scholarly journals The Oulipo and Modern Thought

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Italo Calvino ◽  
Georges Perec ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Raymond Queneau ◽  
The Us ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Impact

The impact of the Oulipo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle), one of the most important groups of experimental writers of the late twentieth century, is still being felt in contemporary literature, criticism and theory, both in Europe and the US. Founded in 1960 and still active today, this Parisian literary workshop has featured among its members such notable writers as Italo Calvino, Georges Perec, and Raymond Queneau, all sharing in its light-hearted, slightly boozy bonhomie, the convivial antithesis of the fractious, volatile coteries of the early twentieth-century avant-garde. For the last fifty years the Oulipo has undertaken the same simple goal: to investigate the potential of ‘constraints’ in the production of literature—that is, formal procedures such as anagrams, acrostics, lipograms (texts which exclude a certain letter), and other strange and complex devices. Yet, far from being mere parlour games, these methods have been frequently used as part of a passionate—though sometimes satirical—involvement with the major intellectual currents of the mid-twentieth century. Structuralism, psychoanalysis, Surrealism, analytic philosophy: all come under discussion in the group’s meetings, and all find their way in the group’s exercises in ways that, while often ironic, are also highly informed. Using meeting minutes, correspondence, and other material from the Oulipo archive at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, The Oulipo and Modern Thought shows how the group have used constrained writing as means of puckish engagement with the debates of their peers, and how, as the broader intellectual landscape altered, so too would the group’s conception of what constrained writing can achieve.

Ouvroir de literature potentielle (Oulipo) [Workshop of potential literature]

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Didier Lapprand
Keyword(s):  
Italo Calvino ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Georges Perec ◽  
Writing Workshops ◽  
Marcel Duchamp ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Public Events ◽  
Raymond Queneau ◽  
Radio Programs ◽  
Potential Literature

Oulipo, Ouvroir de littérature potentielle [Workshop of potential literature] is a dynamic and even flamboyant group of writers, poets, and mathematicians who strive to elaborate new constraints, which they employ in order to explore and enhance the potentiality of language. Oulipo was born in 1960 thanks to the union of two complementary minds: that of François Le Lionnais (1901–1984), a mathematician and renowned chess specialist, and that of Raymond Queneau (1903–1976), a famed novelist and poet. The group, now over 30 strong, gives public readings, facilitates writing workshops, and participates in many other public events, including radio programs on France-Culture. One of the key factors of the group’s unequalled longevity is precisely that Oulipo is not an avant-garde assigned to topple previous domineering currents. The most celebrated Oulipians, other than the two founding members, are Georges Perec (1936–1982), Jacques Roubaud (1932--) and Jacques Jouet (1947--). Other icons include Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) and Italo Calvino (1923–1985).

A Window to Internal and External Change in Banking

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernardo Bátiz-Lazo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Computer Technology ◽  
Business Organizations ◽  
Organizational Challenges ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Self Service ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Proper Consideration

Chapter 1 (‘A Window to Internal and External Change in Banking’) provides a wide-arch view of the themes in the book. It highlights how in spite of being deeply embedded in our culture as an object of everyday life, the interaction with ATMs is largely inconsequential for most people. This chapter also forwards a case to study the ATM to better understand the possibilities for technological change to bring about a cashless economy. Another argument put forward is that the ATM is essential to appreciate the technological and organizational challenges that gave rise to self-service banking. As a result, the case is made that business histories of the late twentieth century will be incomplete without proper consideration to the impact of computer technology on the different aspects of business organizations.

Looking Again: The Critical Heritage

2017 ◽  
pp. 21-28
Author(s):  
Jessica Gildersleeve
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Critical Heritage ◽  
Literature And Film ◽  
British Culture ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This chapter examines Don't Look Now (1973) in the context of Daphne Du Maurier's Gothic narratives, with particular emphasis on those which had previously been adapted to film, and Nicolas Roeg's earlier films, particularly those which deal with themes of trauma and violence. It proposes that Du Maurier and Roeg's works should be read within the context of mid- to late-twentieth-century British culture, considering them as particularly concerned to depict the cultural traumas of the period. Although there are some distinctive differences between the film and the story from which it is adapted, one must not forget that Don't Look Now is adapted from a literary text, and that this may have implications for the representations and adaptations of trauma in contemporary literature and film. The chapter then reviews the existing studies of the film and the story from which it is adapted. It interrogates Don't Look Now's critical heritage as both avoiding and approaching the ever-retreating position of the trauma-text: a simultaneous recognition and avowal of the film's horror and its anxieties.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
pp. 222-234
Author(s):  
Stuart Aveyard ◽  
Paul Corthorn ◽  
Sean O’Connell
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Consumer Credit ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
European Consumer ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

The long-term perspective taken by The Politics of Consumer Credit in the UK affords fresh evidence on a number of significant historical debates. It indicates that Britain’s departure from pathways followed in other European consumer credit markets was not simply a by-product of neo-liberalism’s influence on late-twentieth-century governments. It has also allowed us to offer important contributions on questions such as the impact of political ideologies over policymaking, the validity of a right–left framework for analysing politics, the extent to which a post-war consensus existed (and was broken after 1979), and the question of how adept British political parties were in exploiting the emergence of a more affluent electorate....

The Global Conscience of American Evangelicalism: Internationalism and Social Concern in the 1970s and Beyond

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 1197-1220
Author(s):  
MELANI MCALISTER
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Religious Right ◽  
Social Concern ◽  
Evangelical Christians ◽  
Latin Americans ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Impact ◽  
American Evangelicalism

The Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in 1974 was the largest global gathering of evangelical Christians in the latter half of the twentieth century. Lausanne was significant, in part because of the struggle between two sets of evangelical leaders: those, led by the US, who wanted to retain a focus on “evangelism,” and the young radicals, led by Latin Americans, who demanded a broader attention to “social concern.” This essay traces the impact of the liberalizing faction, while also following the “evangelism-first” movement and its role in the rise of the religious right in the US in the 1980s.

Placeless People

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyndsey Stonebridge
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
George Orwell ◽  
New Class ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
Mass Displacement ◽  
The Impact

The twentieth century bore witness to the creation of a new class of person: the placeless people; those who cross frontiers and fall out of nation states; the refugees; the stateless; the rightless. Unlike genocide, the impact of mass displacement on modern thought and literature has yet to be recognized. For writers such as Hannah Arendt, W.H. Auden, George Orwell, Samuel Beckett, Simone Weil, and Dorothy Thompson, among others, the outcasts of the twentieth century raised vital questions about sovereignty, humanism, and the future of human rights. Placeless People combines an account of these first responses to the era of the refugee with a critique of contemporary humanitarian sensibilities.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alys Moody
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Postcolonial Literature ◽  
The Political ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This book has traced a history of modernism’s decline and of its doubters. In post-Vichy France, the US circa 1968, and late apartheid South Africa, modernism’s fate was precarious, its reputation tarnished, and its politics reviled. The inescapability of the political in these contexts compromised the structural conditions of the autonomous literary field on which modernism had been built. In turn, it threw into crisis the philosophical defense of autonomy and the literary legacies of modernism, which grew out of and were guaranteed by this autonomous literary field. The stories we tell about late twentieth-century literary history reflect this dilemma. According to received wisdom, the period between 1945 and 1990 saw postmodernism replace modernism in both literature and scholarship, and new waves of postcolonial literature and theory discredited the Eurocentric specter of modernism. ...

Samba

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mika Lior
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
First Century ◽  
Northeastern Brazil ◽  
Upper Body ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
The Us ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Afro Brazilian

Modern samba music and dance began in Rio de Janeiro’s Afro-Brazilian communities in the early 1900s and spread rapidly to international audiences through twentieth-century technologies of mass media, recording, and cinema. Rio’s samba developed from Bahian samba de roda, which has been danced and played by enslaved Africans and their descendants from the sixteenth century to the present. Modern samba differed from the circular samba de roda through its harmonic elements, the linear use of space, increased speed and footwork, and stylized upper body positions. First brought to the US by Brazilian sensation Carmen Miranda through Hollywood films of the 1940s, samba’s numerous rhythmic variations have achieved broad global recognition in the twenty-first century. The fast-paced samba no pé singularizes Rio’s world-famous carnaval, which expanded through modern industrial fabrication of floats and costumes and through increasingly cross-national commerce while continuing to capitalize on influences from traditional Afro-Brazilian dance and percussion. The partner dance samba de gafieira has spread from its origins in Rio’s neighborhoods to nightclubs in urban locations across Brazil, North America, and Europe. Meanwhile samba reggae, a late twentieth-century reappropriation of samba within northeastern Brazil that integrates African aesthetic elements with reggae beats and steps has become emblematic of Bahian popular culture.

The Scottish Highlands as a Special Policy Area, 1886 to 1965

Rural History ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewen A. Cameron
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Special Treatment ◽  
Policy Area ◽  
Scottish Highlands ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World

This paper has two objectives. The first is to explore the creation of a Highland policy area in the 1880s. Emphasis will be placed on the use of historical arguments by the government in the course of the construction of the Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act of 1886, especially in the attempt to justify confining the operation of that statute to the Highlands. The second theme, explored in the latter parts of the paper, concerns the strategies which succeeding governments have used to justify the perpetuation of a distinct Highland policy area. An element of continuity in Highland history in the twentieth century has been the special treatment of the area by governments. On the occasions when this has caused resentment in other rural areas of Britain, the Scottish Office response has been to argue that the Highlands are a special case because of the existence of the crofting counties with their special code of legislation. Clearly, this is a tautological argument and it is hoped that this paper, by exploring the period from the creation of the crofting legislation in the 1880s, to the late twentieth century, will shed some light on its origins. It will be argued that this has created a climate of fear in the Highlands and particularly the crofting community, but also, on occasion in the Lowlands. Further, there are occasions when the existence of a special Highland policy area has served to marginalise Highland policy. The paper falls into five main sections: the first will briefly review the literature about the Highland/Lowland division in Scotland, the second will look at the origins of the Crofters' Act of 1886, the third will examine the period from 1906 to 1911 when aspects of crofting legislation were extended to the rest of Scotland; the fourth section will identify the inter war period as an era when Highland policy became more diverse and the final section will scrutinise the impact of that more diverse approach in the years after the Second World War.

scholarly journals W przestrzeni wymiany. Obrazy Jacka Goldsteina i fotografie Olivera Wasowa

2018 ◽  
pp. 87-110
Author(s):  
Filip Pręgowski
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Complex Structure ◽  
Image Transmission ◽  
Advanced Technology ◽  
Technological Aspect ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Mediated Images ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

The paper, focused on the works of two American artists of the 1980s, Jack Goldstein and Oliver Wasow, is an attempt to consider the process of crossing boundaries between two different kinds of art. That phenomenon was a characteristic feature of the late twentieth-century art, including also The Pictures Generation to which both artists actually belonged. Both Goldstein, in his paintings from the 1980s, and Wasow, in his photos from the same period, used mediated images and simulated the effects achieved by the advanced technology of nature watching and picture transmission. In consequence, among several features common to the works under scrutiny, one realizes in the first place a significant change in the defining of the medium understood not just as a material and technological aspect of the work, but as a dynamic and complex structure connecting different forms and spaces of artistic expression with the spectator’s experience. Challenging the autonomy of art and the separate identities of its kinds, rooted in the historical avant-garde, leads to a revision of the modernist idea of the medium, as well as to reconsidering the ways in which its changing status influences the semantic potential of paintings and photos. Moreover, the spectacular paintings of Goldstein and photos by Wasow, made and taken in relation to the rapidly changing technology of image transmission, provokes questions about their critical potential: do they denounce the spectacle-making techniques or, as fetishized merchandise, do they just take part in it? The frame of reference are analyses conducted by American critics and art historians who redefined the concept of the medium in contemporary artistic practices, examined the role of photography, and considered the subjection of the late twentieth-century art to the logic of spectacle, such as Rosalind Krauss, Douglas Crimp, and Hal Foster.

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