Roland Végső
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823245567
- eISBN:
- 9780823252534
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823245567.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter presents a discussion of the “crisis of representation” at the root of Cold War anti-Communism. It concentrates on the instances when the American anti-Communist discourse of the 1950s ...
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This chapter presents a discussion of the “crisis of representation” at the root of Cold War anti-Communism. It concentrates on the instances when the American anti-Communist discourse of the 1950s explicitly reflected on the necessary limits of representation. The chapter examines the recurrent rhetorical and discursive strategies of official American anti-Communist politics in order to argue that Cold War anti-Communism primarily legitimized itself by reference to a number of privileged moments when representation reached a specific limit. It contrasts two basic paradigms of Cold War anti-Communism: the liberal aestheticization of politics and the conservative militarization of politics.Less
This chapter presents a discussion of the “crisis of representation” at the root of Cold War anti-Communism. It concentrates on the instances when the American anti-Communist discourse of the 1950s explicitly reflected on the necessary limits of representation. The chapter examines the recurrent rhetorical and discursive strategies of official American anti-Communist politics in order to argue that Cold War anti-Communism primarily legitimized itself by reference to a number of privileged moments when representation reached a specific limit. It contrasts two basic paradigms of Cold War anti-Communism: the liberal aestheticization of politics and the conservative militarization of politics.
Dario Castiglione and Johannes Pollak (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226588360
- eISBN:
- 9780226588674
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226588674.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
For at least two centuries, democratic representation and how it should work has been at the center of many disputes. Representative democracy itself, though arguably the dominant political form of ...
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For at least two centuries, democratic representation and how it should work has been at the center of many disputes. Representative democracy itself, though arguably the dominant political form of constitutional states, remains a frequent focus of contestation, regarded as incapable of reflecting the will of the masses, or inadequate in today’s global governance. This view of democratic representation, based on a reflective and responsive mode, has lately been under attack for its failure to capture the performative and constructive elements of the process of representation. By contrast, the new literature is more attentive to the dynamic and mutually constructive aspects of the relationship between represented and representatives. In this book, a group of international scholars explores the implications of such a turn and the sense in which democratic representation needs the creation of political presence, as discussed in the opening essay. Two broad, overlapping perspectives emerge in the rest of the book. In the first section, the contributions investigate how political representation relates to empowerment, either facilitating or interfering with the capacity of citizens to develop autonomous judgment in collective decision making. Contributions in the second section look at representation from the perspective of inclusion, focusing on how representative relationships and claims articulate the demands of those who are excluded or have no voice. The final section examines political representation from a more systemic perspective, exploring its broader environmental conditions and the way it acquires democratic legitimacy.Less
For at least two centuries, democratic representation and how it should work has been at the center of many disputes. Representative democracy itself, though arguably the dominant political form of constitutional states, remains a frequent focus of contestation, regarded as incapable of reflecting the will of the masses, or inadequate in today’s global governance. This view of democratic representation, based on a reflective and responsive mode, has lately been under attack for its failure to capture the performative and constructive elements of the process of representation. By contrast, the new literature is more attentive to the dynamic and mutually constructive aspects of the relationship between represented and representatives. In this book, a group of international scholars explores the implications of such a turn and the sense in which democratic representation needs the creation of political presence, as discussed in the opening essay. Two broad, overlapping perspectives emerge in the rest of the book. In the first section, the contributions investigate how political representation relates to empowerment, either facilitating or interfering with the capacity of citizens to develop autonomous judgment in collective decision making. Contributions in the second section look at representation from the perspective of inclusion, focusing on how representative relationships and claims articulate the demands of those who are excluded or have no voice. The final section examines political representation from a more systemic perspective, exploring its broader environmental conditions and the way it acquires democratic legitimacy.
Mae G. Henderson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780195116595
- eISBN:
- 9780199375219
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195116595.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature, Women's Literature
Reviewing the critical reception and scholarship on Nella Larsen’s Passing, the chapter documents the historical and contemporary appeal of the “passing plot” in US fiction, along with the social ...
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Reviewing the critical reception and scholarship on Nella Larsen’s Passing, the chapter documents the historical and contemporary appeal of the “passing plot” in US fiction, along with the social phenomenon of race passing. Like the slave narrative, the passing novel is structured by border crossings and functions as a form of social critique. And while, like many modernist texts, Passing focuses on the theme of identity, Larsen rewrites essentialist notions of identity with the postmodernist concept of performative identity. The chapter proposes that Larsen, in effect, narratively theorizes the postmodern debate around essentialism vs. constructionism, challenging the idea of innate racial difference while embracing an ideology of racial uniqueness. Juxtaposing central characters Clare, who embodies textual performance, and Irene, who embodies readerly performance, the chapter demonstrates how these miscegenous figures represent “a crisis of representation.” Larsen’s achievement, it concludes, lies in her reductio ad absurdum refutation of the essentialist position.Less
Reviewing the critical reception and scholarship on Nella Larsen’s Passing, the chapter documents the historical and contemporary appeal of the “passing plot” in US fiction, along with the social phenomenon of race passing. Like the slave narrative, the passing novel is structured by border crossings and functions as a form of social critique. And while, like many modernist texts, Passing focuses on the theme of identity, Larsen rewrites essentialist notions of identity with the postmodernist concept of performative identity. The chapter proposes that Larsen, in effect, narratively theorizes the postmodern debate around essentialism vs. constructionism, challenging the idea of innate racial difference while embracing an ideology of racial uniqueness. Juxtaposing central characters Clare, who embodies textual performance, and Irene, who embodies readerly performance, the chapter demonstrates how these miscegenous figures represent “a crisis of representation.” Larsen’s achievement, it concludes, lies in her reductio ad absurdum refutation of the essentialist position.
Rihan Yeh
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226511887
- eISBN:
- 9780226512075
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226512075.003.0005
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Latin American Cultural Anthropology
Chapter 3 returns to Inés and her daughter Dara to show how passing turns their projects to consolidate middle-class status inside out. From Inés’ tales of her past to a quibble over table manners, ...
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Chapter 3 returns to Inés and her daughter Dara to show how passing turns their projects to consolidate middle-class status inside out. From Inés’ tales of her past to a quibble over table manners, the chapter draws on a variety of ethnographic evidence from everyday life with the two women to unravel Tijuana’s contradictory semiotics of class status and mobility. The ambiguities of upward mobility and self-transformation play out in relation to multiple physical boundaries, whether the walls of the country club or the border itself. In face of these ambiguities, Inés and Dara’s multigenerational project for middle-class status ultimately merges with working-class sensibilities around social possibility in Tijuana and, in particular, the fascinating and unpredictable outcomes of anonymous encounter on the street. Fictionality takes over; middle-class “I”s dissolve in the imaginative inhabitance of scenarios that just might come true. The ensuing crisis of representation does not only affect personal projects of status; it affects the entire ideology of Tijuana as an ostensibly middle-class city of authorized border crossers, oriented towards the norms of liberal publicity.Less
Chapter 3 returns to Inés and her daughter Dara to show how passing turns their projects to consolidate middle-class status inside out. From Inés’ tales of her past to a quibble over table manners, the chapter draws on a variety of ethnographic evidence from everyday life with the two women to unravel Tijuana’s contradictory semiotics of class status and mobility. The ambiguities of upward mobility and self-transformation play out in relation to multiple physical boundaries, whether the walls of the country club or the border itself. In face of these ambiguities, Inés and Dara’s multigenerational project for middle-class status ultimately merges with working-class sensibilities around social possibility in Tijuana and, in particular, the fascinating and unpredictable outcomes of anonymous encounter on the street. Fictionality takes over; middle-class “I”s dissolve in the imaginative inhabitance of scenarios that just might come true. The ensuing crisis of representation does not only affect personal projects of status; it affects the entire ideology of Tijuana as an ostensibly middle-class city of authorized border crossers, oriented towards the norms of liberal publicity.
Jesús Hernández Lobato
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780199355631
- eISBN:
- 9780199355655
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199355631.003.0010
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter identifies a typically late antique phenomenon: the emergence of a “poetics of silence” involving a metaliterary problematization of language and representation. This phenomenon, ...
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This chapter identifies a typically late antique phenomenon: the emergence of a “poetics of silence” involving a metaliterary problematization of language and representation. This phenomenon, reminiscent of the postmodern “linguistic turn,” is not restricted to literature but is omnipresent in late antique culture; it underlies Augustine’s semiotics, Evagrius Ponticus’s hesychasm, Gregory of Nyssa’s apophaticism and Pseudo-Dionysius’s negative mysticism. The metaphor of silence is tackled by several authors: Sidonius Apollinaris, Fulgentius, Augustine, Ausonius, Rutilius Namatianus, and the anonymous writer of the Peruigilium Veneris. At times, silence is depicted as the haven of tranquillity enabling literary creation; at other times, as a threat of dissolution hovering over the fragility of the poet’s work. Above all, it is the deep, ultimately unknowable reality beyond the murmuring of words. Common to all these authors is a problematizing approach to language and a fundamental distrust of the classical idea of representation.Less
This chapter identifies a typically late antique phenomenon: the emergence of a “poetics of silence” involving a metaliterary problematization of language and representation. This phenomenon, reminiscent of the postmodern “linguistic turn,” is not restricted to literature but is omnipresent in late antique culture; it underlies Augustine’s semiotics, Evagrius Ponticus’s hesychasm, Gregory of Nyssa’s apophaticism and Pseudo-Dionysius’s negative mysticism. The metaphor of silence is tackled by several authors: Sidonius Apollinaris, Fulgentius, Augustine, Ausonius, Rutilius Namatianus, and the anonymous writer of the Peruigilium Veneris. At times, silence is depicted as the haven of tranquillity enabling literary creation; at other times, as a threat of dissolution hovering over the fragility of the poet’s work. Above all, it is the deep, ultimately unknowable reality beyond the murmuring of words. Common to all these authors is a problematizing approach to language and a fundamental distrust of the classical idea of representation.
Leo Shtutin
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- April 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198821854
- eISBN:
- 9780191860980
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198821854.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
The book concludes with broader, more speculative reflections on subjecthood, spatiality, and humanism. Fin-de-siècle modes of literary, dramatic, and pictorial representation are frequently ...
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The book concludes with broader, more speculative reflections on subjecthood, spatiality, and humanism. Fin-de-siècle modes of literary, dramatic, and pictorial representation are frequently anti-humanistic in character, challenging as they do the centrality of the human form and the anthropocentric world view that elevated it to pre-eminence. But anti-humanism must not be equated with the anti-human. The relative marginalization of the human figure does not, contrary to what José Ortega y Gasset argues in The Dehumanization of Art (1925), necessarily entail a flight from ‘human contents’; as the work of Mallarmé, Apollinaire, Maeterlinck, and Jarry bears witness, those contents can be distributed into space, expressed as gaps, fragments, and fissures.Less
The book concludes with broader, more speculative reflections on subjecthood, spatiality, and humanism. Fin-de-siècle modes of literary, dramatic, and pictorial representation are frequently anti-humanistic in character, challenging as they do the centrality of the human form and the anthropocentric world view that elevated it to pre-eminence. But anti-humanism must not be equated with the anti-human. The relative marginalization of the human figure does not, contrary to what José Ortega y Gasset argues in The Dehumanization of Art (1925), necessarily entail a flight from ‘human contents’; as the work of Mallarmé, Apollinaire, Maeterlinck, and Jarry bears witness, those contents can be distributed into space, expressed as gaps, fragments, and fissures.
