Rhetoric and Critical Affect Theory

Critical affect theory continues to hold promise for rhetorical theory and criticism. This article revisits the so-called affective turn in rhetoric and addresses subsequent critiques of the idea of a turn. Accounting for scholarship published since 2010, this article then groups critical affect work into six subareas of research in rhetorical studies: feminist, queer, trans, and crip affects; race and affect; Black women’s affective labor; affective publics and counterpublics; new materialism, materiality, and affect; and affective economics. This article outlines affective methodologies in rhetorical studies and highlights the affective dimensions of “theories of the flesh” in rhetorical inquiry. It ends by considering what is critical about affect theory in rhetoric.

NEW MATERIALISM: PROJECTIONS INTO LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM

The article considers the recent (re)turn to materiality in philosophy and theory, in particular, such schools as speculative realism and object-oriented philosophy. They offer rethinking of objects and criticism of anthropocentric worldview. The attention to materiality privileges matter, body, and nature. Theorists of New materialism reject the binary oppositions (nature/culture, human/nonhuman, etc.) and insist on intra-action as a new materialist orientation. The author argues that the new materialist critique of conventional critique will be useful for literary theory and criticism. According to Latour, critique should be productive and collaborative. As far as critical judgments rely on thelogic of representation that in its turn is based on similarity, analogy and opposition they restrict the analytic enterprise. Moreover, it is necessary to rethink conventional practices of interpretation and explanation. In this context, K. Barad proposes to substitute these strategies with the practice of ‘diffraction’. In the second part of the article, the author analyzes Graham Harman’s article The Well-Wrought Broken Hammer:Object-Oriented Literary Criticism. We pay attention to Harman’s critique of New Criticism, New Historicism, and Deconstruction in their contrast to object-oriented philosophy. In his analysis of New Criticism, Harman figures out the taxonomic fallacy within this theory. He argues against the idea that only poetry has all the non-prose sense while other disciplines have the literal sense. His second argument against New Criticism problematizes the unity of all the elementsin a literary work. Harman outlines the assumptions of New Historicism and points out that it turns everything into interrelated influences. Instead, he argues that contextuality is not universal. In his criticism of Deconstruction Harman underlines that Derrida wrongly believes that ontological realism automatically entails an epistemological realism. In his turn, Harman insists that the thing is deeper than its interactions are.

De la canonul optzecist la canonul transnațional

The present article will try to highlight a series of innovations brought about by Mihai Iovănel’s History of Contemporary Romanian Literature 1990-2020 in the current evaluation and critical interpretation of Romanian literature. Singular in terms of the length of the period under scrutiny and the general objectives pursued by its author, the History views literature as an overarching institution governed by its own mechanisms. The latter are both extraliterary – drawing on historical, sociological, and critical markers – and artistic – explorable by invoking the aesthetic standpoint alone. By discussing the insistence on the first type of mechanisms, I will present one of the major elements of novelty brought by the volume in the contemporary cultural landscape of Romania. Placing myself, therefore, on the position of the “local” reader, i.e., as a connoisseur of the evolution of the contemporary Romanian literary system, I will examine, on the one hand, the ways in which Mihai Iovănel discusses and redefines prevalent concepts in literary theory and criticism, while on the other, I will perform the critical – but also pedagogic – role of the expert who wants to present to a “foreign” public – belonging to another country and culture, that is – the national literature as “literature of the world.” Iovănel employs a set of adequate and representative instruments of study and analysis in showing that Romanian literature is a cultural phenomenon engaging in a constant dialogue with European and universal paradigms and models.

THE THEME OF JUDAICA IN THE MURAL ART OF POLAND (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE MURALS OF THE CITIES OF KRAKÓW AND ŁÓDŹ)

The subject of the study are frescoes created in the cities of Krakow and Lodz, where contemporary underground artists address the theme of Judaism. The purpose of the work is to investigate the specificity of the artistic-figurative component of murals in the cities of Krakow and Lodz, which indicates an appeal to historical events associated with the Jewish population of Poland. The methodology of the work is based on the principle of scientific reliability and completeness; philosophical, historical, cultural, art history approaches; ontological, semiotic, historical-chronological, historical-cultural, micro-historical method, cross-cultural, comparative, iconographic, formal-stylistic and artistic-compositional methods of analysis. The results of the work allow us to get relevant topics that are covered by modern writers in the cities of Krakow and Lodz. The sphere of application of the results is the artistic practice of our time, history, theory and criticism of art, pedagogical activity of students and post-graduate students of creative specialties. Conclusions. It was determined that among the popular topics of street art that writers in European cities cover, in particular, ecology, religion, portraits of famous personalities, issues of tolerance, historicism, military aggression and peace, one of the main themes in the murals of Krakow is Judaica. The artists, whose works are located in Lodz, focus their attention precisely on the historical significance of the events that took place in the intermediate periods of the First and Second World War. Accordingly, plots devoted to the theme of the Jewish population are shown as important and significant. In doing so, they work compositions that use stylized symbols of the Jewish faith of Judaism and try to connect the events of the past and the future.Thus, in the plots of the murals of both cities, there is an appeal to the theme of the life of the Jewish population of Poland. These images are performed by the artists in monochrome colors and stencil spray art, imitating archival photos with a hint of the important cross-cultural significance of the depicted plots, their "documentary" and historical truth.

LA ILUSORIA EN LA ARQUITECTURA MODERNA EN LA CIUDAD DE LOJA A TRAVÉS DE LA OBRA DEL ARQUITECTO JORGE AUQUILLA ORTEGA

El presente trabajo se enmarca en el ámbito de la Teoría y Crítica de la Arquitectura. Se fundamenta en el concepto de formas ilusorias de la arquitectura moderna desarrollado por el profesor Antón Capitel. Una ilusión arquitectónica evoca algo que no está presente físicamente pero que puede recordarnos formas que en algún momento despertaron en nosotros diversas sensaciones o emociones y que nos permite evaluar espacios u objetos con diversos matices. Se analiza la vida y obra del arquitecto Jorge Auquilla Ortega y la presencia de la ilusoria en uno de sus proyectos arquitectónicos construidos en relación con la arquitectura moderna de la segunda mitad del siglo XX. El análisis arquitectónico de la obra permitió identificar la ilusoria presente en ella, a través de figuras retóricas como metonimia, elipsis, prosopopeyas, metáforas, alegorías, y quiasmos. Palabras clave: Ilusoria, arquitectura, estilo internacional, arquitectura moderna, Loja, Ecuador. AbstractThe present work was framed in the field of Theory and Criticism of Architecture. It was based on the concept of illusory forms in modern architecture developed by Professor Antón Capitel. An architectural illusion evokes something that is not physically present but that can remind us of forms that at some point awakened in us different sensations or emotions and that allows us to evaluate spaces or objects with different nuances. The life and work of architect Jorge Auquilla Ortega and the presence of illusory in one of his architectural projectsbuilt in relation to the modern architecture of the second half of the twentieth century are analyzed. The architectural analysis of the work allowed us to identify the illusory present in it, through rhetorical figures such as metonymy, ellipsis, prosopopoeial, metaphors, allegories, and chiasms. Keywords: Illusory, architecture, international style, modern architecture, Loja, Ecuador.

A Contemporary Scientific Study of André Breton’s Automatic Writing

This paper proposes a new scientific way to study the concept and technique of automatic writing in Surrealism. Based on the specialists of André Breton’s work and the experts of automatism, we expose here the literary, psychiatric, neurological and parapsychological influences that Breton had to create his own concept and writing technique. We suggest here that we have to add to all these influences, the spiritist one, specifically, that of Allan Kardec, whose doctrine and concepts, such as psychography, were a direct impact to the surrealist automatic writing, even when Breton wanted to dissociate his movement from Kardec’s doctrine. Automatic writing has been studied from many angles, specially from literary and art theory and criticism, but also from history of science, philosophy, neurology, psychology and psychiatry and even from occultism, hermeticism and esoterism. Nevertheless, we don’t know any contemporary scientific experiment on this surrealist practice, maybe because materialist principles that support traditional Neurosciences are unable to study automatic writing. For this reason, we propose to study automatic writing, not from regular Neuroscience principles that we disapprove here, but from a post-materialist Neuroscience viewpoint, which agrees with the values that Surrealism defended

Photographic representations of 'truth': the history and contemporary practice of photographic narrative tableaux

This thesis explores the history of photographic narrative tableau from the Victorian era, through modernism, postmodernism, and postmodernism examining, as case studies, the contemporary work of Patrick Nagatani and Gregory Crewdson. It illustrates how this genre evolved over time, noting technological, social and cultural influences affecting artists and their work. It includes a discussion of contemporaneous photographic theory and criticism, and illustrates how staged narrative tableau photographs have a paradoxical relationship to the problematic concept of truth. Topics discussed include artifce, the uncanny, paradox, the contemporary sublime, and the aesthetics of seduction; the complicit gaze, anti narrative, and the role of the viewer; the use of language, words, and signs; fact, myth, truth, and the (re)creation of history; theatricality, melodrama, and metaphor; allegory, Simulation, simulacra, reality, and the real.

Photographic representations of 'truth': the history and contemporary practice of photographic narrative tableaux

This thesis explores the history of photographic narrative tableau from the Victorian era, through modernism, postmodernism, and postmodernism examining, as case studies, the contemporary work of Patrick Nagatani and Gregory Crewdson. It illustrates how this genre evolved over time, noting technological, social and cultural influences affecting artists and their work. It includes a discussion of contemporaneous photographic theory and criticism, and illustrates how staged narrative tableau photographs have a paradoxical relationship to the problematic concept of truth. Topics discussed include artifce, the uncanny, paradox, the contemporary sublime, and the aesthetics of seduction; the complicit gaze, anti narrative, and the role of the viewer; the use of language, words, and signs; fact, myth, truth, and the (re)creation of history; theatricality, melodrama, and metaphor; allegory, Simulation, simulacra, reality, and the real.

Life in Movement: A French Impressionist Critical Approach to Terrence Malick's Films

<p>Terrence Malick’s films from Badlands (1973) to The Tree of Life (2011) have generally received critical praise, as well as being the focus of detailed scholarly work. By contrast, his more recent films, what Robert Sinnerbrink refers to as the “Weightless trilogy” with To the Wonder (2012), Knight of Cups (2015) and Song to Song (2017), have been widely criticised and have been largely neglected academically. This thesis endeavours to situate the aesthetic features of these three films within a conceptual framework based in French Impressionist film theory and criticism. I will argue the ways in which these three films use natural light, gestures, close-ups, kinetic images and complex editing in relation to Germaine Dulac’s notions of pure cinema and Jean Epstein’s concept of photogénie. Moreover, these ideas can also be applied to films such as Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998) and The Tree of Life. Thus, it is my contention that despite the significant changes to his filmmaking style evident in the Weightless trilogy, he remains a highly poetic director interested in the interior lives of his characters and the rhythms of life. </p>