scholarly journals “I’M NOT AFRAID OF BEING CALLED A LOSER”: THE ISSUE OF AGENCY IN FINN’S IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION IN THE TELEVISION SERIES GLEE

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonardo Da Silva
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Social Location ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Hegemonic Discourse ◽  
Identity And Agency ◽  
Double Movement ◽  
Do So ◽  
Glee Club

This article analyzes the television series Glee and discusses the ways in which Finn’s identity construction — and his irresolution — can be read counter-hegemonically as fostering political agency. In order to do so, I discuss the concepts of identity and agency and notions such as social location and identification while conducting a textual analysis of specific scenes that pertain to the first season of the series. The analysis highlights that the character’s experience with the Glee club seems to be important for the constant re-construction of his identity. Such reconstruction is always part of a double movement: Finn, as a postmodern subject, is overtly contradictory. While his identity construction can be considered transgressive, at times his actions are in fact very conservative. Finn’s identity construction seems to demonstrate the ways in which Glee can be considered an example of postmodern contingency while being inserted simultaneously within restraining hegemonic discourse.

The Head, the Hand, and Matter: New Materialism and the Politics of Knowledge

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 49-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Rekret
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Constructivism ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
Karen Barad ◽  
Material Turn ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Do So

This article seeks to examine the political connotations of a recent ‘material turn’ in social and political theory and its implications for theorizations of political agency. ‘New materialist’ theories are premised upon transcending the limits which social constructivism places upon thought, viewed as a reification of the division of subject and object and so a hubristic anthropocentrism which places human beings at the centre of social existence. Yet new materialist theories have tended to locate the conditions of the separation of mind and world they seek to overcome upon the terrain of epistemic or ethical error. By taking the work of Quentin Meillassoux, Jane Bennett and Karen Barad as exemplary, this article contends that new materialist theories not only fall short of their own materialist pretensions insofar as they do not interrogate the material conditions of the separation of the mental and material, but that the failure to do so has profound repercussions for the success of their accounts of political agency. This essay seeks to offer a counter-narrative to new materialist theories by situating the hierarchy between thought and world as a structural feature of capitalist social relations.

Sleeping Beauty

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Faisal Devji
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Sleeping Beauty ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Global Community ◽  
Empirical Reality ◽  
Potential Victim ◽  
Regulative Ideal ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Do So

No longer a regulative ideal, humanity has emerged as an empirical reality with our ability to count, measure and alter its global body. But while it is real, humanity possesses no political agency, and has thus been conceptualized since the Cold War in negative ways, as the actual or potential victim of atomic, pandemic or environmental extermination. In the same period, the Muslim ummah, newly conceptualized as an empirical and global community, has also come to be understood primarily as a body of victims. New forms of militancy are geared towards waking this community to its potential for agency, but can only do so outside states and institutions and by the fragmentation of ideology and action into networks of sacrifice that abandon the language of humanism for humanity as an inhuman or impersonal ideal.

scholarly journals Misterchef? Cooks, Chefs and Gender in MasterChef Australia

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Herkes ◽  
Guy Redden
Keyword(s):  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Professional Standard ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Culinary Arts ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Australian History ◽  
Gendered Patterns ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Popular Television

Abstract MasterChef Australia is the most popular television series in Australian history. It gives a wide range of ordinary people the chance to show they can master culinary arts to a professional standard. Through content and textual analysis of seven seasons of the show this article examines gendered patterns in its representation of participants and culinary professionals. Women are often depicted as home cooks by inclination while the figure of the professional chef remains almost exclusively male. Despite its rhetoric of inclusivity, MCA does little to challenge norms of the professional gastronomic field that have devalued women’s cooking while valorising “hard” masculinized culinary cultures led by men.

Remembering socialist entertainment: Romanian television, gestures and intimacy

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Bardan
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Intimate Connection ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Year’S Eve ◽  
Television Characters ◽  
State Socialist ◽  
Made In ◽  
Do So

This essay tackles the question of why people enjoy the re-broadcasting of state socialist programmes, asking whether their desires are driven by nostalgia, manipulated by neocapitalist schemes that commodify the past as an audience-raising strategy or simply linked to a compulsive desire to revisit a ‘traumatic’ past. To do so, I first draw on existing literature on mediated nostalgia to examine some of the possible explanations for the continued popularity of socialist-era television in post-socialist Eastern Europe. Focusing on the Romanian context, I discuss audience memories of socialist TV and then zoom in on some of the most prevalent memories of socialist entertainment in this country: the New Year’s Eve comedy sketches and Pistruiatul, one of very few television series made in Romania during socialism. I argue that in order to understand the popularity of socialist-era reruns, we need to look both into how audiences remember these programmes and into how these programmes construct long-term affinities with the audience. To do so, I discuss two kinds of pleasures: first, the pleasure of recalling one’s ability to resist ideological messages and, second, the pleasure of re-watching familiar content and, through that, reliving the sense of intimate connection with television characters.

scholarly journals Apes on TV: Medium specificity and considerations of continuity in early transmedia storytelling

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Benson
Keyword(s):  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Television Series ◽  
High Expectations ◽  
Early Attempt ◽  
Broadcast Television ◽  
Medium Specificity ◽  
Transmedia Storytelling ◽  
History Of ◽  
Film Series ◽  
Tv Show

In 1974, CBS premiered a television series based on the popular Planet of the Apes films. Despite high expectations from the network, the series was a critical and ratings flop and CBS quickly canceled it in the middle of its first season. This article considers the short-lived Planet of the Apes (1974) series as an early attempt at transmedia storytelling and asks what its failure might reveal about certain pre-conglomeration, pre-franchising industrial logics, particularly as they relate to properties that transition from film to television. The Apes television series offers an opportunity to understand certain logics of transmedia textual management before they become entrenched in discourses of media franchising. Through a combination of industrial and textual analysis, I trace the history of the programme and ultimately argue that the industrial considerations (specifically those of network era broadcast television) heavily informed the intertextual relationships between the film series and the TV show.

Individualisation and Politics in China: The Political Identity and Agency of Private Business People

2008 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoqing Yin ◽  
Jørgen Delman
Keyword(s):  
Political Identity ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Private Business ◽  
Business People ◽  
Identity And Agency ◽  
Critical Tension ◽  
Political Activist ◽  
Private Entrepreneurs ◽  
Party State

AbstractThe article considers the dynamics in the nexus between the Chinese party-state and private entrepreneurs. It develops in response to both globalization and market reforms which promote accelerated individualisation and disembedding of citizens anchored in the new capitalist economy, such as private business people. It is argued that informal political agency is part of the political dynamics of the nexus and that it develops through critical tension between private business people and the autocratic party-state. This is illustrated through the case of Sun Dawu, a Hebei businessman turned political activist. Referring to both Bech and Bech-Gersheim's and Baumann's discussions about the effects of the twin processes of globalisation and individualisation, one of the main conclusions is that Sun Dawu has engaged in 'self-politics' through creating a sub-political or 'peg' community where he and others can exert informal political agency. The construction of such a community is an example of how assertive private business people may exploit the dynamics of the state-private business nexus through critical tension.

scholarly journals RECOBRAR LA MIRADA EN TIEMPOS DE POSVERDAD: EL ESTILO DE PAOLO SORRENTINO ANTE LA OBSCENIDAD EN SILVIO (Y LOS OTROS) (LORO, 2018)

2022 ◽  
pp. 373-400
Author(s):  
Shaila GARCÍA CATALÁN ◽  
Javier MARZAL FELICI ◽  
Aarón RODRÍGUEZ SERRANO
Keyword(s):  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Apparent Relationship ◽  
Do So

El presente trabajo propone un análisis textual de Silvio (Y los otros) (Paolo Sorrentino, 2018). Para ello, utilizaremos una metodología basada en las aportaciones de la semiología del cine, especialmente en lo que toca tanto a los procesos significantes de la forma como al despliegue de intertextos que dotan de espesor a la escritura de Sorrentino. Nuestro objetivo es demostrar que tras la aparente relación con los estilemas de la “imagen postmoderna” –la desmesura, la serialidad, la citación…-, se puede poner de relieve un programa ético que responda a los retos contemporáneos de las relaciones entre verdad, representación y política. Abstract: This paper proposes a textual analysis of Loro (Paolo Sorrentino, 2018). To do so, we will use a methodology based on the contributions of the semiology of cinema, especially with regard to both the significant processes of form and the deployment of intertexts that give thickness to Sorrentino’s writing. Our aim is to show that behind the apparent relationship with the stilems of the “postmodern image” —the disproportion, the seriality, the citation...—, it is possible to highlight an ethical programme that responds to the contemporary challenges of the relations between truth, representation and politics.

scholarly journals O escritor no espaço da obra: o rosto caligrafado – uma leitura de Apresentação do rosto, de Herberto Helder

2014 ◽  
Vol 34 (52) ◽  
pp. 77
Author(s):  
Ana Cristina Joaquim
Keyword(s):  
Textual Analysis ◽  
The Self ◽  
Short Route ◽  
Do So

<p>Trata-se de uma leitura de <em>Apresentação do rosto</em>, de Herberto Helder, em que as incursões pela escrita do “eu” são evidenciadas de modo a considerar a metalinguagem envolvida na elaboração subjetiva. Para tanto, traçamos um breve percurso, passando pelos teóricos que pensaram a autobiografia, o autorretrato e a escrita intimista, de modo geral, de forma que a problematização das categorizações genéricas se farão ver no desenvolvimento da análise textual. A seguir, levantamos questões acerca da constituição do sujeito da escrita mediante as relações estabelecidas entre o “eu” (Autor que se escreve, homem, filho) e os “outros” (leitor que se lê, mulher, mãe).</p> <p>This is a reading of Apresentação do rosto, of Herbert Helder, in wicth incursions by selfwriting are highlighted in order to consider the metalanguage involved in the subjective writing approach. To do so, we draw a short route passing by theorists who thought the autobiography, the self-portrait, and the intimate writing, in general, so that the questioning of generic categorizations will be problematized during the textual analysis. After that, we raise questions about the constitution of the writing subject by the relations between the “self” (that in the text is the “Author” in the process of writing, a man, a son) and the “others” (the “readers” in the process of lecture, the woman, the mother).</p>

scholarly journals On the move: Twentieth anniversary editorial of the European Journal of Cultural Studies

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 595-605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joke Hermes ◽  
Jaap Kooijman ◽  
Jo Littler ◽  
Helen Wood
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Creative Industries ◽  
Editorial Introduction ◽  
Editorial Team ◽  
Fantasy Sports ◽  
Black British ◽  
Twentieth Anniversary ◽  
Do So

Twenty years of the European Journal of Cultural Studies is a cause for celebration. We do so with a festive issue that comes together with our first free open access top articles in three areas that readers have sought us out for: postfeminism, television beyond textual analysis and cultural labour in the creative industries. The issue opens with freshly commissioned introductory essays to these three thematic areas by key authors in those fields. In addition, the issue offers new articles showcasing the range of the broad field of cultural studies today, including pieces on the politics of co-working, punk in China, Black British women on YouTube, trans-pedagogy and fantasy sports gameplay, featuring work by emerging as well as established scholars. Our editorial introduction to this celebratory issue offers reflections on how both the journal and the field of cultural studies have developed, and on our thoughts and ambitions for the future within the current conjuncture as we ‘move on’ as a new editorial team.

Ethos Construction, Identification, and Authenticity in the Discourses of AWSA

2020 ◽  
pp. 1629-1655
Author(s):  
Samaa Gamie
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Hegemonic Discourse ◽  
Virtual Spaces ◽  
Activist Group ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Critical Investigation

The chapter explores the complex emergent feminist ethos in two virtual spaces created by the San Francisco chapter of AWSA—the Arab Women's Solidarity Association International, an Arab women's activist group. First, the chapter discusses ethos and identity construction in cyberspace. Second, the chapter analyzes AWSA's cyber discourses to uncover the characteristics of its feminist ethos and the opportunities allowed or lost for authenticity and the role of anonymity in constructing its feminist ethos. Third, the chapter questions whether anonymity allows for the critical examination of the discourses and ideologies of the powerful in addition to the creation of a sustainable counter-hegemonic discourse or whether it heightens the threat of homogeneity and streamlining in cyberspace. The chapter, in its conclusion, calls for a critical investigation of the potential of the digital domain to challenge the concentration of power in virtual spaces and uncover frameworks through which revolutionary discourses can be sustained and disseminated.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document