at Pausing Time/Timing the Pause: sayability in the arts, philosophy, and politics (2024), 2024
According to Stanley Kubrick, “[I]f it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed”. This is tru... more According to Stanley Kubrick, “[I]f it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed”. This is true for award-winning canonical short story Irish writer Claire Keegan (1968) whose sparse and effective prose has hit the core of audiences struggling to process the lingering impact of collective and individual national trauma. Keegan confronts it all head on, boldly highlighting social issues that loom large, in astute and evocative sentences told from third person perspective and where confronting thoughts, situations and scenarios spill over into the space between the words. What is left unsaid says it all. Open-ended, controlled, and graphic, Keegan’s style resembles that of Mariana Enriquez (1973) and her novellas are similarly filmic. Compared to the likes of Raymond Carver, Alice Munro, William Trevor and Anton Chekhov, Keegan acutely brings attention to the plight of the voiceless, the downtrodden, small, weak and marginalised in a system where the Catholic Church has unquestioning communities that turn a blind eye to the truth in its grip. Keegan is living proof of the power of ‘less is more’. The silence that reigns in a space of ‘NON-sayability’ in stories that keep it tight, is anything but opaque. As Keegan navigates treacherous territory, she demonstrates through words that speak volumes. This paper particularly analyses Small Things Like These, winner of the Booker Prize and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction (2022), whose focus on the Irish Magdalene laundries weighs heavy on our collective consciousness; Melbourne’s Abbotsford Convent across the world a direct accomplice to the abuse behind closed doors. How can we remain passive in the face of wrongdoings? How does Keegan invite us to scrutinise history? And how do we read her literature through the eyes of fellow Irish national Colm Tóibín, himself “one of the contemporary masters of silence, exile, and cunning”.
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The reader is interested in science and healthcare, current healthcare practices and the physical and mental aspects of being a patient. They are concerned with the human condition in general.
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EDITORS: Peter Bray and Marta Rzepecka.
Volume cover photo: Jytte Holmqvist:
https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004373679/front-4.xml
Hard copy book chapter in "Probing the Boundaries: Beyond Present Patient Realities: Collaboration, Care, Identity". Edited by Peter Bray and Ana Maria Borlescu. Inter-Disciplinary Press, Oxford, UK, September 2015, pages 67-84.
https://www.sbs.com.au/language/spanish/es/podcast-episode/hispanic-society-of-victoria-continfomentando-el-sentido-de-pertenencia-en-australia/7jrci3vis
Conference: 33rd Romance Languages and Literatures Conference: 4-6 April, 2013, Cincinnati, USA
Conference: Wally Thompson Seminar Series, Ross House, Melbourne.
"Barcelona (un mapa)" is based on Catalan playwright Lluïsa Cunillé’s 2004 screenplay "Barcelona, mapa d’ombres". Translated into English as "Barcelona, Map of Shadows", the shadows from the Catalan past indeed linger in a visual narrative mainly steeped in the present. The film’s postmodernity is reflected in its pastiche elements and collage-like structure, with a cinematic montage that challenges a conventionally chronological time pattern. Specifically, the storyline criss-crosses between past and present by way of regular flashbacks from times gone by and an opening scene which features black and white footage of the decisive moment when Franco forces invaded Barcelona in 1939. The viewer is then swiftly transported into a colour-tinged present. Such a non-linear narrative structure underscores the postmodernity of Pons’ film, as does the episodic plot featuring lengthy dialogues held between two characters at a time, in a highly theatrical fashion. Rather than predominantly focusing on external action, Pons’ explores the complex relationships not only between his protagonists but also between these characters and their increasingly postmodern urban habitat; a screened, glossy cityscape which mirrors the urban facelift that Barcelona had undergone at the time of the 1992 Summer Olympics. The juxtapositioning of images from today’s global Catalan metropolis with references to its Francoist past helps create a shifting text or visual medley where we witness a city that is seeking to find a new identity in a transitory new era, while it is still affected by its relatively recent past.
Seminar paper given as part of the Second Symposium on Catalonia in Australia. Monash University in collaboration with Melbourne University, 27 July, 2013.
http://www.xarxallull.cat/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=2903
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/persons/the-patient/project-archives/4th-global-conference-2014/conference-programme-abstracts-and-papers/
Schnabel’s film highlights the struggles of an individual with the power to challenge beliefs and open mindsets but whose movements were restricted, his life jeopardized, and who was incarcerated and forced into exile. Award-winning Javier Bardem excels in his role about a man who moved the marginalized to centre stage. The speech will stress the need for inclusion when it comes to gender and a sexual identity that stands out from what is considered normal and acceptable in some cultures still, and emphasise how much we have yet to learn from the tiredless efforts by the Cuban poet to get his voice heard - also from a humanitarian perspective.
in the Cinematic COVID Aftermath
Drawing on Seamus Heaney and his symbolic reference to a great sea change or tidal wave in epic poem “The Cure at Troy” (1990) - much referred to in these pandemic times and indicating that a new chapter is about to begin - and "The City" by Ted Hughes, where a life is read like a poem and in the many depths of the urban space the writer roams "my own darkness" ̶ this paper looks at human resilience in the face of an interrupted COVID reality that has brought a fundamental shift to the way we view our surrounding world and our role in society. In our pandemic new era, the idea that “less is more” is quickly becoming a mantra for our times; a time characterised by a distancing from material hype and frantic face-to-face interaction for the sake of it. The current all-pervasive global attitudinal and behavioural change translates into a different way of relating to our surrounding urban space; one more cautious and reluctant than in pre-COVID times, and we also witness how reality and fiction merge – our first-world cinematic reality verging on Sci-Fi surreality. Under these unpredictable new conditions, following the exodus from the city centres is an internalising of our existence as we look within. As the virus still rages outside we turn to Netflix and other online streaming systems within the safety of our own homes and escape into another, parallel, reality. This paper demonstrates, partly through a filmic analysis, how fiction and our New Normal roll into one and how two contemporary poets (English and Irish) illuminate our oppressive 2021.