Mapping the metafictional / mapiranje metafikcije
TL;DR: The authors presented Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project as a post-modern narrative which employs various strategies such as an altered view of history, namely history serving purely as material to construct a new narrative, a growing emphasis on the manner in which space affects one's identity and overall hybridity in both the narrative structure and the characters themselves.
Abstract: The aim of the paper is to present Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus Project as a postmodern narrative which employs various strategies such as an altered view of history, namely history serving purely as material to construct a new narrative, a growing emphasis on the manner in which space affects one’s identity and overall hybridity in both the narrative structure and the characters themselves. We shall discuss Linda Hutcheon’s notion of historiographic metafiction as the key concept around which the narrative is formed, followed by a view of the characters’ search for identity in the metafictional labyrinth through Fredric Jameson’s concept of cognitive mapping. These two theories combined give us a more detailed look into the narrative structure of the novel and provide evidence of its postmodernity. The aforementioned hybridity will be presented in the context of the narrative structure resembling a loop due to its metafictional nature and through the amalgam of various nationalities in each character. The paper ultimately strives to express the postmodern characteristics of the narrative and draw attention to the way the themes of the literary work are emphasized by such a structure, more so than if any other narrative structure had been used.
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12 Dec 1990
TL;DR: Simians, Cyborgs and Women as mentioned in this paper is a collection of ten essays written between 1978 and 1989 by Haraway that analyzes accounts, narratives, and stories of the creation of nature, living organisms, and cyborgs.
Abstract: Simians, Cyborgs and Women is a powerful collection of ten essays written between 1978 and 1989. Although on the surface, simians, cyborgs and women may seem an odd threesome, Haraway describes their profound link as "creatures" which have had a great destabilizing place in Western evolutionary technology and biology. Throughout this book, Haraway analyzes accounts, narratives, and stories of the creation of nature, living organisms, and cyborgs. At once a social reality and a science fiction, the cyborg--a hybrid of organism and machine--represents transgressed boundaries and intense fusions of the nature/culture split. By providing an escape from rigid dualisms, the cyborg exists in a post-gender world, and as such holds immense possibilities for modern feminists. Haraway's recent book, Primate Visions, has been called "outstanding," "original," and "brilliant," by leading scholars in the field. (First published in 1991.)
6,863 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1936
TL;DR: One of the most important works of cultural theory ever written, Walter Benjamin's groundbreaking essay explores how the age of mass media means audiences can listen to or see a work of art repeatedly and what the troubling social and political implications of this are as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: One of the most important works of cultural theory ever written, Walter Benjamin's groundbreaking essay explores how the age of mass media means audiences can listen to or see a work of art repeatedly - and what the troubling social and political implications of this are. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.
5,238 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1989
TL;DR: In this article, the postmodernist representation is de-naturalized the natural, Photographic discourse, Telling Stories: fiction and history, Re-presenting the past: 'total history' de-totalized, Knowing the past in the present, The archive as text.
Abstract: General editor's preface. Acknowledgements. 1. Representing the postmodern: What is postmodernism? Representation and its politics, Whose postmodernism? Postmodernity, postmodernism, and modernism. 2. Postmodernist representation: De-naturalizing the natural, Photographic discourse, Telling Stories: fiction and history. 3. Re-presenting the past: 'Total history' de-totalized, Knowing the past in the present, The archive as text. 4. The politics of parody: Parodic postmodern representation, Double-coded politics, Postmodern film? 5. Text/image border tensions: The paradoxes of photography, The ideological arena of photo-graphy, The politics of address 6. Postmodernism and feminisms: Politicizing desire, Feminist postmodernist parody, The private and the public. Concluding note: some directed reading. Bibliography. Index.
1,169 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1984
TL;DR: Metafiction as mentioned in this paper surveys the state of contemporary fiction in Britain and America and explores the complex political, social and economic factors which influence critical judgment of fiction, and argues that metafiction uses parody along with popular genres and non-literary forms as a way not only of exposing the inadequate and obsolescent conventions of the classic novel, but of stuggesting the lines along which fiction might develop in the future.
Abstract: Metafiction begins by surveying the state of contemporary fiction in Britain and America and explores the complex political, social and economic factors which influence critical judgment of fiction. The author shows how, as the novel has been eclipsed by the mass media, novelists have sought to retain and regain a wide readership by drawing on the themes and preoccupations of these forms. Making use of contemporary fiction by such writers as Fowles, Borges, Spark, Barthelme, Brautigan, Vonnegut and Barth, and drawing on Russian Formalist theories of literary evolution, the book argues that metafiction uses parody along with popular genres and non-literary forms as a way not only of exposing the inadequate and obsolescent conventions of the classic novel, but of stuggesting the lines along which fiction might develop in the future.
556 citations
TL;DR: Aleksandar Hemon as discussed by the authors is the author of three novels, Nowhere Man (2002), The Lazarus Project (2008), a finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award; and the just published The Making of Zombie Wars (2015).
Abstract: Timothy Boswell, managing editor of Studies in the Novel, interviewed Aleksandar Hemon in Denton, Texas, on March 2, 2015. Hemon is the author of three novels—Nowhere Man (2002), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Lazarus Project (2008), a finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award; and the justpublished The Making of Zombie Wars (2015)—as well as two collections of short stories (The Question of Bruno [2000], Love and Obstacles [2009]) and a collection of essays (The Book of My Lives [2013]). He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003, a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation in 2004, and a PEN/W.G. Sebald Award in 2011. Hemon left his native Sarajevo to visit Chicago in 1992, planning to stay for a matter of months. After the outbreak of war in Bosnia, he was unable to return home and remained in the United States, where he studied English while working such jobs as a Greenpeace canvasser, bike messenger, and ESL teacher. He published his first story in English in Triquarterly in 1995. His work, which is often compared to that of Vladimir Nabokov, now appears frequently in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, Granta, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere, and he writes in Bosnian for the web portal Radio Sarajevo. Hemon’s books thus far have all dealt in some way with the Yugoslav wars, Bosnia, or Chicago, and they blur the lines of genre and the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction—as he points out, there is no such distinction in Bosnian literature. He lives in Chicago with his wife and two daughters.
9 citations