scholarly journals Plastic (in) Paradise: Karen Tei Yamashita’s Through the Arc of the Rain Forest

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-40
Author(s):  
Michaela Keck
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Rain Forest ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Historiographic Metafiction ◽  
Material Wealth ◽  
Aesthetic Experiences ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site

This contribution examines the magic-realist metaphor of the Matacão in Karen Tei Yamashita’s (1990) debut novel Through the Arc of the Rain Forest as a trope that invites us to imagine, reflect on, and explore plastic’s cross-cultural meanings, aesthetic experiences, and materialist implications. I contend that through the Matacão, Yamashita engenders a narrative about, as well as an aesthetic experience of, plastic that is inherently ambivalent and paradoxical. While it provides societies with material wealth and sensual pleasures, it poses at the same time a profound threat to life – human and nonhuman. The main part of the article is divided into two major sections: in the first part, I read Yamashita’s story about the Matacão as historiographic metafiction that parodies the socio-cultural history of plastic and its utopian promises and failures. In the second part, I draw on Catherine Malabou’s philosophical concept of plasticity to explore the Matacão’s material agency, as well as the social mobility and economic connectivity of Yamashita’s human protagonists in their plastic environments. The theoretical perspective of Malabou’s concept of plasticity shifts the focus to the agentic forces of the waste material and allows us to read Yamashita’s Matacão as both a site and material that, notwithstanding its devastating impacts, also holds potentialities for resilience and repair, and even the possibility for an, at least temporary, utopia.

Women, Writing and the Iraqi Ba'thist State

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hawraa Al-Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
The State ◽  
Woman Question ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cultural Resistance ◽  
Cultural Revival ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
Material Form

The book examines the trajectory of the state sponsored novel in Iraq and considers the ways in which explicitly political and/or ideological texts functioned as resistive counter narratives. It argues that both the novel and ‘progressive’ discourses on women were used as markers of Iraq’s cultural revival under the Ba‘th and were a key element in the state’s propaganda campaign within Iraq and abroad. In an effort to expand its readership and increase support for its pan-Arab project, the Iraqi Ba‘th almost completely eradicated illiteracy among women. As Iraq was metaphorically transformed into a ‘female’, through its nationalist trope, women writers simultaneously found opportunities and faced obstacles from the state, as the ‘Woman Question’ became a site of contention between those who would advocate the progressiveness of the Ba‘th and those who would stress its repressiveness and immorality. By exploring discourses on gender in both propaganda and high art fictional writings by Iraqis, this book offers an alternative narrative of the literary and cultural history of Iraq. It ultimately expands the idea of cultural resistance beyond the modern/traditional, progressive/backward paradigms that characterise discourses on Arab women and the state, and argues that resistance is embedded in the material form of texts as much as their content or ideological message.

Sentimenti, emozioni. Potenzialitŕ e limiti della storia culturale

2012 ◽  
pp. 75-92
Author(s):  
Rolf Petri
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
History Writing ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Theoretical Status ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of

The first part of the essay tries to elaborate a reasonable itemisation of the three main streams in the history of emotions: that of individual emotions, the study of the role that emotions have in historical processes, and the reflection about the influence of emotions on history writing. The second part is devoted to the methodological and theoretical status of the study of past emotions. The author criticises the definition of emotions as merely cultural phenomena. He argues in favour to a cross-disciplinary and theoretical perspective, and maintains that cultural history of emotions should be able to deconstruct its own history and contextualise historically the very paradigms of "culture" and "emotion".

Introduction: music and urban history

Urban History ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Harding
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Urban History ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
New Historicism ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Urban Experience ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic

Music – as many of the contributors to this special issue of Urban History point out – is an important component of the urban experience and can play a significant role in the construction of a civic identity, and yet it is a topic that urban historians have tended to overlook. There are some parallels with the case of the fine arts, to which a special issue of this journal was devoted in 1995, both in the causes for this neglect – which similarly include ‘the intimidating traditions of connoisseurship associated with the field’ and the difficulty we have with analysing the ‘aesthetic experience’ – and in the developments which are helping to overcome such inhibitions. So far, the impulse seems to be coming from musicologists and music historians, who, inhabiting a fairly small corner of the academic field, are fully conscious of the need to forge connections with other disciplines and historiographical traditions. The importance of contextualizing and historicizing not only the composition but also the production, transmission and reception of music has been recognized for some time, but so far urban historians have not responded as perhaps the music historians thought they might to the insights and openings that a musical ‘new historicism’ seems to offer. But there is clearly an opportunity – indeed, a pressing need – to develop a broadly-based cultural history of towns and cities in which music will take its place. The aim of this special issue is to promote that objective by illustrating the state of the art and suggesting some of the ideas, tools and methodologies with which it might be developed in future.

scholarly journals Articulating Race and Nation in Brazilian Popular Song

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James McNally
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Popular Song ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Musical Genres ◽  
A Site

This article presents a cultural history of Brazilian popular song (canção popular) and the many musical genres that fall under its umbrella. From the early days of samba to contemporary popular styles, popular song in Brazil has long represented a site for negotiating complex questions of race, nation, and politics.

A Cultural History of the Hologram

Leonardo ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean F. Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Form Function ◽  
History Of

The hologram, the novel imaging medium conceived in 1947, underwent a series of technical mutations over the following 50 years. Those successive adaptations altered the form of the medium, broadened its imaging capabilities and promoted wider perceptions of its functions and possibilities. Appropriated by disparate technical communities and presented to varied audiences, the hologram and its cultural meanings evolved dramatically. This paper relates the fluidity of the form, function and meaning of the hologram to its distinct creators and users.

Introduction: Archives, Record Keeping and Imperial Governance, 1500-1800

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 311-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Pia Donato
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Historical Collections ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Project ◽  
Imperial Governance ◽  
A Site ◽  
Geographical Scope ◽  
Archival Practices

Abstract In the last decades, a vast body of literature has scrutinized the archive, regarding it as an instrument of power for the Western conquest of the world. More recently, a new, vibrant cultural history of archives has changed our understanding of archives as a fully-fledged historical object and why they matter for extending the geographical scope of history and achieving a more connected image of modernity. The articles assembled in this themed issue delve into the history of imperial archives and archival practices in the period 1500-1800, bringing together different lines of inquiry. Each contribution focuses on a major Western imperial formation at different epochs in their evolution, dealing both with current records and historical collections; each engages with archives as an institution, as assemblages of documents that circulated in and out of official depositories, as a site where colonial administrative knowledge was elaborated, and as a political project.

scholarly journals The Role of the Arts in the History of Emotions: Aesthetic Experience and Emotion as Method

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Over Time

Abstract What role do the arts play in the study of the history of emotions? This essay reflects on the position that aesthetic works and arts-oriented methodologies have occupied in the field’s development since the early 2000s. It begins by connecting artistic sources to anxieties about impressionism within cultural history, before looking at examples from literature that help illustrate the advantages works of art can bring to the study of emotion over time. Chief among these benefits is the power of artistic sources to create emotional worlds for their audiences – including, of course, historians. Ultimately, in arguing for a greater use of aesthetic works in our field, the essay makes the case for a more overtly emotional history of the emotions.

scholarly journals A Bourgeois Reader Through the Eyes of a Post-Bourgeois Researcher: On Tatiana Venediktova’s Literature as an Experience, or a “Bourgeois Reader” as a Cultural Hero. Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2018. 280 p.

2020 ◽  
pp. 158-170
Author(s):  
Vera P. Kirzhaeva ◽  
◽  
Oleg E. Osovskiy ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Herman Melville ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Theoretical Description ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Psychology Of Reading

Tatiana Venediktova’s new book is devoted to the problem particularly relevant for contemporary philosophers, culturologists and philologists. In the situation of radical changes in the social and economic status of literature, the question of the reader’s role ceases to be an element of receptive aesthetics or the psychology of reading only and strongly requires new approaches for its research. In Venediktova’s interpretation, the reader is a real participant in the creative process and gets new experience through communication with the literary work creating new meanings, often different from those the author laid in the text. The figure of a bourgeois reader is presented through the intersection of literary history, cultural history and literary theory dimensions. This gave Venediktova the possibility to use the sociological poetics of Mikhail Bakhtin’s circle. At the same time, Venediktova’s research methods have little in common with the traditional sociology of reading and the new sociology of reader. The reference to Bakhtin is not only a tribute to today’s fashion in the humanities. Bakhtin as a reader and creator of new artistic and aesthetic meanings is a special and not yet explored part in the modern history of literary text interpretation. In the later fragments, Bakhtin offers his own understanding of the image of the reader opposing it to the structuralist image of the ideal reader. Venediktova chooses the 19th century as a field of her research. It is the historical period when the bourgeois class consciousness reaches its highest point and acquires a special sociality; one of its characteristic features is the wide-spread distribution of books and reading and the final democratisation of the readership. The author presents a transition from the theoretical description of the bourgeois reader to the historical interpretation of the possibilities and ways of gaining aesthetic experience as a consistent transfer from poetry to prose. The prosaisation of the lyrical vision of the world and man finds its continuation in the novel as a “bourgeois epic” (Hegel). The concept of the book is especially convincing due to the author’s reliance on the authoritative circle of the classics of the contemporary humanities as well as on the well-made and logical composition of the text. The literary-historical parts of the monograph become a natural continuation and development of theoretical ideas. In gaining new reader experience, the specific characteristics of its source, the changing position of the creator of the text are important. It equally works in relation to the poetry of William Wordsworth, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Charles Baudelaire and to the novels of Honoré de Balzac, Herman Melville, Gustave Flaubert, and George Eliot. Another important feature of the book is the prospects of the research. The problem of the bourgeois reader seems relevant for the sociocultural history of Russian literature and for the understanding of the role and interaction of the reader and writer in the space of today’s World Wide Web.

Coastal Works

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
Historic Site ◽  
History And Criticism ◽  
The North ◽  
Cultural Imaginary ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
Coastal Space

In all the complex cultural history of the islands of Britain and Ireland, the idea of the coast as a significant representative space is critical. For many artists, coastal space has figured as a site from which to braid ideas of empire, nation, region, and archipelago. They have been drawn to the coast as a zone of geographical uncertainty in which the self-definitions of the nation founder; a peripheral space of vestigial wildness, of island retreats and experimental living; a network of diverse localities richly endowed with distinctive forms of cultural heritage; and a dynamically interconnected ecosystem, which is also the historic site of significant developments in fieldwork and natural science. This collection situates these cultures of the Atlantic edge in a series of essays that create new contexts for coastal study in literary history and criticism. The contributors frame their research in response to emerging conversations in archipelagic criticism, the blue humanities, and Island Studies, challenging the reader to reconsider ideas of margin, periphery, and exchange. These twelve case studies establish the coast as a crucial location in the imaginative history of Britain, Ireland, and the north Atlantic edge. Coastal Works will appeal to readers of literature and history with an interest in the sea, the environment, and the archipelago from the eighteenth century to the present. Accessible, innovative, and provocative, Coastal Works establishes the important role the coast plays in our cultural imaginary and suggests a range of methodologies to represent relationships between land, sea, and cultural work.

scholarly journals The Everyday Aesthetics of Public Space

2019 ◽  
pp. 75-89
Author(s):  
Mateusz Salwa
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Main Claim ◽  
Aesthetic Quality ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
Everyday Aesthetics ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
A Site

The main claim of the article is that everyday aesthetics conceived as a philosophical analysis of everyday objects and situations offers a theoretical perspective that may be applied to the aesthetics of public space. Analysed in aesthetic terms, the public space may be thought to be a space that offers an aesthetic experience to the widest possible public. I contend that the aesthetic quality of public space should be a quality that favours positive experiences of the everyday, banal practices taking place in it. Accordingly, designing public space should consist in making it “everyday experience-friendly.” My argument will be illustrated by the example of a site-specific installation, the Oxygenator, created in Warsaw by Joanna Rajkowska, whose intention was to offer people an ordinary place where they could meet in a “healthy atmosphere.”

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