Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, 2020 vol. 55s2
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Browsing Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, 2020 vol. 55s2 by Subject "Canadian literature"
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Item ‘Alimentary assemblages’ at intersections: Food, (queer) bodies, and intersectionality in Marusya Bociurkiw’s "Comfort Food for Breakups: The Memoir of a Hungry Girl" (2007)(2020) Suchacka, WeronikaClearly devoted to the analysis of various issues of belonging, the work of Marusya Bociurkiw, a Ukrainian-Canadian queer writer, director, academic, and activist, examines culture, memory, history, and subjectivity in a fascinatingly unique way. Such a thematic composition is, however, not the only aspect that visibly marks and unities Bociurkiw’s multi-generic oeuvre; what clearly stands out as yet another distinguishing characteristic that Bociurkiw’s works have in common is the idea that seems to stand behind their creation – an impelling notion that “[t]o have one’s belonging lodged in a metaphor is voluptuous intrigue” (Brand 2001: 18). Consequently, what Bociurkiw’s works vividly portray is the writing-self “in search of its most resonant metaphor” (Brand 2001: 19). In one of her works, Comfort Food for Breakups: The Memoir of a Hungry Girl (2007), this metaphor is food as the art of food-making and the act of eating become here a crucial background against which the issues of belonging are played out. The aim of this article is thus to show how Bociurkiw finds her way of discussing various aspects of subjectivity by means of writing about food, whether about preparing it, tasting it, or recollecting its preparation and tastes. Ultimately, however, the article is to prove that food in Bociurkiw’s memoir not only reflects identity but is presented as a vital site of intersectionality. Thus, embedded in intersectionality discourse, and particularly instructed by Vivian May’s Pursuing Intersectionality, Unsettling Dominant Imaginaries (2015), the analysis of Comfort Food for Breakups is carried out from an interdisciplinary perspective because it is simultaneously grounded in food studies theory, i.e., the ideas developed by Elspeth Probyn in Carnal Appetites: FoodSexIdentities (2000), confirming, in this way, that vital connections can and should be made between the two, ostensibly unrelated, fields of study.Item On refusing Canada, CanLit and more: National and literary identity in all its varieties(2020) Ravvin, NormanTwo recent anthologies of Canadian writing – Refuse: CanLit in Ruins and Resisting Canada: An Anthology of Poetry – reflect stances of resistance to mainstream institutional understandings of Canadian writing culture. They highlight recent scandals in academia and in literary communities, as well as highlighting the voices of Indigenous and women writers. These stances echo earlier forms of cultural revolution in Canada, in particular the Refus global manifesto, which provoked conventional Quebec society in the late 1940s. This paper contrasts these forms of refusal with a period in the 1950s and 1960s when influential Jewish writers, including Leonard Cohen and Irving Layton, took a counter-cultural stance while appearing in mainstream venues offered to them by CBC television and radio.Item Recent (re)visions of CanLit: Partial stock-taking(2020) Rzepa, AgnieszkaThis article approaches recent discussions on the state of contemporary CanLit as a body of literary texts, an academic field, and an institution. The discussion is informed primarily by a number of recent or relatively recent publications, such as Trans.CanLit. Resituating the Study of Canadian Literature (Kamboureli & Miki 2007), Refuse. CanLit in Ruins (McGregor, Rak & Wunker 2018), Luminous Ink: Writers on Writing in Canada (McWatt, Maharaj & Brand 2018), and the discussions and/or controversies some of those generated – expressed through newspaper and magazine articles, scholarly essays, but also through tweets, etc. The texts have been written as a response to the current state and – in some cases – scandals of CanLit. Many constitute attempts at starting or contributing to a discussion aimed at not only taking stock of, but also re-interpreting and re-defining the field and the institution in view of the challenges of the globalising world. Perhaps more importantly, they address also the challenges resulting from the rift between CanLit as implicated in the (post)colonial nation-building project and rigid institutional structures, perpetuating the silencings, erasures, and hierarchies resulting from such entanglements, and actual literary texts produced by an increasingly diversified group of writers working with a widening range of topics and genres, and creating often intimate, autobiographically inspired art with a sense of responsibility to marginalised communities. The article concludes with the example of Indigenous writing and the position some young Indigenous writers take in the current discussions.