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The Politics of Postmodernism

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.
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Journal ArticleDOI
01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: In this paper, a new perspective for the interpretation of the past in J. M. Coetzee's Dusklands (1974) and Caryl Phillips's Higher Ground (1989) is presented.
Abstract: This study is an attempt to cross the boundaries between academic disciplines and provide a new perspective for the interpretation of the past in J. M. Coetzee’s Dusklands (1974) and Caryl Phillips’s Higher Ground (1989). The analysis of the narrative strategies the two authors share to expose patterns of socially and ideologically constructed representation of the historical «other» draws on some of the main ideas and concepts developed by Frank Ankersmit, one of the leading figures in contemporary historiography. Reflecting on the relation between interpretation, truth, and the meaning given to past reality, the present article reads the fragments of representations of the past as «narrative substances» and examines the choice and arrangement of these fragments in the two novels. The way individual stories of suffering are interconnected to stand as a «whole» helps our understanding of the discursive practices in the production of knowledge about the past and reveals their power and limitations.

1 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Jan 1997

1 citations

17 Mar 2008
TL;DR: In this article, a reflection on how a Christian educator should behave in a post-modern society is presented, where the emphasis on the concept of community, the importance of experience and reflection, the need of authenticity, the value of emotion and creativity, the appeal to inclusion and, at last, variety on teaching approaches.
Abstract: This article presents a reflection on how a Christian educator should behave in a postmodern society. At first, the author summarizes the main characteristics that caused postmodernism to overcome modernist paradigm and presents the postmodern assumptions, making comments in relation to the educational role. To the author, some postmodernist’s premises, such as relativism, fragmentation of knowledge and the refusal of religious doctrines are incompatible with Christian teaching, since they are definitively opposed to the biblical worldview. By the other hand, some aspects of postmodern paradigm converge to the same worldview and, therefore can serve in favor of Christian testimony. Among those aspects, the author points out the emphasis on the concept of community, the importance of experience and reflection, the need of authenticity, the value of emotion and creativity, the appeal to inclusion and, at last, variety on teaching approaches.

1 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the representation of the cultural life during the siege of Leningrad (1941-1944) in Andrei Makine's eleventh novel, La Vie d'un homme inconnu (2009).
Abstract: The present article focuses on the representation o f the cultural life during the siege of Leningrad (1941-1944) in Andrei Makine’s eleventh novel. Analysing the portrait of the block ade created by La Vie d’un homme inconnu (2009) in the light of historical works and personal writings, I demonstrate that despite its a pparent wish to contest the official version of the blockade Makine ends up endorsing some of the myths established by Soviet propaganda. He thus emphasises the Leningraders’ heroism, altruism and high level of culture, representing the blokadniki as active defenders of the city rather than helpless victims of both the atrocious conditions imposed by the siege and Stalinist terror. Consequently, alt hough the novel may seem to belong to the canon of historiographic metafiction which systematically questions official historiography an d gives voice to those excluded from making and writing History, a c areful reading of the Franco-Russian author’s eleventh work of fictio n reveals its conservative — not to say reactionary — character, even if La Vie d’un homme inconnu may be challenging another dominant discourse regarding the Soviet Union’s role in World War II, namely that forged in the West.

1 citations