Contemporary Literary Studies Research Articles

Квазінауковий секонд-хенд сучасного літературознавства: фальсифікаційно-плагіатні стратегії

The article examines the specifics of constitution and modification of self-depicted and self-reflective activity as a separate type of cultural practice which is called to monitor and correct the literary studies process at theoretical and methodological levels as well as at value and ethical levels. The author demonstrates, with the help of the case study, the destructive coming into the field of cultural production. Ukrainian meta-literary studies are formed as intellectual, further – cultural, practice with its specific tasks (analytical and descriptive, comparative and combinational, correctional and observational), functions (the creation of the cultural meaning and the encouragement of its circulation at the scientific field, the animation of critical self-reflection, the creation of community which shares common values connected with the field of high quality cultural production) and strategies (canonization, recanonization and decanonization, contextualization, mapping). The analysis of meta-descriptive practices has shown that from the very beginning of the 2000th the noticeable turn from theory and methodology to ethic and axiology has taken place, and the activation of appeal and preventive strategies has been observed. These appeal-preventive strategies are targeted at increasing of intolerance to scientific dishonesty sensitivity threshold. The obtained results of the case study, on the one hand, point to a diversity and systematic character of quasi-scientific kitsch production «techniques». On the other hand, they make one think about the constitutional and functional peculiarities of not invited identity (in the Weber sense). Then the question arises: whether the permanent neuroticism and hidden implosion are the possible side effects of the scientific creativity game. Therefore, cynicism of falsification-plagiarism practices can be considered as the result of one’s certainty of the support from the community, which tolerates quasi-scientific second-hand as well as a distinctive defensive strategy against the threat of non-recognition by the community, guided by the values of scientific virtue. In this paper the fundamental role of S. Pavlychko’s issue «The methodological situation in contemporary Ukrainian literary studies» has been underlined. The author states that all subsequent issues in the field of Ukrainian postcolonial literary and meta-literary studies directly or indirectly refer to the main points contained in S. Pavlychko’s texts. This prominent researcher underlined the impossibility of non-theoretical status of literary criticism research papers.

Introduction to Critical Forum: The Sonic Politics of Black Experimentalism

Introduction to Critical Forum:The Sonic Politics of Black Experimentalism Tyler Bradway The following critical forum, "The Sonic Politics of Black Experimentalism," takes as its point of departure Carter Mathes's Imagine the Sound: Experimental African American Literature after Civil Rights, published in 2015 by the University of Minnesota Press. Mathes's groundbreaking work demonstrates the exciting conceptual and political affordances of black experimental literature for contemporary literary and cultural studies. His book does not simply bring together the fields of black studies, sound studies, and literary studies—it profoundly reimagines their points of convergence. Focused primarily on African American experimental literature and music, Imagine the Sound argues that the sonic dimensions of black experimentalism open out onto histories of black radicalism that have been repressed, forgotten, or marginalized by predominant narratives about the Black Arts Movement and black postmodernism. Mathes advocates for close listening as a method to recover the inchoate potentialities and resistant auralities of postwar African American experimental literature. Through their sonic experimentations, these texts afford more capacious and radical notions about black freedom and sociality than those sanctioned within the post-Civil Rights Era. [End Page 257] Among its many contributions, Imagine the Sound makes a strong case for understanding sound as an experimental dimension of the aesthetic that outstrips restrictive boundaries of genre and other "simplified categories of interpretation" (18). Indeed, Mathes draws inspiration from Zora Neale Hurston's foundational identification of "an improvisational impulse within the sound that exceeds flattened constructions of race and culture." Hurston anticipates and makes possible Imagine the Sound's attunement to a "fusion of sonority, temporality, and narration that has political implications in signaling different orientations toward black historical consciousness" (17). Mathes discovers this fusion within an expansive archive of writers and musicians, including John Coltrane, Amiri Baraka, Henry Dumas, Larry Neal, James Baldwin, Toni Cade Bambara, Gayl Jones, and Gloria Naylor. Listening for the sounds that reverberate out through their experimentations with form, Imagine the Sound beckons readers into new phenomenological and historical relations with the Civil Rights Era and its aftermath. In this regard, Mathes's title is an invitation to think and feel—to imagine, in the fullest sense of the verb—literary sound in all of its corporeal density and political vitality. Our contributors take up this invitation by recontextualizing Imagine the Sound within different fields of scholarship and cultural debate. As outlined in the introduction to this issue, each contributor was encouraged to reflect on how the experimental methods and archives of Imagine the Sound might be brought to bear on other areas of inquiry. As is clear from their responses, Mathes opens new horizons for thinking about the sonic politics of black experimentalism in many fields, including hip hop studies, time studies, new phenomenologies of reading, black feminism, queer of color critique, and black radical mysticism, among others. The conversation that unfolds within this forum testifies to multiple kinds of inquiry that experimental aesthetics engender. Far from seeing experimentalism as a step back from the social, each of these essays insists on its imbrication with the lived and historical experiences of people of color. Indeed, they draw inspiration from Mathes's understanding of experimentation as a means to break open the racist epistemologies that enclose black culture. Following Toni Cade Bambara, Mathes teaches us to understand "critical thought as phenomenological and experiential" (149). Collectively, the contributors take up this integration of affect and critique, and they stress that the politics of black experimentalism cannot be understood without an attunement to [End Page 258] its affective dimensions. In Mathes's words, the affective liveliness of black experimentalism engenders "radical openings onto new and evolving paradigms of African American aesthetic form and critical thought" (200). The following essays pursue such radical openings through their own experiments with form and thought. [End Page 259] Copyright © 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press and West Chester University

Introduction: The Promise of Experimental Writing

Introduction:The Promise of Experimental Writing Tyler Bradway (bio) What promise does experimental writing hold for literary studies now? This special issue of College Literature asks why experimental writing has risen to the forefront of contemporary literary studies in a historical moment defined by reactionary nationalism and populism, weaponized state violence against people of color, the enclosures of digital surveillance, and the ongoing economic and ecological precarity wrought by global capitalism. After all, experimental writing has often been understood—and understood itself—as removed from the everyday concerns of the social world. By now, the epithets are familiar: elitist, esoteric, solipsistic, formalist. The pure commitment to aesthetic experimentation has been seen as an end in itself; the artwork's autonomy from the social world has been understood as the very locus of its critical power.1 Yet the past decade has witnessed a scholarly reappraisal of the social and cultural relevance of experimental writing. This reappraisal is evident in the notable publication of The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature (Bray et al. 2012) and the inauguration of Wesleyan University Press's annual Best American Experimental Writing anthology in 2014. Moreover, there has been a proliferation of scholarly monographs, articles, and special issues of academic journals focused specifically on the politics of experimental writing—its responsiveness to the [End Page 1] material forces of social strife; its embeddedness within progressive and radical political movements; and its innovations in the politics of aesthetics.2 These considerations arise in monographs such as Timothy Yu's Race and the Avant-Garde: Experimental and Asian American Poetry Since 1965 (2009); Evie Shockley's Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry (2011); Alex Houen's Powers of Possibility: Experimental American Writing since the 1960s (2012); Anthony Reed's Freedom Time: The Poetics and Politics of Black Experimental Writing (2014); and Ellen Berry's Women's Experimental Writing: Negative Aesthetics and Feminist Critique (2016)—to name just a few representative examples.3 If "experimental writing" once nominated a tradition of innovative writing by European, white, male, and heteronormative authors, then the new criticism of experimental writing finds promise in the excavation of hidden, degraded, and ignored experimentalisms developed among marginalized writers and communities. Yet the return to experimental writing is not solely a project of recovery; its conceptual ambit is much broader, as intimated by the title of this special issue. The phrase, "lively words," is drawn from Gertrude Stein's Lectures in America (1935), in which Stein famously invokes the concept of "liveliness" to describe an experimental poetics of language that does not operate primarily through meaning—through denotation or connotation—but through the affective forces of language itself. Indeed, for Stein, language is quite literally alive, if not exactly human: it is autopoietic and signifies without necessarily expressing an authorial subject.4 Words have a materiality and force all their own—a liveliness that experimental writing makes uniquely perceptible by undoing our unconscious readerly habits. Undoubtedly, Stein's experimental writing inaugurates an important genealogy of modernist, queer, and feminist literature to which many of the authors and texts in this volume owe a debt. Yet it is her more expansive conception of experimental writing—as revealing the entanglements of language and matter, of words and the world—that anticipates contemporary interest in experimental writing. This entanglement underlies the conjunction of "politics and poetics" that this special issue seeks to understand with fresh eyes. To be sure, the essays collected here do not advocate for a single, overarching conception of the politics and poetics of experimental writing. Rather, each is invested in experimental writing because the texts themselves are actively rethinking the chiasmus of politics and poetics through their formal experimentations. The new [End Page 2] criticism on experimental writing thus promises to discover an array of new practices for reading the politics of literature, and its search is guided by the specific poetic forms and interpretative protocols that experimental writers innovate. If literary studies again finds itself debating the work that form can do, experimental writing gets there first.5 Whereas formalism and historicism have often been opposed by literary scholars, this has not been the case for experimental writers, particularly...

«Изучать значит сравнивать»: юбилей как повод к разговору о проблемах современного литературоведения и литературной критики Рецензия на книгу: Noscere est comparare: Компаративистика в контексте исторической поэтики: К юбилею Игоря Шайтанова: Сб. ст. / Отв. ред. и авт. вступ. ст. О. И. Половинкина. М.: РГГУ, 2017. 496 с.

«Изучать значит сравнивать»: юбилей как повод к разговору о проблемах современного литературоведения и литературной критики Рецензия на книгу: Noscere est comparare: Компаративистика в контексте исторической поэтики: К юбилею Игоря Шайтанова: Сб. ст. / Отв. ред. и авт. вступ. ст. О. И. Половинкина. М.: РГГУ, 2017. 496 с.

МОТИВЫ ЭККЛЕСИАСТА И ПЕСНИ ПЕСНЕЙ В ПОЭЗИИ И. К. ГЮНТЕРА (к вопросу о библейской архетекстуальности)

The problem of correlation between literature and the Bible is one of the relevant issues of contemporary literature studies, with the Bible being an 'axial' archetext of the European culture and literature, an ancient text of a crucially high axiological and aesthetical importance, performing the function of meaning- and text-generation. This research paper is focused on the investigation of the archetextual function of The Book of Ecclesiastes and The Song of Songs in J. Chr. Gunther’s (1695–1723) poetry. The concept of dialogue of cultures, especially ‘the dialogue of texts’ (M. Bakhtin), as well as the theory of intertextuality (J. Kristeva, R. Bart, G. Genette) provide theoretical and philosophical basis for the investigation. We employ a combination of cultural, historical, biographical, comparative, hermeneutic, structural and holistic analysis methods. Gunther is constantly engaged in dialogue with the Bible, no matter in what genre he creates his poetry. He is often guided by the Biblical poetics. The Book of Ecclesiastes became highly consonant with the poetry of Baroque , as it investigates tragic antinomies of the world and in a paradoxical way connects the idea of vanity and absurd of life with the call for getting joy and pleasure from its every moment. Gunther preserves the features of the Baroque worldview to a large extent, therefore the motifs of Ecclesiastes naturally permeate his lyrical poetry (spiritual and student songs, love and philosophical poems). Gunther’s hedonism is stronger in comparison to that of the ancient Hebrew poet and the Baroque poets of the 19 th century. However, his hedonism is that of a new type as it is built on the reasonable nature of a human and the natural pursuit of happiness, which is first of all seen in the poet’s student songs ( Studentenlieder ), being the first works of Rococo in German poetry. The new hedonism together with the motifs of the vanity of life, seen through the topoi of The Book of Ecclesiastes and The Song of Songs , manifests itself in Gunther’s innovative love poetry, standing out due to its special confessional manner. In the late works of Gunther, reflections on the irresolvable problem of theodicy from the perspective of The Book of Job and The Book of Ecclesiastes are intensifying and becoming organically interwoven with the aspiration to redemption and Divine love in the world. Therefore, the poet refers to the mystically understood topoi of The Song of Songs. The Biblical archetextuality allowed Gunther to express his individuality and the problems of human spirit in a deeper way during the difficult and life-changing period of time.

W archiwum Jerzego – przestrzenie pamięci, przestrzenie rozproszenia, zakamarki interpretacji. Recenzja książki Jerzego Kandziory, „Poeta w labiryncie historii. Studia o pisarskich rolach Jerzego Ficowskiego”, Fundacja Terytoria Książki, Gdańsk 2017

Jerzy Kandziora w swojej książce Poeta w labiryncie historii. Studia o pisarskich rolach Jerzego Ficowskiego podjął próbę całościowego spojrzenia na twórczość autora Ptaka poza ptakiem. Głównymi kategoriami interpretacyjnymi zaproponowanymi przez badacza stały się czas, labirynt i historia. Pozwoliły one autorowi na typ lektury przekrojowej – począwszy od opisania życia przedpoetyckiego Ficowskiego, przez jego literackie i artystyczne fascynacje Schulzem, Wojtkiewiczem, Tuwimem, światem codziennym, aż po doświadczenie pogranicza, tego dosłownego i poetyckiego. Tą eseistyczną, fragmentami również syntetyczną forma opisu, Kandziora zaznacza nowy nurt odczytań twórczości poety, zwraca uwagę zwłaszcza na wpływ społecznego imaginarium w funkcjonowaniu poety we współczesnym literaturoznawstwie.

Review of Kholikov, A. and Kling, O., eds. (2017). Russian literary historians of the 20th century: A biobibliographical dictionary. Vol. I: A-L. Moscow, St. Petersburg: Nestor-Istoriya. 532 pages.

The review discusses the first volume of the biobibliographical dictionary Russian Literary Historians of the 20th Century, published by Nestor-Istoriya in 2017. Working at the Department of Literary Theory atLomonosovMoscowStateUniversity, the authors, Doctors of Philology O. Kling and A. Kholikov invited several specialists to participate in their project. The article is a critical analysis of the publication, identifying its typical characteristics, advantages and disadvantages. The review summarizes the history of the project, highlights its conceptual emphases based on the foreword to the first volume, in particular, with regard to selection criteria for the subjects (scholars), and examines the structure of a typical dictionary entry. In conclusion, the reviewer describes the dictionary’s significance for contemporary literary studies, and its contribution to solving such problems as the creation of a biographical entry about a writer, removal of bias in perception of the writer’s personality, inclusion of the historical context and then-relevant scientific paradigms to help with a more nuanced perception of the scholar.

Franz Kafka’s Novel der Prozess (The Trial) As A Novel About Creative Endeavor, Choice and Faith

In this article, the author discusses the topic of adequate interpretation of F. Kafka’s novel The Trial, one of the most well-known works of literature of the early 20th century, this topic being very relevant for contemporary literature studies. The introduction states the purpose of the article, and points out that the theme of creative pursuits, which is touched upon in the writer’s diaries and letters, is one of the main topics that help understand the environment in which the novel was created. The principal part of the paper reveals approaches used to analyze the novel. Additionally, the article discusses records from the writer’s diary and letters; shows the direct link between the works and the biography of the Prague writer. The article presumes that the novel models a real-life situation. It argues S. Kierkegaard had an impact on F. Kafka’s writing, and uncovers a link between works of the Danish philosopher and the emergence of the novel. Moreover, the paper draws a conclusion on the role that F. Kafka’s lover, F. Bauer, played in creating The Trial, proposes a possible plot of the novel and summarizes observations on the work. In conclusion, the article speaks about the results of the “modeling” that F. Kafka obtained, and about the influence of that novel and S. Kierkegaard’s ideas on the latter part of the Prague writer’s career.

Islands of Mind and Matter: Challenging Dualism in J. G. Ballard's ‘The Terminal Beach’ and The Chinese Room'sDear Esther

Ideas enter our mind, a realisation can dawn on us, and we should let bad news sink in. This article argues that experimental narrative can destabilise this widespread tendency to describe mental processes through spatial metaphors. My case studies are J. G. Ballard's short story ‘The Terminal Beach’ (1964) and Dear Esther (2012), an arthouse video game developed by The Chinese Room. These narratives develop and literalise metaphors for mind by foregrounding the continuity between the physical space of the setting (an island) and the protagonists’ existential predicament. Going beyond a dualistic reading of the ‘mind as space’ metaphor, these texts construct spaces that are more than a symbol for the characters’ mental processes: narrative space is causally linked to mind in neurophysiological terms (in Ballard's short story), or extends the protagonist's emotional meaning-making (in Dear Esther). This set-up is unsettling, I contend, because it raises deep questions about the relationship between subjective experience and material realities. By exploring these narratives and their ramifications, the article seeks to open a conversation between the cognitive humanities and the ‘nonhuman turn’ in contemporary literary studies.

МУЗЫКАЛЬНОСТЬ ЛИРИКИ: ТЕОРЕТИКО-ЛИТЕРАТУРНЫЕ АСПЕКТЫ ВЗАИМОДЕЙСТВИЯ ЕВРОПЕЙСКОГО И РУССКОГО ИСКУССТВА

В статье прослеживается история взаимосвязей европейского и русского искусства, среди которых идея музыки слова была одной из самых востребованных и плодотворных, не случайно словесная музыка не только имела широкое истолкование в философии, эстетике, филологической науке, нои получила стремительное развитие в поэзии барокко, романтизма, чистого искусства, символизма. При этом музыкальность лирики осмысливалась совершенно поразному в статье обосновываются теоретиколитературные критерии музыкальности, связанные как с родовидовой спецификой лирики, так и с особенностями стихотворной речи The paper looks into the evolution of interconnections between European and Russian art, in which the concept of music of word (verbal music) was most prominent. It can be exemplified by the fact that it was researched in philosophy, aesthetics, philology and was central to poetry of Barocco, Romanticism and Symbolism. At the same time musicality of lyrical poetry has been viewed from absolutely different angles. The author defines theoretical and literary criteria of musicality related to the specifics of the poetic verse as well as the genre specifics of poetry. These methodological principles stem from a number of objective causes as the concept of music has evolved into a dynamic artistic trend. The first comprehensive theory of musical lyrical poetry in Russian poetics was propounded by A. Fet. Later Symbolism put this theory on the philosophical footing, taking it to its most developed form. On top of this, searching for musical expression of poetry brought about an array of studies in the field of poetic theory. Some musical theories of Russian poetry in the 1920th centuries are relevant in the historic perspective only. Others serve as the basis for further analysis. One of the key premises which remain relevant up to this day is that poetry is an acoustic phenomenon, thus it correlates with the structure of musical art. The analysis of Russian lyrical poetry helps define two types of poetic music: harmonious and disharmonious. The history of Russian poetry proves that the criteria of musicality have evolved naturally including aesthetic and artistic trends, genre specifics, content structure, phonetic, rhythmic and melodic structure, intonation and syntactic structure and composition of poetic verse. These criteria are also applicable to European poetry. The theory of lyrical music in contemporary literary studies as well as in the 1920th centuries serves in this paper as a foundation for defining musicality from the perspective of literary theory and poetic studies. These criteria help uncover both general approaches to musical lyrical poetry and its specific features, determined by the language, historic trends and ethnic traditions.

On the Significance of the Graphic Novel to Contemporary Literary Studies: A Review of The Cambridge Companion to the Graphic Novel

Stephen Tabachnick’s edited collection The Cambridge Companion to the Graphic Novel (2017) is reviewed in light of the graphic novel’s relevance for contemporary literary studies. This review gives a special focus to the terminological debate surrounding the term ‘graphic novel’ and what that debate can mean for the field of literary studies as a whole.

Re-examining English and/in the Geography of (World) Literature

Re-examining English and/in the Geography of (World) Literature

Literatura polska 1918–2018. Narracje, dyskursy, dzieła

The year when the eighth number of “Themes and Contexts” is published, is unique because we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the restoration of Poland’s sovereignty. It is also an opportunity to look at the contractual century of the “new” Polish literature. In this context of “duration and changeability”, it is important to discuss the work of outstanding poets and writers of the last century, as well as interpretations of important works. This is a convenient time both for reappraisals and for new interpretations seen from a variable, literary perspective. Thinking about Polish literature in 1918-2018, we had in mind the attempts to establish the hierarchy of the most important literary phenomena in the context of political, constitutional and transformational changes. These issues are discussed in the first group of texts entitled Synthesis and reappraisals. Another group of problems connected with the subject of (Post)modern reading introduces the circle of detailed considerations. The research of Polish literature of the last century is conducted by the authors in two ways. In the first one, the researchers adopted a comparative perspective and analyzed new works compiled with works from the interwar period. The second variant is dominated by the synchronous perspective, in which the authors’ attention is focused on the originality of the latest works and contemporary methodologies of studying a literary work and “modern” contexts (social-media, pop-culture, hypertext, blogosphere, etc.). The study of contemporary literature in the context of the works of the past century has resulted in interesting literary and cultural findings. This section, titled Views, is a voice of researchers asking for the restoration of forgotten literary writings, artists (Gniatczyński), single works. The articles collected in the volume authorize the conclusion that these conventional chronological frames cover many literary phenomena, as well as the names of writers who created and create an image of Polish literature of the last century.

"Id", "ego" i deficyt superego w obrazie psychologicznym bohaterów powieści "Zazdrość i medycyna" Michała Choromańskiego

Id, ego and superego deficit in a psychological image of the protagonists of ″Jealousy and Medicine″ by Michał Choromański Jealousy and Medicine – a novel by Michał Choromański, published in 1933, evidently breaks out of the convention of psychological realism thriving on the achievements of behavioural psychology, dominant in the interwar period. Choromański’s work is an innovatory experiment on composition and thought; the world shown in the novel resembles a psychotic maligna or oneiric vision. The whole novel prompts interdisciplinary research using psychoanalysis of Sigismund Freud, Charles Mauron’s psychocritical method, being a transformation of classical Freudian psychoanalysis (with Otto Rank’s modifications), contemporary psychology of a creative process and the methodologies of psychological research which are accepted and occasionally used by contemporary literary studies. Choromański’s novel is deemed the most discerning studium of jealousy in interwar literature.

Art that Scars: Literary Reenactments and Self-Conscious Representations in Si te dicen que caí and Kar

Art that Scars:Literary Reenactments and Self-Conscious Representations in Si te dicen que caí and Kar Başak Çandar This article brings together two novels from disparate contexts and separated by three decades: Spanish author Juan Marsé's 1973 novel Si te dicen que caí and Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk's 2002 novel Kar. The basis for the comparison is neither geographical nor historical, nor is it based on points of encounter between the Turkish and Spanish literary worlds, which are arguably rare. Rather, my contention here is that the marked similarity between Marsé and Pamuk's approaches to fictionalizing state violence gains significance precisely because of their distance geographically, linguistically, and historically. The novels' similarities foreground important questions regarding fictional representations of state violence in contexts where that violence is still contested, even as its legacy continues to shape the present. I argue that Si te dicen que caí and Kar utilize a particular self-reflexivity, which they construct in very similar means in order to negotiate the challenges of representing state violence fictionally. As writers like Elaine Scarry and J.M. Coetzee have suggested, fictional representations of state violence pose unique challenges for readers and writers alike, because they must navigate ethical and aesthetic imperatives that derive from their complicated relationship with verisimilitude. These challenges are largely unresolvable, because they are inherent to the relationship between fiction and state violence. Accordingly, Marsé and Pamuk's works do not resolve these challenges; instead, they navigate [End Page 1337] them by representing them. The works purposefully underscore the pitfalls of representing state violence by inserting these challenges into their plots. The novels not only represent state violence, but also narrate the process of representing state violence. The resulting self-reflexivity and metafiction become the novels' means of establishing an ethics of representing state violence fictionally. Although Spain and Turkey are rarely brought together in contemporary literary studies, there are numerous tempting overlaps between these contexts. Turkey and Spain are successors to early modern empires that derived their authority in large part from religious identities: the Ottoman Empire functioned as the Islamic Caliphate for over five centuries, while the Spanish Empire expanded its territories in the name of Catholicism.1 In twentieth-century Turkey and Spain, repressive states emerged in reaction to pluralist tendencies, centralizing power to construct an ethnic and religious unity at odds with the diversity of their respective populations.2 To be sure, state repression followed different trajectories in Turkey and Spain, but in both contexts it has been a deeply entrenched reality that not only affected political and social life, but also decidedly shaped literature, among other forms of cultural production. Following the Civil War (1936–1939), General Francisco Franco established a dictatorship in Spain that lasted over three decades. While Turkey never experienced a full-fledged dictatorship, political repression has been a constant. Since transitioning into a multiparty [End Page 1338] system in 1946, Turkey experienced three military coups (1960, 1971, 1980). Although the military never took over power indefinitely—its longest regime lasted three years following the 1980 coup, after which it transferred power over to civilians—the depoliticization measures,3 as well as the violent repression that accompanied the coups themselves had drastic effects. The coups had different motives in practice, but they were all responses to a perceived threat by the military to the unitary and Kemalist character of the nation.4 These successive coups made state violence a deeply ingrained reality in Turkey, a fact that is evident in the authoritarian tendencies of the current AKP government, in addition to the thwarted coup attempt of July 2016 that resulted in a state of emergency which lasted two years. Despite being hailed as largely successful, the Spanish transition to democracy never cut ties with the dictatorship, allowing officials of the Franco regime to participate in the democratic system. The transition was marked by the so-called pacto de olvido (pact of forgetting), an implicit agreement to overlook the injustices of the Franco dictatorship rather than bring its officials to justice. The pacto de olvido culminated in the Amnesty Law of 1977, which guaranteed that there would be no indictment of the crimes...

O Brešićevoj, Bagićevoji Rafoltovoj književno-povijesnoj upisanosti (u filološki "dis/kontinuitet").

This article discusses three recent books that deal with the Croatian literary hi/story. In the first part of the work we discuss the issues of the contemporary post-structural and deconstructionist view of writing history. The argument is based on Alun Munslow’s thesis that it is not possible to write hi/story outside the narrative genre. The starting point of discussion is that hi/story (of literature) is only one of possible modal practices of narration/narrative. This means that history can only be read as one of many narratives while simultaneously it reflects the narrative that is produced by its nature/mode. That in many ways changes the way in which today, in poststructuralist and postmodern perspective, one can (and will) interpret the tradition of literary history as a “practical activity” (interpretation of meaning and/or philological discipline) but also as a story (construction). The tradition of Croatian literary history is very much dependent on the narrative(s) of the nation, the idea of its continuity in time (“diachronic development”) and on viewing literature as the narration of the nation, or as a major way of preserving national memory. In most books on the 19th and the 20th century national literary history this was the prevailing viewpoint of scholars who were constructing the Croatian cannon and national narrative as “agreed upon” hi/story “of the nation” (and its literary memory/canon). The three books discussed in this article, each in its particular way (methodologically and by its idea of how to interpret texts), change, or at least contribute to the change of this traditionalist storytelling that has become hi/story (of national literature). This article simultaneously challenges the tradition of (literary) history writing and interprets various aspects of reading hi/story anew in the works by three contemporary authors. It puts in perspective three different types of “politics of small differences” that form the basis of the original contributions. Brešić’s study into the Croatian 19th century literature shifted from writing the hi/story of writers and national narratives towards the modes of presentation and study of genres. Bagić’s study of contemporary literature for the first time treats traditional literary genres and new media, as well as popular culture, equally, thus allowing new insight into the possibilities of studying both fiction and its discursive frames. The third book discussed here introduces the discussion of the role that contemporary questioning of humanities as a discipline has in both post-structural environment and interpretative community of scholars. In conclusion, the article discusses the possibilities of reading (literary) history anew in the hegemonic environment of school system, academia and cultural paradigm of the “nation”.

Money is time: On the possibility of critique after neoliberalism

At the end of his Capital and Time: For a New Critique of Neoliberal Reason (2018), Martijn Konings offers a brief reflection on the methodology of critical thought itself. “It is not possible to provide an objective set of criteria for what makes knowledge critical”, he writes. Then, turning to a problem that he has considered and rejected in his book as a possible approach to the study of finance, that of performativity, he continues: “A good critique is a performative achievement; we recognize it when we encounter it” (205). It's an odd way to end a book that, I think, in many ways does provide a model for social theory. Likewise, it seems to me that the critical operation does contain a certain positive set of features, including a self-consciousness of critical terminology and an ability to explain it in a vocabulary both endogenous to and foreign to its own origins; an awareness of the scale of abstraction at which the categories of analysis operate; and the resources to acknowledge when and why the scale of the abstraction changes, as it likely will need to in order to respond reflexively to whatever it encounters. Finally, the critical operation must distinguish its own sense of narrative - a kind of consistency of meaning over time - from argument, an assertion of why that consistency of meaning should persist in the face of difference. Another way of saying this: critique must be cognizant of its own deployment of the categories of time (argument) and space (abstraction). How, then, should this process confront an object that makes fundamentally temporal demands, namely money, and its constituents in a society organized around their investment and hoped-for realization, namely a financialized society? As its title indicates, Capital and Time sets its sights methodologically and historically on these precise concerns.

A Report on Japanese Modern and Contemporary Literature Studies in China : Chinese Translation of Japanese Literature and the Internationalization of Japanese Literature Studies

A Report on Japanese Modern and Contemporary Literature Studies in China : Chinese Translation of Japanese Literature and the Internationalization of Japanese Literature Studies

Byline, Richard Wright: Articles from “The Daily Worker” and “New Masses”

Byline, Richard Wright: Articles from “The Daily Worker” and “New Masses”

جهود العلماء في تطوير علم البديع مع تطبيقاته في القرآن الكريم ودور أهمية توظيفه في الدراسات الأدبية المعاصرة The Scientist's Efforts in Developing the Science of Albadīʿ and its Applications in the Qurān and its Important Role of employing it in Contemporary Literary Studies

جهود العلماء في تطوير علم البديع مع تطبيقاته في القرآن الكريم ودور أهمية توظيفه في الدراسات الأدبية المعاصرة The Scientist's Efforts in Developing the Science of Albadīʿ and its Applications in the Qurān and its Important Role of employing it in Contemporary Literary Studies