CTSJ: Journal of Undergraduate Research

Visible Body, Invisible Organs: Micropolitics and the LGBTTTI Movement

Katharine “Kai” Allen — Mon, 06 May 2013 13:06:14 PDT

Resisting Containment: Relocating Subjectivity in Sandra Cisneros’s “One Holy Night”

Julia Sills — Mon, 06 May 2013 13:06:12 PDT

Composting History: The Terrifying Melancholia of Pornoterrorismo

Sam Nasstrom — Mon, 06 May 2013 13:06:10 PDT

Orphaning Queerness

Mary Zaborskis — Mon, 06 May 2013 13:06:09 PDT

Gender Ambiguity and Liberation of Female Sexual Desire in Fantasy Spaces of Shojo Manga and the Shojo Subculture

Maana Sasaki — Mon, 06 May 2013 13:06:08 PDT

Introduction to this Issue

H. N. Lukes — Mon, 06 May 2013 13:06:06 PDT

Misson and Staff

CTSJ — Mon, 06 May 2013 13:06:04 PDT

In This Issue

CTSJ — Mon, 06 May 2013 13:06:02 PDT

Artist Statement

Agne Jomantaite — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:06:47 PDT

Community

Agne Jomantaite — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:06:45 PDT

Encounter

Agne Jomantaite — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:06:41 PDT

Subject 2

Agne Jomantaite — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:06:38 PDT

Subject 1

Agne Jomantaite — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:06:35 PDT

Mission & Staff

G.A.E. Griffin — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:06:32 PDT

Artist Statement

Alex Wolf — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 11:21:08 PST

Synaesthesia and Transgression in "Story of the Eye"

Brenda McNary — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 11:21:06 PST

While Georges Bataille’s “Story of the Eye” challenges many boundaries (pornography and art among them), his central concern was of the boundary between the possible and the impossible, or, what could be expressed in language. Though his novel has had a long critical history related to its unique narrative and thematic concerns, few have identified Bataille’s linguistic constructions as an integral piece of his project to transcend the boundaries of possibility in his novel. Experimenting with unexpected sense-language descriptors in “Story,” Bataille confronts readers with sensory experiences that exist outside the text—provoking a disruption in the normally separate spaces between reader, author, and text. Synaesthesia enables Bataille to trouble the divisions between the senses more strongly than any other literary device can, providing a greater opportunity to represent what would be otherwise impossible. A close reading of “Story,” considered along with Bataille’s theoretical work on the impossible, informs this paper’s analysis of the “avant-garde” or transgressive/transcendent possibilities of synaesthetic language in Bataille’s “Story.”

Georges Bataille's Vertigo and the Flamenco of the Other

Tania Flores — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 11:21:06 PST

In his search for the origins of the transgressive philosophical project of Georges Bataille, biographer Michel Surya turns to Bataille’s experiences in Spain in 1922. Surya cites two commentaries on flamenco written by Bataille twenty-four years apart. In the first of these commentaries, written in 1922, Bataille describes a female flamenco dancer in erotic terms. In the second commentary, written in 1946, Bataille describes the experience of flamenco in terms of ecstasy and death, essential components of the experience of approximating “the impossible” or the void. The 1922 depiction of the dancer is Bataille’s first known erotic writing, significant because of the critical role of erotic terminology in describing the experience of the void. From the quotes Surya provides, flamenco emerges in Bataille’s consciousness not only as an instance of approximating the impossible, but also as the catalyst for the development of this concept. Bataille, however, derives this catalytic eroticism from a process of Othering that subverts the experience of the impossible. By constructing this inherently unstable concept, Bataille denies the utility of flamenco in lending the possibility of political transgression and sovereignty to women.

Georges Bataille and the Ruinous Role of Nonknowledge in Derrida's Unconditional Hospitality

Mukasa Mubirumusoke — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 11:21:05 PST

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, when political debates concerning strangers and foreigners often gestured towards hostility, Jacques Derrida took the exact opposite position, demanding that the stranger and foreigner be welcomed with unconditional hospitality. As with the other themes that fall within Derrida’s political and ethical corpus, readers of his discussions on hospitality often find it difficult to reconcile his proposed position with any practical application. In particular, readers often take issue with the extreme vulnerability that he demands of the acting agent and the consistent questioning of his position’s possibility. This paper attempts to address the motivations behind his radical demands by exploring points of congruence with Georges Bataille’s project of inner experience, focusing particularly on a shared understanding of the role that nonknowledge plays in necessitating both extreme risk and impossibility. I contend that the central role of nonknowledge frames Derrida’s unconditional hospitality as a Bataillen project of self-ruination.

Introduction to this Issue

G.A.E. Griffin — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 11:21:03 PST

Artist Statement

Tucker Neel — Fri, 07 May 2010 19:22:15 PDT