Lifelong Education/Learning: An Alternative Critical Approach

Author(s):  
Dale Hudson

This chapter compares two films that reinterpret Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula and its vampire in different ways. Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) parodies a nostalgic and orientalist perspective on debates about the place of the Middle East in the formation of US transnational identity and history, whereas Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) moves towards this history’s radical revision. Coppola imagines a “vampire ayatollah” during the first US invasion of Iran’s neighbor Iraq; Amirpour, as a feminist hijabi in the sonic space of Tehrangeles. The filmmakers’ familial trajectories underscore Hollywood’s transnational constitution as linked to US policy. The comparison develops a critical approach for how vampires serve as both object and mode of analysis throughout the book. Stoker’s tropes of blood, bodies, and borders map onto US laws concerning race, immigration, and assimilation.


2019 ◽  
pp. 151-186

Resumen: Este artículo va a indagar en los significados del crimen en los tiempos que corren. Lo que se pretende es partir de la observación del crimen para llegar a reflexionar no sólo sobre las condiciones hodiernas de coexistencia de los sujetos sino especialmente sobre su condición misma de existencia. El crimen será pensado en sus interconexiones con la exclusión social. Se va a trabajar con un enfoque crítico de la posmodernidad, que examina su nivel mucho más elevado y profundo de extracción de riqueza y expropiación de los sujetos, reflexionando así sobre su capacidad de alienarlos incluso de sí mismos. Se discutirá sobre la presencia de anomia en la posmodernidad y su instrumentalización para fines de control social. La teoría criminológica de la anomia de RobertK. Merton será analizada y se le propondrá una ampliación de interpretación. Palabras clave: crimen, exclusión social, anomia, posmodernidad, control social. Thinking about postmodernity, anomie and crime Summary:This article will investigate the meanings of crime at present times. From the observation of crime, will be thought about not only the hodiern conditions of coexistence of the subjects but especially about their condition of existence. Crime will be taken into consideration in its interconnections with social exclusion. It will be worked with a critical approach to postmodernism, which examines its much higher and deeper level of extraction of wealth and expropriation of subjects, with the propose to think about its ability to alienate them even from themselves. The presence of anomie in postmodernity and its instrumentalization for purposes of social control will be discussed. The criminological theory of the anomie of Robert K. Merton will be analyzed and an extension of its interpretation will be proposed. Keywords:crime, social exclusion, anomie, postmodernity, social control.


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