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Discourse and Cultural Transformation

Robert Maier

in Discourse as Cultural Struggle

This chapter examines the influence of discourse on cultural transformation. It considers the new cultural context of contemporary discourse and discusses new ways of engaging in cultural discourses. ... More

This chapter examines the influence of discourse on cultural transformation. It considers the new cultural context of contemporary discourse and discusses new ways of engaging in cultural discourses. It attempts to answer the question about the possibility of avoiding a renewed imposition of some abstract universalistic norms and values while at the same time respecting cultural differences in a satisfactory way. It discusses the observation that discourse is receiving increasing attention in the social sciences because it is a crucial medium and component in the various forms of power and identity in the contemporary multicultural world.Less

The Arms in the Sky: Diffraction of a Narrative Theme

Alessandro Barchiesi

in Homeric Effects in Vergil's Narrative

This chapter considers some of the narrative strategies and their relative effects of sense in the Aeneid. What matters here is grasping the specific way the complexity of cultural presuppositions ... More

This chapter considers some of the narrative strategies and their relative effects of sense in the Aeneid. What matters here is grasping the specific way the complexity of cultural presuppositions (and their interactions) acts in reading as a source of complex meanings—that is, tightening the link between the density of literary signification and the multitude of implied models. This chapter marks out the elusive pathway that unites two discursive manifestations in Vergil's epic poetry which are quite distinct from one another: an ideological contradiction and a narrative “polyphony.” It then concludes with the form and workmanship of a “pluri-isotopic” narrative text.Less

A Chinese Christmas Story

Gary Sigley

in Discourse as Cultural Struggle

This chapter examines the popular Christmas celebration in the broader context of China's unfolding social transformation. It highlights the interconnectivity of political, economic, and cultural ... More

This chapter examines the popular Christmas celebration in the broader context of China's unfolding social transformation. It highlights the interconnectivity of political, economic, and cultural discourses. It treats the Christmas celebration as an allegory for the celebration of China's integration with the global economy and of the emergence of a so-called consumer democracy. It suggests that any examination of the discourse of Christmas and cultural nationalism in China must take into account what is excluded just as much as what is included.Less

Dynamics of Diversity

Adelyn Lim

in Transnational Feminism and Women's Movements In Post-1997 Hong Kong: Solidarity Beyond the State

This chapter deliberates on the feminization of poverty to illustrate diverging feminist agendas and organizing processes as the first local Chinese women's groups reinforce an enduring ... More

This chapter deliberates on the feminization of poverty to illustrate diverging feminist agendas and organizing processes as the first local Chinese women's groups reinforce an enduring organizational base for women's activism in Hong Kong. Women activists confront a difficult dilemma of balance – as popular education, political mobilization, and poor and working-class women's empowerment are being replaced by gender policy assessment, project execution, and social services delivery – and often have to compromise between their feminist ideals and the realities and demands of their socio-political environment. Feminism as a collective action frame is incorporated into organizations, networks, and other sorts of strategic mobilizing initiatives. Frames do not do anything by themselves; they allow different political and social groupings to engage in debate and negotiation. In this way, women activists can embrace diverse feminist organizational forms, rhetoric, and strategies and, at the same time, develop shared understandings and aspirations of changing prevailing gender structures and advancing women's empowerment.Less

The Chicano Familia Romance

Rosa Linda Fregoso

in meXicana Encounters: The Making of Social Identities on the Borderlands

This chapter considers the salience of the ideology of la familia in Chicana/Chicano cultural discourse and politics. The discussion also reflects on the effects of its monolithic representation for ... More

This chapter considers the salience of the ideology of la familia in Chicana/Chicano cultural discourse and politics. The discussion also reflects on the effects of its monolithic representation for the identities of women. It begins with a study of My Family, a Chicano family romance composed of memory traces triggered by familiar historical desires and tropes. It then looks at how la familia was championed as a “righteous causa” and the guiding principle of the Chicano Movement. This principle is expressed by two concepts, which are carnalismo and la familia de la raza. The family ideology and the experience of la familia of some Chicanas are discussed in the final section of the chapter.Less

Can Chinese grandparents say no? A comparison of grandmothers in two Asian cities

Esther C.L. Goh and Sheng-li Wang

in Grandparenting Practices around the World

This chapter examines two dominant research constructs namely, ‘cultural obligation’ and ‘intergenerational reciprocity’ in caring for grandchildren in Chinese societies – Fuzhou and Singapore. ... More

This chapter examines two dominant research constructs namely, ‘cultural obligation’ and ‘intergenerational reciprocity’ in caring for grandchildren in Chinese societies – Fuzhou and Singapore. Drawing on Social Relational Theory (SRT), it examines the agency of grandmothers through unpacking the rationales for their involvement or non-involvement in childcare, and the goals and meanings they ascribe to their decisions. Grandparents are viewed as agents: capable of setting goals, devising plans, strategies and taking actions to achieve their goals in the relational contexts with their adult children and grandchildren. The key research questions addressed in this chapter are : (1) to what extent do grandmothers in Fuzhou and Singapore are influenced in their decisions to provide childcare by similar yet diverse Confucian roots; (2) understanding the socio-cultural discourses of grandparenthood in Fuzhou and Singapore; and (3) whether such discourses will constrain or facilitate their sense of agency in decision making.Less

Private Letters: An Alternative Sphere for Cultural Discourse

Natalie Naimark-Goldberg

in Jewish Women in Enlightenment Berlin

This chapter discusses the role of personal correspondence as a vehicle for circulating ideas and opinions of enlightened Jewish women. The network of correspondence they sustained with many people ... More

This chapter discusses the role of personal correspondence as a vehicle for circulating ideas and opinions of enlightened Jewish women. The network of correspondence they sustained with many people in many cities in the German lands and even further afield constituted from their point of view a crucial means of participating in cultural discourse. Personal letters were an important channel through which these women could not only expand their horizons and acquire knowledge, but also demonstrate their intellectual abilities and participate in public discourse on literature, theatre, politics, and religion, among many other subjects. Thus, a study of their correspondence enables one to assess the involvement of these Jewish women in the contemporary world of culture — an involvement at times hidden from the public gaze and partly revealed in their epistles. Women also employed the epistolary form in order to participate in the intellectual activity of the Haskalah, but this happened only in a later period.Less

Face Value: Racial Typology and Irish Modernism

John Brannigan

in Race in Modern Irish Literature and Culture

This chapter reviews the relationship of Irish political and cultural discourses and the ‘sciences’ of racial typology during the 1930s. It argues that the connection between the typologies of the ... More

This chapter reviews the relationship of Irish political and cultural discourses and the ‘sciences’ of racial typology during the 1930s. It argues that the connection between the typologies of the Irish ‘race’ and state nationalism is probably a more important context for certain forms of late modernist writing and art in Ireland than has previously been acknowledged. The chapter determines that face was a central figure in the cultural imagination of Ireland, both in the revival and post-independence periods.Less

“All Stories Are True”: Palimpsestic Storytelling

Tracie Church Guzzio

in All Stories Are True: History, Myth, and Trauma in the Work of John Edgar Wideman

This chapter shows how the Ibo saying “all stories are true” suggest a way of reading Wideman’s chronicle of his family and the history of the community and the race. The statement and its appearance ... More

This chapter shows how the Ibo saying “all stories are true” suggest a way of reading Wideman’s chronicle of his family and the history of the community and the race. The statement and its appearance in his canon direct readers to a meditation on history itself, the nature of storytelling, and the dialogue between cultural discourses. This can also be extended into a consideration of Wideman’s style and how it reflects his content. His “palimpsestic” storytelling can be seen through the intratextual and intertextual interaction of multiple perspectives, narrators, versions of stories, and discourse modes. This allows Wideman to engage both the European and African traditions in his narratives as dialogic and contrapuntal texts.Less

Creativity and Chaos: War on the Front Lines

Carolyn Nordstrom and Antonius C. G. M. Robben

in Fieldwork Under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Culture

Not only chaos but also creativity accompanies war and violence. This chapter describes how the author has struggled and continues to struggle with the senselessness of the violence inflicted on the ... More

Not only chaos but also creativity accompanies war and violence. This chapter describes how the author has struggled and continues to struggle with the senselessness of the violence inflicted on the population of Mozambique by Renamo's war. The excessive violence deliberately attacks people's sense of family and community, shattering the foundations of their cultural and human existence. Anthropologists themselves, like those among whom they work, cannot remain removed from the impact of witnessing tragedy. Instead of reasoning away her bewilderment or surrendering to the inevitable distortions of reasonable narration, the author focuses on the poetics of the cultural discourse of the victims of war who create their worlds anew with the shards of their broken homes and lives.Less

Ideology and the New Rhetoric of Genomics

Kelly E. Happe

in The Material Gene: Gender, Race, and Heredity after the Human Genome Project

This introductory chapter explains how genomics is dependent on normative conceptions of the gendered, raced, and bounded body. Epistemologically and rhetorically, genomics effects the ... More

This introductory chapter explains how genomics is dependent on normative conceptions of the gendered, raced, and bounded body. Epistemologically and rhetorically, genomics effects the dematerialization of the body and its embeddedness in historically specific environments when biological matter is translated into the language of gene sequences and risk assessment. The body becomes just so much information. Yet the body rematerializes when genomics must make fathomable and palpable the body at risk, both to fashion medical subjects and to engage in the making of procedural rules and norms necessary to formalize and routinize particular sets of interventions. Not only must genomics rely on cultural discourses about the body to translate genetic information into body practices, but in doing so it will in turn participate in their construction. It thus contributes to our shared meanings of race, gender, and embodied life.Less

Justice, Respect, and Recognition in Mental Health Services: Theoretical and Testimonial Accounts

Paul Brodwin

in Understanding Health Inequalities and Justice: Bridging Perspectives for New Conversations

This chapter raises a key question for the interdisciplinary study of health and justice: is dialogue possible between theoretical models and first-person testimony about the harms caused by ... More

This chapter raises a key question for the interdisciplinary study of health and justice: is dialogue possible between theoretical models and first-person testimony about the harms caused by injustice? To consider this question, the chapter examines the claim that disrespect—the systematic devaluation of others in a way that excludes them from reciprocal social relations—is a form of injustice. The philosopher Stephen Darwall and social theorist Axel Honneth conceptually elucidate the links between justice, respect, and recognition. Their normative arguments offer a high-order conceptual framework for recognizing people’s equal worth as human beings (and the harmful effects of denying such recognition). This chapter compares their abstract frameworks with a landmark autobiography by a founder of the psychiatric survivor movement. The search for commensurability between these texts exposes the precise difference between experience-far and experience-near genres of ethical expression. This chapter adopts a similar approach as DeBruin et al. (this volume) in examining popular cultural discourses in light of formal theory. Both chapters take seriously the lay narratives and forms of ethical argumentation that circulate outside the academy. Both envision a plural ethics of justice and health that acknowledges how ordinary people interpret and respond to institutionalized oppression in health-care services.Less

The “Angel of Arsenic”: Marie Lafarge

Lisa Downing

in The Subject of Murder: Gender, Exceptionality, and the Modern Killer

This chapter examines the case of Marie Lafarge, and how the treatment she received in a series of cultural discourses, including medical, literary, journalistic, and criminological, differed ... More

This chapter examines the case of Marie Lafarge, and how the treatment she received in a series of cultural discourses, including medical, literary, journalistic, and criminological, differed considerably from that of Lacenaire, despite her own, more prolific output as a writer. Although a feature shared by conservative accounts of both murderers is the focus on the criminal dangers of reading and writing, the gendered specificity of the treatments afforded the reading and writing criminal subject will be given consideration here. There was a general disagreement on whether Lafarge was guilty or not, and this divided French society into two opposing factions: the Lafargistes and the anti-Lafargistes. The extensiveness of the medico-legal investigations concerning the physical evidence of the crime has led to the case being cited as the first instance of forensic toxicology.Less

The Alchemist's Personae

in Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire

This chapter examines the emergence of an alchemical persona from the late Middle Ages to the sixteenth century, the initial elements of which it describes as having been reshaped in reaction to ... More

This chapter examines the emergence of an alchemical persona from the late Middle Ages to the sixteenth century, the initial elements of which it describes as having been reshaped in reaction to public debates about alchemy. It discusses the public perception of the alchemist as artisan, fool, and corrupt merchant. The chapter suggests that in the absence of formal institutions to shape the alchemist's identity, these cultural discourses became all the more important in shaping just who alchemists were and where they fitted into the early modern social and cultural landscape.Less

Whether Home or Away

Timothy Luckritz Marquis

in Transient Apostle

This chapter discusses the theme of judgment, which influences Paul to target the attitude and behavior of the Corinthians. It reviews a language Paul used that might reflect his initial and basic ... More

This chapter discusses the theme of judgment, which influences Paul to target the attitude and behavior of the Corinthians. It reviews a language Paul used that might reflect his initial and basic message, and looks at Paul's discussion on the connection between death and apostleship in light of Christ's death. This discussion leads to the removal of consolatory motifs. The chapter ends with the issue that the pacing of the imagery that serves as a unique characteristic of the letter provides the rhetorical function of causing many cultural discourses; these define Paul as an apostle in relation to these discourses.Less

Marginalized Agencies and Narrative Selves

Joel P. Christensen

in The Many-Minded Man: The "Odyssey," Psychology, and the Therapy of Epic

This chapter evaluates the impact that the Odyssey's projected narratives of agency has on those who are not the returning hero, in particular, on the enslaved people who make up a significant part ... More

This chapter evaluates the impact that the Odyssey's projected narratives of agency has on those who are not the returning hero, in particular, on the enslaved people who make up a significant part of Odysseus's world. It employs frameworks and insights from Disability Studies in an attempt to understand the general impact of Homeric discourse on the people represented within the narrative and its possible impact on audiences outside of it. The chapter argues that the Odyssey ultimately uses the authorizing force of cultural discourse to marginalize, to dehumanize, and even to render certain types of violence acceptable. After outlining some basic concepts from the field of Disability Studies appropriate to Homer, it explains how this framework informs the way slaves, in particular, are treated by the Odyssey and, especially, provides structural and cultural motivations for the mutilation of Melanthios and the hanging of the enslaved women. In particular, Disability Studies illustrate how certain characters and bodies are marginalized to define an ideological center and how this marginalization relies on cultural processes of infantilization and vilification.Less

Penelope’s Subordinated Agency

Joel P. Christensen

in The Many-Minded Man: The "Odyssey," Psychology, and the Therapy of Epic

This chapter offers a longer reading of Penelope alone to examine the ways in which her own agency is curbed by the expectations of social roles and varying levels of internalized oppression. It ... More

This chapter offers a longer reading of Penelope alone to examine the ways in which her own agency is curbed by the expectations of social roles and varying levels of internalized oppression. It considers how the Homeric depiction of Penelope may be understood as relying on and re-enforcing psychologically damaging discourse about women. Even though Penelope is easily the most complex woman depicted in Homeric poetry, readings that emphasize her complexity tend to overlook the way her “behavior is imposed on her by her impossible role as faithful wife of a man who is absent.” The chapter then argues that Penelope's characterization is limited to traditional roles and hemmed in by cultural discourse about the weakness of the female body. In addition, Penelope's suffering is instrumentalized: the emotional cost of Odysseus's absence increases the value of his homecoming and delimits idealized behavior for a woman separated from her husband.Less

Between Fable and Romance

R. Howard Bloch

in The Anonymous Marie de France

This chapter examines the elements of doctrine that fit into the mold of fable and of romance in Marie de France's Espurgatoire Seint Patriz, her translation of the Tractatus. It analyzes Marie's ... More

This chapter examines the elements of doctrine that fit into the mold of fable and of romance in Marie de France's Espurgatoire Seint Patriz, her translation of the Tractatus. It analyzes Marie's reasons for choosing to write a literary translation of Tractatus and describes how Espurgatoire Seint Patriz served as a dissemination of the legend in the vernacular. This chapter also argues that what the Espurgatoire Seint Patriz accomplished in converting a supposedly documentary treatise on the origins and workings of Purgatory into a tale of knightly deeds is significant because it is a translation not just between languages but between different cultural discourses.Less

Introduction

in Identity Parades: Northern Irish Culture and Dissident Subjects

This book examines bourgeois formations within Northern Irish cultural discourse, and also addresses indigenous and non-indigenous film, popular fiction, autobiography, critical analyses and ... More

This book examines bourgeois formations within Northern Irish cultural discourse, and also addresses indigenous and non-indigenous film, popular fiction, autobiography, critical analyses and government publications. The material considered deals with identity and with developing the meaning of identity in modern Northern Ireland. The book deals with the frameworks founded through criticism of Northern Irish poetry, and, in addition, tries to indicate something of their ultimate obsolescence through a strategic relocation of focus. Moreover, it concludes with an extended consideration of what happens when the internal contradictions of identity's strategies of engagement overwhelm its own delicate structures. The book seeks to map a cultural progression. It has been previously suggested that there is no ‘solution’ to the conflicts of identity in Northern Ireland or anywhere else, but equally there is an imperative to be more than simply a spectator of the faction fight.Less