scholarly journals ‘The Masses Make History’: On Jameson’s Allegory and Ideology

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Benjamin Noys

Abstract This essay responds to Frederic Jameson’s Allegory and Ideology by arguing that this book is centrally concerned with the masses. By developing Jameson’s own model of allegorical reading, the pressure of the masses on the text is explored. This is demonstrated through a reading of Albert Camus’s The Plague, Jameson’s central example of ‘bad’ allegory. While this novel is ‘bad’ for implying a one-to-one allegorical relationship between the plague infection and the Occupation of France during World War Two, or to the human condition, a reading of the text as biopolitical allegory reveals the complex presence of the masses. Finally, this response considers the ‘immortality’ of the masses as the utopian moment traced within Allegory and Ideology.

Renascence ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19
Author(s):  
Maurizio Ascari ◽  

A complex and controversial novel, Atonement is at the core of a lively critical debate, opposing those who focus on the impossibility of Briony’s atonement – also in relation to the author’s atheist views – to those who conversely explore the redemptive quality of her “postlapsarian” painful self-fashioning. Far from concerning simply the destiny of a literary character, this debate has to do with the impact Postmodernist relativism has on both the conception of the human subject and the discourses of the past, from memory to history and fiction. Discarding any potentially nihilistic interpretations of Atonement as disempowering, this article delves into Ian McEwan’s multi-layered text in order to comprehend its ambivalences, its subtle investigation of the human condition, and its status as a postmemory novel reconnecting us to the events of World War Two.


2021 ◽  
pp. 661-679
Author(s):  
María de los Ángeles Hernández Gómez

Los dos conflictos mundiales que protagonizan la primera mitad del siglo XX provocan un movimiento de renovación humanista en busca de nuevos valores para el hombre contemporáneo. Entre las muchas propuestas que surgen, la de la obra y el pensamiento del escritor francés Vercors, especialmente marcado por la Segunda Guerra mundial. En este artículo, trataremos de identificar y analizar las particularidades del nacimiento de la propuesta vercoriana en el contexto francés de la guerra y de la inmediata posguerra. Las primeras obras de ficción del autor se construyen a partir de un diálogo directo con la realidad contemporánea, escritos de los que surgen diferentes interrogantes sobre la condición humana a los que Vercors tratará de responder en sus ensayos de corte ético-filosófico. Para ello, proponemos un estudio detallado de algunas de estas producciones con el fin de crear un espacio de convergencia entre las identidades ética y estética que caracterizan las primeras publicaciones del autor. The two World Wars brought a trend of humanist revival in search of new values for con-temporary man. Among others, the Second World War particularly left its mark on the work and thought of the French writer Vercors. In this article, we will try to identify and analyse the particularities of the birth of Vercors’ works in the French context of the war and post-war periods. Based on contemporary realities, his first fictions raised questions about the human condition, which Vercors tried to answer in his ethical-philosophical es-says. We propose a detailed study of some of these texts in order to create a space of con-vergence between the ethical and aesthetic identities that characterise the author’s early publications. Les deux conflits mondiaux de la première moitié du XXe siècle provoquent un renouveau de la pensée humaniste contemporaine. Parmi les nombreuses propositions qui surgissent, l'œuvre et la pensée de l'écrivain français Vercors, particulièrement marqué par la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Dans cet article, nous tenterons d'identifier et d'analyser les particularités de la naissance de la proposition vercorienne dans le contexte français de la guerre et de l'immédiat après-guerre. Les premières œuvres de fiction de l'auteur sont construites sur la base d'un dialogue direct avec la réalité contemporaine, des écrits d'où émergent différentes questions sur la condition humaine, auxquelles Vercors tentera de répondre dans ses essais éthico-philosophiques. Nous proposons une étude détaillée de certaines de ces productions afin de créer un espace de convergence entre les identités éthiques et esthétiques qui caractérisent les premières publications de l'auteur.


2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 232-247
Author(s):  
Keith Moser

This study investigates the highly original theories about the origins of human violence developed by the physicist Gérard Gouesbet and the Franco-Mauritian writer J. M. G. Le Clézio. Both authors pinpoint the indifferent, cosmic forces that conceived all life as the hidden source of human aggression. In Violences de la nature and Terra Amata, Gouesbet and Le Clézio assert that the very act of existence itself is a violent struggle for survival. Although this biological parasitism is unavoidable due to the universal principles that govern life, both writers urge global society to deviate from its current path. In their biocentric reflections related to the absurdity of the human condition, Gouesbet and Le Clézio contend that we must find a way to end this ‘world war’ and to limit our incessant acts of aggression against the remainder of the cosmos.


Author(s):  
Jonathan R. Eller

This chapter focuses on Ray Bradbury's exploration of the human condition during the war years, and how he broadened his horizons through books and beyond. In July 1944, Henry Kuttner suggested a trip East. Bradbury turned to the South instead. Later that summer, he traveled to Mexico. He was interested in understanding not only the multiplicity of cultures in the region, but also his own personality—who he was, and what he believed in. Bradbury believed that the wartime boom in novels exploring faith and the modern crisis of faith distracted from what he called the “real, factual, scientific problems” of the day. This chapter discusses Bradbury's views on the causes of World War II, along with his evolving sense of the challenges facing the future postwar world, and how they were influenced by Philip Wylie's books such as Generation of Vipers (1942). It also considers Bradbury's sentiments about living with the choices we make as individuals, with self-reflection as the key, as well as education, philosophies, aesthetics, and science and technology.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (A30) ◽  
pp. 528-530
Author(s):  
William H. Waller ◽  
Lina Canas ◽  
Hidehiko Agata ◽  
Hitoshi Yamaoka ◽  
Shigeyuki Karino ◽  
...  

AbstractAs the IAU heads towards its second century, many changes have simultaneously transformed Astronomy and the human condition world-wide. Amid the amazing recent discoveries of exoplanets, primeval galaxies, and gravitational radiation, the human condition on Earth has become blazingly interconnected, yet beset with ever-increasing problems of over-population, pollution, and never-ending wars. Fossil-fueled global climate change has begun to yield perilous consequences. And the displacement of people from war-torn nations has reached levels not seen since World War II.


Author(s):  
Alistair Fox

The analysis in this chapter focuses on Christine Jeffs’s Rain as evidence of a shift that had occurred in New Zealand society whereby puritan repression is no longer perceived as the source of emotional problems for children in the process of becoming adults, but rather its opposite – neoliberal individualism, hedonism, and the parental neglect and moral lassitude it had promoted. A comparison with Kirsty Gunn’s novel of the same name, upon which the adaptation is based, reveals how Jeffs converted a poetic meditation on the human condition into a cinematic family melodrama with a girl’s discovery of the power of her own sexuality at the core.


Paragraph ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-90
Author(s):  
Damiano Benvegnù

From Hegel to Heidegger and Agamben, modern Western philosophy has been haunted by how to think the connections between death, humanness and animality. This article explores how these connections have been represented by Italian writers Tommaso Landolfi (1908–79) and Stefano D'Arrigo (1919–92). Specifically, it investigates how the death of a nonhuman animal is portrayed in two works: ‘Mani’, a short story by Landolfi collected in his first book Il dialogo dei massimi sistemi (Dialogue on the Greater Harmonies) (1937), and D'Arrigo's massive novel Horcynus Orca (Horcynus Orca) (1975). Both ‘Mani’ and Horcynus Orca display how the fictional representation of the death of a nonhuman animal challenges any philosophical positions of human superiority and establishes instead animality as the unheimlich mirror of the human condition. In fact, in both stories, the animal — a mouse and a killer whale, respectively — do die and their deaths represent a mise en abyme that both arrests the human narrative and sparks a moment of acute ontological recognition.


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