Pub Date : 2022-11-24DOI: 10.18778/2083-2931.12.16
Matthew Harrison Tedford
Inspired by what literary scholar Lisa Lowe calls “the past conditional temporality”—or the “what could have been”—this paper examines how the work of 20th-century Cuban American performance artist Ana Mendieta challenges modernist ontologies that separate the human from the non-human, simultaneously calling on older ways of being and demonstrating that they never disappeared. Many argue that the ecological crises of the Anthropocene are in large part due to the proliferation of modernist worldviews that set humans apart from the non-human world. The rise of European rationalist philosophies in the early modern period played a central role in the proliferation of instrumentalist relationships between humans and the non-human world. This paper explores how Mendieta’s Silueta and Rupestrian Sculptures series (from the 1970s and 1980s) resist the logic of European capitalism and colonialism, revealing that the relationships that rationalism sought to subdue have always existed, will continue to exist, and can proliferate. Symbolic communication is a key means of mediating and actualizing relationships between subjects, and so, if a non-instrumental relationship is possible between the human and non-human, visual art ought to be a possible means of enactment. Through Mendieta’s work, this paper considers the mechanisms by which this is possible. By considering meaning-making as a basis for life, the co-constitution of human/non-human subjectivities, and the inherent permeability of the category of the individual, this paper highlights counter-modernist visual art practices that are of special urgency in the age of the Anthropocene.
{"title":"Past Conditional Subjectivities: Enacting Relationships with the Non-Human in the Work of Ana Mendieta","authors":"Matthew Harrison Tedford","doi":"10.18778/2083-2931.12.16","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.12.16","url":null,"abstract":"Inspired by what literary scholar Lisa Lowe calls “the past conditional temporality”—or the “what could have been”—this paper examines how the work of 20th-century Cuban American performance artist Ana Mendieta challenges modernist ontologies that separate the human from the non-human, simultaneously calling on older ways of being and demonstrating that they never disappeared. Many argue that the ecological crises of the Anthropocene are in large part due to the proliferation of modernist worldviews that set humans apart from the non-human world. The rise of European rationalist philosophies in the early modern period played a central role in the proliferation of instrumentalist relationships between humans and the non-human world.\u0000This paper explores how Mendieta’s Silueta and Rupestrian Sculptures series (from the 1970s and 1980s) resist the logic of European capitalism and colonialism, revealing that the relationships that rationalism sought to subdue have always existed, will continue to exist, and can proliferate. Symbolic communication is a key means of mediating and actualizing relationships between subjects, and so, if a non-instrumental relationship is possible between the human and non-human, visual art ought to be a possible means of enactment. Through Mendieta’s work, this paper considers the mechanisms by which this is possible. By considering meaning-making as a basis for life, the co-constitution of human/non-human subjectivities, and the inherent permeability of the category of the individual, this paper highlights counter-modernist visual art practices that are of special urgency in the age of the Anthropocene.","PeriodicalId":41165,"journal":{"name":"Text Matters-A Journal of Literature Theory and Culture","volume":"74 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78100489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-24DOI: 10.18778/2083-2931.12.07
W. DeBuys
The old metaphor of the canary in the coal mine has lost its edge. When applied to global warming and climate change, the relevance of its parts has become reversed—the canary is clearly dead, and it died a good while ago, its warnings mostly ignored. The coal mines of the world, meanwhile, are busier than ever, as the power plants they serve pump vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. A better metaphor for the present human predicament is the frog and the kettle of water. Everybody knows that the frog, if thrown into hot water, will leap out. No problem there. But we pity the frog placed in cool water because, when its kettle is gradually heated, the complacent frog hasn’t the sense to escape, and it stays until it boils. . . . Climate change is transforming the polar regions of North America fastest—melting ice, thawing permafrost, and drowning polar bears— but for most people who live in the Lower 48, those transformations are nearly as remote as a tsunami hitting Borneo. While we lament such calamities at a distance, the warming kettle, now rattling up toward a boil, is working changes closer to home that promise sweeping transformations. The place where those changes might best be observed is a region already straining from rapid growth, whose water resources are stretched to the utmost—the aridlands of the North American West. What happens under the turquoise skies of the continent’s most celebrated landscapes will presage changes that human frogs in kettles the world over can expect to experience.
{"title":"Robustness and Vulnerability: Caring for the Earth in an Age of Loss","authors":"W. DeBuys","doi":"10.18778/2083-2931.12.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.12.07","url":null,"abstract":"The old metaphor of the canary in the coal mine has lost its edge. When applied to global warming and climate change, the relevance of its parts has become reversed—the canary is clearly dead, and it died a good while ago, its warnings mostly ignored. The coal mines of the world, meanwhile, are busier than ever, as the power plants they serve pump vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. A better metaphor for the present human predicament is the frog and the kettle of water. Everybody knows that the frog, if thrown into hot water, will leap out. No problem there. But we pity the frog placed in cool water because, when its kettle is gradually heated, the complacent frog hasn’t the sense to escape, and it stays until it boils. . . . Climate change is transforming the polar regions of North America fastest—melting ice, thawing permafrost, and drowning polar bears— but for most people who live in the Lower 48, those transformations are nearly as remote as a tsunami hitting Borneo. While we lament such calamities at a distance, the warming kettle, now rattling up toward a boil, is working changes closer to home that promise sweeping transformations. The place where those changes might best be observed is a region already straining from rapid growth, whose water resources are stretched to the utmost—the aridlands of the North American West. What happens under the turquoise skies of the continent’s most celebrated landscapes will presage changes that human frogs in kettles the world over can expect to experience.","PeriodicalId":41165,"journal":{"name":"Text Matters-A Journal of Literature Theory and Culture","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83002479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-24DOI: 10.18778/2083-2931.12.23
A. Žukauskaitė
In this essay I will discuss Donna J. Haraway’s notion of sympoiesis and examine different modes of cohabitation or hybridization with nonhuman others. Such concepts as sympoiesis, or holobiont, question the notion of the biological individual and also change our understanding of what it means to be human. As Richard Grusin pointed out, “we have never been human” because “the human has always coevolved, coexisted, or collaborated with the nonhuman—and that the human is characterized precisely by this indistinction from the nonhuman” (ix–x). We have never been human because we have always been dependent on other species living within or beyond our bodies. However, the question which still needs to be answered is whether all forms of coexistence are profitable and welcomed. How does one define the limit at which this co-existence is collaborative and productive (“posthuman”), and beyond which it becomes damaging and lethal (in other words, “posthumous,” e.g., coming after life)? For this reason, the interrelations between different life forms should be discussed together with the concepts of contagion and immunity. The notion of immunity expresses an ambivalent character of life: on the one hand, it protects the organism against everything that is beyond its boundary; on the other hand, it helps to collaborate with other organisms and to create an ecosystem. In this sense, immunity can be thought as a field of negotiations between human and nonhuman beings.
在这篇文章中，我将讨论Donna J. Haraway的共生概念，并研究与非人类他人同居或杂交的不同模式。像同质性(sympoiesis)或全息生物(holobiont)这样的概念质疑了生物个体的概念，也改变了我们对人类意义的理解。正如理查德·格鲁辛(Richard Grusin)所指出的那样，“我们从来就不是人类”，因为“人类总是与非人类共同进化、共存或合作——而人类正是以这种与非人类的区别为特征的”(ix-x)。我们从来就不是人类，因为我们一直依赖于生活在我们体内或体外的其他物种。然而，仍然需要回答的问题是，所有形式的共存是否都是有益的和受欢迎的。人们如何定义这种共存是协作和富有成效的(“后人类”)，超过这个界限，它就会变得具有破坏性和致命性(换句话说，“死后”，例如，死后)?因此，不同生命形式之间的相互关系应该与传染和免疫的概念一起讨论。免疫的概念表达了生命的矛盾特征:一方面，它保护生物体免受超出其边界的一切事物的侵害;另一方面，它有助于与其他生物合作，创造一个生态系统。在这个意义上，免疫可以被认为是人类与非人类之间谈判的领域。
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Pub Date : 2022-11-24DOI: 10.18778/2083-2931.12.26
Magdalena Szuster
The consequences of the partially coerced opening of Japan to the Western world in the second half of the 19th century went far beyond economic and political goals and considerations. The previously secluded land almost instantly became a source of artistic inspiration and endless fascination. Japonisme, the term by which the latest craze become known in France, was no passing fad. For many decades, Western artists, most of whom had never set foot in Japan, derived profound inspiration from all facets of the mysterious culture which unfolded in the period. Thus, with scant information and a lack of accurate records being available, common gossip and unfounded rumor filled in the blanks of official reports and naval tales, connecting the dots between the real and the imagined. In this paper, I succinctly examine the story of Madame Butterfly, cutting across time, genre and borders in the works of John Luther Long, David Belasco, Giacomo Puccini and Claude-Michel Schönberg/Alain Boublil. I contextualize the selected narratives within their socio-political frameworks, but also consider the ramifications of the past and present-day adaptations from the 21st-century perspective, in the light of current struggles for (adequate) representation. Lastly, I examine the production of Miss Saigon (2019–22) at the Music Theatre of Łódź, Poland to compare how the staging of such a musical in a predominantly racially homogenous country affects the perception of Orientalist works. As such this section is a case study based on personal interviews conducted by the author with the producers and cast members.
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Pub Date : 2022-11-24DOI: 10.18778/2083-2931.12.27
Joanna Kruczkowska
The aim of the article is to compare three (re)creative activities within one interdisciplinary project: a public space (14 Henrietta St. Museum in Dublin), poetry (Paula Meehan’s cycle of sonnets in Museum of 2019) and photography (Dragana Jurišić’s photos in the same book). They are all examined in the light of the current housing crisis in Ireland, which followed the collapse of the Celtic Tiger in 2008. The Museum project not only comments on the crisis and the changing social relations in Ireland but also challenges the perception of history and private/public memory. In the article, the components of the project are situated against biographical and historical backgrounds, and within the framework of new museology, memory studies, and the functions of photography and poetry.
这篇文章的目的是比较一个跨学科项目中的三种(重新)创造性活动:公共空间(都柏林的14 Henrietta St. Museum)，诗歌(Paula Meehan在2019年博物馆的十四行诗循环)和摄影(Dragana Jurišić在同一本书中的照片)。在2008年凯尔特之虎(Celtic Tiger)崩溃之后，爱尔兰出现了当前的住房危机。博物馆项目不仅评论了爱尔兰的危机和不断变化的社会关系，还挑战了对历史和私人/公共记忆的看法。在文章中，项目的组成部分是在传记和历史背景下，在新博物馆学、记忆研究以及摄影和诗歌功能的框架内进行的。
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Pub Date : 2022-11-24DOI: 10.18778/2083-2931.12.05
C. Arnsperger, Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet, J. Greer
“Looking CA & ASM: You are not officially an academic, but in our eyes your work on the critique of progress as a religion and on the opportunities and pitfalls of a “de-industrial” descent ranks among the most creative and exciting on the market—by a long shot. One remarkable aspect is that while dismantling the modern idea of progress, you doggedly refuse to slide down the other, twin slope of the modern imaginary—that of catastrophic collapse and apocalypse. You were an early witness to how the neoliberal backlash successfully halted the advent of appropriate technologies in the late 1970s and 1980s, and how the Overton window for a still relatively serene transition to sustainable lifestyles was abruptly shut (Greer, Green Wizardry ). This seems to have convinced you that “catabolic” decline is the actual path our industrial civilization is going to follow into a de-industrial future as it chronically overshoots the biosphere’s limits (to paraphrase William Catton, one of your intellectual mentors). You have called this the “Long Descent” and published one of your most acclaimed books under that title (Greer, The Long Descent ). What signs do you identify at present that this descent is clearly underway, and how do you fend off the twin objections that you’re ( a ) being pessimistic and ( b ) feeding hopelessness? JMG: I’d like to start my response by questioning the idea that the myth of apocalypse is in any way separate from the myth of progress. The connection between these two isn’t just a matter of shared heredity, though of course that’s a dimension worth examining; as Philip Lamy pointed out quite some time ago in his book Millennium Rage , these and most other visions of the future are “fractured apocalypses,” fragments
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Pub Date : 2022-11-24DOI: 10.18778/2083-2931.12.08
C. Arnsperger, Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet, W. DeBuys
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Pub Date : 2022-11-24DOI: 10.18778/2083-2931.12.22
Edyta Lorek-Jezińska
The recent exhibition of Patricia Piccinini’s art called That’s Us (Toruń, CSW) largely represents the Australian artist’s visions and fascinations known from earlier exhibitions. Questioning and erasing the borders between species, the affective realities of Piccinini’s art are bound to the concepts of care, empathy and fragility, which refigure what is human and non-human and the relations between them by expanding the notion of mothering and fostering to include interspecies relations. Beginning with a discussion of the uncanny, abjection and monstrosity, this article aims to examine the complicated implications of interpreting Piccinini’s art within the conceptual framework of ecofeminism, as well as in the context of disability aesthetics. In her explorations of different and alternative corporealities, Piccinini, among many other things, asks questions about ideologies of normativity and able-bodiedness, suggesting the possibility of going beyond them.
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Pub Date : 2022-11-24DOI: 10.18778/2083-2931.12.13
Emily Childers, Hannah Menendez
Contemporary climate fiction (cli-fi) frequently invokes the concept of apocalypse to explore the experience of living through the era of unprecedented climate change and environmental disaster that has been named the Anthropocene. Yet, as often as apocalyptic narratives are deployed to express those anxieties and experiences, they so often ignore the histories and presents of peoples who have already lived through multiple apocalypses—in particular, the ongoing violence of settler colonial exploitation of the land now called North America. Considering the role that settler colonialism has played in the development of the current crisis, we turn to two recent works by the Métis writer Cherie Dimaline and Ojibwe author Louise Erdrich to consider how the act of cultural storytelling challenges Western notions of linear temporalities. Our analysis of Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves will explore how the settler-colonial narratives of scientific progress is challenged through Indigenous storytelling and collective memory, and our analysis of Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God will examine how Indigenous modes of understanding operate through a cyclical timescape that allows for alternative methods of existing with and within the larger world.
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Pub Date : 2022-11-24DOI: 10.18778/2083-2931.12.18
Courtney A. Druzak
This article examines M. R. Carey’s 2014 zombie apocalypse novel The Girl with All the Gifts through the ecofeminist concept of trans-corporeality as defined by Stacy Alaimo in Bodily Natures. Carey’s heroine Melanie showcases how humans can re-conceptualize their relationship to a more-than-human, or natural, world that is both exterior to the self and always-already a part of the self through fungal agency. Indeed, the novel continuously engages in intimate human-environment interconnections that, in their horrific capacities, are meant to inspire readers to reflect upon their own enmeshment in a larger, material world. The novel’s use of the real fungus Ophiocordyceps as the more-than-human agent that inspires the transformation of humans into zombies provides a vision for how humans can more ethically relate, in posthuman manners, to a more-than-human world. Finally, this article considers the novel as a depiction of slow horror, or a gradual descent into apocalypse.
{"title":"Apocalypse . . . Eventually: Trans-Corporeality and Slow Horror in M. R. Carey’s The Girl with All the Gifts","authors":"Courtney A. Druzak","doi":"10.18778/2083-2931.12.18","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.12.18","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines M. R. Carey’s 2014 zombie apocalypse novel The Girl with All the Gifts through the ecofeminist concept of trans-corporeality as defined by Stacy Alaimo in Bodily Natures. Carey’s heroine Melanie showcases how humans can re-conceptualize their relationship to a more-than-human, or natural, world that is both exterior to the self and always-already a part of the self through fungal agency. Indeed, the novel continuously engages in intimate human-environment interconnections that, in their horrific capacities, are meant to inspire readers to reflect upon their own enmeshment in a larger, material world. The novel’s use of the real fungus Ophiocordyceps as the more-than-human agent that inspires the transformation of humans into zombies provides a vision for how humans can more ethically relate, in posthuman manners, to a more-than-human world. Finally, this article considers the novel as a depiction of slow horror, or a gradual descent into apocalypse.","PeriodicalId":41165,"journal":{"name":"Text Matters-A Journal of Literature Theory and Culture","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87532372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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