scholarly journals Dystopias in the Realm of Popular Culture: Introducing Elements of Posthuman and Postfeminist Discourse to the Mass Audience Female Readership in Cecelia Ahern’s Roar (2018)

Text Matters ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 204-221
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Ostalska
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
Middle Aged ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Innovative Work ◽  
The Common ◽  
Female Bodies

This article analyzes selected short stories in Cecelia Ahern’s thirty-narrative collection Roar (2018) to see how (and with what losses or gains) the perspectives of posthuman and postfeminist critique can be incorporated via the common dystopic umbrella into the mainstream female readership of romance literature. The dystopic worlds created by Ahern in Roar portray inequality and power imbalances with regard to gender and sex. The protagonists are mostly middle-aged women whose family and personal lives are either regulated by dystopic realities or acquire a “dystopic” dimension, the solutions to which are provided by, among other tropes, “posthuman” transformations. Roar introduces other-than-human elements, mostly corporeal alterations, in which the female bodies of Ahern’s characters become de-formed and re-formed beyond androcentric systems of value. The article raises the question of whether feminist and, to some extent, “posthuman” (speculative) approaches, need to be (and indeed should be) popularized in such an abridged way as Ahern does in her volume. The answer depends upon the identification of the target audience and their expectations. Ahern’s Roar represents popular literature intended to be sold to as many readers as possible, regardless of their education, state of knowledge, etc. Viewed from that perspective, what some critics could perceive as the collection’s structural weaknesses constitutes its utmost marketing asset. The essay argues that despite not being a structurally innovative work of art, Ahern’s book fulfils the basic requirements of the popular fiction genre, intermittently providing some extra, literary gratification and popularizing rudimentary elements of the posthuman and postfeminist thought.

scholarly journals Nineteenth-Century Sentimental and Popular Trends and their Transformation in Fin-de-siècle Latvian Literature

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 162-172
Author(s):  
Benedikts Kalnačs ◽  
Pauls Daija
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Female Agency ◽  
Elite Culture ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Literary Techniques

In this paper, the role of popular culture in fin-de-siècle Latvian literature has been explored by analysing the mid-nineteenth century Latvian translation of Christoph Schmid’s novel Genoveva (1846) by Ansis Leitāns, and unfinished drama Genoveva (1908) by Rūdolfs Blaumanis. While the first version of the Genoveva story was created according to the patterns of popular literature and played a significant role in the development of the Latvian reading public, the author of the second version attempted to turn the plot of popular fiction into a work of elite literature, elaborating the issue of female agency and adding psychological ambiguity to the plot. The mixture of popular melodramatic imagination and modernist themes, as observed in Blaumanis’s work, provides a deeper insight into fin-de-siècle literary techniques by turning attention to the conscious use of different literary styles and narrative levels and illuminating interactions between popular and elite culture. By comparing both works and interpreting their aesthetic innovations in terms of the relationship between idealism, realism and modernism, this paper traces the ways in which fin-de-siècle Latvian literature appropriated and reworked models of popular culture and developed new aesthetic insights by merging elements of low and high culture.

scholarly journals KETEGARAN TOKOH MELIA DALAM NOVEL DI SINI CINTA PERTAMA KALI BERSEMI KARYA MIRA W. DALAM DUNIA PENDIDIKAN

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ikha Listyarini
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Character Education ◽  
Extracurricular Activities ◽  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
Structured Learning ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Popular Art

Popular culture (popular culture) is the culture created by ordinary people with simple and intended for commercial purposes, so it can be enjoyed by the whole society. Popular culture (popular culture) is one part of the realm of cultural studies (cultural studies) because popular culture is also part of a culture that enrich the culture of any society. In the span of a long history, created a popular culture that has produced popular literature which has a high magnetic power to the audience of literary or lovers who simply looking for entertainment. Conditions that hit many aspects of life, not least in the literature. Originally came from the birth of popular art, which later developed into popular fiction stories circulating lately. In popular literature stories told not to show an intense problem, because if so, the popular literature will be heavy and can turn into serious literature.Novel Love it Here First Bersemi reached a circulation of 10,000 and suffered five reprints. After the success of his novel, Wim Umboh working on this novel into a film of the same title and was also sold in the market in the '80s with a cast-famous actor. This is one sign that the novel is a work of popular literature, which is reproduced through a variety of media. In this way, it is hoped this story can be enjoyed by the wider community, not just lovers of literature community.Kink is inside of Melia can be applied in education. Actualization of the value in the formation of character through education requires careful planning and mature so that the process and the results are as expected. Planting process in the formation of character values ?óÔé¼ÔÇ??óÔé¼ÔÇ?through education must be packaged well and that can be implemented through a structured learning, extracurricular activities, and the activities of governance (management). Given the character education is part and an integral part of the development of national character, the role of education is vital and has a major responsibility for generating human resources Indonesian character that can conduct a civilized nation of Indonesia.

On the Margins of Modernism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Rosenmeier
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
Extensive Study ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Chinese Fiction ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
Chinese Writing

Xu Xu and Wumingshi were among the most widely read authors in China during and after the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). Despite being an integral part of the Chinese literary scene, their bestselling fiction has, however, been given scant attention in histories of Chinese writing. This book is the first extensive study of Xu Xu and Wumingshi in English or any other Western language and it re-establishes their importance within the popular Chinese literature of the 1940s. Their romantic novels and short stories were often set abroad and featured a wide range of stereotypes, from pirates, spies and patriotic soldiers to ghosts, spirits and exotic women who confounded the mostly cosmopolitan male protagonists. Christopher Rosenmeier’s detailed analysis of these popular novels and short stories shows that such romances broke new ground by incorporating and adapting narrative techniques and themes from the Shanghai modernist writers of the 1930s, notably Shi Zhecun and Mu Shiying. The study thereby contests the view that modernism had little lasting impact on Chinese fiction, and it demonstrates that the popular literature of the 1940s was more innovative than usually imagined, with authors, such as those studied here, successfully crossing the boundaries between the popular and the elite, as well as between romanticism and modernism, in their bestselling works.

Between High Culture and Low Culture; and also The Difference Between Popular Culture and Folk Culture

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Kunal Debnath
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Folk Culture ◽  
Common People ◽  
High Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Low Culture

High culture is a collection of ideologies, beliefs, thoughts, trends, practices and works-- intellectual or creative-- that is intended for refined, cultured and educated elite people. Low culture is the culture of the common people and the mass. Popular culture is something that is always, most importantly, related to everyday average people and their experiences of the world; it is urban, changing and consumeristic in nature. Folk culture is the culture of preindustrial (premarket, precommodity) communities.

The Still Life of Objects – Heidegger, Schapiro, and Derrida reconsidered

2015 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-102
Author(s):  
KErstin Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Still Life ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Concrete Material ◽  
Vincent Van Gogh ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Specific Object ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
The Common ◽  
Critical Intervention ◽  
The Given

Kerstin Thomas revaluates the famous dispute between Martin Heidegger, Meyer Schapiro, and Jacques Derrida, concerning a painting of shoes by Vincent Van Gogh. The starting point for this dispute was the description and analysis of things and artworks developed in his essay, “The Origin of the Work of Art”. In discussing Heidegger’s account, the art historian Meyer Schapiro’s main point of critique concerned Heidegger’s claim that the artwork reveals the truth of equipment in depicting shoes of a peasant woman and thereby showing her world. Schapiro sees a striking paradox in Heidegger’s claim for truth, based on a specific object in a specific artwork while at the same time following a rather metaphysical idea of the artwork. Kerstin Thomas proposes an interpretation, which exceeds the common confrontation of philosophy versus art history by focussing on the respective notion of facticity at stake in the theoretical accounts of both thinkers. Schapiro accuses Heidegger of a lack of concreteness, which he sees as the basis for every truth claim on objects. Thomas understands Schapiro’s objections as motivated by this demand for a facticity, which not only includes the work of art, but also investigator in his concrete historical perspective. Truth claims under such conditions of facticity are always relative to historical knowledge, and open to critical intervention and therefore necessarily contingent. Following Thomas, Schapiro’s critique shows that despite his intention of giving the work of art back its autonomy, Heidegger could be accused of achieving quite the opposite: through the abstraction of the concrete, the factual, and the given to the type, he actually sets the self and the realm of knowledge of the creator as absolute and not the object of his knowledge. Instead, she argues for a revaluation of Schapiro’s position with recognition of the arbitrariness of the artwork, by introducing the notion of factuality as formulated by Quentin Meillassoux. Understood as exchange between artist and object in its concrete material quality as well as with the beholder, the truth of painting could only be shown as radically contingent. Thomas argues that the critical intervention of Derrida who discusses both positions anew is exactly motivated by a recognition of the contingent character of object, artwork and interpretation. His deconstructive analysis can be understood as recognition of the dynamic character of things and hence this could be shown with Meillassoux to be exactly its character of facticity – or factuality.

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cassandra L. Yacovazzi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
The Public ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
The Common ◽  
Public Imagination ◽  
Maria Monk ◽  
People Today

Nuns in popular media today are a staple of kitsch culture, evident in the common appearance of bobble-head nuns, nun costumes, and nun caricatures on TV, movies, and the stage. Nun stereotypes include the sexy vixen, the naïve innocent, and the scary nun. These types were forged in nineteenth-century convent narratives. While people today may not recognize the name “Maria Monk,” her legacy lives on in the public imagination. There may be no demands to search convents, but nuns and monastic life are nevertheless generally not taken seriously. This epilogue traces opposition to nuns from the Civil War to the present, analyzing the various images of nuns in popular culture as they relate to the antebellum campaign against convents. It argues that the source of the misunderstanding about nuns is rooted in the inability to categorize these women either as traditional wives and mothers or as secular, career-driven singles.

Non-religious Players Asking Big Questions: Video Game Worlds Affording Affinities of Meaningful Encounters

2021 ◽  
pp. e20200012
Author(s):  
Heidi Rautalahti
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Qualitative Interview ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Interview Method ◽  
Search For Self ◽  
Game Players

The article examines player narratives on meaningful encounters with video games by using an argumentative qualitative interview method. Data gathered among Finnish adult video game players represents narratives of important connections in personal lives, affinities that the article analyzes as further producing three distinctive themes on meaningful encounters. Utilizing a study-of-religion framework, the article discusses meaning making and emerging ways of meaningfulness connected to the larger discussion on the “big questions” that are asked, explored, and answered in popular culture today. Non-religious players talk about intricate and profound contemplations in relation to game memories, highlighting how accidental self-reflections in mundane game worlds frame a continuing search for self.

scholarly journals On Smart Contracts and Organisational Performance: A Review of Smart Contracts through the Blockchain Technology

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zaheer Allam
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Resistance To Change ◽  
Business Management ◽  
Smart Contracts ◽  
Business Sector ◽  
Organisational Performance ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
Management Processes ◽  
Common Notion ◽  
The Common

AbstractAs the Blockchain technology is gaining momentum in popular culture through Cryptocurrencies, its full implication and application to businesses, on a concrete and factual level, is still seen to be in its infancy stage. While the technology provides numerous advantages regarding stability, trust, speed and others, the robustness of the technology is not widely disseminated. This is further coupled by the common notion of resistance to change in business management processes. This paper explores the concept of Smart Contracts through the blockchain technology and its relevance to the business sector and further outlines the advantages and limitations of its applicability as of date.

scholarly journals The Common Good in an Age of Moral Hyperpluralism: A Catholic Bioethical Perspective

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 345
Author(s):  
John Kleinsman
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Innovative Work ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Contemporary Account

This article will argue that the notion of the common good is imperilled by a particular contemporary account of the moral good; one which, because of its (somewhat narrow) emphasis on the individual, readily lends itself to a state of 'moral hyperpluralism' in which 'the good' is primarily defined in terms of the promotion and protection of self-interest. At the same time, it will be argued that any quest to recover the notion of the common good cannot be achieved by either returning to, or holding onto, a more traditional account of morality. It will also be proposed that, as part of the quest to recover the common good, close attention needs to be paid to how the term is understood. The tension between individual autonomy and the welfare of society, and the differing ways in which this tension is resolved within different moral paradigms, will emerge as central to any discussion about the ongoing place of the common good in contemporary legal and moral debates. Finally, it is suggested that a solid basis for articulating a robust account of the common good may be found in the foundational and innovative work being done by thinkers of the gift to establish an alternative account of morality. 

Egīla Ventera fenomens latviešu literatūrā

2021 ◽  
pp. 181-196
Author(s):  
Laimdota Ločmele
Keyword(s):  
Popular Literature ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Semiotic Analysis ◽  
The World ◽  
Innovative Work ◽  
Reading Texts

The article aims to study Egīls Venters’s latest works from the point of view of text semiotics and interpretation to make conclusions about the possibilities of interpretation of texts written by this author and his place in Latvian literature. In this article, a semiotic analysis of Venters’s fiction is applied as well as research of the book reviews on his recent prose texts. The present paper deals with the factors determining the popularity of a work of fiction; these factors may be related to the text itself or the readers’ ability and desire to read such texts. The most innovative work of Venters, “Mainīgā intervence” (2012), which received Dzintars Sodums Prize for Innovation in Literature, has been semiotically analysed in terms of its literary form. This work of fiction is a complex, multi-layered message, although outwardly it seems laconic and aphoristic. The possibilities of interpreting fiction depend on the language used by the author to express the content and the language available to the reader for decoding the text. Thus, the reader needs the experience of reading texts, a desire to gain new unprecedented experience, and the ability to evaluate the language and form of the work of fiction. Venters’s writing does not belong to the popular literature of easy reading; it has fewer readers who can accept the world created by Venters’s texts and are open to the unpredictable in literature.

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