Articles

Ollivier DYENS
Cyberpunk, Technoculture, and the Post-Biological Self
Abstract: Ollivier Dyens presents in his article, "Cyberpunk, Technoculture, and the Post-Biological Self," the argument that because of technology's intrusion in our perception and understanding of the world and because of its constant production of impossible images of the human body, today's representation of that same body must be fundamentally re-evaluated. As one can see in works of science fiction -- films and literature alike -- such as Terminator 2 or Neuromancer, the body must now be perceived as a quantum-like pattern whose form and essence depend on the human or machine observer. The human body entangled in technology wavers between life and non-life, between biology and matter, between the finite and the infinite and as the cyberpunk genre clearly illustrate, only a re-inventing of ontology and phenomenology can help us re-acquire our own bodies.

Kwaku ASANTE-DARKO
Language and Culture in African Postcolonial Literature
Abstract: In his article, "Language and Culture in African Postcolonial Literature," Kwaku Asante-Darko offers both conceptual basis and empirical evidence in support of the fact that critical issues concerning protest, authenticity, and hybridity in African post-colonial literature have often been heavily laden with nationalist and leftist ideological encumbrances, which tended to advocate the rejection of Western standards of aesthetics. One of the literary ramifications of nationalist/anti-colonial mobilization was a racially based aesthetics which saw even the new product of literary hybridity born of cultural exchange as a mark of Western imposition and servile imitation by Africa in their literary endeavour. Asante-Darko exposes the hollowness of the hostile racial militancy of the works of Frantz Fanon and Ngugi by assessing their salient arguments from the point of view of the themes, the methodology, the language choice, and the stratagem of African literary discourse. He explains that all these aspects contain a duality born of the reconcilability of African literary aspirations on one-hand, and Western standards on the other. Last, Asante-Darko demonstrates that the African literary and cultural past cannot be reconstituted but only reclaimed and that the linguistic, thematic, and aesthetic hybridity this presupposes must be embraced to give African literature the freedom it needs to contribute its full quota to the universality of literature.

Angeline O'NEILL in collaboration with Josie BOYLE
Literary Space in the Works of Josie Boyle and Jeannette Armstrong
Abstract: In their collaborative article, Angeline O'Neill and Josie Boyle discuss the interconnection between the spoken and written word and the manipulation of literary space, here defined as a continuum characterised by different modes of intellectual production and developed in a socio-historical context. In particular, the article focuses on the work of two Indigenous women storytellers, Josie Boyle of the Western Australian Wongi people, and Jeannette Armstrong of the North American Okanagan people. O'Neill examines the movement from oral to written speech as a process by which the word is essentially "reconstituted"; a process which is utilised by these women as a means of empowerment and to affirm individual and group identity as well as promote greater cross-cultural understanding. Importantly, the article also acknowledges that any reading of Indigenous literature is problematised by the fact that critics and authors, whether indigenous or not, are affected by ideologies concerning the processes of reading, writing and speaking.  In order to understand these processes better it must be acknowledged that when texts are transformed from one medium to another they may also move from one discursive regime to another. Through their manipulation of literary space the storytelling of Josie Boyle and Jeannette Armstrong opens this transformation to further enquiry.

Sophia McCLENNEN
Cultural Politics, Rhetoric, and the Essay: A Comparison of Emerson and Rodó
Abstract: In her article, "Cultural Politics, Rhetoric, and the Essay: A Comparison of Emerson and Rodó," Sophia McClennen compares two essays which have been central to debates over "American" cultural identity. Her work is a detailed comparison of the persuasive language used in "The American Scholar" by Ralph Waldo Emerson and "Ariel" by José Enrique Rodó. She focuses on the specific ways that the rhetoric of the persuasive essay binds Emerson and Rodó to a literary tradition and consequently impedes each author's ability to construct a liberated culture. She also demonstrates how the comparative method is a useful tool for analyzing representations of cultural autonomy. For in both essays the author is intent on resisting cultural colonization from a dominant power; yet the tools employed in such resistance ultimately resort to thoughts derived from others. The similar literary and intellectual framework of these essays suggests that a correlative historical moment -- nation-building -- and political motivation -- the quest for an autonomous cultural identity -- can lead two authors from different places and different periods to produce very similar types of rhetoric or persuasive discourse. The conflict between these essays' cultural politics and their use of rhetoric explains one of the fundamental pitfalls of these texts: On the one hand, each essay wants to convince the reader to think "freely" yet, on the other hand, clearly articulates and dictates the guidelines for such behavior.

Evi PETROPOULOU
Gender and Modernity in the Work of Hesse and Kazantzakis
Abstract: Evi Petropoulou discusses in her article, "Gender and Modernity in the Work of Hesse and Kazantzakis," selected basic tendencies of the modern European novel, in this case pertaining to gender identity and she exemplifies her postulates with an analysis of texts by Hermann Hesse and Nikos Kazantzakis. She examines the mainly male dominated literary discourse in the work of these authors in light of their theoretical indebtedness to the thought of Nietzsche and Hegel. The study offers new insight into literary representations of gender relations in modernity and how Hesse and Kazantzakis define identity, the self, and otherness.

Benton Jay KOMINS
Sightseeing in Paris with Baudelaire and Breton
Abstract: In his article "Sightseeing in Paris with Baudelaire and Breton," Benton Jay Komins discusses the tensions between Charles Baudelaire's acts of modern appropriation and André Breton's imaginative seizing of the démodé. While Breton roams the Parisian cityscape with the same aspect of creative gazing as Charles Baudelaire's nineteenth-century dandy, the objects and experiences that he privileges are different from the dandy's fashionable marvels. In texts such as Nadja passé artifacts captivate Breton. Between Baudelaire's revelling in the elegant modern possibilities of dandysme and Breton's imaginative seizing of démodé objects, something significant has occurred: Twentieth-century urbanites like Breton no longer celebrate the experience of the new; rather, they privilege the obsolete, injecting it with inspirational possibilities. Against the cultural frame of Baudelaire's dandy and the social phenomenon of the fetishized commodity, Breton's twentieth-century descriptions of ruined Parisian landmarks, decrepit neighbourhoods, and exhausted everyday objects indeed become political.

Book Reviews

Fedora GIORDANO
Experiencing Texts and Cultures:
A Review Article of New Work Edited by Nemesio and Tötösy and Sywenky