Studies in Arts and Humanities最新文献

{"title":"Writing Utopia Now","authors":"S. Willow","doi":"10.18193/SAH.V5I1.161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18193/SAH.V5I1.161","url":null,"abstract":"Writing Utopia Now is a multi-modal manifesto interrogating the category of the utopian in modern and contemporary literature.  Building upon the utopian philosophy of Ernst Bloch (1885 – 1977) and drawing upon my current doctoral research, I propose ‘utopian poetics’ as a literary gesture towards the utopian, whereby reader and writer may enter into an equal and non-oppressive relationship with one another via the text.  Rather than a description of, or proposal for, a better world – fraught with the limitations of language and the imposition of one person’s perspective on how that better world might look – utopian poetics offers the possibility of a performance, or experience, of non-alienated subjectivity through the text’s formal processes.  Many modern and contemporary literary texts employ formal strategies, such as fragmentation, proliferation and attention to language’s materiality, to invite readers into the process of meaning construction.  Thus, the text becomes a site of utopian potential, both through its proliferation of possibilities and through its openness to the equal subjectivities of reader and writer.   In Bloch’s lifelong engagement with the utopian he frequently employed spiritual vocabulary to explain the utopian process.  He describes the utopian potential of non-alienated subjectivity through the aesthetic object as the ‘ultimate self-encounter’, or, in Sanskrit,  tat twam asi  (‘there you are’).  In my own life, I have experienced a striking similarity between the effects of utopian poetics in a literary text and the spiritual practices of yoga and meditation.  In this manifesto I include reflections on that similarity and suggest ways in which a spiritual practice can be interpreted as a performance of the utopian possibility of non-alienated subjectivity.","PeriodicalId":31069,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Arts and Humanities","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79643434","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Basque ‘68 in Light of Cultural Nationalism and Critical Utopia","authors":"Haritz Azurmendi-Arrue, Alba Garmendia Castaños","doi":"10.18193/SAH.V5I1.157","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18193/SAH.V5I1.157","url":null,"abstract":"In enlightened or utilitarian reasoning, nationalism is considered a reactionary and irrational belief in an invented tradition. Utopian imaginary, for its part, is cast into the background together with escapist fantasy or useless science fiction. This paper will look at alternative theories that challenge these interpretations. In this new light, utopianism serves as a critique of the status quo and an impulse against it – Ernst Bloch’s principle of hope and Tom Moylan’s critical utopia are our compass in this regard. On the other hand, cultural nationalism is interpreted as a desire to modernise a community through cultural praxis and not subordinated to state-building projects, as argued by John Hutchinson. These theories are the framework for the revision of the Basque ‘68. As far as nationalism is concerned, this period has been interpreted from a political perspective, with the foundation of ETA and demands for independence as the key features. The new framework, however, allows us to consider cultural praxis as a way to critically recreate the community through new utopian imaginaries. Therefore, the Basque ‘68 keeps the nation’s imaginary from being subordinated to statist politics and becomes an ambiguous yet open-ended movement in search of the (n)ever true Heimat .","PeriodicalId":31069,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Arts and Humanities","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88277491","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Glimpsing Cracks in the Present: Acts of Utopian Desire and Resistance at Gezi Park and the Aboriginal Tent Embassy","authors":"Francis Tarpey-Brown","doi":"10.18193/SAH.V5I1.165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18193/SAH.V5I1.165","url":null,"abstract":"Present prefigurations of a dystopian future are visible at every turn. Amidst the ongoing development of authoritarian capitalism, the rising cultural and institutional power of what many have termed neo-fascism, transnational organisations warning of imminent environmental devastation, decreasing standards of living paralleling growing wealth inequality and the prevalence of social and psychological crises of depression and disaffection, a commitment to action based on a desire for a radically altered and more just world seems futile and even dangerously irresponsible. We are compelled to be pragmatic and alleviate the catastrophes to come. However such a reading of the possibilities of the present relies on a particular understanding – and experience – of ‘our time’ as homogenous, historically myopic and more or less permanently stuck under the thumb of the hegemonic terms that govern it. Such hegemony, though, is both necessarily contingent and contested. Against this chronopathology or time-sickness, turning our gaze towards acts and events that manifest a utopian desire allows us to see the cracks in the present demonstrating the unsettled, dis-jointed and dis-adjusted nature of ‘our time’. This article explores two events of resistance that manifest(ed) such desire and call on us to acknowledge, explore and embrace the cracks. The Gezi Park protests that erupted out of Istanbul in 2013 demonstrated possibilities that almost always fall under the sign of utopian impossibility. The Aboriginal Tent Embassy likewise has been dismissed as an impossible entity in itself: reclaiming space from the colonial occupiers, developing programs to support and strengthen the presently vulnerable whilst demanding and enacting a desire for a different future; and struggling in solidarity with others around the globe. Such acts haunt any proclaimed closure of the present and demand a critical inheritance of their manifestations of utopian desire if we want to see the light through the cracks. This article attempts to at least provide a glimpse the spectral heritage of such utopian acts. Keywords: Utopia; Utopian Desire; Resistance; Time; Temporality; Gezi Park; Protest; Aboriginal Tent Embassy","PeriodicalId":31069,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Arts and Humanities","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83026166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Horizons Without Borders: Wendy Trevino’s 'Cruel Fiction' and the Utopian Poetry of the Commune","authors":"Mikkel Nørregaard Jørgensen","doi":"10.18193/SAH.V5I1.162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18193/SAH.V5I1.162","url":null,"abstract":"Contemporary anti-capitalist and anti-racist politics are beginning to organize around the violence of borders. This comes in reaction to the re-enforcement of nation-states which has taken hold after the economic crisis of 2008. In this article I analyze the collection of poems, Cruel Fiction, by the American poet Wendy Trevino, to show how the new struggles are taking up poetry as one of their weapons and in doing so build on a utopian tradition of revolutionary struggle. I focus my reading around Trevino’s invocation of communal forms such as plural “We’s” and her use of historic revolutionary moments, and how this all together shapes the inherent utopian horizon in her poetry. The reading of Cruel Fiction will take form in a three-step structure investigating the way Trevino, in her poems, moves from the singular “I” over the plural “We”, finally ending with the political subject of the “Commune”. I summarize my reading by pointing to how Cruel Fiction is uniquely connected to the real political struggle going on in the present against borders and other capitalist formations, and how she forms this connection between poetry and political struggle in the figure of the commune. The commune comes to be the figure of a place of open reproduction of identity freed from the capitalist reproduction of oppression.","PeriodicalId":31069,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Arts and Humanities","volume":"53 5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83662506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Sussex Campus ‘Forever Strike’: Estrangement, Resistance and Utopian Temporality","authors":"Heather McKnight","doi":"10.18193/SAH.V5I1.166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18193/SAH.V5I1.166","url":null,"abstract":"The 2018 strike undertaken by academics working in the UK was the largest called in University and College Union history, lasting for fourteen days over 4 weeks, with 88% of members voting for strike action across 64 universities. [1] This article explores how the campus at the University of Sussex during the time of this strike became a strange, conflicted and transformative space; both a heterotopia and a site for a critical utopian process, where norms can be bent and broken, where people can function outside of the normal rules and disciplinary technologies of contemporary academia. [2] The picket lines were supplemented by strike supporting events, teach-ins, teach-outs, occupations, marches, workshops and socials; linking it with debates on the public university, decolonizing the curriculum.  The strike action reached beyond the pensions debate and demonstrated radical utopian potential.  The article considers how moments of estrangement are created in the learning space of the picket, whose strangeness and otherness, in comparison to a class room , allowed participants to open up to new ideas. [3] Estrangement enforces a reduction of hierarchy and creation of community essential to establishing what Giroux might view as a critical pedagogy that tries to resist modes of cultural reproduction. [4] This actively changes how time is experienced on campus: slowing down, allowing for contemplation, opening up different experiences of the ‘Now’. Ultimately this article considers how the struggle is far from over either off or on campus.   On Sussex campus, the strike songs are still heard on Library square, meetings are ongoing, the UCU and student groups are taking forward their manifesto for change, while beyond Sussex, there has been disruption to established democratic processes at both the National Union of Students National Conference and the UCU Congress this year.  Strike action has contributed to a process of revealing new potentials both within, and beyond the campus. [1] “UCU Announces 14 Strike Dates at 61 Universities in Pensions Row.” [2] Foucault, “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias, ‘Des Espace Autres.’” 2 [3] Bloch, Halley, and Suvin, “Entfremdung, Verfremdung.” [4] Giroux, On Critical Pedagogy . 5 - 6","PeriodicalId":31069,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Arts and Humanities","volume":"52 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74045890","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘Only one way in and one way out’: Staging Utopian Spaces","authors":"Amy Butt","doi":"10.18193/SAH.V5I1.155","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18193/SAH.V5I1.155","url":null,"abstract":"This polyphonic paper draws together methods, content and impressions from a workshop on utopian spatial practice. It provides a critical reflection on the utopian possibilities inherent in small scale performances of spatial re-organization which re-structure existing patterns of behaviour.  Over the course of this workshop, held as part of the ‘Utopian Acts’ conference, the mundane space of a university seminar room was briefly transformed. Participants were asked to read extracts from three works of feminist utopian science fiction (sf): Ursula Le Guin’s ‘The Dispossessed’, Marge Piercy’s ‘Woman on the Edge of Time’ and Sally Miller Gearhart’s ‘The Wanderground: Stories of the Hill Women’. They then worked in groups to rearrange the furniture into an echo of the utopian space of the text. By inhabiting these temporary stagings of utopian space the participants disrupted existing patterns of behaviour and opened up a site for alternatives. This process of imaginative construction is extended into this paper which crosses the fields of architecture, utopian studies, drawing and performance. A series of narrative architectural drawings by the author are presented alongside commentary from the workshop participants to reflect on multiple voices and modes of interpretation which shaped these overlapping utopian acts of construction. This act of remaking space is considered in terms of space as social practice to ask how the re-staging of a single room can open up alternative possibilities for wider socio-spatial action. It draws on Dolan’s conception of utopian performatives to ask whether the non-hierarchical engagement of participants in an act of construction offers a utopian mode of practice. From this, it asks whether the re-staging of spaces drawn from utopian sf can be considered an ‘act of imagination’ as called for in Levitas’ ‘Utopia as Method’. Through drawings, descriptions, critical theory and transcribed conversation this paper reflects on an attempt to establish a fragment of utopian space, establishing an alternative way of being, however small and fleeting.","PeriodicalId":31069,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Arts and Humanities","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73992720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“#NotHim”: Latin American Feminisms and their Contributions to Twenty-First Century Utopianism","authors":"L. Ribas","doi":"10.18193/SAH.V5I1.160","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18193/SAH.V5I1.160","url":null,"abstract":"The activism of Latin American women has been instrumental in combating societal taboos, introducing new mores, fighting for social justice, advocating for more inclusivity, the expansion of democracy, and changing the hearts and minds of populations deeply associated with macho culture. The region experienced a three-decade, mid-twentieth century period, which saw civilian governments in eleven nations fall to coups d’etat, which installed dictatorial military regimes. In the midst of their neutering, if not dismantling democratic institutions and their use of state terrorism and extrajudicial killings to maintain control, it was women’s movements that gave hope to and often mobilized large numbers of individuals to fight against authoritarianism. Women’s struggles contributed to transitions back to democratic rule and progressive legislation, which were significantly influenced by the unique feminisms that blossomed to establish a new praxis for the 21 st century. A highly notable example of this was seen, in 2018, in Brazil. A small Facebook group sparked a mass movement that was quickly identified by its Twitter name, #EleNao (#NotHim), which opposed the far-right candidacy of the man who is now Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro. The discontents and alarm of millions on the internet poured into the streets of every major city in the nation on September 29, 2018. Although this movement was primarily born out of feminist perspectives and women’s concerns, it rapidly became much more than the focal point for those standing against a political figure. Rather, #EleNao – quite apart from generating the largest women’s demonstrations ever seen in Latin America – planted a figurative flag on societal territory hard fought for and secured. Participants wanted to make clear that they were not prepared to accept retrograde policies, nor to see democratic advancements rolled back. The protests were more about championing now cherished principles and rights, than decrying policies and practices they wanted overturned. Women’s efforts unquestionably paved the road to this astonishing contemporary moment. A look at several meaningful initiatives and underlying philosophies is instructive in better understanding the utopian feminism of Latin America and how it has brought us to this current pivot point in the region’s history.","PeriodicalId":31069,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Arts and Humanities","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83403941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Overcoming Culture Shock: Journal reflection","authors":"Fidaa Marouf","doi":"10.18193/sah.v4i2.154","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18193/sah.v4i2.154","url":null,"abstract":"From Syria via Turkey and Greece to ultimately Ireland, it has been a very long journey full of ups and downs, tears of frustration and dismay, the odd glimmer of hope. Eleven months on roads and cross country, living in tents and the odd night under a proper roof, it was a long and tortuous road that finally took me and 129 other Syrians to Dublin. It was December 2016 when we landed at Dublin airport, cheerful and hopeful and greatly relieved. It was the beginning of the honeymoon phase in Ireland as new arrivals - or at least it was for me. [...]","PeriodicalId":31069,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Arts and Humanities","volume":"75 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86286624","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Questioning Representation: Testimonials, Witness Accounts and Literary Migrant Narratives","authors":"Alisha Mathers","doi":"10.18193/sah.v4i2.152","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18193/sah.v4i2.152","url":null,"abstract":"This article rethinks contemporary approaches to asylum by examining literary accounts of human displacement to problematise representations and authenticity. A believable testimonial of asylum seekers’ experience is key in the asylum application process and the pursuit of such truth by Europe’s border forces usually entails a celebration of authenticity. Yet, the emphasis on migrant testimonials as the definitive source in understanding the migration ‘crisis’ is deeply problematic. This essay argues that literary representations of displacement are equally valuable in helping us understand contemporary migration. This paper engages with the poetry of two exiled poets, Warsan Shire and Yousif Qasmiyeh, to illustrate the importance of literary accounts of migration, and to demonstrate that the intimate and traumatic stories of the borderline condition should be shared on migrants’ own terms, not by the demands of the European border forces. By drawing on John Coetzee’s The Childhood of Jesus (2013) and its representation of the current approach to human displacement, this paper also explores the role of fiction to 'narrativize' the nuances of migratory experiences.","PeriodicalId":31069,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Arts and Humanities","volume":"106 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74013312","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Another Drop in the Ocean: Dispatches from the Ground","authors":"Almut Schlepper","doi":"10.18193/sah.v4i2.153","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18193/sah.v4i2.153","url":null,"abstract":"In Part One, I give some background of the situation of refugees coming to Europe, especially to Greece. I give a brief outline of the EU policy of Fortress Europe and externalisation of borders. The contribution of Ireland is also discussed. In Part Two, I discuss the challenges and joys of my work in the small refugee camp Pikpa on Lesbos, run by Lesvos Solidarity where I worked for four months in 2017/2018. Other projects, such as the Mosaik Centre are also described. In view of the overall refugee population in the world of 68 million, my contribution seems just a drop in the ocean. The independent camp where I worked has around 120 residents while elsewhere on the island in the notorious “hot spot” camp Moria, 8,000 refugees are confined in a cramped space. Greece has to manage about 60,000 refugees. Still Europe’s numbers of refugees with about 0.5 % of the total population of 508 million taken in are small compared to refugees fleeing to countries neighbouring conflict and war zones.","PeriodicalId":31069,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Arts and Humanities","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82332921","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}