Journal of Literary Studies

Robotic Narrative, Mindreading and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun

Guanghui Shang — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Bringing into dialogue the theory of mindreading reformulated within cognitive narratology, this article offers an analysis of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021). It argues that Ishiguro extends this theory beyond human minds to nonhuman minds and human-machine bonds to explore human minds as human essence. By examining an artificial-intelligence (AI) character-narrator’s struggle to read human minds through observation, this study draws two conclusions. Firstly, machines cannot comprehend entire human minds due to their complexity and variability. A mind encompasses not only an individual’s own intricate thoughts and emotions but also others’ diverse feelings about this individual. Secondly, both humans and machines engage in one-sided mindreading without eliciting reciprocal affective responses. This suggests that the limitations of robotic mindreading, coupled with human anthropocentrism, prevent the establishment of true human-machine intersubjectivity. By illustrating machines’ incapability to possess human minds through robotic narrative, Ishiguro offers a new perspective on the theory of mindreading, asserting the irreplaceable nature of human minds in the age of AI to prompt a reflection on the uniqueness of human minds, a realm that machines cannot replicate or transfer.

Unveiling Jane Eyre: Space Escape and the Construction of Subjectivity through a Foucauldian Lens

Zhixing Nie, Hardev Kaur, Mani Mangai — Fri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This paper reexamines Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre through a Foucauldian lens, focusing on how traditional societal structures and the rise of capitalism impact women in 19th-century Britain, as observed by literary critic Sandra M. Gilbert and Gayatri C. Spivak. It analyses Jane’s journey through oppressive environments such as Gateshead Hall, Lowood School, Thornfield Hall, and Marsh End, culminating in her retreat to Ferndean Manor. These settings are interpreted as sites of power that impose disciplinary measures on Jane, both physically and mentally, with windows symbolising possible escape routes. The study argues that Jane represents a female rebel challenging patriarchal constraints and seeking personal freedom and equality. Despite her attempts to transcend societal and economic confines, her ultimate settlement at Ferndean Manor highlights the persistent influence of the old societal order, illustrating the novel’s realism and the complex, inescapable nature of reality. This interpretation enriches the ongoing scholarly discussion about Jane Eyre in light of its relevance to discussions of gender, power dynamics, and societal change.

“I Felt Misunderstood by the World”: The Interplay of Fame, Adversity, and Identity in Bonnie (Mbuli) Henna’s Autobiography Eyebags & Dimples

Nonki Motahane, Oliver Nyambi — Fri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Bonnie (Mbuli) Henna’s autobiography, Eyebags & Dimples (2012), navigates the intricate and multifaceted interplay between fame, adversity, and identity in a uniquely South African post-colonial context. Through an ‘interested’ (re)memorialisation of her journey of becoming a black female celebrity, Henna unveils the complexities of becoming and being a celebrity in a transitioning society marked by pervasive historical legacies of institutionalised disadvantage, shifting notions of gender, and agency. Focusing on what is remembered and how it is remembered for specific aesthetic and perspectival effects, this article examines Henna’s identity project in Eyebags & Dimples. It explores how autobiographical memory in the text becomes, for Henna, a technology of the self she implements to grapple with profound internal struggles inhabiting her (celebrity) identity. Deploying theories of self-writing and memory, the article centres on Henna’s portrayal of adversity – its past location in the colonial home and township and its persistence in family relations – to understand the nature of memory-assisted self-(re)identification processes. The article argues that adversity emerges in Eyebags & Dimples as a transformative force that allows Henna to inscribe history, race, mental health, and family onto her consciousness of being famous. Within this context, Henna’s celebrity identity is completed as re-formed through the narrative stabilisation of the tension between her public fame and personal struggles.

Problems in Philosophy of Literature

Paolo Pitari — Fri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This article discusses methodological inconsistencies affecting philosophy of literature today, especially in its analytical and perspectivist instantiations. In doing so, it raises questions on method that apply to the humanities in general. As a result of the inquiry, an invitation to return to ontology-metaphysics is formulated: too often, isolating specificities from their contexts can lead to arbitrary definitions and incomplete analyses. It might be necessary to adopt a wider outlook—one which seeks the foundations of knowledge and to explain a specific object in relation to its widest possible context—to explain many of the literary objects we want to understand.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Maternal Ambivalence in Avni Doshi’s Burnt Sugar

Haritha Vijayakumaran, Marx T — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Scholars and philosophers of motherhood studies have continuously highlighted the contradictions in the dominant cultural ideologies of motherhood and the lived experiences of mothers. While the ideologies define the mother as selfless, unconditional, and unequivocal in her love for her children, the actual experience, psychological and sociocultural studies reveal, is often permeated with negative, violent, and conflicting emotions towards children, known as maternal ambivalence. In India, where the idealisation blatantly spills over to deification, voicing such feelings becomes sacrilegious. This paper attempts to study how the novel Burnt Sugar (2020) by Avni Doshi dares to speak the “unspeakable” and demonstrates maternal ambivalence as resulting from a combination of psychological, social, and cultural factors. The analysis looks at how the text negotiates the interspace between daughter-centricity and matrifocality in women’s writing by giving voice to ambivalences on both sides of the mother’s experience—of mothering and being mothered. Ultimately, this study investigates the manner in which these feelings, which are not acknowledged within cultural conceptions of the mother, result in ambivalence and trauma across generations.

My Silver Stripes and Other Poems, by Maletšema Ruth Emsley

Naomi Nkealah — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: An Overview, by Jeffrey Di Leo

Alan Northover — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Literary Gerontology Comes of Age: A Poetic Language of Ageing (2023), edited by Olga V. Lehmann and Oddgeir Synnes

Antoinette Pretorius — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Book review

Refiguring in Black, by Tendayi Sithole

Athambile Masola — Tue, 07 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Refiguring in Black, by Tendayi Sithole

Polity Press. 2023. viii + 158.

ISBN: HB: 13: 978-1-5095-5071-1; PB: 13: 978-1-5095-5702-8

Athambile Masola

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9550-7944

University of Cape Town

athambile.masola@uct.ac.za

Norman Ajari Book Review

Tendayi Sithole — Tue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000