Containing Tragedy: Rhetoric and Self-Representation in Sophocles' "Philoctetes"

1998 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas M. Falkner

This essay examines "Philoctetes" as an exercise in self-representation by looking at the self-referential and metatheatrical dimensions of the play. After suggesting an enlarged understanding of metatheater as "a particularly vigorous attempt to engage the audience at the synthetic and thematic levels of reading," I examine "Philoctetes" as a self-conscious discourse on tragedy, tragic production, and tragic experience, one which participates in a larger conversation in the late fifth century about the ethics of tragedy, including the remarks of Gorgias on theatrical deception (ἀπάτη). The play points up its own constructedness in a variety of ways, most strikingly in the theatrical character of the intrigue by which Odysseus deceives Philoctetes, which provides a play within a play and a representation of texts and readers, plays and spectators. In laying bare the kinds of strategies and techniques that undergird this "intratext," "Philoctetes" offers a model of tragedy and of the tragic poet based on power, deceit, and manipulation. Yet by attributing these characteristics to the moral deficiencies of its internal creator and by demonstrating his failure to achieve his ends, "Philoctetes" rejects such a theater of sophistry. At the same time, the play considers issues of textual reception by providing in Philoctetes an audience for this internal text and a protocol of reading that suggest a more positive model of tragic response. "Philoctetes" uses this model to offer the spectator a subject position that affirms the inherent value of reading tragedy, a humanistic model of reading based upon the audience's identification with and sympathy for the tragic protagonist. Sophocles thus finds in this exercise in self-representation a way to frame critical questions on dramatic theory and to define his own dramatic practice.

Author(s):  
Adam Schoene

Where Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) extends the domain of spectatorship beyond the ocular realm and claims that we must become the impartial spectators of our own character and conduct, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques, Dialogues (1776) also attempts to probe beyond the visual surface to examine through careful study the constitution of another, who is actually himself. This chapter traces a Smithian sentiment in the radical division of the self dramatized in Rousseau’s fictional autobiographical Dialogues, emphasizing Rousseau’s attempt to liberate his own gaze and render an unbiased judgment upon himself. Although Rousseau does not write in direct discourse with Smith, he applies a strikingly similar rhetorical device to the spectator within the dialogic structure of his apologia. Reading Rousseau alongside Smith resituates the Dialogues not as a work of madness, as it has frequently been interpreted, but rather as an unrelenting struggle for justice.


2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aliette Lambert

Extending the critical project of interrogating the consumer subject form, in this study, the consumer subject is read as potentially acritical, precarious and psychotic through Dufour’s Lacanian-inspired analysis of neoliberal subjectivity. Reflecting on two case studies from an ethnographic-type study of young women, identity and consumer culture, I demonstrate how participants attempt to fulfil neoliberal ideals related to agency, productivity and creativity. Relying on commodities for symbolic anchoring in doing so, a ‘psychotic’ and precarious subject position is evidenced. While the findings could certainly be interpreted as productive, tendencies toward materialism, uncertainty and anxiety, along with pervasive mental health issues, provided the impetus to further problematise dominant understandings of the consumer. Neoliberal consumer culture is evidenced as a harmful, dehumanising ideology that fosters competitiveness, individuality and meritocratic tendencies, encouraging a reliance on ever-changing, transient commodities to (in)form the self. This occurs at the expense of compromise, communality and social welfare, through which subjects may find more stable and emancipatory symbolic anchors. Only by recognising critical theorisations of the consumer as dominant subject positions of neoliberalism can cultural consumer researchers begin to imagine opportunities for resistance and emancipatory change.


Literator ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Deudney

This paper is a preliminary survey of the visions of the s e lf in poetry. It is concerned with the transformation of consciousness as depicted by each of the three poets a Romantic, a Modernist and a Postmodernist poet respectively and expressed in specific poems with a cyclical nature. The romantic poet Coleridge's “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is taken as the first example. It is found to be an allegory of the metamorphosis of the poet’s temporal subjective consciousness into an ‘eternal ’ subject position in the narrated text. Eliot’s "Four Quartets" exemplifies the Modernist mode of consciousness as an 'anironic vision of unity' achieved by adhering to a religio-aesthetic meta-narrative. Breytenbach (1988:115) calls his volumes of prison poetry "The Undanced Dance". Taken as a whole "The Undanced Dance" has a structure which concurs with what Brodey (1971:4) calls "an Einsteinian time-space form of relations” and lures its readers into the trap of falling into postmodern quantum consciousness.


2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-48
Author(s):  
Arti Minocha

Abstract This paper looks at the formation of colonial print publics in Punjab, the gendered subjectivities that emerged in this new discursive space, and middle-class women’s deployment of print to articulate the self. This will be done through a close reading of one of the first novels in English, Cosmopolitan Hinduani, which was published in Lahore, Punjab, by a woman in 1902. The essay examines the narrator’s notion of a gendered cosmopolitanism and the subject position that it affords, her attempt at going beyond the fault lines of religion to articulate a liberal and modern political subject, while reworking the cosmopolitan/local binary. How does her insertion of herself as a gendered subject in the provincial, national, cosmopolitan imaginary reflect in the author’s choice of language and genre? My attempt will be to see the novel and its author as part of a literary culture in which she made certain choices about the form, language, content, and audience.


1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. H. Armstrong ◽  
R. Ravindra

The Bhagavad-Gītā is the most important text in the smrti (what is remembered) literature of India, as distinct from the śruti (what is heard) literature which is traditionally regarded as ultimately authoritative. The Bhagavad-Gītā has been assigned a date ranging from the fifth century B.C. to the second century B.C. The Indian religious tradition places the Gītā at the end of the third age of the present cycle of the universe and the beginning of the fourth, namely the Kali Yuga to which we belong.


1989 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Budwig

ABSTRACTThe present study examines the relationship between linguistic forms and the functions they serve in children's early talk about agentivity and control. The spontaneous linguistic productions of six children ranging between 1;8 and 2;8 served as the data base. Preliminary analyses of who the children referred to and what forms were used in subject position suggest that the children could be divided into two groups. Three children primarily referred to Self and relied on multiple Self reference forms in subject position, while the other children referred to both Self and Other and primarily used the Self reference form, I. A functional analysis was carried out to examine whether the seemingly interchangeable use of Self reference forms could be related to semantic and pragmatic patterns. The findings indicate that at a time before they regularly refer to others, the children systematically employed different Self reference forms to mark distinct perspectives on agency.


Comunicar ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (25) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorena López-Font ◽  
Cristina González-Oñate

The Spanish televising scene is, at the present time, the center of a social and cultural discussion.Before the critic carried out towards as daily means as it is it the television, are many, (including the hearing), those that demand a reform that structures all the televising scene with the purpose of constructing an educative television and of quality. But, what it is happening from the point of view of the own television networks before the critical panorama which they face?. Which is its reaction, its strategies and their techniques to create a positive image of the own means and, most important, to transmit it to the spectator and to seduce to him?. The television networks have chosen to reframe their identity to reform the image that grant to the hearing. They have begun to be unmarked, to create a differentiating positioning before a hearing that every day is more demanding due to the supply that the technology offers to him. One of the most effective instruments fortify a position, to consolidate a position of the television companies before a heterogenous and more and more complex hearing, is the development of the televising continuity, with peculiar discursivas forms like cardboards of continuity, self-promotions, heads of programs, syntonies, bursts, etc., that contribute to fix the image of mark of the different companies, before the eyes of the spectator. This communication will be placed in the plane of the televisions like organizations to reflect from the side of televising means before the emergent problems, and to analyze the methods that are carrying out the different chains to create that positioning that differentiates from the others, centering to us in the autopromociones like the used advertising tool more, nowadays, by the television networks. The transmitted values, the corporative image and communicative identity and, really, all those aspects that in the autopromociones are expressed, will be analyzed to be able to understand the reactions caused by the chains of the Spanish televising panorama. In sum: 20 seconds of publicity of self-promotion so that a chain can transmit a new image, full of positive values for a society that, nowadays, questions own televising means, that is to say, to analyze how the televising means make use of its own channel to trasmitir and to create value of mark. El panorama televisivo español se encuentra, desde su pasado reciente hasta la actualidad, en el centro de un debate social y cultural. La audiencia, reclama ya, una reforma de contenidos que construya una televisión con mayor diversidad y equilibrio de contenidos. Esa audiencia alza la voz ante la evidente necesidad de recibir una televisión de mayor calidad. Pero, ¿qué está ocurriendo desde el punto de vista de las propias cadenas de televisión ante el panorama crítico al que se enfrentan? ¿Cuál es su reacción, sus estrategias y sus técnicas para crear una imagen positiva del propio medio? y, lo más importante para esta comunicación, ¿cómo están transmitiéndola al espectador para seducirle? Las cadenas de televisión han optado por replantearse su identidad con el objetivo de reformar la imagen que otorgan a la audiencia. Han comenzado a desmarcarse, a crear un posicionamiento diferenciador ante segmentos de audiencias que cada día son más exigentes debido a la saturación de la oferta. Uno de los instrumentos más efectivos para consolidar la posición de las empresas de televisión ante una audiencia cada vez más heterogénea y compleja, es el desarrollo de la continuidad televisiva, con formas discursivas peculiares como los cartones de continuidad, autopromociones, cabeceras de programas, sintonías, ráfagas, etc., que contribuyen a fijar la imagen de marca de las distintas empresas audiovisuales, ante los ojos del espectador. Esta comunicación se colocará en el plano de las televisiones como entidades para reflexionar desde el lado del medio televisivo ante los problemas emergentes, y analizar los métodos que están llevando a cabo las diferentes cadenas para crear ese posicionamiento que diferencie las unas de las otras, centrándonos en las autopromociones como la herramienta publicitaria más usada, hoy en día, por las cadenas de televisión. Los valores transmitidos, la imagen e identidad corporativas y, en definitiva, todos aquellos aspectos comunicativos que en las autopromociones se expresan, serán analizados para poder entender las reacciones provocadas por las cadenas del panorama televisivo español. En suma: 20 segundos de publicidad de autopromoción para que una cadena pueda transmitir una imagen nueva, llena de valores positivos para una sociedad que, hoy en día, cuestiona el propio medio. Concretamente y con esta investigación, se analizarán las últimas telepromociones de TVE-1, es decir, cómo esta cadena trasmite y crea valor de marca.


Author(s):  
Amber A. Ditizio

Modern sports/media complex may be the result of complex inactions of communication technologies, social developments, and the increased sophistication of businesses in understanding the intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of consumer behavior. From the promotion options of print media, television and radio, to the self-engaging aspects of Internet sport coverage and gaming, the spectator is rapidly becoming an integral part of the branding process. Media, especially fantasy sports, has transcended the traditional roles of television's function as agents of exposure to engagement and personal involvement in athletic contest and its merchandising. Although the media aspect may been neglected in sports research, media research traditionally has considered sports too popular for traditional research. This paper explores some of the major topics for research that combines sports and newer forms of media exploitation for marketing purposes.


Author(s):  
Michelle Devereaux

This chapter argues that Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York creates a metatextual relationship between director and protagonist through its use of Romantic irony. The film directly addresses issues of solipsism as it is told from the radically subjective viewpoint of its self-obsessed protagonist, who may or may not be descending into madness. Kaufman conjures sublime feeling in the spectator through aesthetic devices of fantastic world creation. These include the creation of mise en abyme and an engagement with Tzvetan Todorov’s fantastic ‘themes of the self’ and ‘themes of vision’, which are expressed by inexplicable narrative elements such as a continually burning house fire. Drawing on German idealism and Schlegel’s concept of Romantic irony to counteract traditional notions of mimetic realism, Kaufman portrays his film world (and the world itself) as chaotic. But whereas Kaufman’s film embraces the chaos of becoming inherent in Schlegel’s philosophy, its protagonist suffers from a complete inability to engage with life on any authentic level and subsequently fails as an artist and person.


Author(s):  
Lyne Bansat-Boudon

Lyne Bansat-Boudon gives us a ‘thick description’ of Śaktibhadra’s Āścaryacūḍāmaṇi, from which the act Aṅgulīyāṅkam is taken. She defines powerful thematic emphases and focuses on the special expressivity of this work within the classical tradition and in light of the Nāṭyaśāstra and Abhinavagupta’s commentary. Further, she discovers surprising continuities between structural features discussed by Abhinavagupta and the living performance tradition of Kūṭiyāṭṭam. She further emphasizes that the preparation of the clearing also alludes to the pūrvaraṅga, those semi-ritual and semi-theatrical preliminaries to the performance of dramatic fiction. She concludes by saying that the yogin and the spectator of drama have in common such a ‘recognition’ of the Self (which is none other than their own Self)—a transitory experience for the spectator but one established once and for all for the yogin, who is thus nothing but an ‘emancipated spectator’.


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