This thesis studies Patricia Lockwood's novel No One Is Talking About This and Maxime Garcia Diaz' poetry collection Het Is Warm In De Hivemind in search of an understanding of the forms of affect...Show moreThis thesis studies Patricia Lockwood's novel No One Is Talking About This and Maxime Garcia Diaz' poetry collection Het Is Warm In De Hivemind in search of an understanding of the forms of affect that arise in an online/offline dynamic. It brings this affect in conversation with theories of metamodernism and postdigitality. It puts forth a sensibility called the postdigital, metamodern sensibility in which the poles of postmodern irony and cynicism and modern enthusiasm and naivety exist in a fluid dualism with eachother, as opposed to in the oscillation proposed by the metamodern school.Show less
This thesis explored the Afropessimism framework for examining the dynamics of race and racial inequality in the United States and Brazilian contexts and its potential for advancing racial justice...Show moreThis thesis explored the Afropessimism framework for examining the dynamics of race and racial inequality in the United States and Brazilian contexts and its potential for advancing racial justice efforts. It examined and answered the following questions: How does the critical perspective of Afropessimism impact the experiences and identities of individuals of African descent in the Americas, specifically in the U.S. and Brazil? How does Afropessimism critique the effectiveness of the human rights framework in securing racial justice for individuals within the African diaspora? To examine the translatability of Afropessimism to a different cultural context other than that of the U.S., I researched whether this theoretical framework could also accurately explain the historical and contemporary experiences of Black individuals in Brazil. These questions aimed to evaluate the extent to which Afropessimism, departing from other racial theories, such as intersectionality, questions the efficacy of the human rights framework in transforming society and its social institutions, as a means of irrevocably achieving racial justice.Show less
Human beings make sense of the world through the stories that they tell. Contemporary media is still predominately postmodern, but there are signs that there is a shift towards a new ‘post...Show moreHuman beings make sense of the world through the stories that they tell. Contemporary media is still predominately postmodern, but there are signs that there is a shift towards a new ‘post-postmodern’ paradigm. In this thesis I will analyze this shift through the figure of the literary vampire, introducing the concept of the hauntological dominant of post-postmodernism.Show less
