Documents found
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461.More information
This paper is a critical reflection of the important debate on postmodernism in Anthropology. In the paper, the discourse and counterdiscourses on postmodernism are outlined and assessed. In the end the author (1) worries about plethora of obfuscating criticism and the dearth of revelatory ethnography in the postmodern debate and (2) suggests three paths to a future anthropology beyond the postmodern: sensorial anthropology, ethnographic film, and narrative ethnography.
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462.More information
This essay examines the formulation of the so-called Indian “problem” as a significant element in relations between Indians and non-Indians in Western Canada. Making use of the concept of the culture of public problems, the author identifies some of the means by which Indian representatives seek to renegotiate with non-Indians a new understanding of the nature of the Indian “problem”.
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463.More information
This article explores the subversive potential of kitsch aesthetics, in favor of a sobriety that would fall within the perspective of a political ecology (Gorz, 2020) or sustainable degrowth (Abraham, 2019). Starting from a critique of sobriety as it is promoted, represented and put into practice today −a sobriety we describe as managerial− we argue for the possibility of claiming a "kitsch sobriety". At first glance, this notion seems a perfect oxymoron. Yet kitsch sobriety does exist, and is embodied in singular practices, places and environments that are invisible in today's ecological discourse. This sobriety resists the prevailing primordial materialism that imposes a certain definition of the superfluous and demands its elimination, through commodification (Ferrarese, 2023) and the electronization of the world. Having explored the different meanings of the term kitsch, we will draw on the literature on garage sales and jumble sales, and on our own experience, to invite the reader to stroll with us through these places of kitsch sobriety and pay attention to certain practices of recuperation. At the end of this excursion, we will argue that it is necessary not only to question the aesthetics associated with sobriety (Rancière, 2000), but also to politicize "the superfluous" (Illich, 1973).
Keywords: Sobriété, Écologie politique, Esthétique, Kitsch, Récupération, Réparation, Réemploi, Sobriety, Political ecology, Aesthetics, Kitsch, Recovery, Repair
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Taking as starting point Paul Ricoeur's analysis on the epistemological components of historical testimony, we discuss the contribution of the literary work of Kourouma to a theoretical reflection on the possibility of the African giving testimony to his or her experience. We broach such questions such as the African's ability to express evidence as an individual, the relation between the African and the audience required to hear the account, the instability of the African's presence and his or her I in literary and historiographic fields. The trajectory of Kourouma's work makes it possible to formulate paths to better understand the rarity of African testimonials, principally in the area of institutional history.
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Dividing collections into three principal genre-types - the short story, poetry and the essay - this annotated bibliography is intended to serve as a tool for the systematic study of collections as such. Without making any pretence to exhaustiveness, the bibliography enumerates works having a broad scope which might serve as the basis of a critical reflection on the collection as genre. Short introductory notes situate the theoretical and analytical tendencies associated with each genre.
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Can we laugh reading Kafka and, if so, what are we laughing about? What in us laughs whilst The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, The Trial and The Castle are so widely reputed as nightmarish? Setting aside the serious mindset that allegorizes Kafka's novels, some critics also extoll a comic force in Kafka that still contains the metaphysical intent. This laughter arises unexpectedly, like a radical, heterodox offshoot, derived from the Talmudic tradition and the notion of an arms-length God, delegating to mankind the administration of the world, for better or for worse (and just for laughs too), to fend for themselves in their human quibbling. Walter Benjamin surely meant this when he wrote to Gershom Scholem: “I think the key to Kafka's work is likely to fall into the hands of the person who is able to extract the comic aspects from Jewish theology.”