‘Always Returning from It’: Neoliberal Capitalism, Retrospect, and Marlon James's A Brief History of Seven Killings

CounterText ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-191
Author(s):  
Sharae Deckard
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Totality ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Structural Adjustment Programmes

This article contemplates the question of the afterwardly through a reading of Marlon James's A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014). I argue that in Brief History, anxieties about the inability to summon a future beyond the present – to know a world beyond neoliberal capitalism – are formally generative, providing the literary and cultural material for experimentation. Far from having exhausted the potential of the literary, the novel instead insists on the vitality of counter-hegemonic representation of the rise of the neoliberal world-system, and the capacity to resurrect the ‘not-known’ social totality of an earlier historical event even as it simultaneously struggles to imagine potentialities of collective agency in the present. James constructs a retrospective history of the aftermath of the 1976 attempted assassination of Bob Marley, reinterpreted from the standpoint of the twenty-first century in order to narrate not only the individual traumas incurred by the event, but in order to rematerialise a collective history of the social, systemic, and inter-state violence perpetrated by the neoliberal turn of capitalist accumulation in the Caribbean. In particular, the novel offers a hemispheric view of the complex historical causality of the political destabilisation of Caribbean and Latin American states through CIA-sponsored drug and arms trafficking, the exploitation of extractivist resource regimes, and the economic imposition of structural adjustment programmes.

scholarly journals El hombre de Montserrat: writings on violence in the latin american crime fiction

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-160
Author(s):  
Víctor Manuel Sanchis Amat
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Central American ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Detective Novel ◽  
Theoretical Terms ◽  
Central American Literature ◽  
Latin American Narrative ◽  
History Of

Abstract: The article adresses the novel El hombre de Montserrat, written by the Guatemalan writer Dante Liano and recognized within the genre of crime fiction, as a precursory model for a narrative that established a way of rewriting the history of violence in Central American countries in both fictional and theoretical terms. Dante Liano’s successful reception has turned the novel into a reference of the Central American literature of the nineties. This is due to the fact that his narrative is replete with mechanisms that were seen in the best works of the previous Latin American narrative, far from the great discourses, by a displaying genre hybridization, a parodic transgression or lexical localism. This article analyses the interweaving of genres and the subversion of the plot, the characters and the rewriting of the history against the postulates of the classic detective novel.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Foltz
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
The Novel ◽  
History Of The Novel ◽  
Moving Image ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
Straight Line ◽  
History Of

The current notion of the “death of the novel” is a midcentury construction at once inherited from modernism and designed to obscure the novel’s affinity with new forms of moving image storytelling. Against this critical rubric, I suggest that contemporary literary history is already enmeshed in a history of evolving media—which is to say, an ongoing record of generic distress. There has not been only one death of the novel, stretched out over a century from modernism to the present; for the “death of the novel” is not a historical event. The literary history of the novel after film cannot be drawn in a straight line, in part because that history is not simply literary in nature. What has it meant for writers to discover that film and television may no longer be conceived as media foreign to the novel but are instead crucial pieces of its “hideous furniture”?

Mario Vargas Llosa, Euclides da Cunha, and the Strategy of Intertextuality

PMLA ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 108 (3) ◽  
pp. 460-473
Author(s):  
Renata R. Mautner Wasserman
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Mario Vargas Llosa ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
South American ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Latin American Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Os Sertoes ◽  
Euclides Da Cunha

When revisiting Euclides da Cunha's Os sertões with La guerra del fin del mundo, Mario Vargas Llosa constructs an intertextual sequence analogous to that constituted by literary and other texts within European culture, the sphere against which Latin American writings are usually measured. As the two books examine a complex historical event, they consider the composition, physical environment, and history of South American populations, attempting to define a characteristically Latin American culture and to question the relevance of European explanatory schemes for such a definition. The relation between the two texts suggests that intertextuality can be a tool in the service of shaping a national — or continental — consciousness. (RRMW)

Redressing ‘unwinnable battles’: Towards institutional justice capital in Australian child protection

2021 ◽  
pp. 144078332110102
Author(s):  
Sharynne L Hamilton ◽  
Sarah Maslen
Keyword(s):  
Child Protection ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Parental Rights ◽  
Multiple Systems ◽  
Australian Child ◽  
Protection Systems ◽  
History Of ◽  
Systemic Nature ◽  
Outcomes For Children ◽  
The Individual

Australia’s history of negative child protection outcomes for children in state care highlights the sustained, systemic nature of serious harm. Situated in emerging conversations on structural challenges and state violence for parents involved in child protection systems, we trace the resources and barriers to responsive and ‘just’ child protection practice, highlighting how institutions can serve to compound disadvantage and injustice. We argue that addressing challenges such as access to advocacy at the level of the individual is to miss the underlying politics of oppression that serves to keep families marginalised. Instead, we need to rethink how parental rights and responsibilities are best facilitated at institutional levels – what we term institutional justice capital. This requires public conversation about thresholds for child removal, transparent treatment of families, access to mechanisms to challenge the determinations of child protection authorities, and inter-organisational respect and collaboration to support families to navigate complex and multiple systems.

scholarly journals Foucault’un İktidar Görüşleri Işığında Erdal Öz’ün Yaralısın Romanı / Yaralisin, the Novel by Erdal Oz, in the Light of Foucault’s Power Theory

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 564
Author(s):  
Koray Üstün
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Power Structure ◽  
New Order ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Private Space ◽  
Power Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual

<p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p>In the light of the power concepts theorized by Michel Foucault, this article investigates Erdal Oz's novel Yaralisin (You’re Wounded). Foucault’s power structure that systematized in Subject and Power (1961), History of Sexuality (1984), Birth of Prison (1975), The Birth of Biopolitics (2004), has similarities with crime production that the novel reflects. Accordingly, individuals are being standardized in the prison through programs, strategies and technics that the power structure determined. In this process, there is no direct enforcement on the individual. The power structure connects the individual to itself through knowledge and body. In Oz’s novel the subject depending on space changing are being standardized and transformed into the “Nuri” character, as we read in the text. At the base of becoming standard individual through lost of identity, there is crime production. As for crime production, it takes shape in accordance with space. In the novel, space dependent suffering, inflicted on individuals, places the subject on a hierarchical plane, as Foucault has also indicated, and brings an end to existence. The power structure, cutting off the individual from his private space, taking him first into the interrogation room, and then to the prison, has made him a part of the system and has objectified him. The digestive effect of the power structure has become even more concrete with the presence of the second person narrator within the narrative plane; depersonalization has taken place within the new order.</p><p><strong>Öz</strong></p><p>Bu makalede Michel Foucault’un kuramsallaştırdığı iktidar kavramı ışığında Erdal Öz’ün <em>Yaralısın</em> romanı incelenmiştir. Foucault’nun <em>Özne ve İktidar </em>(1961),<em> Cinselliğin Tarihi </em>(1984)<em>, Hapishanenin Doğuşu </em>(1975)<em>, Biyopolitikanın Doğuşu</em> (2004) gibi kitaplarında sistemleştirdiği iktidar, romanda aktarılan suç üretimi ile paralellik taşımaktadır. Bireyler, iktidar tarafından belirlenen program, strateji ve tekniklerle hapishanelerde tek tipleştirilmektedir. Bu süreçte bireyler üzerine doğrudan bir yaptırım uygulanmaz; iktidar, bilgi ve beden yönetimi üzerinden bireyi kendine bağlar. Öz’ün romanında da uzamsal değişimlere bağlı olarak tekil özneler, tek tipleştirilerek metindeki karşılığıyla “Nuri”lere dönüşür. Bireyin kendi kimliğini yitirerek tek tipleşmesinin temelinde suç üretimi vardır. Suç üretimi ise uzama göre şekillenir. Romanda uzama göre değişen çektirilen azaplar, Foucault’un da belirttiği gibi özneyi hiyerarşik düzleme yerleştirir ve varoluşu sona erdirir. İktidar, özneyi kişisel mekânından ayırıp önce sorgu odasına ardından da hapishaneye götürerek onu düzenin bir parçası hâline getirmiş ve nesneleştirmiştir. İktidarın sindirici etkisi, anlatı düzlemindeki ikinci tekil anlatıcının varlığıyla daha da somutlaşmış; kurulan düzen içerisinde özne yitimi gerçekleşmiştir. </p>

scholarly journals Ανάπτυξη και εφαρμογή εργαλείων βιοπληροφορικής για τη φυλογενετική ανάλυση και πρόβλεψη της δομής και ρύθμισης της λειτουργίας των πρωτεϊνών

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Αθανασία Παυλοπούλου
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Inflammatory Diseases ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Dna Methyltransferases ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Homologous Proteins ◽  
Plant Dna ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Encoding Genes

In the present thesis, the availability of an increasing number of complete or almostcomplete genomes, including those that were completed recently, enabled the study ofthe evolutionary history of three functionally important protein families: (a) the plant DNAmethyltransferases and (b) the eukaryotic RNA methyltransferases, which are enzymesthat catalyze the transfer of a methyl group to nucleotide sequences, as well as (c) thekallikrein-related peptidases or KLKs, which are trypsin- or chymotrypsin-like serineproteases. The evolutionary relationships of the already known and the novel proteins ofthe three families that were identified here were investigated using phylogenetic trees.Moreover, the secondary and tertiary structures of the homologous proteins wereanalyzed, as well as the structure of the protein-encoding genes, and diagnostic proteinmotifs were constructed based on the sequences of the three enzyme families. Ourresults led to suggestions pertaining to the biological function of the identified novelproteins. In particular, homologous plant DNA methyltransferases and novel eukaryoticRNA methyltransferases were identified in publicly accessible sequence databases.Detailed phylogenetic analysis of plant DNA methyltransferases identified four alreadyknown families and a novel subfamily in addition (Pavlopoulou and Kossida, 2007).Moreover, five distinct eukaryotic RNA methyltransferase subfamilies were identified;apart from the three already known subfamilies (NOP2, NCL1 and YNL022C), onenovel subfamily (RCMT9) and the FMU which hitherto was considered to existexclusively in prokaryotes were also identified (Pavlopoulou and Kossida, 2009).Furthermore, protein fingerprints were constructed from the generic family of RNAmethyltransferases (and the individual subfamilies), which were deposited in thePRINTS database (http://www.bioinf.man.ac.uk/dbbrowser/PRINTS). We developed the computational program RCMTHMM, in order to discriminate/identify eukaryotic RNAmethyltransferases from other proteins. The RCMTHMM program has been madepublicly available in the URL: http://www.bioacademy.gr/bioinformatics/RCMTHMM.Finally, the evolutionary history of KLKs was reconstructed. Kallikreins are importantproteolytic enzymes which are involved in proteolytic cascade pathways and theirdysregulated expression has been associated with major human pathologies(cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative disorders, inflammatory diseases, skindiseases, different cancer types). The prominent feature of the kallikrein family is that itconsists of tandemly and uninterruptedly arrayed genes on a single locus at humanchromosome 19q13.3-13.4. This unique feature was used in order to identify novelKLKs and KLK-like genes/proteins. Previous studies on the evolution of kallikreins wererestricted to mammals and the emergence of the kallikrein genes was suggestedapproximately 150 million years ago. In the present study, homologous novel kallikreinprotein sequences were detected in silico in the genomes of various species. For thefirst time, novel KLK orthologues were identified in reptiles, aves and amphibia, whichallowed us to trace the evolutionary origin of kallikreins 330 million years ago. Inaddition, apart from the 15 already known KLK genes (KLK1-15), three novel memberswere identified (orphan Klks). All the defining structural features which are related to thecatalytic activity of KLKs were found to be conserved in the novel KLK proteinsequences. Of particular interest, the synteny of the KLK-encoding genes was analyzedand it was shown that these genes are co-localized in contiguous, uninterrupted clustersmaintaining the same orientation in all species under investigation. We suggest that aseries of gene duplication and mutation events gave rise to the family of KLK enzymesand KLKs have co-evolved with their specific substrates (Pavlopoulou et al., 2010).

scholarly journals Some Endangered Feeling

Daedalus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 150 (01) ◽  
pp. 40-61
Author(s):  
Nancy Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
Recent Trend ◽  
Affect Theory ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Robinson Crusoe ◽  
History Of The Novel ◽  
Human Motivation ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Individual ◽  
And Behavior

This essay sees the recent trend in novels that feature damaged, partial, or wayward protagonists as the ascent of a tradition of formal outliers as old as the novel itself to a position of dominance. Rather than formulate a self-contained individual capable of defending itself against whatever forces of nature or society might disperse and refigure it, this other tradition gave into those forces, releasing human subjectivity from the confines of the self-regulating individual. Why now? How does this major turn in the history of the novel contribute to the current reconsideration of human motivation and behavior in light of affect theory? If Robinson Crusoe provided a bellwether for the individual to come, then what can the damaged protagonist of Tom McCarthy's 2005 novel Remainder tell us about the selves we are likely to become?

scholarly journals Between Social Utopia and Totalitarian Reality: “Children of Milky Way” by Dokiia Humenna

2019 ◽  
pp. 73-89
Author(s):  
Vadym Vasylenko
Keyword(s):  
Milky Way ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Life Strategies ◽  
The World ◽  
Literary Process ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
And Control ◽  
Social Utopia

The paper considers the novel “Children of Milky Way” by Dokiia Humenna in the context of the postwar Ukrainian diaspora’s literary process. The focus is on the issues of relations between fiction and documentary writing, the individual and collective experiences. The literary Kyiv, being one of the central images in Dokiia Humenna’s novel, appears not only as a page from individual or national histories, a sample of the Kyiv text in the Ukrainian diaspora’s prose, but also as a generalization based on such texts and made due to various forms of intertextuality, which absorb the history and atmosphere of the Kyiv 1920s. The problem of interrelations between the writer and government, art, politic, and ideology is one of the most essential in the novel: Dokia Humenna reveals various aspects of the writer’s life and work in conditions of the totalitarian state and culture – from suicide to madness, from resistance to adaptation and collaboration. A future person and society in “Children of Milky Way” are represented in a commune. The histories of the two characters-antipodes Taras Saragola and Seraphym Carmalita are connected to its progress and decline; in the world of totalitarian repressions and control they choose different life strategies and roles. The memory about Soviet terror and repressions, as well as the Holodomor-genocide, “killing the Ukrainian peasantry as a foundation of the nation and destructing intellectuals as a brain of the nation” is important in the novel. The history of collectivization is related to the traumatic memory of the serfdom times, which affects  the second and third generations and deepens the trauma caused by disintegration of a family, destruction of the patriarchal peasant world. This process was accompanied by desacralization of the Father’s figure as a personification of power, by infantilization of masculinity. The writer associates totalitarian reality with the metaphor of Night, which acquires different ambiguous meanings in the Ukrainian anti-totalitarian discourse.

scholarly journals Joaquín Senderos y Yemeyá, dos protagonistas “subalternos” en la novela eclipse de luna,de Ricardo Estupiñán Bravo

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (17) ◽  
pp. 281-320
Author(s):  
Alexis Francisco Uscátegui Narváez
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Latin American ◽  
African Descent ◽  
Lunar Eclipse ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Society ◽  
Key Terms ◽  
Latin American Society

Este artículo sintetiza los resultados de un trabajo investigativo que busca, a través de la crítica literaria y la teoría de la subalternidad, repensar la historia de aquellas personas a las que se consideraba como subalternos en la sociedad latinoamericana. Este documento destaca los aportes socioculturales de dos razas (indígena y afrodescendiente), representadas por dos protagonistas de la novela Eclipse de luna, del escritor colombiano Ricardo Estupiñán Bravo, quienes por cosas del destino afrontan un apasionante universo de amor, dolor y muerte. En términos claves, erguido con firmeza sobre dichos supuestos, Estupiñán expresa, con esta maravillosa novela, la dolorosa y cruda verdad de la subalternidad en Nariño, el desarraigo y la miseria de Cumbal y Barbacoas. Por esta razón, se realizó una interpretación que desplaza los discursos coloniales al olvido y legitima la heterogeneidad cultural y literaria que presentan las letras de Nariño, el mundo sureño, en cuyo verbo prolifera la libertad.ABSTRACTThis article summarizes the results of a research project which seeks, through literary criticism and the theory of subalternity, to rethink the history of those who are regarded as subordinate in Latin American society. This paper highlights the social and cultural contributions of two races (indigenous and African descent), represented by two main characters in the novel entitled Lunar Eclipse by the Colombian writer Ricardo Estupiñán Bravo. These characters, for reasons of fate face an exciting universe of love, pain and death. In key terms, standing firmly on these assumptions, Estupiñán through this wonderful novel describes the painful and raw truth of subalternity in Nariño and the uprooting and misery of Cumbal and Barbacoas. For this reason, an interpretation that displaces colonial discourses to forgetfulness and legitimizes the cultural and literary heterogeneity expressed in the letters of Nariño - the southern world-, was performed-, in which the word freedom revolves.RESUMOEste artigo sintetiza os resultados de un trabalho de pesquisa que busca, através da crítica literaria e da teoría da subordinação, repensar a historia daquelas pessoas às quais são considerada como subordinados da sociedade latinoamericana. Este documento destaca as contribuições sociais e culturais de duas raças (indígena e afrodescendente), representadas por dois protagonistas da novela Eclipse de luna, do escritor colômbiano Ricardo Estupiñán Bravo, quem por coisas do destino diante de um apaixonante universo de amor, dor e morte. Em termos chaves, erguer-se firmemente sobre ditas suposições, Estupiñán expressa, com esta maravilhosa novela, a dolorosa e crua verdade da subordinação em Nariño, o desenraizamento e miséria de Cumbal e Barbacoas. Por estarazão, se realizou uma interpretação que move os discursos coloniais ao esquecimento e legitima a heterogeneidade cultural e literária que apresentam as letras de Nariño, o mundo do sul, no qual se dá a proliferação da liberdade.

scholarly journals A poeticised indulgence. “The Beginning” by Andrzej Szczypiorski: A story of success

2021 ◽  
pp. 346-364
Author(s):  
Irina E. Adel'gejm
Keyword(s):  
Great Difficulty ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Moral Self ◽  
Bright Field ◽  
National Tradition ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Polish Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
The Individual

The article dwells upon the reception of the novel “The Beginning” (“The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman”) by Andrzej Szcypiorski. The success of the book turned out to be an extremely clear evidence of the then state of the Polish society in terms of the attitude to the problem of participation / non-participation of Poles in the fate of Jews during the Holocaust and the development of a language adequate to this trauma. The reception of the novel once again showed that the sale of book products directly depends on its ability to indulge the requirements of a wide segment of consumers — but this does not necessarily apply to low genres. Szczypiorski’s “The Beginning” was the first artistic step in a public discussion concerning probably the most painful story in the history of Poland. The historical truth associated with it, on being silenced for decades, makes its way into the bright field of consciousness, even though with great difficulty and provoking resistance in various circles of the society. The experience of shame is hardly included into the baggage of memory, since it does not create a positive image of society and the individual as a part of it, and therefore any nation state seeks to suppress the memory of events that violate the declared commonality of the national tradition. However, the writer offers the society — which latently feels ethical discomfort, but in fact is not ready neither to revise the idea of itself as of a solely heroic victim of history, nor to reflect on the discourse of Polish patriotism, or to experience the emotion of collective shame — the illusion of moral self-purification and mourning for the exterminated Jewish population of Poland to soothe the conscience.

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