This edited collection offers an exploration of American literature in the age of Trumpismunderstood as an ongoing sociopolitical and affective realityby bringing together analyses of some of the ways in which American writers have responded to the derealization of political culture in the United States and the experience of a new American reality after 2016. The volumes premise is that the disruptions and dislocations that were so exacerbated by the political ascendancy of Trump and his spectacle-laden presidency have unsettled core assumptions about American reality and the possibilities of representation. The blurring of the relationship between fact and fiction, bolstered by the discourses of fake news and alternative facts, has not only drawn attention to the shattering of any notion of shared reality, but has also forced a reexamination of the purpose and value of literature, especially when considering its troubled relation to the representation of America. The authors in this collection respond to the invitation to reassess the workings of fiction and critique in an age of Trumpism by considering some of the most recent literary responses to the (new) American realit(ies)including works by Colson Whitehead, Ben Winters, Claudia Rankine, Gary Shteyngart, Jennifer Egan, and Steve Erickson, to name but a few, some of which were composed in the run-up to the 2016 election but were able to accurately and incisively imagine the world to come.
This editorial is not about pandemics. Or not only. After a long year, when most predictions about how society would change turned out to be wrong —or were revealed as mere wishful thinking—, if one thing has become clear it is the perennial difficulty, as Walker Kaplan noted in a recent article in LitHub (2020), of writing "about the swamp while still being waist-deep in it". Experiences of social and political unrest, trauma, or crises in the broadest sense "need time to percolate" and it is usually easier to look at them from a distance, obliquely, or with some measure of historical perspective (Power, 2020). And this applies to fiction as well as to historical, sociological or political analyses. In other words, the challenges of the last year are compounded by the difficulty of accurately diagnosing the present because, as the philosopher Patricia Manrique notes, faced with the novelty of a "crisis" the usual reflex is to interpret it within the parameters of the already known. We tend to appeal to tired tropes and dull meanings, for example our understanding of "time" and "crisis", in our attempt to name that which does not yet have a name. In these brief introductory notes, I turn to these three concepts —contemporaneity, crisis, time— as a means of providing a framework for approaching the eight articles that make up this monographic dossier. In their examination of literary texts that traverse the long twentieth century and reach into the twenty-first, they span almost a century, from Virginia Woolf's first modernist novel, published in 1922, to works published as recently as 2019.
According to a comprehensive study of the year 2018 published in the journal Democratization ("State of the World 2018"), democracy is in decline around the world. A retreat in democracy implies a weakening of the conditions that make it possible; that is, a drift towards autocratic rule, a disregard for the rights and protection of minorities, the curtailment of civic freedoms such as the right to assembly and to critical dissent, and a lack of commitment to the rule of law. As the report by Lührmann et al. makes clear, this retreat has been ongoing for at least a decade—as attested to by the breadth and depth of debates and publications on the matter in recent years—and is taking place primarily, though not exclusively, in democratic regions, most notably in Eastern and Western Europe and the United States. ; Irish Research Council ; 2020-07-22 JG: PDF replaced at publisher's request
It would be impossible to cover all of the questions and "hot topics" of American electoral politics in a single, or a single series of, films. But films are often very effective in explaining, one or two at a time, a variety of relevant issues, from voter suppression and legal machinations to the workings of an arcane and arbitrary electoral system. Film often manages to transmit the affective implications of fundamental issues that, in the minds of those who take advantage of them, would better remain obscure. Leaving aside series and documentaries—in which the will to explain and sometimes to denounce is perhaps more straightforward— and because it would be unwise to speak generically of such a prolific genre that continues to fascinate viewers, in this piece I will focus on just a number of films that, in dealing with the "behind the scenes" of election campaigns, draw attention to a number of issues that remain unsolved and that continue to be extremely relevant today. ; Irish Research Council
This volume addresses what is arguably one of the hottest debates in recent years – the rise of right-wing populisms across the Western world in the 21st century – while at the same time framing it through one of its most obvious, but often least understood, consequence, which is the crisis of transatlanticism. ; European Commission Horizon 2020 ; Update citation details during checkdate report - AC
This dissertation analyzes a typically overlooked novel within the corpus of post-9/11 fiction studies, Jess Walter's The Zero (2006), and puts forward some hypotheses for this under-examination. It suggests that the debates that arose in the United States in the wake of 9/11—regarding the status of fiction in the face of tragedy, the theses about the demise of irony and satire, the high expectations put on canonical authors to give meaning to the event, and standardized interpretations of what a "good 9/11 novel" should be—all contributed to construct readings of The Zero that fell within the somewhat prescriptive approaches established by the first wave of post-9/11 fiction studies, and thus overlooked the subversive potential of Walter's novel. While recent academic output is starting to explore The Zero in innovative ways, early reception of the novel failed to examine it conceptually and formally, favoring as it did a trauma studies approach that resulted in a bland analysis of the discursive exploration that the novel carries out. On the other hand, the novel's use of satirical humor has been mostly ignored, and this is partly explained by the currency of outdated theoretical conceptions of what constitutes a satirical novel. Therefore, this dissertation carries out a revision of the theoretical corpus on narrative satire and proposes its renewal through the theories of carnivalization of Mikhail Bakhtin. Approaching the novel through the notions of satirical carnival, dialogism, and intertextuality reveals how satire is a very effective way of exploring and questioning the discursive apparatus that mobilized in the United States after the attacks. Such is the object of the novel, the interaction with, the representation and the eventual subversion of a nationalist discourse that was underpinned by its appeal to foundational myths and cultural themes and that was highly accepted by the general population, which allowed the Bush administration to respond to the attacks in military terms and to suspend ...
[eng] This dissertation analyzes a typically overlooked novel within the corpus of post-9/11 fiction studies, Jess Walter's The Zero (2006), and puts forward some hypotheses for this under-examination. It suggests that the debates that arose in the United States in the wake of 9/11—regarding the status of fiction in the face of tragedy, the theses about the demise of irony and satire, the high expectations put on canonical authors to give meaning to the event, and standardized interpretations of what a "good 9/11 novel" should be—all contributed to construct readings of The Zero that fell within the somewhat prescriptive approaches established by the first wave of post-9/11 fiction studies, and thus overlooked the subversive potential of Walter's novel. While recent academic output is starting to explore The Zero in innovative ways, early reception of the novel failed to examine it conceptually and formally, favoring as it did a trauma studies approach that resulted in a bland analysis of the discursive exploration that the novel carries out. On the other hand, the novel's use of satirical humor has been mostly ignored, and this is partly explained by the currency of outdated theoretical conceptions of what constitutes a satirical novel. Therefore, this dissertation carries out a revision of the theoretical corpus on narrative satire and proposes its renewal through the theories of carnivalization of Mikhail Bakhtin. Approaching the novel through the notions of satirical carnival, dialogism, and intertextuality reveals how satire is a very effective way of exploring and questioning the discursive apparatus that mobilized in the United States after the attacks. Such is the object of the novel, the interaction with, the representation and the eventual subversion of a nationalist discourse that was underpinned by its appeal to foundational myths and cultural themes and that was highly accepted by the general population, which allowed the Bush administration to respond to the attacks in military terms and to suspend certain rights and freedoms on the domestic front, under the premise of promoting security. This dissertation seeks to demonstrate how satire understood this way is especially suited for constructing a dialogical, polyphonic and inquisitive narrative that not only questions but also dialogues with the American nation after 9/11 ; [spa] La presente tesis explora una novela poco estudiada del corpus de ficción post-11-S, The Zero (2006), de Jess Walter, y propone algunas hipótesis que puedan explicar esta falta de atención. Se sugiere que los debates que se originaron en los Estados Unidos tras el 11-S—respecto al estatus de la ficción frente a la tragedia, la supuesta falta de adecuación del humor satírico e irónico para explicarla, las grandes expectativas depositadas en los autores canónicos para que dieran sentido al hecho, y las interpretaciones un tanto prescriptivas y normativas por parte del campo de los "post- 9/11 fiction studies"—contribuyeron a determinar ciertas lecturas de The Zero dentro de los parámetros establecidos por la primera ola de ficción post-11-S, pasando por alto el potencial subversivo de la novela de Walter. La recepción temprana de la novela ha tendido a desatender el análisis formal y conceptual de The Zero al favorecer una aproximación desde los estudios del trauma que resulta en un análisis insustancial de la exploración discursiva que la novela lleva a cabo. Por otra parte, se ha ignorado casi por completo su uso del humor satírico, y ello en parte se explica por ciertas concepciones teóricas un tanto parciales y anticuadas sobre qué es una novela satírica. Por lo tanto, la tesis lleva a cabo una revisión del corpus teórico sobre la sátira narrativa y propone su renovación a través de las teorías de carnivalización de Mikhail Bakhtin. La aproximación a la novela desde las nociones de carnaval satírico, dialogismo, e intertextualidad revela como la sátira es un modo muy efectivo de explorar y cuestionar el aparato discursivo que se movilizó en Estados Unidos tras los atentados. Tal es el objeto de la novela, la interacción con, representación y eventual subversión de un discurso nacionalista que se sostuvo por la apelación a mitos fundacionales y temas culturales de alta aceptación entre la población, lo cual permitió una respuesta militar y el abandono de ciertas libertades en el frente doméstico con el fin de garantizar la seguridad. La tesis busca demostrar como la sátira entendida de este modo es especialmente idónea para construir un relato dialógico, polifónico e inquisidor que no solo cuestione sino que dialogue con la nación estadounidense tras el 11-S.
Cecilia Sosa's volume offers an incisive, heart-wrenching yet joyful exploration through the aftermath of the convulse years of the military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983), which brought horror and death to Argentine society with an estimated 30,000 people disappeared by the State (according to human rights organizations; 9,000 according to official figures), and of how Argentine society has managed to deal and engage with loss.
