Regional aspects of Miami crime fiction

This thesis argues that forces of literary regionalism and postmodern culture are behind the explosion of crime fiction being written in and about South Florida by a growing number of resident authors. ^ Research included four methods of investigation: (1) A critical reading of many of the novels that make up the sub-genre. (2) A study of the theories of regionalism, postmodernism and the genre of the crime fiction. (3) Interviews with a number of the authors and a prominent Miami book seller. (4) Sociological studies of Miami in terms of historical events and their cultural significance. ^ Today's South Florida crime fiction authors cast their narratives in the old genre of the detective novel where characters are delineated according to traditional definitions of good and evil. What makes South Florida crime fiction different from traditional detective fiction is its interest in the exotic, postmodern culture and setting of South Florida. There is a unique cultural diversity of the city due to the geographical location of Miami in relationship to Latin America and the Caribbean, and the political forces at work in the region. South Florida's sub-tropical climate, fragile ecosystem, and elements of frontier life in a cosmopolitan city work to support Miami crime fiction. ^

Hacia una poetica del Neobarroco: La vision de la historia en Jose Lezama Lima, Reinaldo Arenas y Severo Sarduy

Most of the critical studies of Baroque novels written in Spanish America during the 1960s and 1970s are characterized by a limited examination of their formal and stylistic representations. This dissertation explored the way in which certain writers developed a new Baroque tendency, the so-called Neobarroco, that presented a particular vision of history. José Lezama Lima, Reinaldo Arenas and Severo Sarduy developed innovative fictional and historiographic perceptions as alternative discourses to understand and perceive the cultural intricacies of Cuba and the New World. Their novels posited an elaborated poetic theory of history that can be summarized by the principle of supratemporal analogies, interweaved by a "metaphoric subject" that makes possible the conception of "imaginary eras". Since this poetry arises from a network of metaphoric correspondences, the image is conceived as a cultural creation that acts upon reality. ^ Although this study traced the trajectory of their writings from the point of view of their own essays, our focus was on the act of recovering the past as reshaped forms that are present in the memory. Paradiso, El mundo alucinante and De donde son los cantantes exemplified the attempt to place Americanness within the realm of poetics and history as one single discourse constructed by a combination of self-consciousness and historiographic meditation. ^ Basing my thesis on postmodernist theory (Ihab Hassan, Brian McHale, Linda Hutcheon) and philosophies of history (Michel Foucault, Hayden White, Keith Jenkins, Dominick LaCapra), I argued that the antagonistic paradoxes faced by postmodernism were reconcilable tendencies of the Neobarroco prior to the actual debate on the postmodern condition. The aesthetic trend initiated by these writers and their reading of history confronted the official historiographic discourse, thus empowering a contemporary voice in the current debate on historical skepticism. ^

Entre el terror y la irrealidad: La narrativa poetica postmoderna de Reinaldo Arenas

This study focuses on the works of Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, one of the most prolific and controversial Latin American authors in the second half of the twentieth century. First, I propose Arenas as the creator of the Cuban revolutionary novel (a term coined by critics when referring to the narrative written after the revolution), within the scope of postmodern historiographic metafiction and against the trend of the official revolutionary novel promoted by the political establishment. Through the analysis of the five novels of the pentagony and other texts, my study follows the tragic journey of the antihero protagonist, from adolescence into adulthood, registering the correlation between his existential crisis and the narrative historical discourse. Contemporary Cuba from 1959 onwards—the historical-political circumstances that afflicted and overwhelmed him the most—becomes the point of reference to deconstruct reality and reaffirm the existence of a “self” threatened by the violence of a totalitarian discourse. Out of the fragments of this reality, Arenas undertook a radical reconstruction in which he inverted and questioned every inherited cultural value, as well as the power structures. Within this context, Arenas projects what I call “the Cuban hideous unreal”, an ontological and literary vision antagonistic to the carpentirean concept of the American “marvelous real”. ^ Despite the ostracism Reinaldo Arenas suffered for ten years, this study shows how he established through his work a meditative dialogue with himself and the common man. This perspective formulates a permanent literary and philosophic reflection with thinkers and writers of his country and the West, as the basis for a rejection of the Cuban reality. The resultant interdisciplinary and postmodern dialogue constitutes one of the most significant and distinctive contributions of his work. ^

Propuestas para una reconceptualización surrealista y postmoderna de la sexualidad femenina en los textos de Cristina Escofet e Isabel Allende

Female sexuality has commonly been viewed as the passive counterpart of male sexuality. Building upon Adrienne Rich's theory of compulsive heterosexuality, I would suggest that the fundamental location of this problem lies within the subconscious. Cristina Escofet's stance on this issue is to argue in favor of a deconstruction of Jungian archetypes, revealing their constructed rather than intrinsic character. In this dissertation, I study representative texts by Escofet and Isabel Allende and show not only how they depict patriarchal compulsive heterosexuality, but also try to reconceptualize female sexuality through surrealist and postmodern techniques such as self-reflection, dialogue with our double or Other, and sensorial perception. These techniques are designed to create a new epistemology of jouissance and excess, as defined by contemporary French theory. The significance of my study resides in the interdisciplinary analysis of female sexuality in Hispanic feminist writers. The first chapter proposes that surrealism, postmodernism, and feminism are theoretical frameworks which create new paradigms for social change. In their feminist philosophies, Escofet and Allende emphasize the use of subconscious knowledge as a means of helping them understand the world and create alternative realities. The second chapter shows how Escofet and Allende deconstruct the mysoginist archetype of Eve, which has been largely responsible for identifying women's sexual identity with the disreputable qualities of the femme fatale and whose mirror-image has long plagued women. In accordance with this stereotype, Lillith (Adam's sexually active ex-partner), has typically been portrayed as the negative Other, and for generations the she-devil myth which surrounds her has resurfaced in the media, where she assumes the role of innumerable evil female characters. In the third chapter, I examine how class and race differences have been used to intensify the demonization of different types of sexuality. In the same manner as Lillith and Eve, black and indigenous characters express dissent by retelling their stories in words and performance, and by seeking to form a dialog with their readers. The last chapter deals with the importance of the senses for female characters as they try to create their own sexuality from the fragmented bodies we find in surrealist and postmodern art. In this section we shall see how Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous's theories about multiple sexualities are in evidence when Escofet and Allende reconceptualize female sexuality. As no previous scholarship has analyzed the use of the subconscious, the senses, and performance when understanding female sexuality in Latin American literature, this dissertation seeks to provide a tentative exploration of the issues that may help to open up a new field of research in Hispanic feminist cultural studies.

Teoría y práctica del neobarroco en Severo Sarduy

This dissertation analyzes the theory and practice of the Cuban postmodern writer Severo Sarduy (1937–1993) from his early adult years in Cuba to his exile period in Paris, France, where he lived until his death. By studying his narrative through the light of his theoretical essays, this paper demonstrates that the author created his own type of reading model—from and for Sarduy. His literary work is influenced by three major elements: (post)structuralism, psychoanalysis, and Buddhism, which combined form what Sarduy himself called the Neobarroque style. The Sarduyan writing is a transgressive exercise expressed through his concept of simulación. This style breaks with the traditional art concept of mimesis (the representation of reality in the western world), and therefore with the correspondence between the signifier and the signified. Sarduy does not intend to represent reality but to go beyond it, achieving by his technique of signifying exhaustion to represent absence itself. The Neobarroque of Severo Sarduy is an aesthetic of the empty signifier based on the reckless expenditure, and ultimately exhaustion, of the artifices of language that precipitates in a signifier chain towards the infinite. His language does not transmit a message but it signifies itself, that is, a means without an end. Paradoxically, this signifier chain produces an excess of metaphors beyond the material limits of language and its support, the page. The space beyond language is the hipertelic technique inherited by Sarduy from his literary master, José Lezama Lima. This is also the empty space of no signification or nonsense in which occurs the depersonalization of the speaking subject; in Buddhist terminology this becomes the dissolution of the ego. The Sarduyan language is determined by a Lacanian psychoanalytic erotic drive (pulsion) known as the Barroquean desire, a death drive which directly relates to the exile condition of the author. But the genesis of this desire lies in a primordial desire of encounter with his origin: mother, maternal language, paradise, God. That is the reason why Sarduy not only poses an aesthetic question but also an ontological one. This other dimension of the Sarduyan writing is based on a liberating drive that permeates all his work—an ontological liberation expressed through language. The empty space created in the text provides the subject with the possibility of fusion with the all. Ultimately, Sarduy strives for a language that goes beyond the symbolic limits towards a place of constant dissolution, evanesce, and death-horror vacui. This corroborates the Sarduyan statement: “la simulación enuncia el vacío y la muerte.”

The Travel Industry: What's in a Name?

The travel and tourism industry is enormous in both size and importance. There can be little doubt that the field is striving to accommodate the diversity of opinion concerning what the industry is and how it can be improved and enlarged even further. Resistance to critiquing long-held beliefs about the industry may inhibit its future. Deconstruction, a postmodern method of analysis, is proposed as one tool with which to engage in reflection upon what the industry is and where it may be headed.

Post-revolutionary post-modernism: Central American detective fiction by the turn of the 21st century

Contemporary Central American fiction has become a vital project of revision of the tragic events and the social conditions in the recent history of the countries from which they emerge. The literary projects of Sergio Ramirez (Nicaragua), Dante Liano (Guatemala), Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador), and Ramon Fonseca Mora (Panama), are representative of the latest trends in Central American narrative. These trends conform to a new literary paradigm that consists of an amalgam of styles and discourses, which combine the testimonial, the historical, and the political with the mystery and suspense of noir thrillers. Contemporary Central American noir narrative depicts the persistent war against social injustice, violence, criminal activities, as well as the new technological advances and economic challenges of the post-war neo-liberal order that still prevails throughout the region. ^ Drawing on postmodernism theory proposed by Ihab Hassan, Linda Hutcheon and Brian MacHale, I argued that the new Central American literary paradigm exemplified by Sergio Ramirez's El cielo llora por mí, Dante Liano's El hombre de Montserrat, Horacio Castellanos Moya's El arma en el hombre and La diabla en el espejo , and Ramon Fonseca Mora's El desenterrador, are highly structured novels that display the characteristic marks of postmodern cultural expression through their ambivalence, which results from the coexistence of multiple styles and conflicting ideologies and narrative trends. The novels analyzed in this dissertation make use of a noir sensitivity in which corruption, decay and disillusionment are at their core to portray the events that shaped the modern history of the countries from which they emerge. The revolutionary armed struggle, the state of terror imposed by military regimes and the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime, are among the major themes of these contemporary works of fiction, which I have categorized as perfect examples of the post-revolutionary post-modernism Central American detective fiction at the turn of the 21st century.^

Regional aspects of Miami crime fiction

This thesis argues that forces of literary regionalism and postmodern culture are behind the explosion of crime fiction being written in and about South Florida by a growing number of resident authors. Research included four methods of investigation: 1. A critical reading of many of the novels that make up the sub-genre. 2. A study of the theories of regionalism, postmodernism and the genre of the crime fiction. 3. Interviews with a number of the authors and a prominent Miami book seller. 4. Sociological studies of Miami in terms of historical events and their cultural significance. Today's South Florida crime fiction authors cast their narratives in the old genre of the detective novel where characters are delineated according to traditional definitions of good and evil. Evil characters threaten established order. What makes South Florida crime fiction different from traditional detective fiction is its interest in the exotic, postmodern culture and setting of South Florida. Like the region, the villains are exotic and the order that they threaten is postmodern. There is less of an interest in attributing a larger social meaning to the heroes. Rather, there is an ontological interest in the playing out of good against evil in an almost mythical setting that magnifies economic, environmental and racial issues. There is a unique cultural diversity of the city due to the geographical location of Miami in relationship to Latin America and the Caribbean, and the political forces at work in the region. South Florida's subtropical climate, fragile ecosystem, and elements of frontier life in a cosmopolitan city work to support Miami crime fiction. The setting personifies the unpredictability and pastiche of a postmodern world and may call for a new definition for literature that relies on non-traditional regional characteristics.

Relectura del discurso novomundista de Alejo Carpentier y Abel Posse en el contexto de la nueva novela histórica

The purpose of this dissertation was to analyze the narrative works of Alejo Carpentier and Abel Posse within the context of the new Latin American historical novel that revises the Old World-New World Encounter. Focusing on El arpa y la sombra and Los perros del paraíso, the dissertation studied the particular manner in which Latin American novelists, and particularly Alejo Carpentier and Abel Posse, approach and question traditional historiography. The research also compared different novels to identify various trends within the new historical novel that rewrites the foundational period of Latin American literature. This study considered the theories of the new historical novel as proposed by critics such as Seymour Menton, Fernando de Aínsa, Linda Hutcheon, and Brian MacHale. The new novel was examined within the frameworks of postmodern literary and historiographic theories. The study also contemplated the philosophical views that have influenced postmodern thought, and, especially, the ideas of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Lyotard, Harbermas, and Foucault. Research showed two major trends within the new Latin American historical novel. In the case of the first trend, initiated by Alejo Carpentier in 1949 with El reino de este mundo, the novelist’s approach is founded on historicism and factual rigor. The second trend, initiated by Reinaldo Arenas with El mundo alucinante in 1969, is marked by irreverence, parody, irony, and carnavalization. Characterized by intertextuality, dialogism, and anachronism, novels such as Carpentier´s El arpa y la sombra and Posse´s Los perros del paraíso, undermine the values and beliefs instituted by the traditional historiographic paradigm and the discourse of power.

Ficción de Racionalidad: La memoria como operador mítico en las estéticas polares de Jorge Luis Borges y José Lezama Lima

The aesthetic placement and period designation of Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) and José Lezama Lima (1910-1976) are complicated issues among critics. Borges is obviously considered a predecessor of the Latin American literary “boom,” but despite that taxonomy his work transcends that definition and provides a foundation for new trends and styles, such as the “neobarroco” cultivated by Severo Sarduy. Lezama is considered part of the second wave of the “boom,” but his work feeds, stylistically, from the Spanish baroque. At the same time, Lezama’s daring treatment of homoeroticism and his revolutionary system of images place him after the “boom” in a narrative style that is postmodern. This study undertakes a thorough revision of external and internal issues, revealing the key linguistic and fictive elements that characterize both writers. Through discourse analysis and close reading, a poetic system is formulated, which incorporate features of the “neobarroco,” “boom” and postmodern narrative styles. This dissertation uses a polar structure to analyze both poetic visions and concludes that they are compatible and symmetrical. From this perspective, Borges and Lezama belong to the “core” of literature that centers its emphasis in the creation of a system versus other modes of writing in which mimetic function prevails. By doing this and by recycling world culture, they create postmodern myth: the new building material for Hispanic American literature. There are only a few studies that explore the works of Borges and Lezama within the context of Baroque aesthetics. For the first time, this dissertation offers a comprehensive analysis that considers their poetic visions at large. Besides the difference in perspective, defined as macro-spatial in Borges and micro-spatial in Lezama, there are many similarities in content and form. Both writers question the cause and effect relationship and the modern use of metaphor. They also share a redefinition of genre as well as a hedonistic approach to literature and culture. This kinship in poetic vision is revealed through the polar method used for this study, which proposes a new form of aesthetic placement and period designation.

I want out of the labels : how Chuck Palahniuk's characters challenge the dominant discourse

The purpose of this study was to explore postmodern identity in the work of Chuck Palahniuk. The characters within Palahniuk's text Invisible Monsters realize the manner in which identity is a construct, and their response is to oppose and redefine it. In my research, I looked at how postmodern identity is defined by some of the leading critical thinkers in the field, and then I applied their thought to Palahniuk's characters. I showed how these characters come to understand the process by which society defines them, and with that realization, they oppose its totalizing definitions. The characters deconstruct the natural attitudes society has towards identity, and they reveal that it is in some way possible to create a unique identity that is not easily definable by the ruling discourse. I concluded that his attention to identity highlights Palahniuk's concern for the place, identity, and influence of his generation.

Pioneers in the study of motion

From the multitudinous streets of Mexico City through the lonely highways of the United States, this collection of poetry charts strategies of representation across complex territories of culture and gender. These poems represent dialogues and negotiations with popular and poetic narratives of the Americas, as well as individual quests for identification against a backdrop of postmodern and postcolonial concerns. The effect is like that of a collage that elicits the reader's participation in order to produce individual signification. The figures alluded to in these pieces enact the struggle to situate the self within multiple registers of discourse and identity, as well as to establish a site from which to speak.

Identidades coletivas de estudiosos da linguagem no currículo lattes: docência, pertença social e capital cultural-acadêmico

The discussion involving the identity of social actors has taken place for some years, however, it has become significant for the discourse studies over the last years due to the fragmentation of postmodern actors. Understanding the identity as a symbolic concept that can aid in the detection of certain realities - a kind of mechanism / a magnifying glass (MERLUCCI, 1985) - you can check the linguistic materiality of the introductory text of the lattes resume as a adequate place for the formation of collective identities . The aim of this dissertation is to reflect, in a time of postmodernity, through the lattes introductory curriculum texts, the collective identities of the language researchers are portrayed in discursive and social practices based on the accumulation of cultural and academic capital. For analysis, surrounding the indisciplinary posture in Applied Linguistics (MOITA-LOPES, 2006), the descriptive / interpretive methodology was used (MAGALHÃES, 2001). Whereas the study method and the social theory, as state reasons of the research makes use of the Sociological Approach and Communicational Discourse, chain linked to the assumptions of Critical Discourse Analysis (PEDROSA, 2012a). The corpus is constituted of twenty-seven introductory texts from the lattes curriculum of language researchers, connected to three institutions of higher learning in Sergipe. After the collection, on the lattes platform, and the numbering of the curriculum in order to achieve the research objective, we performed the analysis based on three identity themes: teaching, social belonging (BAJOIT, 2006; DESCHAMPS; MOLINER, 2009) and the accumulation of academic-cultural capital (BOURDIEU, 2004; HEY, 2008). The data show that the texts of the lattes curriculum are based on hegemonic and ideological principals, referring to the accumulation of academic assets, the valuation of actors and the hierarchical positions, recognized and ratified by couples who socialize among themselves Right now, the research allows us to infer that, in postmodernity, some collective identity assumptions, contribute to the understanding of the academic reality, around the the lattes curriculum.

Cenários de contra-hegemonia no protestantismo brasileiro no contexto da pós-modernidade

Since long ago that the religious manifestations are considered important items in various social media. In this sense, we are interested in understanding the strong denominational plurality, and the emergence of new movements / events and forms of Christianity in Brazil, which therefore is a reflection of what happens in the rest of the globalized world. Such interest is covered by the assumption that religiosity and social media are built on mutual and interconnected way, which allows us to understand that social cosmology presents itself as a fertile space privileged and to verify the interactions pertaining to the binomial: religion and society. The Protestantism is divided into three main streams: Historical, Pentecostal and Neo-Pentecostal. Each current of Protestantism emerged to adapt to social cosmology of historical ages, from the Reformation to the present day, forming institutions with certain ethical and moral stances. In this sense, it is necessary to research and understand how the historical Protestant, Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal were implanted in Brazil. From this we believe to be interesting problematize accurately the following: How have the processes of formation of strands / evangelical movements in Brazil? These movements are still holding their "classic robes" or hybreeding their borders? What are the modulations in the religious transit demonstrate that this probable hybridization? If there is, indeed, a hybridization between the Evangelical means, we can put it is provoked only by a logic of "market of symbolic goods of religion" in the world today? Nowadays, we are experiencing a period of change cosmological, from Modern to Postmodern (caosmológic). This last is therefore characterized by secularization, the fracture, the mutilation, the diversity of subjectivities. And thinking about is this "spirit of the times" we take as the main its theoretical references of this study, the Italian philosopher and thinker of postmodernity Gianni Vattimo featuring postmodernity with the cosmology of fragile / pensiero debole Thought and post-metaphysical, that is which enhances the appearance of more plural institutions and non-absolute. To do so, he makes use of the philosophies of German, Nietzsche and Heidegger. Finally, it must be said that this grounded theoretical framework, raise the hypothesis that the Protestantism tends to "injure anymore" by the influence of postmodern social episteme, providing thereby the emergence of a new hybrid framework has not yet nominated and can move between the three major currents of world Protestantism, with features in converged aspects of the same.

Cenários de contra-hegemonia no protestantismo brasileiro no contexto da pós-modernidade

Since long ago that the religious manifestations are considered important items in various social media. In this sense, we are interested in understanding the strong denominational plurality, and the emergence of new movements / events and forms of Christianity in Brazil, which therefore is a reflection of what happens in the rest of the globalized world. Such interest is covered by the assumption that religiosity and social media are built on mutual and interconnected way, which allows us to understand that social cosmology presents itself as a fertile space privileged and to verify the interactions pertaining to the binomial: religion and society. The Protestantism is divided into three main streams: Historical, Pentecostal and Neo-Pentecostal. Each current of Protestantism emerged to adapt to social cosmology of historical ages, from the Reformation to the present day, forming institutions with certain ethical and moral stances. In this sense, it is necessary to research and understand how the historical Protestant, Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal were implanted in Brazil. From this we believe to be interesting problematize accurately the following: How have the processes of formation of strands / evangelical movements in Brazil? These movements are still holding their "classic robes" or hybreeding their borders? What are the modulations in the religious transit demonstrate that this probable hybridization? If there is, indeed, a hybridization between the Evangelical means, we can put it is provoked only by a logic of "market of symbolic goods of religion" in the world today? Nowadays, we are experiencing a period of change cosmological, from Modern to Postmodern (caosmológic). This last is therefore characterized by secularization, the fracture, the mutilation, the diversity of subjectivities. And thinking about is this "spirit of the times" we take as the main its theoretical references of this study, the Italian philosopher and thinker of postmodernity Gianni Vattimo featuring postmodernity with the cosmology of fragile / pensiero debole Thought and post-metaphysical, that is which enhances the appearance of more plural institutions and non-absolute. To do so, he makes use of the philosophies of German, Nietzsche and Heidegger. Finally, it must be said that this grounded theoretical framework, raise the hypothesis that the Protestantism tends to "injure anymore" by the influence of postmodern social episteme, providing thereby the emergence of a new hybrid framework has not yet nominated and can move between the three major currents of world Protestantism, with features in converged aspects of the same.