A Case Study on the Impacts of Social Contexts on a Chinese English as a Foreign Language Learner’s L1 and L2 Identities Development

Informed by the poststructuralist theory, this study investigates the case of Ming, a Chinese professor of English, about the impacts of his first language (L1) and second language (L2) learning experience, and the changes of social contexts on his L1 and L2 identities construction. It was found that being a learner of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), Ming’s identities development aligned with the poststructuralist theory, in which it is considered dynamic, fluid and conflicting. Ming negotiated and renegotiated his identities in various social contexts in China and the United States and finally gained acceptance into the L2 academic community. This study not only analyzes Ming’s experience with his language learning and identities, but also unravels that conflicts may be part of the process of identities construction, and encourages learners to be persistent and emotionally resilient, while using certain strategies to retain a stable L1 identity so that they can navigate through the negative encounters during the second language acquisition (SLA) process to sustain the development of their identities and L2 abilities.

Moving beyond (id)entities, toward emergent becomings of the world and its mattering

In the last 30 years we have increasingly, as humans, been individualised and set in competition with each other in the quest for ever increasing productivity. Neoliberalism has exacerbated those very liberal humanist features that feminist poststructuralist theory set out to dismantle with its critique of binary thought and the ascendance of white, male, elite, western consciousness. While transferring the responsibility for individual survival to the individual, away from the social, it weakened our responsibility, our response-ability, to each other and to the earth and our earth others. In this paper I tease my way, through stories, and through new materialist concepts, to a sense of self as emergent, as process rather than (id)entity, as response-able and responsible in the mattering of the world.

Utilization of Proverbial Wisdom in Enhancing Harmony in Sports: A Case of Devil on the Cross

Proverbs are the sayings of the wise that affect the society in many various ways. In scholarship, proverbs constitute a significant field of study not only in the discipline of Literature but in other areas as well. This is possible due to the flexibility, contextuality and the multiplicity of their meanings. In African cultural settings, and particularly in Kenya and more specifically among Agĩkũyũ community, proverbs function as the infallible avenues for ferrying messages successfully to their assigned targets. Further, as proverbs enjoy the tenure of flexibility and contextuality they are able to bend to the discretion of the user rendering unequaled service to the community. This paper seeks to explore and investigate the utilization of proverbial wisdom in the sports arena. Sports is one of the developing sectors and constitute a significant portion of social harmony in the community, the nation as well as in international relations. The proverbs are drawn from Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross. This postcolonial novel has an imaginary geographical setting: Ilmorog. The study takes a qualitative research design based on the interpretivist paradigm. The interpretation is informed by poststructuralist theory. Data from the text are broken into quotations, analogies, metaphors and images to assist in the analysis. The findings of the study will contribute in the comprehension and appreciation of the role played by writers in highlighting the issues that affect society. Consequently, society will be motivated towards a positive multidisciplinary reading culture. The results of the study will also aid researchers who may want to carry out similar or related scholarship in Literature or any other related disciplines.

After McCahon at Auckland City Art Gallery: Canonisation and the Market in the 1980s

Can New Zealand postmodernism be described as a post-McCahon condition? Curator Christina Barton’s exhibition after McCahon: some recent configurations in art (1989), at Auckland City Art Gallery, was a critical response to McCahon’s canonisation, registering internal diversity within an institution deeply invested in this status. Strategically invoking McCahon’s name enabled Barton to smuggle a group of younger artists into ACAG’s exhibition programme. The artists in After McCahon explored poststructuralist theory, an expansion of institutional critique, post-punk practices and decolonial politics. These discourses of the 1980s supported the production of works dripping with postmodern irony and acutely conscious of the institutional authority amplifying McCahon’s voice and certifying his blue-chip status.

Elizabeth Bowen and the Pleasure of the Text

This chapter recognises that while several authors in the extant criticism have used various lenses of critical theory through which to analyse Bowen’s work, a case for Bowen as a theorist herself has not yet been made. Through an analysis of Bowen’s critical essays, reviews, and depictions of reading and writing in her fiction, this chapter proposes a logic of literary theory as it emerges in her work. Bowen’s theory of reading does anticipate, in some ways, poststructuralist theory as it appears in the work of Roland Barthes, particularly in terms of her syntactical evocations of trauma. Where her work differs (or defers) from theirs, however, is in her insistence upon a kind of mindless and spontaneous memory-work which describes the impact of the reader and the text upon each other and the production of pleasure engendered through this relationship. It is in the process of this mutual engagement, Bowen’s work suggests, that each comes into being. This essay will thus argue for the innovation present in Bowen’s understanding of reading and writing as an anticipation and an inflection of later poststructuralist theory.

The Laugh of the Medusa and the Ticks of Postmodern Feminism: Helen Cixous and the Poetics of Desire

This paper aims to explore Helen Cixous’ postmodernist trends in her formulations of a new form of writing known as ecriture feminine. The paper attempts to validate the view that Cixous’ “The Laugh of the Medusa” is regarded as the manifesto of postmodern feminism. This is done by attempting a critical discourse analysis of Cixous' narrative of ecriture feminine. Deploying a multifaceted-framework, ranging from postmodernism to psychoanalysis through poststructuralist theory and semiotics, the study reveals Cixous' metamorphosing and diversified trend of feminist writing that transposes the subversion of patriarchy into a rather bio-textual feminism, known as bisexuality. The paper highlights the significance of Cixous’ essay as a benchmark of postmodern feminism.

Savage Marks

This chapter analyzes how poststructuralist theory forgot, then rediscovered its roots in anthropology by investigating the conceptual genealogy of theories of subjection that imagine the production of the socialized subject as acts of inscription. It traces the obsession of poststructuralist theories with Kafka’s 1914 story “In the Penal Colony” and recontextualizes Kafka’s text in discourses on tattooing and body ornamentation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The link between subjection and bodily inscription was first rooted in anthropological interest in tattooing, in the context of other, “primitive,” cultures then in the service of criminal anthropology, but, via Nietzsche and Foucault, became a universal theoretical imaginary. In a complementary move, theorists such as Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari, and Lingis allowed themselves to be haunted by the specter of anthropology and rediscovered inscription as another technology of writing, exemplified by the practices of other cultures, often in the service of countering “western” theories of subjection.

Introduction

As an introduction, this chapter lays the theoretical groundwork for The Mark of Theory. It traces the importance of inscriptive metaphors as a medium for theoretical thought and explains inscription’s paradoxical rules, especially when wielded in poststructuralist theory. As a liminal concept, one that mediates between signification and materiality, inscription is closely tied to the construction, representation, and destabilization of various differences, such as sex and gender, race and culture, determining the politics and ethics of theoretical thought.