Articles

Lois Parkinson ZAMORA
Comparative Literature in an Age of "Globalization"
Abstract: Lois Parkinson Zamora, in her paper "Comparative Literature in an Age of 'Globalization'," presents a definition of globalization and considers how its cultural and spatial displacements have, and might, change traditional disciplinary practices of comparative literature. Zamora discusses how contemporary Latin American writers dramatize and evaluate the forces of globalization in their fiction and she exemplifies her observations with texts by Carpentier, Borges, Paz, Fuentes, Puig, García Márquez, and Vargas Llosa. Further, the author proposes that the cultural specificity of fictions by contemporary Latin American writers may serve as an antidote to current processes of cultural homogenization.

Dora SALES SALVADOR
In Conversation with Itamar Even-Zohar about Literary and Culture Theory
Abstract: Dora Sales Salvador presents, in "In Conversation with Itamar Even-Zohar about Literary and Culture Theory," the text of an interview with literary and culture theoretician Itamar Even-Zohar (Tel Aviv University). In the interview, Sales Salvador discusses with Even-Zohar his polysystem theory, a framework that emerges from the wish to foster open dialogue between different trends in culture research. The discussion suggests that there are assumptions shared by practitioners of cultural studies and Even-Zohar's culture research framework he has been developing since 1993. At the same time, the discussion reveals that it is also necessary and perhaps much more important to be conscious and to be aware of the differences between the two frameworks. Even-Zohar's explanations present lucid accounts of the bases of the respective theoretical frameworks. Further, Even-Zohar responds to the Sales Salvador's queries about aspects of the reception of the polysystem theory in literary and culture scholarship, the role of translation studies in the context of the polysystem theory, aspects of knowledge transfer in humanities scholarship, and the need to consider what other areas of research and scholarship can provide.

Adrian GARGETT
Nolan's Memento, Memory, and Recognition
Abstract: Adrian Gargett, in his paper "Nolan's Memento, Memory, and Recognition," analyses Christopher Nolan's film Memento. Gargett employs Deleuzian film theory in a general consideration of the relationship between thought and film. Gargett proposes that Memento acts as a type of intellectual stimulant that has the viewer deciphering a puzzle in process: what is identified in Memento is the way in which memory and the work of memory are presented in the film's narrative construct. In his analysis Gargett argues that memory is not added on; rather, it is already present, and that the Deleuzian abstract quality does not lie in the negative relation to representation, externality, and figure. And it is there in the way memory is present: abstraction is not present simply because memory lacks a given determination, and thus all that is apparent in the film is memory in the abstract. Abstraction here means a particular type of filmic presentation and it is the employment of abstraction as an already determined form of film construction. This presentation and what allows the film to be abstract is the confrontation with the conventions of abstraction. Engaging with abstraction within abstraction must be understood in terms of the construction and in terms of a response to the construction/structure of the film, in which narrative/subject matter can only be identified with their emergence from the way in which particular sequences/scenes work.

Anne GARRAIT-BOURRIER
Poe Translated by Baudelaire: The Reconstruction of an Identity
Abstract: In her paper, "Poe Translated by Baudelaire: The Reconstruction of an Identity," Anne Garrait-Bourrier argues that Poe and Baudelaire seem to have developed what could be described as a father-son or teacher-student relationship. Baudelaire devoted half of his life to the translation into his mother tongue of Edgar Allan Poe's tales and the other half to the creation of poetry which was inspired, to say the least, by the American writer. Garrait-Bourrier proposes that the influence Poe exerted is undeniable and particularly manifest in Les Fleurs du Mal, so akin to Poe's spirit of "spleen" and the systematic deconstruction of the romantic tenets that many scholars and critics have been suspicious about this intellectual similarity. Garrait-Bourrier refers to the fact that Baudelaire admitted openly that Poe had a discernible impact on his own work but that he systematically rejected any accusation of plagiarism. The purpose of Garrait-Bourrier's study is to come to a better understanding of this very unusual literary relationship and try to define it.

Hugo AZÉRAD
Investigative Spaces in the Poetry of Pierre Reverdy, Jules Supervielle, and Henri Michaux
Abstract: In his paper, "Investigative Spaces in the Poetry of Pierre Reverdy, Jules Supervielle, and Henri Michaux," Hugo Azérad revisits the notion of poetic space and tries to re-examine it in a novel light. In so doing, Azérad re-adapts phenomenology, which tells us that space outreaches itself in the shape of an horizon of perception. But can we posit a space which would progressively do away with perceiver and perceived alike, a space which poetry (art?) can help establish? Azérad attempts to approach poetic space as if it were a utopian place of encounter, different from the physical or psychological dimensions found usually in studies offered on the subject. Poetic space would be a threshold where the poet, the poem, and reality annihilate themselves by using images which are Benjaminian in nature, in order to create/prepare -- i.e., poème préparé similar to Cage's piano préparé -- the ground for an experience/encounter to happen. Azérad exemplifies his notions about poetic space with texts by Supervielle, Reverdy, Michaux, Mondrian, and Malevich, and decomposes the categories of subject-object, inside-outside for the sake of a "not yet" created dimension: a vital terrain of elective experience.

Book Review Article

Ralph FREEDMAN
The Memoir and Representations of the Self: New Books by Vlasopolos and Picard

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