Jean-Jacques Thomas

Bio: Jean-Jacques Thomas is an academic researcher from State University of New York System. The author has contributed to research in topics: Poetry & Aristocracy (class). The author has an hindex of 2, co-authored 14 publications receiving 24 citations.

Poststructuralism and the New Humanism

Abstract: THE "TOWER OF BABEL" by Pieter Breugel the Elder depicts our linguistic research as a titanic collective enterprise requiring the efforts of an organized, hard-working multitude. The image of the "Tower of Babel" can be seen as a representation of the structuralist movement as well. Closely examined, the painting's laboring masses surprise us with their general movement away from the tower and toward us, the viewers--so that we can imagine the title of the painting to be "Structuralists of Yore Turning their Backs on Linguistics." Among the most well-known French structuralists, many at one point or another have become apostates, renouncing their original principles and ventriloquizing what has become known as "poststructuralist" positions. Barthes, Foucault, Todorov and Deleuze are exemplary of this radical shift. A full treatment of their "poststructuralist" theories would require an extensive discussion not possible here. It is, however, necessary to propose a brief assesment of the conditions which have led to their devolution, especially at a time when in Europe--particularly in France and Germany-the legitimacy of their apostasy comes under question, and when the challenge of the New Humanism promotes innovative means to shape a different critique of our contemporary society.

The Ephemeral Era: Gilles Lipovetsky

Abstract: brief reference to the immigration question within the general framework of the global "door-slamming" by rich nations on immigrants from poor neighboring countries, no special mention is made of France as a particularly troubling spot in the world. While there are references to important elections in Germany and Russia, nothing is said about the French upcoming April presidential elections, as if an election that will change the nature of a fourteen-year r6gime (and for which only a few seem eager to be candidates) were not important. There is an old French proverb, "Happy people do not have History." It's probably too rash to conclude from the absence of France in the Newsweek article -that that country has now reached the blissful status of a happy people that time has forgotten. However, if this were the case, there is no doubt that the philosopher of such a nation would be Gilles Lipovetsky. Contrary to the other French jeunes essayistes (such as Bernard-Henri Levy, Pascal Bruckner, Alain Finkielkraut, Luc Ferry, and others), Lipovetsky is a supporting chronicler of a post-1968 French society perceived as indulgent and narcissistic, living in a satisfying democracy organized as a free market and driven by the opiate of advertising and frivolous desires generated by fads. This stance places Lipovetsky at odds with the French intellectual tradition, which has always considered individualism as a social poison. Although French intellectuals have valorized a "right" social disobedience to oppose a perceived mistake by the majority, individualism for the sake of personal gratification has always been rejected as not socially conscious. The whole social fabric of France, in a sense, has been shaped since the French Revolution so as to counteract the idle, narcissistic characteristics of its former aristocracy. "Fraternity" has been elevated to the status of key-word in the new egalitarian order of the Republic, and it is assumed that the genius of our great figures is due largely to their caring for the community, and not indulging in a selfish pursuit of individual happiness. Even Tocqueville, a

Le Poete en personnes: Mises en scene de soi et transformations de l'ecriture chez Blaise Cendrars, Guillaume Apollinaire et Max Jacob

Abstract: Cette these analyse les enjeux de la diversification des styles et des representations du poete chez trois ecrivains, Blaise Cendrars, Max Jacob et Guillaume Apollinaire. L’essentiel du corpus s’etend de 1912-1919, soit les annees de guerre et l’immediat avant- et apres-guerre. La carriere de ces trois poetes prend alors son envol; ce sont des initiateurs de l’avant-garde poetique postsymboliste. L’une des caracteristiques saillantes de leur demarche est de multiplier les representations de soi souvent divergentes ou contradictoires, accompagnees d’autoderision et/ou d’autopromotion hyperboliques, de porte-parole fictifs ou de transformations stylistiques importantes. Cela va a l’encontre d’une tendance a l’effacement du poete dans la poesie moderne et contemporaine. Mais les deux phenomenes d’effacement et de mise en scene excessive, temoignent d’une meme interrogation sur la place du poete dans la societe et du monde exterieur a l’art. Face au poeme, poser la question « qui parle? » revient a demander a quel titre il parle, de quel droit, depuis quelle position: affaire de valeur et de legitimite. Pour peu que le poete n’ait plus de role social ou symbolique clair, il peut se retirer de son poeme sous pretexte que la particularite de son existence n’a aucune pertinence, – ou bien profiter de l’indetermination de son statut pour jouer les roles qui lui plaisent; mage, oracle, soldat, paria, etc. Jacob, Apollinaire et Cendrars optent pour ce jeu de masques qui temoigne a la fois d’une inquietude – le poete n’a-t-il plus aucune place? – et d’une aspiration a l’universel: parler enfin pour tous – en devenant chacun tour a tour.

Cripping Communication: Speech, Disability, and Exclusion in Liberal Humanist and Posthumanist Discourse

Abstract: In this article, I bring communication and disability studies into dialogue, arguing that speech communication has long been a dilemma within liberal humanism and posthumanism. While humanism venerates speech as the most privileged manifestation of rational human identity, it defers the immanent tension in speech between universal and particular by excluding nonnormative voices from the realm of rational discourse. The reconfiguration of the humanist subject into the posthuman privileges informationally flexible and malleable bodies. The disabled speaker provides an important critique of the ableism and exclusion latent within communication theory and offers new modes of thinking about posthuman communication as an embodied and impure activity based on noise, relationality, and reciprocity.

The state of literary semiotics: 1983

Abstract: Semiotics is a science of communication and signification. Vast in breadth, yet limited to the study of sign function, semiotics has been defined as 'the exchange of any messages whatever and of the systems of signs which underlie them' (Sebeok 1974: 211). To write a history of semiotics is to be in touch with the theory of knowledge in general and to be aware of the enormity of its scope. It was in the course of this kind of experience that Umberto Eco playfully listed the many fields of investigation undertaken in the name of semiotics: zoosemiotics, olfactory signs, tactile communication, codes of taste, paralinguistics, medical semiotics, kinesics and proxemics, musical codes, formalized languages, written language, unknown alphabets and secret codes, natural languages, visual communication, systems of objects, plot structure, text theory, cultural codes, aesthetic texts, mass communication, and rhetoric (Eco 1976: 9-13). To this list he later added psychoanalysis, motor signs, grammatology, traffic signs, architecture, and literature (Sebeok 1978b: 13). Where does literature fit into this kaleidoscope of semiotic subjects that constitute a science of communication and signification? Literary exchanges are particular forms of communication, whose complex workings occupied the prolonged interest of Russian formalists and early structuralists in search of the specificity of literary discourse, which they called 'literariness. It was from this fruitful search that literary semiotics grew. Far-reaching in scope, varied in form, diverse in perspective, semiotics is one of the key constants linking the various 'isms' found on the twentiethcentury literary critical scene — Russian formalism, New Criticism, structuralism, and post-structuralism. What is literary semiotics and when did it begin? While interest in signs and modes of signification has appeared to affect literary criticism only since the 1970s, readers familiar with the history of semiotics can trace its development from the time of the Greeks. The French classical age had its own stronghold on semiotics among the Port Royal grammarians, who sought to discover a universal logic and the laws of reason through the

Reimagining Cubanidad: Transnational and Alternative Spaces in Contemporary Cuban Cultural Production

Abstract: of a dissertation at the University of Miami. Dissertation supervised by Dr. George Yudice and Dr. Lillian Manzor. No. of pages in text. (200) The dissertation surveys the impact of the 1990s crisis in the de-construction of the revolutionary and exile imaginary in Cuban literature and music respectively, by less politically visible agents and cultural spaces within and outside the island. By conducting close readings of novels written during and about the crisis, a series of thematic coordinates that delineate a post-Soviet literary moment are identified. The analysis of the negotiation of narratives of identity and practices of music production documents a relatively unexplored transnational network of music collaborations among singers, songwriters and academically trained musicians that massively migrated at the time. The study argues that in light of the nineties’ crisis, new Transnational and Alternative narrative spaces emerged, resulting in creative “in-between” spaces that reflect the emergence of a post-national and/or post-socialist aesthetic condition. It identifies generational connections between musicians and writers that propose plural narrative approaches to Cubanness. The dissertation encourages a critical multidisciplinary scholarly conversation about the sustained process of transnationalization of Cuban cultural production in particular since the turn of the 21century.

Translation in Lydia Davis's work

Abstract: This thesis analyses the position of translations in the work of the American writer and translator Lydia Davis. Davis has been publishing stories and translations since the early 1970s, and has translated works by Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, and Marcel Proust among others. This thesis argues that her translations form a graft onto the body of her own fiction; they are both part of her work and retain their identity as being written by someone else. The first chapter builds on theory from Translation Studies and literary criticism to formulate a theory of translation as a form of writing that creates texts which are recognised to be equivalent to another, pre-existing text in another language. The second chapter posits three main tendencies for how an author’s translations may be seen to interact with their other writings: no relationship; training or influence; and dialogue. The next four chapters provide case studies which analyse Davis’s translations in relation to other texts by Davis and the author she translated. Chapter three focuses on Blanchot, who is an important figure for Davis. Chapter four analyses Davis’s relationship of influence and dialogue with Leiris. Chapter five posits that Davis creates a dialogue with Proust in her translation and her novel. Chapter six questions Davis’s rejection of some of her translations as ‘work-for-hire’, focusing on Leon-Paul Fargue, whose writing is only superficially similar to Davis’s, and Daniele Sallenave, whom Davis rewrites in her own novel. The final two chapters analyse how Davis’s own stories use translation and similar intertextual techniques, questioning the boundaries of translation as a practice. These stories make translation a central part of Davis’s work, as it operates within the structure of some of her stories as well as in the more conventional sense of her translations of other writers.