Until I read Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, I never thought that reading a graphic novel will make a difference in the ways I can approach socio-political issues. I thought I was reading a personal story about a girl growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. However, I realized that I was participating in the cultural, private and social narrative which triggered active multi-sensory responses. I connected emotionally with the author’s story, learnt about the Iranian and Austrian cultures and politics - which caused self-reflexivity and furthering my own understanding of those topics.
Stories are an essential part of understanding the world and forming identities - whether they are individual, cultural, national or of any other kind.
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Due to the variety of representational forms close to the realm of literature (poetry, plays, etc.) and the evocative language of the author who is both the subject and the researcher in the autoethnography - there are many challenges this method is facing (Berry & Adams, 2016). Since the autoethnographic work can fall anywhere on the continuum between the auto, ethno and graphy axes, so do methodological processes. Therefore many scholars agree that autoethnography should be ethnographic in its methods, cultural in interpretation and autobiographical in content orientation (Chang, 2008; Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011). As such, some of the common practices for gathering data are in-depth dyadic interviews, examination of cultural practices and artifacts. Autoethnographers do not only tell a story - they compare their personal experience with existing research in order to analyze it and prove its …show more content…
Therefore the purpose of this paper is to (a) contribute to the small but evolving database of research on this method and its critique and (b) explore ways in which autoethnographic works can be used as a transformative tool in society. I will look at the existing body of research to draw conclusions and patterns regarding the understanding of this method. Then, I will investigate the potential applications of the autoethnography in areas of social justice, cross-cultural understanding and collaboration, emancipation of the scholar and peacebuilding through case studies and my own experiences as a
Good evening and welcome to tonight’s episode of Learning Literature. Tonight we will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of Gattaca by analysing the techniques text producers employ to construct representations of social issues relating to marginalised groups. We will focus on two classic pieces of literature, Ken Kessey’s, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, as well as Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca. Through a range of techniques, the text producers have included representations of freedom and independence, power, as well as discrimination in each of their respective texts.
Stories are a means of passing on information, acting as a medium to transport cultural heritage and customs forward into the future. In his essay titled "You'll Never Believe What Happened," King says that, "The truth about stories is that that's all we are” (King Essay 2). Contained within this statement is a powerful truth: without stories, a society transcending the limitations of time could not exist. Cultures might appear, but they would inevitably die away without a means of preservation. Subsequent generations would be tasked with creating language, customs, and moral laws, all from scratch. In a way, stories form the core of society's existence.
This essay will provide quotes representing the parts of life that make a story relatable. It has all of the elements of a good creative non-fiction story. Unfortunately, it fails to deliver its promise to readers. It is a great story, but it is not creative non-fiction. Unfortunately, because of its tainted history it will never be remembered for its greatness. Too bad.
In the graphic novel, Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, Satrapi’s childhood was highly impacted by American culture. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of American culture on Satrapi’s view of the Iranian Revolution.
According to Robert M. Emerson and colleagues, reflexivity is a method in which the ethnographer is aware that his/her writing choices are shaped to acknowledge the ethnographers presence in the culture being studied. Thus, while writing and analyzing fieldnotes, the ethnographer-as-author grows increasingly aware of his role and responsibility in telling the story of the people being he/[she] studied; for in writing he/[she] re-presents their everyday world[1]. By taking the ethnographers presence in consideration, the ethnography becomes more than a mere piece of text. In the process of writing his/her analyzes of a culture, the ethnographer is constantly reminded that his work is to understand a realm of reality. In the following I will discuss the approach Dorinne K. Kondo and Renato Rosaldo use in writing their reflective ethnography.
A good story is one that isn't demanding, that proceeds from A to B, and above all doesn't remind us of the bad times, the cardboard patches we used to wear in our shoes, the failed farms, the way people you love just up and die. It tells us instead that hard work and perseverance can overcome all obstacles; it tells lie after lie, and the happy ending is the happiest lie of all. (85)
Lyotard questioned the authority of all self-validating theoretical frameworks that were used to legitimize science. He argued that researchers should study the world in its fragmentary state, examining each distinct fragment, rather than creating meta-theories to explain observed cultural phenomenon and argued for the creation of new, temporally appropriate, modes of expression which questions the implied authority of traditional theoretical and methodological constructs (1984). Derrida (1976) questioned the relationship of text and author, challenging the dominance of the latter over the former, offering deconstructionism as an answer to the problem of authorship and interpretation of texts. Clifford (1988) viewed the accepted ethnographic authority as being derived from the privileging of “participant observation” as evidence of the authenticity of the text; the author having gone there, observed the event, and which he objectively reported as fact on his return. Nichols writes: “mobility and travel no longer serve as a symbol for the expansion of one’s moral framework, the discovery of cultural relativity, the heroics of salvage ethnography, the indulgences of secret desires in strange place…movement and travel no longer legitimate, ironically the subjects’ right to disembodied speech, disembodied but master (italics in original text) narratives and mythologies in which the corporeal “I” who speaks dissolves itself in a disembodied, depersonalized, institutional speech ...
Within the fictional worlds of Haroun and the Sea of Stories, the characters realize that stories are not mere entertainment, but are crucial to their lives. Fictional stories are crucial pieces to Rashid Khalifa since he relies on them for a career and brings him enjoyment. They are also important to a politician because storytelling is a critical part of a politician’s survival and livelihood since they rely on the storytellers to persuade and convince people to vote for them. Most importantly they are important to Guppees since they depend on stories to be the source of all there speaking, and the pages of Gup (the army) they depend on stories to help them fight. All in all stories can
Telling stories throughout history has been a way for individuals to enhance their communication skills. Without stories there is no real proof of experience. In many instances one could say storytelling has changed his/her perspective on life. Focusing on three works of literature, Tracks, The Joy Luck Club, and “The Wisdom Of The New”, it will be discussed if storytelling plays a vital role in each of these. Throughout these three works of literature, there are stories embedded within that help evolve the relationship between stories and real life.
Marcus categorizes reflexivity into three parts: feminist, sociological, and anthropological. Although all are important in understanding Marcus’ work, I will discuss the anthropological reflexivity. Marcus believes that the most interesting form of self-critical reflexivity in anthropology is one that “emphasizes the intertextual or diverse fields of representation that any contemporary project of ethnography enters and crosses in order to establish its own subject and to define its own voice” (Marcus 196).
There are many times when problems in a country affect one's life. Persepolis by Majarne Satrapi recounts the coming-of-age of a girl during a period of war. Utilizing a graphic novel to illustrate, Marjane recalls the struggles of her family and herself living in warfare. For instance, in Persepolis, Marjane's external conflict result in her internal conflict.
Pictures are worth a thousand words, as the saying goes, making graphic novels powerful works of art. A prime example is Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, the memoir of Satrapi’s childhood, which took place during the Iranian Revolution. Satrapi uses powerful imagery in her novel to show the war through a child’s eye view. A rather heartbreaking panel is on page 15, in the middle of the bottom row.
Stories are our essence of life. They grow and change with us. They allow us to reconstruct the pas, and put our slant on things. They don’t’ have make sense, and they don’t all have to be fact. That’s what kind of story this is.
Persepolis, a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, is not a run-of-the-mill comic book. It is written with purpose. Satrapi wrote and illustrated this book to show Americans that their perspective of her home country, Iran, is askew. She believes Americans are too focused on the “fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism” (Satrapi ii), of the nation and that they forget to notice the normality and humanness of it. Since these two perspectives have vast differences, Satrapi wants to change their minds. Thus, it is crucial that she effectively communicate this humanness of Iran to the literary audience in America. Since the literary devices in a work are needed to correctly convey a message, she found it necessary to include these and manipulate them in her favor. Satrapi uses the innocence of a child along with morals in her pictures and a relation of cultures to effectively communicate her message. It is necessary to examine how she manipulates such literary devices in order to gain a full understanding of the text.
Hiromi Goto is the author of The Body Politic, a poem depicting racialized identity struggle. She is a Japanese-Canadian writer, whose poem is based upon her own personal experience. Goto presents this first-hand experience of the identity crisis immigrants and those who do not fit into rigid binary stereotypes face in daily life. She highlights her internal struggle to extend into public spaces when she doesn’t fit into the normative structures around her. The Body Politic is a journey for Goto that shows her audience her struggle to accept and understand herself. For Goto, this ability to understand her difference and the binary she fails to be apart of is the first step for her to begin to navigate an alternative way to extend through spaces within socially constructed institutions where her body does not fit in accordingly. Throughout this essay I explore the way binaries work in our world, and culture through the use of Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phemenology and the implications of