Vol. 12 No. 2 (2022): DISASTER DISCOURSE: REPRESENTATIONS OF CATASTROPHE (II)
The journal’s originality lies primarily in the following cherished values: 1. inclusiveness: open to both literature-centered, and culture-centered scholarship, both theory, and practice/ applied analysis, and coverage of the entire English-speaking space; 2. pluralism: no theoretical or ideological partisanship, pooling scholars from all areas of the world, all national and academic cultures; open-minded engaging of contentious subjects; 3. extended cultural discourse studies: screening the entire field of applicability for the notion of discourse and discourse studies as a suprasegmental concept, meant to bring together under the same umbrella critical theories, literary criticism, social anthropology, British, American and Canadian cultural studies, translation theories, comparative literature, as well as the study of nationalism and post-communism, visual culture and performance arts.
Full Issue
Articles
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BREAKING THE SILENCE: THE IRISH CIVIL WAR IN THE SHORT STORIES BY DOROTHY MACARDLE
Abstract
The article focuses on Dorothy Macardle’s collection of short stories Earth-Bound to complicate the traditional understanding of the Civil War (1922–1923) as a catastrophe subject to enforced silence or the aporia of representation. This despite the fact that Macardle’s stories are not event-centric nor realistic accounts of the conflict: they are set before 1922, during difficult periods for the Irish such as in times of famine or the Anglo-Irish War, and, throughout the collection, realism combines with the supernatural, multiple temporalities mingle, and there is a peculiar co-dependency of politics and aesthetics. However, I contend that it is precisely by displacing the Civil War from her stories and by replacing it with narratives of other, ‘minor’ tragedies that Macardle thematically foregrounds the defining characteristics of internecine conflict: the collapse of the bonds of solidarity and the consequences of that for the most vulnerable. Story after story, through narratives of ‘slow violence’ dispersed across time and space, readers get a sense of a slow erosion of the Irish community, predating the war and then exploding in the destruction of the conflict, but also a sense that violence – its continuous perpetration now and in the future – is not inevitable. Some of the tales in Earth-Bound have the potential, through estrangement and shifts in setting, to move their readers to think critically about the status quo and possibly act on and change it. Hence, my article first explores the supposed un representability of the Civil War; second, by comparing the stories in Earth-Bound to the more celebrated ones by Frank O’Connor and Sean O’Faolain, it intends to highlight the peculiarity and originality of Macardle’s writing.
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LAUGHING AND CRYING AT THE SAME TIME: READING BIYI BANDELE’S BURMA BOY THROUGH A BERGSONIAN THEORY OF THE COMIC
Abstract
The fabricated disaster caused by war and conflict and its traumatic effect on people and the environment hardly seems an appropriate subject of comic representation. Yet such an unamusing topic has often been represented in literature and visual arts through humour. Joseph Heller’s novel Catch 22 and movies such as Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit or Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful exemplify artistic expression that uses laughter to substantiate the poignant absurdity of war and genocide. Similarly, British-Nigerian writer and film director Biyi Bandele’s WWII novel Burma Boy, the focus of the present article, uses Comedy to portray the futility, irrationality and madness of a war that had mortal consequences and traumatic resonances on the lives of the often-forgotten young Black African soldiers who participated in the Burma Campaign. In this article, I read the novel through a Bergsonian lens of the Comic to suggest that such techniques reveal the absurdity and tragedy of war by dragging the reader onto the stage to perceive themselves as part of the failings of humanity and, above all, of western modernity.
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WHEN MEMORY BECOMES DEBRIS: AESTHETIC MODES OF REPRESENTING DISASTER LOSS
Abstract
The concept of public forgetting by Bradford Vivian explains how acts of forgetting are utilized to enhance selective and normative public remembrance. One common example is when tons of debris caused by a natural disaster that once functioned as material memory either on a personal or collective levels were taken away. How do people respond to this kind of loss when such memory has to be disposed of as waste? Japanese disaster memory discourse aims to disseminate knowledge of disaster prevention, preparedness, and commemoration of victims, while the ways disaster survivors make sense of their losses individually have yet to be examined. The Kobe City’s monument and the annual commemorative service of the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake bring about chronological post-disaster temporality among the general public. However, three different survivor testimonies this article analyzes show that individual kins of the deceased called izoku continue to nurture their memories of the deceased relevant to their current lives; their memories are related to the past trauma, but they are simultaneously interrelated memories in the present. James E. Young’s concept of texture of memory, Giuliana Bruno’s concept of fabrics of the visual, and Ernst van Alphen’s concept of reintegration of subjectivity and body are examined to consider the way a survivor/izoku connects lost material memory with the present living memory. The series of earthenware works crafted by a survivor/izoku are analyzed to consider how she makes sense of absence and presence of the deceased in her present everyday life. The author proposes decomposed memory as a concept of processing memory as debris, where memory needs to be appropriately decomposed and transformed by individuals into interrelated memory.
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DISASTER AND EMOTION IN RICHARD MATHESON’S NOVEL "I AM LEGEND"
Abstract
This article seeks to examine the emotional impact of disaster in the novel I Am Legend (1954) by Richard Matheson, one of the most celebrated writers of science fiction and horror genre in the 20th century. A global pandemic appears to have transformed all people into vampires, except for Robert Neville, the hero, who is immune to the virus. The only human survivor now, he is nightly faced with the massive threat of these infected living and undead vampires, whom the hero kills without mercy day by day, drastically reducing their numbers. While striving to survive at all costs, he tries hard to find a cure for the disease but is finally caught by the living vampires and condemned to death due to his unrestrained violence against them. As the last representative of the ‘old society’, he must relinquish the Earth to the ‘new society’, which is now able to keep the disease in check with a pill. Based on a qualitative research, the analysis begins with an introduction into the concepts of disaster and emotion. It subsequently elaborates on a range of emotions and feelings resulting from the catastrophe in the novel: fear and anxiety; sadness and grief; interest and anticipation, with a view to analyzing the hero’s capability of managing and regulating his emotions and the others’ emotions under psychologically and emotionally distressing circumstances. It is concluded that Neville is not particularly able to effectively manage his emotions, which translates into excessive violence against others. Becoming aware of the consequences of his destructive acts, he accepts his tragic end with courage.
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“WHAT IS THE COST OF LIES?” HISTORIOGRAPHY OF A DISASTER AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET METANARRATIVE IN CRAIG MAZIN AND JOHAN RENCK'S HBO MINISERIES "CHERNOBYL"
Abstract
HBO's five-episode docudrama Chernobyl (2019) is an attempt to re-imagine the horrific nuclear explosion of 1986 in Pripyat, and what it was like to live through the catastrophic tragedy. Throughout the extent of the show, the creators are seen attempting to strike a balance between the dramatization required for televisual representation and the effort to maintain historical accuracy. Subsequently, Chernobyl successfully portrays (and juxtaposes) two conflicting responses to the disaster of 1986 — the state-sanctioned denial and distortion of the real events incorporated by a series of self-serving officials, and the “personal evaluation” of first-hand witnesses — such as Valery Legasov, Boris Scherbina, and Ulana Khomyuk — configured to establish a counter-narrative to a state-monopolized history. Hence, Chernobyl becomes what Agnes Heller calls an ‘evaluative reconstruction’ of the 1986 disaster, making way for a historiographical study. This article will also attempt to illustrate how Craig Mazin and Johan Renck's portrayal of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster opens up the possibility of critiquing the pre-existing unquestionability, and the imagined notions of power and perfection of the Soviet hierarchy, as is represented in the show by a set of corrupt government agents and servicemen working for the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
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DIPLOMATIC GIFTS AS EXPRESSION OF THE COLONIAL TRAUMA. STORIES OF AFRICAN WOODEN AND IVORY SCULPTURES
Abstract
This article offers an analysis of a series of diplomatic gifts of African origin, part of the “Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu Collection” of the ASTRA National Museum Complex in Sibiu, Romania, from the perspective of their capacity of evoking the trauma of the colonial oppression, in an international context. While the collection includes a high variety of objects, of different types and origins, this study will focus on a selection of black wood and ivory sculptures which explicitly refer to catastrophic aspects of the colonialist encounter, such as war and slavery, and belong to a particular kind of political objects offered by African leaders to their counterparts throughout the second half of the 20th century. Although the objects derive from the colonial interaction and may seem, at first sight, an alienation of local artistic traditions, made for an external audience, so as to satisfy foreign tastes and expectations, I argue for understanding them as expressions of the catastrophic realities of the colonial oppression, which belong to the local culture and serve two main purposes. Firstly, they act as parts of a form of cultural resistance, as commentaries upon the endured violence and humiliation. Secondly, they serve as political messages for an external audience, meant to raise sympathy and support for the cause of the people’s liberation. The conceptual framework of performativity and cultural performance, as explained by anthropologist Victor Turner provides an understanding of the way in which social conflicts are memorized and communicated in artistic forms, while the works of Africanists such as Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Harry G. West and Nichole Bridges offer an overview of the aesthetics and functions of African sculpture as objects of communication, throughout the colonial and post-colonial eras. Comparative studies, referring to the contributions of Alexandre Girrard-Muscagorry and Alexander Bortolot, provide concrete example of African sculptures being offered to several state leaders in diplomatic context, hereby offering valuable insights for the interpretation of similar objects in the “Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu” collection.
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CALLING OUT TO THE HEAVENS FOR AID: DISASTER SONGS IN AMERICAN FOLK MUSIC
Abstract
This article will explore American folk songs dealing with disasters, mostly from the first half of the twentieth century. These songs dealt with shipwrecks, train-wrecks, fires, tornadoes and drought and even the so-called Dust Bowl. Along with murder ballads, these songs functioned as a kind of oral newspaper providing information to even illiterate people in rural America. The songs also served as a stimulus to imagination, opening up exotic worlds to people often isolated and sedentary. The songs provided an opportunity for the listener/singer/musician to experience vicarious pain and catharsis in relation to the particular disaster. Finally, there was often a religious dimension to the songs and disasters which were being memorialised in song. The paper will conclude with a demonstration of how the disaster song finally became politicized with the example of Woody Guthrie. The primary source for the songs was the anthology of disaster songs entitled People Take Warning released in 2007. The artists included in the collection and discussed in this paper range from well-known figures such as the Carter Family and Charlie Poole to lesser known musicians who are practically forgotten. There will also be a discussion of the predecessors to these songs as well as the successors.
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“THE DREAMS OF MEN, THE SEED OF COMMONWEALTHS, THE GERMS OF EMPIRES”. THE IMPACT OF COLONIALISM IN JOSEPH CONRAD’S HEART OF DARKNESS
Abstract
Despite accusations of racism and of upholding colonialism, Heart of Darkness reveals the problematic nature of the imperial enterprise. The dichotomy between superior versus inferior, us versus them, self versus other, embedded in colonial discourse, becomes challenging when considering that the foray into the Dark Continent reveals more about the character of Europeans. The outward journey of exploration of the still partially unknown Africa is mirrored by an inward journey that reveals the degenerate nature of the European identity. The geographical journey is doubled by an anthropological one, towards our earliest origins, as well as a psychological one, towards the primitive self.
Miscellanea
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THE DISCOURSE OF COUNTER-MODERNIZATION. CONSTANTIN NOICA’S REACTIVE NATIONAL IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION
Abstract
Nationalist philosopher Constantin Noica (1909-1987), like many other public intellectuals in Romania, felt that modernization and modern civilization were traumatic to his culture. In this article, I mean to address the discursive templates he used to formulate his version of a traumatized Romanian identity. These templates are structured by master tropes (cf. Kenneth Burke’s “Appendix” to A Grammar of Motives and Hayden White’s “Introduction” to Metahistory) and are ideologically charged. Relying on suggestions from François Hartog (The Mirror of Herodotus) and from Ruth Wodak et al. (The Discursive Construction of National Identity), I propose alternative master tropes which are generally used in shaping national identities, as well as in dealing with the particular situation of cultures that feel threatened and traumatized by modernization.
