We are pleased to announce the publication of the eleventh issue of Patchwork Student Journal. Although the texts in this edition may seem disparate, there seems to be a throughline connecting them – the line between the cultural and the natural. Where is this boundary, where does the human fall and are there other oppositions to be delineated?
The natural and the cultural within the human: First, David Brajković analyzes the use of music in Burgess’ and Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange as an exploration of the duality of humanity as both cultural and bestial. He argues that the juxtaposition of classical music with scenes of extreme violence challenges the audience’s preconceived notions about high culture, while also critiquing various societal structures which accentuate one aspect of human nature and violently suppress the other.
The human and the cultural within the natural: This is followed by Petar Sakač’s sonnet The Tears of Eagles (and a bit of Tempest), an interlude which decenters the human in its own dealing with the relationship between the “cultural” and the “natural”, alluding to Shakespeare’s (certainly high culture) take on that dichotomy in The Tempest.
Beyond the human, the cultural, and the natural: Taha Al-Sarhan similarly departs from anthropocentric perspectives in describing Lovecraft’s inversion of traditional humanistic (Burkean) conceptions of the sublime – rather than revealing the vastness of experience as an opportunity for transcendence, Lovecraft’s encounters with the sublime only indicate the insignificance of human agency within those vast expanses.
Who gets to be human? Finally, Lara Braun’s paper narrows the scope, focusing in on the question of agency, specifically in Women in Prison media – who is granted humanity and subjectivity and who is simply captured by the subject’s gaze?
We hope that you will enjoy reading this issue as much as we enjoyed creating it.
The Editors