Lessons from Literature
From Similarities to the Future: A Discourse Analysis of Schools and Factories in Cartoons
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Hatiye Garip
To show similarities between schools and factories, the study focuses on the ones that use factory school criticism. Additionally the study explains the future of schools and factories with regard to the cartoonists’ point of view. The explanation of the future provides an optimistic output for the future of school as a public institution. The paper also attempts to use similarities of school and factory as a case study. The study underlines Foucault’s critics about space while determining the similarities between these public institutions selected for the study. Using discourse analysis as a research method, while supporting it with content analysis and semiology provides a detailed examination, since as it is very helpful to see beyond the sampling contents. In this study, both cartoons that use factory metaphors for school criticism and the ones that criticize school-education are analyzed to show how they place them and what do they mean for cartoonists. I also try to understand the secret meanings of these public institutions from cartoonists’ perspective as they have the ability of criticizing with humor.
"The Last Blond," or the Convergece of Race and the Socio-economic Apparatus
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session William Rosa
Clemente Palma’s "The Last Blond" (La ultima rubia) proposes the existential validity of modernity within the parameters of the scientific materialism of the period and the perspective of a polyphasic relevant language. From here on language moves from being conceived as a scientific tool that corroborate a pre-selected set of ideas to a malleable discourse that allows an approach to matters as fundamental as the search for philosophical principles or on a quantifiable level, the production of gold from the multivalued perspective of the dynamic between what is true and what is a lie. The discourse turn to learned positions, to authorities not to propose but to establish the path to follow in search of the pre-conceived goals; this is, to produce gold since this, after all, is the one that validates what he already established as the truth and therefore, constitutes the dominant voice since it is in control of the knowledge which is no other thing but the power that he seek which in turn represents the mercantilist goals of the period and key to material progress. The discourse is not a mere communication device used by representatives from determined spaces but rather it is conceived and employed as an instrument to impose, or better, it is seen as a domination artifact supported by the known unknown in order to delineate behavior patterns as well as interaction methods. Thus, we should ask, how this story teller arrives at this position, how he manages to convince others to agree with him, how he engineers to string us in his narration to the point that we also side with him.
Perspectives and Voices of Differences: Patriarchy and Feminism, or When Zeus and Lilith Collide
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alba Elizabeth Melgar, Gloria Velásquez
Patriarchy is the system of male domination through the control of female sexuality. The control of female sexuality through the institution of patriarchal marriage is central to patriarchy. Mythology is an ontological phenomenon that illustrates people’s perceptions, and patriarchy is a concept deeply rooted into mythology. Zeus, was the ruler of skies and earth, the personification of the laws of nature; the ruler of the state, gods, and men and the founder of patriarchy. Gradually, the idea of male ownership of children took hold. Women gradually lost their freedom, mystery, and superior position. Slowly, the social order was painfully reversed. Women became the underclass. Part of this devaluation of women’s image is due also to mythology. Before the Hellenistic period, Athena was the most important goddess. But because she was born only of Zeus, Athena’s powerful self-image as goddess was demoted. As the goddesses fell, the misogyny present in patriarchy rose. But, the rise of patriarchy was also bringing the seed of its own nemesis, feminism. As patriarchy collides with feminism, Zeus the founder of patriarchy collides not with Eve but with Lilith, the Other First woman, First Feminist, founder of feminism. In Genesis 2:21-23, Eve was not the first woman but the second and Lilith was the first, Genesis 1:27. Haughty and defiant, Lilith refused to submit to Adam’s authority, refusing to lay beneath him during intercourse. Lilith free from male authority, fled and challenged masculine authority renouncing to conceive. Lilith’s subsequent career as the agent of destruction of the male authority made of her the first feminist. “The nature and symbolism of the myth of collision between Lilith and Zeus also reveal that, in our shrinking global village, the universalized feminist fight can only succeed, and that nothing will bring back the dark ages of patriarchy.”
