Esta disertación examina diversas expresiones artísticas y literarias de finales del siglo XX y principios del XXI desde una perspectiva ecocrítica. La tesis sostiene que la literatura contemporánea y el arte en general ofrecen experiencias por medio de las cuales se puede reconceptualizar lo que hoy se conoce como crisis medioambiental, para dar a conocer su dimensión ética y entenderla como una crisis moderna del conocimiento. Como una intersección de teoría crítica y estudios ambientales la ecocrítica ha abordado la dicotomía cultura-naturaleza como un dualismo cartesiano convencional. Este trabajo complejiza la dialéctica de sujeto y objeto, integrando perspectivas de la teoría poscolonial y los estudios de performance, y examina cómo la representación se apropia de espacios retóricos y epistémicos para intervenir en la percepción que el individuo tiene de la realidad. Del estudio surge un marco analítico que se identifica con la sustentabilidad y responde a tensiones sociales y culturales contemporáneas que se tejen entre el conocimiento local y las fuerzas globales. Mediante la inclusión de perspectivas acotadas de investigación, el estudio mantiene la referencialidad de las obras y permite plantear interrogantes sobre la naturaleza ontológica y epistémica de los estudios culturales. La tarea se aborda a lo largo de tres ejes: un análisis de las instalaciones de la escultora mexicana Helen Escobedo y de los artistas argentinos Nicolás García Uriburu y Marta Minujín, un examen de obras literarias -principalmente La loca de Gandoca de Anacristina Rossi (Costa Rica) y Un viejo que leía novelas de amor de Luis Sepúlveda (Chile)- y un trabajo de campo llevado a cabo con la comunidad Rapa Nui de Isla de Pascua (territorio chileno). Este último eje revela aspectos de una cosmovisión diferente, perteneciente a una identidad colectiva en búsqueda de reconocimiento dentro del mundo multicultural latinoamericano. La tesis concluye con un epílogo que analiza brevemente El libro del silencio de Ricardo Chávez Castañeda (México). A modo de síntesis, mediante juegos del lenguaje, esta novela expone la modernidad contemporánea como una crisis mucho mayor que se reproduce en múltiples dimensiones, donde el desequilibrio medioambiental se reconstituye en síntoma de una crisis de la civilización.

This research aims to understand self-translation as a postcolonial, social, political, cultural and linguistic phenomenon and it focuses on how it communicates a hybrid transcultural identity that not only challenges the monolingual literary canons and concepts of national homogeneous identities, but also subverts to patriarchal society. Thus, I understand self-translation as a mean of empowerment and contestation. The cases under study are Puerto Rican writers Rosario Ferré and Esmeralda Santiago, and their novels The House on the Lagoon and América’s Dream, written in English and translated into Spanish by the authors themselves. I believe that Rosario Ferré and Esmeralda Santiago are representative of a group of writers, artists and intellectuals who through their work originated from the island and from the U.S. Diaspora, have aimed to give voice to a Puerto Rican postcolonial hybrid identity that has been silenced until recently. Therefore, they disrupt the official national cultural and linguistic discourse about the Puerto Rican identity that has been weaved by the Spanish language in opposition to U.S. colonialist attempts of linguistic and cultural assimilation. This dissertation is located in the intersection between the fields of comparative literature, translation, cultural, gender and postcolonial studies. The question that guides this research is: Is self-translation in the case of Puerto Rico, a result of cultural hybridity in Puerto Rico’s postcolonial context?Therefore, this is a multidisciplinary research project that integrates elements from the humanities and the social sciences. Methodologically, it integrates qualitative and quantitative approaches. Hence, hybridity is embedded in this research not only because it discusses English and Spanish writing, but because it includes textual analysis, content analysis and statistical analysis. The main finding is the deep conection between socio-political context, language, culture, identity, power and translation that supports the idea that self-translation is a postcolonial act, which in the case of Puerto Rico is strongly related to hybridity as an everyday practice of identity affirmation.

This thesis examines whether hip hop, and rap in particular, was an infrastructure for the lower-class of Black Americans in the 1980s and early 1990s to transport their concerns, knowledge, and protest from the margins to the center. It first demonstrates what issues Black Americans from the ghetto have raised in terms of content in the first place. Next is an examination of where and how hip hop created a platform for itself and how the institutionalization process unfolded. Finally, it is discussed whether and to what extent the infrastructure was successful. In general, and in a nutshell, the research revealed that rap had an impact, especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s and more and more hip hop artists appeared in the white American mainstream public sphere. Through various media and in different circles, they addressed topics that were otherwise less part of the discourse of this public, such as racism, the situation of subalterns in the ghetto or Black history. Thus, through rap, this knowledge flowed into the Center. Although women were given far less space to talk about Black feminism, for example, they too had consistently raised these issues.

This thesis concerns subject of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C), ritual commonly - but inaccurately - named female circumcision. In the thesis I analyze two autobiographical texts written by women who got through the FGM/C - Mutilated written by Senegal author Khady and Desert Flower by Somali author Waris Dirie. Aim of this thesis is to analyze view point of two women who have direct experience with FGM/C, to add more information to research of this ritual and to strengthen effort to understand structural reasons for its existence and continuance. I attach myself to the side of opponents to FGM/C and by this thesis I'd wish to help to banish this ritual. My effort is connected with my feminist conviction but also with human rights discourse. ABSTRAKT Tato diplomová práce zkoumá problematiku Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C), rituálu u nás běžně - avšak nepřesně - nazývaného ženská obřízka. V diplomové práci analyzuji dva autobiografické příběhy žen, které prožily FGM/C. Jedná se o knihy Zmrzačená od senegalské autorky Khady a Květ pouště od somálské autorky Waris Dirie. Cílem tohoto výzkumu je analyzovat pohled dvou žen na rituál FGM/C, připojit další informace ke zkoumané problematice FGM/C, a tak rozšířit nejen znalosti týkající se rituálu samotného, ale zejména podpořit snahu...

<p>An experimental piece blending theory, fiction, and academic writing in order to both create and criticize a work in the tradition of science fiction while seeking to undermine the hegemonic ideals that sometimes lie at the heart of works in that tradition.</p>

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Die vorliegende Analyse des Sterne-Romans von Özdamar ist Hauptanliegen dieser Magisterarbeit im Fach Deutsch mit literaturwissenschaftlicher Einrichtung und die Betrachtung der Dynamik wandelbarer Identitäten in Bezug auf Individuen und Gesellschaft in postkolonialen und postmigrantischen Zusammenhängen, primäres Forschungsziel. In methodischer Anlehnung an postkoloniale Theorien und transnationaler Literaturforschung, fokussiert diese Analyse insbesondere auf die Forschungsbereiche Transnationalität, Hybridität und Alterität, betrachtet allerdings auch Lesarten multiperspektivischer und autosoziobiographischer Erinnerungen innerhalb kollektiver Gedächtnisräume. Durch die Anwendung der Postcolonial Studies wird ersichtlich, dass eine hybride Neubetrachtung von Individuen und Gesellschaft, dekoloniale Neuaushandlungen sowie kulturelle- und soziopolitische Transfers ans Licht tragen, die auf dynamische und bewegliche Prozesse in der jeweiligen Identitätsbildung hinweisen. Die erfasste Dynamik in Bezug auf Identität erleichtert die Identifikation und Inszenierung kolonialer nationaler Stereotypen sowie Machtverhältnisse in der Literatur. Dies geschieht in neu verhandelten sozialen Strukturen der Transmoderne, wobei diese Ära durch eine umfassende Neubewertung traditioneller Muster geprägt ist.

The aim of this study is to investigate three English as a second language (ESL) textbooks used for English 6 in Swedish upper secondary school from a postcolonial perspective, answering the following research question: Who is the implied reader, based on assumptions of the expected experiences and culture, and what and who is constructed as deviant or Other? To examine these questions, the study employs critical discourse analysis and implements strategies from multimodal analysis. The analysis is concerned with matters such as what is constructed as familiar or unfamiliar to the student, what images are chosen, and what those images convey. The study shows that the implied reader is expected to align with Western culture and experiences in two of the textbooks. In the third, the implied reader has no ethnic markers at all. Further findings show several cases where non-Western cultures are depicted as deviant, both in texts and images. Therefore, I emphasize that it is important that teachers are aware of how different cultures are depicted in the materials they choose to use in their classroom to be able to prevent reproduction of harmful stereotypes and portrayals of non- Western cultures that do not align with the fundamental values of the Swedish school.

Rhythmic Literacy: Poetry, Reading and Public Voices in Black Atlantic Poetics" analyzes the poetry of the African American Langston Hughes and the Jamaican Louise Bennett during the 1940s. Through an examination of the unique similarities of their poetic projects, namely their engagement of performance to build their audiences, their experiments with poetic personae to represent vernacular social voices, their doubleness as national and transnational figures, their circulation of poetry in radio and print journalism and their use of poetry as pedagogy to promote reading, this dissertation establishes a new perspective on the role of poetry in decolonizing language practices. While Hughes and Bennett are often celebrated for their representation of oral language and folk culture, this project reframes these critical discussions by drawing attention to how they engage performance to foster an embodied form of reading that draws on Creole knowledge systems, which I term rhythmic literacy. Growing up in the U.S and Jamaica in the early twentieth century, Hughes and Bennett were both subjected to a similar Anglophone transatlantic schoolroom poetry tradition, which they contend with as one of their only available poetic models. I argue that memorization and recitation practices play a formative role in the development of their poetic projects. As an enactment and metaphor for the dynamics of colonial control, this form of mimicry demonstrates to them the power of embodied performance to reclaim language from dominant forces. This dissertation reveals how black Atlantic poetics refashions the institutional uses of poetry in early twentieth-century U.S and British colonial education for the purposes of decolonization. / English

Peter Carey has been discussed in academia since the 1980s. And since then these discussions revolve around postmodernism, postcolonial studies or, indeed, both at once. So, either Peter Carey has been writing the same old novel for nearly thirty years by now, or there are whole worlds in his writings that have yet to be uncovered. Since I claim the latter is the case, this thesis sets out to chart at least a few areas of these vast forgotten territories, to use a consciously colonial metaphor. The theoretical ‘vehicle’ with which the new areas are entered is agency. Which means that the thesis investigates how individual characters manage to become successful actors, or fail to do so. The thesis first provides an overview of Carey's writing (Chapter 2), then traces three typical 'Carey themes' through his entire oeuvre and shows how they are relevant for agency (Chapter 3), before discussing the concept of agency itself at some length in Chapter 4. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 are close readings of My Life as a Fake, Illywhacker and Tristan Smith and investigate the novels' main characters' development in depth. The appendix contains research that would be relevant for a biographical approach to Carey's works. It explains the climate of Australian literature production in the 1970s in which Carey emerges as an author and that is relevant for his writing up to his latest works Amnesia and a Long Way from Home. It also relates a few biographical notes that are relevant for many of his works.:1. Introduction 4 2. Literary Overview of Carey’s Writing 18 3. Agency in Carey’s Writing: Three ‘Carey Themes’ 29 4. Agency 49 4.1. Important Terminology 49 4.2. Agency: A New Phenomenon? 53 4.3. The Ancient Sources of Agency 62 4.4. The Agency Game: The Sociological Concept of Agency 67 4.5. Agency, Nature, and Metaphysics 76 4.6. The Problem of Normativity 84 4.7. Getting the Moral Framework Back into the Picture 89 4.8. Getting Intrinsic Capacity Back into the Picture 95 4.9. The Whole Picture 100 5. My Life as a Fake 109 5.1. The Story 109 5.2. The Central Conflict: Apollo and Dionysus Caught in a ‘Deathlock’ 112 5.3. My Life as a Fake and the Struggle for Authenticity 125 5.4. Chubb and McCorkle Revisited: Authenticity and the Social Arena 132 5.5. Conclusion 138 6. Illywhacker 141 6.1. Lies and control 148 6.1.1. Book I 149 6.1.2. Book II 156 6.1.3. Book III 164 6.2. Compulsive Visions and Compelled Selves 171 6.2.1. The McGraths: Molly and Jack 185 6.2.2. The Young Compulsive Mistresses 190 6.3. Peter Carey’s Entrapped Dreamers 199 6.4. From the Aircraft Factory to the Museum: Baudrillard in Australia 204 6.4.1. The Three-Tiered Advance of Australia Fair 205 6.4.2. Agency in the Hyperreal Condition 214 6.4.3. Illywhacker and the Western World: Anti-Depressants 217 6.5. Final Remarks on Illywhacker 221 7. Tristan Smith 224 7.1. Tristan as Narrative Voice and as Character inside his Story 228 7.2. Tristan’s Bildung: A Study in two Mirror Phases 231 7.2.1. Initial Conceit 232 7.2.2. The Gaze of the Other 236 7.2.3. The First Mirror Stage 241 7.2.4. Interlude 246 7.2.5. The Voyage 249 7.2.6. The Second Mirror Stage 252 7.3. Tristan’s Subversiveness: “Bodies […] out of Control” 258 7.3.1. Postcolonial Approaches and External Reality 259 7.3.2. Cultural Simulation: Ghostdorps and Ghost Lights 264 7.3.3. Confronting Simulations: Tristan and Peggy 270 7.3.4. Not Escaping the Now: Felicity 275 7.3.5. Jacqui: From Self-Realisation to Escapism and Back to the Now 280 7.4. The Radical’s Conceit: Peter Carey’s Political Activists 287 8. Conclusion 292 9. Bibliography 303 10. Appendix 314 10.1. Publishing Carey: The Emergence of an Author 314 10.2. Peter Carey and the New Nationalism 320 10.3. Biographical Notes on Peter Carey’s Writing 330