Altered States

This paper examines the young heroine’s ambivalent relationship with books in Doris Lessing’s coming-of-age novel Martha Quest. Martha, a young British girl growing up in the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the wake of World War II, is a voracious young reader who reads extensively in order to make sense of the world in which she is living. Sometimes the books she reads lead her to think critically and challenge the canonical authorities and patriarchal society; however, at times her reading experience is also unsettling and frustrating because the books she reads are mostly produced within a biased system she intends to go beyond. The paper analyzes how Martha relies on books to reshape her national identity and personal life, and how she deals with the discrepancy between the world represented in books and reality in terms of Benedict Anderson’s concept of an ‘imagined community’. Furthermore, this paper also discusses how Martha’s portrait as a bewildered reade...

Rape is a crime so close and personal, a trauma so individual, yet an experience so grotesquely impersonal, collective and inherent in our culture that it has a distinct place in the artistic practice of many feminist authors fighting for a voice where the cry had been muffled, refusing to be reframed into another masculinist fantasy of violence. Resistance through performance art as a mode of expression, its power and limitations, is what this article attempts to approach and start to untangle. When it comes to the artistic mode that prides itself most on its closeness to life and body – when there is pain, the pain is real – this paper aims to answer the following questions: how does one approach a violent invasion of a person’s body and self in a culture that perpetuates the mass psychology of rape (Brownmiller), and what can it mean to those who stand by and watch? Keywords: rape, feminism, performance art, autobiography, representation, representability, pain

i tako čitava života.(Boscalt)Misaelu AlermuU cik zore, kada se prođu Sobrebosc i Teieda, vidi se kako izlazi tekst, sjajan i velikih ruku, koji crtamo ili pišemo, koji hoda i vidi nas gdje dolazimo.No, kada se smrači, diže se i sve nam obavije; i kreće se među stablima, ne bi li mu pokazao puteve i mjesta na kojima se krije.Víctoru SunyoluMost je, ili ne, tek prijelaz, da, prijelaz, koji postavljaš jer želiš preko rijeke, pa uzimaš trupce i brezovu koru i nešto kamenja i odjednom to više nisu trupci ni brezova kora ni kamenje: to je most, ili ne, tek prijelaz, da, prijelaz.Postavio si ga da bio prešao preko i da zatim padne; no ispada da si prešao rijeku i da si na istoj strani kao i prije pa sad tražiš još trupaca i breza i kamenja…[FRAGMENT]Joanu Ferreru GracijiKada spusti se Noć, stvari se približavaju i nalikuju jedna drugoj; no, kada svane Dan, malo pomalo, nalikujući jedna drugoj, odvajaju se, kao stabla od zemlje ili riječi od tijela.Za Mariliin Vassenin

Budimo se u sedam ujutro i odmah pospremamo krevet, izravnavamo plahte, namještamo prekrivač. Još uvijek sneni, tuširamo se u tišini, ne želimo razgovarati. Pravi je čas za vođenje ljubavi, ali nismo raspoloženi. Filtriramo kavu, grijemo mlijeko, jedemo kruh s maslacem, čitamo novinske naslove. Čitamo naslove i ostavljamo novine po strani odlučni da navečer nastavimo s čitanjem. Znamo da više nećemo čitati, ali održavamo tu iluziju živom. Ako pada kiša, pričamo o tome kako pada kiša i kako je promet usran i kako je nemoguće živjeti u ovome gradu. Ako sja sunce, žalimo se na vrućinu, na žeđ i na svjetlost koja nas gotovo zasljepljuje. Uvijek komentiramo vrijeme. Razgovaramo o nevažnim stvarima. Nemamo što reći, ali ne možemo živjeti u šutnji. Kada nekoga sretnemo, to proslavimo, sjetimo se dobrih vremena i osjetimo nešto ugodno, ali ne znamo točno što. Nismo uvijek iskreni u tim prigodama. Odmotavamo Arijadninu nit. Ponovno je namatamo u klupko. Kada netko zabije gol, vičemo gol. Nismo ...

The limitations of Chinese transcription and the domination of Chinese scripts in print cause a difficulty in reflecting the otherness of Chinese foreign terms in English. The discrepancy among Chinese dialects has also brought about challenges. A novel form of translating Chinese foreign terms in The Joy Luck Club was invented in order to improve the representation of otherness. Since the publication of the first Chinese version of the novel, better results have been demonstrated in more recent retranslations of The Joy Luck Club. Fewer deletions and less mistranslation indicate an improvement in the latest retranslations in comparison to the older versions. On the basis of a result-oriented analysis, supported by data and real-time reading experience, this study discusses linguistic and non-linguistic factors in translating Chinese foreign terms in English in The Joy Luck Club into five Chinese and one Japanese version. Reflecting otherness can provide an accurate translation whereas...

In this article we analyze the novel Waiting for the Barbarians, by the South African writer John Maxwell Coetzee. We read the novel from the perspective of some ethical insights of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, associating them with the emphasized domination of the political in the novel. In this unequal relationship, however, political domination gradually cedes place to the ethical doing, the beginning of which is marked by aporia, that is, by an attempt to reconcile two irreconcilable perspectives: that of loyalty to political authority and that of individual responsibility for the other human being. When the latter takes place, the main character – the unnamed Magistrate – becomes an ethical subject. But this is not an easy process, and in order for this to happen, he must experience physical pain and risk his own life. In doing so, he undergoes the journey from a position of political power to complete disempowering. However, taking responsibility for the other is a much ...