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1

Boundaries and Otherness in Science Fiction: We Cannot Escape the Human Condition

100%

Hermann I.

Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture

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2018

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issue 8

212-226

EN

The article explores the construction of boundaries, alterity and otherness in modern science-fiction (SF) films. Boundaries, understood as real state borders, territoriality and sovereignty, as well as the construction of the other beyond an imagined border and delimited space, have a significant meaning in the dystopian settings of SF. Even though SF topics are not bound to the contemporary environment, be it of a historical, technical or ethical nature, they do relate to the present-day world and transcend our well-known problems. Therefore, SF offers a pronounced discourse about current social challenges under extreme conditions such as future technological leaps, encounters with the alien other or the end of the world. At the same time the genre enables us to play through future challenges that might really happen. Films like Equilibrium (2002), Code 46 (2003), Children of Men (2006) and District 9 (2009) show that in freely constructed cinematic settings we are not only unable to escape from our border conflicts, but quite the contrary, we take them everywhere with us, even to an alternative present or into the future, where new precarious situations of otherness are constructed.

2

We Write in Other People’s Blood: Troubling the Body Politics and Disability Representation of Yakuza O

86%

Loh A.

Acta Ludologica

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2024

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vol. 7

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issue 1

38-49

EN

This paper takes Yakuza 0, a retrospective prequel and standalone entry to the Yakuza digital game franchise from Japan, as a case study for disabled feminine bodies vis-à-vis their male counterparts in game narratives. Of note is Makimura Makoto, a downtrodden Chinese-Japanese woman experiencing post-traumatic psychogenic blindness, who serves as the unwitting kingpin of the yakuza’s schemes. This paper posits that a reading of the game’s narrative (as supplemented by its gameplay mechanics) through the critical lens of disability studies offers a more affective and recuperative understanding of the game’s treatment of its marginalised characters. This paper first seeks to intervene in the game’s embodied and gendered power dynamics by attending to the body politics of its fictitious criminal underworld. Correspondingly, this paper troubles the game’s presentation of disability as a gendered performance, wherein feminine bodies disproportionately experience the material consequences and trauma of their disabilities, framed as pivotal narrative movements that spur the game’s male protagonists forward. Ultimately, this paper works towards a more empathetic reading of Yakuza 0 as a roadmap for how the franchise and digital games at large can address disability as a compounding, ever-evolving relational condition in addition to its physical and/or mental dimensions.

3

Widzialne i wyobrażone – historia muzeum jako przedmiot wiedzy. Na marginesie pierwszego tomu „Muzeum. Historii światowej” Krzysztofa Pomiana

72%

Olechnowicz E.

Biuletyn Historii Sztuki

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2023

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vol. 85

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issue 4

141-150

EN

The article discusses the recently published Polish translation of the first volume of Le Musée, une histoire mondiale by Krzysztof Pomian, placing it in the context of Pomian’s previous research on human beings’ relationship with time and objects. The essay recalls Pomian’s insights into the influence of material culture on the imagination of societies and his reflections on history as a discipline of knowledge. In this context, Pomian’s main theses on the nature of collecting are discussed, that is, the understanding of a collection as a place where the symbolic meanings of objects are created and multiplied, constituting unique ways of conceptualising and visualising the invisible. The essay also discusses the points in the history of collecting that mark the transition from a private collection to a public, secular museum, namely the history of the Capitoline collection in Rome and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. It emphasises the shift inherent in the transition of collections from the hands of individuals to the ownership by legal entities and thus political bodies, thereby reorienting collections from the past to the present.

PL

W artykule omówiono opublikowany niedawno polski przekład pierwszego tomu Muzeum. Historii światowej Krzysztofa Pomiana, sytuując go w kontekście dotychczasowych badań tego autora nad relacjami człowieka z czasem i z przedmiotami. Przywołano Pomianowskie ustalenia dotyczące wpływu kultury materialnej na wyobraźnię społeczeństw oraz refleksję nad historią jako dyscypliną wiedzy. Na tym tle przedstawiono najważniejsze tezy Pomiana dotyczące natury kolekcjonowania, a więc pojmowanie kolekcji jako miejsca, w którym symboliczne sensy przedmiotów są tworzone i pomnażane, stanowiąc unikatowe sposoby konceptualizacji i wizualizacji niewidzialnego. W artykule wskazano także te punkty w dziejach kolekcjonerstwa, które stanowią o przejściu od kolekcji prywatnej do publicznego, świeckiego muzeum, a więc historię zbiorów kapitolińskich w Rzymie i florenckiej galerii Uffizi. Zaakcentowana została zmiana, polegająca na przejściu zbiorów z rąk jednostek na własność osób prawnych, a więc ciał politycznych, a tym samym przeorientowanie kolekcji z przeszłości na przyszłość.

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1 Acta Ludologica

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1 Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture

1 Hermann I.

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Boundaries and Otherness in Science Fiction: We Cannot Escape the Human Condition

We Write in Other People’s Blood: Troubling the Body Politics and Disability Representation of Yakuza O

Widzialne i wyobrażone – historia muzeum jako przedmiot wiedzy. Na marginesie pierwszego tomu „Muzeum. Historii światowej” Krzysztofa Pomiana