[ecrea] Canadian Review of American Studies 42.2 August 2012 now available online

*Canadian Review of American Studies ***

*Volume 42, Number 2, August 2012 *

http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/u1953756228x/

This issue contains:

*Rhetorical Insurgents: Biopolitics and the Insurrectionary Rhetoric of 
McLuhan's Cool Media*

Stuart J. Murray

This essay examines the subversive political potential of censored 
cartoons by the Guantánamo prisoner, Sami al-Hajj. In McLuhan's terms, 
these cartoons constitute cool media, which I read as a rhetorical 
response to biopolitical (Foucault) forms of governmental power. I 
conclude by reflecting on the ethical demands of such media.

http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/72521215736623p4/?p=14bbf51d7d224c9a9e61205a63e6f662&pi=0 
<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/72521215736623p4/?p=14bbf51d7d224c9a9e61205a63e6f662&pi=0>

DOI: 10.3138/cras.42.2.123

*Tipping Point Discourse in Dangerous Times*

Chris Russill, Chad Lavin

The concept of the tipping point has reshaped how crisis is perceived 
and understood in public discourse. We study this trend in selected 
instances, including the 2005 Iraqi elections, the 2005 flooding in 
Louisiana, and the climate-change crisis, before situating Malcolm 
Gladwell's theory of the tipping point in historical context. We discuss 
how Gladwell interprets key dimensions of the epidemiological approach 
in an overly selective manner in order to advance a particular political 
perspective on public policy. This perspective restricts an 
understanding of the way social inequalities shape the environmental 
conditions, contexts, and politics of social problems.

http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/p62lh5702n822881/?p=14bbf51d7d224c9a9e61205a63e6f662&pi=1 
<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/p62lh5702n822881/?p=14bbf51d7d224c9a9e61205a63e6f662&pi=1>

DOI: 10.3138/cras.42.2.142

*Cinéma américain, communication politique et information*

Isabelle Gusse

L'auteure appréhende le cinéma en tant que support de communication 
politique dans l'axe informateur/information. Il se dégage de l'analyse 
qualitative de trois films historiques américains (Good night, and good 
luck, Bobby et Across the universe) produits entre 2006 et 2007 et de 
leurs notes de production deux figures de l'informateur : réalisateurs 
et personnages expriment et relaient certains idéaux démocratiques liés 
au respect des droits fondamentaux du citoyen.

The author examines cinema as a medium for political communication along 
the informant/information axis. From the qualitative analysis of three 
American historical films (Good Night, and Good Luck, Bobby, Across the 
Universe 2006--7) and of their production notes, two types of informants 
emerge: directors and characters express various democratic ideals 
having to do with respect for citizens' fundamental rights.

http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/05g8g1142767q7j0/?p=14bbf51d7d224c9a9e61205a63e6f662&pi=2 
<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/05g8g1142767q7j0/?p=14bbf51d7d224c9a9e61205a63e6f662&pi=2>

DOI: 10.3138/cras.42.2.164

*Blood Money: Gresham's Law, Property, and Race in Faulkner's Go Down, 
Moses*

Ross Bullen

This paper examines the relationship in William Faulkner's Go Down, 
Moses between the "one-drop rule" and the economic precept known as 
Gresham's Law. I explore the connection between these two laws of 
circulation in Faulkner's text, situating the novel's sustained interest 
in both biological and financial inheritance within a broader history of 
the relationship between slavery and the monetization of gold.

http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/g05x57l710207028/?p=14bbf51d7d224c9a9e61205a63e6f662&pi=3 
<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/g05x57l710207028/?p=14bbf51d7d224c9a9e61205a63e6f662&pi=3>

DOI: 10.3138/cras.42.2.194

* "It's Almost Like Being There": Speculative Fiction, Slave Narrative, 
and the Crisis of Representation in Octavia Butler's Kindred*

Nadine Flagel

Octavia Butler's novel Kindred (1979) combines characteristics of two 
primary genres: slave narratives and speculative fiction. Employing the 
conceptual framework of métissage, the article examines the interaction 
of generic attributes. Some generic qualities simply overlap. More 
frequently, Butler's novel imaginatively defamiliarizes and revitalizes 
each generic cluster of attributes as a critique of the other. Such a 
critique often pushes toward the literal: for instance, speculative 
fiction's latent investment in aliens and the master-slave dialectic is 
made manifest; slave narratives' reliance on literacy is exposed. The 
novel's commitment to reinvigorating perceptions of slavery complicates 
and compromises certain types of representation---particularly literary 
or discursive representation---thus contributing to a crisis of 
representation characteristic of black feminist postmodernity.

http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/13456358500n3346/?p=14bbf51d7d224c9a9e61205a63e6f662&pi=4 
<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/13456358500n3346/?p=14bbf51d7d224c9a9e61205a63e6f662&pi=4>

DOI: 10.3138/cras.42.2.216

* "A Knowing So Deep It's Like a Secret": Recent Approaches to Race, 
Identity, and Transformation in Toni Morrison's Fiction*

Katrina Harack

In the burgeoning field of Toni Morrison studies, three scholars have 
recently made original contributions to the field with their 
interdisciplinary scholarship, showing a trend in Morrison studies of 
forging new readings through the use of comparative and cross-cultural 
techniques. In so doing, Evelyn Jaffe Schreiber, K. Zauditu-Selassie, 
and Rebecca Hope Ferguson help to elucidate Morrison's complex 
relationship to the past and to African and American culture as well as 
the consistent ethical concerns across her body of work. 
Zauditu-Selassie focuses primarily on Morrison's references to African 
cosmology, while Ferguson and Schreiber take interdisciplinary 
approaches to key themes (transition, exchange, and the concept of home) 
in Morrison's work. While Ferguson and Schreiber tend to problematize 
Morrison's relationship to an African past, Zauditu-Selassie takes a 
much more celebratory approach regarding her use of cultural and 
spiritual references.

http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/h3413804414g2656/?p=14bbf51d7d224c9a9e61205a63e6f662&pi=5 
<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/h3413804414g2656/?p=14bbf51d7d224c9a9e61205a63e6f662&pi=5>

DOI: 10.3138/cras.42.2.246

_________________________________________________

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