DOCSLIB.ORG

Food, Nostalgia, and the Power of Dreaming in Old Comedy and the New Southern Food Movement

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Food, Nostalgia, and the Power of Dreaming in Old Comedy and the New Southern Food Movement UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Agrarian Pasts, Utopian Futures: Food, Nostalgia, and the Power of Dreaming in Old Comedy and the New Southern Food Movement A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Drama and Theatre by Lily Kelting Committee in charge: University of California, San Diego Professor Nadine George-Graves, Chair Professor Page duBois, Co-chair Professor Patrick Anderson Professor Anthony Edwards Professor Marianne McDonald University of California, Irvine Professor Daphne Lei 2014 Copyright Lily Kelting, 2014 All rights reserved. Signature Page The Dissertation of Lily Kelting is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Co-chair Chair University of California, San Diego University of California, Irvine 2014 iii Table of Contents Signature Page ............................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents .......................................................................................................... iv List of Tables ................................................................................................................. vi Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... vii Vita……… ..................................................................................................................... x Abstract of the dissertation ............................................................................................ xi Introduction: Be realistic! Demand the impossible. ....................................................... 1 Why utopianism? ................................................................................................... 9 Why these case studies? ...................................................................................... 13 Methodologies ..................................................................................................... 14 Why food? ........................................................................................................... 21 Chapters ............................................................................................................... 24 Chapter One: Golden Age Utopias and the Power of Utopian Thinking in Aristophanes’ Birds and Assemblywomen ........................................................ 30 “Outlines of a Better World”: Towards a definition of utopian performance ..... 30 Aristophanes’ novelty and utopianism ................................................................ 39 Golden Age utopias before Aristophanes ............................................................ 54 Utopianism in Aristophanes: transcending the meddlesome city ........................ 63 Polypragmosune, sophism, and the boastful chef ............................................... 68 City and country .................................................................................................. 74 A culinary free-for-all in Assemblywomen: the limit case of slavery ................. 79 Chapter Two: Utopian Thinking and Utopia at odds in Aristophanes’ Acharnians .... 89 A road map .......................................................................................................... 96 Democratic ideology and longing: a brief literature review .............................. 102 iv Dikaiopolis at Athens ........................................................................................ 106 Utopian freedom between positive and negative freedoms ............................... 116 Utopia and the failure of democracy ................................................................. 126 Chapter Three: Regressive Temporal Logic of Paula Deen’s Southern-Fried Nostalgia and the Seoul Food of the Future ................................................................... 139 Nostalgia as antihistory ..................................................................................... 142 Nostalgia as televisually mediated .................................................................... 146 Nostalgia at the border between regional history and American exceptionalism ........................................................................................................................... 148 Nostalgia and contemporary health concerns: on diabetes and kimchi grits ..... 154 Antihistory and temporal estrangement ............................................................. 159 Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. and the afterlife of the spoken menu minstrel show 166 The regressive logic of temporal estrangement ................................................. 170 Re-enactment and the regressive logic of southern nostalgia ........................... 174 Atlanta’s Buford Highway ................................................................................ 181 Chapter Four: Nostalgia and Utopianism in Contemporary Southern Food Cookbooks ........................................................................................................................ 195 “Telling a better—telling a fuller story” ........................................................... 142 Starters ............................................................................................................... 200 Cookbooks as performance ............................................................................... 208 Culinary mimesis and cooking by feel .............................................................. 211 Appetizers: archiving loss ................................................................................. 218 Grains: continuity versus discontinuity ............................................................. 221 Drinks: substitution and surrogation ................................................................. 227 Meats: hunting, experience, and the South outside the South ........................... 230 Preserves: celebrating and reinventing southern culture ................................... 238 In Defense of the City of Pigs: Some Conclusions .................................................... 244 The city of pigs .................................................................................................. 250 Works Cited ................................................................................................................ 249 v List of Tables Figure 1: “Road map” to Acharnians. .......................................................................... 97 Figure 2: Booker Wright. Still from Mississippi: A Self Portrait (1966). .................. 164 Figure 3: Mama Blue serves shrimp soup. Still from Forrest Gump (1994). ............ 172 Figure 4: Grandma Blue serves shrimp soup. Still from Forrest Gump (1994). ........ 172 Figure 5: Mama Blue is served shrimp soup. Still from Forrest Gump (1994). ........ 180 Figure 6: Signs on Buford Highway, Atlanta Georgia (2010). .................................. 182 vi Acknowledgements In San Diego, a brand called “No Bad Days” emblazons its slogan across tire covers, back windshields, and baseball caps. I have taken this message, outlined by two curving palm trees, much to heart. This dissertation could not exist without the love, friendship, and support of my exceptional friends and colleagues. I submit this dissertation in a spirit of deep gratitude to those who push, nurture, and laugh with me. I would like to thank my incredible colleagues and friends in the Department of Theatre and Dance. My lone cohort, Julie Burelle, has been not only an incisive editor but also an unwavering defender of my work and ideas even before I was. Heather Ramey has routinely encouraged me to dream, live, and dissertate outside the box. Sonia Fernandez has been an indispensable source of good sense and most importantly good fun. Janet Hayatshahi invited me to join her onstage after I was the only incoming student to answer “no” to the orientation-week question “are you an artist?” My answer has changed. Of course, my brilliant, funny, challenging, talented, and supportive colleagues and collaborators have truly made every day a joy. In particular, I can’t wait to high-five Naysan Mojgani, Melissa Minnifee, and Nadeen Kharputly when this is all done. Amy Evans at the Southern Foodways Alliance made the last two chapters possible. She deserves to be thanked over a microphone in a large and full auditorium. The Southern Foodways Alliance is an invaluable academic resource for the serious and passionate study of southern foodways. It is also comprised of some very sharp, generous, and kind women. The dissertation that follows would be very different without several late nights on the balcony of City Grocery. Thank you to Emilie vii Dayan Hill for hosting me and the University of Mississippi and UCSD’s Department of Theatre and Dance for financially supporting my time there. I would also like to thank the generous and passionate chefs and authors who agreed to be interviewed for this project. They are truly organic philosophers. I feel very fortunate to work with such a dissertation committee. Their suggestions on the content and structure of this manuscript have improved it greatly. Most importantly, their faith that a non-traditional project of this nature could come together was very dear to me. I am particularly grateful to my dissertation co-chair, Page duBois, for her mentorship. If I never
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Marx's Confrontation with Utopia Darren Webb Department of Politics
    In Search of the Spirit of Revolution: Marx's Confrontation with Utopia Darren Webb Department of Politics Thesis presented to the University of Sheffield for the degree of PhD, June 1998 Summary This thesis offers a sympathetic interpretation of Marx' s confrontation with Utopia. It begins by suggesting that Marx condemned utopianism as a political process because it undermined the principles of popular self-emancipation and self-determination, principles deemed by Marx to be fundamental to the constitution of any truly working­ class movement. As a means of invoking the spirit of revolution, it was therefore silly, stale and reactionary. With regards to Marx's own 'utopia', the thesis argues that the categories which define it were nothing more than theoretical by-products of the models employed by Marx in order to supersede the need for utopianism. As such, Marx was an 'Accidental Utopian'. Two conclusions follow from this. The first is that Marx's entire project was driven by the anti-utopian imperative to invoke the spirit of revolution in a manner consistent with the principles of popular self-emancipation and self-determination. The second is that, in spite of his varied attempts to do so, Marx was unable to capture the spirit of revolution without descending into utopianism himself Such conclusions do not, however, justify the claim that utopianism has a necessary role to play in radical politics. For Marx's original critique of utopianism was accurate and his failure to develop a convincing alternative takes nothing away from this. The accuracy of Marx's original critique is discussed in relation to the arguments put forward by contemporary pro-utopians as well as those developed by William Morris, Ernst Bloch and Herbert Marcuse.
    [Show full text]
  • Utopia and the Ends of the City 16Th Annual International Conference – Utopian Studies Society (Europe) 1-4 July 2015, Newcastle University, UK
    Utopia and the Ends of the City 16th Annual International Conference – Utopian Studies Society (Europe) 1-4 July 2015, Newcastle University, UK. It [a town] is an artefact – an artefact of a curious kind, compounded of willed and random elements, imperfectly controlled. If it is related to physiology at all, it is more like a dream than anything else” Joseph Rykwert, Idea of a Town. “Man ceased to be a wild animal only when he built the first wall” Yevgeny Zamyatin, We. Utopia and the Ends of the City 16th Annual International Conference – Utopian Studies Society (Europe) 1-4 July 2015, Newcastle University, UK. CONFERENCE OVERVIEW BY DAY Day 01 – Wednesday 01 July 13.00 – 16.00 CONFERENCE REGISTRATION 14.00 – 16.00 Careers Session - Optional Careers Session for Postgraduate/Early Career Researchers 16.00 – 17.30 Formal Welcome & Plenary 01 18.00 – 21.00 Welcome BBQ at Northern Stage 1 Utopia and the Ends of the City 16th Annual International Conference – Utopian Studies Society (Europe) 1-4 July 2015, Newcastle University, UK. Day 02 – Thursday 02 July Parallel Sessions Panel 01: Panel 02: Panel 03: Panel 04: Panel 05: Times The Ends of the City Revisions Utopia & the Everyday Utopias, Heterotopias, Representations Dystopias 09.00 – 09.30 CONFERENCE REGISTRATION – Percy Building Foyer 09.30 – 11.00 Urban Voids New Directions in Intentional Early Modern Utopias The Metropolitan Utopian Thought Communities City 11.00 – 11.20 TEA & COFFEE BREAK 11.20 – 12.50 The Sense of an Vertical Tomorrow Never Dies: Ending (1): Infrastructures of Cinematic
    [Show full text]
  • 9/15 JEFFREY JAMES HENDERSON William Goodwin Aurelio Professor
    9/15 JEFFREY JAMES HENDERSON William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of Greek Language and Literature General Editor, Loeb Classical Library Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences Department of Classical Studies 460 Park Drive Boston University Boston, MA 02215 745 Commonwealth Avenue, Rm. 435 (857) 250-4216 Boston, MA 02215 (617) 358-5072 or 2427 email: [email protected] EDUCATION PhD 1972 Harvard University MA 1970 Harvard University BA 1968 Kenyon College (summa cum laude) POSITIONS HELD Visiting Professor Spring 2010 Brown University Aurelio Professor of Greek 2002-- Boston University Dean of Arts and Sciences 2002-07 Boston University Professor and Chair 1991-2002 Boston University Visiting Professor 1986 Univ. California at Los Angeles Professor 1986-91 Univ. Southern California Associate Professor 1983-86 Univ. Southern California Visiting Professor 1982-83 Univ. Southern California Associate Professor 1978-82 Univ. of Michigan (Ann Arbor) Assistant Professor 1972-78 Yale University ACADEMIC HONORS Kenyon College Highest Honors in Classics Brain Prize in Classics Essay Prize in English Phi Beta Kappa Harvard Univ. Bowdoin Prize in Latin Prose Composition PRIZES AND HONORS Raubenheimer Distinguished Faculty Award (1991) University of Southern California Doctor of Humane Letters (1994) Kenyon College Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit (2002) American Philological Association Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences elected 2011 eProduct/Best in Humanities (2015) for digital LCL American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly
    [Show full text]
  • Rethinking Athenian Democracy.Pdf
    Rethinking Athenian Democracy A dissertation presented by Daniela Louise Cammack to The Department of Government in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Political Science Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts January 2013 © 2013 Daniela Cammack All rights reserved. Professor Richard Tuck Daniela Cammack Abstract Conventional accounts of classical Athenian democracy represent the assembly as the primary democratic institution in the Athenian political system. This looks reasonable in the light of modern democracy, which has typically developed through the democratization of legislative assemblies. Yet it conflicts with the evidence at our disposal. Our ancient sources suggest that the most significant and distinctively democratic institution in Athens was the courts, where decisions were made by large panels of randomly selected ordinary citizens with no possibility of appeal. This dissertation reinterprets Athenian democracy as “dikastic democracy” (from the Greek dikastēs, “judge”), defined as a mode of government in which ordinary citizens rule principally through their control of the administration of justice. It begins by casting doubt on two major planks in the modern interpretation of Athenian democracy: first, that it rested on a conception of the “wisdom of the multitude” akin to that advanced by epistemic democrats today, and second that it was “deliberative,” meaning that mass discussion of political matters played a defining role. The first plank rests largely on an argument made by Aristotle in support of mass political participation, which I show has been comprehensively misunderstood. The second rests on the interpretation of the verb “bouleuomai” as indicating speech, but I suggest that it meant internal reflection in both the courts and the assembly.
    [Show full text]
  • Slaves, Sex, and Transgression in Greek Old Comedy
    Slaves, Sex, and Transgression in Greek Old Comedy By Daniel Christopher Walin A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Classics in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Mark Griffith, Chair Professor Donald J. Mastronarde Professor Kathleen McCarthy Professor Emily Mackil Spring 2012 1 Abstract Slaves, Sex, and Transgression in Greek Old Comedy by Daniel Christopher Walin Doctor of Philosophy in Classics University of California, Berkeley Professor Mark Griffith, Chair This dissertation examines the often surprising role of the slave characters of Greek Old Comedy in sexual humor, building on work I began in my 2009 Classical Quarterly article ("An Aristophanic Slave: Peace 819–1126"). The slave characters of New and Roman comedy have long been the subject of productive scholarly interest; slave characters in Old Comedy, by contrast, have received relatively little attention (the sole extensive study being Stefanis 1980). Yet a closer look at the ancestors of the later, more familiar comic slaves offers new perspectives on Greek attitudes toward sex and social status, as well as what an Athenian audience expected from and enjoyed in Old Comedy. Moreover, my arguments about how to read several passages involving slave characters, if accepted, will have larger implications for our interpretation of individual plays. The first chapter sets the stage for the discussion of "sexually presumptive" slave characters by treating the idea of sexual relations between slaves and free women in Greek literature generally and Old Comedy in particular. I first examine the various (non-comic) treatments of this theme in Greek historiography, then its exploitation for comic effect in the fifth mimiamb of Herodas and in Machon's Chreiai.
    [Show full text]
  • "A Study of Three Plays by Jean Genet: the Maids, the Balcony, the Blacks"
    Shifting Paradigms in Culture: "A Study of Three Plays by Jean Genet: The Maids, The Balcony, The Blacks" Department of English and Modern European Languages Jamia Millia Islamia New Delhi 2005 Payal Khanna The purpose of this dissertation is two fold. Firstly, it looks at the ways in which Genet's plays question the accepted social positions and point towards the need for a radical social change. Secondly, this dissertation also looks at Genet's understanding of theatre to underline the social contradictions through this medium. The thesis studies through a carefully worked out methodology the dynamic relationship between theatre and its viewers. This dissertation analyses the works of Genet to locate what have been identified in the argument as points of subversion. In this world of growing multiculturalism where terms like globalization have become a part of our daily life Genet's works are a case in point. Genet's plays are placed in a matrix that is positioned outside the margins of society from where they question the normative standards that govern social function. They create an alternative construct to interpret critically the normalizing tendency of society that actually glosses over the social contradictions. The thesis studies the features of both the constructs-that of society and the space outside it, and the relation that Genet's plays evolves between them. The propensity of a society that is divided both on the basis of class and gender is towards privileging groups that are powerful. Therefore the entire social rubric is structured in a way that takes into consideration the needs of such groups only.
    [Show full text]
  • Greek Drama As Feminist Window on American Identity 1900-1925
    Pre-print version of article forthcoming in K. Bosher, F. Macintosh, J. McConnell and Patrice Rankine (eds. 2014) The Oxford Handbook to Greek Drama in the Americas The Migrant Muse: Greek Drama as Feminist Window on American Identity 1900-1925 Edith Hall (KCL) The Quest for a New Muse Just before the academic rediscovery of ancient Greek drama in performance in the 1880s, Walt Whitman appealed for a new form of poetry to replace worn-out classicism, in ‘Song of the exposition’ (1871): Come, Muse, migrate from Greece and Ionia; Cross out, please, those immensely overpaid accounts. That matter of Troy, and Achilles’ wrath, and Eneas’, Odysseus’ wanderings; Place ‘Removed’ and ‘To Let’ on the rocks of your snowy Parnassus... For know a better, fresher, busier sphere – a wide, untried domain, awaits, demands you. But what, precisely, would be the nature of the Muse’s fresher, busier, untried North American domain? If she was to migrate from Greece and Ionia, how was she to adapt herself to a new destination far from her original home? This chapter looks at some ways in which American Modernist feminists used the Muse of Greek drama in the reconfiguration of American identity. Fifty years later, on July 7th 1921, Calvin Coolidge, Vice-President of the USA, addressed the American Classical League at UP in Philadelphia. Despite the tumultuous history 1 Pre-print version of article forthcoming in K. Bosher, F. Macintosh, J. McConnell and Patrice Rankine (eds. 2014) The Oxford Handbook to Greek Drama in the Americas of the intervening decades, he still defended the American tradition of classical education, even while confessing his desire for a distinctively American identity: We do not wish to be Greek.
    [Show full text]
  • Aristophanes in Performance 421 BC–AD 2007
    an offprint from Aristophanes in Performance 421 BC–AD 2007 Peace, Birds and Frogs ❖ EDITED BY EDITH HALL AND AMANDA WRIGLEY Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing Legenda: Oxford, 2007 C H A P T E R 16 ❖ A Poet without ‘Gravity’: Aristophanes on the Italian Stage Francesca Schironi Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Aristophanes has enjoyed a certain public profile: I have counted at least seventy-four official productions that have taken place in Italy since 1911. The most popular play by far seems to be Birds, which has taken the stage in sixteen different productions. Clouds is also reasonably popular, having been staged in twelve different productions. There have also been some interesting rewritings and pastiches of more than one play. But particularly striking is the relative infrequency with which Frogs — in my view one of Aristophanes’ most engaging comedies — has been produced: it has only seen public performance twice, in 1976 and in 2002.1 Indeed, it is one of those two productions of Frogs that attracted my attention: the most recent one, directed by Luca Ronconi at Syracuse in May 2002. As most people know by now, this performance excited many discussions, in Italy,2 as well as abroad,3 because of widespread suspicion that it had incurred censorship at the hands of Berlusconi’s government. I would like to reconsider this episode, not only because it is both striking and ambiguous, but above all because on closer inspection it seems to me a particularly good illustration of how theatre, and in particular ancient Greek and Roman theatre, ‘works’ in Italy.
    [Show full text]
  • The Eden Project – Gardens, Utopia and Heterotopia
    Heterotopian Studies The Eden Project – gardens, utopia and heterotopia To reference this essay: Johnson, P. (2012) ‘The Eden Project – gardens, utopia and heterotopia’ Heterotopian Studies [http://www.heterotopiastudies.com] Gardens and utopia Utopias have ‘frequently invoked the special and resonant spaces of gardens, just as gardens have often been utopian in impulse, design and meaning’ (Hunt, 1987: 114): The garden provides an image of the world, a space of simulation for paradise-like conditions, a place of otherness where dreams are realised in an expression of a better world. (Meyer, 2003: 131) The garden features strongly in Thomas More’s original account of utopia. The conversations that form the basis of the book take place in a garden in Antwerp (1965: 17); the narrative suggests that the founder of utopia must have had a ‘special interest’ in gardening; and the inhabitants of utopia are said to be particularly fond of their gardens (53). Bloch goes so far as to suggest that in More’s utopia, ‘life is a garden’ (1986a: 475). Mosser and Teyssot assert that ‘nostalgia for the Garden of Eden has provided garden designers throughout history with a model of perfection to aspire to’ (1990: 12). Elsewhere, Mosser claims that garden enthusiasts seem ‘devoted to creating the impossible’ (1990: 278). Bauman asserts that gardeners ‘tend to be the most ardent producers of utopias’ (2005: 4). A recent exhibition at the National Art Museum of China (2008) entitled ‘Garden Utopia’ articulates the traditional perspective of a Chinese garden as a space for ‘contemplation, a borderland between reality and fantasy to escape the trappings of the modern world and reconnect humanity with nature’.
    [Show full text]
  • The Rise of Authoritarianism in a Democratic Regime in Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen1
    The rise of authoritarianism in a democratic regime in Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen1 Greice Drumond2 Abstract: The plot of Assemblywomen tells the story of a coup organized by a group of women to conquer power and administrate the city of Athens. By examining the historical and dramatic elements in this comedy, we seek to comprehend the use of the notions of liberty and democracy, taking into consideration that through the drama we glimpse on what can happen when democracy is undermined. Aristophanes made use of artistic liberty to re- define the parameters of his art, showing a new form of comedy and how liberty can contribute to the development of art and society. Keywords: Athenian democracy; Aristophanic comedy; Assemblywomen; liberty; coup. Resumo: A trama de Assembleia de Mulheres conta a história de um golpe organizado por um grupo de mulheres para conquistar o poder e adminis- trar a cidade de Atenas. Ao examinar os elementos históricos e dramáticos desta comédia, buscamos compreender o uso das noções de liberdade e democracia, levando em consideração que, nesse drama cômico, entrev- emos o que pode acontecer, quando a democracia se encontra enfraquecida. Além desse aspecto narrativo, Aristófanes fez uso da liberdade artística para redefinir os parâmetros de sua arte, apontando um novo formato de comédia e mostrando como a liberdade pode contribuir para o desenvolvi- mento da arte e da sociedade. Palavras-chave: democracia ateniense; comédia aristofânica; Assembleia de Mulheres; liberdade; golpe. Introduction The play Assemblywomen (Ecclesiazousai)3 presents us with an opening scene of wom- en preparing themselves to attend the essential democratic institution of Athens’s governing body, the ἐκκλεσία [“Assembly”].
    [Show full text]
  • CX247/CX347: Sexuality and Gender in Antiquity (2015/16)
    09/24/21 CX247/CX347: Sexuality and Gender in Antiquity | University of Warwick CX247/CX347: Sexuality and Gender in View Online Antiquity (2015/16) Aeschines. n.d. Against Timarchus. http://0-www.loebclassics.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/view/aeschines-timarchus/1919/ pb_LCL106.1.xml. Andrea Nye. 1989. ‘The Hidden Host: Irigaray and Diotima at Plato’s Symposium.’ Hypatia 3 (3): 45–61. http://0-www.jstor.org.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/stable/3809787. Aristophanes. n.d. Assemblywomen | Loeb Classical Library. http://0-www.loebclassics.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/view/aristophanes-assemblywo men/2002/pb_LCL180.245.xml. ———. n.d. Clouds | Loeb Classical Library. http://0-www.loebclassics.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/view/LCL488/1998/volume.xml. ———. n.d. Clouds | Loeb Classical Library. http://0-www.loebclassics.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/view/LCL488/1998/volume.xml. Aristotle. n.d. Generation of Animals. Loeb Classical Library. http://0-www.loebclassics.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/view/LCL366/1942/volume.xml. ———. n.d. Politics. Loeb Classical Library. http://0-www.loebclassics.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/view/LCL264/1932/volume.xml. ———. n.d. Politics | Loeb Classical Library. http://0-www.loebclassics.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/view/aristotle-politics/1932/pb_L CL264.3.xml?result=1&rskey=BFeRhi. Ashley Cooper, Maurice, and Xenophon. 1810. The Cyropædia, Or, The Institution of Cyrus. Philadelphia: B.B. Hopkins & Co. http://0-opac.newsbank.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/select/shaw/22117. Barnard, Laura S., and Aristophanes. 1987. Aristophanes’ Clouds. Vol. Bryn Mawr Greek commentaries.
    [Show full text]
  • The Ecstasy of Rebellion in the Works of Jean Genet
    City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Dissertations and Theses City College of New York 2014 Dissidence is Bliss: The Ecstasy of Rebellion in the Works of Jean Genet Shane Fallon CUNY City College How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/237 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Dissidence is Bliss: The Ecstasy of Rebellion in the Works of Jean Genet By Shane Fallon Mentored by Harold Aram Veeser August 2013 Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts of the City College of the City University of New York “We must see our rituals for what they are: completely arbitrary things, tired of games and irony, it is good to be dirty and bearded, to have long hair, to look like a girl when one is a boy (and vice versa); one must put ‘in play,’ show up transform, and reverse the systems which quietly order us about. As far as I am concerned, that is what I try to do in my work.” -Michel Foucault “What is this story of Fantine about? It is about society buying a slave. From whom? From misery. From hunger, from cold, from loneliness, from desertion, from privation. Melancholy barter. A soul for a piece of bread. Misery makes the offer, society accepts.” -Victor Hugo, Les Miserables Table of Contents Introduction…….
    [Show full text]