Sexual blinging of women : Alice Walker's african character tashi and issue of female genital cutting

This thesis provides a reading of the different forms of representation that can be attributed to the character Tashi, the protagonist of the novel Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992), written by the African American writer Alice Walker. Before this work Tashi had already appeared in two previous novels by Walker, first, in The Color Purple (1982) and then, as a mention, in The Temple of My Familiar (1989). With Tashi, the author introduces the issue of female circumcision, a ritual Tashi submits herself to at the beginning of her adult life. The focus of observation lies in the ways in which the author’s anger is transformed into a means of creative representation. Walker uses her novel Possessing the Secret of Joy openly as a political instrument so that the expression “female mutilation” (term used by the author) receives ample attention from the media and critics in general. The aim of this investigation is to evaluate to what extent Walker’s social engagement contributes to the development of her work and to what extent it undermines it. For the analysis of the different issues related to “female genital cutting”, the term I use in this thesis, the works of feminist critics and writers such as Ellen Gruenbaum, Lightfoot-Klein, Nancy Hartsock, Linda Nicholson, Efrat Tseëlon and the Egyptian writer and doctor Nawal El Saadawi will be consulted. I hope that this thesis can contribute as an observation about Alice Walker’s use of her social engagement in the creation of her fictional world.

Important, unimportant a critical anticipation of the assumptions of legal positivism in Alice in Wonderland

Almost a full century separates Lewis’ Alice in Wonderland (1865) and the second, lengthier and more elaborate edition of Hans Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law (1960; first edition published in 1934). And yet, it is possible to argue that the former anticipates and critically addresses many of the philosophical assumptions that underlie and are elemental to the argument of the latter. Both texts, with the illuminating differences that arise from their disparate genre, have as one of their key themes norms and their functioning. Wonderland, as Alice soon finds out, is a world beset by rules of all kinds: from the etiquette rituals of the mad tea-party to the changing setting for the cricket game to the procedural insanity of the trial with which the novel ends. Pure Theory of Law, as Kelsen emphatically stresses, has the grundnorm as the cornerstone upon which the whole theoretical edifice rests2. This paper discusses some of the assumptions underlying Kelsen’s argument as an instance of the modern worldview which Lewis satirically scrutinizes. The first section (Sleepy and stupid) discusses Lewis critique of the idea that, to correctly apprehend an object (in the case of Kelsen’s study, law), one has to free it from its alien elements. The second section (Do bats eat cats?) discusses the notion of systemic coherence and its impact on modern ways of thinking about truth, law and society. The third section (Off with their heads!) explores the connections between readings of systems as neutral entities and the perpetuation of political power. The fourth and final section (Important, Unimportant) explains the sense in which a “critical anticipation” is both possible and useful to discuss the philosophical assumptions structuring some positivist arguments. It also discusses the reasons for choosing to focus on Kelsen’s work, rather than on that of Lewis’ contemporary, John Austin, whose The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (published in 1832) remains influential in legal debates today.

O efeito da voz do narrador nos contos Carried away e Monsieur les deux chapeaux, da escritora canadense Alice Munro

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Voz narrativa e memória: a busca de identidade pelas protagonistas de Felicidade clandestina, de Clarice Lispector e de Lives of girls and women, de Alice Munro. -

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

A escrita da história entre dois mundos: uma análise da produção de Alice Piffer Canabrava (1935-1961)

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Intertextualidade entre Coraline e Alice's adventures in wonderland & Throught the looking-glass and what Alice found there

When writing Coraline, Neil Gaiman takes up some resources used by Lewis Carroll in his two major works, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, but still manages to write a unique novel, seemingly grim, filled with horror. In the 1960s, the theoretician Julia Kristeva conducted a study on the possible dialogue between the texts, concluding that every text contains parts of other texts, already written or that will be. Based on the theory of intertextuality she first proposed and which was subsequently discussed by several theoreticians, this paper aims to find points in the works in which this dialogue is present, as well as how Neil Gaiman appropriates these resources properly. It also tries to show elements where these points of intertextuality differ, proposing that this difference is because Gaiman resorted, directly, or indirectly, to insights drawn from the study of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory

Memória, culpa e angústia nas narrativas de Alice Munro e Clarice Lispector

This study analyses two writers from different nationalities and cultures, the Brazilian Clarice Lispector and the Canadian Alice Munro, to demonstrate the common treatment that both writers give to the childhood theme. The central aim is to examine, with the support of Freud‘s psychoanalytic studies, how childhood is important to understand the writers‘ fiction, or when a narrative voice revisits experiences lived in that period, or when the narrative is dominated by a childlike voice. In both events, memory is the central element in this anamnesis process. We seek to prove that even when dealing with different cultures, it is possible to develop a comparative study to show similar strategies applied by the writers. The selected narratives show relevant information concerning the chosen theme and enable to reveal the mode of composition and the concept of literary creation of each author. The analytical study of the narrative categories, especially the narrator, time and space, will be examined to show how they influence on the construction of the theme. Other features will provide support for the analysis, such as internalized narrative, the open end, the constant temporal and spatial distortions, the use of contradictory figures of speech such as oxymoron, unusual metaphors and antitheses, the portrayal of a paradoxical world and the concern with existential questions, all of which are shared by the authors, in addition to the theme, which allow the comparative work

Underlying Event measurements in pp collisions at root s=0.9 and 7 TeV with the ALICE experiment at the LHC

We present measurements of Underlying Event observables in pp collisions at root s = 0 : 9 and 7 TeV. The analysis is performed as a function of the highest charged-particle transverse momentum p(T),L-T in the event. Different regions are defined with respect to the azimuthal direction of the leading (highest transverse momentum) track: Toward, Transverse and Away. The Toward and Away regions collect the fragmentation products of the hardest partonic interaction. The Transverse region is expected to be most sensitive to the Underlying Event activity. The study is performed with charged particles above three different p(T) thresholds: 0.15, 0.5 and 1.0 GeV/c. In the Transverse region we observe an increase in the multiplicity of a factor 2-3 between the lower and higher collision energies, depending on the track p(T) threshold considered. Data are compared to PYTHIA 6.4, PYTHIA 8.1 and PHOJET. On average, all models considered underestimate the multiplicity and summed p(T) in the Transverse region by about 10-30%.