Oltre il postmodernismo: L'opera di David Foster Wallace tra autoriflessivita' e realismo

La presente ricerca si propone di delineare un orizzonte critico e filosofico che permetta di ridefinire il concetto di postmodernismo in America alla fine del XX secolo e, a partire dagli anni Novanta del Novecento, il tentativo di un suo superamento da parte della letteratura contemporanea. L’analisi si focalizza sull’opera dello scrittore David Foster Wallace che esemplifica le contraddizioni interne al postmodernismo e mostra il passaggio cruciale dal postmodernismo a una non-ancora-ben-definita letteratura contemporanea. Muovendosi in un’ottica interdisciplinare e comparata, la tesi si propone di mostrare come Wallace, riprendendo la metariflessività e alcune opere di scrittori postmodernisti, tenti un atto di liberazione dalle convenzioni postmoderne attraverso un «postmodern founders’ patricidal work»: un “parricidio” letterario, prima di accettazione e poi di superamento. Attraverso un percorso tematico, nonché strutturale, si cercherà dunque di porre in rilievo il recupero del realismo da parte di Wallace che, seppur nel suo breve periodo compositivo, rappresenta questa nuova direzione della letteratura americana.

Everything in di Dark Muss Come to Light: A Postcolonial Investigation of the Practice of Extra Lessons at the Secondary Level in Jamaica's Education System

Despite the vast research examining the evolution of Caribbean education systems, little is chronologically tied to the postcolonial theoretical perspectives of specific island-state systems, such as the Jamaican education system and its relationship with the underground shadow education system. This dissertation study sought to address the gaps in the literature by critically positioning postcolonial theories in education to examine the macro- and micro-level impacts of extra lessons on secondary education in Jamaica. The following postcolonial theoretical (PCT) tenets in education were contextualized from a review of the literature: (a) PCT in education uses colonial discourse analysis to critically deconstruct and decolonize imperialistic and colonial representations of knowledge throughout history; (b) PCT in education uses an anti-colonial discursive framework to re-position indigenous knowledge in schools, colleges, and universities to challenge hegemonic knowledge; (c) PCT in education involves the "unlearning" of dominant, normative ideologies, the use of self-reflexivity, and deconstruction; and (d) PCT in education calls for critical pedagogical approaches that reject the banking concept of education and introduces inclusive pedagogy to facilitate "the passage from naïve to critical transitivity" (Freire, 1973, p. 32). Specifically, using a transformative mixed-methods design, grounded and informed by a postcolonial theoretical lens, I quantitatively uncovered and then qualitatively highlighted how if at all extra lessons can improve educational outcomes for students at the secondary level in Jamaica. Accordingly, the quantitative data was used to test the hypotheses that the practice of extra lessons in schools is related to student academic achievement and the practice of critical-inclusive pedagogy in extra lessons is related to academic achievement. The two-level hierarchical linear model analysis revealed that hours spent in extra lessons, average household monthly income, and critical-inclusive pedagogical tents were the best predictors for academic achievement. Alternatively, the holistic multi-case study explored how extra-lessons produces increased academic achievement. The data revealed new ways of knowledge construction and critical pedagogical approaches to galvanize systemic change in secondary education. Furthermore, the data showed that extra lessons can improve educational outcomes for students at the secondary level if the conditions for learning are met. This study sets the stage for new forms of knowledge construction and implications for policy change.

Vulnerable identities: Maya Yucatec identities in a postmodern world

In numerous anthropological works there have been preoccupations about the relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Whatever social researchers have concluded, one thing is consistent: the tendency to interpret ethnographic “data” in terms of binary oppositions. This dissertation reviews the works which have been centered upon binary oppositions, as for instance, in the case of Yucatan, between the Maya and the Dzul—the Yucatec Maya term for white males—and highlights the fact that such works have failed to recognize that within and between each “pole,” or social group there are individuals that have multiple identities, and that do not recognize themselves as belonging to a homogenized “pole.” Instead, these individuals, recognize themselves as belonging to different groups and, therefore, being aware that they have not a single identity but multiple ones. ^ Analogical anthropology is highly criticized because of its emphasis on binary oppositions, its authoritarianism, and the notion of the “Other.” In contrast, dialogical anthropology places great importance on the relationship between the individuals and the anthropologist. A relation in which both, the anthropologist and the subject, are immersed in a dialogue, because of the identification between the writer and the story that is being written. ^ However, anthropologists seem to be more interested in “dialoguing” among themselves rather than with the people that they write about. Indigenous people are relegated, they are voiceless, and, therefore, we keep treating them as “objects,” and not as individuals. This is ironic, precisely because it undermines the aim of the dialogical discourse. ^ In this context, awareness of self-identity or self-identities and the various ways in which Francisco, a good friend and the main character of this dissertation, assumes them, and the way I assume them, within multicultural contexts, leads us along the road to establish and reestablish communication. The methodology is based on four considerations: positioning, fieldwork conversations, self reflexivity and vulnerability. Hence, this dissertation constitutes an attempt to break with authoritarian models of ethnography, it is a dialogue between Francisco and me, a conversation among ourselves. A dialogue that expresses the desire of hearing our voices being echoed by each other. ^

Revaloracion de la comedia de Pedro Munoz Seca: Un teatro menospreciado

The comedies of Pedro Muñoz Seca (1879-1936) received extraordinary public acclaim for over thirty years, yet critics rejected them. Although several experts have recently begun to study his plays in an objective manner, this author has generally either been underrated or omitted from theater histories. This study identifies the merit, contributions and relevance of Muñoz Seca's works so that the unwarranted void that now exists in Spanish theater annals is justly filled. Historical and biographical backgrounds and a brief sketch of the development of comedy in Spain serve to introduce the literary, political and social contexts in which the author develops the subgenre known as "astracán" and introduces the "fresco" character type. ^ This analysis illustrates Muñoz Seca's verbal comic techniques---the use of regional dialects and individuals' speech peculiarities, double entendres, incongruence, periphrasis, and ingenious plays on words. It also explores the author's profound theatrical sense manifested in inter-textual references and self-reflexivity within the content of his plays. In addition, it identifies the scenic creativity he displays through the use of cinematography, the removal of color from stage decor (or the elimination of scenery altogether), and the original application of music to create comic effect. Furthermore, this study comments the satirical tone projected in Muñoz Seca's characters' idiolect and barbarisms as socio-political conditions worsen. Finally, it brings forth the author's use of parody to criticize his society and to deride other theatrical genres in vogue during his time. ^ While the polarization between Muñoz Seca's popular success and the critics' rejection can be explained by esthetic and ideological prejudices, this dissertation ascertains that the true nature of the author's plays has not been properly identified. The "astracán" is a double parody; however, since it caricaturizes a comic subgenre that is already burlesque, its defining parodic features have been consistently misinterpreted as mere exaggerations and defects. What is more, as its critical content is not recognized, its renewing function goes unnoticed. Muñoz Seca's "astracán" illustrates an era of the Spanish comic stage and paves the way for the theater of the absurd. Its merit and relevance must be recognized. ^

El discurso vindicatorio de Juan Goytisolo y Zoe Valdes: Deconstruccion y recodificacion del lenguaje hegemonico

The goal of this dissertation is to explore the use of transgressive language in the works of Juan Goytisolo and Zoé Valdés. This study examines the socio-political and cultural contexts in which the narrative of both authors develops, as well as the textual devices employed by these writers for undermining the “official history” imposed by the dictatorial regimes in Francoist Spain and Castro's Cuba. Furthermore, this dissertation argues that the deconstructing strategies in Goytisolo and Valdés mark their literary trajectory. Their vindicatory standpoints seek an alternative discourse of national identity. ^ The function of language in demythifying and recodifying hegemonic discourse is examined in Goytisolo's trilogy Señas de identidad, Reivindicación del conde don Julián, and Juan sin tierra; and the novels of Zoé Valdés La nada cotidiana and Te di la vida entera. The parallelisms in the literary works of Goytisolo and Valdés are established by contrasting the authors' revisionist approach to history, the self-reflexivity of their novels, the sexual referent, and the use of irony and parody. The theoretical framework incorporates poststructuralist theorists such as Todorov, Foucault, Lacan, Barthes, Derrida, and Kristeva; the psychoanalytical theory of Freud; and the feminist theories of Cixous and Irigaray. The comparative approach of this study and the interplay of power, politics, aesthetic creation, and author's psychology provide an illuminating perspective that could be of interest to individuals from a variety of disciplines. ^

Book review: Laurel Kamada, Hybrid Identities and Adolescent Girls: Being Half in Japan. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2010

Arguably, the catalyst for the best research studies using social analysis of discourse is personal ‘lived’ experience. This is certainly the case for Kamada, who, as a white American woman with a Japanese spouse, had to deal first hand with the racialization of her son. Like many other mixed-ethnic parents, she experienced the shock and disap-pointment of finding her child being racialized as ‘Chinese’ in America through peer group taunts, and constituted as gaijin (a foreigner) in his own homeland of Japan. As a member of an e-list of the (Japan) Bilingualism Special Interest Group (BSIG), Kamada learnt that other parents from the English-speaking foreign community in Japan had similar disturbing stories to tell of their mixed-ethnic children who, upon entering the Japanese school system, were mocked, bullied and marginalized by their peers. She men-tions a pervasive Japanese proverb which warns of diversity or difference getting squashed: ‘The nail that sticks up gets hammered down’. This imperative to conform to Japanese behavioural and discursive norms prompted Kamada’s quest to investigate the impact of ‘otherization’ on the identities of children of mixed parentage. In this fascinat-ing book, she shows that this pressure to conform is balanced by a corresponding cele-bration of ‘hybrid’ or mixed identities. The children in her study are also able to negotiate their identities positively as they come to terms with contradictory discursive notions of ‘Japaneseness’, ‘whiteness’ and ‘halfness/doubleness’.The discursive construction of identity has become a central concern amongst researchers across a wide range of academic disciplines within the humanities and the social sciences, and most existing work either concentrates on a specific identity cate-gory, such as gender, sexuality or national identity, or else offers a broader discussion of how identity is theorized. Kamada’s book is refreshing because it crosses the usual boundaries and offers divergent insights on identity in a number of ways. First, using the term ‘ethno-gendering’, she examines the ways in which six mixed-ethnic girls living in Japan accomplish and manage the relationship between their gender and ethnic ‘differ-ences’ from age 12 to 15. She analyses in close detail how their actions or displays within certain situated interactions might come into conflict with how they are seen or constituted by others. Second, Kamada’s study builds on contemporary writing on the benefits of hybridity where identities are fluid, flexible and indeterminate, and which contest the usual monolithic distinctions of gender, ethnicity, class, etc. Here, Kamada carves out an original space for her findings. While scholars have often investigated changing identities and language practices of young people who have been geographi-cally displaced and are newcomers to the local language, Kamada’s participants were all born and brought up in Japan, were fluent in Japanese and were relatively proficient in English. Third, the author refuses to conceptualize or theorize identity from a single given viewpoint in preference to others, but in postmodernist spirit draws upon multiple perspectives and frameworks of discourse analysis in order to create different forms of knowledge and understandings of her subject. Drawing on this ‘multi-perspectival’ approach, Kamada examines grammatical, lexical, rhetorical and interactional features from six extensive conversations, to show how her participants position their diverse identities in relation to their friends, to the researcher and to the outside world. Kamada’s study is driven by three clear aims. The first is to find out ‘whether there are any tensions and dilemmas in the ways adolescent girls of Japanese and “white” mixed parentage in Japan identify themselves in terms of ethnicity’. In Chapter 4, she shows how the girls indeed felt that they stood out as different and consequently experienced isolation, marginalization and bullying at school – although they were able to make better sense of this as they grew older, repositioning the bullies as pitiable. The second aim is to ask how, if at all, her participants celebrate their ethnicity, and furthermore, what kind of symbolic, linguistic and social capital they were able to claim for themselves on the basis of their hybrid identities. In Chapter 5, Kamada shows how the girls over time were able to constitute themselves as insiders while constituting ‘the Japanese’ as outsiders, and their network of mixed-ethnic friends was a key means to achieve this. In Chapter 6, the author develops this potential celebration of the girls’ mixed ethnicity by investigating the privileges they perceived it afforded them – for example, having the advantage of pos-sessing English proficiency and intercultural ‘savvy’ in a globalized world. Kamada’s third aim is to ask how her participants positioned themselves and performed their hybrid identities on the basis of their constituted appearance: that is, how the girls saw them-selves based on how they looked to others. In Chapter 7, the author shows that, while there are competing discourses at work, the girls are able to take up empowering positions within a discourse of ‘foreigner attractiveness’ or ‘a white-Western female beauty’ discourse, which provides them with a certain cachet among their Japanese peers. Throughout the book, Kamada adopts a highly self-reflexive perspective of her own position as author. For example, she interrogates the fact that she may have changed the lived reality of her six participants during the course of her research study. As the six girls, who were ‘best friends’, lived in different parts of the Morita region of Japan, she had to be proactive in organizing six separate ‘get-togethers’ through the course of her three-year study. She acknowledges that she did not collect ‘naturally occurring data’ but rather co-constructed opportunities for the girls to meet and talk on a regular basis. At these meetings, she encouraged the girls to discuss matters of identity, prompted by open-ended interview questions, by stimulus materials such as photos, articles and pic-tures, and by individual tasks such as drawing self-portraits. By giving her participants a platform in this way, Kamada not only elicited some very rich spoken data but also ‘helped in some way to shape the attitudes and self-images of the girls positively, in ways that might not have developed had these get-togethers not occurred’ (p. 221). While the data she gathers are indeed rich, it may well be asked whether there is a mismatch between the girls’ frank and engaging accounts of personal experience, and the social constructionist academic register in which these are later re-articulated. When Kamada writes, ‘Rina related how within the more narrow range of discourses that she had to draw on in her past, she was disempowered and marginalized’ (p. 118), we know that Rina’s actual words were very different. Would she really recognize, understand and agree with the reported speech of the researcher? This small omission of self-reflexivity apart – an omission which is true of most lin-guistic ethnography conducted today – Kamada has written a unique, engaging and thought-provoking book which offers a model to future discourse analysts investigating hybrid identities. The idea that speakers can draw upon competing discourses or reper-toires to constitute their identities in contrasting, creative and positive ways provides linguistic researchers with a clear orientation by which to analyse the contradictions of identity construction as they occur across time in different discursive contexts

Supporting minority students through a reflexive approach to empowerment

Referring to the experiences of three Muslim refugee girls recently settled in Australia, this paper examines issues of schooling and empowerment. The paper draws on teacher and student interview data from a study that investigated inclusive approaches to addressing issues of cultural diversity in a secondary state high school in Queensland. The paper foregrounds the girls’ highly positive views of their experiences at the school; views that reflect the girls’ access to spaces of empowerment but belie the complexity and tensions involved in how empowerment was understood and approached by educators at the school. Theorising empowerment through poststructural understandings of agency, the paper examines conditions and ways of understanding that make possible spaces of empowerment for the girls. In particular, the paper argues for a reflexive approach to empowerment that is informed by an understanding of the framing discourses shaping minority student identity and a critical reflection on educator and school positionality.

Reflexivity and self-care for creative facilitators: Stepping outside the circle

Those who work with others to explore new and creative ways of thinking about community and organizational participation, ways of engaging with others, individual well-being and creative solutions to problems, have a significant role in a cohesive society. Creative forms of learning can stimulate reflexive practices of self-care and lead to enhanced relationships and practices both personally and professionally. We argue that those who facilitate such practices for others do not always practice their own self-care, which potentially leads to burnout and disillusionment. This research sought to explore understandings and practices of self-care with such facilitators in order to develop resources or techniques to support more sustainable professional identities. A key finding is that reflexive processes are most effective and transforming when shared as a social practice.

Reflexivity and aesthetic inquiry : building dialogues between the arts and literacy

Reflection can form the basis for powerful dialogue between the arts and literacy as we seek interpretive and expressive fluency across modes. Through deep, cumulative reflection we make aspects of our world and experiences more perceivable, and open them up for artistic expression and aesthetic inquiry. Such reflections are also the catalysts for self-awareness and identity building. Theories of reflexivity offer a useful lens with which to understand our relationship with the world and the people, texts and things within it. The reflexive process can prompt us to challenge our understandings and change our representations of self and others through text. This paper offers a discussion of reflexivity and the ways in which it can be expressed and performed in discursive and non-discursive ways to develop literacies through and in the arts.

The metaphysics of self in Praśastapāda's differential naturalism

In A Compendium of the Characteristics of Categories (Padārthadharmasaṃgraha) the classical Vaiśeṣika philosopher Praśastapāda (6th c. CE) presents an innovative metaphysics of the self. This article examines the defining metaphysical and axiological features of this conception of self and the dualist categorial schema in which it is located. It shows how this idea of the self, as a reflexive and ethical being, grounds a multinaturalist view of natural order and offers a conception of agency that claims to account for all the reflexive features of human mental and bodily life. Finally, it discusses the ends of self’s reflexivity and of human life as a return to the true self. It argues that at the heart of Praśastapāda’s metaphysics of self is the idea that ethics is metaphysics, and that epistemic practice is ethical practice.

Working out intimacy: young people and friendship in an age of reflexivity

Drawing upon a longitudinal, interview-based study of Australian secondary school students, this article explores young people's friendship experiences and attitudes to intimacy and the interpersonal. The discussion develops in relation to the work of Anthony Giddens on detraditionalisation and reflexivity, and Nikolas Rose on modernity and the self. First, I argue that feminism and psychotherapeutic ways of constituting and knowing the self are reconfiguring the cultural meanings of intimacy. Second, I suggest that this reworking of intimacy has differential and uneven effects and has particular consequences for the production of gendered subjectivities. Third, I raise some critical questions about the extent to which either Giddens's or Rose's account can properly capture the gendered and situated experiences of intimacy. I offer examples in which gender is being rearticulated in new yet familiar ways and note some persistent tensions in desires for connection and community versus autonomy and freedom. Carol Gilligan's work on gender differences in orientations to autonomy and connection is briefly revisited. Overall, it is argued that we need to take more account of how class, location and schooling differences influence dispositions to friendship and the interpersonal, and this is elaborated through a discussion of the 'relationship orientations' of two white Australian young men.

Why we interview now-reflexivity and perspective in a longitudinal study

This paper discusses a longitudinal, interview-based study of Australian secondary school students that explores the interaction between school ethos and forms of subjectivity. The study was designed to enable prospective and retrospective understandings of identity over time. It is suggested that this methodology encourages a reflexive self-positioning for both participants and researchers and, in the accumulation of an archive of perspectives, responds to poststructuralist critiques of contingency and construction in research interviews. Second, it is argued that the richness of longitudinal research invites more than one kind of analysis, and that working with and across conventionally divergent theoretical approaches can be fruitful. This is discussed with reference to Bourdieu's account of social field and habitus, and Hollway and Jefferson's notion of the 'defended subject'.

The ambivalent practices of reflexivity

Reflexivity involves turning one’s reflexive gaze on discourse—turning language back on itself to see the work it does in constituting the world. The subject/researcher sees simultaneously the object of her or his gaze and the means by which the object (which may include oneself as subject) is being constituted. The consciousness of self that reflexive writing sometimes entails may be seen to slip inadvertently into constituting the very (real) self that seems to contradict a focus on the constitutive power of discourse. This article explores this site of slippage and of ambivalence. In a collective biography on the topic of reflexivity, the authors tell and write stories about reflexivity and in a doubled reflexive arc, examine themselves at work during the workshop. Examining their own memories and reflexive practices, they explore this place of slippage and provide theoretical and practical insight into "what is going on" in reflexive research and writing.

Is this a meaningful learning experience? Interactive critical self-inquiry as investigation

What conditions enable educators to engage in meaningful learning experiences with peers and beginning practitioners? This article documents a self-study on our actions-in-practice in a peer mentoring project. The investigation involved an iterative process to improve our knowledge as teacher educators, reflective practitioners, and researchers. Data sets included: video-stimulated reflections; audiotaped reflexive dialogue; individual and shared reflective writings. Data analyzed through the iterative process revealed competing tensions that were not addressed by the triad, leading to a less than meaningful learning experience. We sought to name the dilemmas and document how they impeded meaningful learning; identifying tensions proved useful in data interpretation. The research led us to focus on the tension between collegiality and criticality. Managing this tension requires being authentic with and accepting of the other and working with cognitive dissonances. Collegiality and criticality together promote reflexivity and increase growth, leading to new professional knowledge.

Viewing The Biggest Loser : modes of reception and reflexivity among obese people

This article builds on previous reception research and scholarship on makeover TV through an analysis of obese people's views of The Biggest Loser (TBL). TBL involves obese people competing to lose weight as personal trainers push them through dietary and physical activity regimes. We articulate four themes characterizing responses to TBL: “That's not reality,” “Public ownership and judgment of the fat body,” “The lure of the transformation,” and “A guilty pleasure.” We consider how these themes are reflected in participants' movement between mediated, discursive, transparent, and referential modes of reception. While some were adamant in their rejection of the program, others were ambivalent in accepting and identifying with the desire for weight loss but questioning TBL's aesthetic dimensions and moralizing undertones. We argue that the reflexivity of viewers complicates appraisals of TBL as governing at a distance and offer some alternative readings of the impact and appeal of the program.