Browsing by Author "Sierra, Sarah"
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- Countering Anthropos with Trans-Corporeal Assemblages in Rita Indiana’s TentacleSierra, Sarah (Il Sileno Edizione, 2021)Rita Indiana’s 2015 novel La Mucama de Omicunlé, translated in English as Tentacle in 2018, portrays an attempt to intercede in the events leading to an ecological disaster in the year 2024 by appealing to the agent of the Anthropocene, Anthropos, to restrain from world-destroying behaviors. Characterized by an exceedingly autonomous and individualistic nature, Anthropos is compelled by an incessant and singular focus to fulfill personal desires. Seemingly isolated from the environing world, Anthropos – as an embodiment of human exceptionalism – fails to comprehend that every subject lives entangled with diverse agents at any given moment. The character of Anthropos emerges, then, as a destructive force that interprets the powerless human and more-than-human entities as expendable objects reserved for the improvement of its privileged position in the world. In contradistinction to the self-perceived exceptionalism of Anthropos, Indiana’s novel also generates trans-corporeal assemblages. Successful aversion of the apocalyptic ecological event depends upon these assemblages created by the dispersed consciousness of a prophesied savior, Olokun. This figure’s power emerges from the ability to exist simultaneously in distinct moments of time, what Walter Mignolo characterizes as ‘pluriversal’ that counters the Western hegemonic idea of unilineal temporality and hierarchical classification of subjectivity. However, avoiding the catastrophe that decimates all oceanic life will depend upon a decisive moment when Olokun is forced to choose between his individualistic pleasures to live in the present or to sacrifice himself and his avatars by altering the timeline that would prevent his emergence. In spite of Olokun’s doomed human struggle between self-preservation and the collective good, he engenders multi-temporal and intersubjective assemblages capable of altering the disembodied perspective that guides the Anthropos. These diverse entities that he creates - or actants to use Jane Bennet’s terminology - unite and display the dynamic and productive experience of converging with the richly populated disenfranchised human and more-than-human inhabitants of the planet. The constellation of actants generates potent connections across temporal and spatial boundaries and produces an alternative ontology that resists conceiving of humanity as removed or above a vibrant and diversely inhabited world.
- The Darkening of the Other: Demarcating Difference in Cantar de Roldan, Cartas marruecas, and La reina del surWeil, Amy Margaret (Virginia Tech, 2018-12-18)This thesis analyzes the research of various historical and literary theorists in relation to identification of Otherness in three Spanish works: Cantar de Roldán, Cartas marruecas, and La reina del sur. Throughout the thesis, I analyze hwo the discourse of identification of Otherness has progressed throughout these three works. Each work was chosen as a cultural artifact of its time. I begin the thesis with Cantar de Roldán and analyze how variation in faith served as primary demarcation of Otherness. I then analyze Cartas marruecas and how race also becomes an identifier of Otherness; I end the thesis analyzing La reina del sur and the role of racial discourse as the primary identifier of Otherness.
- Michel Franco: Auteur of ViolenceDorton, Elizabeth deShazo (Virginia Tech, 2017-06-06)Michel Franco’s works provide his audience with a conceptualization of modern (mostly Mexican) society through an exploration of violence and trauma as they affect the individual on both personal and public levels. Using the filmic auteur theory as my basis for an exploration of his body of work, I examine his use of spatial theory, trauma, spectatorial complicity, and neoliberalism as contributors to violence in the present day, both within a Mexican and universal context. Within his films, violence is demonstrated as resultant of his characters’ environments and larger systems at work, reflected in both the spaces they inhabit and their individual selfpresentations after surviving traumatic events. Ultimately, these works lead his audiences to moments of self-reflection regarding their own involvement with mediatic violence and how they assist in its perpetuation. I have taken this thesis project as an opportunity to explore each of his films as unique parts of a collective whole, in the hopes of providing a cohesive analysis of each while also demonstrating their impact as they are connected to one another thematically. Franco’s ability to explore contemporary, similar themes in a multitude of forms places him in the position of a filmic auteur, one arguably enjoyed by his contemporaries but not indicative of the generation of Mexican directors who preceded him. Thus, he simultaneously ushers in a new form of contemporary Mexican cinema. Ultimately, his explorations of trauma are resultant of a discussion of mediatic violence in contemporary society.