror is the first full-length study of one of the most important and divisive movements in twenty-first-century horror cinema. It argues that the affect produced by these films’ minimalist aesthetic has fueled taste-based disagreements between professional film critics, genre fans, and more casual viewers about whether the horror genre can or should be upheld as more than a populist entertainment form, especially as the genre turned away from the post-9/11 debates about graphic violence that consumed the first decade of the twenty-first century. The book thus explores the aesthetic qualities, historical precursors, affective resonances, and thematic concerns of this emerging cycle by situating these texts within revived debates between over the genre’s larger artistic, cultural, and entertainment value. Chapters include thematic analyses of trauma, gaslighting, landscape, existential dread, and political identity across a range of films straddling the line between art-horror and multiplex fare since approximately 2013.

Performing the techno-self: Paul B. Preciado’s Testo Junkie as a twenty-first century feminist narrative

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 342-352
Author(s):  
Leah E. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Sexual Experiences ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Feminist Performance ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
French And Francophone

This article examines Paul B. Preciado’s Testo Junkie as portraying the need for a postpornographic trans* feminism that contests homonormative queer and feminist responses to LGBTQIA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, and asexual) individuals in neoliberal French and Francophone societies during the rise of far-right anti-gender movements. Interrogating Preciado’s autotheory text, which questions what gendered performance entails in the pharmacopornographic era, allows for a consideration of the author’s bodily subjectivity and how he represents material-discursive practices to theorise his techno-identity. The article argues that Preciado highlights his sexual and gendered performance to assert a trans* identity that rebels against classification. Unveiling the multiplicity of gendered and sexual experiences that counter Western hegemonic binary categorisations, Preciado shows readers that through his material representation, he controls his own subjectivity to centre possibility with postpornographic feminist performance, expanding what it means to be a feminist subject in the twenty-first century.

scholarly journals Atheneum Architektury XXI wieku. Rio de Janeiro

2020 ◽  
pp. 99-109
Author(s):  
Magdalena Jagiełło-Kowalczyk ◽  
Stanislav Avsec ◽  
Maja Leszczyńska
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
First Century ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
A Site

Artykuł przedstawia efekt badań dotyczących potencjału współczesnego Rio de Janeiro jako miejsca dla projektu XXI wieku. Analiza architektury miasta w kontekście uwarunkowań społecznych, przestrzennych i przyrodniczych oraz analiza istniejących tam najważniejszych miejsc kulturotwórczych stały się punktem wyjścia do określenia ideowych wytycznych do projektu konkursowego Atheneum Architektury w Rio de Joneiro, który został przedstawiony w publikacji. Badania prowadzono w oparciu o metodę analizy krytycznej literatury oraz badania in citu. Athenaeum of twenty-first-century architecture: Rio de Janeiro This paper presents the outcomes of a study on the potential of contemporary Rio de Janeiro to act as a site for a twenty-first century project. An analysis of the city’s architecture in the context of social, spatial and wildlife-related determinants and an analysis of extant major culture-forming places became the starting point for determining conceptual guidelines for the competition design of the Architecture Athenaeum in Rio de Janeiro, which has been presented in the paper. The research was based on critical analysis of the literature and on-site studies.

scholarly journals Reconciliation Paradigm in the Post Colonial Africa: A Critical Analysis

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 74-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julius Gathogo
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
First Century ◽  
Tropical Africa ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
African Theology ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Reconciliation Project ◽  
African Sample

Abstract The article sets out to stir up the debate on reconciliation project in the post colonial Africa. As we strategise on ways and means of delivering the promise of reconstruction, there is need to pay more attention on the reconciliation for individual and society. In other words, does reconciliation mean blanket forgiveness or reparation? How can we ensure that those who looted Africa account for their misdeeds without further complicating the situation? The article is set on the premise that even though there are many paradigms in African theology of the twenty-first century, minor paradigms (refer to reconciliation, liberation, inculturation, market-theology and charismatic among others) and the dominant paradigm (refer to reconstruction) are both critical in the holistic rebuilding of the post colonial Africa. This said; it is imperative to critically assess reconciliation as an important paradigm – as it runs concurrently with other paradigms in Africa today. In particular, are the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commissions taking place in various countries of the tropical Africa, since Tutu’s South African sample of 1995, rooted in African cultural and religious heritage, and hence authentic? How can Africa go about her reconciliative phase?

The fashion scandal: Social media, identity and the globalization of fashion in the twenty-first century

2021 ◽  
Vol 00 (0) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Annamari Vänskä ◽  
Olga Gurova
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
First Century ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Citizen Journalism ◽  
Cultural Appropriation ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Way

During the latter part of the 2010s, many fashion brands – e.g., Gucci, Burberry, Dolce & Gabbana, Prada, Dior – have been caught up with scandals and called out for racism, cultural appropriation and other types of insensitivity towards vulnerable groups. This article will unpack, through critical analysis of some of these examples, the changing landscape of the ‘fashion scandal’ in the late-2010s. We understand fashion scandals as the fuel of fashion. They are debated in social media and they are controversial actions, statements or events that cause strong emotional responses. Even though scandal has been proven effective in fashion marketing for decades, and despite it is still frequently used, there might be a change on the way. Our examples suggest that with the rise of social media and its so-called ‘citizen journalism’ the tactics of creating scandals may have lost their lustre and can easily turn against the brand. We will also discuss new tactics that brands have adopted to escape undesired scandals by establishing new roles such as the ‘diversity consultant’.

scholarly journals A Critical Analysis of Sharankumar Limbale’s Hindu: A Novel (2010)

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 74
Author(s):  
Priyanka Arora
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
First Century ◽  
Active Participant ◽  
Twenty First Century

A Critical Analysis of Sharankumar Limbale’s Hindu: A Novel (2010)  This paper critically analysis Sharankumar Limbale’s Hindu: A Novel (2010). It is set in a small casteist village of Achalpur in Maharashtra and is translated from Marathi (2003) by Arun Prabha Mukherjee in 2010.  Dalit literature has undergone a transformation in the twenty-first century and Sharankumar Limbale is an active participant in it. The paper, thus, traces this very trajectory along with providing a detailed analysis of the plethora of techniques Limbale employs to present a world of Dalits, which is not binary world but one where characters are grey and humane; where the path Dr. B. R. Ambedkar left for them to follow is not liberating enough; where the struggle against casteism is as much internal as it is external; where the women and the lower class are doubly oppressed; and where the Dalit movement’s trajectory is in question. This paper then addresses these themes and tries to comprehend what Limbale tries to project through his work.

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