English Department

Although embedded in radically different historical and cultural contexts, the spectacular theatrical productions of the English Restoration and the present-day digital film industry provide a rich testing ground to explore the intersections of visual artifice with negotiations of the heroic. My paper analyses how these configurations of media, technologies and audiences interact with the (affective) modes of relatedness which determine heroic figurations as well as cultural concepts of the heroic. Using Dryden’s Conquest of Granada (1669) and Settle’s Empress of Morocco (1673) as case studies, the first part sets out to analyse how (competing) modes of heroic effect and audience response are negotiated, and how affective responses are tied to allocations of power. 21st-century cinema, and digital 3D in particular, is similarly characterized by paradigmatic shifts in media cultures and perceptual habits, and constantly operates on the boundaries of illusion. In a close reading of Cuarón’s Gravity (2013), I will analyse how the photorealistic and stereoscopic expansion of space as well as the intersection of image and narrative comes to unhinge the spectators’ position and inflects established tropes of heroic exceptionality.

This article examines the representation of climate change and heroic agency in
recent European and North American ecothrillers. Through the use of four literary
case studies, it shows how heroic figurations support an idea of climate change
as a distinct disastrous event. Moreover, the heroic is shown to bring out images
of a threatening other, usually in the shape of a distinct villain, who gives shape
to forms of diffuse, indirect agencies as they are associated with anthropogenic
climate change. In addition, the ideal positions of hero and perpetrator are articulated
to larger normative and ideological frameworks, which the heroic figuration
frames as irreconcilable. In this regard, markedly similar structures can be
observed in novels that seek to present climate change as a genuine threat, such
as L. A. Larkin’s Thirst and texts that follow a climate-sceptic agenda, such as
Michael Crichton’s State of Fear. However, this article also shows how the hero’s
position towards the sublime, as well as audio-visual tropes of destruction, can
entail a tentative reformulation of the recipient, as in Bernard Besson’s The
Greenland Breach. Finally, this article turns to Liz Jensen’s The Rapture, which
is shown to follow a plot-driven, suspenseful thriller structure but withdraws
heroic or prophetic authority over the disaster it represents and, in doing so, brings
out the epistemological and ethical instability of the spectator’s position.

Književna i filmska produkcija britanskih autora kolonijalnog porekla poseduje izraženu političku komponentu koja gotovo jednoobrazno ispituje svojim estetskim i narativnim formama različite aspekte neoliberalne hegemonije. Prikazi hijerarhijski podeljenih urbanih prostora su jedna od strategija kojima ovi tekstovi dovode u pitanje diskurs da je savremena neoliberalna Britanija post-klasno i post-rasno društvo. Dramski, književni i filmski rad Hanifa Kurejšija (Hanif Kureishi) nezamenjivi je vodič kroz britanski neoliberalni pejzaž. Rasna i klasna topografija Londona u eri tačerizma ogleda se u oba dela kojima se ovaj rad bavi-Kurejšijevim romanom Buda iz predgrađa (The Buddha of Suburbia, 1990) i filmom za koji je napisao scenario Moja prelepa perionica (My Beautiful Laundrette, 1985). Ova dela protivreče tačerovskoj viziji o Britaniji osamdesetih kao homogenoj naciji, govoreći o pluralnostima i dubokim procepima subjektiviteta. Cilj ovog rada je da, na tragu savremenih teoretičara ideologije u poznom kapitalizmu, prikaže da je Kurejšijeva ambivalentnost prema neoliberalizmu produkt tekstualne svesti o tome da se ovde radi o poretku sposobnom za aproprijaciju intimnih prostora i njihovu transpoziciju u prostore gde društveni subjekti ostvaruju materijalne uslove za život. Zaključak je da pozni kapitalizam briše granicu između privatnog i poslovnog prostora, neutrališući tako svest subjekta o predideološkoj realnosti, utoliko koliko je ona zamisliva.