Mapping the Liminal Experience of Eastern Europe in Selected American Works, 1965-2002

The purpose of this dissertation is to study literary representations of Eastern Europe in the works of celebrated and less-known American authors, who visited and narrated the region between the mid-1960s and early 2000s. The main critical body focuses on Eastern Europe before 1989 and encompasses three major voices of American literature: John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, and Philip Roth. However, in the last chapter I also explore American literary perceptions of the area following the collapse of communism. Importantly, the term “Eastern Europe” as used in this dissertation is charged with significance. I approach it not only as a space on the map or the geopolitical construct which emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War, but rather as a conceptual category and a repository of meanings built out of fact and fantasy: specific historical, political and cultural realities interlaced with subjective worldviews, preconceptions, and mental images. The critical framework of this dissertation is twofold. I reach for the concept of liminality to elucidate the indeterminacy and malleability which lies at the heart of the object of study—the idea, image, and experience of Eastern Europe. Bearing in mind the nature of the works under analysis, all of which were inspired by actual visits behind the Iron Curtain, I propose to interpret these transatlantic literary journeys in terms of generative experience, where Eastern Europe is mapped as a liminal space of possibility; a contact zone between cultures and, potentially, the locus of self-discovery and individual transformation. If liminality is the metaphor or a lens that I employ in order to account for the nature of the analyzed works and the complex terrain they map, imagology, whose purpose is to study the processes of constructing selfhood and otherness in literature, provides me with the method and the critical vocabulary for analyzing selected literary representations. The dissertation is divided into six chapters, the last of which serves as coda to the previous discussion. The first two chapters constitute the critical foundation of this work. Then, in chapters 3, 4, and 5 I study American images of Eastern Europe in the works written by John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, and Philip Roth, respectively. The last, sixth chapter of this dissertation is divided into two parts. In the first one, I discuss new critical perspectives and avenues of research in the study of Eastern Europe following the collapse of communism. Then, I carry out a joint analysis of four works written after 1989 by Eva Hoffman, Arthur Phillips, John Beckman, and Gary Shteyngart. The dissertation ends with conclusions in which I summarize my findings and reflections, and suggest implications for future research. As this dissertation seeks to demonstrate, Eastern Europe portrayed in the analyzed works oscillates between contradictory representations which are contingent upon a number of factors, most importantly who maps it and in what context. Even though each experience of Eastern Europe is distinct and fueled by the profiles, identities, and interests of the characters and their creators, I have found out that certain patterns of othering are present in all the works. Thus, my research seems to suggest that there is something of a recurrent literary image of Eastern Europe, which goes beyond the context of the Cold War. Accordingly, while this dissertation hopes to be a valid contribution to the study of literary and cultural mappings of Eastern Europe, it also generates new questions regarding the current, post-communist representation of the area and its relationship to the national tropes explored in my work.

EL NOS-OTROS-ORIGINARIO: Sobre la posibilidad de respetar los derechos de el-otro

Este texto plantea la posibilidad de recuperar el nos-otros-originario como clave para la superación del «sufrimiento inútil» del sujeto; de este modo, muestra al nos-otros-originario como una zona de protección de los derechos de el-otro, hace una crítica en contra del nos-otros-caído como vulnerador de derechos fundamentales, y aborda la posibilidad de recuperar el nos-otros-originario a través de una consumación definitiva de la "justicia".

Paraíso Imaginado y Paraíso Vivido: formaciones raciales desde el turismo en Santa Marta

Este trabajo se pregunta por las formas de construcción de la alteridad racial a partir de la configuración turística de la ciudad de Santa Marta.

Conversation Circles as a Teaching Strategy: An Experience to Reflect on and Implement in Higher Education

The experience approached in this paper aims at reflecting, reasoning, planning and implementing the “Conversation Circles” as a teaching strategy in the PF-4237 course “Theory of Education: Multiculturalism and Education” of the Latin American Doctoral Program in Education, University of Costa Rica. This training experience, based on the communicative action theory, intended to integrate the assistance of the teacher, the confrontation to otherness and the building of knowledge, skills and social attitudes in higher education.

INTERSUBJETIVIDADE E GESTALT COMO FUNDAMENTO DA ANÁLISE EM GEOGRAFIA URBANA

Este artigo fundamenta a análise em Geografia Urbana com base na intersubjetividade de Heidegger e na Gestalt Urbana de Maria E. Kohlsdorf. Para tanto, deve-se romper com a Geografia de herança cartesiana e kantiana e reintroduzir no debate a noção de Geografia como dimensão do ser. Assim, a existência autêntica dá-se quando os sujeitos exercem sua cidadania e reduzem a participação que planejadores e governantes tem na condução da vida urbana, bem como na alteridade vivenciada nas urbes, ainda que as diferenças sejam ônticas e não ontológicas.Abstract This paper substantiates Urban Geography analysis by Heidegger’s intersubjectivity and. Kohlsdorf’s Urban Gestalt. In order to achieve it, there must be a rupture with Descartes’ and Kant’s Geography and replace it with the notion of Geography as being’s dimension. Therefore, authentic (Eigentlich) existence happens when subjects exert citizenship and diminish planners’ and governmental body’s participation in the management of urban life, as well as in otherness experienced in cities, though differences are ontic not ontological.

Letter of discovery of Brazil: bodies, sexuality and power

This essay, starting from the description of the indigenous in the letter of discovery of Brazil of Pero Vaz de Caminha (1500), tries to define the clear tensions in the relationship between the first seafarers went to Brazil and the local population.It will be defined the relationship with the otherness, starting from the bodies, in their double function: they are at the same time filter (the eye of the colonizer) and filtered (the bodies of the colonized). It will be analyzed the way the sensorial perception can contribute to the construction of the representation of the world.  The description of the bodies and the perception of them, that the Portuguese writer will give though his own senses, will be the basis to observe the relation of the power and the tensions between colonizers and colonized, tensions that will persist in the future Brazilian society. Finally starting from the production of desire that this bodies excite and from the relationship between genders, will be speculated the function of sexuality in the society and the way the the power tries control it for its strengthness and establishment. The perception of the body will be also the reason to analyze the representation that the Portuguese writer will give of the otherness as being or as existing being.  

Assessment of Intercultural Communicative Competence of Lusophone Teachers

International mobility programs and curriculum restructuration stand out as the most common practice to develop intercultural communicative competence of students, in quest of respect for diversity in its otherness. For the teacher in initial and continuing training, the aim is to train in order to deal with children, adolescents and young adults, forming the growing migration around the world. Interested in the profile of Portuguese-speaking teachers for intercultural education, we address the professionals of Angolan nationality who were present at the Fórum Juventude Europa – Lusofonia, in its issue of Coimbra 2014. With methods in line with the proposal of Schaefer (2014), we assess the ability of Knowledge Discovery, Empathy, Respect for Otherness, Tolerance for Ambiguity, Behavioral Flexibility and Communicative Awareness. In this article, we present and discuss the findings of the group of teachers from Angola based on the literature of cultural studies and emphasis on intercultural communicative competence. The considerations which allow us to analyze are around the actual limits of the subjects - in this case pre-service and in-service teachers - to signify the symbiotic nature of the relationship among themselves, the others and the world.

A fé contra o crime: A bakhtinian analysis of the image of evangelicals in Brazil in the cover of Veja magazine

The present paper, based on the concept of surplus of vision discussed in some works of the bakhtinian Circle, as, mainly Bakhtin (2010a) and Bakhtin (2010b), has the main aim to analyse the image of evangelicals in a cover delivered by Veja magazine from the bakhtinian categories of exotopy, otherness and expressive intonation and, consequently, the meaning effects resulting from them. Therefore, anchored by the perspective of Bakhtinian Studies (BS), we analysed the magazine cover, seeking to apprehend the meanings constructed by this genre of verb-visual basis. To the constitution of the corpus of analysis, we selected the cover of the edition 1555, published on July, 15, 1998, entitled A fé contra o crime: Numa cruzada em presídios e redutos de traficantes, os evangélicos estão convertendo bandidos em soldados de Jesus, to analyse in which way the magazine, from its discursive place, appropriates the image of the evangelicals and represents it with its intonations in its statements. From the analysis, we can state that Veja constructs an image that tends to the homogenization of the evangelicals in Brazil, from its surplus of vision, with its tone of sarcasm, prejudice and vilification of this group, attempting to position the consumer/reader of Veja against the protestant sphere. The conclusion of this research, therefore, is that the exotopic position assumed by Veja with regard to its otherness, the evangelical discursive sphere, articulates axiologic aprehensions materialized in the form of intonation on the cover of the magazine that we analysed, disseminating, with the character of truth, the protestant group as integrant of mere dualities. Although the cover figures the group as an agent of change in society, this change gets the intonation by the magazine so that it seems false or, at least, incomplete, which equips the Veja readers of mistrust and, therefore, discredit to the actions of the discussed discursive sphere.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE TEACHER ALFABETIZADOR: THE TEXT BOOK AND THE GRAMMAR IN THE TEACHING OF THE WRITTEN MOTHER TONGUE

This text presents the interlocution that literacy teachers maintain with didactic textbook and traditional/normative grammar, and how these books become constitutive elements – the Others – of these teachers and theirs mother tongue teaching practices. The analysis focuses on teachers statements/enunciation and is based on Bakhtin's circle concepts, especially in the categories of statement/enunciation, dialogism and otherness. The cited elements appears updated in teachers enunciations and signalize a permanent tom in their practices, as a result of the cultural tradition in grammar teaching and the legitimate use of the didactic textbook