Transgressing Discourses

The basic theme of this volume is excellent. Readers are treated to fascinating explorations of communication at the boundaries between discourses and selves. The essays address important theoretical issues, and do so often by treating significant social issues. Most welcome is the constructive tone that is for the most part maintained throughout the volume, demonstrating an effort to understand, engage, and critically assess different discourses and selves (and others) at once, without valorizing one over the other. An essential theme running through this volume is the idea that our efforts to engage, as well as other's efforts to engage us, have been seriously impaired because of problems which are fundamentally communicative in nature. More specifically, there is general agreement among the contributors that the voice of other has not been sufficiently heard, and this on account of how discourses of the human sciences, as well as other dominant discourses (e.g. law) have structured our interaction with other. Each of the essays helps to clarify the nature of the communicative failing and to develop an appropriate corrective action.

Despite decades of activism, resistance, and education, both feminists and gender rebels continue to experience personal, political, institutional, and cultural resistance to rights, recognition, and respect. In the face of these inequalities and disparities, Transgressing Feminist Theory and Discourse seeks to engage with, and disrupt the long-standing debates, unquestioned conceptual formations, and taboo topics in contemporary feminist studies. The first half of the book challenges key concepts and theories related to feminist scholarship by advocating new approaches for theorizing interdisciplinarity, intersectionality, critical race theory, trans studies, and genetics. The second half of the book offers feminist critiques or explorations of timely topics such as the 2017 Women’s March and Donald Trump’s election as well as non-Western perspectives of family and the absence of women’s perspectives in healthcare. Contributors comprise of leading scholars and activists from disciplines including gender and sexuality studies, African American studies, communication studies, sociology, political science, and media. Transgressing Feminist Theory and Discourse is a compelling examination of some of the most high-profile feminist issues today. It hopes to infuse future and current debates and conversations around feminism and feminist theory with intersectional, imaginative, provocative, and evocative ideas, inspiring bold cross-fertilizations of concepts, principles, and practices.

The basic theme of this volume is excellent. Readers are treated to fascinating explorations of communication at the boundaries between discourses and selves. The essays address important theoretical issues, and do so often by treating significant social issues. Most welcome is the constructive tone that is for the most part maintained throughout the volume, demonstrating an effort to understand, engage, and critically assess different discourses and selves (and others) at once, without valorizing one over the other. An essential theme running through this volume is the idea that our efforts to engage, as well as other's efforts to engage us, have been seriously impaired because of problems which are fundamentally communicative in nature. More specifically, there is general agreement among the contributors that the voice of other has not been sufficiently heard, and this on account of how discourses of the human sciences, as well as other dominant discourses (e.g. law) have structured our interaction with other. Each of the essays helps to clarify the nature of the communicative failing and to develop an appropriate corrective action.

This study focuses on the language around sexuality and discourses about sex, labeled by the authors as metasex, from a broad crosslinguistic perspective. Unlike many existing studies on sexting that predominantly take into account the linguistic practices of teenagers often located in the Global North, this book offers a more holistic approach by discussing Southern concepts of body parts, their conceptualization and mediatization (“dick pics”), the interconnectedness of food and sex and its sensualization (“foodporn”) as well as processes of social cohesion around sex, sociability and conviviality (“bonding”). Based on an anthropological linguistic perspective, the authors analyze metasex practices from Nigeria, DR Congo, Uganda, the Mediterranean, and numerous other contexts. Africanist Agnes Brühwiler’s afterword on sex (talk) in Tanzania rounds off the various fresh insights this study offers.

This book offers a valuable contribution to the practice of literary criticism and cultural studies by seeking to explore “transgression” as a literary theme. Based on the analyses of six representative twentieth century novels, it deals with the fictional representation of various transgressive acts, from murder and incest to forbidden love affairs and adultery. A detailed consideration of major reader-response theories establishes a useful context for the textual analyses, as the readers are encouraged to integrate knowledge about style, narrative structure, and formal interpretive strategies with knowledge about social norms and moral values embedded in each text. Focusing on the evolving relationship between text and reader, the book exposes the potential of narrative strategies revealed in the act of narrating a story in an unconventional manner. “Broken” narratives, “unreliable narrators”, and “self-referentiality” are only some of the features discussed in the book with the aim of stimulating the readers to reflect on the narrative complexity of the twentieth century novel and to question their reading expectations. Designed for use in small and large classes organized by Literature, Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies Departments in colleges and universities around the world, this systematic, in-depth novel study aims to increase the students’ capacity to interpret challenging narrative texts, appreciate the aesthetic value of world literature, and experience the pleasure of reading beyond the limits of their own field.

Whereas currently, German-Polish relations are marked by irritations, the previous phase of politics and discourse from 1990 leading up to the EU-accession of Poland was marked by an increasing stress on Europe in both countries. This was connected with changing practices of cross-border cooperation as well as a change in academic border studies. Transgression as a Rule argues that resulting from this, cross-border cooperation has become a rule. The actors negotiate new, contradictory spaces for their actions: supported by the state but partly uncomfortable with it, drawing on the powerful discourse of cooperation and trying to escape from it. Their practices can also inform the practices of border studies.

Bringing together prominent scholars from a variety of disciplines, "Communicative Practices in Workplaces and the Professions: Cultural Perspectives on the Regulation of Discourse and Organizations" offers readers an engaging set of essays on the complicated relationship between discourse and the many institutions within which people act. Each author brings a unique theoretical perspective to conceptualizing how discourse is regulated and how it regulates when human activity is organized for such purposes as work or belonging to a profession. Together, the contributors to this collection offer a provocatively complex picture of what regulation means and the means of regulation.

Presenting a broad spectrum of reflections on the subject of female transgression in early modern Britain, this volume proposes a richly productive dialogue between literary and historical approaches to the topic. The essays presented here cover a range of ’transgressive’ women: daughters, witches, prostitutes, thieves; mothers/wives/murderers; violence in NW England; violence in Scotland; single mothers; women as (sexual) partners in crime. Contributions illustrate the dynamic relation between fiction and fact that informs literary and socio-historical analysis alike, exploring female transgression as a process, not of crossing fixed boundaries, but of negotiating the epistemological space between representation and documentation.