Document Type
Introduction
Abstract
[First paragraph]
I suppose it might seem self-assuming to supply an introduction stemming from my own situation when I should be contextualizing the contents of the current crop of essays. Rather than a unifying discourse, though, two class discussions might offer entry points to a disparate collection of otherwise unrelated essays. First, I gave my class an essay assignment which asked them to consider Leon Ferrari's work, Civilisacion Occidentale y Christiana (1965) to see whether or not a contemporary viewer, born after 1986, might find a one or two intertexts in a work of art which features the figure of Christ crucified on an F-105 Thunderchief. The second entry point came from the class themselves. They asked me what I made of an installation of US Navy barracks at Coronado which has an unfortunate resemblance to a swastika. In combination, the two images gave me ample opportunity to teach the ambivalences of the sign and the politics of the available readings. The second instance, especially, proved profitable because I was able to address pointedly the character type who has become known as "doesn't apply to me guy" in my classes. This type is the first to remind me that in Cultural Studies we are always "reading into" things when we even begin to study a subject critically. I'm going to run the risk then of attempting to impose a reading upon the collection of otherwise unrelated articles which comprise our annual "open" issue.
Repository Citation
Ouellette, Marc. "Theories, Memories, Bodies and Artists." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 7, no. 4, 2007, pp. 1–3. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol7/iss4/1