Добірка наукової літератури з теми "Neo-Hellenic theater (20th century)"

The Lithuanian folktale “The Sister as Duck” (AT 452C*), most commonly known under the name of “Sigutė”, is generally regarded as a popular narrative. It is appreciated for the rich mythical imagery: after the female protagonist is burned and the cow licks the ashes, the duck appears; the snow is allegedly sparkling because of the witch’s brains (bones) scattered there, etc. Moreover, the tale abounds in expressive song insertions.This tale has been published both in academic and popular editions. Its images are widespread in popular culture, even becoming stereotypical. However, in the card file catalogue of the Lithuanian folk narratives, only 17 variants of this tale and 5 fragments recorded from oral tradition can be found.By using contextual analysis, the author of the article attempts establishing when, how, and due to what circumstances this tale has turned into a phenomenon of popular culture.Its first recording from oral tradition in the 19th century purported to serve as illustration of the peculiarities of a particular Lithuanian dialect. After the ban of the Lithuanian press in Latin alphabet was lifted in the beginning of the 20th century, this variant of the tale was included into a published collection of folktales for children, subsequently spreading to various schoolbooks, which commonly used it for didactic purposes, such as educating empathy in children.During Soviet times, the tale found its way into several academic editions, afterwards crossing into popular folktales’ collections for children published in thousands of copies. The tale also became popular in audial shape: its sound recordings were published both in Lithuania and abroad.The analysis of the tale’s variants recorded from the oral tradition highlighted certain characteristics indicating that its popularity must have depended on the written culture. In the five variants of the tale recorded in 1936–1959, the female protagonist is not once called Sigutė or turns into the duck. However, the eleven variants recorded in 1962–1980 include most of the structural components or certain peculiar details from the first published variant of the tale, e.g. the song insertions, the girl’s name, the duck motive. In most cases, the girl turns into duck here, and only once into a cuckoo. This testifies to the obvious influence of the published variant.The folktale “Sigutė” earned phenomenal popularity also due to its artistic interpretations. In the beginning of the 20th century, it inspired works by such Lithuanian neo-romanticists as Vydūnas, Salomėja Nėris and others. During Soviet times, this story served as basis for plays and theater performances for children, thus further paving its way into popular culture.The fate of the folktale “Sigutė” may be regarded as a certain case of folktale canon formation: the folk text originating in oral tradition is affected by instruments of the written culture, turning into a narrative of national renown and importance. Possibly such cannon formation was also determined by the decline of the traditional folk culture, as result of which the educated people selecting the folk texts to inspire their creativity particularly favored the ones characterized by a dramatic story line and impressive tragic developments, which therefore could be easily adapted into individual literary compositions.Thus, the literary and musical interpretations of the folktale “Sigutė” have significantly added to its popularity, turning it into a canonic childhood text. Lacking popularity in the oral tradition and recorded as just a few fragmented variants, most likely retold from the published folktale collections, the folktale “Sigutė” became a special phenomenon of the written Lithuanian culture.

In which ways was Medieval and Byzantine History embedded in the Greek national narrative in the first life steps of the Greek state during the 19th century? In which ways has it been related to the emerging nationalism in the Balkans, and to relationships with the West and the countries of south-eastern Europe during the Balkan Wars, the First and Second World Wars, and especially the Cold War, until today? In which ways does Byzantium correlate with the notion of Greekness, and what place does it occupy in Neo-Hellenic identity and culture? Moreover, which role does it play in history teaching, and what kind of reactions does any endeavour of revision or reformation provoke? To answer the above questions I performed a comparative analysis on the following categories of sources: (a) Greek national and European historiography, (b) School history curricula and textbooks, (c) Public history sources, (d) The new History Curriculum for primary and secondary school classes, and (e) The principles and guidelines of international organizations such as the Council of Europe. In the first three sections of this paper, I provide an overview of the conformation and integration of the Byzantine period in Greek national historiography, in association with the dominant European philosophical and historical perspectives during the era of modernity, as well as the evolving national politics, foreign affairs, prevailing ideological schemas and the role of history teaching in shaping the common identity of the Neo-Hellenic society throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The fourth section briefly deals with the current situation in history teaching in Greek schools, while the fifth section critically presents the innovative elements and features of the new History Curriculum, which, to some degree, aspires to be considered a paradigm shift in the teaching of Medieval History in school education. Finally, I summarize and draw several conclusions.

The article presents for the Lithuanian audience an interdisciplinary approach of literary canon studies that integrates diverse methods of various disciplines (sociology of literature and culture, literary and cultural history, teaching of literature, text reception and aesthetic response history, memory and media research and bibliography studies). The most intense development of literary canon studies can be observed in Western Europe and the United States in the last decade of the 20th century. This was due to the fact that the scholars engaged in the field of postcolonialism, gender studies and neo-Marxism gave it a strong impulse by initiating a debate about insufficient representation of some social groups (women, racial or ethnic minorities and people from lower social strata) in high school curricula in the USA. The debate was expanded into theoretical polemics of whether the canon is formed by means of objective aesthetic criteria or, on the contrary, canon depends on the social contract. Methodologically, investigations of literary canon that are genetically related to the tradition of sociology of culture seem to be the most productive, while this perspective provides an apparatus for a detailed investigation of relations between specific interests of literary field and wider national, social or group interests.The framework of this article is based on the studies of John Guillory, Renate von Heydebrand and Simone Winko. Their essential starting point is the understanding of the canon as a sociocultural process in which the political elite selects a corpus of significant texts in accordance with tradition and formulates practices that ensure the transmission of those texts for future generations. Therefore, canon formation turns to be a strategy based on complex relations of evaluation, cognition and actions that aims to conserve this selected knowledge and transmit it to future generations. The structure of the canon is directly related to the notion of literature and literariness; a society (or its group) defines its canon by considering what they recognize as valuable.Unlike religious canons, which can only be constructed by theologians, there are a lot of canonizing institutions (schools, universities, literary criticism, theatre repertoire, book market, libraries, etc.) involved in the formation of literary canons. They do not create any well-balanced system of the canon but rather conduct diverse practices of canonization. We can distinguish a micro and macro level in the process of canon formation. The micro level contains a lot of separate actions of canonization that propel the canonization process which enables the canon formation at macro level. Origin, stabilization and transformation of literary canon are multidimensional processes, thus it is essential not to lose sight of the interaction of separate dimensions.

Одна из значимых проблем мировой художественной культуры – проблема взаимосвязи и взаимовлияния литератур. Она еще более актуальна в России, которая позиционируется как многонациональное государство. Потому роль межкультурного диалога русской и осетинской литературы, возникшего в конце 19 века, лишь увеличивалась в последующие десятилетия. Ощутимым в развитии этого диалога представляется творчество выдающегося российского поэта, прозаика, переводчика, журналиста, педагога и художника Сергея Митрофановича Городецкого, вошедшего в русскую литературу на рубеже XIX и XX веков в рамках культуры «Серебряного века». Эта эпоха составила гордость отечественной литературы, дав миру А. Блока, А. Ахматову, С. Есенина, И. Бунина, В. Брюсова, Н. Гумилева, К. Бальмонта, О.Мандельштама, В.Маяковского, М.Волошина и многих других. Наследие С. Городецкого поражает жанровым многообразием – поэзия, проза, драматургия, оперные либретто, публицистика, критика, литературоведческие статьи, переводы. Его долгое творчество развивалось под влиянием русского фольклора, символизма, неоромантизма, неомифологизма, он сформулировал задачи акмеизма. Предлагаемая работа посвящена осетинским литературным связям Городецкого, практически не отраженным ни в его биографиях, ни в исследованиях творчества. В 1919 г. журналистская судьба привела поэта на Кавказ, полюбившийся ему на всю жизнь. Его знакомство с Осетией началось с Нартовского эпоса, с перевода в 1920 г. нартовской легенды об Ацамазе и Агунде. В 1928 г. он обратился к осетинскому Даредзановскому эпосу и творчеству осетинского драматурга Е.Бритаева, создав либретто оперы «Амран», поставленной на сцене Большого театра. В 30-е годы со знакомства с поэтом Харитоном Плиевым начинается новый этап осетинских литературных связей Городецкого. Началом их многолетней творческой дружбы стал перевод стихотворения Х. Плиева «Æнæхуыссæг æхсæв», написанного на смерть Кирова. Городецкий, опытный переводчик, приложил немалые старания в поисках адекватности образности, художественных особенностей, выразительности осетинской поэтической речи. Помощь в этом ему оказали знания, приобретенные в середине 20-х гг., когда в качестве корреспондента газеты «Известия» он побывал в Осетии, познакомился с ее этнографией, культурой, эпосом, обрядами и обычаями, встречался с народом Осетии. Затем Городецкий обращается к образу выдающегося осетинского поэта Коста Хетагурова, любовь к которому, обусловленная общностью идейной направленности их творчества, отношения к народу, к фольклору, оставалась неизменной до конца жизни. В статье рассмотрены переводы Городецкого стихотворений Харитона (Хадо) Плиева, посвященных Коста. Их отличает высокое качество перевода, глубокое проникновение в специфику осетинской поэтической речи, художественного мышления национальных поэтов, их духовно-нравственных ценностей. Также проанализировано стихотворение Городецкого «Коста Хетагурову», написанное в 1939 г. к юбилею поэта и прочитанное им на торжествах во Владикавказе (тогда Орджоникидзе). Через несколько десятилетий это стихотворение перевел на осетинский язык поэт Хаджи-Мурат Дзуццати. One of the significant problems of world art culture is the problem of the interconnection and mutual influence of literature. It is even more relevant in Russia, which is positioned as a multinational state. Therefore, the role of intercultural dialogue between Russian and Ossetian literature, which arose at the end of the 19th century, only increased in the following decades. The work of the outstanding Russian poet, prose writer, translator, journalist, teacher and artist Sergei Mitrofanovich Gorodetsky, who entered the Russian literature at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries as part of the Silver Age culture, seems to be tangible in the development of this dialogue. This era was the pride of Russian literature, giving the world A. Blok, A. Akhmatov, S. Yesenin, I. Bunin, V. Bryusov, N. Gumilyov, K. Balmont, O. Mandelstam, V. Mayakovsky, M. Voloshin and many others. S. Gorodetsky’s heritage is striking in its genre diversity – poetry, prose, dramaturgy, opera libretto, journalism, criticism, literary articles, and translations. His long work developed under the influence of Russian folklore, symbolism, neo-romanticism, neo-mythology, he formulated the tasks of acmeism. The proposed work is dedicated to the Ossetian literary connections of Gorodetsky, which are practically not reflected either in his biographies or in his studies of his creations. In 1919, the journalistic fate brought the poet to the Caucasus. His acquaintance with Ossetia began with the Nart epic, with the translation in 1920 of the Nart legend of Atsamaz and Agunda. In 1928, he turned to the Ossetian Daredzan epic and the work of the Ossetian playwright E. Britaev, creating the libretto of the opera Amran, staged in the Bolshoi Theater. In the 30s, a new period in the Ossetian literary relations of Gorodetsky began with his acquaintance with the poet Khariton Pliev. The beginning of their creative friendship was the translation of the poem by Kh. Pliev “Ænækhuyssæg ækhsæv”, written on the death of Kirov. Gorodetsky, an experienced translator, made considerable efforts in the search for the adequacy of imagery, artistic features, and expressiveness of Ossetian poetic speech. The knowledge acquired in the mid-1920s, when he visited Ossetia as a correspondent for the Izvestia newspaper, got acquainted with its ethnography, culture, epos, rites and customs, and met with the people of Ossetia, helped him a lot. Then Gorodetsky turned to the image of the outstanding Ossetian poet Kosta Khetagurov, whose love, due to the common ideological orientation of their work, attitude to the people, to folklore, remained unchanged until the end of his life. The article considers the translations of Gorodetsky poems by Khariton (Hado) Pliev dedicated to Kosta. They are distinguished by the high quality of translation, deep penetration into the specifics of Ossetian poetic speech, the artistic thinking of national poets, their spiritual and moral values. Gorodetsky’s poem “Kosta Khetagurov”, written in 1939 for the poet’s anniversary and read by him at the celebrations in Vladikavkaz (then Ordzhonikidze), is also analyzed. A few decades later, this poem was translated into Ossetian by the poet Haji-Murat Dzutstsati.

“The intellect must not only desire surreptitious delights; it must become completely free and celebrate Saturnalia.” (Nietzsche 6) Theory-jamming suggests an array of eclectic methods, deployed in response to emerging conditions, using traditional patterns to generate innovative moves, seeking harmony and syncopation, transparent about purpose and power, aiming for demonstrable certainties while aware of their own provisional fragility. In this paper, theory-jamming is suggested as an antidote for the confusion and disarray that typifies communication theory. Communication theory as the means to conceptualise the transmission of information and the negotiation of meaning has never been a stable entity. Entrenched divisions between ‘administrative’ and ‘critical’ tendencies are played out within schools and emerging disciplines and across a range of scientific/humanist, quantitative/qualitative and political/cultural paradigms. “Of course, this is only the beginning of the mischief for there are many other polarities at play and a host of variations within polar contrasts” (Dervin, Shields and Song). This paper argues that the play of contending schools with little purchase on each other, or anything much, has turned meta-discourse about communication into an ontological spiral. Perhaps the only way to ride out this storm is to look towards communication practices that confront these issues and appreciate their theoretical underpinnings. From its roots in jazz and blues to its contemporary manifestations in rap and hip-hop and throughout the communication industries, the jam (or improvised reorganisation of traditional themes into new and striking patterns) confronts the ontological spiral in music, and life, by taking the flotsam flung out of the spiral to piece together the means to transcend the downward pull into the abyss. Many pretenders have a theory. Theory abounds: language theory, number theory, game theory, quantum theory, string theory, chaos theory, cyber-theory, queer theory, even conspiracy theory and, most poignantly, the putative theory of everything. But since Bertrand Russell’s unsustainable class of all classes, Gödel’s systemically unprovable propositions and Heisenberger’s uncertainty principle, the propensity for theories to fall into holes in themselves has been apparent. Nowhere is this more obvious than in communication theory where many schools contend without actually connecting to each other. From the 1930s, as the mass media formed, there have been administrative and critical tendencies at war in the communication arena. Some point to the origins of the split in the Institute of Social Research’s Radio Project where pragmatic sociologist, Paul Lazarsfeld broke with Frankfurt School critical theorist, Theodor Adorno over the quality of data. Lazarsfeld was keen to produce results while Adorno complained the data over-simplified the relationship between mass media and audiences (Rogers). From this split grew the twin disciplines of mass communication (quantitative, liberal, commercial and lost in its obsession with the measurement of minor media effects) and cultural/media studies (qualitative, post-Marxist, radical and lost in simulacra of their own devising). The complexity of interactions between these two disciplines, with the same subject matter but very different ways of thinking about it, is the foundation of the ontological black hole in communication theory. As the disciplines have spread out across universities, professional organizations and publishers, they have been used and abused for ideological, institutional and personal purposes. By the summer of 1983, the split was documented in a special issue of the Journal of Communication titled “Ferment in the Field”. Further, professional courses in journalism, public relations, marketing, advertising and media production have complex relations with both theoretical wings, which need the student numbers and are adept at constructing and defending new boundaries. The 90s saw any number ‘wars’: Journalism vs Cultural Studies, Cultural Studies vs Cultural Policy Studies, Cultural Studies vs Public Relations, Public Relations vs Journalism. More recently, the study of new communication technologies has led to a profusion of nascent, neo-disciplines shadowing, mimicking and reacting with old communication studies: “Internet studies; New media studies; Digital media studies; Digital arts and culture studies; Cyberculture studies; Critical cyberculture studies; Networked culture studies; Informatics; Information science; Information society studies; Contemporary media studies” (Silver & Massanari 1). As this shower of cyberstudies spirals by, it is further warped by the split between the hard science of communication infrastructure in engineering and information technology and what the liberal arts have to offer. The early, heroic attempt to bridge this gap by Claude Shannon and, particularly, Warren Weaver was met with disdain by both sides. Weaver’s philosophical interpretation of Shannon’s mathematics, accommodating the interests of technology and of human communication together, is a useful example of how disparate ideas can connect productively. But how does a communications scholar find such connections? How can we find purchase amongst this avalanche of ideas and agendas? Where can we get the traction to move beyond twentieth century Balkanisation of communications theory to embrace the whole? An answer came to me while watching the Discovery Channel. A documentary on apes showed them leaping from branch to branch, settling on a swaying platform of leaves, eating and preening, then leaping into the void until they make another landing, settling again… until the next leap. They are looking for what is viable and never come to ground. Why are we concerned to ground theory which can only prove its own impossibility while disregarding the certainty of what is viable for now? I carried this uneasy insight for almost five years, until I read Nietzsche on the methods of the pre-Platonic philosophers: “Two wanderers stand in a wild forest brook flowing over rocks; the one leaps across using the stones of the brook, moving to and fro ever further… The other stands there helplessly at each moment. At first he must construct the footing that can support his heavy steps; when this does not work, no god helps him across the brook. Is it only boundless rash flight across great spaces? Is it only greater acceleration? No, it is with flights of fantasy, in continuous leaps from possibility to possibility taken as certainties; an ingenious notion shows them to him, and he conjectures that there are formally demonstrable certainties” (Nietzsche 26). Nietzsche’s advice to take the leap is salutary but theory must be more than jumping from one good idea to the next. What guidance do the practices of communication offer? Considering new forms that have developed since the 1930s, as communication theory went into meltdown, the significance of the jam is unavoidable. While the jam session began as improvised jazz and blues music for practice, fellowship and fun, it quickly became the forum for exploring new kinds of music arising from the deconstruction of the old and experimentation with technical, and ontological, possibilities. The jam arose as a spin-off of the dance music circuit in the 1930s. After the main, professional show was over, small groups would gather together in all-night dives for informal, spontaneous sessions of unrehearsed improvisation, playing for their own pleasure, “in accordance with their own esthetic [sic] standards” (Cameron 177). But the jam is much more than having a go. The improvisation occurs on standard melodies: “Theoretically …certain introductions, cadenzas, clichés and ensemble obbligati assume traditional associations (as) ‘folkways’… that are rarely written down but rather learned from hearing (“head jobs”)” (Cameron 178-9). From this platform of tradition, the artist must “imagine in advance the pattern which unfolds… select a part in the pattern appropriate to the occasion, instrument and personal abilities (then) produce startlingly distinctive sound patterns (that) rationalise the impossible.” The jam is founded on its very impossibility: “the jazz aesthetic is basically a paradox… traditionalism and the radical originality are irreconcilable” (Cameron 181). So how do we escape from this paradox, the same paradox that catches all communication theorists between the demands of the past and the impossibility of the future? “Experimentation is mandatory and formal rules become suspect because they too quickly stereotype and ossify” (Cameron 181). The jam seems to work because it offers the possibility of the impossible made real by the act of communication. This play between the possible and the impossible, the rumbling engine of narrative, is the dynamo of the jam. Theory-jamming seeks to activate just such a dynamo. Rather than having a group of players on their instruments, the communication theorist has access a range of theoretical riffs and moves that can be orchestrated to respond to the question in focus, to latest developments, to contradictions or blank spaces within theoretical terrains. The theory-jammer works to their own standards, turning ideas learned from others (‘head jobs’) into their own distinctive patterns, still reliant on traditional melody, harmony and syncopation but now bent, twisted and reorganised into an entirely new story. The practice of following old pathways to new destinations has a long tradition in the West as eclecticism, a Graeco-Roman, particularly Alexandrian, philosophical tradition from the first century BC to the end of the classical period. Typified by Potamo who “encouraged his pupils instead to learn from a variety of masters”, eclecticism sought the best from each school, “all that teaches righteousness combined, the complete eclectic unity” (Kelley 578). By selecting the best, most reasonable, most useful elements from existing philosophical beliefs, polymaths such as Cicero sought the harmonious solution of particular problems. We see something similar to eclecticism in the East in the practices of ‘wild fox zen’ which teaches liberation from conceptual fixation (Heine). The 20th century’s most interesting eclectic was probably Walter Benjamin whose method owes something to both scientific Marxism and the Jewish Kabbalah. His hero was the rag-picker who had the cunning to create life from refuse and detritus. Benjamin’s greatest work, the unfinished Arcades Project, sought to create history from the same. It is a collection of photos, ephemera and transcriptions from books and newspapers (Benjamin). The particularity of eclecticism may be contrasted with the claim to universality of syncretism, the reconciliation of disparate or opposing beliefs by melding together various schools of thought into a new orthodoxy. Theory-jammers are not looking for a final solution but rather they seek what will work on this problem now, to come to a provisional solution, always aware that other, better, further solutions may be ahead. Elements of the jam are apparent in other contemporary forms of communication. For example bricolage, the practice from art, culture and information systems, involves tinkering elements together by trial and error, in ways not originally planned. Pastiche, from literature to the movies, mimics style while creating a new message. In theatre and TV comedy, improvisation has become a style in itself. Theory-jamming has direct connections with brainstorming, the practice that originated in the advertising industry to generate new ideas and solutions by kicking around possibilities. Against the hyper-administration of modern life, as the disintegration of grand theory immobilises thinkers, theory-jamming provides the means to think new thoughts. As a political activist and communications practitioner in Australia over the last thirty years, I have always been bemused by the human propensity to factionalise. Rather than getting bogged down by positions, I have sought to use administrative structures to explore critical ideas, to marshal critical approaches into administrative apparatus, to weld together critical and administrative formations in ways useful to both sides, bust most importantly, in ways useful to human society and a healthy environment. I've been accused of selling-out by the critical camp and of being unrealistic by the administrative side. My response is that we have much more to learn by listening and adapting than we do by self-satisfied stasis. Five Theses on Theory-Jamming Eclecticism requires Ethnography: the eclectic is the ethnographer loose in their own mind. “The free spirit surveys things, and now for the first time mundane existence appears to it worthy of contemplation…” (Nietzsche 6). Enculturation and Enumeration need each other: qualitative and quantitative research work best when they work off each other. “Beginners learned how to establish parallels, by means of the Game’s symbols, between a piece of classical music and the formula for some law of nature. Experts and Masters of the Game freely wove the initial theme into unlimited combinations.” (Hesse) Ephemera and Esoterica tell us the most: the back-story is the real story as we stumble on the greatest truths as if by accident. “…the mind’s deeper currents often need to be surprised by indirection, sometimes, indeed, by treachery and ruse, as when you steer away from a goal in order to reach it more directly…” (Jameson 71). Experimentation beyond Empiricism: more than testing our sense of our sense data of the world. Communication theory extends from infra-red to ultraviolet, from silent to ultrasonic, from absolute zero to complete heat, from the sub-atomic to the inter-galactic. “That is the true characteristic of the philosophical drive: wonderment at that which lies before everyone.” (Nietzsche 6). Extravagance and Exuberance: don’t stop until you’ve got enough. Theory-jamming opens the possibility for a unified theory of communication that starts, not with a false narrative certainty, but with the gaps in communication: the distance between what we know and what we say, between what we say and what we write, between what we write and what others read back, between what others say and what we hear. References Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 2002. Cameron, W. B. “Sociological Notes on the Jam Session.” Social Forces 33 (Dec. 1954): 177–82. Dervin, B., P. Shields and M. Song. “More than Misunderstanding, Less than War.” Paper at International Communication Association annual meeting, New York City, NY, 2005. 5 Oct. 2006 http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p13530_index.html>. “Ferment in the Field.” Journal of Communication 33.3 (1983). Heine, Steven. “Putting the ‘Fox’ Back in the ‘Wild Fox Koan’: The Intersection of Philosophical and Popular Religious Elements in The Ch’an/Zen Koan Tradition.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 56.2 (Dec. 1996): 257-317. Hesse, Hermann. The Glass Bead Game. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.” New Left Review 146 (1984): 53-90. Kelley, Donald R. “Eclecticism and the History of Ideas.” Journal of the History of Ideas 62.4 (Oct. 2001): 577-592 Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Pre-Platonic Philosophers. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001. Rogers, E. M. “The Empirical and the Critical Schools of Communication Research.” Communication Yearbook 5 (1982): 125-144. Shannon, C.E., and W. Weaver. The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949. Silver, David, Adrienne Massanari. Critical Cyberculture Studies. New York: NYU P, 2006. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Stockwell, Stephen. "Theory-Jamming: Uses of Eclectic Method in an Ontological Spiral." M/C Journal 9.6 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0612/09-stockwell.php>. APA Style Stockwell, S. (Dec. 2006) "Theory-Jamming: Uses of Eclectic Method in an Ontological Spiral," M/C Journal, 9(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0612/09-stockwell.php>.

Introduction“Cage rage” is one of the most famous Internet memes (Figure 1) which made Nicolas Cage's stylised and sometimes excessive acting style very popular. His outbursts became a subject of many Youtube videos, supercuts (see for instance Hanrahan) and analyses, which turned his rage into a pop-cultural phenomenon. Cage’s outbursts of rage and (over)acting are, according to him (Freeman), inspired by German expressionism as in films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). How should this style of acting and its position within the context of the Hollywood industry today be read in societal and political sense? Is “Cage rage” a symptom of our times? Rage might be a correct reaction to events such the financial crisis or the election of Donald Trump, but the question should also be posed, what comes after the rage, or as Slavoj Žižek often puts it, what comes the “morning after” (the revolution, the protests)?Fig. 1: One of the “Cage Rage” MemesDo we need “Cage rage” as a pop cultural reminder that, to paraphrase Gordon Gekko in Wall Street (1987), rage, for a lack of a better word, is good, or is it here to remind us, that it is a sort of an empty signifier that can only serve for catharsis on an individual level? Žižek, in a talk he gave in Vienna, speaks about rage in the context of revolutions:Rage, rebellion, new power, is a kind of a basic triad of every revolutionary process. First there is chaotic rage, people are not satisfied, they show it in a more or less violent way, without any clear goal and organisation. Then, when this rage gets articulated, organised, we get rebellion, with a minimal organisation and more or less clear awareness of who the enemy is. Finally, if rebellion succeeds, the new power confronts the immense task of organising the new society. The problem is that we almost never get this triad in its logical progression. Chaotic rage gets diluted or turns into rightist populism, rebellion succeeds but loses steam. (“Rage, Rebellion, New Power”)This means that, on the one hand, that rage could be effective. If we look at current events, we can witness the French president Emanuel Macron (if only partially) giving in to some of the demands of the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protesters. In the recent past, the events of “Arab spring” are reminders of a watershed moment in the history of the participating nations; going back to the year 2000, Slobodan Milošević's regime in Serbia was toppled by the rage of the people who could not put up with his oligarchic rule — alongside international military intervention.On the other hand, all the outrage on the streets and in the media cannot simply “un-elect” or impeach Donald Trump from his position as the American President. It appears that President Trump seems to thrive on the liberal outrage against him, at the same time perpetuating outrage among his supporters against liberals and progressives in general. If we look back at the financial crisis of 2008 and the Occupy Wall Street movement, despite the outrage on the streets, the banks were bailed out and almost no one went to prison (Shephard). Finally, in post-Milošević Serbia, instead of true progressive changes taking place, the society continues to follow similar nationalistic patterns.It seems that many movements fail after expressing rage/aggression, a reaction against something or someone. Another recent example is Greece, where after the 2015 referendum, the left-wing coalition SYRIZA complied to the austerity measures of the Eurozone, thereby ignoring the will of the people, prompting its leaders Varoufakis and Tsipras falling out and the latter even being called a ‘traitor.’ Once more it turned out that, as Žižek states, “rage is not the beginning but also the outcome of failed emancipatory projects” ("Rage, Rebellion, New Power").Rage and IndividualismHollywood, as a part of the "cultural industry" (Adorno and Horkheimer), focuses almost exclusively on the individual’s rage, and even when it nears a critique of capitalism, the culprit always seems to be, like Gordon Gekko, an individual, a greedy or somehow depraved villain, and not the system. To illustrate this point, Žižek uses an example of The Fugitive (1993), where a doctor falsifies medical data for a big pharmaceutical company. Instead of making his character,a sincere and privately honest doctor who, because of the financial difficulties of the hospital in which he works, was lured into swallowing the bait of the pharmaceutical company, [the doctor is] transformed into a vicious, sneering, pathological character, as if psychological depravity […] somehow replaces and displaces the anonymous, utterly non-psychological drive of capital. (Violence 175)The violence that ensues–the hero confronting and beating up the bad guy–is according to Žižek mere passage a l’acte, an acting out, which at the same time, “serves as a lure, the very vehicle of ideological displacement” (Violence 175). The film, instead of pointing to the real culprit, in this case the capitalist pharmaceutical company diverts our gaze to the individual, psychotic villain.Other ‘progressive’ films that Hollywood has to offer chose individual rage, like in Tarantino's Kill Bill Volume I and II (2003/2004), with the story centred around a very personal revenge of a woman against her former husband. It is noted here that most of Nicholas Cage’s films, including his big budget movies and his many B-movies, remain outside the so-called ethos of “liberal Hollywood” (Powers, Rothman and Rothman). Conservative in nature, they support radical individualism, somewhat paradoxically combined with family values. This composite functions well values that go hand-in-hand with neoliberal capitalism. Surprisingly, this was pointed out by the guru of (neo)liberalism in global economy, by Milton Friedman: “as liberals, we take freedom of the individual, or perhaps the family, as our ultimate goal in judging social arrangements” (12). The explicit connections between capitalism, family and commercial film was noted earlier by Rudolf Arnheim (168). Family and traditional male/female roles therefore play an important role in Cage's films, by his daughter's murder in Tokarev (2014, alternative title: Rage); the rape of a young woman and Cage’s love interest in Vengeance: A Love Story (2017); the murder of his wife in Mandy (2018).The audience is supposed to identify with the plight of the father/husband plight, but in the case of Tokarev, it is precisely Cage's exaggerated acting that opens up a new possibility, inviting a different viewpoint on rage/revenge within the context of that film.Tokarev/RageAmong Cage's revenge films, Tokarev/Rage has a special storyline since it has a twist ending – it is not the Russian mafia, as he first suspected, but Cage’s own past that leads to the death of his daughter, as she and her friends find a gun (a Russian-made gun called ‘Tokarev’) in his house. He kept the gun as a trophy from his days as a criminal, and the girls start fooling around with it. The gun eventually goes off and his daughter gets shot in the head by her prospective boyfriend. After tracking down Russian mobsters and killing some of them, Cage’s character realises that his daughter’s death is in fact his own fault and it is his troubled past that came back to haunt him. Revenge therefore does not make any sense, rage turns into despair and his violence acts were literally meaningless – just acting out.Fig. 2: Acting Out – Cage in Tokarev/RageBut within the conservative framework of the film: the very excess of Cage’s acting, especially in the case of Tokarev/Rage, can be read as a critique of the way Hollywood treats these kinds of stories. Cage’s character development points out the absurdity of the exploitative way B-grade movies deal with such subjects, especially the way family is used in order to emotionally manipulate the audience. His explicit and deliberate overacting in certain scenes spits in the face of nuanced performances that are considered as “good acting.” Here, a more subdued performance that delivered a ‘genuine’ character portrayal in conflict, would bring an ideological view into play. “Cage Rage” seems to (perhaps without knowing it) unmask the film’s exploitation of violence. This author finds that Cage’s performance suffices to tear through the wall of the screen and he takes giant steps, crossing over boundaries by his embarrassing and awkward moments. Thus, his overacting and the way rage/revenge-storyline evolves, becomes as a sort of a “parapraxis”, the Freudian slip of the tongue, a term borrowed by Elsaesser and Wedel (131). In other words, parapraxis, as employed in film analysis means that a film can be ambiguous – or can be read ambiguously. Here, contradictory meanings can be localised within one particular film, but also open up a space for alternate interpretations of meanings and events in other movies of a similar genre.Hollywood’s celebration of rugged individualism is at its core ideology and usually overly obvious; but the impact this could on society and our understanding of rage and outrage is not to be underestimated. If Cage's “excess of acting” does function here as parapraxis this indicates firstly, the excessive individualism that these movies promote, but also the futility of rage.Rage and the Death DriveWhat are the origins of Nicholas Cage’s acting style? He has made claims to his connection to the silent film era, as expressive overstating, and melodrama was the norm without spoken dialogue to carry the story (see Gledhill). Cage also states that he wanted to be the “California Klaus Kinski” (“Nicolas Cage Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters”). This author could imagine him in a role similar to Klaus Kinski’s in Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampire (1979), a homage remake of the silent film masterpiece Nosferatu (1922). There remain outstanding differences between Cage and Kinski. It seems that Kinski was truly “crazy”, witnessed by his actions in the documentary My Best Fiend (1999), where he attacks his director and friend/fiend Werner Herzog with a machete. Kinski was constantly surrounded by the air of excessiveness, to this viewer, and his facial expressions appeared unbearably too expressive for the camera, whether in fiction or documentary films. Cage, despite also working with Herzog, does mostly act according to the traditional, method acting norms of the Hollywood cinema. Often he appears cool and subdued, perhaps merely present on screen and seemingly disinterested (as in the aforementioned Vengeance). His switching off between these two extremes can also be seen in Face/Off (1997), where he plays the drug crazed criminal Castor Troy, alongside the role of John Travolta’s ‘normal’ cop Sean Archer, his enemy. In Mandy, in the beginning of the film, before he goes on his revenge killing spree, he presents as a stoic and reserved character.So, phenomena like ‘Cage Rage’, connected to revenge and aggression and are displayed as violent acts, can serve as a stark reminder of the cataclysmic aspect of individual rage as integrated with the death drive – following Freud’s concept that aggression/death drive was significant for self-preservation (Nagera 48).As this author has observed, in fact Cage’s acting only occasionally has outbursts of stylised overacting, which is exactly what makes those outbursts so outstanding and excessive. Here, his acting is an excess itself, a sort of a “surplus” type of acting which recalls Žižek's interpretation of Freud's notion of the death drive:The Freudian death drive has nothing whatsoever to do with the craving for self-annihilation, for the return to the inorganic absence of any life-tension; it is, on the contrary, the very opposite of dying – a name for the “undead” eternal life itself, for the horrible fate of being caught in the endless repetitive cycle of wandering around in guilt and pain. (Parallax 62)Žižek continues to say that “humans are not simply alive, they are possessed by the strange drive to enjoy life in excess, passionately attached to a surplus which sticks out and derails the ordinary run of things” (Parallax 62). This is very similar to the mode of enjoyment detected in Cage’s over-acting.ViolenceRevenge and vigilantism are the staple themes of mass-audience Hollywood cinema and apart from Cage’s films previously mentioned. As Žižek reports, he views the violence depicted in films such as Death Wish (1974) to John Wick (2014) as “one of the key topics of American culture and ideology” (Parallax 343). But these outbursts of violence are simply, again, ‘acting out’ the passage a l’acte, which “enable us to discern the hidden obverse of the much-praised American individualism and self-reliance: the secret awareness that we are all helplessly thrown around by forces out of our control” (Parallax 343f.).Nicholas Cage’s performances express the epitome of being “thrown around by forces out of our control.” This author reads his expressionistic outbursts appear “possessed” by some strange, undead force. Rather than the radical individualism that is trumpeted in Hollywood films, this undead force takes over. The differences between his form of “Cage Rage” and others who are involved in revenge scenarios, are his iconic outbursts of rage/overacting. In his case, vengeance in his case is never a ‘dish best served cold,’ as the Klingon proverb expresses at the beginning of Kill Bill. But, paradoxically, this coldness might be exactly what one needs in the age of the resurgence of the right in politics which can be witnessed in America and Europe, and the outrage it continuously provokes. ConclusionRage has the potential to be positive; it can serve as a wake-up call to the injustices within society, and inspire reform as well as revolution. But rage is defined here as primarily an urge, a drive, something primordial, as an integral expression of the Lacanian Real (Žižek). This philosophic stance contends that in the process of symbolisation, or rage’s translation into language, this articulation tends to open up inconsistencies in a society, and causes the impetus to lose its power. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the cycle of rage and the “morning after” which inevitably follows, seems to have a problematic sobering effect. (This effect is well known to anyone who was ever hungover and who therefore professed to ‘never drink again’ where feelings of guilt prevail, which erase the night before from existence.) The excess of rage before followed, this author contends, by the excess of rationality after the revolution are therefore at odds, indicating that a reconciliation between these two should happen, a negotiation, providing a passage from the primordial emotion of rage to the more rational awakening.‘Cage Rage’ and its many commentators and critics serve to remind us that reflection is required, and Žižek’s explication of filmic rage allows us to resist the temptation of enacting our rage that merely digresses to an ’acting out’ or a l'acte. In a way, Cage takes on our responsibility here, so we do not have to — not only because a catharsis is ‘achieved’ by watching his films, but as this argument suggests, we are shocked into reason by the very excessiveness of his acting out.Solutions may appear, this author notes, by divisive actors in society working towards generating a ‘sustained rage’ and to learn how to rationally protest. This call to protest need not happen only in an explosive, orgasmic way, but seek a sustainable method that does not exhaust itself after the ‘party’ is over. This reading of Nicholas Cage offers both models to learn from: if his rage could have positive effects, then Cage in his ‘stoic mode’, as in the first act of Mandy (Figure 3), should become a new meme which could provoke us to a potentially new revolutionary act–taking the time to think.Fig. 3: Mandy ReferencesAdorno, Theodor W., and Max Horkheimer. Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 2006.Arnheim, Rudolf. Film als Kunst. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2002.Cage, Nicolas. “Nicolas Cage Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters.” 18 Sep. 2018. 19 Dec. 2018 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_WDLsLnOSM>. Death Wish. Dir. Michael Winner. Paramount Pictures/Universal International. 1974.Elsaesser, Thomas, and Michael Wedel. Körper, Tod und Technik: Metamorphosen des Kriegsfilms. Paderborn: Konstanz University Press, 2016.Freeman, Hadley. “Nicolas Cage: ‘If I Don't Have a Job to Do, I Can Be Very Self-Destructive.” The Guardian 1 Oct. 2018. 22 Nov. 2018 <https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/oct/01/nicolas-cage-if-i-dont-have-a-job-to-do-it-can-be-very-self-destructive>.Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982.Gledhill, Christie. “Dialogue.” Cinema Journal 25.4 (1986): 44-8.Hanrahan, Harry. “Nicolas Cage Losing His Shit.” 1 Mar. 2011. 19 Dec. 2018 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOCF0BLf-BM>.John Wick. Dir. Chad Stahelski. Thunder Road Films. 2014.Kill Bill Vol I & II. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Miramax. 2003/2004.Mandy. Dir. Panos Cosmatos. SpectreVision. 2018.My Best Fiend. Dir. Werner Herzog. Werner Herzog Filmproduktion. 1999.Nagera, Humberto, ed. Psychoanalytische Grundbegriffe: Eine Einführung in Sigmund Freuds Terminologie und Theoriebildung. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1998.Powers, Stephen, David J. Rothman, and Stanley Rothman. Hollywood’s America: Social and Political Themes in Motion Pictures. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996.Shephard, Alex. “What Occupy Wall Street Got Wrong.” The New Republic 14 Sep. 2016. 26 Feb. 2019 <https://newrepublic.com/article/136315/occupy-wall-street-got-wrong>.Tokarev/Rage. Dir. Paco Cabezas. Patriot Pictures. 2014.Vengeance: A Love Story. Dir. Johnny Martin. Patriot Pictures. 2017.Wall Street. Dir. Oliver Stone. 20th Century Fox. 1987. Žižek, Slavoj. The Parallax View. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009.———. “Rage, Rebellion, New Power.” Talk given at the Wiener Festwochen Theatre Festival, Mosse Lectures, 8 Nov. 2016. 19 Dec. 2018 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbmvCBFUsZ0&t=3482s>. ———. Violence: Six Sideways Reflections. London: Profile Books, 2009.

L’enjeu de cette thèse est d’analyser comment l’acte de se remémorer se trouve au cœur des œuvres d’après-guerre de Kosmas Politis (1888-1974), tout comme il sous-tendait la narration d’Eroica, son roman le plus célèbre datant de 1938. En effet, nous étudions la manière dont Politis convoque dans Yiri, À Hatzifrango et Terminus les trames de sous-genres romanesques populaires tels le roman social ou encore le roman sentimental, suscitant chez le lecteur une impression de familiarité renforcée par l’influence dans ces récits des romans lus et souvent traduits par Politis. Les narrations, par des citations ou des allusions intertextuelles à des pièces de théâtre ou à des opéras, références inscrites dans la mémoire du lecteur, deviennent également dramatiques. Le lecteur, prenant le rôle de spectateur, est contraint de constater la précarité de l’existence, du temps et du territoire. Les sociétés disparues du début du XXe siècle ou de l’immédiat avant-guerre sont enfin décrites par des narrateurs-témoins qui se heurtent à la fragilité de leurs souvenirs. Pourtant, l’art musical auquel ils ont recours permet leur perpétuation. Portant ainsi la trace des arts romanesques et dramatiques des époques révolues, les récits d’après-guerre de Politis sont composés selon une mélodie nouvelle qui lui est propre : cette petite musique s’éloigne de la tonalité majeure d’Eroica. Laissant entendre les influences orientales de l’amanès mêlées à des compositions européennes, elle devient moins homogène et plus dissonante. Plus que les arts visuels, c’est donc l’art musical qui est au centre des narrations car il permet de dire la fugacité du temps sans exclure sa possible résurrection
We intend to analyze how the act of remembering is a central element in the post-war works of Kosmas Politis (1888-1974), as well as it already underlied Eroica’s narration, his most famous novel published in 1938. We thus study the way that Politis introduces in Yiri, In Hatzifrango and Terminus the plots of popular novels such as the social novel or the sentimental novel. These can arouse an impression of familiarity in the reader reinforced by the influence of readings or translations of Politis himself. Moreover, the narrations through intertextual quotes or allusions to theatrical plays and operas, already known to the reader, also become dramatic. The reader, having a spectator’s role, is forced to contemplate the precariousness of existence, time and territory. The societies which have disappeared are at last described by narrator-witnesses who face the fragility of their memories. However, the musical art they use allows these pictures of the past to survive. Therefore, bearing the trace of novels and plays of bygone eras, the post-war stories of Politis are composed according to a new melody. The author’s own music moves away from the major key of Eroica, adopting oriental influences from amanes and mixing with other European musical forms, to become less homogeneous and more dissonant. More than the visual arts, it is musical art that shapes Politis’ postwar novels as it expresses the fleetingness of time without excluding its possible resurrection