scholarly journals Framing of Identity and Personal History through Multiperspective Narratives in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-30
Author(s):  
Dev Mayurakshi
Keyword(s):  
Public History ◽  
Personal History ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Her Family ◽  
The Past ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
History Of ◽  
Shifting Identities

: Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin (2000) is an engagement in layers of shifting identities and their eventual unravelling. The novel is dominated by the character and voice of Iris Chase, an octogenarian who slowly and fumblingly presents to the reader the fragmented and complex personal history of her family. The novel becomes an exercise in historiography through Iris’s visitations to her and her sister Laura’s youth in order to explain their tenuous relationship which is achieved through three parallel sources: Iris’s own attempts at a memoir, journalistic documents and letters from the past, and excerpts from an infamous novel published forty years previously. My paper will explore the three narrative structures present in the novel, and attempt to understand the questions of authorship and writing, and their importance in building a historiographic narrative. It will try to examine the ways in which retrospective interventions into public history helps to counter and create identities which were hitherto repressed under social decorum. This paper will borrow from Linda Hutcheon’s writings of the postmodern metanarratives in order to compose a lucid understanding of what alternative historiography in literature can achieve, keeping at the centre Atwood’s novel.

LT: Yes, I think so. You move between and among all those different states. In a way desire, libido, that sort of drive, that energy— without it you probably wouldn’t do anything. But when you have it, when you’re experiencing it very, very strongly, so that it’s pushing you in all sorts of ways, you’re also at its mercy. You can feel content, maybe, in the moment when you’re not feeling that, but you’re also in a static state. You may have a period of equilibrium but you’re always going to head toward a state of disequilibrium. PN: There are several moments in Cast in Doubt where Horace finds himself ‘without or separate from desire’; ‘Indeed I felt blank’, he says (C, 141). LT: Yes—a desire not to desire. I’m working on a story now in which a woman likes to watch pornography. But to say ‘I like this’, or to say ‘I want to see this’, means that those things are not in her life. That’s the implication. That’s why nobody wants to be caught wanting. We’re filled with desires, but you’re not supposed to say that you have them. Because if you have them, it means that you’re lacking. At the ICA panel on Straight Sex, Lynne Segal in November talked about female heterosexual agency in so-called straight sex that everybody agrees is not so straight. Later all I could think about was that implied in the term ‘I desire’ is its own negation, a negation of agency. If you desire then you have a problem. But you can always say, ‘I wanted him and I got him.’ PN: But he wasn’t good enough! LT: Then I wanted someone else! PN: Can we go back to your first book, Haunted Houses? I gather the title comes from a passage in H.D.’s Tribute to Freud where she says that ‘We are all haunted houses.’ At the end of the novel that haunting is described as ‘A bad feeling that someone or something is never going to let you alone’ (H, 206). What kind of someone or something were you trying to get at in this novel? LT: I guess it’s a question of personal history, psychological history, of one’s family, which never leaves you alone. The idea that you can be completely free of that is bogus. Moving from personal history into public history, your present is always inflected by your past. I believe one can move, with a lot of psychological work, further away from the neurosis of the family, but perhaps never completely. PN: There’s certainly a lot of interest in this first book in forms of recollection and repetition. The young women in the novel fear they will repeat the lives of their mothers, and it’s as if the

2005 ◽  
pp. 53-53
Keyword(s):  
Young Women ◽  
Public History ◽  
Personal History ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Static State ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Haunted Houses ◽  
As If

Camus's Absurd and the World of Melville's Confidence-Man

PMLA ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-27
Author(s):  
Leon F. Seltzer
Keyword(s):  
Careful Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Confidence Man ◽  
Ugly Duckling ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

In recent years, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, a difficult work and for long an unjustly neglected one, has begun to command increasingly greater critical attention and esteem. As more than one contemporary writer has noted, the verdict of the late Richard Chase in 1949, that the novel represents Melville's “second best achievement,” has served to prompt many to undertake a second reading (or at least a first) of the book. Before this time, the novel had traditionally been the one Melville readers have shied away from—as overly discursive, too rambling altogether, on the one hand, or as an unfortunate outgrowth of the author's morbidity on the other. Elizabeth Foster, in the admirably comprehensive introduction to her valuable edition of The Confidence-Man (1954), systematically traces the history of the book's reputation and observes that even with the Melville renaissance of the twenties, the work stands as the last piece of the author's fiction to be redeemed. Only lately, she comments, has it ceased to be regarded as “the ugly duckling” of Melville's creations. But recognition does not imply agreement, and it should not be thought that in the past fifteen years critics have reached any sort of unanimity on the novel's content. Since Mr. Chase's study, which approached the puzzling work as a satire on the American spirit—or, more specifically, as an attack on the liberalism of the day—and which speculated upon the novel's controlling folk and mythic figures, other critics, by now ready to assume that the book repaid careful analysis, have read the work in a variety of ways. It has been treated, among other things, as a religious allegory, as a philosophic satire on optimism, and as a Shandian comedy. One critic has conveniently summarized the prevailing situation by remarking that “the literary, philosophical, and cultural materials in this book are fused in so enigmatic a fashion that its interpreters have differed as to what the book is really about.”

The Diaspora of the Novel

1992 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-146
Author(s):  
Artemis Leontis
Keyword(s):  
Uneven Development ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
The Novel ◽  
History Of The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Type

Reflection on the history of the novel usually begins with consideration of the social, political, and economic transformations within society that favored the “rise” of a new type of narrative. This remains true even with the numerous and important studies appearing during the past ten years, which relate the novel to an everbroadening spectrum of ideological issues—gender, class, race, and, most recently, nationalism. Yet a history of the genre might reflect not just on the novel’s national, but also its transnational, trajectory, its spread across the globe, away from its original points of emergence. Such a history would take into account the expansion of western markets—the growing exportation of goods and ideas, as well as of social, political, and cultural forms from the West—that promoted the novel’s importation by nonwestern societies. Furthermore, it could lead one to examine the very interesting inverse relationship between two kinds of migration, both of which are tied to the First World’s uneven “development” of the Third. In a world system that draws out natural resources in exchange for technologically mediated goods, the emigration of laborers and intellectuals from peripheral societies to the centers of power of the West and the immigration of a western literary genre into these same societies must be viewed as related phenomena.

Re-membering Syria’s Traumatic Past: Gender, Poetics, and Loss in Manhal al-Sarrāj’s As a River Should

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 202-227
Author(s):  
Linda Istanbulli
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Traumatic History ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The City

Abstract In a system where the state maintains a monopoly over historical interpretation, aesthetic investigations of denied traumatic memory become a space where the past is confronted, articulated, and deemed usable both for understanding the present and imagining the future. This article focuses on Kamā yanbaghī li-nahr (As a river should) by Manhal al-Sarrāj, one of the first Syrian novels to openly break the silence on the “1982 Hama massacre.” Engaging the politics and poetics of trauma remembrance, al-Sarrāj places the traumatic history of the city of Hama within a longer tradition of loss and nostalgia, most notably the poetic genre of rithāʾ (elegy) and the subgenre of rithāʾ al-mudun (city elegy). In doing so, Kamā yanbaghī li-nahr functions as a literary counter-site to official histories of the events of 1982, where threatened memory can be preserved. By investigating the intricate relationship between armed conflict and gender, the novel mourns Hama’s loss while condemning the violence that engendered it. The novel also makes new historical interpretations possible by reproducing the intricate relationship between mourning, violence, and gender, dislocating the binary lines around which official narratives of armed conflicts are typically constructed.

Reflections on the Public Interpretation of Regional Environmental History In Western Pennsylvania

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 50-69
Author(s):  
Chris J. Magoc
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
Public History ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Interpretation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Natural Resource Extraction ◽  
History Of ◽  
Environmental Histories ◽  
Western Pennsylvania

This essay attempts to counter the scarcity of efforts to address issues of natural resource extraction and environmental exploitation in public history forums. Focused on western Pennsylvania, it argues that the history of industrial development and its deleterious environmental impacts demands a regional vision that not only frames these stories within the ideological and economic context of the past, but also challenges residents and visitors to consider this history in light of the related environmental concerns of our own time. The essay explores some of the difficult issues faced by public historians and practitioners as they seek to produce public environmental histories that do not elude opportunities to link past and present in meaningful ways.

scholarly journals A Personal History of Using Crystals and Crystallography to Understand Biology and Advanced Drug Discovery

Crystals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 676
Author(s):  
Tom L. Blundell
Keyword(s):  
Growth Factors ◽  
Drug Discovery ◽  
Cell Surface ◽  
Small Molecule ◽  
Personal History ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Surface Receptors ◽  
The Past ◽  
Industry Collaboration ◽  
History Of

Over the past 60 years, the use of crystals to define structures of complexes using X-ray analysis has contributed to the discovery of new medicines in a very significant way. This has been in understanding not only small-molecule inhibitors of proteins, such as enzymes, but also protein or peptide hormones or growth factors that bind to cell surface receptors. Experimental structures from crystallography have also been exploited in software to allow prediction of structures of important targets based on knowledge of homologues. Crystals and crystallography continue to contribute to drug design and provide a successful example of academia–industry collaboration.

scholarly journals "We Never Knew":  The Differences between Museum History and  Academic History Explored through an  Exhibition of the New Zealand Wars

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Elspeth Hocking
Keyword(s):  
Public History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
The Past ◽  
Presentation Modes ◽  
Academic History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Museum History ◽  
Conducting Research

<p>Public history and academic history have been viewed both as opposites, two practices related only by their concern with sharing the past, as well as conceptualised as similar fields with close connections to each other. Museum history exhibitions are an obvious example of public history in action. However, is the history that exhibitions present all that different from what is produced in the academy, or is this history academia in another form? Initially this dissertation aimed to explore the relationships between academic and public histories as discipline and practice, assuming a relationship rather than divide between the two fields as suggested in some of the literature. However, the eventual results of the research were different than expected, and suggested that in fact public histories manifest very differently to academic histories within a museum context. Using an adapted ethnographic research methodology, this dissertation traces the development of a single history exhibition, "Te Ahi Kā Roa, Te Ahi Kātoro Taranaki War 1860–2010: Our Legacy – Our Challenge", from its concept development to opening day and onwards to public programmes. This exhibition opened at Puke Ariki in New Plymouth in March 2010, and was a provocative display not only of the history of the wars themselves, but of the legacy of warfare in the Taranaki community. Other methods include partially structured interviews which were conducted with ten people involved in creating this exhibition, who outlined their roles in its production and provided their views on its development, and also a brief analysis of the broader social and historical context in which the exhibition was staged. Through tracing the creation of this history, the findings suggested that the history produced at Puke Ariki is a history in its own right, with noticeable differences from academic histories. The strongest correlation between public and academic history in this instance was the shared aspiration to be rigorous in conducting research and, as far as possible, to create an accurate portrayal of the past. Otherwise the history created by Puke Ariki through the exhibition proved to be different in that it was deliberately designed to be very accessible, and it utilised a number of presentation modes, including objects, text, audiovisual and sound. It was interactive, and had a clear aim of enabling the audience to participate in a discussion about the history being presented. Finally, it was a highly politicised history, in that decision making had to be negotiated with source communities in a collaborative fashion, and issues of censorship worked through with the council, a major funding source. The dissertation concludes that producing history in a museum context is a dynamic and flexible process, and one that can be successful despite not necessarily following theoretical models of exhibition development.</p>

scholarly journals On Remembering Le premier festival culturel panafricain d’Alger 1969

Lateral ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Jayne Kimmel
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Third World ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Personal History ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Remarkable Event ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pandemic Response

This assembled interview centers both Elaine Mokhtefi and Le premier festival culturel panafricain d’Alger 1969 (PANAF), a festival which she organized and attended as a part of the Algerian Ministry of Information, noting it as an exemplary instance of the power of performance at the nexus of political ideology, activist history, and the subsequent nostalgia for that era of liberation. It is equally an attempt to overcome a distant relationship to each, reflecting on the potential of oral histories to open up new pathways through the past. This history—of entangled international relations negotiated under the guise of a festive performance, a complicated trajectory of global politics which culminated in a remarkable event of celebration and solidarity—remains understudied, a footnote to more “political” concerns of Third World agendas, decolonial reorderings, and capitalist critiques. Yet through Mokhtefi’s testimony, interwoven with searching tendrils of archival detail, we can see that this festival was not a superficial exaltation in extravagance, but a pivotal moment in foreign affairs. More importantly, through her personal history, we can trace the central role that women played in these politics, if often unacknowledged. Edited in 2020, it also counters the pejorative label of non-essential labor applied to most cultural activities during the contemporary pandemic response to COVID-19.

scholarly journals Thirteen ways of looking at institutional history: a model for digital exhibitions from science archives

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Venkat Srinivasan ◽  
TB Dinesh ◽  
Bhanu Prakash ◽  
A Shalini
Keyword(s):  
Biological Sciences ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Public History ◽  
Wallace Stevens ◽  
Institutional History ◽  
The Past ◽  
National Centre ◽  
History Of ◽  
Oral History Interviews ◽  
Official Records

Over the past decade, there have been many efforts to streamline the accessibility of archival material on the web. This includes easy display of oral history interviews and archival records, and making their content more amenable to searches. Science archives wrestle with new challenges, of not just putting out the data, but of building spaces where historians, journalists, the scientific community and the general public can see stories emerging from the linking of seemingly disparate records. We offer a design architecture for an online public history exhibit that takes material from existing archives. Such a digital exhibit allows us to explore the middle space between raw archival data and a finished piece of work (like a book or documentary). The National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) digital exhibit is built around thirteen ways to reflect upon and assemble the history of the institution, which is based in Bangalore, India. (A nod to Wallace Stevens' poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”). The exhibit tries to bring to light multiple interpretations of NCBS, weaved by the voices of over 70 story tellers. The material for the exhibit is curated from records collected to build the Centre's archive. The oral history excerpts, along with over 600 photographs, official records, letters, and the occasional lab note, give a glimpse into the Centre's multifaceted history and show connections with the present.

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