Proposal-paper

XXXIV Aedean Conference (Almería 2010)

PANEL: CULTURAL STUDIES (Coordinator: José Manuel Estévez Saá)

SESSION 1 (ROUND TABLE)

Unstable Meanings, Unstable Methods: Analysing Linkin Park’s song “What I’ve Done”
Sara Martín Alegre (University Autonoma Barcelona)

‘I must bring my family, my friends to this new universe: Separate Realities in Spaces of Contingency
Eduardo Barros Grela (University of A Coruña)

SESSION 3 (ROUND TABLE)

Reinterpreting the American West: Postfrontier Western Writing
David Río Raigadas (University Pais Vasco)
Participants: David Río Raigadas, Chair (University Pais Vasco), Juan Ignacio Guijarro (University of Sevilla), Aitor Ibarrola (University of Deusto), Angel Chaparro (University of Pais Vasco)

SESSION 4

British Identity and Political Discourse: New Labour, New Britain?
Betsabé Navarro Romero (University of Santiago de Compostela)

Cultural Capitalism and the Objet Petit a in M.T. Anderson's Feed
Jacobo Canady Salgado (University of Sevilla)

SESSION 5 (ROUND TABLE)

The Cultural (Con)Texts of The Great Irish Famine and its Age-old Silence
José Manuel Estévez-Saá (University of A Coruña)
Participants: José Manuel Estévez-Saá (Chair), José Miguel Alonso Giráldez, David Clark, Antonio Raúl de Toro Santos (University of A Coruña/Amergin).

SESSION 6

Silenced Identities: Black Writing in CANADA
Natalia Rodríguez Nieto (University of Salamanca)

Body and Self in Jeanette Winterson's “Planet Blue” and Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross' “Flowers from Alice”
Jacobo Canady Salgado (University of Sevilla)

Racism in E. E. Cummings' Poetry: the Poet or the Man?
María Teresa González Minués (University Carlos III/IES Cervantes, Madrid)

SESSION 7 (ROUND TABLE)

Tracing Sensation: Women as 'Creatures of Sensation' from the Long Eighteenth Century to the Victorian and Neo-Victorian Novel
Rosario Arias Doblas (University of Malaga)
Participants: Rosario Arias, Chair (University of Malaga), Miriam Borham Puyal (University of Salamanca), Laura Monrós Gaspar (University of Alicante)

SESSION 8 (ROUND TABLE)

The Representation of Aliens in Early Modern English texts I (Proyecto I+D FFI2009-13165)
María de la Cinta Zunino Garrido (University of Jaen)
Participants: Jesús López-Peláez Casellas, Chair (University of Jaen),Yolanda Caballero Aceituno, Jesús Manuel Nieto García y Mª Cinta Zunino Garrido (University of Jaen)

SESSION 9 (ROUND TABLE)

The Representation of Aliens in Early Modern English texts II (Proyecto I+D FFI2009-13165)
María de la Cinta Zunino Garrido (University of Jaen)
Participants: Luciano García García, Chair (University of Jaen), Eroulla Demetriou, María Paz López-Peláez Casellas, José Ruiz Mas.

CULTURAL STUDIES
ABSTRACTS

"If Poetry and Sweet Music Agree:" From Musical Rhetoric to the Rhetorics of Pop
Didac Lloréns Cubedo (UNED)
Participants: Rafael Vélez Núñez (University of Cadiz), Gerardo Rodríguez Salas (University of Granada)
“Music a sister to poetry.” This motto encapsulates the symbiosis between both arts, which has always attracted the attention of poets and musicians. The purpose of this round table is to explore three different facets of this relationship: poetry as music, poetry set to music and poetry in music. In other words: the musical features intrinsic to poetry, the complexities of adaptation and the poetic quality of song lyrics. Several poetic and musical compositions will be referred to, ranging from adaptations of Early Modern poems to contemporary popular songs.

Unstable Meanings, Unstable Methods: Analysing Linkin Park’s song “What I’ve Done”
Sara Martín Alegre (University Autonoma Barcelona)

Although pop and rock have been widely researched as cultural phenomena of the first order, the analysis of songs still remains problematic. On the one hand, even though the lyrics of songs of past centuries have been incorporated into the corpus dealt with by Literary Studies, the lyrics of contemporary pop and rock songs (mid 20th-21st centuries) are often too low quality for literary (much less poetic) analysis and remain on a singular methodological limbo. On the other hand, even though the ideal methodology to study songs would demand training in music few Cultural Studies specialists have that training, whereas few musicologists specialise in Cultural Studies. To complicate matters further, internet forums show that the few fans that bother considering the lyrics of their favourite singer or band hardly ever reach a consensus on their meaning. Music videos add another difficulty by superimposing on the song other layers of meaning not always intended by the original authors. This paper deals with these difficulties by taking as an example a song by the well-known American ‘nu-rock’ band Linkin Park: “What I’ve Done”, a hit from their best-selling CD Minutes to Midnight (2007). The evocative lyrics of the song are so open to interpretation as to be practically meaningless, a fact which actually contributes to the success of pop and rock songs as fans tend to enjoy them subjectively and regardless of coherence. Yet, the music video, directed by DJ Hahn, a member of the band, which is a montage of the band’s performance and of images reflecting all the hot issues in today’s global world –from junk food to global warming– gives the song a particular political meaning as an anthem about the ills of contemporary life and the need to acknowledge guilt for them. It is my intention, therefore, not so much to offer a new methodology to study songs but to defend the idea that given the instability of these texts we need an equally unstable method to study them, at least for the time being. We can’t, in any case, ignore songs due to methodology issues, given their impact on the contemporary culture in English and in our globalised world at large.
Keywords: Cultural Studies, Musicology, song lyrics, music videos, interpretation

‘I must bring my family, my friends to this new universe: Separate Realities in Spaces of Contingency
Eduardo Barros Grela (University of A Coruña)

Throughout the pages of this paper I will discuss the path followed by Robert Stone in his narrative journey to (re)present his idea of American spatialities –and spaces– at the turn of the 70’s. With his novel, Dog Soldiers, Stone leans towards a heterotopian vision of subjectivity fragmentation that includes both the hopeful possibility of reality deconstruction as paradigm, and the aporetic ontological vision of the human condition as a dystopian collective identity. Topographies, drugs, and politics are used in this paper to portray the state of agitation, of confused identities that Stone’s characters share.

The main aim of this round table is to explore the current condition of contemporary western American literature, analyzing its major trends and features in the last five decades. The speakers in this table vindicate “place” and “region” as fundamental analytical categories to understand recent western writing. Certainly, “place” and “region” have usually been neglected as critical categories in mainstream American cultural studies, with few exceptions, mainly in the field of southern literature. Even nowadays the term “regional literature” still seems to retain a series of negative connotations and restrictions, often suggesting mere “local color” writing. The prejudice against place and region has become particularly notorious in the case of western American literature due to popular culture’s limited vision of the West and its literature, often identified almost exclusively with formula westerns. However, the new prominence of “place” and “region” in cultural studies and t he flowering of quality western writing since the 1960s have helped to bring increasing critical attention to the American West. In fact, as Krista Comer has observed, “at present in American cultural studies, at least two competing strains of `western´ connotations operate” (2007: 242). One of them resorts to traditional myth and iconography and is illustrated by the resilience of archetypal descriptions of this region in contemporary western writing, whereas the other focuses on neglected or suppressed stories and aspects of this territory, indexing “an emergent critical regionalism or postnational West” (Comer 2007: 242).

British Identity and Political Discourse: New Labour, New Britain?
Betsabé Navarro Romero (University of Santiago de Compostela)

The debate on national identity has been repeatedly employed by political parties in the UK with an interest in displaying the ideal nation that they believe in, an imagined nation that serves as a model for their people and their voters. Britain, having experienced an identity crisis during the last decades after the loss of the Empire and the consequences of globalization and mass migration, is trying to redefine its national identity and rethink a new role in the world. In this context, Tony Blair celebrated a renewed country, a New Britain where tolerance, multiculturalism and modernity characterized the nation he believed in. How did Blair understand Britishness? Which notion of identity did New Labour celebrate? In an ethnically diverse country, homogenizing elements like shared values, institutions, rights and duties have been used to define national identity. In addition, history plays an important role in the conception of Britishness for New Labour, marking a decisive evolution from a tepid recognition of the significance of history to a glorification of Britain’s past.
Keywords: Nation, Identity, Britishness, New Labour.

Men’s Magazines’ Problem Columns, Sport and the Discursive Construction of Masculinities in he UK: A CDA-Oriented Cultural Studies Case Study
Eduardo de Gregorio Godeo (University of Castilla-La Mancha)

Sport has been taken to be a fundamental social practice linked to the articulation of masculinities in contemporary social formations (cf. Whitson, 1990; Wiegers, 1998). As Sabo and Jansen put it, “male images in sport media contribute to the social reproduction of cultural values and structural dynamics of dominance systems within the gender order” (1992: 170). In a similar fashion, media discourse is usually conceived of as a crucial scenario for the constitution of gender in general and masculine identities in particular (cf. McLoughlin, 2000; Jackson, Stevenson and Brooks, 2001). With a focus on men’s magazines as an arena for the production and representation of models of what it means to be a man in present-day Britain (cf. Benwell, 2003), this paper presents a case study aiming to shed light on the role of sport for the discursive construction of masculinity activated in problem pages in these periodicals. Within an overall cultural studies perspective conceiving of identities as discursively constructed (Barker 2004: 93-94), this contribution focuses on the role of language and discourse in the articulation of cultural processes where language features prominently (cf. Barker and Galasinski, 2001), thereby attempting to disentangle the role of text in the cultural processes of representation and identity construction within circuits of culture (du Gay et al, 1997). Assuming gender to be “both the product and the process of its representation” (de Lauretis, 1987: 5) – and masculinities as “act ively produced using resources and strategies available in a given social setting” (Connell, 2000: 12) – sport-based representational practices of masculinity in cultural artefacts like problem pages will thus be herein explored insofar as having a fundamental constituting effect upon identity construction and negotiation processes in this genre. Based on the use of critical discourse analysis as an analytical resource for cultural studies (cf. Barker and Galasinski 2001; Barker 2002: 40-41, 44, passim), Fairclough’s CDA approach for the analysis of ‘socio-cultural change and change in discourse’ (1989, 1992, 1995a, 1995b, 2003) is herein methodologically employed assuming the recognition of the mutually constitutive effects of language, discourse and the socio-cultural, thereby aiming to unveil the place of power relations in the discursive constitution of identities in/through the discursive practices taking place in specific social formations with a special focus on the use of language. Through an analysis of a sample from FHM men’s lifestyle magazine’s advice column as a case in point, this piece will substantiate this process at (a) a strictly speaking textual level, (b) at an interaction level – involving processes of text production, interpretation, consumption and distribution in this genre – and (c) at a broa der social-cultural level. Sport will thus be highlighted as an essential social practice regulating the articulation of masculine identities in contemporary Britain, where the masculine cult of the body reveals ‘hypermasculine’ attitudes (Pleck, 1981) as a sign of apparent self-assertiveness concealing male anxieties in a context of changing gender relations. Perhaps more importantly, the role of specific linguistic features will be demonstrated as being key to this process within the socio-cultural on the whole.
Keywords: cultural studies, CDA, masculinities, British men's magazines, sport.

Cultural Capitalism and the Objet Petit a in M.T. Anderson's Feed
Jacobo Canady Salgado (University of Sevilla)

In Feed, M.T. Anderson tells the love story of teenagers Titus and Violet in a future world practically ruled by corporations, and where 73% of the population is permanently connected to a future version of the internet called the feed thanks to a chip implanted in their brain. The main activity characters in this novel are engaged in is frantic consumption. The aim of this paper is to study this consumption, and compare it to what critics like Slavoj Zizek and Brian Massumi call “cultural capitalism,” a capitalism where corporations sell, not only commodities, but lifestyles and experiences. Then, it is see how capitalism affects the perception of time, so people end up living in a mere succession of 'nows' that have no connection with the past nor with the future. What matters is the moment of buying. Finally, in the novel, Titus, the narrator explains his frustrations as he can never be “cool,” since “cool” always seem to fly ahead of him. This reminds of lacanian objets petit a as understood by Slavoj Zizek: they never provide the full experience they promise, so people feel compelled to consume more and more.
Keywords: Anderson, Feed, Science Fiction, Objet petit a, Cultural Capitalism, Agamben, Zizek, Fashion, Time

The varied and numerous remains of texts and documents on “The Great Famine” (an Gorta Mór), that devastated and destroyed Ireland in mid-nineteenth-century (1845-1852), allow us to place the events within perspective as one of the greatest tragedies suffered by any country (then a British colony) in all human history. This “Great Calamity,” which has been alluded to with different names (“The Irish Holocaust,” “God’s Visitation,” “The Bad Times,” “The Great Starvation,” “The Irish Famine,” “The Great Hunger,” etc.) has also generated differences of interpretation, emphasis, and response throughout Europe based on varied and opposite ideologies which this round table aims at revealing, through attention to different literary texts that, despite their relevance, have not received enough critical attention. The causes (besides the one-hundred-and-fiftieth commemoration of “Black ’47”) that have motivated a renewed general interest in this episode in Irish History in the last two decades of the twentieth century and the first years of the twenty-first century, as well as the hidden reasons for the critical and literary silence from the 1870s to the 1970s, will also be studied. ‘Literary Anthropology’ will favour a ‘culturalist’ approach based on the notions of ‘Historical Consciousness’ and ‘Collective Memory’, and will facilitate a comparative as well as contrastive analysis of both the obvious silenced years and the evident renewed interest in the last three decades. Besides, our approach will smooth the process of contextualisation and will aim to look further than simply the classic ‘traditionalist’ approach based on ‘revisionist’, ‘nationalist’, and even ‘religious’ interpretations and arguments whose appropriateness will also be questioned. Apart from very briefly marking the different angles from which the topic of The Great Hunger is being studied by the participants, this round table will be introduced as emerging from a R&D Project just granted by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (FFI2009-12751) in which the three speakers participate and work as research members, and the moderator as main researcher.
Keywords: Irish Famine, Hunger, Ideology, Literary Anthropology, Historical Consciousness, Collective Memory, Silence.

Silenced Identities: Black Writing in CANADA
Natalia Rodríguez Nieto (University of Salamanca)

Canada has been, and is, self-described as multicultural as intended in its Multiculturalism Act which, according to M. Nourbese Philip, is based on a theoretical equality since it is actually Eurocentric, and thus, white oriented. Following Robert Lecker, such white supremacy has also made its way into Canadia’s literary field. In Making it Real, he explains that Canadian mainstream criticism has worked until recently in the establishment of a monolithic and Eurocentric literary canon/tradition, built upon a dichotomy of centre/margin and following a politics of inclusion/exclusion. Anthologization as the main canon-making device has contributed to perpetuate this situation and has been the main source in the biased construction of Canada’s literary identity. Within the English-Canadian literary context, Black literature can be considered as a paradigm. Although modern black writers are gaining more recognition, early black writers are usually dismissed. George Elliot Clarke emphasizes that “even a cursory survey of early African-Canadian literature renders untenable the position that it is only a recent invention.” Mary Ann Shadd appears as the writer of the first text by an African–Canadian woman: A Plea for Emigration or, Notes of Canada West (1852). Shadd’s contribution is not only a proof of Canada’s literary diversity and the early presence of ethnic women writers, but a multicultural agent which raises a debate about racism in Canada yet to be attempted by mainstream institutions. Connecting her to modern black writers and thus configuring a black literary tradition, and establishing connections between her text and other works by canonized and non-canonized women and/or male writers, would be a means of writing back Canada’s black and mainstream literary history and an attempt of re-constructing its cultural identity.
Keywords: Canada, Black Literature, Multiculturalism, Mary Ann Shadd Cary

Body and Self in Jeanette Winterson's “Planet Blue” and Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross' “Flowers from Alice”
Jacobo Canady Salgado (University of Sevilla)

Jeanette Winterson in “Planet Blue” and Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross in “Flowers from Alice” deal with the same topic: the consequences of Cartesian dualism. Their premise is that the self is to be located, not in the body, but in the mind or consciousness of the person. That is where the real 'I' is. Nonetheless, although they share the same starting point, they reach completely opposed conclusions. For Winterson, the placement of the self in the consciousness opens up the possibility of including within the realm of the 'human' other conscious beings, as is the case, in her story, of Spike, a female Robo sapiens. On the other hand, for Doctorow and Stross this placement of the self in the consciousness allows the possibility of expecting that, one day, technology will be able to literally split mind and body. This way, people, like Alice in the story, will be able to have their minds, and, consequently, their selves, in more than one body. But this, instead of making 'h uman' a broader term, for Doctorow and Stross means precisely the end of the human and the birth of the post-human.
Keywords: Jeanette Winterson, Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross, Body, Mind, Self, Dualism, Human, Humanism, Post-human, Post-humanism

Racism in E. E. Cummings' Poetry: the Poet or the Man?
María Teresa González Mínguez (University Carlos III/IES Cervantes, Madrid)

From the very first day E. E. Cummings arrived in New York from Boston in 1917, he was fascinated by the variety of cultures and the mixture of so many races and nations. In 1950 Cummings published XAIPE. Two poems in this book --"A kike is the most dangerous" and "one day a nigger"-- hurt sensibilities in America after WWII. It is my purpose in this paper to demonstrate that Cummings was not racist but one of the greatest satirical poets of the United States whose only aim was to see the world from an optimistic perspective. The works of critics such as Leslie Fileder, Staton Coblentz, Norman Friedman or Marc Miller will be used in order to demonstrate the game of oppositions between the poet's mind and his personal feelings and his interest in preserving the distinctness of the different cultures.
Keywords: African Americans, Jews, Racism, Satire, Distinctness.

This Roundtable aims to explore how the concept of sensation has evolved from the eighteenth- to the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. The theoretical framework will be provided by the notion of the trace in a phenomenological sense and related to the power of memory, as Edward Casey states: “Just because sensation has been viewed as so openly receptive of these contents – “and” because its manifestations are so constantly changing (constantly changing precisely because so rich: intolerable if held steadily the same) – some form of fixation and preservation is called for. This demand is clearest in the case of ”memory”, whose very function is normally considered to be one of recording or registration – that is to say, fixation in memory traces that can be stored and retrieved with maximum ease (Casey 242; emphasis original). Therefore, the members of this Roundtable will trace the ways in which the idea of ‘sensation’ is inextricably associated with the female body from the long eighteenth century onwards, and how this association has been fixed and preserved along the centuries.
Keywords: sensation, trace, women’s writings, body vs. mind, memory

What we know as early modern England was the product of complex and sophisticated social and cultural processes that eventually led to shaping English identity as well as England as a nation-state. This was carried out through the development of discursive and ideological forms and artefacts that confronted other communities, which progressively came to be pointed out for their apparent alterity. Consequently, we suggest that Catholics, Muslims, and Jews are tactically defined through the nascent production of an allegedly coherent English identity based on a community of skin colour, religion, and ideology. We will explore how these processes established dialectical relations with all kinds of cultural artefacts, but most especially with textual ones, which simultaneously inscribe and constitute this process of constructing an English identity. Hence, and given the extent of this research, we propose the constitution of two panels which will explore Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, pamphlets, travel narratives and emblems.
Keywords: identity, otherness, Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, Early Modern England.