The Maniac as the Apocryphal Intervento: How Form Determines Substance in Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist

The Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1970) is one of famed Italian play-wright Dario Fo, written as a response the neo-fascist tension that reached a boiling point in during the ‘Hot Autumn.’ A period of immense turmoil in late 20th -cemtury Italy. The play draws from the conventions of the Brechtian form and commedia dell’arte, aptly transforming them into mechanisms that can help both the play and spectators subvert the high cultures of Gramscian cultural hegemony, absorbed into ADA’s comic microcosm. This essay explores how political and theatrical realms are immortalised and then pit against each other through the course of the play, with the character of the Maniac acting as a rhetorical device acting as the connection between the two. In essence, this paper believes that Style is considered over substance in many of the styles of theatre Accidental Death operates within; the stylistic elements that quantitatively constitute the Brechtian form, commedia dell’arte, and farce allow them to subvert the ‘high cultures’ that are held culpable in Gramscian cultural hegemony, all of which ADA absorbs into its comic microcosm. This leads to a sustained paradox between the political and theatrical dimensions of the play, where the theatrical lends credence to the political though the use of fictional formal elements.

CULTURAL HEGEMONY IN CHINUA ACHEBE'S THINGS FALL APART: A POSTCOLONIAL ANALYSIS

The current research paper considers theory of cultural hegemony as reflected in the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel Things Fall Apart. The study aims to examine Achebe's novel as a profound example of cultural hegemony during the colonial era. The novelist exhibits his mother land Nigeria as a culturally hegemonized territory by the English colonizer at that time. The study also presents Antonio Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony as the main subject in the development of both fields Cultural Studies and Postcolonialism. The research paper is divided into three main sections and a conclusion. The first section shows the development of cultural hegemony as a new theory at the hand of the Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci, who is known for his own perspective of hegemony as a cultural component. Based on Gramsci's theory, the second section examines the significance of cultural hegemony in the fields of Cultural Studies and Postcolonialism. As for the third section, it tackles the theory of cultural hegemony through a selective analysis of Achebe's novel. As far as Things Fall Apart is concerned, the analysis traces the novelist's attempt to expose colonialism as a hegemonic power through an overt portrayal of the cultural struggle between the colonizer and the colonized in Nigeria. Finally, the study ends with a conclusion that sums up the ultimate findings of the research..

Certain Women Directors: US Independent Filmmakers in the World

This article analyzes the work of Chloé Zhao and its reception in order to explore the role of female auteurs in 21st century world cinema. By comparing Zhao to Kelly Reichardt, another US director acclaimed internationally for distinctive works of US regional realism, the essay argues that US independent women directors critique American cultural hegemony and the global dominance of Hollywood both through the subject matter and formal structures of their films and through their positioning within the discourse of world cinema auteurism. After analyzing the authorial personae of both directors as constructed in their films and press reception, the essay offers close readings of Reichardt’s Certain Women and Zhao’s The Rider, both set in the US West, with specific attention to the perspectives of central Native American characters. The readings demonstrate how the filmmakers use realism to locate a singular, gendered authorial perspective on the world.

A estratégia hegemônica do realismo na narrativa venezuelana e haitiana no início do século XXI / The Hegemonic Strategy of Realism in the Venezuelan and Haitian Narrative in the Beginning of the 21st Century

Resumo: O trabalho analisa dois textos realistas latino-americanos, Bicentenaire (2004) do escritor haitiano Lyonel Trouillot e Yo maté a Simón Bolívar (2010) do venezuelano Vicente Ulive-Schnell, como produtos simbólicos em circulação num campo comunicacional amplo no qual o sentido das obras como mensagens interage com o horizonte ideológico de época. A leitura literária da identidade dos personagens se fará tomando em conta o conceito de articulação de Gramsci (2011). A relação complementar entre obra e mercado se fará partindo do conceito gramsciano de hegemonia, revisado em sentido pós-estrutural por Laclau e Mouffe (2001), e também da leitura política da literatura proposta por Jameson (1994) e Rancière (2000; 2007). A tensão nas identidades marginalizadas e classes sociais articuladas nos romances aponta para uma exibição crítica da vida nacional e a desigualdade socioeconômica e, além disso, para a construção de uma nova hegemonia cultural. Porém, as obras e seus autores lidam com a frustração de observar os limites do mercado literário no debate nacional ao se deparar com o baixo índice de leitura de sociedades dominadas hegemonicamente por outros horizontes, mercados e suportes comunicacionais.Palavras-chave: romance; Haiti; Venezuela; articulação identitária; hegemonia cultural.Abstract: The article analyzes two realist Latin American texts, Bicentenaire (2004) by Haitian writer Lyonel Trouillot and Yo maté a Simón Bolívar (2010) by the Venezuelan Vicente Ulive-Schnell, as symbolic products in circulation in a broad communicational field in which the meaning of the works as messages interacts with the ideological horizon of the time. The literary reading of the characters’ identities will be done taking into account the concept of articulation by Gramsci (2011). The complementary relationship between literary work and market will be based on his concept of hegemony, reviewed in a post-structural sense by Laclau and Mouffe (2001), and also on the political reading of literature proposed by Jameson (1994) and Rancière (2000; 2007). The tension in marginalized identities and social classes articulated in the novels points to a critical exhibition of national life and socioeconomic inequality and, moreover, to the construction of a new cultural hegemony. However, the works and their authors deal with the frustration of observing the limits of the literary market in the national debate when faced with the low reading rate of societies dominated hegemonically by other horizons, markets and communicational supports.Keywords: novel; Haiti; Venezuela; identitary articulation; cultural hegemony.

Ingathering the Exiles of the Past?

This chapter follows the history of the Jewish Historical General Archives in Jerusalem, founded in 1939 and opened in 1947, which in 1969 changed its name to the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People. This archive sought to bring Jewish archives from all over the world to Jerusalem under the banner of what they termed the “ingathering of the exiles of the past.” Its leaders, including Alex Bein and Daniel Cohen, who spearheaded the effort to gather materials from Europe, hoped to draw upon the legacy of European Jewry and thereby place Jews around the world within a sphere of Israeli cultural hegemony. In this archive, one finds an extension and intensification of the Gesamtarchiv’s dream of a total archive of Jewish life—and a powerful instance showing both its possibilities and the problems of fundamentally reframing the Jewish past.

COVID-19 Viral Logics, Social Inequality and Hegemonic Mimicry: Deconstructing the Language of Cultural Parasite

Drawing on Michel Serres’ philosophical notion of the parasite, this essay examines human responses to COVID-19 that mimic parasitic behavior and uncovers social inequalities by exploring the cultural hegemony of viral logics perpetuated by the media. How can Serres’ notion of the parasite help us reconfigure structural inequalities experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic? First, the essay examines the viral logic of internalization, which seeks to normalize, if not appropriate, the impact of the pandemic through the rhetoric of togetherness. This particular viral logic induces people to internalize the coronavirus pandemic’s illusion as a crisis shared equally by all. The essay argues that this viral logic of internationalization resonates with the French philosopher’s parasite logic, which, in Serres’s words, “expresses a new epistemology, another theory of equilibrium.” Second, this study examines the viral logic of correlation, which designates certain marginalized cultural groups as infected, and therefore regarded and (mis)treated like the virus itself. This blame-game behavior mimics the parasite’s violation of the host’s chain of order and the creation of a new order that is self-serving. Hence, the parasite becomes, according to Serres, “an interruption, a corruption, a rupture of information.” The essay argues that although mimicry becomes the theatre of cultural inequality that dominates communication for the parasitic operator, both viral logics of parasitic mimicry eventually slip into mockery.

Narasi Islam dalam Studi Orientaslisme dan Post Kolonialisme

This paper will try to uncover the affair of orientalism and (post) colonialism in which the orientalist discourse, at the practical level, cannot be separated from the intertwined network of colonialism. In fact, between the two there is a reciprocal relationship that is so intimate in the form of cultural hegemony of orientalism which is fully supported by the authority of colonialism or vice versa, depending on the frame of the object being studied. But the first option is more appropriate to be my choice--for the sake of adaptation of the basic theme that will be raised. This lengthy presentation, aside from presenting paradoxical historical accounts between the two—in fact, each has its own historical identity—it will also strip down the motivation, background and epistema of the two. And with a little rash, because of my limitations, it can also be said as a case study of both at once. Tulisan ini akan mencoba menguak perselingkuhan orientalisme dan (post) kolonialisme dimana wacana orientalis, dalam tataran praksis, tidak bisa dilepaskan dari jejaring kolonialisme yang bererat-kelindan. Bahkan antar keduannya ada hubungan timbal balik yang begitu mesra berupa hegemoni kebudayaan orientalisme yang disokong penuh oleh otoritas kekuasaan kolonialisme atau bisa juga kesebalikannya, bergantung frame objek yang dikaji. Namun opsi yang pertama lebih tepat jadi pilihan saya--demi adaptasi dari tema dasar yang akan diangkat. Paparan panjang ini, disamping akan mempresentasikan paparan-paparan sejarah yang paradoks antar keduanya—bahkan sejatinya masing-masing memiliki ciri identitas sejarah sendiri—pun juga akan mempreteli motivasi, latar belakang dan epistema keduannya. Dan dengan sedikit gegabah, karena keterbatasan saya, bisa dikatakan pula sebagai studi kasus keduanya sekaligus.

The Dead Brother’s Ballad as a Balkan Shared Place of Memory

There is a ballad saved in the folklore and oral literary tradition of several Balkan peoples and their collective memory under different names, but with the same proto narrative: “The Dead Brother’s Song” (Greek), “The Return of the Dead Brother” (Macedonian), “Brother and Sister” (Serbian, Montenegrin, Bosnian), “Lazar and Petkana” (Bulgarian), “Constantin and Doruntinë” (Albanian), and “Voika” (Romanian). Appearing in several linguistic and stylistic variants, this ballad can be considered as an illustrative shared place of collective Balkan memory. Saved both as a local (national), and regional (transnational) cultural heritage, Тhe Dead Brother’s Ballad contains the most significant aspects of the Balkan cultural paradigm: mythical, mystical, folkloric, religious, ethical, and historical ones. The interpretation of this ballad in the mythopoetic context demystifies the Balkan identity prejudices and the misinterpretation of the shared cultural heritage. Methodologically, the present interpretation of the Balkan ballad is syncretic, combining diverse theoretical and interpretative tools from mythology, theory of literature, culturology and post-postcolonial criticism. Instead of giving an ultimate conclusion, this paper deconstructs the dominant interpretative strategies of the Balkan spiritual and historical heritage in the last two centuries (adoptive, contestable, convertible, competitive) showing that they all actualise the conservative principles of cultural hegemony on the Balkans. Having a scientific consensus for the transnational aspects of the Balkan cultural heritage might be a starting point for a new, empathetic strategy of their perception.