The Art of Writing from the Border: Narrative Decentralisation and Pluricultural Identity Construction in Tomizza’s Franziska (1996)

Torunn Haaland

doi:10.33137/q.i..v41i1.35896

The Art of Writing from the Border: Narrative Decentralisation and Pluricultural Identity Construction in Tomizza’s Franziska (1996)

Quaderni d'italianistica ◽

10.33137/q.i..v41i1.35896 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 41 (1) ◽

pp. 95-116

Author(s):

Torunn Haaland

Keyword(s):

Identity Construction ◽

Social Background ◽

Border Crossing ◽

Early 20Th Century ◽

Historical Reconstruction ◽

Multiple Perspectives ◽

Cultural Codes ◽

Border Writing ◽

History And Myth ◽

Literary Unity

This article examines one of Tomizza’s unjustifiably understudied texts within two primary contexts: one formed around the historical, political and social background of early 20th-Century Trieste, the other around the author’s recurrent concern with hybrid characters and geopolitical, cultural and linguistic borderlands. At the surface, these contexts are dramatised to revisit a political and ethnic conflict from the viewpoint of one of its most invisible victims. To uncover the novel’s more deep-running operations, however, this study takes a narratological approach and applies perspectives associated with imagology and linguistic hybridity as well as theories of border writing and border-crossing. Whereas the narrative fusion of historical reconstruction, self-reflexive commentaries, epistolary testimonies and mythical fictionalisations creates a discourse of literary fragmentation and deterritorialisation, the protagonist’s biographical background and socio-culturally embedded experiences are interlaced to represent a liminal character formed by dual perspectives, plurilingual enunciations and incompatible loyalties. Franziska exists between history and myth and as she increasingly acquires different cultural codes, she also comes to linger, irreconcilably, between different and conflicting cultural civilisations. Just as the multidimensional text questions norms of literary unity, so does this fluid character expose stereotypical conceptions of ethnic identities. As an amalgamated device, the self-referential narrator and the border crosser he constructs expose not only ideals of linguistic and cultural purity but also totalitarian conceptions of geographical and cultural borders. Ultimately, this experimental literary operation implicates the reader in a democratic literacy of multiple perspectives that questions normative notions of identities, belonging, culture and nationhood.

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Liminality and Border Crossing in Ádám Bodor’s Novels

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica ◽

10.1515/ausp-2017-0009 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

pp. 117-129

Author(s):

Zsuzsa Tapodi

Keyword(s):

Identity Construction ◽

Ethnic Diversity ◽

Border Crossing ◽

The Self ◽

The Other ◽

Literary Works ◽

Physical Sense ◽

Border Zones ◽

Spatial Changes

Abstract The plots of the novels The Sinistra Zone (1992), The Archbishop’s Visit (1999) and The Birds of Verhovina (2011) by Ádám Bodor unfold in border zones, in spaces of liminal existence. By investigating the intricate relationship between the Self and the Other, using particular space forming techniques with shifts and displacements, these novels extend the scope of postmodern fragmentariness to identity construction as well. In these literary works enforced journeys or travels with well-defined purposes should not be merely understood in their physical sense: identity also undergoes a change, becomes hybrid. In a space characterized by a labyrinth of ethnic diversity, identities distorted by a dictatorial regime often go beyond the border of the human, the characters being endowed with animal features. Starting from Merleau-Ponty’s idea according to which action is not set in space, but rather comes into being through space (Faragó 2001, 7), the consequences of spatial changes must also be taken into account.

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The Memoirs of Cola Nicea: A Case-Study on the Discursive Identity Construction of the Aromanian Armatoles in Early 20th Century Macedonia

Res Historica ◽

10.17951/rh.2016.41.125 ◽

2016 ◽

pp. 125

Author(s):

Vladimir Cretulescu

Keyword(s):

Identity Construction ◽

20Th Century ◽

Early 20Th Century ◽

Font Size

Artykuł rozpoczyna się od ogólnego omówienia Wspomień Coli Nicei – dokumentu, który został poddany analizie z wykorzystaniem metod zaczerpniętych z krytycznej analizy dyskursu. W artykule wyjaśniono etnonimy używane przez Niceę w jego opowieści, co prowokuje do dyskusji o tożsamościach macedońsko-słowiańskiej i macedońsko-arumuńskiej na początku XX w.W dalszej kolejności omówiono formy i powody współpracy między arumuńskimi armatoles a comitadji Tajnej Macedońskiej Organizacji Rewolucyjnej w Adrianopolu, tak jak zostało to ukazane w tekście Niecei.Informacje zawarte w tym źródle prowadzą do konkluzji, że filorumuński dyskurs okazał się nieprzydatny w obliczu zaostrzenia kryzysu macedońskiego, a Arumuni,miłośnicy Rumunii, przyjęli drugi dyskurs, przez twórcze połączenie go z programem politycznym Tajnej Macedońskiej Organizacji Rewolucyjnej w Adrianopolu.Artykuł odnosi się również do rozmaitych tekstowych i metatekstowych narzędzi, które odgrywają rolę w iteracji pozycji podmiotu arumuńskich armatole Coli Nicei.

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Amateur Magazines of Tomsk Seminarians: The History of Magazine “Soyus”

Vestnik NSU Series History and Philology ◽

10.25205/1818-7919-2021-20-6-54-61 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 20 (6) ◽

pp. 54-61

Author(s):

V. A. Esipova

Keyword(s):

20Th Century ◽

Early 20Th Century ◽

Theological Seminary ◽

Historical Reconstruction ◽

Structural Element ◽

Single Issue ◽

Social Democratic ◽

Archival Documents ◽

History Of ◽

The One

The problem of publications made by students in the early 20th century recently became a matter of interest among scholars. The purpose of the article is to study one of them, “Soyuz” magazine, which was published by students of the theological seminary in Tomsk in 1907. The problem is that not a single issue of the magazine has survived to this day. Therefore, the research relies on the method of historical reconstruction based on the archival documents. The main achievements of this study are as follows. Based on the analyses of previously unknown archival sources, it reconstructs the history of the magazine, its team, printing equipment, and capacities, and the list of authors. It discovers a description of the magazine made by the Tomsk gendarme office. The article contains the contents of two issues of the magazine. It establishes that the magazine stuck to social-democratic ideas and was the structural element of the Tomsk branch of the All-Russian Seminary Union. It indicates the place of the magazine among other Tomsk periodicals. On the one hand, it fully fitted into the practice of the work of social-democratic organizations, on other hand, in terms of the methods of technical and organizational creation, it was a typical students self-published publication.

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Reception of Charles Baudelaire’s work in the poetry of Igor Severyanin

Sibirskiy filologicheskiy zhurnal ◽

10.17223/18137083/73/7 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 105-118

Author(s):

E. V. Kuznetsova ◽

Keyword(s):

Public Opinion ◽

20Th Century ◽

Early 20Th Century ◽

Avant Garde ◽

Cultural Codes ◽

Literary Heritage ◽

Second Wave

The paper considers Igor Severyanin’s approaches to the retransmission of Charles Baude-laire’s creative heritage in his lyrics. In the late 19th – early 20th century, there was a surge of interest in the works of French symbolists and their predecessors, especially to the fate and literary heritage of the author of “Flowers of evil.” Severyanin addressed Baudelaire’s poetry later, at the turn of the 1910s, referring both to his original texts, and translations and critical articles by his older contemporaries (V. Bryusov, F. Sologub, Viach. Ivanov, Ellis, Andrej Belyj, etc.). The analysis covers the peculiarities of this second-wave “Baudelairianism,” its differences from senior and junior symbolists’ apprenticeship, namely, the ironic game in-volving both the image of the “pariah poet” and some of the key themes and motifs of his poetry. In 1909, Severyanin begins mastering Baudelaire’s style by translating his sonnets, but later these, not being entirely successful, are ironically reinterpreted and published in the col-lection “Poesoantract” as purposeful parodies. Another version of the reception is presented in the poem “Sextina” (1910). Weaving a web of verbal puns, the Russian poet inscribes himself in the Pantheon of the famous rulers of doom, while destroying Baudelaire’s tragic aura and placing himself in the vacant place of the poet persecuted by public opinion. Thus, the Severyanin’s reception is seen to reveal the evolution of pre-modernist and modernist cultural codes being a part of the mass discourse, ironic distancing from them, and their loss of philo-sophical and ideological foundations. A conclusion is drawn that the deferential attitude to Baudelaire’s legacy is due both to the change in the readers’ perception in general and to the Severyanin’s aspiration for new avant-garde poetics.

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“In a strange feast hangoverˮ: the drama of the Russian intelligentsia of the early 20th century

INTELLIGENTSIA AND THE WORLD ◽

10.46725/iw.2020.3.2 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 21-33

Author(s):

Farida Akhunzyanova

Keyword(s):

20Th Century ◽

Art History ◽

Spiritual Development ◽

Human Life ◽

Early 20Th Century ◽

Cultural Codes ◽

The World ◽

The Status ◽

Russian Intelligentsia ◽

Methodological Approaches

The Russian intelligentsia at the beginning of the 20th century is characterized by a steady need for unity with the world. This need takes on an intertextual character, flowing into the interaction of ideas and cultural codes leading to the attainment of the status of Homo Cosmicus. One of these codes is a feast. The purpose of the author of the article is to reconstruct the lifecreation of the Russian intelligentsia at the beginning of the 20th century through the prism of an ancient feast. It seems that in the conditions of intense spiritual searches, in the struggle to find wholeness and completeness of human life, turning to antiquity became a truly metaphysical idea, where the feast was a significant cultural constant. In the process of moving to the highest point of spiritual development, the antique feast metaphorically reflects the cosmos of being, just as the violation of the order of the feast reflects the violation of the order of being. This is what happens in Russian reality in the first half of the 20th century, where against the backdrop of tragic historical events, the Platonic “feastˮ turns into the vulgar “feastˮ of Petronius. After the revolution of 1917 the intelligentsia, with its own aspirations, found itself at a feast alien to itself, where it could not find a place, and the “hangover” became too heavy and turned into a real drama. Methodological approaches to the problem under study are based on the theoretical basis of modern scientific knowledge, which includes concepts and methods of philosophy (N. A. Berdyaev, P. A. Florensky, D. S. Merezhkovsky, V. V. Rozanov, Vl. S. Solovyov), cultural studies (I. A. Edoshina, M. S. Kagan, Yu. M. Lotman, N. O. Osipova), art history (I. A. Azizyan, A. Payman, A. A. Rusakova, D. V. Sarabyanov), intelligentsia studies (V. S. Memetov, S. M. Usmanov).

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The Memoirs of Cola Nicea: A Case-Study on the Discursive Identity Construction of the Aromanian Armatoles in Early 20th Century Macedonia

Res Historica ◽

10.17951/rh.2016.0.125 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 41 ◽

pp. 125

Author(s):

Vladimir Cretulescu

Keyword(s):

Identity Construction ◽

20Th Century ◽

Early 20Th Century

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Brandon is a Network Not a Name: Fictocriticism & the Cyberfeminist Art of Shu Lea Cheang

Open Library of Humanities ◽

10.16995/olh.6391 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Zach Pearl

Keyword(s):

20Th Century ◽

User Experience ◽

Border Crossing ◽

Early 20Th Century ◽

Art Practice ◽

Art Object ◽

Studio Practice ◽

Cultural Theorist ◽

Recall Methods

The cyberfeminist art practice of Shu Lea Cheang evinces a particular relation of generative complicity with the art object—what Canadian cultural theorist Jeanne Randolph referred to as “the amenable object” (1983). Randolph, who pioneered “ficto-criticism”—a method of writing that intentionally blurs theory, poetics and narrative—wrote of the amenable object as an incomplete creation whose “ambiguous elements” allow the viewer to make “subjective interventions” in the work. Likewise, Cheang’s participatory installations and non-linear online narratives operate as amenable object-texts, requiring the user to not only navigate but contribute to them through acts of critical play and improvisation. Across Cheang’s oeuvre is also a nomadic politics of border-crossing that resonates as loudly with Donna Haraway’s cyborg as it does with the experimental feminist writing that became associated with fictocriticism. In this paper, I examine correlations between fictocritical approaches and formal tactics in Cheang’s studio practice to consider them as interrelated cyberfeminist strategies of resistance and dissent; ones that arose in counterpoint to the proliferation of deterministic, technocapitalist narratives. In particular, I look at how the fragmentation, partiality and double-voicing seen in many fictocritical texts were echoed in the user-experience of Cheang’s Brandon (1998), a sprawing network that posited the queer body as a collective series of actions. I conclude by looking at how these same techniques recall methods from Dadaism and Surrealism in the early 20th century and reflect on the recurrent role of indeterminacy in art and literature more generally to stem the entropy of binary paradigms.

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SOPA, FAMÍLIA E TRABALHO: PERCEPÇÕES CONSTITUÍDAS ENTRE FORQUETA E ITÁLIA

polemica ◽

10.12957/polemica.2018.45072 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 18 (4) ◽

pp. 46-59

Author(s):

Cleber Cristiano Prodanov ◽

Magna Lima Magalhães ◽

Rogério De Vargas Metz

Keyword(s):

Oral History ◽

Identity Construction ◽

Rio Grande ◽

Oral Narrative ◽

Mountainous Region ◽

Rio Grande Do Sul ◽

Italian Immigration ◽

Cultural Codes ◽

Cultural Code ◽

Person Experience

Resumo: Este estudo aborda as percepções de moradores da zona rural de Forqueta, distrito de Caxias do Sul, sobre o alimento. A localidade está inserida na região historicamente conhecida pela imigração italiana do século XIX e integra o roteiro turístico da região serrana do Rio Grande do Sul. Buscou-se, com base na narrativa oral, o recordar de sujeitos que vivenciaram experiências relacionadas à gastronomia italiana e que acionam, a partir de suas lembranças e rememorações, códigos culturais relacionados aos alimentos. Entende-se, de acordo com Alessandro Portelli (1996), que as narrativas apresentam significados individuais relacionados à vivência e à subjetividade de cada indivíduo. Para tanto, lança-se mão da história oral como metodologia de trabalho, o que possibilita conhecer e registrar diferentes manifestações socioculturais. Destacam-se, portanto, no artigo, as percepções e memórias de três descendentes de italianos que viajaram e conheceram o país de seus antepassados, a Itália. Entende-se o alimento como código cultural constituído em uma complexidade histórica e que pode ser relacionado à constituição de identidades e autorrepresentação.Palavras-chave: Alimento. Memória. Italianos. Imigração.Abstract: This study approaches the perceptions of residents of Forqueta rural area, Caxias do Sul district, about food. The locality is inserted in the region historically known by the Italian immigration of century XIX and it integrates the itinerary that is in the tourist route of the mountainous region of Rio Grande do Sul. Based on the oral narrative, we sought to recall the subjects who experienced experiences related to the Italian gastronomy and that trigger, from their memories and recollections, cultural codes related to food. According to Alessandro Portelli (1996), it is possible to comprehend that the narratives show individual meanings related to each person experience and subjectivity. Therefore, it was used the oral history as this works methodology, that enables us to know and to register different sociocultural manifestations. Stands out the perceptions and memories of three Italian descendants who had traveled and visited their parent’s country, Italy. The foods are understood as a cultural code that was made during a historical complexity and can be related to identity construction and self-representation. Keywords: Foods. Memory. Italians. Immigration.

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Green and single: The role of green distinction among environmentalists

Human Affairs ◽

10.1515/humaff-2017-0017 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 27 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Lukáš Kala

Keyword(s):

Identity Construction ◽

Collective Identity ◽

Social Differentiation ◽

Tribal Community ◽

Specific Group ◽

Self Presentation ◽

Cultural Codes ◽

Potential Partner ◽

Research Questions

AbstractThis paper examines profiles on online dating sites for environmentally aware singles identifying as ‘green single’. The research was motivated by these research questions: What kind of people use these sites to search for a partner? How do green singles earn ‘green distinction’, the markings of a green identity? The main objective of this research is to find out how green singles impress a potential partner on dating sites. The paper discusses recent research influenced by the work of Bourdieu and Maffesoli. It considers a specific group of singles obtained from the quantitative and qualitative analysis of one thousand randomly selected profiles. It investigates self-presentation strategies, characteristic green performances and identity construction among green singles, particularly ‘green cultural codes’ and ‘green scripts’. The paper contributes to the knowledge on symbolic boundaries, social differentiation and collective identity in the environmentalist subculture, discussed as a kind of neo-tribal community.

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“As it’s our last exchange next time…”. The closure initiation in email counseling

Linguistik Online ◽

10.13092/lo.87.4180 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 87 (8) ◽

Author(s):

Franziska Thurnherr

Keyword(s):

Empirical Evidence ◽

Identity Construction ◽

Collaborative Work ◽

Analytic Approach ◽

Multiple Perspectives ◽

Counseling Process ◽

Relational Work ◽

Naturally Occurring ◽

Email Counseling ◽

Relational Strategies

This paper reports from an interpersonal pragmatics perspective on the negotiation of closure of the counseling process in five naturally occurring email counseling exchanges between one counselor and five different clients. I focus on three aspects: who initiates closure, in what form, and in which interpersonal context. A mixed methodology consisting of a discourse-analytic approach combined with a participant interview serves to examine the closure initiation from multiple perspectives. Results show that extensive collaborative work (e. g. relational strategies such as showing empathy or praising) is carried out to create a “closure-relevant” environment in which the initiation of closure can occur. The counselor, who initiates all five closures, tailors the initiation according to clients’ progress so far and elicits specific relational work (e. g. self-praise) from clients that aims to position them as active self-helpers. It is the collaborative work by counselor and clients that facilitates the closure initiation of the counseling process. The analysis of the collaborative work from an interpersonal pragmatics perspective provides further empirical evidence of the link between relational work and identity construction.

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