{"title":"“Productivity of Constraint”: Wit Pietrzak in Conversation with Philip Terry","authors":"Wit Píetrzak, P. Terry","doi":"10.18778/2083-2931.12.31","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.12.31","url":null,"abstract":"WP: To begin with, some orientation points. You were born in Belfast but have lived outside Northern Ireland for extended periods of time. How much do you feel part of the Irish literary tradition? And is a notion of tradition a relevant idea for you (especially in view of the advice the poetpilgrim receives from Dr Moss in your rendition of Dante’s Inferno: “Steer a path between the mainstream and the / Experimenters, that way nobody can claim you, // You’ll always be your own man”)?","PeriodicalId":41165,"journal":{"name":"Text Matters-A Journal of Literature Theory and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87281976","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":"How Deep Time Can Help Shape the Present: Existential Economics, “Joyful Insignificance” and the Future of the Ecological Transition","authors":"C. Arnsperger","doi":"10.18778/2083-2931.12.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.12.06","url":null,"abstract":"An awareness of deep time—both humanity’s deep past and the Earth’s deep future—and an understanding of its existential implications can significantly enhance the chances that humanity might still be able to transition towards an ecologically sustainable way of inhabiting the biosphere. This essay explains in detail why this is so, using analysis of a science fiction story that evokes existential horror at humanity’s ultimate cosmic insignificance. With the tools of “terror management theory” (a paradigm of existential thought based on the work of Ernest Becker and emphasizing the saliency of the denial of death in human motivation and behaviour) and of “existential economics” (an approach postulating that the way in which the economic system is organized and operates is crucially influenced by this widespread denial of death), the essay suggests that death denial has turned into the capitalist denial of life, and that only a deep reconciliation of humanity with its true ontological place in the universe will make it possible for us to transition towards a regenerative rather than a destructive system. This will entail new modes of human thinking, feeling, and acting anchored in a shared sense of “joyful insignificance,” as well as a renewed sense of “cosmic indigeneity”—a sense that all humans are indigenous to this planet and that this fact has major implications for how we ought to live into the deep future, anchored in our deep past.","PeriodicalId":41165,"journal":{"name":"Text Matters-A Journal of Literature Theory and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80864860","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":"Comics in the Anthropocene: Graphic Narratives of Apocalypse, Regeneration and Warning","authors":"Małgorzata Olsza","doi":"10.18778/2083-2931.12.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.12.03","url":null,"abstract":"Narratives of the Anthropocene function in the realm of not only scientific but also popular discourses. Indeed, the most popular narratives of the Anthropocene, namely the story of the apocalypse and the story of progress, with their respective temporalities, are particularly well-represented in comics. The present article looks at the Anthropocene through the lenses of word and image, tracing the response of the medium of comics to the ongoing catastrophe, including Joe Sacco’s Paying the Land (2020), Scott Snyder and Yanick Paquette’s modern take on Swamp Thing (2019) and Richard McGuire’s Here (2014). Paying the Land is a story of the Dene people and their response to the Anthropocene. Drawing on the opposition between nature and progress, it examines whether empathy can stop capitalistic exploitation of Indigenous communities and the land which they cherish. Swamp Thing, seemingly a narrative of environmental apocalypse, also functions as a story of ecological reconciliation and regeneration. Finally, Here builds on and deconstructs the narrative of progress, demonstrating how a specific location has and will be transformed from 3,000,500,000 BCE to 22,175 CE, offering the reader/viewer a non-chronological look at environmental changes. Apart from the visions of the now and the future that these graphic narratives present, temporality coded in their “grammar” (layout, panels and gutters) is also discussed.","PeriodicalId":41165,"journal":{"name":"Text Matters-A Journal of Literature Theory and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78317246","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":"Monet at a Glance: A Dynamic, Ekphrastic Encounter in Michèle Roberts’s “On the Beach at Trouville”","authors":"Marta Goszczyńska","doi":"10.18778/2083-2931.12.28","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.12.28","url":null,"abstract":"The essay analyzes Michèle Roberts’s 2012 story “On the Beach at Trouville” as an ekphrasis of Claude Monet’s early Impressionist painting, The Beach at Trouville. It first approaches the narrative though W. J. T. Mitchell’s model in which ekphrasis is understood as staging “a war of signs,” only to conclude that the dynamics between the painting and the story is too complex to be satisfactorily explained in these terms. As a result, the essay moves on to read the story as an “ekphrastic encounter” and uses Norman Bryson’s concept of the glance to account for what happens between Roberts’s text and Monet’s image. Bryson discusses the glance in opposition to the totalizing, immobile and disembodied gaze and understands it both as a way of looking and painting. The essay reveals how the glance can be used to explain important dimensions of Roberts’s ekphrastic project: its depiction of Monet’s picture as a semiotic system of arbitrary signs, its emphasis on the durational, performative aspect of painting, its insistence on the contingent nature of interpretation, and, finally, its attempts to mimic Monet’s Impressionist style. All these features, the essay argues, allow Roberts to transform her story into a dynamic scene of intermedial dialogue where word and image enter a relation of what Stephen Scobie describes as “reciprocal supplementarity.”","PeriodicalId":41165,"journal":{"name":"Text Matters-A Journal of Literature Theory and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78454197","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}
Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet, C. Arnsperger, Elizabeth A Watson
{"title":"“Did You See Last Night’s Episode of Ecotopia?”: How a TV Series Could Help Move Climate Action Forward. A Conversation with Elizabeth Watson","authors":"Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet, C. Arnsperger, Elizabeth A Watson","doi":"10.18778/2083-2931.12.20","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.12.20","url":null,"abstract":"Elizabeth Watson: My original impetus came in response to a question that was posed during a class I took on “Climate Crisis and Societal Change”— the question of “Why are there so few utopian representations of the future?” As a fan of dystopian books, films and TV shows, it struck me that I had never been exposed to, nor engaged by, a utopian story. In the same class, I was introduced to Callenbach’s Ecotopia, and I immediately wondered if it had already been made into a film or TV series. I found the society described in Ecotopia to be inspiring and well thought out, but it also seemed to be one that could act as a flexible setting in which to explore the implications of systemic change. How would changing the societal and economic system of a place look not only on the institutional level, but straight down to the interpersonal, familial and personal spheres? Could systemic change go as far as modifying our own relationship to our inner world and emotions? Could healing our relationship to nature completely change our relationship to ourselves and others? It seemed to me that Callenbach was exploring this question along with others in his novel. His Ecotopian characters have a different way Text Matters, Number 12, 2022 https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.12.20","PeriodicalId":41165,"journal":{"name":"Text Matters-A Journal of Literature Theory and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91334726","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":"Echoes of Rituals of Initiation and Blood Sacrifice in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad","authors":"A. Wicher","doi":"10.18778/2083-2931.12.24","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.12.24","url":null,"abstract":"In Heart of Darkness, the protagonist Kurtz, of whom we do not, in fact, see much, is shown as connected with a native “sorcerer,” a “witch-man,” who had “antelope horns” on his head. Antelopes, or goats, are typical sacrificial animals, and the protagonist of this novella is a European who perishes in the midst of tropical forests, in spite of the high hopes that accompany his decision to try his luck in an exotic environment. Kurtz has promising beginnings, but later he gradually degenerates, carrying out what may be called a reversal of the ritual of initiation, comparable to the inverted ritual, to use V. Propp’s term, in folklore. In this sense, he may be regarded as a counterpoint to Conrad himself whose life can easily be described as a modern and uncommonly successful enactment of the same ritual. Meanwhile, Kurtz’s, and to a lesser extent also Marlow’s, failure as initiates is inscribed in the failure of the European civilization to construct a European empire in Africa.","PeriodicalId":41165,"journal":{"name":"Text Matters-A Journal of Literature Theory and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72507689","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":"Winter’s Tales","authors":"John Michael Greer","doi":"10.18778/2083-2931.12.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.12.04","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41165,"journal":{"name":"Text Matters-A Journal of Literature Theory and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79400694","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":"A Review of Variable Objects: Shakespeare and Speculative Appropriation, edited by Valerie M. Fazel and Louise Geddes (Edinburgh UP, 2021)","authors":"M. Cieślak","doi":"10.18778/2083-2931.12.30","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.12.30","url":null,"abstract":"William Shakespeare, a literary and cultural icon, and his no less iconic texts continue to fuel the performance and adaptation landscape, various areas of pedagogy, and, inexhaustibly, academic criticism. Dynamically developing theoretical approaches, be it corpus linguistics, media studies, adaptation studies, or posthumanism, reach out to Shakespeare for stimulating research material, taking Shakespeare studies further into exciting and productive areas. One of the issues that keeps returning to the centre of various discourses is the question of what Shakespeare is, and how to approach, understand, and analyze this complex assemblage of meanings— the poet of Stratford-upon-Avon, the theatre person, the theatrical texts themselves, metonymically referred to by the name of the man, as well as their afterlives in print, performance, and appropriations across centuries, cultures, and media. What emerges as an intuitive answer to that question is “Shakespeare”—the Shakespeare object—easily recognizable through its numerous fragmentary landmarks. Variable Objects: and Speculative Appropriation , a collection M. and Geddes, ventures the exploration of that very concept. With its rich and stimulating interdisciplinary approach, it examines how “Shakespeare” keeps circulating in our world, but it does a lot more than discover ways to read Shakespeare’s texts anew. Recognizing “the interchangeability of humans and objects as its starting point” ( VO 2), the volume takes for granted the power of Shakespeare’s texts to generate an abundance of new ideas. What it does is to propose a focus on how fragments and objects, material and immaterial, human and non-human, rhizomatically networking away from the “Shakespeare”","PeriodicalId":41165,"journal":{"name":"Text Matters-A Journal of Literature Theory and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84676030","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":"“Stories of Making and Unmaking”: Deep Time and the Anthropocene in New Nature Writing","authors":"A. Player","doi":"10.18778/2083-2931.12.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.12.02","url":null,"abstract":"New Nature Writing reflects many of the anxieties which are becoming increasingly prevalent in the Anthropocene, an era which necessitates temporal leaps between the present moment, the deep past, and the deep future. Coming to contextualize our impact on the planet in the Anthropocene era in such expansive, geological terms poses profound challenges to the ways we have conventionally framed our wider place on Earth. When viewed through the lens of deep time, our impact on the planet has been comparatively brief, but we are scarcely beginning to comprehend its lasting effects. While the scale of the environmental problems we have created often seems insurmountable, this chapter argues that writing which helps us to think about deep time and acclimatizes us to its vast scale can itself serve as a way for us to grapple with the immensity of the problems we face. Through a consideration of the writing of new nature writers Robert Macfarlane and Kathleen Jamie, it looks at how their engagements with deep time challenge the feelings of helplessness that the scale of the environmental crisis can sometimes burden us with. By arguing that coming to terms with the Anthropocene is to come to terms with a changing narrative we tell ourselves about our role on the planet, it considers how New Nature Writing is playing a crucial role in this narrative shift more specifically, as it explores different ways for us to reimagine our relationship with the more-than-human world in the Anthropocene era.","PeriodicalId":41165,"journal":{"name":"Text Matters-A Journal of Literature Theory and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72563529","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":"Narrating Wonder in Mark Anthony Jarman’s Stories","authors":"Jason A. Blake","doi":"10.18778/2083-2931.12.25","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.12.25","url":null,"abstract":"Mark Anthony Jarman’s characters are often down and out, and often wandering and wondering. Using theories of wonder, this essay argues that wonder plays a key role in many of Jarman’s stories—stories that are marked not by narrative or psychological closure, but by a sense of wonder as characters muse on their lot in life. After briefly considering Jarman’s role within Canadian literature, including his innovative approaches to the short story form, and his odd status as an influential yet often ignored writer, the essay moves to a discussion of the various ways that wonder is at play in his works, both as a verb and a state. Jarman’s characters are frequently in doubt, and the act of wondering takes us into their drifting, self-reflecting minds. However, there is also the sense of wonder as the miraculous. Jarman’s narrators find optimism in the world around them, thanks to flashes of the beauty of the unlikely. Wonder, thus, has a crucial structural function.","PeriodicalId":41165,"journal":{"name":"Text Matters-A Journal of Literature Theory and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87624110","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}