scholarly journals Grand Guignol and new French extremity: horror, history and cultural context

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Oliver Hicks
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
French Society ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Violence ◽  
The Times ◽  
French Theatre

This thesis will investigate and examine the French theatre The Grand-Guignol (1897-1962) and the film movement New French Extremity (1990s-roughly 2008). The theatre and the film movement will be examined in terms of their origins, evolutions and eventual declines. These will be related to French society and culture at the times as well as their historical contexts, for instance the long history of violence on French soil and the rise of the far-right in the 1980s/90s leading to the rise of New French Extremity. There will be an interrogation of the theatre and film movement’s use of ‘othering’, examining how they both alternately exploit the trope and subvert it, allying themselves with the so-called ‘other’. There will also be an examination of the term ‘Grand-Guignol violence’, often used colloquially to describe gruesome violence in entertainment. The term will be examined in relation to the stage violence inflicted during Grand-Guignol plays on stars like Paula Maxa and compared with the violence inflicted upon women in the mainly-female-led New French Extremity films. The escapist, entertaining violence of the theatre will also be contrasted with the nihilistic violence of New French Extremity, which often seeks to reinforce social commentary from the creative teams. The theatre and the film movement are both positioned as key moments in French horror history. This thesis will examine the ways that they are similar and the ways that they fundamentally differ, beyond their obvious stage/film barriers.

scholarly journals Historical explanation, emotives, and emotional suffering

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-152
Author(s):  
Ljiljana Radenovic
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Emotional Regulation ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Political Regimes ◽  
French Society ◽  
Emotional Suffering ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Times ◽  
Objectively Measured ◽  
The Revolution

One of the main goals of the book ?The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions ? by William Reddy (Reddy, 2001) is to provide an explanation of the events that led to the French Revolution and the political regimes that followed the First Republic. What makes Reddy?s approach unique is that, unlike standard political, social, economic and similar approaches, it emphasizes the role that emotions and emotional suffering have in the change of political regimes. For this purpose Reddy introduces the concept of emotives. According to him, we use emotives to express and change the emotions we feel. By expressing and changing emotions, we reconsider the values we endorse, and in the times of crisis, we sometimes embrace new ones. In this way, emotives play important role not only in the emotional regulation but also in the formation of our identity. Reddy argues that in the strict emotional regimes in which the use of emotives is restricted individuals experience emotional suffering. Such suffering is not relative to culture and can be objectively measured. Thus, for Reddy some political regimes are better than others. Within this theoretical framework Reddy describes the emotional regime of the French society that preceded the revolution as strict. According to him, emotional suffering that was caused by such regime played substantial role in bringing about the revolution. In this paper I will argue that the emotional regime of the 18th century France was not as strict as Reddy argues. What was strict were the rules for how to behave not for the emotional expressions, i.e. for the use of emotives. Thus, his analysis of the emotional pre-revolutionary regime is not without weakness. I will conclude with some problems that Reddy?s analysis of the acute emotional suffering characteristic of the revolutionary period faces.

Captain Alfred Dreyfus: A case study in the group dynamics of scapegoating

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 515-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Behr
Keyword(s):  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Emile Zola ◽  
Group Analysis ◽  
French Society ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Army Officer ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
History Of

This article explores the metaphor of the scapegoat by offering a case study taken from the history of France at the turn of the 20th-century. The case is presented of a French army officer, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, whose wrongful conviction for treason created an international sensation and tore French society apart. The author outlines the general features of the scapegoating dynamic and applies them to the Dreyfus case. He sets out the flow of events from Dreyfus’s first trial through to the official declaration of his innocence a century after his conviction, illustrating the tenacity of the scapegoating dynamic when an entire nation is caught up in the process. The view is put forward that it was the dramatic intervention by the novelist Emile Zola in the Dreyfus case which arrested the scapegoating process. The author asks what the implications of this might be for group analysis. At the centre of the Dreyfus case was the fact of his Jewishness. The author depicts anti-Semitism as a deeply rooted set of assumptions based on myths about the Jews. He touches on the origins of these myths in early monotheistic theology and in the political ideology of the Far Left and the Far Right. An explanation is offered for the persistence of these myths in our culture, which may extend to our understanding of myths surrounding other peoples and societies. The author concludes with some reflections on the recurring nature of the scapegoat phenomenon.

scholarly journals Brazil in the Time of Coronavirus

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (Especial) ◽  
pp. 239-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maite Conde
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Ethnic Differences ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Far Right ◽  
The Poor ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Violence ◽  
Laissez Faire ◽  
The Right ◽  
Structural Inequalities

This essay outlines and analyses the spread of the coronavirus in Brazil. In doing so it explores how the pandemic, whilst initially brought into the country by the wealthy elite, has predominantly affected the country’s poor, revealing structural inequalities that encompass class, race and ethnic differences, in which the poor are not afforded the right to live. It additionally examines the response to COVID-19 by the country’s far right president, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, looking at how his laissez faire reaction to the virus builds on a history of violence against the marginalized, especially to the country’s indigenous peoples, that has not just excluded them from the nation state but at times actively and violently eradicated them.

Introduction: Coming after Violence in Literature

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Juliette Cherbuliez
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
Violence In Literature ◽  
Temporal Structures ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Violence ◽  
French Theatre

The introduction contextualizes the role of Medea through history of violence in performances today and in the history of French theatre of the seventeenth century. It shows how and why violence was never banished from the stage, contrary to prevailing scholarship. It then outlines the concept of the “Medean principle” of violence as a means to consider how tragedy rehearses questions of violence and suggests why Corneille’s 1634 Médée occupies an exceptional place in theatre history. It offers an overview of how the Medean presence functions as a disruptive but persistent force—by disrupting temporal structures upon which premodern theatre is based.

Making and contesting far right sites of memory. A case study on Romania

2021 ◽  
pp. 175069802098205
Author(s):  
Francesco Zavatti
Keyword(s):  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Memory Work ◽  
Revisionist History ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Violence ◽  
A Site

Among the strategies followed by far right groups for normalising their messages of intolerance in contemporary Europe, sites of memory play a pivotal role. Adopting an actor-centred and instrumentalist perspective of memory work and memory politics, the article considers sites of memory as products of the framing and staging of the past by the memory entrepreneurs, leading figures within the community of remembrance who, mastering the art of memorialisation, strive to establish their revisionist history within the state-endorsed memory politics. The far right memory entrepreneurs spatialise their memory work in sites of memory that downplay the history of violence of their group and present its heroic and patriotic side. The degree of success in contesting such sites shows whether the memory entrepreneurs have succeeded in normalising their messages. The article analyses the making and the contestation of a site of memory established by the far right in post-communist in Romania.

Esotericism and the “Coded Word” in Mormonism

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Clyde Forsberg Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
Divine Inspiration ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
New Religion

In the history of American popular religion, the Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, have undergone a series of paradigmatic shifts in order to join the Christian mainstream, abandoning such controversial core doctrines and institutions as polygamy and the political kingdom of God. Mormon historians have played an important role in this metamorphosis, employing a version (if not perversion) of the Church-Sect Dichotomy to change the past in order to control the future, arguing, in effect, that founder Joseph Smith Jr’s erstwhile magical beliefs and practices gave way to a more “mature” and bible-based self-understanding which is then said to best describe the religion that he founded in 1830. However, an “esoteric approach” as Faivre and Hanegraaff understand the term has much to offer the study of Mormonism as an old, new religion and the basis for a more even methodological playing field and new interpretation of Mormonism as equally magical (Masonic) and biblical (Evangelical) despite appearances. This article will focus on early Mormonism’s fascination with and employment of ciphers, or “the coded word,” essential to such foundation texts as the Book of Mormon and “Book of Abraham,” as well as the somewhat contradictory, albeit colonial understanding of African character and destiny in these two hermetic works of divine inspiration and social commentary in the Latter-day Saint canonical tradition.

“Sou Inglesa! Sou Inglesa!”: Memórias de uma Menina Anglo-Portuguesa (1907-1930)

2017 ◽  
pp. 141-155
Author(s):  
Miguel Alarcão
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social History ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Cultural Encounter ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Times

Textualizing the memory(ies) of physical and cultural encounter(s) between Self and Other, travel literature/writing often combines subjectivity with documental information which may prove relevant to better assess mentalities, everyday life and the social history of any given ‘timeplace’. That is the case with Growing up English. Memories of Portugal 1907-1930, by D. J. Baylis (née Bucknall), prefaced by Peter Mollet as “(…) a remarkably vivid and well written observation of the times expressed with humour and not little ‘carinho’. In all they make excellent reading especially for those of us interested in the recent past.” (Baylis: 2)

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