Editors’ Notes and Introduction to Ecofictions: The Legitimacy of Hope: Chief Editor’s Note

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This article examines the capacities of polar literature within an interwoven framework to think through climate crisis and human involvement therein in the midst of the Anthropocene. <italic>Ice Diaries</italic> (2016) and <italic>Arctic Dreams</italic> (1986) provide the opportunity to reconsider Earth’s cryosphere in literary form as mediated places that participate in the global network of the planetary imaginary (Clarke). Examining polar literature through a reparative lens (Sedgwick) enables the tutelary aspects of both landscapes to emerge as they provide strategies for investigating present and future trouble (Haraway). Employing theories from Earth System Science and spatial studies, this paper locates the potential for hope in remote regions that are nonetheless embedded within global realities—climatic and political—through the sharing of stories that encourage life to flourish even in what appear to be the harshest of circumstances. (IMK and IS)
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Reconsidering Polar Literature in the Anthropocene: Locating Hope in the Works of Jean McNeil and Barry Lopez

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Building on Donna Haraway’s advocacy for embracing “unexpected collaborations and combinations, in hot compost piles” (<italic>Trouble</italic> 4), this paper reads Sherri L. Smith’s <italic>Orleans</italic> (2013) with a focus on how, in the face of profound environmental challenges, stereotypical narratives of heroism are transformed—like in a compost pile—through cyborg-elements. The essay argues that grounding hero stories in the techno-organismal entanglements of ecosystemic crisis, yields an explicitly instable, corporeal conception of heroism in/of crisis of <italic>eco-heroism</italic>. Reading Smith’s protagonists, Fen and Daniel, as eco-heroic cyborgs in conjunction with ideals of the traditional hero’s corporeal and affective superiority creates instances of hopeful heroics in the narrative that challenge supposedly stabilizing patterns of identification in traditional discourses of American heroism. This vision of cyborg eco-heroism in <italic>Orleans</italic> makes communicable an unpredictable and instable crisisstate, generating hope as a composted affect in this eco-heroic story of oddkin. (LB)
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Hoping for Cyborgs: Cyborg Eco-Heroism, Odd Kinships, and Hopeful Heroics in Sherri L. Smith’s <italic>Orleans</italic>

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This essay examines the role of waste as a categorizing mechanism in the formation of storyworlds in two of the short stories featured in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s <italic>Friday Black</italic> (2018), “The Era” and “Through the Flash.” These two stories “waste” is a category defined according to the internal rules that govern their respective storyworlds, and in this case it arguably takes inspiration from preexisting classifications that have shaped, and continue to shape, the Black experience in the US under (late) capitalism. Analyzing how the relation between emotions, interpersonal bonding, and waste is constructed in each story, the essay demonstrates that understanding the power of waste as a classifying device helps shed light on mechanisms of oppression, which could contribute to dismantling the resulting classifications as well. (SVF)
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“Even the apocalypse isn’t the end”: Emotional Numbness and the Reconstruction of Interpersonal Bonding in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s <italic>Friday Black</italic>

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The unfolding ecological crisis is often blamed on an excerpt from the bible, according to which humans should “[b]e fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28). This command is repeatedly contrasted with another, saying that “[t]he LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (Gen 2:15). Could the current climate change have been avoided if the “second” command had carried more weight? Darren Aronofsky directed two films that deal with this question. In <italic>Noah</italic> (2014), it is the “second,” “eco-friendly” command that seems to reflect the intent of God; therefore, the secular techno-capitalist development of humankind, which is leading to an ecological disaster, is a revolt against this command and a manifestation of the Fall. As opposed to this, <italic>mother</italic>!, made three years later, suggests that it is the intertwining of the Christian tradition with patriarchy and anthropocentrism that lies behind the destruction of the environment, which in turn implies that the disaster can actually be interpreted as an adherence to the “first” command. (AH)
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Aronofsky’s Two Visions of the Ecological Fall

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In the age of the Anthropocene, capitalism’s expansion and damage to the planet can ultimately be seen as “becoming extinction” (McBrien). This essay discusses post-neoliberal structurations of space, time, and consciousness by examining the “desert timescapes” featured in Don DeLillo’s philosophical novel, <italic>Point Omega</italic> (2010). The desert, placed at the novel’s heart, is analyzed as a prominent religious, aesthetic, and philosophical topos of the crisis of human subjectivity. Furthermore, the investigation of the conceptions in the novel of the “Omega Point” (as the ultimate point of consciousness toward which the universe is heading) reveals an interplay of transcendence and immanence about matter and human evolution and offers a geological perspective of “becoming-mineral.” Finally, this paper claims that the “desert timescapes” polychronic perspective challenges anthropocentrism and the ontopolitics of the neoliberal state, and paves the way for reflection on “geontopower” (Povinelli), Life and NonLife in a geophilosophical mode of planetary thinking. (PK)
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Becoming-Mineral: Desert Timescapes and Post-Neoliberal Geontopower in Don DeLillo’s <italic>Point Omega</italic>

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This essay explores the outlines of the “quarantine subject,” a construct that has formed along the borderlines of viral, immunological, psychopolitical, and biopolitical metaphors. The focus is grounded in media archeology and media anthropology. Under media anthropology lies a basically German philosophical anthropological tradition that explores the convergence of biological and cultural dimensions. Helmuth Plessner and Arnold Gehlen have only recently been rediscovered in the English-speaking world.1 Hans Belting, for one, has elaborated a triple image anthropology that uses the triad of picture–medium–body in the interpretation of various aesthetic paradigms. This essay maps the convergence between the three dimensions emphasized by Belting and the digital-virtual turn driven by, among other factors, the COVID–19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns. The goal is the elaboration of a speculative “quarantine subjectivity model,” one that is determined by geographical and social factors, such as Internet access and technological integration, as well as a relatively “moderate” degree of quarantine measures. (MZN)
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Going Viral: The Media Anthropology of the “Quarantine Subject” in the Context of Biopolitics and Psychopolitics

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The article examines how Vladimir Nabokov probes the boundaries between autobiography and fiction in his autobiography, <italic>Speak, Memory</italic>, and his last finished novel, <italic>Look at the Harlequins!</italic> Both autobiographies and first-person novels project possible worlds, that is, alternative perspectives on empirical reality. The Nabokov of <italic>Speak, Memory</italic> and V.V. in <italic>Look at the Harlequins!</italic> are both focalizers in possible worlds derived from the historical Nabokov’s empirical reality. The common origin that binds them together opens up a multi-directional channel between the worlds, allowing the reader to gain a deeper understanding of Nabokov’s life story than either of the texts could offer on its own. Nabokov’s two texts highlight the fundamental similarities between the nonfictional genre of the autobiography and the fictional genre of the novel by exploring the transitory zone between fiction and reality. (BGY)
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The Nonidentical Twin: The Possible Worlds of Nabokov’s <italic>Speak, Memory and Look at the Harlequins!</italic>

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David Foster Wallace and Bret Easton Ellis are known for their contributions to postmodern literature; however, they also developed a contentious relationship outside of their literary works. But what caused this conflict between the two writers? Although they were often in competition with one another as literary contemporaries who both explored postmodernism, the real issue between the two writers is the difference in how they envisioned and portrayed a postmodern world. While both Wallace and Ellis utilize irony, examine collectivist identities, and critique equality in the West, they do so with a different endgame in mind—namely, Wallace’s idea that the postmodern world encourages a deeper look into notions of selfhood that extend beyond Ellis’s cynical emphasis on surface and superficiality. A comparative approach of “Girl With Curious Hair” (1989) and <italic>American Psycho</italic> (1991) offers fresh perspectives on how Wallace and Ellis utilized similar themes to contrast their different points of view regarding the postmodern world. (SSL)
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Fiction As a Conversation: Unreliable Narrators, Pop Culture, and Violence in David Foster Wallace’s “Girl With Curious Hair” and Bret Easton Ellis’s <italic>American Psycho</italic>

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From 2017 on, the #MeToo movement has resulted in a set of new perspectives and narratives in cinema; narratives, which, so far, have only ever been presented from and for the point of view of the male gaze. A special case in this process is Emerald Fennel’s 2020 directorial debut, <italic>Promising Young Woman.</italic> This essay argues that the film not only capitalizes on rape-revenge genre clichés, but it also relies on the tropes of romantic comedy traditions to give a sharp critique of the cultural climate that tolerates, denies, and normalizes rape. The subversion of the male gaze, the centrality of morality in revenge, and the avoidance of the spectacle of female suffering align <italic>Promising Young Woman</italic> with the rape-revenge genre. At the same time, the film’s take on the Hollywood myth of the likeable and harmless “good guy” highlights the role of classical romantic comedy conventions in perpetuating rape culture. (ZSOR)
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Film Genres after #MeToo: <italic>Promising Young Woman</italic> as a Rape-Revenge Film and a Rom-Com

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Through positing shame as inherent in women’s sexual development, this article explores the screen representations of sexually abused female survivors/victims by focusing especially on the articulation of their selfhood. It interrogates the representation of rape narratives in the television series <italic>Broadchurch</italic> (Amazon 2017) by focusing primarily on the visual culture and visual texts as social texts. Using an intersectional perspective informed by such disciplines as feminism, film and television studies, body politics, trauma studies, and psychology, it also intends to prepare women to be media critical and question the effects of the heavy penetration of popular culture into their lives. The notion of selfhood developed in this article emphasizes embodiment, agency, conscience, and the inextricable relationship between self and other. (AF)
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“Nobody Can Be Vulgar All Alone”: The Power of Shame in <italic>Broadchurch</italic>

Reviews: Arab Cinema Studies: A Revisit of the Past and Devaluation of the Present

Reviews: Achieving “Presence Within Absence” in Western Narrative Theory

Reviews: Encounters with Children in Adult Fiction

Reviews: Ghost Walkers: Southern and Eastern Europeans at the US–Canada Border in the Interwar Period

Volume 29 (2023): Issue 2 (November 2023)

Volume 29 (2023): Issue 1 (June 2023)

Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies

The Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (HJEAS) seeks to publish the best of Hungarian and international scholarship and invites articles, interviews, review essays, and reviews in English and American Studies (including Canadian, Australian, Irish, South African, and Caribbean topics) on such varied fields as literature, theater, visual culture, film, music, art, culture, philosophy, history, religion, and theory. We are open to all theoretical approaches and methodologies, provided that they engage with the chosen topic at the required depth and promise to advance its critical elaboration. The language of the journal is English. Manuscripts are welcome and are subject to rigorous peer review: the contribution is first reviewed by the editors; if judged to be potentially publishable, the contribution is sent for blind review by two authoritative referees; once the contribution has been tentatively accepted, the HJEAS editors work with the author to prepare it for publication. All submissions should conform to the 7th edition of the MLA Handbook in all matters of style and use the MLA parenthetical method of citation keyed to a works-cited list. Contributions to history may alternatively employ the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style.  Any contribution accepted for publication by HJEAS is done so with the understanding and under the author’s warranty that it has not been previously published in English in any form, and that it will not be published elsewhere until after it has been published by HJEAS, unless an agreement has been specifically entered into for a joint publication with HJEAS; that the author will be financially responsible for any legal action taken against HJEAS by cause of the author’s contribution; that HJEAS retains the right to republish the contribution in any issue or reissue of HJEAS in any form, including the HJEAS website, and to reprint it in any anthology sponsored by HJEAS; and that in any subsequent republication of the contribution, the author will acknowledge its first publication in HJEAS.  HJEAS is published twice a year (once in the summer and once in the winter). Archiving  Sciendo archives the contents of this journal in Portico - digital long-term preservation service of scholarly books, journals and collections.  Plagiarism Policy The editorial board is participating in a growing community of Similarity Check System's users in order to ensure that the content published is original and trustworthy. Similarity Check is a medium that allows for comprehensive manuscripts screening, aimed to eliminate plagiarism and provide a high standard and quality peer-review process. 

Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies

Volume 29 (2023): Issue 1 (June 2023)

Editors’ Notes and Introduction to Ecofictions: The Legitimacy of Hope: Chief Editor’s Note

Reconsidering Polar Literature in the Anthropocene: Locating Hope in the Works of Jean McNeil and Barry Lopez

Hoping for Cyborgs: Cyborg Eco-Heroism, Odd Kinships, and Hopeful Heroics in Sherri L. Smith’s Orleans

“Even the apocalypse isn’t the end”: Emotional Numbness and the Reconstruction of Interpersonal Bonding in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Friday Black

Aronofsky’s Two Visions of the Ecological Fall

Becoming-Mineral: Desert Timescapes and Post-Neoliberal Geontopower in Don DeLillo’s Point Omega

Going Viral: The Media Anthropology of the “Quarantine Subject” in the Context of Biopolitics and Psychopolitics

The Nonidentical Twin: The Possible Worlds of Nabokov’s Speak, Memory and Look at the Harlequins!

Fiction As a Conversation: Unreliable Narrators, Pop Culture, and Violence in David Foster Wallace’s “Girl With Curious Hair” and Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho

Film Genres after #MeToo: Promising Young Woman as a Rape-Revenge Film and a Rom-Com

“Nobody Can Be Vulgar All Alone”: The Power of Shame in Broadchurch

Reviews: Arab Cinema Studies: A Revisit of the Past and Devaluation of the Present

Reviews: Achieving “Presence Within Absence” in Western Narrative Theory

Reviews: Encounters with Children in Adult Fiction

Reviews: Ghost Walkers: Southern and Eastern Europeans at the US–Canada Border in the Interwar Period

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