On pluralist mythscapes

In this article, I outline a possible way to think about the ‘mythscape’, the discursive space within which identity-constitutive mythologies are articulated, in a pluralist and pragmatic philosophical framework. Instead of concentrating on the content of particular narratives, as previous attempts in this vein have done, I explain a way to organise the mythscape which adheres to the principles of a pluralist democracy. I discuss the role of the state and its education system with respect to myths. I argue that a pluralist mythscape should be based on acknowledgement rather than recognition, and it should be aided by critical and sentimental education.

The Adolescent as Sentimental Education

This article dwells on my earlier method, of mining discursive taboos, specific for each novel by Dostoevsky, for the key values made prominent in these novels. More than the original chapter in my 1998 book, Dostoevsky’s Taboos, the article applies this method to the specific poetics of The Adolescent as Bildungsroman. As Arkady, the character, and then, eventually, the narrator, learns about his own faux pas about violating others’ taboos, he also learns about values entailed by these taboos. He becomes less selfish and more sensitive to the reality of other people and their pain and sore spots. As readers, we learn about compassion and a certain imperative system of values, together with this character, just as these newly unmentionable values emerge or transpire for him. Rather than being told about the “before and after” of the character, we are implicated in his transformation, learning his lessons together with him and never having any moral immunity from his faults or any opportunity to judge him from above.

The Adolescent as Sentimental Education

This article dwells on my earlier method, of mining discursive taboos, specific for each novel by Dostoevsky, for the key values made prominent in these novels. More than the original chapter in my 1998 book, Dostoevsky’s Taboos, the article applies this method to the specific poetics of The Adolescent as Bildungsroman. As Arkady, the character, and then, eventually, the narrator, learns about his own faux pas about violating others’ taboos, he also learns about values entailed by these taboos. He becomes less selfish and more sensitive to the reality of other people and their pain and sore spots. As readers, we learn about compassion and a certain imperative system of values, together with this character, just as these newly unmentionable values emerge or transpire for him. Rather than being told about the “before and after” of the character, we are implicated in his transformation, learning his lessons together with him and never having any moral immunity from his faults or any opportunity to judge him from above.

ГЕНДЕРНЫЕ МОДЕЛИ ИСПОВЕДАЛЬНОЙ СТРАТЕГИИ В ИСПОВЕДИ СЫНА ВЕКА А. ДЕ МЮССЕ И ИСПОВЕДИ МОЛОДОЙ ДЕВУШКИ ЖОРЖ САНД

The article deals with the peculiar features of the confessional strategy in the novels La Confession d'un enfant du siècle (1836) by Alfred de Musset and La Confession d’une jeune fille (1864) by George Sand. The author analyses correlation between the universal and the gender marked principles in the authors’ style of the presentation of events. There have been revealed similarities at the level of the plot model (the story of a young man/woman growing up), the narrative organization (confession), the motives’ structure (orphanhood, self-identification, “sentimental education”), which have been determined by the influence of the genre tradition and the authors’ Romantic worldview. At the same time, the differences in the composition, the criteria for the selection of material, the degree of frankness and self-esteem show the dependence of the confessional text on gender.

Quinteto de Buenos Aires: La educación sentimental de Pepe Carvalho

Este trabajo se acerca a la novela Quinteto de Buenos Aires (1997) de Manuel Vázquez Montalbán desde la perspectiva de teorías de la afectividad, trazando cómo en ella la racionalidad convencional tanto del género detectivesco como de la Serie Carvalho en etapas anteriores da paso a un proceso por el cual el protagonista, personalmente implicado en el caso que investiga, atraviesa una trayectoria primordialmente sentimental. El estilo fragmentado que recuerda la composición musical, y la trama del misterio, en cuya resolución Carvalho finalmente ocupa una posición casi tangencial, eluden cualquier avance lineal hacia el descubrimiento y la justicia. Mediante entrecruzamientos, reduplicaciones entre situaciones y personajes, y un complejo entramado de relaciones intertextuales e interartísticas, la novela deviene una épica de genealogías interrumpidas que termina en algo más parecido a una catarsis que a la restauración simbólica de un orden moral o la superación de un pacto de olvido. En lugar de estos posibles objetivos, puede hablarse de la historia narrada sobre todo como ejercicio de subversión emocional de regímenes opresivos apoyados, como las dictaduras española y argentina, en la regulación de lo afectivo. Palabras clave: Manuel Vázquez Montalbán; Quinteto de Buenos Aires; emociones; estructura narrativa; catarsis; memoria histórica Keywords: Manuel Vázquez Montalbán; Quinteto de Buenos Aires; emotions; narrative structure; catarsis; historical memory Título en inglés: Quinteto de Buenos Aires: The Sentimental Education of Pepe Carvalho

Memórias da violência no drama pós-catástrofe / Memories of Violence in Post-Catastrophe Drama

Resumo: A partir, principalmente, de Walter Benjamin e Jean-Pierre Sarrazac, esse trabalho analisa a insurgência na dramaturgia de Plínio Marcos de um embrião narrativo que, fazendo uso da memória traumática dos personagens e da crítica do poder como violência (Gewallt), encontrará sua realização plena em Querô, uma reportagem maldita, romance e drama da década de 1970. Na adaptação teatral do romance, a forma biográfica da matéria rememorada, princípio constitutivo da ação dramática, impôs mudanças na fábula que, negando a estrutura sintagmática da ação, passou a assumir uma configuração pós-catástrofe da cena, na qual o passado de violências do personagem é agenciado no presente da enunciação por uma “dramaturgia do retorno” e por um processo descontínuo e disjuntivo das lembranças. Na comparação entre drama e romance, compreende-se como a memória da educação sentimental de Querô coloniza a ação teatral, caracterizando uma dramaturgia da intrassubjetividade em que o personagem, testemunha de si mesmo, narra a própria Paixão.Palavras-chave: crítica da violência; drama pós-catástrofe; Plínio Marcos.Abstract: Grounded mainly on Walter Benjamin and Jean-Pierre Sarrazac’s work, this article analyzes the insurgency in Plinio Marcos’s dramaturgy of a narrative embryo that, using the traumatic memory of characters and the critique of power as violence (Gewallt), will find its full materialization in Querô, a Damned Report (“Querô, Uma reportagem maldita”), romance and drama on the 1970s. In the theatrical adaptation of the novel, the biographical form of the remembered matter, constitutive principle of dramatic action, imposed changes in the fable that, denying the syntagmatic structure of the action, began to assume a post-catastrophe configuration of the scene in which the violent past of the character is settled in the present of the enunciation by a “dramaturgy of return” and by a discontinuous and disjunctive process of remembering. Comparing the drama and the novel, one understands how the memory of Querô’s sentimental education colonizes the theatrical action, characterizing a dramaturgy of intra-subjectivity in which the character, witness of himself, narrates his own Passion.Keywords: criticism of violence; post-catastrophe drama; Plinio Marcos.

Las pasiones y los intereses: La educación sentimental de Gustave Flaubert

In Sentimental Education, Gustave Flaubert carries out a penetrating analysis of the behavior of a whole generation born during the second and third decades of the nineteenth century that will live, at a very young age, the introduction of the Orleanist regime whose bourgeoisie captained the first steps of the industrial boom of France. This generation will likewise attend the 1848 revolution, the birth of the Second Republic and the coup of Louis Napoleon. The world of big business, financial speculation and banking, along with the social response in the form of conspiracy and criticism is reported in this work. Through the story of a young provincial student moving to Paris as background, the passions and interests permanently confronted on the stage of the mid-nineteenth century France are collected.