Martin Heidegger posits a significant future-directed question concerning the human existence in relation to the essence of technology, a question which builds a way for anticipating the poetics of Artificial Intelligence and posthumanism. What is missing in the Heideggerian concept of modern technology is the part of the human activity, which represents the physical human embedded embodied mind who thinks, reads, and writes, and acts with gestures and bodily movement. Human brain is the center of these activities. Maryanne Wolf in her Proust and the Squid (2007) posits reading as a human invention, and elaborates the human brain’s plastic ability in relation to the act of reading. Wolf’s models of Proust and the Squid in terms of the intellectual and the biological is closely related to the linguistic and the neurocognitive aspects of the Artificial Intelligence. The complementary examples of human brain’s reading processes have analogically elaborated how various neuro-cognitive processes will work algorithmically in the data-processing of the AI. Both cases of reading by Maryanne Wolf are referring to human intelligence’s information processing in terms of the human brain’s automatic learning which reminds us of machine learning and deep learning algorithms. The development of artificial intelligence in tandem with that of human intelligence may be the last great challenge of humanism and the first great endeavor of posthumanism. Cognitive neuroscience and artificial intelligence have undergone revolutionary changes in the past decades, and they now foreground the embodied and environmentally embedded nature of intelligent action. What is at stake is the ethical articulation of intelligence (both human and artificial) in this “second machine age.”

In this paper, there has been concretized the specification of various theoretical and literary discourses—the eidosic one, the personalistic one and the literary grammar, which found upon different methods and set various research objectives. Hence, it is proved that the vision of “style” is different in each of them. The eidosic theory of literature is characterized by conviction in the importance and advantage of poetic cognition through images. Eidosic comprehension of style is a crucially valuable concept, which characterizes aesthetic perfection, namely, “the correlation of the word picture with something which is Anderssein for it” (according to A.F. Losev). Among these lines of research, literary grammar is the most epistemological, as it corresponds to the modern European ideal of scientific character. The notion of style within the boundaries of literary grammar is pre-aesthetic, since the sensual, that is, the “inner form” as a plastic-pictorial and vivid component of the image, is not considered. In personalistic discourse, all the problems associated with the perception and interpretation of the literary text, are transferred to the sphere of intersubjective relations. Dialogical relations—relations between the subjects of utterance—are the objects in personalism. In the personalistic theory of literature, the author-creator is the constitutive moment of artistic creation. Literary style is a method of “aesthetic consummation,” which is not conceivable without the finishing ability of the image, that is, the concept of style in personalism is post-aesthetic. The article states the main difference between academic theories of literature and philological theory, which lies in the attitude toward language. The essence of the philological theory is determined by interrogative thinking, different from the representative thinking, which underlies the modern theory of literature.

This paper explores the notion of nostalgia and its revealing nature in the formation of the autobiographical self, in cultural and gendered self identity. Truth and lie are popular topics for discussion regarding autobiographies. Different from factual diversions there can sometimes take place prevarications when the authors try to conceal their emotions but their discourse makes these denied feelings obvious. Azerbaijani emigrant writer Banine’s autobiography is analysed in this paper with the purpose to find evidences of nostalgia for her native land while living in Paris. Qualitative studies, discourse analysis, close reading are employed to unfold the author’s cultural identity and her perception of this identity. The method of hermeneutic phenomenology is applied to find goes further than the author’s own understanding or confession, to offer point of departure in the situation suggesting meanings which then allow the possibility of analysis, description, and interpretation. Through interpretation of microcontexts are offered insights into macrocontexts (the whole picture). The feeling of nostalgia which takes part in life-writings, has diverse expressions in different works what is influenced by culture, personality, social status of the authors. In Banine’s autobiography it is multilayered and has been expressed both through silence and eloquent denial of its existence.

This paper aims to provide a critical analysis of an American miniseries named The Night Of. The show narrates the story of Nasir/Naz Khan, a second generation Pakistani immigrant and the problems he and his family encounter in the United States in the context of post 9/11. Movie critics and reviewers have pointed out briefly the racial discriminations against Naz by the society as a Muslim and the possible terrorist following the 9/11 events regardless of analyzing the psychological changes happening to him as an immigrant with Pakistani heritage. Acculturation strategies as a branch of cross-cultural psychology provided by Berry and his colleagues, considering the values of society of origin and the host country, offers a framework for analyzing the psychological and cultural aspects of immigrants’ lives. This study endeavors to investigate the Khans’ process of acculturation and cultural maintenance in encountering different societal institutions. Moreover, it is shown how they oscillate between acculturation strategies so as to fit in the mainstream. Consequently, it is concluded how certain strategies does not work and Naz resorts to the strategy of marginalization which is moving away from both American and Pakistani values and thus becomes a potential criminal.

This article highlights features in Daniel Corkery’s short story, “Colonel Mac Gillicuddy Goes Home” (1919) which foreshadow characteristics outlined by Rachel Freudenburg in her argument for the fiction of friendship in 20th century German first-person narratives. In line with Freudenburg’s argument as she applies it to Günter Grass’s Cat and Mouse (1961), Corkery’s narrator can ultimately be said to engage in acts of passive aggression toward the Colonel in an attempt to acquire from the site of his friend the desired if ultimately unattainable identity of hero. This discussion raises two questions. Could Corkery’s portrayal of the friend as a site upon which the narrator unsuccessfully attempts to project his idealized identity, have at its root the nature of the Irish War of Independence where the concept of hero was far from clean-cut? If “Colonel Mac Gillicuddy …” falls into a paradigm of friendship common in 20th century German narratives, can the story’s facilitation of such an alternative interpretation rescue it from the stigma of didactic propaganda.

The present paper seeks to apply Linda Hutcheon’s theory of historiographic metafiction to Meridian (1967) by Alice Walker. Hutcheon coined the term historiographic metafiction to refer to the tendency of literary texts to combine literature with history in order to highlight the literariness of history and the historicity of literature. Alice Walker, in her Meridian, yokes the idea of identity crisis to the crisis in grand narratives of history. Walker’s novel adds the dimension of race to the aforementioned crisis and demonstrates how race is also an artificial narrative knitted into the texture of mainstream history. The fact that an African American novelist writes about the oppression of a female protagonist who has to endure the atrocities of a patriarchal world is the final aspect by means of which the fictionality of history is laid bare. In other words, feminine narratives in a patriarchal discourse serve as alternate possibilities to the orthodox history.

The relationship between literature and power structures has been at the center of attention and discussion. While Louis Althusser considers literature an ideological entity, Franz Fanon see its liberating force. Althusser’s insertion of literature in “Ideological State Apparatuses” is in contrast to Fanon’s “combat literature.” This paper adopts Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo as a touchstone to evaluate the applicability of Althusser and Fanon’s understanding of literature to an African American novel. This undertaking is also concerned with literary theory, using literature to discuss the applicability of literary theory. It applies Althusserian key terms to study Mumbo Jumbo and expose the historical, cultural and religious inconsistencies in Althusser’s definitions. Since Althusser emphasizes that dominant powers inundate history with illusion to present a favored version of the past, this study reveals how Reed de-illusions history to present a distinctive African American one. Regarding culture, it discusses how Reed is self-conscious about literature as an ISA and how he through expositions changes his literature into an anti-ideological entity. Regarding religion, Mumbo Jumbo is full of expositions of white Christianity as a religious ISA in the hands of the dominant powers. Such investigations come to the conclusion that Mumbo Jumbo is more inclined to Fanon’s “combat literature” than Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatuses. It is possible to apply Althusserian philosophy to paradoxically detect the inconsistencies in it. Moreover, it is possible to conclude that Althusser has an inclusive approach to literature and does not take particularities into consideration and that his classification is not complete.

The present article discusses the nature of ethnic detective fiction from the comparative perspective of world literature by underscoring the divergent discourses that can hide under such a seemingly unified subgenre. In the context of our current understanding of world literature, both the Inspector Ramirez series by Canadian crime writer Peggy Blair and the Lieutenant Conde series by Cuban author Leonardo Padura can be categorized as multiethnic, international, minority, multicultural, cross-cultural or ethnic detective fiction, because of the series’ focus on the Cuban crime scene. However, a comparison of the action-space, plot space, and worldview chronotopes (i.e. time-space frames) of The Beggar’s Opera and Pasado perfecto reveals that the focalizers of both novels adhere to opposite worldviews. Pasado perfecto’s Cuban worldview chronotope largely conforms to the premises of the original hardboiled paradigm, whereas the Canadian worldview of The Beggar’s Opera appears to cross over from detective fiction into ethnographic travel fiction. In the end, it would seem the only thing holding both novels together is their shared label of ethnic detective fiction.

This paper explores Lebanese Rabih Alameddine’s novel The Hakawati (2008) as an appropriation of British James Joyce’s novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), each of which is considered a Künstlerroman as its central character is a developing artist. The paper traces the lives of the two artists to be in the two novels: the developing poet, Stephen Dedalus, and the budding musician and hakawati, Osama Al-Kharrat. As it does so, it draws on the socio-political contexts in the two texts, which are religion, family, and the political conditions in the protagonists’ countries, Lebanon and Ireland. The paper also tackles the spiritual and physical journeys of becomingness which the two characters go through as well as the hardships they encounter and reveals how Alameddine appropriates Joyce’s journey and becomingness. The paper is divided into the following sections: childhood, obstacles, and becomingness. As it depicts the two characters’ development, it draws on the resemblance between the two texts which are seemingly distant from each other. Moreover, it sheds light on their departure points and exposes how the journeys of both Stephen and Osama turn out to be ones of self-affirmation and self-actualization which are directed towards freedom of expression.

The paper delves into the manner in which Franz Kafka utilizes the various symbolic representations to enhance the overall impact of the thematic content of the short story. While the author explores how artists can be alienated from the society and even misconstrued, he uses various symbols to highlight this matter. Also, the association of business and art is explored through the use of symbolism in this tale. The protagonist and his fasting also symbolize the thirst for appreciation and fame. The various symbolic representations not only enrich the text, but provide the tale with much more emotional appeal. The paper explores the impact of symbols like the cage, the clock, the act of fasting, hunger, the artist himself, the impresario, as well as the panther to bring out the true essence of the life and sacrifices of the hunger artist. The characteristics of the text that lead to the quintessence of literary appeal are explored in detail. Thus, the short story is analytically deciphered to understand the apt use of semiotics by Kafka. Finally, it is made conspicuous that the theme of the narrative along with the richness of the symbols has the capacity of leaving a lasting effect on the readers.

This study mainly focused on a critical analysis of flashback employed in the novel The Revelation. The researcher employed descriptive research design with qualitative data analysis approach. Purposive sampling technique was employed to select the novel under scrutiny. In addition, the researcher used document analysis as data gathering tool. The novelist employed different past events in the novel to narrate different life lessons or experiences. This helped the leading character Blen to learn various life experiences; for instance, she shared the wedding tradition of her grandparents, what traditions they were practicing, the life journey of her parents and this, in turn, helped her to be conscious about her stand, especially on her education. It also helped Blen to know her parents’ and grandparents’ background very well. Inculcating the past events in the novel had, in short, motivated Blen to be dynamic in everything. In addition, the author inserted these past events to create tension in the readers mind especially when Hiwot narrated how her husband or father of Blen, Alemayehu escaped from death and left his homeland to a new country. Finally, conclusions and recommendations have been drawn.