Material Ecocriticism and the Creativity of Storied Matter Situated in the conceptual horizons of the new materialist paradigm, material ecocriticism views matter in terms of its agentic expressions, inherent creativity, performative enactments and innate meanings. It asks us to rethink the questions of agency, creativity, imagination, and narrativity. Taking into account material-discursive practices (Karen Barad)… Continue reading 26.2 | Serpil Opperman
Month: September 2015
26.2 | Michael Marder and Patricia Vieira
Writing Phytophilia: Philosophers and Poets as Lovers of Plants This essay considers the effects of phytophilia (the love of plants) in philosophy and in literature through an analysis of texts by French thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau and by Brazilian poet Manoel de Barros. In his relation to vegetal beings, the phytophile philosopher grapples with something as… Continue reading 26.2 | Michael Marder and Patricia Vieira
26.2 | Kym Martindale
Murder in Arcadia: Towards a Pastoral of Responsibility in Phil Rickman’s Merrily Watkins Murder Mystery Series Phil Rickman’s Merrily Watkins murder mystery series look to the ‘golden age’ of detective fiction to create then undo the pastoral upon which that form heavily relied. This paper examines how such a strategy might be termed post-pastoral in… Continue reading 26.2 | Kym Martindale
27.1 | Rajini Srikanth
Quiet Prose and Bare Life: Why We Should Eschew the Sensational in Human Rights Language Several scholars observe that sensational depictions of human rights violations enter international circuits of activist discussion and action. However, sensational narratives eclipse the everyday deprivations that accumulate to become a multigenerational legacy of want, stunted potential, and psychological emasculation. This… Continue reading 27.1 | Rajini Srikanth
27.1 | Loes van der Voort
Incorporating the Impossible: Female Suicide Terrorism in Before We Say Goodbye The novel Before We Say Goodbye (2004) is endorsed by Amnesty International for contributing to a better understanding of human rights values. It tells the news item story of a Palestinian girl blowing up herself and an Israeli girl in a supermarket. Through exclusion,… Continue reading 27.1 | Loes van der Voort
27.1 | Alexandra Schultheis Moore
“Not to Arouse Your Pity”: Situated Engagement and Human Rights in Dangarembga’s “The Letter” This essay reads Tsitsi Dangarembga’s short story, “The Letter,” for the ways in which its play with epistolary form challenges normative human rights discourse and literary expectations. I develop the concept of situated engagement examine how the text at once locates… Continue reading 27.1 | Alexandra Schultheis Moore
27.2 | Daniel Listoe
A Double-Negation: Allegory and the Re-inscription of Human Rights This essay explores the intersection of literary form and appeals for human rights. It focuses on how the form of allegory, or what Walter Benjamin calls the “expression of convention,” highlights the authority of those genres that work to confirm or deny human rights. To this… Continue reading 27.2 | Daniel Listoe
27.1 | Elizabeth S. Anker
Bodily Vulnerability, the Human Rights of Immigrants, and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Biutiful Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Biutiful (2010) follows the final months in the life of its protagonist Uxbal as he dies from prostate cancer. Uxbal is a middleman who brokers the labor of unauthorized immigrants, yet as he confronts his mortality he also contends with… Continue reading 27.1 | Elizabeth S. Anker