Book•
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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Dissertation•
01 Sep 2018
TL;DR: Nelson et al. as mentioned in this paper explored ways of performatively facilitating ludic interactions between people and their environments, investigate what benefits might accrue from doing so, examine the structure and significance of these interactions, and consider the role of performance training in their facilitation.
Abstract: This practice-as-research project investigates the interrelations between performance, playfulness, and ecology, highlighting these as constituting an important nexus of study in the current ecological context. I explore ways of performatively facilitating ludic interactions between people and their environments, investigate what benefits might accrue from doing so, examine the structure and significance of these interactions, and consider the role of performance training in their facilitation. Conducting practice-as-research ‘in the wild’ (cf. Hutchins, 1995) provides a unique and valuable perspective from which to interrogate current and historical thinking regarding play. The rigorous supporting rationale provided suggests potential areas of impact and value for the practice beyond the performances themselves. The qualitative evidence presented supports my argument that ludic (playful) performance can positively recalibrate participants’ environmental attitudes and relations.
In order to conduct this practical inquiry, I reflexively develop an original methodology: Popular Participatory Peripatetic Performance, or 4P for short. I fully integrate playfulness into three replicable models of practice, derived from 4P, each employing a different modality of peripatetic performance. They are: Perplexpedition – an intervention in public space; Wandercast – an audio-walk podcast; and Spinstallation – a performance workshop. Each of these forms a dynamic and responsive live artwork, enacted and documented in numerous iterations, which allows for reflexive development of the models themselves as well as the overarching 4P methodology; each constitutes research process and outcome. My aim in devising this tripartite approach has been to achieve significant comprehensiveness and also to render the project accessible and attractive to as wide a variety of participants as possible, thereby maximising its validity and the generalisability of its findings.
Ecology is formulated here in line with Gregory Bateson’s “ecology of mind” ([1972] 2000: xxiii), which seeks a holistic understanding of living systems through the recognition of far-reaching patterns and formal regularities. This project builds upon Bateson’s notion that play constitutes one such pattern to develop the conceptual framework and practical approach that I term ludic ecology. I also employ James J. Gibson’s (1979) concept of affordance and draw on Baz Kershaw’s (2007) ecological approach to performance studies, using them interdependently to structure and support this project from both practical and theoretical perspectives.
This project contributes primarily to three fields: ecological performance, through an original methodology and modes of practice; practice-as-research, through a novel theoretical stance and documentation techniques; and play-studies, by refining a distinction between play and playfulness and elucidating their philosophical status. This writing aims to clarify these contributions and thus position the project as “praxis” not only as “theory imbricated within practice” (Nelson, 2013: 5), but also practice imbricated within theory.
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TL;DR: The use of the present-tense narration is not a unique phenomenon in these two or three decades as discussed by the authors, and examples abound when we expand our scope and search all types of novels published in the same period, with Margaret Atwood's quasi-autobiographical Cat's Eye (1988), Michael Cunningham's temporally multilayered fiction The Hours (1998), Deborah Moggach's straightforwardly-plotted mystery Tulip Fever (1999), Jacqueline Wilson's teen book Girls in Love (1997), Jon McGregor's prose-poem If Nobody Speaks of
Abstract: Anne Enright’s The Gathering (2007), DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little (2003), J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999), Graham Swift’s Last Orders (1996), Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger (1987), Keri Hulme’s The Bone People (1984)—what do these books have in common, other than the fact that they are all Booker Prize winners in the last quarter-century? Answer: they are novels narrated basically in the present tense, and examples abound when we expand our scope and search all types of novels published in the same period—with Margaret Atwood’s quasi-autobiographical Cat’s Eye (1988), Michael Cunningham’s temporally multilayered fiction The Hours (1998), Deborah Moggach’s straightforwardly-plotted mystery Tulip Fever (1999), Jacqueline Wilson’s teen book Girls in Love (1997), Jon McGregor’s prose-poem If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (2003), Paul McCartney and Philip Ardagh’s picture book for children High in the Clouds (2005), Paul J. McAuley’s techno-thriller sciencefiction Fairyland (1997), and Sophie Kinsella’s chick-lit The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic (2000). This considerably wide use of the narrative present tense is not a unique phenomenon in these two or three decades. According to Christian Paul Casparis, the extensive use of present-tense narration in the novels in
15 citations
01 Jan 2000
15 citations