Narrative Questions Research Articles

Romantic Narrative: Shelley, Hays, Godwin, Wollstonecraft. Tilottama Rajan.

Tilottama Rajan, Narrative: Shelley, Hays, Godwin, Wollstonecraft (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010) xxvii + 282 $65.00 Tilottama Rajan's Narrative is a quiet sensation of a book. Although title ostensibly describes a project centered around two touchstones that haunt core and periphery of studies, book dissolves any simple intuitions about what one might think Romantic and might be. Rajan explores both terms as strange epistemological, aesthetic, and ultimately institutional composites of what emerge as disruptive traces of a negativity that unsettles logic of progressivism that often colors multiple forms of narrative. Although not planned as such, Narrative is an elegant shadow companion of sorts to Rajan's two previous classic volumes: Dark Interpreter and Supplement of Reading; it too is concerned with dense interpretative strategies entailed by texts that cannot fail but to (re) read themselves, strategies that challenge formal logics governing their seemingly pristine forms. Indeed, in these prior books, and even more so in Narrative, Rajan examines very thought of Romanticism as something that is still (to be) born (44), or excessive figure of a tension that is at once site of a potentiality and un-avowable remainder of a traumatic encounter that is prior to experience itself. In this way, Rajan builds upon scholarship of critics such as Peter Brooks, Paul Ricoeur, J. Hillis Miller, and D.A. Miller (to name a few), but her approach is decidedly--and eloquently--aslant and athwart their writings. Narrative considers how question of narrative is itself symptom of processes of dislocation and division that undo any generic argument that aims to gird what Carol Jacobs has called uncontainable aspect of thinking, which is to say, its resistance to any claims for substantialization and demarcation. Thus uniqueness of Rajan's work lies in way in which each of her chapters falls away from structural considerations, and challenges apparent insularity of thinking about narrative as something that only produces itself out of established norms of a text. Narrativity becomes a process ... that operates between texts and is not to be aligned strictly with genres of prose or (4). This tension informs Rajan's almost polemical deployment of narrative throughout her and she develops three overlapping positions: that narrative is not easily assimilable to the apparatus of Novel and its various forms of institutionalization; that narrative is not akin to reading for plot; and finally, that narrative has something to say about disciplinary issues raised by historical study, specifically modern, epistemic relationship between and prose, and reorganization of knowledge that produced notion of nineteenth century as an institutionalized power that precipitates strange (dis)avowal of idea of Romanticism. While each of six chapters concentrates on work of a single author, approach is de-familiarizing and uses texts as part of a critical laboratory around crisis of narrativity. first chapter, The Trauma of Lyric: Shelley's Missed Encounter, primarily reads Alastor as a text that meditates on what poetry and might mean in a period of generic transition where ascendancy of narrative-as-novel gives way to various kinds of formal experiments. Rajan argues that Alastor is neither lyric nor narrative, but rather a collapse of both possibilities as Narrator produces a work that echoes a Wordsworthian lyricism which hampers posthumous attempts at subsuming poem into any recognizable form. misrecognition, as Rajan argues, of Alastor lies in its embrace of a Blanchotian negativity that undoes lyric's culturally productive ideality. …

A Howl and a Black Cat: Allegory, Nonsense, and Ethics in Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil

A Howl and a Black CatAllegory, Nonsense, and Ethics in Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil Jenni Adams (bio) In Yann Martel’s 2010 novel Beatrice and Virgil, the protagonist, Henry—an ironic alter ego of Martel himself—contends that, in contrast to the subject matter of war, which has been depicted in a variety of modes from thriller to comedy through to science fiction, the Holocaust occupies quite a rigidly restrictive—and realist—representational sphere: “No such poetic license was taken with—or given to—the Holocaust. That terrifying event was overwhelmingly represented by a single school: historical realism.”1 However, this is not, in fact, the case. Not only has the Holocaust been subjected to exactly the range of generic modes associated by Martel’s protagonist with the literature of war—the Holocaust thriller, the Holocaust romance, the Holocaust comedy—admittedly with varying degrees of acceptance on the part of critics—but the Holocaust is frequently, and increasingly, depicted in terms that indicate a flight from realism on the part of Holocaust writers.2 Problematizing any transparent “access” to these historical events, writers like Joseph Skibell, Art Spiegelman, Yoram Kaniuk, Michael Chabon, and David Grossman use nonrealist techniques including magic realism, the fantastic, and the surreal, raising key questions in the process concerning the relationship between representation, experience, and traumatic history.3 Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil—itselfa text combining nonrealist representation and Holocaust content—can be viewed in the context of this emerging tradition, though the degree to which it adopts a similar problematizing stance regarding representation [End Page 31] is open to discussion. This essay aims to take up this question, examining the relationship between trauma writing and two particular nonrealist representational modes in the process. With a focus on the interplay of allegorical and nonsensical strategies of representation and reading in Martel’s novel, I aim to explore these techniques’ comparative ethical merits: specifically, the degree to which either mode invites or models an ethically productive form of encounter between reader and text. Trauma, Nonsense, and Framing in Holocaust Literature I shall begin, however, by exploring briefly a few other instances of nonsense in Holocaust literature in order to better contextualize the subsequent analysis of Martel.4 One significant example is present in Jonathan Safran Foer’s third-generation American Jewish novel Everything Is Illuminated (2002), which details the experience of the protagonist Jonathan Safran Foer as he travels to Ukraine in search of Trachimbrod, the shtetl in which his grandfather lived before the war. This quest narrative is interwoven with a series of excerpts, written by the character of Jonathan, from a magic realist history of Trachimbrod, in which he imaginatively reconstructs the experience of his ancestors in what Marianne Hirsch would characterize as a project of postmemory.5 This magic realist chronicle incorporates extracts from the “Book of Antecedents,” a book of collective memory—a kind of living, continually evolving yizher-bukh—which the residents of Trachimbrod, in Jonathan’s fantasy, maintain. The “Book of Antecedents” includes a glossary of a series of actual and invented words, such as the nonsense or portmanteau word “ifactifice,” which is explained as follows: Since the beginning of time, we (the Jews) have been looking for a new way of speaking. . . . (Words never mean what we want them to mean.) If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand. This was the origin of Torah chanting and, in all likelihood, Yiddish—that most onomatopoeic of all languages. It is also the reason that the elderly among us, particularly those who survived a pogrom, hum so often, indeed seem unable to stop humming, seem dead set on preventing any silence or linguistic meaning in. But until we find this new way of speaking, until we can find a nonapproximate vocabulary, nonsense words are the best thing we’ve got.6 [End Page 32] This passage in many ways sums up the attitude of Foer and other magic realist Holocaust writers toward the possibility, and available modes, of Holocaust representation. In particular, it positions nonrealist forms of expression as ways of accommodating what trauma theorists regard as...

Reconsidering Olmec visual culture: the unborn, women, and creation

Preface Acknowledgments Chapter 1. Rediscovering Women and Gestation in Olmec Visual Culture A Cradle of Civilization Mesoamerica and Its Visual Culture Early Interpretations of the First Known Olmec Sculptures New Questions in Olmec Studies Is Gender or Gestation the Compelling Issue? How the Book Develops: Content and Methodologies Chapter 2. The Tale of the Were-Jaguar The Birth of the Were-Jaguar One Were-Jaguar or Many Deities? The First Attempt to Slay the Were-Jaguar The Were-Jaguar as a Shamanic Alter Ego Monstrous Congenital Anomalies Pantheons of Deities or Symbols of Vital Forces? Shamanism in an Ecological Context The Rebirth of the Maize Deity Signs of Life Chapter 3. The Sowing and Dawning of the Human-Maize Seed Images of the Unborn The Formative Mesoamerican Embryo and Its Matrix of Associations Ethnographic Analogies Hollow Babies A Contemporary Baby in a Boat: Ninopa Conclusions about Embryos, Fetuses, and Babies Chapter 4. Tracking Gender, Gestation, and Narrativity Through the Early Formative The Archaic Period, 10,000 to 2000 BC: The Beginning of Visual Symbols The Initial Formative, circa 1900 to 1400 BC Maize Technology I: Fermentation Maize Technology II: Nixtamalization The Early Formative, 1400-900 BC Fluctuations in Visual Culture During the Initial and Early Formative Periods Chapter 5. La Venta's Buried Offerings: Women and Other Revelations Topography and Sources of Stone Discovery, Excavation, and Chronology of La Venta Surveying La Venta's Visual Culture Through Time Women and the Unborn Return to Prominence Chapter 6. Female Water and Supernaturals: The Massive Offerings, Mosaic Pavements, and Mixe Work of the Earth Why Construct Massive Offerings? Mixe Beliefs in Earth, Water, and Thunder Supernormal Entities La Venta's Mosaic Pavements Offerings Inseminating the Flowering Massive Offerings: Contained Water Mixe Healers, Midwives, and Rituals, and Their Olmec Antecedents Female Shamans The Mosaic Pavements as Conventionalized Symbols Politics, Protection, and Healing Chapter 7. A Processional Visual Narrative at La Venta Previous Investigations of Olmec Creation Narratives Patterns for the Distribution of Monumental Sculptures A Processional Visual Narrative Chapter 8. La Venta's Creation and Origins Narrative An Approach to Visual Narratives from Preliterate Societies The Narrative Stations Station One: A Womb with Three Fetuses Station Two: A Quincunx of Thrones Station Three: The Dawning of Human-Maize Station Four: The Female Sources of Life: and Water Station Five: The Bodiless Heads Station Six: The Phallic Column Inserting Politics into the Creation and Origins Narrative Alternative Reading Orders Conclusions and Questions Chapter 9. A Scattering of Seeds Assessing Arguments for Some Major Points Modes of Communication Where Did Olmec Ideas Go? Asking and Answering the Fundamental Questions Appendix 1. La Venta Monuments by Format Appendix 2. Comparison of Mesoamerican Creation and Origins Narratives Appendix 3. Shape-Shifters and Werewolves to Were-Jaguars: A Brief Chronology Notes Bibliography Index

The Oxford handbook of the American musical

The Oxford Handbook of the American Musical. Edited by Raymond Knapp, Mitchell Morris and Stacy Wolf. NY: Oxford University Press, 2011. 480 pp (hardcover). Bibliography, Index, Companion website. ISBN 978-0195385946. Jim Lovensheimer's excellent essay in The Oxford Handbook of the American Musical ends with the statement the musical undergoes more and more serious critical interrogation, solutions to the problems posed in this essay might be forthcoming. But even if they are not, the problems make for challenging consideration. Although in this case Lovensheimer refers to the many issues raised by Barthian and Foucauldian readings on the questions of authors and texts of musicals, this statement could well sum up the central thrust of this publication, which explores the musical prismatically (to use co-editor Stacy Wolf's term) and raises the most interesting and pressing questions about the American musical. In a field that is full of encyclopedias, chronicles, and other reference works, the advent of yet another handbook would seem to glut an already full market of data-rich but critical-poor sources on musical theatre. However, editors Raymond Knapp, Mitchell Morris, and Wolf (all leading experts in the field) have organized the twenty-nine essays in this volume around central keywords and concepts in much the same way as one of the primary texts on critical theory, Lentricchia and McLaughlin's Critical Terms for Literary Study (University of Chicago Press, 1995). Although this allegiance would suggest that the Handbook is heavily influenced by critical theory (and some of the essays in the first section certainly reflect that focus) the volume embraces a wide variety of approaches and methodologies, with essays from film and theatre scholars, musicologists, and practitioners. Organized into six large sections (Historiography, Transformations, Media, identities, Performance and Audiences), the Handbook presents short, useful essays on practical and critical concerns and presents something of a snapshot as to where the research field stands at present. Scholars of the musical will find the first section the most stimulating, particularly Morris's essay on historiography, which lays out issues in dealing with musicals as historical artifacts as well as ideas of the impartiality of historical chronicles, questions of value, narrative, authorship and organicism. Indeed, one would wish this section were longer, so tantalizing and searching are the questions it raises. Similarly Lovensheimer's previously mentioned essay on Texts and Authors addresses some of the most interesting intellectual concerns of the musical. For the student or neophyte, Paul R. Laird's survey of musical style in the musical and Liza Gennaro's overview of choreography and dance allow for a broad introduction to the major periods and styles of musical theatre, and the addition of a companion website with audio and video excerpts makes this volume an excellent musical theatre textbook. At the same time, essays on audiences and the financing and production of musicals (as well as the field of amateur musical theatre production) offer practical information on the nuts and bolts of how musicals come to the stage. One of the strengths of this publication, then, is the variety of audiences it addresses and its usefulness both to the serious scholar, the student, the collector, and the newcomer to the world of musical theatre. One of the benefits of a publication of this kind is that it parses out so completely different elements of the musical, so Gennaro's previously mentioned chapter Evolution of Dance in the Golden Age of the American 'Book Musical' in the Historiography section is followed up in the Performance section by Zachary A. …

The Narrated Organization: Implications of a Narrative Corporate Identity Vocabulary for Strategic Self-Storying

Narrative is assigned a central role in conceptualising and constructing both individual and collective identity. The purpose of this article is to articulate a narrative vocabulary of corporate identity in order to address its implications for analyzing and storying identity. The central argument is that a narrative corporate identity vocabulary questions the usefulness of integrated communication and consequently introduces polyphonic assumptions regarding strategic organizational self-storying. Following a brief overview of existing corporate identity vocabularies articulated within mainstream research, a narrative vocabulary is constructed with reference to select contributions from organizational studies research. Third, an illustration of what corporate identity is when articulated from within a narrative point of view is offered with reference to the storying of the Danish-Swedish dairy cooperative Arla Foods during the controversy surrounding the 2006 Mohammed cartoon incident. Attention is given to the narrative construction and negotiation of the organization's identity with Danish consumers on its weblogs. In conclusion, focus is placed on the potential consequences a narrative vocabulary has for strategic self-storying. The consequences include ambiguous, collaborative and emergent storytelling practices.

Through the Deamon's Gate: Kepler's “Somnium,” Medieval Dream Narratives, and the Polysemy of Allegorical Motifs

Through the Deamon's Gate: Kepler's “Somnium,” Medieval Dream Narratives, and the Polysemy of Allegorical Motifs

Victimhood, Hope and the Refugee Narrative: Affective Dialectics in Magnet Theatre'sEvery Year, Every Day, I Am Walking

Contemporary theatricalized refugee narratives are often understood to communicate the profound trauma associated with forced displacement, even as this trauma is made ‘meaningful’ or ‘recognizable’ to audiences by the identification, however nebulous, of hope. This article examines some of the ways in which an affective dialectic of victimhood and hope functions inEvery Year, Every Day, I Am Walking(2006–), a small-scale international touring work directed by Mark Fleishman and produced by Cape Town-based Magnet Theatre. Paying attention to questions of narrative and performative form, I investigate how, and for whom, victimhood and hope function in and through the work, constructing its emotional and political tensions. I trace some of the conditions of its circulation, with particular emphasis on its transnational work with respect to a metropolitan audience at London's Oval House Theatre in 2010. In this, my purpose is to probe the question of who is served (as well as who is implicated and mobilized) by refugee narratives that may occupy all too easily a generalized geopolitical imaginary: ‘far from here’.

From the Mouths of Babes: Children in Recent Indonesian Film and Fiction

A noticeable trend in recent Indonesian fiction and film has been the use of children as protagonists. This paper examines the role of children in Andrea Hirata’s 2005 novel Laskar Pelangi (Rainbow Warriors) and the 2006 film Denias, directed by John de Rantau. I argue that, like the German Bildungsromane, these texts belong to a genre that might be called ‘coming of age’ or quest narratives. And yet, importantly, they are not just about the personal experience of finding one’s place in the world; the young protagonists of these texts also carry the weight of nation-building on their slender shoulders. The texts are not, therefore, simple derivations from European Bildungsromane, but are shaped by colonialism and globalization

‘Chaos, restitution and quest’: one woman’s journey through menopause

Menopause, a natural stage in a woman's reproductive life, is not an illness; yet some women experience severe enough symptoms to cause a breakdown in the body similar to illness or other major health disruptions. As part of a larger narrative analysis investigation of distress during menopause, this case study presents one woman's transformational journey through menopause, analysed through Frank's health and illness narratives - chaos, restitution and quest. The narratives were retranscribed using Labov's elements of a true story and Gee's poetic restructuring. This report of one woman's experience of distress during the menopause transition describes a poetic chaos narrative of incessant night sweats resulting in a loss of physicality and a deep-rooted belief in self-healing; a restitution narrative of restored health that mandated the surrender to a new healing discourse, experienced simultaneously as a victory and a defeat; and a quest narrative of seeking meaning, insight and new-found values and identities.

Remembering Palestine before 1948

This essay offers insights and perspectives on studying and understanding the 1948 war, the first war between Israel and the Arabs, and specifically, the Palestinian defeat. The impact of this event, known to the Palestinians as the Nakba (catastrophe) continues to fuel much of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While there is little disagreement between Arabs and Jews about the events and processes of the war, the question of the war's historical narratives and the relationship between them and historical truth is far more complex. Unfortunately, as one recent book on this subject demonstrates, many studies of the war often veer towards a more anti-Israeli polemic driven by identification with Palestinian suffering. This ultimately perverts history and the quest for highlighting the truth.

Political Ecologies of the Precarious

Soon after debates about post-Fordism drew attention to the precariousness of employment under new labor regimes, a sense of precarity entered ecological discourse through depictions of climate change that made the hold of life on earth appear increasingly tenuous. Political ecologies of the precarious incorporate an affective stance that allows people to live with apparent contradictions, reassuring them that they can poison the world without limit even as they recognize that a limit must be out there somewhere and suturing them to ecological demise even as they work against it. Through a series of ethnographic “stopgaps” set in Chicago, New Delhi, and Venice, this essay examines the part played by Henry Ford’s iconic product, the automobile, in cultivating this affective stance by bringing “the masses” into an intimate, visceral engagement with the products of synthetic chemistry. The story of how the car became a leading protagonist in quest narratives of the path to sustainability suggests ways to reinvent such affective intimacies by organizing the world into something other than a collection of resources waiting to be managed.

프로배구 관람객의 관전요인을 통한 척도개발

The objective of this study is to investigate the spectators` motive to view pro volleyball so that more spectators participate in the pro volleyball and the infra for development of pro volleyball and the spectators can be formed. The questionnaires were done for 255 male and female adults over 20 years old who view pro volleyball. Receiving 227 question papers, I studied the 1st target of study on the basis of 212 question papers excluding 15 which were insincerely replied. For the 2nd study, sample was extracted by using stratified cluster random sampling to spectators who personally view pro sports on site. The questionnaires were done to 350 persons and the question papers of 347 persons were collected. Excluding 26 insincere persons who answered insincerely, 321 were taken as the final analysis target. The contents were categorized into 5 general areas in the order of enjoyment, recreation, refreshing, presence and event through expert conference composed to develop measuring tools on the basis of result got by inductive analysis of spectators` motive to view pro volleyball. The 2nd data was analyzed on the basis of question papers through result of inductive analysis. As 4 questions were eliminated through narrative statistics and question analysis, 37 questions were developed in 5 factors. Since the load quantity was eliminated in 7 questions below .40 in exploratory factor analysis to find common quantity among factors, 30 questions were drawn in 4 factors (enjoyment, recreation, refreshing, presence) after exploratory factor analysis.

Assessment of factors affecting employee appeal and retention of nurses in Bangladesh

This study determines the level of job satisfaction through an examination of the relationship between Herzberg's motivation and hygiene factors, and the nurses' overall job satisfaction. The study was conducted in medical college hospital, private hospital and clinic at three different districts in Bangladesh, used a non–experimental, quantitative design with a convenience sample. Through a direct survey 207 participants received a demographic questionnaire, work quality index (WQI) and two narrative questions, that were analysed using descriptive statistics. The WQI is a 33–item, six–point Likert scale that measures the satisfaction of nurses in relation to their work and work environment. The study inquired why nurses are or is not satisfied and asked what aspects of their job most leads to their satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Result of the analysis indicates that majority of nurses are not satisfied. The two factors which effect the job satisfaction are not maintained in any work station, and this is the reason why the job satisfaction is in a poor level in nursing field.

Holocaust and Herring: The Resuscitation of the Silenced in W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn

Sebald's narrator is a pilgrim, and his English pilgrimage leads him through the county of Suffolk in East Anglia. His mission lies in the attempt to comprehend the brutalities of battle and the despair of the victims he describes. In a distinctly Benjaminian sense, the narrator enacts by telling the stories of injustice and barbaric crime constitutive of history as such. He sees (as does the saturnine Walter Benjamin) as, above all, for the dead, and that means remembering the injustice done to them. To be sure, the narrator is aware of the appropriation of justice by the ruling class of each generation, which is why he restores the unrecorded stories of the vanquished and resuscitates their silenced discourse. Oddly enough, Sebald's narrator himself falls victim to his narrative quest: he who tells the stories of others in order to do yields to despair. (MB-B)

A Hybrid Form of Spirituality and the Challenge of a Dualistic Gender Role: The Spiritual Quest of a Woman Priest in Tendai Buddhism

This article is an examination of the unconventional spiritual exploration that one woman, a priest of the Tendai School, engaged in from her twenties into her fifties. It follows her conflicts regarding her spiritual quest and gender roles, and further through her encounters with Christianity, Shinto, and Buddhism. Throughout these encounters, she pressed ahead in her spiritual explorations while persistently refusing to make an either-or choice in her life, neither choosing between immersion in gender roles and pursuit of her quest, nor among the three religions. Neither rejecting nor choosing from these alternatives, she pursued her quest until it finally led her to find her true station in life in Buddhism. Until she reached that point, however, her path was not so much a trajectory through choices she made of her own volition as it was a process of rushing headlong, as though across an invisible map, and being guided to experience those encounters. Ever since building her own temple, however, she has still held the multiple identities of priest, Japanese language teacher, wife, and mother while also continuing her spiritual quest in the very midst of the secular world. This article examines how a certain woman maintained her unconventional spiritual exploration for forty years, and how she met the challenge of a hybrid form of and dualistic gender roles. Keywords: spiritual quest (gudo)-Tendai Buddhist women priest-station in life- dualistic gender role-spiritual hybridity (ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) We find that, except for the cases of a few remarkable women in history, the models for protagonists in quest narratives who are seeking god have traditionally been men. The emergence of women who seek to live out quest narratives of their own, different from those that have men as protagonists, was significantly influenced by the second wave of the women's movement that started in America in the 1960s. Carol Christ, who studied women's spiritual quests in works by women writers, found that there were few publications on women and religion in the early 1970s, and that terminology for discussing women's spiritual quests did not even exist (Christ 1980, xxix). In Japan, it was not until the early 1980s that research on women and Buddhism began to take off. Until then the focus of most research was on the history of established organizations, or the political and economic changes among individual temples or sectarian organizations, and mainly about the activities of male priests, so there were few studies on the religious experiences of women (Ruch 2002; Katsuura 2010; Kawahashi 2011). Recently, however, a broader range of research topics have appeared, including spirituality and issues of religious belief and practice in daily life. The role of women has been seen as crucial in examining these issues (Osumi 2002, xxv). However, it is important not only to include women within such research topics, but also to be aware of various perspectives. By incorporating women's perspectives and experiences, the special issue of the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies in 2003 titled Feminism and Religion in Contemporary was able to introduce the work of women who were engaged in reforming established religion (Kawahashi and Kuroki 2003).1 In this article I will look at the spiritual quest of a certain lay woman spanning over thirty years, and the challenge toward established religion that this quest involved. This was a twofold challenge, both against gender roles and against unitary models of religious belonging. Until now, feminist research in Japan has mostly involved criticism against established religion. However, if we accept religion as a product of a false consciousness, and religious salvation merely as cleverly disguised oppression, the point of the religious quest by women is suppressed (Kawahashi and Kuroki 2004, 15). Many feminist scholars of religion point out that the dualism of spirit and matter, or of and politics, is oppressive to women. …

Silencing the Provincial other: Focalisation, Identification and Power in Franz Innerhofer's Schöne Tage

ABSTRACTFranz Innerhofer's first novel, Schöne Tage, is often held up as an archetype of the Austrian anti‐Heimat novel, whose critical revision of the provincial idyll is believed to have contributed to the linguistic and social emancipation of Austria's rural underclass. Employing a comparative narratological approach, which combines insights from literary and film studies, this article addresses the issue of narrative perspective in Innerhofer's novel. The view ‘von unten’, celebrated as a sign of rural literature's liberation from patriarchal power, is exposed as a problematic peg on which to hang provincial equality. Whilst narrative perspectives may have changed, the language in which they find expression remains firmly in the service of existing power structures, subjugating rather than enfranchising the rural subject. This article examines the connection between perspectival, narrative and identificatory structures and questions the basis of the reader's identification with the text's protagonists in the face of an unidentified, omniscient narrator wielding ultimate narrative power. In locating the basis of the reader's identifications in problematic linguistic power structures, this article demands a re‐evaluation of the impulse in literary history to accord a positive performative function to anti‐Heimat literature.Franz Innerhofers erster Roman, Schöne Tage, gilt in der Literaturgeschichte als Paradebeispiel des österreichischen Antiheimatromans, der durch seine kritische Transformation der ländlichen Idylle einen wesentlichen Beitrag zur sprachlichen sowie sozialen (Selbst‐)Befreiung der provinziellen Unterschicht geleistet haben soll. Meine Analyse bedient sich literatur‐ und filmtheoretischer Ansätze, um sich narratologisch‐komparativ den diversen Erzählstandpunkten zu widmen, die in Innerhofers Roman vorkommen. Die als sprachliches Befreiungsmittel vielfach gefeierte Perspektive ‘von unten’ erweist sich dadurch als eine äußerst problematische Basis für diese postulierte ländliche Emanzipation. Obwohl der Blickwinkel eindeutig einer tiefgehenden Transformation unterzogen wird, bleibt er immer noch auf die autoritär‐patriarchalisch gefärbten Ausdrucksweisen angewiesen, die das ländliche Subjekt eher knechten als befreien. Die Perspektiven‐, Erzähl‐ und Identifikationsstrukturen werden hier analysiert, um Licht auf die psychoanalytische Grundlage für die vom Leser unternommenen Identifikationen mit den Protagonisten und dem unsichtbaren, allwissenden und daher allmächtigen Erzähler zu werfen. Damit wird einen zutiefst problematischen Aspekt der mit dem Erzählstandpunkt eng verknüpften Identifikationsstrukturen aufgedeckt, der eine kritische Neubewertung der Rezeption erfordert.

The Two-Eyed Cyclops: Metaphor and Narrative in American Medical Research Policy

Health care insurance reform and medical research in the United States have been driven by metaphor and narrative. Obama's year-long reform effort effectively used the narrative of social progress (and the compelling stories of his dying mother and grandmother and their bitter experiences with the health care and insurance systems). Narrative, in the form of a quest, is usually reserved to support medical research. The quest narrative has, for example, been a staple of both “personalized” and regenerative medicine. The quest narrative, paired with stories of dying patients, has had a profound, and not always positive, effect on the way we package and sell both medicine and medical research in the United States, causing us to favor the latter at the expense of the former. We will have to supplement the pervasive quest narrative not with stories about lives that could have been made better by more medical research, but rather with lives that have a beginning, a middle, and an end—inevitable and not to be fought at all costs—and that deserve decent, quality health care throughout.

Undocumented to Hyperdocumented: A Jornada of Protection, Papers, and PhD Status

In this personal essay, Aurora Chang describes her experience of hyperdocumentation—the effort to accrue awards, accolades, and eventually academic degrees to compensate for her undocumented status. In spite of her visible successes and naturalization,Chang still confronts the rage and intolerance of American "commonsense"beliefs about immigration. Her narrative questions the pursuit of documentation as a means to legitimacy and acceptance in American society.

Musical Structure as Narrative in Rock

In an attempt to take a fresh look at the analysis of form in rock music, this paper uses Susan McClary’s (2000) idea of ‘quest narrative’ in Western art music as a starting point. While much pop and rock adheres to the basic structure of the establishment of a home territory, episodes or adventures away, and then a return, my study suggests three categories of rock music form that provide alternatives to common combinations of verses, choruses and bridges through which the quest narrative is delivered. Labyrinth forms present more than the usual number of sections to confound our sense of ‘home’, and consequently of ‘quest’. Single-cell forms use repetition to suggest either a kind of stasis or to disrupt our expectations of beginning, middle and end. Immersive forms blur sectional divisions and invite more sensual and participatory responses to the recorded text. With regard to all of these alternative approaches to structure, Judy Lochhead’s (1992) concept of ‘forming’ is called upon to underline rock music forms that unfold as process, rather than map received formal constructs.
 
 Central to the argument are a couple of crucial definitions. Following Theodore Gracyk (1996), it is not songs, as such, but particular recordings that constitute rock music texts. Additionally, narrative is understood not in (direct) relation to the lyrics of a song, nor in terms of artists’ biographies or the trajectories of musical styles, but considered in terms of musical structure. It is hoped that this outline of non-narrative musical structures in rock may have applications not only to other types of music, but to other time-based art forms.

Review: The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience by Jennifer Barker

Book Review| June 01 2011 Review: The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience by Jennifer Barker The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience by Jennifer Barker Film Quarterly (2011) 64 (4): 80–81. https://doi.org/10.1525/FQ.2011.64.4.80 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Review: The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience by Jennifer Barker. Film Quarterly 1 June 2011; 64 (4): 80–81. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/FQ.2011.64.4.80 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2011 by the Regents of the University of California.2011 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.