CRITICAL DOSSIER
Daniela PETROŞEL
Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - daniela.petrosel@gmail.com
Feţele Postumanismului, suprafeţele teoriei / Faces of Posthumanism, Surfaces of Theory
În opoziţie, poate, cu vremurile în care conceptele rezistau prin univocitatea lor, astăzi ‒ dimpotrivă ‒ tocmai pulverizarea univocităţii este semnul majestăţii. În turnul Babel teoretic pătrund concepte ale căror sensuri le multiplică identitatea, cu accepţiuni nu o dată contradictorii şi cu existenţe şi istorii particularizate. […]
Marie-Laure DELAPORTE
Université Paris Nanterre - marie-laure.delaporte@hotmail.fr
Robots, avatars et autres cyborgs : le corps posthumain dans les arts visuels / Robots, Avatars and Other Cyborgs: the Posthuman Bodies in Visual Arts
Résumé: De tout temps, le corps a été un sujet majeur dans les représentations artistiques. Lorsque la pensée post-humaine rencontre le domaine des arts, le corps continue d’être au coeur des créations et des questionnements, à travers diverses métamorphoses, transformations, hybridations et autres modifications à la fois de l’enveloppe charnelle et de son intériorité, dans un espace virtuel ou réel. Le corps se fait image dans les domaines de la représentation mais aussi pure incarnation dans les oeuvres performatives. Il est le lieu de tous les imaginaires, futuristes, post-humains.
Il s’agit donc de comprendre en quoi penser le post-humain a permis à toute une génération d’artistes contemporains de renouveler l’image du corps. De l’esthétique de la machine à la figure emblématique du cyborg, des corps virtuels aux corps monstrueux et à la manipulation du vivant, ces artistes proposent un nouveau régime de visibilité à travers la représentation et l’incarnation du corps artistique post-humain. Le post-humain permettrait une esthétique de la rupture, contre l’anthropocentrisme. Le post-humain laisserait la possibilité d’une identité humaine faite d’altérité et d’hybridité, une transgression des limites, de dépasser les identités fixes du corps, de libérer l’être d’une nature imposée par les normes sociales.
Mot clefs: corps, métamorphoses, hybridations, machine, cyborg.
Jessica RAGAZZINI
Université Paris Nanterre et Université du Québec en Outaouais - jessica.ragazzinicastello@gmail.com
L’influence des monstres littéraires sur le corps post-humain / The Influence of Literary Monsters on the Posthuman Body
Résumé: Fictionnel ou réel, mental ou physique, le monstre a toujours inspiré et fasciné. Hors-norme, Hors-limite, tantôt horreur, tantôt super héros, il est cet être qui révulse autant qu’il fascine. Il est le garde-fou, le tabou et le fantasme de la société depuis l’Antiquité.
Aujourd’hui, le post-humanisme artistique réutilise- implicitement ou non- les codes de la monstruosité littéraire des siècles précédents. Au prisme de l’histoire de l’art, de la philosophie et de la littérature de l’imaginaire, cet article propose de questionner les influences monstrueuses du corps post-humain dans l’art. Ainsi, la photographie donne au corps le champ des possibles: il récupère du vampire l’immortalité, de la sirène la séduction, à Frankenstein la recomposition morbide, au cyborg la mécanisation, aux Freaks l’exhibition… La photographie du corps post-humain peut être interprétée comme une sorte de portrait de Dorian Gray. L’image capturée semble donner l’exemple d’immortalité, si son tirage peut vieillir, le corps post-humain réel rêve de la jeunesse éternelle.
Elle propose de voir le corps post-humain tantôt comme un prodige miraculeux, tantôt comme un hybride hors nature. Ainsi, cet article suggère de s’attarder plus spécifiquement sur les oeuvres d’abord de Witkin et de Molinier, deux photographes qui, certes ne sont se sont pas déclarés « post-humanistes » mais dont les représentations corporelles peuvent être mises en lien avec celles des trois autres artistes post-humanistes que ce corpus compte analyser Aziz et Cucher ainsi qu’ORLAN. Nous verrons comment ces créations réutilisent les codes du monstre, présents dans la littérature passée. Notre objectif sera ainsi de comprendre le corps artistique post-humain comme découlant d’une véritable tradition corporelle de l’hors-norme.
Mots-clefs: monstre, hors-norme, hors-limite, cyborg, corps, post-humanisme.
Viorella MANOLACHE
Institutul de Ştiinţe Politice şi Relaţii Internaţionale „Ion I. C. Brătianu”, Academia Română, Bucureşti - viorella.manolache@ispri.ro
Feminism-ul Gaga şi Postumanismul “Made This Way” / The Feminism Gaga and the “Made This Way” Posthumanim
Abstract: The present text approaches, proposes and refers to a double act of post-becoming (in a manufacturing/spectacular sense), launching a perspective filtered by two inter-related terms/concepts: the formulae of making – made – as a way of fulfilling a new way of to be born. The investigation angle applied will be following J. Jack Halberstam & Rosi Braidotti’s theoretical frames, intersected with Lady Gaga & Slavoj Žižek’s (probable or negated) interferences. The result consists in affirming the Gaga Feminism, as part of the post-humanist turn, highlighting three post-founding directions: critical evaluation – political intervention – normative action.
Keywords: Gaga Feminism, Feminist Posthumanities, the Posthuman, Rosi Braidotti, Slavoj Žižek.
Régine ATZENHOFFER
Université de Strasbourg – EA 3224 - r.atzenhoffer@unistra.fr
La femme augmentée de Barbara Kirchner. Entre science et littérature, imagination et réalité / The Improved Woman by Barbara Kirchner. Between Science and Literature, Imagination and Reality
Abstract: In the novel Die verbesserte Frau published in 2002, a scientist tries to create an “improved woman” in his institute. This creature results from transgressions of biological laws, moral and social laws and natural or human order. The description of this “creature” refers to abnormality, which makes her a singular being. This peculiarity shocks because it goes beyond the limits of what is acceptable. After first creating feelings of surprise or dismay in the reader’s mind, Barbara Kirchner’s novel generally tends to trigger feelings of horror rather than admiration thanks to practices violating Ethics and scenes of an incredible violence meant “to improve” the woman. To plagiarize Charles Grivel, this new woman is a figure of excess, which is both scary and compelling. This theme of the improvement of the human being has already been dealt with in literature and in movies, but in this novel the scientist does not aim at creating a great genius able to use each and every capacity of the brain, cyborg-like. This improved version of a “woman” would only be a completely submissive sexual partner who would feel some pleasure at being tortured―almost to death―during SM sessions. We shall attempt to show how, in this contemporary work, a “modern day Frankenstein” and modern science are trying to create such a being. 171 years after Mary Shelley’s final version of Frankenstein, another woman focuses on experimental medicine and on building a new human being. The interest that lies in Barbara Kirchner’s novel, professor at the university of Bonn and doctor in chemistry at the University of Basel, is the fact that nowadays such “improvements” are not totally inconceivable anymore.
Keywords: postmodern human being, prototypes, scientific experiments, mad scientist, anthropotechnics, transhumanism, neurotransmitter, pain inhibition.
Daniela PETROŞEL
Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - daniela.petrosel@gmail.com
Lectura digitală – portret robot / The Features of Digital Reading
Abstract: The immersion of the reader into the new media generates a series of questions concerning the specific characteristics of this type of reading. By confronting the traditional theories on reading (Paul Cornea, Matei Călinescu, etc.) with the new perspectives on reading in the digital environment (Andrew Piper, Naomi S. Baron, Sven Birkerts, etc.), our paper aims to approach the changes in the personal and collective reading practices as determined by switching from the paper book to the electronic one. Some of the questions that nourish our investigation are as follows: What does it mean digital reading when the reader is human and the meaning is a construction of the human mind? What are the characteristics of the digitalization of the act of reading and to what extent reading – one of the activities that best define humanity – has become posthuman in the current informational context?
Keywords: reading, digital reading, ebook, immersion, posthumanism.
Maude RIVERIN
Université du Québec - maude.riverin@gmail.com
Quand la chair devient technologique: vers une ontologie plate de la sexualité dans le devenir-cyborg de Lucy (2014) / When Flesh
Becomes Tehnology: Towards a Plate Ontology in the Sexuality of Becoming a Cyborg of Lucy (2014)
Résumé: En 1995, Nicholas Negroponte écrivait que nous devenions tous digital et nous pouvions certainement nous questionner quant aux répercussions de ce devenir digital sur le corps humain. Vingt ans après son affirmation, la question que nous devrions nous poser aujourd’hui semble plutôt être « existe-t-il encore un corps humain? ». Les technologies ont affecté les définitions qui avaient été données au corps; non seulement ce devenir-digital a-t-il affecté le corps en lui- même, mais il a également affecté l’existence même du corps.
En utilisant les théories féministes postmodernes, le présent texte propose d’analyser la manière dont ce devenir-digital perturbe le corps féminin dans les films de science-fiction contemporain. Plus précisément, en prenant comme objet d’étude le film Lucy (Luc Besson, 2014), il s’agira de constater le pouvoir subversif au féminin de la figure du cyborg et de son rapport au féminisme postmoderne. Toujours à la limite entre la chair biologique et le corps technologique, le personnage de Lucy représente le lien pouvant être construit entre les conceptions du féminisme postmoderne et les façons dont le posthumanisme a témoigné des impacts des technologies. Plus précisément, il s’agit de considérer ce corps technologique comme moyen directionnel vers une ontologie plate de la sexualité.
Alina BRUCKNER
„Alexandru Ioan Cuza“ Universität Iaşi - bruckner.alina@gmail.com
Martin Suters Die Zeit, die Zeit – eine Science-Fiction als Kriminalroman / Martin Suter’s The Time, The Time – A Science Fiction
Novel as a Murder Mystery
Abstract: This paper intends to analyze a contemporary novel Die Zeit, die Zeit (English version The Time, The Time), written by a successful Swiss author, Martin Suter. Even though the novel has been considered by critics a crime thriller, since it deals with the murder of the main character’s wife, the author does not include his work in this genre, the crime story being from my point of view only the surface layer of the novel. It is rather an attempt at a philosophical novel, in which the topic of time is more prominent than the crime case. The pseudo-scientific approach on the topic of time, as well as the denouement of the novel suggest the inclusion of this work in the science-fiction category.
Keywords: Martin Suter, time, crime novel, science-fiction, denouement.
Oana SAFTA
G. Călinescu Institute of Literary History and Theory, Bucharest - anca_oana_alexandra@yahoo.com
Corporalul şi identitatea în distopii / Corporeal and Identity in Dystopias
Abstract: The article Corporeal and Identity in Dystopias analyses various identity-related aspects in three reference novels of the genre: When The Sleeper Awakes, We and Nineteen Eighty-Four, using the interdisciplinarity triggered by the theme, and the converging points of these narratives. The dystopian space is a very rich one for the existential crisis of the individual, which it follows from various points of view: sociological, historical, psychological, bio-ethical and philosophical. The understanding issue is another highly important aspect in this analysis, as it mirrors the efficiency of the respective literary genre and the impact of the writings as possible mentality studies.
Keywords: identity, dystopia, totalitarianism, otherness, dehumanizing.
Régis-Pierre FIEU
Université du Québec à Montréal - regispierre.fieu@gmail.com
Le post-humain comme monstre messianique dans Babylon Babies de Maurice. G. Dantec / The Posthuman as Messianic Monster in
Babylon Babies by Maurice. G. Dantec
Abstract: Maurice. G. Dantec viewed himself as a “Catholic from the future” or a “technoprophet”. In fact, his fiction is entirely dedicated to the description of a future where human beings will disappear and leave their place to a new species. Heir of Nietzsche’s philosophy, Dantec imagines in Babylon Babies the future of mankind through the Zorn twins, babies destined to be the next step for humanity. In Dantec’s fiction, the posthuman is a messiah that will finally reach possibilities impossible for humans. Both monsters and wonders, the Zorn twins are the next step of evolution, necessary in Dantec’s pessimistic vision of humanity.
Keywords: Dantec, posthumanism, Babylon Babies, apocalypse, monster, logos, evolution.
EXEGESIS
Mircea A. DIACONU
Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - mircea_a_diaconu@hotmail.com
Bucovina, între idilizare şi demonizare. Cum e cu putinţă identitatea? / Bukovina Between Idealization and Demonization. Is Its Identity Possible?
Abstract: Is there a Bukovinian specificity? Is it possible to define or identify some diachronical essentials of a certain region and what are the risks of doing so? The present investigation, which is in fact an attempt to reconstitute archaeologically a hypothetically unitary perspective, reveals primarily the methodological difficulties such an approach presupposes. In spite of all these, literary and cultural facts belonging to a less explored continent – however fascinating, as we shall see – reveal the contradictory nature of conceivable answers to the questions above. Therefore, any legitimate question concerning
this specificity is not interested finally in its accurate delimitation, but in the way in which it has been elaborated, in its consequences, reception and history. How can one image host histories that are so different? The present study is less a demonstration and more a presentation of edifying facts.
Keywords: Bukovina, Czernowitz, identity, multiculturality, antisemitism.
Sabina FÎNARU
Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - sab59ina@yahoo.com
Mircea Eliade şi Generaţia Marii Uniri. Corespondenţă cu scriitori şi critici literari (II) / Mircea Eliade and the Generation of the
Great Union. Correspondence with Writers and Literary Critics (II)
Abstract: Mircea Eliade began his intellectual formation and rose to prominence in the years immediately following the Great Union, an age dominated by important polemics concerning the relation between traditionalism and modernism, ethnicity and Europeanism, as well as the means of artistic expression of the national specific character and the rise of new aesthetic directions. Eliade’s correspondence with outstanding writers, theorists, and critics of the Great Union generation is a reflection of the recognition of the intellectual, literary, and ethical worth conveyed by the younger contemporary’s journal articles, essays, and novels; it refers to the cultural turmoil of that time, to the texts that generated it and to the personalities that orchestrated it, also evoked in subsequent memorialistic writings. He stood by his own vision of literature, which was close to that of the modernist group, but also open to tradition – like Şerban Cioculescu, Camil Petrescu, and Cezar Petrescu, to whom I shall refer in my paper, Mircea Eliade and the Great Union Generation. Correspondence with Writers and Literary Critics.
Keywords: polemic, traditionalism, modernism, ethnicity, Europeanism, interwar.
Anca-Elena ALECSE (PUHA)
Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - ancaelenapuha@gmail.com
Ipostaze ale feminismului şi literatura feminină în spaţiul românesc / Images of Feminism and Feminine Writings in Romanian Literature
Abstract: For the Romanian society, feminism has been and still is a pejorative label that casts a shadow of doubt over the literature written by women. The attitude is deeply rooted in the preconceived ideas of Romanian society concerning notions such as feminine, femininity, and feminism. If one wants to refer to the beginnings of such debates one can not omit the exemplary list that Eugen Lovinescu proposed in the age between the two World Wars in which he attempted at describing the major traits of femininity. The reticent commencement of feminism in interwar Romania was abruptly changed by the outcome
of history, yet it somehow manages to turn from a struggle against gender inequalities into a fight against totalitarian oppression and for an identity rediscovery.
Keywords: feminism, femininity, womanhood, women’s poetry, interwar, the poetry of the 80s, postmodernism.
Gabriela HECTOR
Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - hectorgabriela@yahoo.com
Început de secol XX. Contacte ale poeţilor români cu poezia lui Walt Whitman / The Beginning of the 20th Century. Romanian Poets’ Contact with Walt Whitman’s Poetry
Abstract: In the first decades of the 20th Century, in the Romanian literary environment were searched formulas that outlined the ‟poetry of new poetry”. Very different, their framing in the single paradigm was not possible, unity being realized, but by diversity. Both Tudor Arghezi and Lucian Blaga, the poets reffered to this article, found such formulas and, moreover, they gave their poetry a poetic art. In Arghezi, being a Bucharest origin with Gorj roots, dominates the infuence of Ch. Baudelaire, while Blaga, being Transylvanian, tends to German expressionism. The influences of the great literatures have found in the aspiration of the two Romanians to originality, a favorable environment, and, ennobled by their personal filters, have acquired the glory of authenticity. There is a tangent in their creation, and this is the American W. Whitman. His controversial poetry awakened interest in the workers movements that have grown since the late nineteenth Century and stood among the preferences of the symbolist Stephen Petică. And the question arises: ‟What artistic spark did Walt Whitman kindle to the two great Romanian poets Tudor Arghezi and Lucian Blaga?”. A question to which this article is intended to be an answer.
Keywords: poetry, unity, diversity, tangency, originality.
Otilia RĂUŢĂ (UNGUREANU)
Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - otiliaungureanu83@yahoo.com
Ciclul Nopţilor de Al. Macedonski. O interpretare psihocritică / Macedonski’s Nights Cycle. A Psychological Critical Interpretation
Abstract: Starting from the idea of a necessity concerning an updated approach regarding macedonskian Nights, this literary work aims to study these poems taking the techniques of psychocritic method as a guide. The superposition of the texts led us to the assumption of two archetypes representing the real side – “the oppression of the matter” and the ideal side “the soars of the ideality” respectively, which subordinate varied avatars, being all together subsumed to the personal myth of the creator. Regarded by now as “variations on to the same topic”, archetypes’ hypostasis are presented as atypical structures, whose form is stable while the meaning is unstable. Thereby the flight, the light, the death, the nature, the poetry, the night, the dream resume in the macedonskian universe the idea of limitating the earthly being but also the idea of a being adhering to metaphysical and according to context symbolizing intermittently the materiality and the absolute.
Keywords: psychocritic method, avatars, archetypes, myth of the creator.
Silvia-Corina POPOVICI (NUŢU)
Universidad “Ştefan cel Mare” de Suceava - silviacorina_nutu@yahoo.es
Reflexiones sobre los ensayos críticos de Miguel Delibes / Reflections on Miguel Delibes’ Critical Essays
Abstract: This paper focuses on the collection of critical essays written by Miguel Delibes and published in the volume España 1936-1950: Muerte y resurrección de la novela aiming to offer a panoramic view on the after-war literary productions provided by the members of the so-called “children-of-the-war” generation, a group of writers in search for novelty in terms of literary form and expression. Delibes’ aim is to cast light on the struggles of the young artists of his generation in their quest to find the right organization and development of the literary discourse in order to face social injustice and censorship. His literary creed spins around the views of the writer as creator and of the work of art as the result of the “inner combustion” of the writer. Also, a key point resides in revealing his critical views on the importance of the character, seen from a double perspective: as a narrative axis and as an alter ego of the narrator or his spokesperson in relation to the world, thus defining himself as a follower of the line unfolded by the great Miguel de Unamuno.
Keywords: children-of-the-war generation, critical essays, creative combustion, flesh-and-blood characters, autobiography.
LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION
Adel FARTAKH
Universidad Hassan II, Casablanca, Marruecos - afartakh@hotmail.com
La actualidad candente del estudio de los arabismos en el español / The Latest Research on the Arabisms in Spanish
Abstract: The subject of the study of Arabicizes in Spanish is very topical, because it recalls the intercultural interaction between Arabs and Spaniards. The reminder of that magnificent linguistic symbiosis helps us, today, to approach and dispel clichés, stereotypes and prejudices between the Arab world and Spain. For this reason, the Andalusian legacy is of great benefit in order to strengthen and strengthen the ties that connect the riverine peoples of the Strait.
Keywords: Arabism, intercultural interaction, linguistic symbiosis, Andalusian legacy.
Monica Geanina COCA
Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - monicabilauca@yahoo.com
Valenţe semantice şi pragmatice ale construcţiilor fixe comparative româneşti (1) / Semantic and Pragmatic Valences of the Romanian Fixed Comparative Constructions
Abstract: The article presents a couple of pragmasemantic directions of the usage of the fixed comparative constructions containing names of plants, animals, birds and insects. The language facts in canonical form – i.e. structured around like as the phrase index – were analysed from more viewpoints: formally, as to their source fields, stilistically; our analysis was followed by an in-depth research of article titles where such structures occur with a modified structure.
Keywords: comparison, fixed constructions, semantics, pragmatics, creativity.
Cristina BLEORŢU & Alina-Viorela PRELIPCEAN
Universitatea din Zürich - cristina.bleortu@uzh.ch & Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - alina.prelipcean@litere.usv.ro
Teoria variaţionistă kabatekiană şi procesul de acomodare lingvistică / The Kabatekian Variationalist Theory and the Linguistic Accommodation
Abstract: This paper focuses on different general aspects concerning the process of linguistic accommodation and the diaphasic dimension within linguistic variation. What we seek to demonstrate is that speakers’ discourses are plurivarietal: each individual “accommodates” his discourse according to situations and purpose, being conditioned by its own linguistic biography. For example, an individual from Calafindeşti will use „curechi” and „macahon” with people from his own village, but he will avoid using this type of regionalisms with persons from other areas, thus controlling to a certain degree his speech.
Our paper is structured as follows: (i) first of all, the concept of linguistic accommodation is explained [Trudgill, 1986; Auer et al., 2005], (ii) secondly, we refer to the theories on the diaphasic dimension [Briz, 2010; Coşeriu, 1992; Kabatek, 2000, 2002; Koch and Oesterreicher, 2007; López Serena, 2007], (iii) then, we present examples of linguistic accommodation in Romanian and Spanish language; and, finally, we draw the conclusions.
Keywords: linguistic accommodation, plurivarietal speech, diaphasic dimension, purpose, linguistic biography.
Cristina BLEORŢU
Universitatea din Zürich - cbleortu@hotmail.com/cristina.bleortu@uzh.ch
Cazul interjecţiei ho în spaniola din Pola de Siero [Asturia, Spania] / The Case of the Interjection Ho in the Spanish of Pola de Siero
[Asturias, Spain]
Abstract: Our goal here is to construct, insofar as possible, a scenario for the study of “ho”, an Asturian interjection taking into account a sociolinguistic perspective. We preferred to start with a review of the previous literature. The results presented here look at the role of social factors – speaker gender, age, level of education, – and at the ways in which social identities and beliefs shape and influence the presence of “ho”.
Keywords: “ho” interjection, sociolinguistics, social factors, Pola de Siero.
Bogdan POPOVENIUC
Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare” din Suceava - bpopoveniuc@yahoo.com
NetLingua – Limbă, dialect sau slang? / NetLingua – Language, Dialect or Slang?
Abstract: The unprecedented development of information and communication technologies in recent decades, shaped a peculiar fuzzy language, NetLingua, used by virtual space users. The status of language used on social networks, in particular, and in Technology-Mediated Communications (TMC), in general, is ambiguous, with specialist opinions varying from cataloging it as slang, dialectal form, up to assigning it the status of a distinct linguistic system. The paper intends to make some clarification on the status of the language used in TMC starting from classical theories on language.
Keywords: Netlingua, Social networks, Technology, Language, Linguistic varieties.