CLCWeb
Comparative Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal
Contents of 7.2 (June 2005)
New Papers in American Cultural Studies
Edited by Joanne Morreale and P. David Marshall
Comparative Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal
Contents of 7.2 (June 2005)
New Papers in American Cultural Studies
Edited by Joanne Morreale and P. David Marshall
Articles
Introduction to New Papers in American Cultural Studies
By Joanne MORREALE and P. David MARSHALL
Kara Lynn ANDERSEN
Harry Potter and the Susceptible Child Audience
Abstract: Kara Lynn Andersen, in her paper "Harry Potter and the Susceptible Child Audience," argues for a rethinking of assumptions of child audiences as passive readers and viewers through an analysis of the Harry Potter phenomenon. Andersen argues that instead of categorizing children as passive and homogenous subjects of analysis, they should instead be incorporated as participants in the discourse about children's books and films. Although frequently figured as especially susceptible to the affects of advertising and other media, young Harry Potter fans are particularly visible as not only consumers of the texts, but creators of new texts. Using work done on Harry Potter in reception studies, film spectatorship, literary criticism, and internet publications, Andersen dissects ideas of passivity and activity in child readers and viewers.
Lan DONG
Tracing Chinese Gay Cinema 1993-2002
Abstract: Lan Dong explores in her paper, "Tracing Chinese Gay Cinema 1993-2002" the recent landscape of Chinese gay cinema through discussing the following three feature films: Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine (1993), Zhang Yuan's East Palace, West Palace (1996), and Stanley Kwan's Lan Yu (2001). The grouping derives from the concern that they all set their stories in Beijing. Using the capital city as a cultural background, the films display how queer is perceived in China from the 1920s to the end of the 1990s. All three storylines portray the characters' struggle to recognize their particular identity as gay men. In Farewell My Concubine, Cheng Dieyi never comes out throughout the decades when China experienced a series of political events and ends up with a testimonial suicide for his queer identity. Policeman Xiao Shi's confusion about his sexual orientation leads East Palace, West Palace to an open ending. With the social circumstances fading into a supplemental backdrop, Lan Yu focuses specifically on two men's love. By way of tracing gay theme as it is reflected in these films, Dong maps a development process of representing gay relationship in Chinese cinema.
Jake KENNEDY
Dust and the Avant-Garde
Abstract: In his paper, "Dust and the Avant-Garde," Jake Kennedy presents an interdisciplinary exploration of experimental modernism in the work of visual artist Marcel Duchamp and writer Gertrude Stein. Kennedy focuses on the strange presence of dust in the work of these two artists and argues that as an abject object -- it is literally the unwanted of domestic space -- the idea of dust engages radically modernism on a material level. Dust is also the unwanted of modernity itself, as it represents a potentially subversive sister-part to urban, masculine modernity's valorisation of machinery, glass, and steel. Transmuted into the metaphysical stuff of avant-garde experimentation, the powdery "residue" of the bourgeois household evidences Peter Bürger's claim in his Theory of the Avant-Garde that the historical avant-gardistes did not so much seek to destroy the bourgeois institution of art as to transfer it (fuse it) more fully to the "praxis of life." Steinian and Duchampian dust thus works to confirm the radical presence of art-in-life, but it also marks multiple, ambiguous sites of gender struggle and self-construction. Their highlighting of dust's liminal aesthetic qualities makes possible a dynamic interrogation of the state and spaces of modernist gender politics, aesthetic "propriety," and the vital place of the bourgeois domestic in the avant-garde project.
Joanne MORREALE
Reality TV, Faking It, and the Transformation of Personal Identity
Abstract: In her paper, "Reality TV, Faking It, and the Transformation of Personal Identity," Joanne Morreale examines the hybrid makeover, game, and reality TV show Faking It as a cultural form that portrays the transformation of personal identity through performance. Morreale argues that the contents and performance of the show intensify the link between consumer culture and the fabrication of identity by teaching that fulfillment comes from becoming, rather than having, a commodity. In the show, participants learn to perform new selves that are perceived as "better." Faking It thus puts on display the processes of fabrication whereby the self is created and is best understood through the logic of simulation rather than representation.
Rebecca ROMANOW
But... Can the Subaltern Sing?
Abstract: In her paper, "But... Can the Subaltern Sing?," Rebecca Romanow discusses the dominance of the English language in rock music and the cultural values and global power that are exerted through the exportation of rock by American and British bands. Further, she explores the question of the ways in which this music represents an area of popular culture where the voices of the non-English speaking and the non-Western are silenced. Salman Rushdie, in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, complains that rock music "is precisely one of those viruses with which the almighty West has infected the East, one of the great weapons of cultural imperialism." The business of rock music production insures that rock remains a global conduit of Western culture, and, emphasizing Edward Said's exhortation to "think of the affiliation ... between music and nation," Romanow argues that the social and cultural power of rock creates a silencing of the non-Western voice. Reading the global proliferation of Western rock through Deleuzian and postcolonial thought, as well as exploring the notion of "world music," Romanow shows the ways in which imperialistic and neo-colonialist hegemonies are embodied within this silencing, creating not a model for hybridity, but rather a deployment of Bhabha's notion of the colonial "mimic man."
Rebecca J. ROMSDAHL
Political Deliberation and E-Participation in Policy-Making
Abstract: In her paper, "Political Deliberation and E-Participation in Policy-Making," Rebecca J. Romsdahl proposes that the internet has now become a valuable medium for information dissemination and long distance communication; it is also gaining attention as a potential tool for political deliberation. Public participation has been a long-standing tradition in American democracy but most scholars today believe it needs a revival. Some of these scholars believe that e-participation in policy-making could help revitalize political discussion between citizens and government and promote greater participation by disenfranchised groups. Whether this would lead to greater opportunities for true deliberation on political issues and not just add to the prolific exchange of conversation on the internet, however, is a more difficult question. Romsdahl argues that despite the internet's ability to reduce the transaction costs of participation, true deliberation will be more difficult to develop. The internet poses great challenges for the essential components of deliberation, such as ensuring access for all interested individuals, fair and equal involvement for all participants, development of interpersonal trust, and the ability to produce effective dialogue on complex, value-laden issues.
Ryan S. TRIMM
Nation, Heritage, and Hospitality in Britain after Thatcher
Abstract: In his paper, "Nation, Heritage, and Hospitality in Britain after Thatcher," Ryan S. Trimm examines the trope of cultural inheritance in postimperial Britain. "Heritage," an ubiquitous term in 1980s Britain, circulates largely as a conservative concept, an imagined bequest that works to exclude groups such as minorities who are disinherited putatively by not being part of the past and conceived as handing down some legacy. Such seems to be precisely the way heritage functioned under Margaret Thatcher's heritage politics, a collection of policies that associated icons such as the country house with the nation itself. However, although appeals to heritage stress continuities with the past, the very idea of inheritance depends on a break with the past. It is the necessity of these fissures that opens the possibility of a reappropriation of heritage, one that locates multiplicities and gaps rather than an exclusive continuity of singularities. Such a reimagining bestows a heritage that awaits the past as that which might return, a specter to whom one must play host. This intersection with hospitality and immigration offers a version of heritage attuned to the ways images of the past can be reworked and national and cultural identity revised, a rearticulation enacted in very different way in the Hanif Kureishi and Stephen Frears's film My Beautiful Laundrette and in Julian Barnes's novel England, England.
Bibliography
Steven TÖTÖSY de ZEPETNEK and Yilin LIAO
Selected Bibliography of Scholarship in (Comparative) Cultural Studies and Popular Culture
By Joanne MORREALE and P. David MARSHALL
Kara Lynn ANDERSEN
Harry Potter and the Susceptible Child Audience
Abstract: Kara Lynn Andersen, in her paper "Harry Potter and the Susceptible Child Audience," argues for a rethinking of assumptions of child audiences as passive readers and viewers through an analysis of the Harry Potter phenomenon. Andersen argues that instead of categorizing children as passive and homogenous subjects of analysis, they should instead be incorporated as participants in the discourse about children's books and films. Although frequently figured as especially susceptible to the affects of advertising and other media, young Harry Potter fans are particularly visible as not only consumers of the texts, but creators of new texts. Using work done on Harry Potter in reception studies, film spectatorship, literary criticism, and internet publications, Andersen dissects ideas of passivity and activity in child readers and viewers.
Lan DONG
Tracing Chinese Gay Cinema 1993-2002
Abstract: Lan Dong explores in her paper, "Tracing Chinese Gay Cinema 1993-2002" the recent landscape of Chinese gay cinema through discussing the following three feature films: Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine (1993), Zhang Yuan's East Palace, West Palace (1996), and Stanley Kwan's Lan Yu (2001). The grouping derives from the concern that they all set their stories in Beijing. Using the capital city as a cultural background, the films display how queer is perceived in China from the 1920s to the end of the 1990s. All three storylines portray the characters' struggle to recognize their particular identity as gay men. In Farewell My Concubine, Cheng Dieyi never comes out throughout the decades when China experienced a series of political events and ends up with a testimonial suicide for his queer identity. Policeman Xiao Shi's confusion about his sexual orientation leads East Palace, West Palace to an open ending. With the social circumstances fading into a supplemental backdrop, Lan Yu focuses specifically on two men's love. By way of tracing gay theme as it is reflected in these films, Dong maps a development process of representing gay relationship in Chinese cinema.
Jake KENNEDY
Dust and the Avant-Garde
Abstract: In his paper, "Dust and the Avant-Garde," Jake Kennedy presents an interdisciplinary exploration of experimental modernism in the work of visual artist Marcel Duchamp and writer Gertrude Stein. Kennedy focuses on the strange presence of dust in the work of these two artists and argues that as an abject object -- it is literally the unwanted of domestic space -- the idea of dust engages radically modernism on a material level. Dust is also the unwanted of modernity itself, as it represents a potentially subversive sister-part to urban, masculine modernity's valorisation of machinery, glass, and steel. Transmuted into the metaphysical stuff of avant-garde experimentation, the powdery "residue" of the bourgeois household evidences Peter Bürger's claim in his Theory of the Avant-Garde that the historical avant-gardistes did not so much seek to destroy the bourgeois institution of art as to transfer it (fuse it) more fully to the "praxis of life." Steinian and Duchampian dust thus works to confirm the radical presence of art-in-life, but it also marks multiple, ambiguous sites of gender struggle and self-construction. Their highlighting of dust's liminal aesthetic qualities makes possible a dynamic interrogation of the state and spaces of modernist gender politics, aesthetic "propriety," and the vital place of the bourgeois domestic in the avant-garde project.
Joanne MORREALE
Reality TV, Faking It, and the Transformation of Personal Identity
Abstract: In her paper, "Reality TV, Faking It, and the Transformation of Personal Identity," Joanne Morreale examines the hybrid makeover, game, and reality TV show Faking It as a cultural form that portrays the transformation of personal identity through performance. Morreale argues that the contents and performance of the show intensify the link between consumer culture and the fabrication of identity by teaching that fulfillment comes from becoming, rather than having, a commodity. In the show, participants learn to perform new selves that are perceived as "better." Faking It thus puts on display the processes of fabrication whereby the self is created and is best understood through the logic of simulation rather than representation.
Rebecca ROMANOW
But... Can the Subaltern Sing?
Abstract: In her paper, "But... Can the Subaltern Sing?," Rebecca Romanow discusses the dominance of the English language in rock music and the cultural values and global power that are exerted through the exportation of rock by American and British bands. Further, she explores the question of the ways in which this music represents an area of popular culture where the voices of the non-English speaking and the non-Western are silenced. Salman Rushdie, in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, complains that rock music "is precisely one of those viruses with which the almighty West has infected the East, one of the great weapons of cultural imperialism." The business of rock music production insures that rock remains a global conduit of Western culture, and, emphasizing Edward Said's exhortation to "think of the affiliation ... between music and nation," Romanow argues that the social and cultural power of rock creates a silencing of the non-Western voice. Reading the global proliferation of Western rock through Deleuzian and postcolonial thought, as well as exploring the notion of "world music," Romanow shows the ways in which imperialistic and neo-colonialist hegemonies are embodied within this silencing, creating not a model for hybridity, but rather a deployment of Bhabha's notion of the colonial "mimic man."
Rebecca J. ROMSDAHL
Political Deliberation and E-Participation in Policy-Making
Abstract: In her paper, "Political Deliberation and E-Participation in Policy-Making," Rebecca J. Romsdahl proposes that the internet has now become a valuable medium for information dissemination and long distance communication; it is also gaining attention as a potential tool for political deliberation. Public participation has been a long-standing tradition in American democracy but most scholars today believe it needs a revival. Some of these scholars believe that e-participation in policy-making could help revitalize political discussion between citizens and government and promote greater participation by disenfranchised groups. Whether this would lead to greater opportunities for true deliberation on political issues and not just add to the prolific exchange of conversation on the internet, however, is a more difficult question. Romsdahl argues that despite the internet's ability to reduce the transaction costs of participation, true deliberation will be more difficult to develop. The internet poses great challenges for the essential components of deliberation, such as ensuring access for all interested individuals, fair and equal involvement for all participants, development of interpersonal trust, and the ability to produce effective dialogue on complex, value-laden issues.
Ryan S. TRIMM
Nation, Heritage, and Hospitality in Britain after Thatcher
Abstract: In his paper, "Nation, Heritage, and Hospitality in Britain after Thatcher," Ryan S. Trimm examines the trope of cultural inheritance in postimperial Britain. "Heritage," an ubiquitous term in 1980s Britain, circulates largely as a conservative concept, an imagined bequest that works to exclude groups such as minorities who are disinherited putatively by not being part of the past and conceived as handing down some legacy. Such seems to be precisely the way heritage functioned under Margaret Thatcher's heritage politics, a collection of policies that associated icons such as the country house with the nation itself. However, although appeals to heritage stress continuities with the past, the very idea of inheritance depends on a break with the past. It is the necessity of these fissures that opens the possibility of a reappropriation of heritage, one that locates multiplicities and gaps rather than an exclusive continuity of singularities. Such a reimagining bestows a heritage that awaits the past as that which might return, a specter to whom one must play host. This intersection with hospitality and immigration offers a version of heritage attuned to the ways images of the past can be reworked and national and cultural identity revised, a rearticulation enacted in very different way in the Hanif Kureishi and Stephen Frears's film My Beautiful Laundrette and in Julian Barnes's novel England, England.
Bibliography
Steven TÖTÖSY de ZEPETNEK and Yilin LIAO
Selected Bibliography of Scholarship in (Comparative) Cultural Studies and Popular Culture