Issue 1 - Origins & Originality
Guest Article
The Life and Death of the Avant-garde on the Battlefield of Rhetoric - and Beyond
Dr Hubert van den Berg, researcher at the Institute for Humanities Research (ICOG) and Department of Dutch Language and Literature of the University of Groningen
Articles
Becoming Origin(al): Deterritorialization and Postcolonial Theory from the Caribbean
William Christopher Brown, Indiana University
Genesis, the Origin, and Darwin's autobiographies
Alexis Harley, University of Sydney
Myths of Origin and Myths of the Future in Larissa Lai's Salt Fish Girl
Elizabeth C. Harmer, McMaster University
Finding the Poem - Modern Gaelic Verse and the Contact Zone
Corinna Krause, University of Edinburgh
Angelopoulos' Ulysses Gaze: Where the Old meets the New
Vangelis Makriyannakis, University of Edinburgh
Lord Byron and George Eliot: Embracing National Identity in Daniel Deronda
Denise Tischler Millstein, Louisiana State University
The Phantom Walking the Text: The Death of the Author Reconsidered
Sten Moslund, University of Southern Denmark
Timeless and (Un)original : the Role of Gossip in R.K. Narayan's The Man-Eater of Malgudi and The Painter of Signs
James Peacock, University of Edinburgh
The Kuleshov Effect and the Death of the Auteur
Michael Russell, The University of Edinburgh
Jean-Luc Godard and Roy Lichtenstein: Originality, Reflexivity, and the Re-Presented Image
Daniel Yacavone, University of Edinburgh
Reviews
Catherine Labio, Origins and the Enlightenment: Aesthetic Epistemology from Descartes to Kant
Joe Hughes, University of Edinburgh
Guest Article
The Life and Death of the Avant-garde on the Battlefield of Rhetoric - and Beyond
Dr Hubert van den Berg, researcher at the Institute for Humanities Research (ICOG) and Department of Dutch Language and Literature of the University of Groningen
'The avant-garde' has most often been defined by its position at the metaphorical 'cutting edge' or forefront of culture. The concept depends on the value assigned to originality and to art's ability to challenge mainstream culture. This paper examines the military origins and usage of the term in order to shed light upon the much heralded 'death of the avant-garde' which has been repeatedly declared by theorists and critics throughout the last few decades.
Articles
Becoming Origin(al): Deterritorialization and Postcolonial Theory from the Caribbean
William Christopher Brown, Indiana University
This essay considers the status of Glissant's Caribbean Discourse and Bernabé, Chamoiseau, and Confiant's In Praise of Creoleness as "minor literature." This paper uses Deleuze and Guattari's theoretical constructs of deterritorialization and reterritorialization to analyze Glissant and Bernabé et al's calls for originality in Caribbean literature.
Genesis, the Origin, and Darwin's autobiographies
Alexis Harley, University of Sydney
When Darwin refuted the creationist claims of Genesis with the evolutionary ones of the Origin of Species, he became a figurehead for Victorian apostasy. By examining how his autobiographical writing re-enacts this apostasy, this paper discusses less the metaphysical arguments he makes in his chapter on "Religious Belief", than how the accounts of Darwin's own origins engage rhetorically and stylistically with questions both of biblical fallibility or authority and of divine creation.
Myths of Origin and Myths of the Future in Larissa Lai's Salt Fish Girl
Elizabeth C. Harmer, McMaster University
Considering both cyborg theory and mythography, this essay compares the treatment of cyborgs and origin myths in Larissa Lai's Salt Fish Girl and Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century." Lai exploits and plays with myth, showing the ways in which myths offer possibilities instead of constraints.
Finding the Poem - Modern Gaelic Verse and the Contact Zone
Corinna Krause, University of Edinburgh
Exploring the relationship between modern Gaelic poetry and the ever facing English self-translations by Gaelic authors, this paper identifies modern Gaelic verse as literary contact zone highlighting dynamics surrounding both the production and the reception of modern Gaelic verse whilst considering the impact of such dynamics on the state of Gaelic as thriving literature and language.
Angelopoulos' Ulysses Gaze: Where the Old meets the New
Vangelis Makriyannakis, University of Edinburgh
This paper looks into Angelopoulos' Ulysses Gaze in order to trace the signature of its author in the episodic narrative of a journey, where memory becomes a vessel to reinterpret the present and places the film among a cinematic mode that Deleuze has called 'The Time Image'.
Lord Byron and George Eliot: Embracing National Identity in Daniel Deronda
Denise Tischler Millstein, Louisiana State University
This article explores Eliot's novel in the context of national consciousness, memory, the search for origin, culture and roots, and community and belonging. I argue that Eliot uses the Jewish plot of the novel and the cultural understanding of Byron as agents to discuss how Victorian England could reform and unify its national character.
The Phantom Walking the Text: The Death of the Author Reconsidered
Sten Moslund, University of Southern Denmark
This paper argues that Barthes in his famous essay replaces the myth of the Author with a myth of the Text as a space of discursive infinitude. The paper proposes a reading of texts that permits a degree of discursive autonomy while at the same time calling attention to their discursive positioning.
Timeless and (Un)original : the Role of Gossip in R.K. Narayan's The Man-Eater of Malgudi and The Painter of Signs
James Peacock, University of Edinburgh
Gossip in the novels of R.K. Narayan serves an intersubjective function, binding citizens together in acts of shared storytelling. It is precisely the difficulty of locating the origin of any one rumour which allows gossip to evade the control of malevolent outsiders, that is, potential cultural colonisers.
The Kuleshov Effect and the Death of the Auteur
Michael Russell, The University of Edinburgh
The Kuleshov Effect has traditionally been interpreted as the origin of Soviet montage cinema, by establishing the effectiveness of montage techniques on cinema audiences. But I propose a new additional interpretation of the significance of the Kuleshov Effect, as a direct attack on the concept of the film auteur. This article explores the meeting point of Soviet montage cinema, the French Nouvelle Vague and Roland Barthes.
Jean-Luc Godard and Roy Lichtenstein: Originality, Reflexivity, and the Re-Presented Image
Daniel Yacavone, University of Edinburgh
A comparative study of Jean-Luc Godard's 1960's "collage" cinema and Roy Lichtenstein's contemporaneous Pop art painting. Godard's and Lichtenstein's innovative use of pre-existing imagery is seen as part of a wider (self-)reflexive challenge to both traditional creative practices, and concepts of "originality" and "expressiveness," in film and the visual arts.
Reviews
Catherine Labio, Origins and the Enlightenment: Aesthetic Epistemology from Descartes to Kant
Joe Hughes, University of Edinburgh
Editors
Lisa Otty
Matt McGuire
