Playing with picturebooks : postmodernism and the postmodernesque

This thesis traces the influence of postmodernism on picturebooks. Through a review of current scholarship on both postmodernism and postmodern literature it examines the multiple ways in which picturebooks have responded to the influence of postmodernism. The thesis is predominantly located in the field of Cultural and Literary Studies, which informs the ways in which children’s literature is positioned within contemporary culture and how it responds to the influences which shape its production and reception. Cultural and Literary Studies also offers a useful theoretical frame for analysing issues of textuality, ideology, and originality, as well as social and political comment in the focus texts. The thesis utilises the theoretical contributions by, in particular, Linda Hutcheon, Brian McHale, and Fredric Jameson as well as reference to children’s literature studies. This thesis makes a significant contribution to the development of an understanding of the place of the postmodern picturebook within the cultural context of postmodernism. It adds to the field of children’s literature research through an awareness of the (continuing) evolution of the postmodern picturebook particularly as the current scholarship on the postmodernism picturebook does not engage with the changing form and significance of the postmodern picturebook to the same extent as this thesis. This study is significant from a methodological perspective as it draws on a wide range of theoretical perspectives across literary studies, visual semiotics, philosophy, cultural studies, and history to develop a tripartite methodological framework that utilises the methods of postclassical narratology, semiotics, and metafictive strategies to carry out the textual analysis of the focus texts. The three analysis chapters examine twenty-two picturebooks in detail with respect to the ways in which the conventions of narrative are subverted and how dominant discourses are interrogated. Chapter 4: Subverting Narrative Processes includes analysis of narrative point of view, modes of representation, and characters and the problems of identity and subjectivity. Chapter 5: Challenging Truth, History, and Unity examines questions of ontology, the difficulties of representing history, and addresses issues of difference and ‘otherness’. The final textual analysis chapter, Chapter 6: Engaging with Postmodernity, critiques texts which engage with issues of globalisation, mass media, and consumerism. Brief discussion of a further fifteen picturebooks throughout the thesis provides additional support. Children’s texts have a tradition of being both resistant and compliant. Its resistance has made a space for the development of the postmodern picturebook; its compliance is evident in its tendency to take a route around a truly radical or iconoclastic position. This thesis posits that children’s postmodern picturebooks adopt what suits their form and purposes by drawing from and reflecting on some influences of postmodernism while disregarding those that seem irrelevant to its direction. Furthermore, the thesis identifies a shift in the focus of a number of postmodern picturebooks produced since the turn of the twenty-first century. This trend has seen a shift from texts which interrogate discourses of liberal humanism to those that engage with aspects of postmodernity. These texts, postmodernesque picturebooks, offer contradictory perspectives on aspects of society emanating from the rise in global trends mentioned above.

Noir and the urban imaginary

Noir and the Urban Imaginary is creative practice based PhD research comprising critical analysis (40%) exegesis (10%) and a twenty-six minute film, The Brisbane Line (50%). The research investigates intersection of four elements; the city, the cinema, history and postmodernity. The thesis discusses relationships between each of the four elements and what cinematic representation of cities reveals about modern and postmodern urban experience and historicisation. Key concepts in the research include, 'urbanism', 'historiography', 'modernity', 'postmodernity', 'neo-noir'.

Strolling through the (post)modern city: Modes of being a flaneur in picture books

The city and the urban condition, popular subjects of art, literature, and film, have been commonly represented as fragmented, isolating, violent, with silent crowds moving through the hustle and bustle of a noisy, polluted cityspace. Included in this diverse artistic field is children’s literature—an area of creative and critical inquiry that continues to play a central role in illuminating and shaping perceptions of the city, of city lifestyles, and of the people who traverse the urban landscape. Fiction’s textual representations of cities, its sites and sights, lifestyles and characters have drawn on traditions of realist, satirical, and fantastic writing to produce the protean urban story—utopian, dystopian, visionary, satirical—with the goal of offering an account or critique of the contemporary city and the urban condition. In writing about cities and urban life, children’s literature variously locates the child in relation to the social (urban) space. This dialogic relation between subject and social space has been at the heart of writings about/of the flâneur: a figure who experiences modes of being in the city as it transforms under the influences of modernism and postmodernism. Within this context of a changing urban ontology brought about by (post)modern styles and practices, this article examines five contemporary picture books: The Cows Are Going to Paris by David Kirby and Allen Woodman; Ooh-la-la (Max in love) by Maira Kalman; Mr Chicken Goes to Paris and Old Tom’s Holiday by Leigh Hobbs; and The Empty City by David Megarrity. I investigate the possibility of these texts reviving the act of flânerie, but in a way that enables different modes of being a flâneur, a neo-flâneur. I suggest that the neo-flâneur retains some of the characteristics of the original flâneur, but incorporates others that take account of the changes wrought by postmodernity and globalization, particularly tourism and consumption. The dual issue at the heart of the discussion is that tourism and consumption as agents of cultural globalization offer a different way of thinking about the phenomenon of flânerie. While the flâneur can be regarded as the precursor to the tourist, the discussion considers how different modes of flânerie, such as the tourist-flâneur, are an inevitable outcome of commodification of the activities that accompany strolling through the (post)modern urban space.

Introduction : Picture Books ... Then, Now and Beyond

Picture books are known and familiar objects to many children and adults. They have been variously described as art objects, cultural documents, hybrid texts and verbal-visual art forms. They have also been variously categorised according to their readership – ranging from very young children to older readers, the latter can extend through the primary years to high school and even into adulthood. Scholars and students study picture books as part of an evolving literary and cultural landscape which has given rise to new genres and trends, such as ‘multicultural picture books’, ‘environmental picture books’ and ‘postmodern picture books’, and what Cherie Allan terms, ‘postmodernesque picture books’, that is, ‘picturebooks about postmodernity’ (Allan, 2012, p. 141). Picture books are also the staple literature in many early years and primary school classrooms for literacy and literary development, thus supporting the designated strands for literacy, literature, and language in the Australian Curriculum: English.

Knowledge, identity, and dilemmas of the self in physical education teacher education

This study draws on an eclectic range of influences. The early research was guided by the traditions of Personal Construct Theory. The study was later extended by drawing on theoretical tenets of social constructionism and the notion of the Saturated Self and Anthony Gidden's work on structuration and his later work on self identity. This has provided a new way of investigating how becoming a PE teacher through constructed knowledge established a professional identity. The data suggest that during the process of constructing professional knowledge, the students forge their identities by establishing 'position' and 'role'. In doing so, the participants in this study experienced a series of dilemmas of professional self. These dilemmas are a product of what Giddens calls high modernity and what Gergen refers to as postmodernity. It seems that to become a PE teacher, the dilemmas must be worked through until a position of ontological security has been achieved. For some this was profoundly difficult. In spite of this, the methods of study allowed the participants to begin to articulate their theories and visions of teaching physical education, and the therapeutic qualities of Kelly's theory encouraged many of the students to 'see it differently' (Rossi, 1997) and to begin to develop a rationale for professional work in physical education based on socially just practices.

Empire, Tourism, Nostalgia: Joseph Brodsky and Travel Writing

Joseph Brodsky, one of the most influential Russian intellectuals of the late Soviet period, was born in Leningrad in 1940, emigrated to the United States in 1972, received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987, and died in New York City in 1996. Brodsky was one of the leading public figures of Soviet emigration in the Cold War period, and his role as a model for the constructing of Russian cultural identities in the last years of the Soviet Union was, and still is, extremely important. One of Joseph Brodsky’s great contributions to Russian culture of the latter half of the twentieth century is the wide geographical scope of his poetic and prose works. Brodsky was not a travel writer, but he was a traveling writer who wrote a considerable number of poems and essays which relate to his trips and travels in the Soviet empire and outside it. Travel writing offered for Brodsky a discursive space for negotiating his own transculturation, while it also offered him a discursive space for making powerful statements about displacement, culture, history and geography, time and space—all major themes of his poetry. In this study of Joseph Brodsky’s travel writing I focus on his travel texts in poetry and prose, which relate to his post-1972 trips to Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, and Venice. Questions of empire, tourism, and nostalgia are foregrounded in one way or another in Brodsky’s travel writing performed in emigration. I explore these concepts through the study of tropes, strategies of identity construction, and the politics of representation. The theoretical premises of my work draw on the literary and cultural criticism which has evolved around the study of travel and travel writing in recent years. These approaches have gained much from the scholarly experience provided by postcolonial critique. Shifting the focus away from the concept of exile, the traditional framework for scholarly discussions of Brodsky’s works, I propose to review Brodsky’s travel poetry and prose as a response not only to his exilic condition but to the postmodern and postcolonial landscape, which initially shaped the writing of these texts. Discussing Brodsky’s travel writing in this context offers previously unexplored perspectives for analyzing the geopolitical, philosophical, and linguistic premises of his poetic imagination. By situating Brodsky’s travel writing in the geopolitical landscape of postcolonial postmodernity, I attempt to show how Brodsky’s engagement with his contemporary cultural practices in the West was incorporated into his Russian-language travel poetry and prose and how this engagement thus contributed to these texts’ status as exceptional and unique literary events within late Soviet Russian cultural practices.

Una introducción a temas y tensiones presentes en el documento

Resumen: El artículo recorre los antecedentes que dieron origen al Documento de la Comisión Teológica Internacional sobre ley natural, con particular referencia a las intervenciones de Juan Pablo II y Benedicto XVI. Presenta sucintamente algunos temas del documento, a saber: la búsqueda de un patrimonio ético común a la humanidad en las tradiciones culturales; la cuestión de la experiencia moral y la llamada interior a hacer el bien; la justificación filosófica de la ley natural; el orden político de la sociedad y el tema de Jesucristo, plenitud de la ley natural. También se consideran las tensiones que subyacen al mismo, con particular referencia a las problemáticas de modernidad ilustrada y posmodernidad, laicismo y laicidad y iusnaturalismo y positivismo jurídico.

La construcción del caso Galliano en Clarin : periodismo policial y sensacionalismo

El asesinato de Rosana Galliano fue uno de los casos policiales más resonantes de los últimos años en Argentina. Su cobertura en el diario Clarín es una muestra de que en la posmodernidad se desdibujan los límites entre “prensa seria” y prensa sensacionalista. La invasión de la vida privada de la víctima introduce los códigos de la novela sentimental y conduce a una lógica en la que cualquier acusación es publicada: todos hablan de la única que ya no puede hablar. Así, la cobertura oscila entre culpabilizar a la víctima y condenar sin juicio previo al sospechoso: el periodismo se vuelve fiscal y juez.

Reinventando los museos

Cap. 1. Museos en la posmodernidad : restos y desafíos. Iñaki Arrieta Urtizberea. Cap. 2. Never let a crisis go to waste. John Coppola. Cap. 3. Logique du don et biens communs : réinventer le musée. François Mairesse. Cap. 4. Procesos de hibridación: la evolución de las infraestructuras museísticas, gestión independiente y autogestión como reinvención del sistema del arte. Nekane Aramburu. Cap. 5. Patrimoine et musées du XXIe. Lieux de vie fédérateurs d’actions sociales. Lieux de vie créateurs d’innovation. Annette Viel. Cap. 6. El museo etnográfico: su prolongada adaptación a la crisis. Experiencias en Galicia. Xosé C. Sierra Rodríguez. Cap. 7. Reflexiones en torno a una “refundación”: El nuevo Museu Marítim de Barcelona. Olga López Miguel. Cap. 8. “El museu de todos, el museo para todos”: la accesibilidad como política. Carme Comas Camacho. Cap. 9. Pedagogía pública en participación a través de la construcción de un retrato transmedia de un territorio: caso de estudio en el Barco Museo Mater. Margarita León Guereño, Izaskun Suberbiola Garbizu, Lierni Gartzia Telleria, Josu Aramberri Miranda, José Miguel Correa Gorospe. Cap. 10. ¿Hacia una gestión de museos en red (MGMenRED)?: postcrisis, benchmarking y Euskal Hiria. Karmele Barandiaran e Igor Calzada.

Guillermo Arriaga, um autor midiático: as fronteiras entre cinema e literatura na pós-modernidade

A pós-modernidade é marcada pela dissolução de fronteiras, sejam elas espaciais, culturais, sociais ou artísticas. No campo da arte, percebe-se uma significativa influência mútua entre cinema e literatura, na medida em que as estéticas, os estilos e os recursos são transitáveis entre essas duas artes, a ponto de alguns romances possuírem características da linguagem cinematográfica e de o cinema possuir uma narrativa bem próxima à literária. Por outro lado, a pós-modernidade também é marcada por um grande crescimento das produções fílmicas e literárias para a massa, para um público cujo interesse é o entretenimento, e não a discussão, a crítica ou a reflexão. Nesse sentido, surgem vários autores que se preocuparão em produzir sua arte de forma que atinja o maior número de pessoas, de público, o que inevitavelmente aproxima suas obras das de mercado - ou as converte em obra de mercado. O presente trabalho, portanto, visa fazer uma análise de algumas das produções artísticas do romancista, diretor e roteirista Guillermo Arriaga, cuja obra transita pelo cinema e pela literatura, porém unindo-os a partir de uma estética realista contemporânea, que produz suas obras para o público de massa, caracterizando-se, segundo a definição da prof. Vera de Figueiredo (2010) como um autor midiático

Poéticas da visualidade em João Cabral de Melo Neto e Joan Miró: a poesia como crítica de arte

A tese focaliza alguns dos principais poemas de João Cabral de Melo Neto desenvolvidos como crítica poética. O mote da investigação é a construção de uma lírica crítico-discursiva, uma produção artística que avalia a arte com os termos, os instrumentos da própria arte. Esta perspectiva analítica é deflagrada pelos primeiros românticos (Schlegel e Novalis) e expande-se em duas direções: tanto o poema escrito a partir de uma reflexão sobre a arte ou a natureza (crítico em sua gênese), quanto a crítica, transmutada em poesia. A abordagem comparativa de estâncias do poeta com obras picturais nelas referenciadas evidencia o constante diálogo do poeta com as poéticas da visualidade e com as concepções estéticas da modernidade, mormente com a poética de Joan Miró. Através da abordagem comparativa, materializam-se dois caminhos privilegiados de experimentação estética: o percurso do poético ao plástico, em João Cabral; o caminho inverso, na obra do pintor catalão do plástico ao poético. Para ambos os artistas, os processos de exploração das linguagens artísticas ocasionam, como consequência extrema, a dissolução do plástico e do poético, rumo ao inefável na pintura e na poesia. Para Miró, os signos plásticos são poéticos, porque guardam em si um universo de possibilidades significativas que transcendem a ordem da própria coisa em si. E o alcance das transformações que a sua poética empreende afetará a poesia de modo análogo: os signos poéticos mostram-se plenamente poéticos, ao transcenderem a forma e o sentido, no âmbito da plasticidade da palavra. Se a palavra pode se tornar matéria (passar da abstração para a concreção), a matéria pintada pode ser poesia. Integram a constelação teórica desta investigação os principais filósofos que discutem o caráter crítico da poesia, desde os filósofos do primeiro romantismo (Schlegel e Novalis), até aqueles cujo pensamento está relacionado à modernidade ou à pós-modernidade (Benjamin, Adorno, Lyotard, Blumenberg e Agamben)

Educação e justiça no cenário da pós-modernidade

A questão abordada nesta dissertação visa o entendimento do que vem a ser a educação justa no contexto da pós-modernidade. A justiça na educação só se tornou uma questão a ser considerada a partir da década de setenta do século XX, quando foram produzidas pesquisas que apontavam que a educação reproduzia desigualdades. Pensadores como o português Carlos Estêvão e o francês François Dubet foram os pioneiros na tentativa de produzir concepções a respeito da educação justa. Estêvão apresenta a educação justa como aquela ligada aos valores da filosofia pública democrática, centralizada nos princípios da liberdade e igualdade. Quanto a Dubet, ele chega à conclusão que os princípios para uma escola justa (DUBET, 2008) são os seguintes: discriminação positiva, garantir um mínimo escolar, utilidade dos diplomas, as desigualdades escolares não podem produzir desigualdades sociais e a escola deve tratar os vencidos. Diante do cenário pós-moderno, outro encaminhamento é preciso, uma vez que a pós-modernidade se caracteriza pelo fim dos grandes relatos (Lyotard) e a destruição dos fundamentos (Vattimo). Com ela, não é mais possível, a modelação ou a padronização humana. Os grandes ideais, a finalidade e os motivos se perderam, restando apenas os átomos sociais. Diante desse cenário, o primeiro passo, em direção a uma educação justa pós-moderna, é o estabelecimento do direito à fala, expressão mais fiel de nossa liberdade. Com a pós-modernidade, temos nossa sensibilidade aguçada para as diferenças, e reforçando nossa capacidade para o sublime. Talvez assim, teremos uma vida sublime, que é a efetivação de nosso direito de sonhar.

Carlos Zílio: entre instâncias política/utopia/estética

Esta pesquisa discorre, através das obras do artista Carlos Zílio, sobre pontos ora divergentes, ora complementares, tais como utopias, heterotopias, estética e política, pensamento utópico e pós-modernidade. Este artista foi selecionado levando em consideração o período de elaboração de suas obras, no qual havia uma profunda modificação na estrutura política do Brasil. As décadas de 1960/70, período de análise das obras, foram marcadas pelo Regime Militar brasileiro, que dentre das muitas ações, perseguiu aqueles que eram contrários às novas imposições governamentais. Tendo em vista essa datação das obras, as análises partem do engajamento político para o engajamento estético, fazendo uma comparação entre esses dois campos, discutindo as relações da arte com a política. Outro ponto de discussão das obras de Zílio é sua função utópica, após uma reavaliação deste conceito, que perde sua força onírica para se tornar um conceito relacionado a impulsos transformadores e políticos. Ao analisar obras deste período faz-se necessário a análise do conceito de pós-modernidade e o entrelaçamento com as utopias, considerados pensamentos antagônicos. Após as comparações entre todos os conceitos podemos intitular as obras e ações de Zílio como vida artista, conceito foucaultniano, que relaciona arte e vida dos artistas como uma ação inseparável. Zílio faz de sua vida uma ação estética