DOCSLIB.ORG

Vampires, Vampires, Everywhere! by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Vampires, Vampires, Everywhere! by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock Underworld films from the last decade, and from the suave sophistication of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula in 1931 to Christopher Lee’s animal magnetism in numerous incarnations mostly in the 1960s and ’70s to the softer model of contemporary masculine perfection of Robert Pattinson in the movie adaptations of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight novels (Twilight, 2008; New Moon, 2009; Eclipse, 2010), the power and danger of sex have undergirded and energized the vampire cinema. That erotic charge, at least in critic David Pirie’s estimation in his Vampire Cinema (1977), constitutes the films’ primary appeal. Vampires, in short, are undeniably the sexiest of monsters. Vampires provide representations of tabooed sexuality to establish and reinforce proper sexual roles. Vampires are, quite simply, very, very naughty. They are seldom decorously heterosexual, monogamous, and respectful partners. Rather, they are polymorphously perverse seducers who, in film scholar Richard Kate Beckinsale turns heads and gives vampires some sex appeal in Underworld (2003). Dyer’s estimation, evoke the thrill of “forbidden sexuality.” Vampires are undisciplined forces of desire outside cultural networks of socialization. Driven Vampires, Vampires, by sexualized thirst, they devour the life force of their partners. Vampires are pure id, libidinal energy incarnate, and this By Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock makes them both dangerous and Everywhere! dangerously attractive. rom the Twilight films to the HBO Thirst, creates vampires as a result of Principle II: The vampire is more series True Blood, from the medical testing gone awry while the interesting than those who pursue it F alternative rock band Vampire Russian fantasy epics Night Watch (2004) Weekend to the TV series The Vampire and Day Watch (2006) include vampires Ironically, the undead are, to borrow Diaries — indeed, from Count Chocula on among a host of supernatural creatures. from contemporary philosopher Slavoj cereal boxes to Sesame Street’s Count von In any number of modern imaginings, Žižek, more alive than we are. In contrast to Count — you would have to live in a coffin vampires have gone global: In True Blood us, the vampire lives for pleasure alone and not to have your path regularly crossed as well as the Blade, Underworld and is a figure of excessive — thus, threatening by vampires. Twilight franchises — to adapt Percy — enjoyment, an uncanny surplus that In New Orleans, thanks to novelist Bysshe Shelley’s famous phrase — the transgresses social expectations and Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles sagas on “unacknowledged legislators of the highlights the precariousness of gender the page and on the screen, it seems one world” no longer are poets but vampires. can’t throw a stone without hitting the Vampires, vampires, everywhere. Why? For another look at vampires and undead. New York is vampire ground zero What explains their persistence — and related monsters, see page 22. in the 2007 Will Smith-driven movie, I Am appeal? Here are a few possibilities about Legend, the third adaptation of Richard the strange attraction of the monstrous Matheson’s apocalyptic 1954 novel about a undead, principles that my forthcoming codes. Vampires are imperial, selfish, world taken over by vampires. California is book, Vampires: Undead Cinema (due out domineering, and intensely physical. Nosferatu Central, teenage-style, in The from Wallflower Press in late 2011), Lurking beneath the human façade is pure Lost Boys (1987) while vampires take on develops in much greater depth. animalistic energy. The vampire’s power the Heartland in director Kathryn and potency (the vampire is driven not just Bigalow’s vampire western, Near Dark Principle I: Vampire narratives to feed but also to reproduce) are both (1987). Even Alaska is vulnerable — are always about sex frightening and alluring. exceptionally so, given its prolonged Those who seek to destroy the vampire, winter darkness — in the bloody 2007 Vampire narratives are always, the agents of cultural repression, cannot cinematic adaptation of writer Steve Niles inevitably, about sex — although what help but seem priggish and impotent. The and illustrator Ben Templesmith’s vampire each has to say obviously will vary Van Helsings, Jonathan Harkers, Arthur comic book miniseries, 30 Days of Night. depending upon time and place. From the Holmwoods and Quincy Morrises of the Lest one think vampires are merely “vamps” of the Theda Bara school who world seem boring juxtaposed against the a domestic concern, Sweden has a populated the silent screen of the early 20th smoldering sexuality of, say, Gary vampire problem in Let the Right One In century and “monsterized” aggressive Oldman’s titular Dracula (1992) or any of (2008), which puts an unusual spin on female sexuality to the lesbian vampires of actress Ingrid Pitt’s luscious vampire the familiar boy-meets-girl story: The Great Britain’s Hammer Studios incarnations for Hammer Studios. Dreaded young teenage girl is actually an aged productions of the 1970s to the leather-clad and desired in equal measure, the vampire vampire. The 2009 South Korean release, sexiness of vampire Kate Beckinsale in the is sexier, more interesting, and more 4 Fall 2010 commanding than the forces of cultural virulent xenophobia. Rather, the vampire is stability that seek to expel it, which in part an “overdetermined” body that condenses a is why we won’t let it die. constellation of culturally specific anxieties and desires into one super-saturated form. Principle III: The vampire always returns Dracula is certainly about sex, but is also in professor/critic Stephen Arata’s The vampire may be staked to death or estimation about race — about “reverse reduced to ashes by the sun at the end of El colonization” in which culturally inferior Vampiro (1957), The Horror of Dracula others from the backwaters of central (1958), Count Yorga, Vampire (1970), Europe infiltrate the heart of the empire. Blacula (1972), Fright Night (1985), or And True Blood parallels vampires coming Dracula 2000 (2000), but all that’s needed out of the coffin with homosexuals coming to revive him is a little blood, a voodoo out of the closet — plus raises questions ritual, or the removal of a cross from the about race and class because of its rural corpse. Even if the vampire is destroyed, Louisiana setting. What makes the vampire some trace or essence invariably survives so potent is its concatenation of sexual, — Dracula’s ashes in The Horror of racial, and technological anxieties and Dracula or his DNA in The Mark of longings — a sort of Rorschach inkblot of Dracula (1997). culturally-specific dread and desire. The vampire always returns because it is our creation, and we won’t let it rest. It is Principle VI: We are all vampire our prodigal son, returning home, bearing textual nomads with it and giving shape to deep-seated anxieties and tabooed desires that may vary None of us can simply watch a single with the times but never vanish. To “taste vampire movie. Instead, we are watching the blood of Dracula,” as the title of the many vampire movies simultaneously, 1970 Hammer Studios film demands, is in comparing the new representation with a sense redundant because Dracula’s blood the old and looking for winks that is already coursing through our veins. acknowledge a rendition is participating However, each time Dracula is in and revising an established tradition. unleashed upon the world he embodies a We are all “vampire nomads,” to adapt an new structure of feeling, a different idea from cultural theorist Henry Jenkins; awareness, an altered set of fears and we range among a profusion of vampire desires. Bela Lugosi’s Dracula in Tod texts, considering one in light of others. Browning’s 1931 version is a suave Old Vampires don’t seem to mind the bitter Alaskan Vampires have so colonized Western World aristocrat. In The Satanic Rites of winters in 30 Days of Night (2007). Far from it. cultural imagination that one need not have Dracula (1974), Christopher Lee’s Dracula read Stoker’s Dracula or seen even a single is a corporate CEO concocting a virulent vampire movie to know the basics: strain of Bubonic plague. In director F.W. the determination of what the vampire is Vampires drink blood, come out only at Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), the monstrous and how to deal with it leads to a night, can transform, are destroyed with a vampire Count Orlok is conquered by the consideration and sometimes revision of stake, etc. There are, at this point, no pure, virginal blood of a woman who epistemological paradigms and to an vampire virgins. We are bitten from the surrenders her body to the vampire, engagement with technology. Tools range moment we see Count von Count on martyring herself in the process. In Buffy from the traditional crucifix and Sesame Street or Count Chocula on a cereal the Vampire Slayer (1992) and the TV communion wafer to the sort of light box or experience our first Halloween. series it spawned, the vampire is also grenade Hugh Jackman wields in The vampire, therefore, is a ready-made vanquished by a woman, but a stake- Van Helsing (2004). metaphoric vehicle whose potency derives wielding, hip teenager who is far from The vampire thus is, perhaps in an from its intrinsic connections to fear, sex, passive. America always gets the vampire unexpected way, a sort of cyborg, defined science, and social constructions of it deserves, opines Pirie. More to the point, in relation to and, in many cases, produced difference. ■ each generation of filmmakers creates the by particular technologies of detection, vampires it desires. determination, and destruction. Vampire narratives thereby function as referendums Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock is Principle IV: The cinematic vampire on the inadequacies, perils, and promises professor of English and director is always about technology of modern science and technology.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Ghost As Ghost: Compulsory Rationalism and Asian American Literature, Post-1965
    ABSTRACT Title of Document: THE GHOST AS GHOST: COMPULSORY RATIONALISM AND ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE, POST-1965 Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, Doctor of Philosophy, 2014 Directed By: Professor Sangeeta Ray, Department of English Since the early 1980s, scholarship across disciplines has employed the “ghostly” as critical lens for understanding the upheavals of modernity. The ghost stands metaphorically for the lasting trace of what has been erased, whether bodies or histories. The ghost always stands for something , rather than the ghost simply is —a conception in keeping with dominant Western rationalism. But such a reading practice threatens the very sort of violent erasure it means to redress, uncovering lost histories at the expense of non-Western and “minority” ways of knowing. What about the ghost as ghost? What about the array of non-rational knowledges out of which the ghostly frequently emerges? This project seeks to transform the application of the ghostly as scholarly lens, bringing to bear Foucault’s notion of “popular” knowledges and drawing from Asian American studies and critical mixed race studies frameworks. Its timeline begins with the 1965 Immigration Act and traces across the 1970s-1990s rise of multiculturalism and the 1980s-2000s rise of the Multiracial Movement. For field of analysis, the project turns to Asian American literature and its rich evocations of the ghostly and compulsory rationalism, in particular Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and China Men , Amy Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses , Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman , Lan Cao’s Monkey Bridge , Heinz Insu Fenkl’s Memories of My Ghost Brother , Shawna Yang Ryan’s Water Ghosts , and Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being .
    [Show full text]
  • The Ballad of Black Tom
    Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research journal.finfar.org A Tale of Two Red Hooks: LaValle’s Rewriting of Lovecraft’s “The Horror at Red Hook” in The Ballad of Black Tom Josué Morales Domínguez Abstract: This article analyses and compares the representations of the monster in H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Horror at Red Hook” (1927) and Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom (2016), the latter being a rewriting of the former, both rooted in the Weird tale. The aim of this article is to illuminate the process through which LaValle turns Lovecraft’s narrative into one where racism becomes evident. The framework for this analysis is Cohen’s “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” (1996), which argues that monsters are bodies of text that have an iterative nature; each iteration adds new layers of meaning to the monstrous body. Whereas Lovecraft’s text arouses racist fears, LaValle’s analyses how these fears turn the racial other into a monster. Keywords: H. P. Lovecraft, Victor LaValle, Monster, The Horror at Red Hook, The Ballad of Black Tom. 1. Introduction H. P. Lovecraft has become an influential figure in modern literature, as demonstrated by the amount of scholarly attention the author has gained in the fields of speculative literature and posthumanist philosophy (see especially Sederholm & Weinstock 5–7), but also by a vast list of Lovecraft-inspired media that range from movies to board games. Lovecraft’s current importance has prompted a discussion about his stance on issues like racism, misogyny, and anti-Semitism (Moore xi–xii).
    [Show full text]
  • Jeffrey Jerome Cohen: an Introduction 1
    392 · China Miéville Notes Jeffrey Jerome Cohen: An Introduction 1. See “Long Live the New Weird.” Works Cited Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock Beebe, William. Half Mile Down. New York: Harcourt, 1934. Open Library. 1 Apr. 2008. Web. Feb. 2012. Blackwood, Algernon. “The Willows.” 1907. Project Gutenberg. 4 Mar. 2004. Web. Feb. 2012. Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins.” Other Inquisitions: 1937–1952. Austin: U of Texas P, 1964. 101–5. Print. Dennis, John. Miscellanies in Verse and Prose: A Quote . London: Knapton, 1693. Early English Books Online. 2012. Web. Feb. 2012. Fox, Marion. Ape’s-Face. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1914. Print. IF THE TRUE MEASURE OF A MAN IS THE COMPANY HE KEEPS . THEN I’M DEEPLY Hodgson, William Hope. “The Hog.” Weird Tales 39.9 (Jan. 1947). eBooks @ concerned that Jeffrey Jerome Cohen may be in trouble and we’d perhaps all Adelaide. 2012. Web. Feb. 2012. best keep our distance. King, Stephen. Introduction. H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life. By Allow me to explain: I have known Jeffrey since we met at the “Reading Michel Houellebecq. Trans. Dorna Khazeni. San Francisco: Believer Books, Monsters, Reading Culture” conference at the University of Cincinnati in 9–18. Print. 1994, at which he presented the keynote address, a version of what was to Lovecraft, H. P. “The Call of Cthulhu.” Weird Tales Feb. 1928. The H. P. Lovecraft become “Monster Culture (Seven Theses),” his introduction to his 1996 Mon- Archive. 20 Aug. 2009. Web. Feb. 2012. ster Theory: Reading Culture collection. This keynote address was given two —.
    [Show full text]
  • Philosophy / Theory / Literary Criticism / Art / Architecture / Film / Media
    philosophy / theory / literary criticism / art / architecture / film/ media philosophy / theory / literary criticism / art / architecture / film/ media philosophy / theory / literary criticism / art / architecture / film/ media philosophy / theory / literary criticism / art / architecture / film/ media philosophy / theory / literary criticism / art / architecture / film/ media human-philosophy / theory / literary criticism / art / architecture / film/ media philosophy / theory / literary criticism / art / architecture / film/ media philosophy / theory / literary criticism / ities art / architecture / film/ media philosophy / theory / literary criticism / art / architecture / film/ media philosophy / theory / literary criticism / art / architecture / film/ media philosophy / theory / literary criticism / & art / architecture / film/ media philosophy / theory / literary criticism / art / architecture / film/ media arts 30% off from University of Minnesota Press 2 Table of Contents █ Philosophy and Theory PAGES 4–6, 8–11, 15–20, 29 █ Environment PAGES 4, 8–10, 15–17 █ Literary Criticism PAGES 5–7, 11–14, 18, 24 █ Gender and Sexuality PAGES 12, 23–26 █ Forerunners series PAGES 16–17 █ New Literature PAGES 21–23, 39, 45 █ Native American and Indigenous Studies PAGES 24–25 █ Education PAGES 28–29 Table of Contents 3 █ Art and Art History PAGES 30–34 █ Museum Studies PAGES 30–31 █ Architecture and Design PAGES 34–38 █ Film PAGES 38–39, 42 █ Digital Culture PAGES 4, 18, 40–41 █ Media Studies and In Search of Media series PAGES 18, 43–44 █ Music
    [Show full text]
  • A Marvel of Monsters”
    INTRODUCTION: “A MARVEL OF MONSTERS” ASA SIMON MITTMAN and MARCUS HENSEL Under the Werewolf’s Skin curse, but the source of this curse is rarely spelled out in such Gerald of Wales, a priest1 and writer active in Britain around Many werewolf narratives imply that the monstrosity is a 1200 CE, tells a curious tale of “some astonishing things that happened in our times.” He has heard the story of another detail. This cursed werewolf then explains that he and his priest travelling through Ireland with only a boy as his wife are this cursed pair, and that she, trapped in the shape of companion. They are sitting around a campfire, beneath a tree, a wolf, is dying and needs a priest to attend to her last rites. 4 Then, as Gerald tells when a wolf approaches them. Naturally, they are afraid, but “The priest follows trembling,” but is hesitant to provide a the wolf then speaks to them with a human voice, telling them mass and absolution for a talking wolf. 2 The priest is, nonetheless, to have no fear. The wolf even “added sensible words about us, “to cleanse any doubt, his foot performing as a hand, [the astonished and afraid: he and his young assistant are alone from the head to the navel and folded it back; and the clear God” to further reassure him. male wolf] pulled back the entire skin of the [female] wolf in the woods with a supernatural creature, a wolf that speaks form of an old5 woman appeared […] He immediately rolled like a man.
    [Show full text]
  • RUSQ Vol. 58, No. 1
    THE ALERT COLLECTOR Mark Shores, Editor Goths. How did we get from warlike Germanic tribes sack- ing Rome, to an aesthetic or subculture imbued with “the The Gothic dark and melancholy, a hint of horror tinged with romance.”1 This column will show you how widely this aesthetic is represented in art, architecture, film, literature and more, Aesthetic and along the way you will undoubtedly find some great resources to add to your collections, from music CD, to academic journals, reference works and the usual popular From the Ancient and academic books. Rachel Fischer has ably put together an excellent resource for anyone wanting to build a collec- tion from the ground-up, or add some new and interesting Germanic Tribes to resources.—Editor lthough the history of the ancient Germanic tribes the Contemporary called the Goths, Visigoths and Ostrogoths occu- pied a very small portion of world history texts, their culture has influenced Western civilization Goth Subculture Amore than people may understand. Some historians believe that the modern world would not be the same without them. The Goths were not commonly known by what they called themselves, like Thervingi (forest people) and Greuthungi (steppe or rock people), but were called Goth because of their barbaric nature. This ancient culture originally wor- shipped Norse gods and was known for piracy. They were most famous for the invasions of Rome that began in 238 Rachel K. Fischer CE, and the Visigoth sacking of Rome in 410 CE. This attack greatly weakened the western Roman Empire and contrib- Rachel K. Fischer is a Metadata Librarian at the University uted to its eventual collapse, and the conquering of Italy of Alabama.
    [Show full text]
  • 6466 Egan & Weinstock.Indd
    AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT 66466_Egan466_Egan & WWeinstock.inddeinstock.indd i 113/08/203/08/20 110:000:00 AAMM 66466_Egan466_Egan & WWeinstock.inddeinstock.indd iiii 113/08/203/08/20 110:000:00 AAMM AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT Critical Approaches to Monty Python Edited by Kate Egan and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock 66466_Egan466_Egan & WWeinstock.inddeinstock.indd iiiiii 113/08/203/08/20 110:000:00 AAMM Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © editorial matter and organisation Kate Egan and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, 2020 © the chapters their several authors, 2020 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 10/12.5 pt Sabon by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 7515 0 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 7517 4 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 7518 1 (epub) The right of Kate Egan and Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock to be identifi ed as the editors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). 66466_Egan466_Egan & WWeinstock.inddeinstock.indd iivv 113/08/203/08/20 110:000:00 AAMM CONTENTS List of Figures vii Acknowledgements viii Notes on Contributors ix ‘It’s .
    [Show full text]
  • The Political Arrays of American Indian Literary History
    UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS 111 THIRD AVENUE SOUTH NON-PROFIT ORG US POSTAGE SUITE 290 PAID TWIN CITIES, MN MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55401-2520 PERMIT NO. 90155 WWW.UPRESS.UMN.EDU TO ORDER CALL 1-800-621-2736 SALES AND MARKETING University of Minnesota Press NATIONAL TRADE AND REGIONAL INTEREST 111 Third Ave. South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401 Phone: 612- 301-1990 p1 Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe p13 Laura Wertheim Joseph Harriet Bart Fax: 612-301- 1980 The Complete and Original Norwegian Folktales of p13 Alice Echols Daring to Be Bad [email protected] Asbjørnsen and Moe www.upress.umn.edu p14 Werner Herzog Scenarios III www.uminnpressblog.com p3 Shannon Gibney and Kao Kalia Yang What God Is Twitter @UMinnPress p15 Sarah Stonich Laurentian Divide Instagram @UMinnPress Honored Here? z.umn.edu/facebookump p17 Chan Poling and Lucy Michell Jack and the Ghost p5 Ola Larsmo Swede Hollow p18 Cheryl Minnema and Julie Flett Johnny’s Pheasant Assistant Director for Book Publishing p6 Billy-Ray Belcourt This Wound Is a World Emily Hamilton p19 Staci Lola Drouillard Walking the Old Road 612- 301- 1936 p7 Allen Ginsberg South American Journals [email protected] p20 Michael Schumacher The Trial of the Edmund p8 Jason Pine The Alchemy of Meth Sales Manager Fitzgerald Matt Smiley p9 Matthew Schneider-Mayerson and 612- 301- 1931 p21 Jack El-Hai The Lost Brothers [email protected] Brent Ryan Bellamy An Ecotopian Lexicon p22 Hy Berman, with Jay Weiner Professor Berman Publicist and Assistant Marketing p10 Eli Meyerhoff Beyond Education Manager p23 Robert B.
    [Show full text]
  • [LIVE] Belle Isle ********** Thursday, March 18, 2021
    1 Thursday, March 18, 2021- 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Board Meeting [LIVE] Belle Isle ********** Thursday, March 18, 2021 - 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. BIPOC Meeting [LIVE] Magnolia ********** Thursday, March 18, 2021 - 13:00 p.m. - 14:00 p.m. JFA Business Meeting [LIVE] Belle Isle SCIAFA Meeting [LIVE] Pine Lord Ruthven Assembly Meeting [LIVE] Magnolia ********** Thursday, March 18, 2021 - 15:00 p.m. – 16:00 p.m. SCIAFA Meet & Greet / Orientation [LIVE] Belle Isle ********** Thursday, March 18, 2021 16:00 p.m. - 18:00 p.m. Division Head Meeting [LIVE] Maple ********** 2 Friday, March 19, 2021 08:00 a.m. – 08:50 a.m. 1. (IF/SF/FTV/VPAA) [PRE RECORDED/UPLOADED] Weirding the Maple Anthropocene I: H.R. Giger, The Matrix, Volodine, and VanderMeer Chair: Dale Knickerbocker East Carolina University Decadence and Parasitism in the Anthropocene: An inquiry into the textual and surreal worlds of Weird Fiction, H.R. Giger and The Matric Trilogy of Films Arnab Chakraborty Ashoka University Anthropocene Weirding in the Fiction of Antoine Volodine and Jeff VanderMeer Christina Lord University of North Carolina Wilmington 2. (FTV) [PRE RECORDED/UPLOADED] Superhero Ecologies Oak Chair: Mark T. Decker Bloomsburg University There are Black People in the Future: Fast Color, Black Futures, and Radical Ecologies Shelby Cadwell Wayne State University "Thanos Was Right": Masculinity, Toxic Fandom, and the Villainization of Climate Change Dan Hassler-Forest Utrecht University Saving the World?: Superheroes and the Environment Kim Wickham Horry-Georgetown Technical College 3 3. (SFL) [PRE RECORDED/UPLOADED] Climate Fictions Captiva A Chair: Audrey Taylor Sul Ross State University, Rio Grande College Lyricality in the Anthropocene: An Afterlife for the Romantic Tool-Box Sumita Sharma University of Delhi Aspects of climate migration in Parable of the Sower and The New Wilderness Anderson Gomes Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ) 4.
    [Show full text]
  • Dissident Diaspora: Genres of Maroon Witness in Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean Literature
    Dissident Diaspora: Genres of Maroon Witness in Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean Literature by Sarah Gabriella Waisvisz A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Language and Literature Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario © 2014, Sarah Gabriella Waisvisz i Abstract This study brings human rights criticism into conversation with postcolonial and transnational studies in order to contribute to a decolonizing of trauma theory. I demonstrate how generically innovative writers from the Caribbean diaspora invoke the tradition of the fugitive slave or maroon, and in so doing, put forward revolutionary ideas about identity, race, and belonging. The genre-bending literature examined in the dissertation is engaged in a form of dissident literary maroonage. Overall, the texts demonstrate a dual focus on ethics and genre as they confront the vexed representation of human rights issues, past and present. I argue that a human rights-oriented approach to Caribbean literature, in tandem with critical attention to form and genre, can attend to witness testimonies, memory, and representations of suffering in literary texts, and can, consequently, draw attention to an ethically-charged poetics of diaspora. The Francophone and Anglophone texts examined in the dissertation, by M. NourbeSe Philip, Dionne Brand, Gisèle Pineau, Myriam Chancy, Edwidge Danticat, Jan J. Dominique, and Saidiya Hartman, represent the paradoxes and tensions of human rights issues within a Caribbean context: they engage productively with loss and mourning; underscore the ambivalent impact of ethnic, cultural, and racial mixing; narrate survivor as well as perpetrator testimony; and contribute to alternative memory projects informed by an interrogation of belonging/un-belonging.
    [Show full text]
  • Hesitant Feminism in American Women's Popular Writing Anne Aramand University of Massachusetts Boston
    University of Massachusetts Boston ScholarWorks at UMass Boston Graduate Masters Theses Doctoral Dissertations and Masters Theses 12-31-2013 Can Women Have It All?: Hesitant Feminism in American Women's Popular Writing Anne Aramand University of Massachusetts Boston Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.umb.edu/masters_theses Part of the American Literature Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Aramand, Anne, "Can Women Have It All?: Hesitant Feminism in American Women's Popular Writing" (2013). Graduate Masters Theses. Paper 205. This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Doctoral Dissertations and Masters Theses at ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CAN WOMEN HAVE IT ALL?: HESITANT FEMINISM IN AMERICAN WOMEN’S POPULAR WRITING A Thesis Presented by ANNE ARAMAND Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS December 2013 English Program © 2013 by Anne Aramand All rights reserved CAN WOMEN HAVE IT ALL?: HESITANT FEMINISM IN AMERICAN WOMEN’S POPULAR WRITING A Thesis Presented by ANNE ARAMAND Approved as to style and content by: Holly Jackson, Assistant Professor Chairperson of Committee Joyce Peseroff, Distinguished Lecturer Chairperson of Committee Elizabeth Fay, Professor Member
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction the American Gothic
    Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-11714-3 — The Cambridge Companion to American Gothic Edited by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock Excerpt More Information JEFFREY ANDREW WEINSTOCK Introduction The American Gothic In Leslie Fiedler’s seminal study of American literature, Love and Death in the American Novel, first published in 1960, Fiedler makes bold claims for the significance of the Gothic1 genre to American literature. He asserts, for example, that “It is the gothic form that has been most fruitful in the hands of our best writers” (28), that the tradition of American literature “is almost essentially a gothic one” (142), and that “Until the gothic had been discov- ered, the serious American novel could not begin; and as long as that novel lasts, the gothic cannot die” (143). Symptomatic of its historical moment, Fiedler’s study limits itself almost exclusively to white male authors. His conclusion, however, is one that arguably could be extended much more broadly: “our greatest writers sought out gothic themes” (142). The American literary tradition, which for Fiedler more or less begins with Charles Brockden Brown at the turn of the eighteenth century and extends to Nabokov but that we could extend today to include Shirley Jackson, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, Bret Easton Ellis, Gloria Naylor, Louise Erdrich, Anne Rice, Cormac McCarthy, Peter Straub, and many others, is at its core a Gothic one. An understanding of American culture and character, therefore, must include as part of its consideration the Gothic impulse as it manifests in both literary and popular culture. While Fiedler’s claims about the centrality of the Gothic form to American letters seem difficult, if not impossible, to dispute, they do introduce some curious problems.
    [Show full text]