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McDonaghland as a global village
Konárková, Michaela ; Pilný, Ondřej (advisor) ; Armand, Louis (referee)
The objective of this e-ssay is to explore various possible perspectives -of looking at Martin McDonagh's work. The author of so far six extremely successful plays premiered between the years 1996-2003 has engaged much critical attention as belonging both to the British and Irish theatrical context. However, another important circumstance of his work is that of the globalized, supranational context. I would like to prove that it is in this context where the parodic strategy of his plays is most powerful. The theoretical background of this thesis is represented by Marshall McLuhan's book War and Peace in the Global Village, Zygmun-d- Bauman's book Globalizatio~d Linda Hutcheon's/oetics of Postmodernism.
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Giving a voice to the Other: Said's theory of anti-colonial resistance
Daghman, Ali ; Armand, Louis (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
Compared to the detailed theoretical analysis of colonial power and discourse, the conception of anti-colonial resistance has been generally underdeveloped and undertheorised. This inadequate, theoretical concern with resistance to colonialism has lead to the current conception of colonial power and discourse in postcolonial theory. This argument is illustrated on the analysis of the approaches to resistance in the works of Foucault and Bhabha, who have paid the major attention to the issues of power, knowledge and colonialism. They are countered by the work of Edward Said who brings resistance to the focal point of the post- and anti-colonial discourse. Foucault argues that resistance is neither defined by terms of its object, nor is it the result of intentionality on the part of the subject, whether this subject is collective or individual. He thinks of power as an intentional question without a subject, as if he were talking about purposefulness without purpose or action without agency. Yet, Foucault's theory of resistance remains inadequately explored. For Foucault, resistance is not integral but rather a necessary condition for the operation of power. Power itself is viewed as an undifferentiated conception: he tends to think of power from the standpoint of its actual realisation, not the opposition to...
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The Language and Subjectivity of a Portrait
Dudešek, Štěpán ; Armand, Louis (advisor) ; Vichnar, David (referee)
In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Joyce shifts away from the traditional objective narration to a more subjective mode of writing. The reader can experience the story and the characters not only through what is actually written but also through how it is written. Joyce employs various language techniques to show different styles that create the feeling of different voices. Four major registers can be distinguished: a child's language, 19th century lyricism, the language of the Catholic school and the more complicated style of the last chapter. The prevalent techniques suggesting a child-like usage are manifested through repetition, childish expressions, use of modality and questions. Lyricism then draws on Byronic and other 19th century parallels, for instance the overuse of adjectives, elevated metaphors and frequent occurrence of standard poetic tropes. The language of the Church is reflected in sermon-like repetition, archaic words, biblical expressions and heavy diction. The language of the last chapter tries to use precise technical terms in an imitation of Thomist and other scholastic texts and manages to incorporate many of the previous elements as well, although often in a self-mocking way. All these techniques and devices in part substitute the traditional objective narrative and help to...
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Authority and Authorship: James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men as a Work of Fictocriticism
Childs, Morgan ; Armand, Louis (advisor) ; Vichnar, David (referee)
viii Abstract This thesis uses James Agee's 1941 book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men to examine the role of so-called fictocriticism in emphasizing the immutability of an author from within a text. The thesis argues that the fictocritical text accounts for the impossibility of extricating the author from writing. Although its precursors date back several centuries- perhaps most notably to Michel de Montaigne-the term fictocriticism was coined in the mid- to late twentieth century to describe texts existing at the interstices of ostensibly fictional and factual genres of writing. Agee's text, borne out of a journalistic assignment for Fortune magazine, blends elements of long-form magazine journalism with lyric poetry with the author's famous sprawling, diaryesque prose, calling the reader to question which elements of the text are rooted in fact and which are simply the author's fabrications or, indeed, whether such a distinction can be drawn. The term can be applied only anachronistically to the 1941 book, yet as defined in these pages it is a befitting description of Agee's otherwise unclassifiable text. Fictocriticism lacks a singular definition, so the examination of Agee's Famous Men as a fictocritical work rests on a thorough revision of the term's history and its lexical implications, both of which...
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Stolen generation in Australia
Valentová, Zuzana ; Armand, Louis (advisor) ; Kolinská, Klára (referee)
The main theme of this thesis is Australia's "Stolen Generation." This term refers to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were removed by force from their families between the years 1909 - 1969. However, these years are only unofficial numbers and it is known that the removals took place even before and after this period. The aim of this policy was to assimilate the Aboriginal people in order to educate them in the British manner. This policy was an act of cruelty and abuse since the children were brought away from their families and put into state institutions or foster care to suppress their culture. The aim of the thesis is to portray the development of the Aboriginal culture; beginning with the situation prior to British colonization and ending with the current situation in Australia. The thesis analyses the situation during the colonization and after it because the process of colonization caused further changes. It demonstrates the inability of the Indigenous people to assimilate to the new lifestyle. After the colonization, the Aborigines were deprived of their land and their traditional culture. The worst policies were the removals of so-called 'half-caste' children from their families, which were nothing less than forcible removals that were done without any permission from their...
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Brophy, Deligny, and Guattari: the Avant-Garde as Subsumption and Stratification
Sabitova, Valeriya ; Armand, Louis (advisor) ; Vichnar, David (referee)
The thesis considers Felix Guattati's notion of transversality, Fernand Deligny anti-pedagody, and Brigid Brophy's novel In Transit (1969) to argue that the terms of subsumption and stratification have the potential to address the conceptual apparatus of the avant-garde to avoid certain foreclosures concerned with the rhetoric of revolutionary transformation traditionally associated both with vanguardism in a politico-ideological sense and with the avant-garde as an aesthetic and critical project. To unlock the critical potential of the terms of subsumption and stratification in regard to the avant-garde, the theoretical framework of Félix Guattari and Fernand Deligny developed as a result of their clinical experience with psychotic and autistic patients, respectively, is used to foreground how subsumption and stratification are inherent in the notions of transversality, group subjectivity, assemblage of enunciation, signification, schizoanalysis, tracing, and mapping. Using these, the thesis argues that in order to address the theoretical foreclosures associated with the notion of the avant-garde, the latter should be viewed in the light of the complementary operations of subsumption and stratification. To substantiate the argument, the thesis juxtaposes Félix Guattari's notion of transversality,...
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Parasitic Voices and Prosthetic Selves: Detecting the Post-Lyrical Subject in the Works of Contemporary Digital Literature
Suchánek, Tomáš ; Vichnar, David (advisor) ; Armand, Louis (referee)
This diploma thesis explores subjectivity in the domain of so-called digital writing, that is, in texts of largely experimental nature generated by computer algorithms (or with their assistance). In order to do so, the thesis briefly covers the history of digital writing, its mediatic specificities, poetics as well as various theoretical and philosophical conceptualizations. Most importantly, it undertakes an analysis of a post-lyrical subject, a concept devised by Janez Strehovec, that is common to all cases of generative writing under focus. For its comparative analysis, the thesis deals with the recent works from contemporary creators who approach algorithmic textuality from variegated perspectives, incl. Nick Montfort, Allison Parish, Stephanie Strickland, Li Zilles, and Jörg Piringer. Texts generated by programs are conceived of as expressing a new, parasitic and prosthetic, genus of cyber-textual subjectivity that defies the traditional lyric and expands its pool "by other means," as Marjorie Perloff would say. Such a tendency results in conceptually as well as formally complex literary corpus "infected" by - to further exploit the suggested metaphor - parasitic voices and prosthetic selves. Unlike in generic lyric, the post- lyrical subject surpasses the confines of poetry as genre; it is...
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The American Dream Machine: Anti-Systemic Fictions of Coover, Thompson, Burroughs, and Acker
Novická, Tereza ; Armand, Louis (advisor) ; Vichnar, David (referee)
Thesis Abstract The thesis examines manifestations of transgression in Robert Coover's The Public Burning (1977), Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (1971), William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch (1959) and The Nova Trilogy (1961-1967), and Kathy Acker's Empire of the Senseless (1988) on a structural and thematic level. Georges Bataille's theory of escalated excess and Michel Foucault's theory of the transgression-limit power dynamics, outlined in Chapter One, provide the theoretical framework through which the texts are analyzed, as through concepts of the spectacle, the carnival, taboo, and the Situationist détournement practice. The nature of the American Dream Machine is explored in regards to its chief components of control; the American war on abstractions, American exceptionalism, and the American Dream, examined through their contradictory connotations and historical relevance. The thesis proposes that despite their anti- systemic drive, the selected texts are complicit with and dependent on the American Dream Machine in perpetuating their power play. In Chapter Two, the hyperbolization of American Cold War propaganda rhetoric is analyzed in Coover's The Public Burning. Chapter Three details Thompson's gonzo writing against the...
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Postmodernity's Search for Postgender: Brophy, Winterson and Place
Peková, Olga ; Armand, Louis (advisor) ; Vichnar, David (referee)
Postmodernity's Search for Postgender: Bropy, Winterson and Place (Abstract) The thesis examines three formally very diverse texts published in 1969, 1993 and 2013 respectively that creatively approach and subvert the gender binary: Brigid Brophy's In Transit, Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body and Vanessa Place's Boycott. Based on Jean-François Lyotard's conception of postmodernism as modernism in a constantly nascent state, the author advances a hypothesis of "postgender." This however does not mean overcoming gender for good (as it is sometimes understood, for example by Rosi Braidotti), but as a structural momentum, a possibility of subversion at the heart of any gender schema and currently therefore of genderism, i.e. the belief that gender is necessarily binary and that aspects of our gender are inherently linked to our sex assigned at birth. Apart from feminist theory and literary criticism, the thesis also touches on the field of transgender studies, psychoanalysis, philosophy of history and most importantly the work of Jacques Derrida. In so doing it tries to articulate the notion of postgender as part and parcel of the condition of postmodernity and a culmination of the modern split of the subject, leading to a certain cultural gender turn during the 1990s. The work nevertheless remains...
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Authority and Authorship: James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men as a Work of Fictocriticism
Childs, Morgan ; Armand, Louis (advisor) ; Vichnar, David (referee)
viii Abstract This thesis uses James Agee's 1941 book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men to examine the role of so-called fictocriticism in emphasizing the immutability of an author from within a text. The thesis argues that the fictocritical text accounts for the impossibility of extricating the author from writing. Although its precursors date back several centuries- perhaps most notably to Michel de Montaigne-the term fictocriticism was coined in the mid- to late twentieth century to describe texts existing at the interstices of ostensibly fictional and factual genres of writing. Agee's text, borne out of a journalistic assignment for Fortune magazine, blends elements of long-form magazine journalism with lyric poetry with the author's famous sprawling, diaryesque prose, calling the reader to question which elements of the text are rooted in fact and which are simply the author's fabrications or, indeed, whether such a distinction can be drawn. The term can be applied only anachronistically to the 1941 book, yet as defined in these pages it is a befitting description of Agee's otherwise unclassifiable text. Fictocriticism lacks a singular definition, so the examination of Agee's Famous Men as a fictocritical work rests on a thorough revision of the term's history and its lexical implications, both of which...
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