Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/2440/98269
Type: Theses
Title: Cloud village: a novel
Author: Binder, Leila
Issue Date: 2014
School/Discipline: School of Humanities: English and Creative Writing
Abstract: This thesis examines the moments in which the differences between cultures create new systems of meaning, the moments in which people reinvent themselves and their values, and in which a new language or expression is created. James Clifford calls these moments “Ethnographic Surrealism”, particularly when ethnography provides a critical distance from one’s own culture in order to subvert its assumptions. The creative part of this thesis may be seen as a work of ethnographic surrealism, because it places its main characters, a North American family, on a commune in an isolated mountain in Colombia where their cultural assumptions are denaturalised. Their endeavour is what Mary Louise Pratt called an “anti-conquest”. Instead of wishing to convert others, they wish to be converted by the local tribe. The family is unaware that they survey others with “imperial eyes”. This exegesis focuses specifically on the New World Baroque, an exuberant and inclusive style appropriate to a mestizo culture. It first discusses the Latin American neo-baroque, later expanding the category to certain North American works. Then it looks at the genre of magical realism as a subcategory of the neo-baroque. It uses Clifford’s conception of Ethnographic Surrealism’s juncture between cultures and the notion of a magical realist clash of paradigms to examine fiction about the Other, in particular The Lost Steps by Alejo Carpentier (the story of an anti-conquest) and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Garcia Marquez. It examines moments of ethnographically surrealist collage in which images of the culturally familiar and the strange are juxtaposed. Then it discusses North American works which contain an inclusive baroque spirit: the work of Henry Miller and the invented worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin. Ethnographic surrealism shares with the neo-baroque a sense of inclusiveness, proliferation, expansiveness and syncretism.
Advisor: Castro, Brian
Dissertation Note: Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2014.
Keywords: creative writing
Ethnographic Surrealism
New World Baroque
ethno graphic novel
magical realism
Colombia
utopian fiction
Garcia Marquez
Henry Miller
Alejo Carpentier
Ursula K. Le Guin
Description: v. 1 Cloud village, a novel: Major work -- v. 2 Ethnographic surrealism and the New World baroque: Exegesis
Provenance: This electronic version is made publicly available by the University of Adelaide in accordance with its open access policy for student theses. Copyright in this thesis remains with the author. This thesis may incorporate third party material which has been used by the author pursuant to Fair Dealing exceptions. If you are the owner of any included third party copyright material you wish to be removed from this electronic version, please complete the take down form located at: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/legals
Appears in Collections:Research Theses

Files in This Item:
File Description SizeFormat 
Binder2014_PhD_vol 1.pdfMajor work2.33 MBAdobe PDFView/Open
Binder2014_PhD_vol 2.pdfExegesis2.1 MBAdobe PDFView/Open
Permissions
  Restricted Access
Library staff access only266.76 kBAdobe PDFView/Open
Restricted_1
  Restricted Access
Library staff access only578.93 kBAdobe PDFView/Open
Restricted_2
  Restricted Access
Library staff access only818.06 kBAdobe PDFView/Open


Items in DSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.