Journal of Artistic Creation and Literary Research

Presence Decentered or Unfinalizable? Utibe Hanson's Unnoticed Presence of Things

Ndubuisi Martins Aniemeka — 2026-04-30

In this article, I interrogate the construction of presence in Utibe Hanson‘s award-winning debut collection, Unnoticed Presence of Things. This poetry volume impels a sort of scepticism about whether the notion of presence is materially unnoticed, politically rife, decentred, or interminable. Hence, I probe the context, image, text, and notions of the unnoticed presence inscribed in the volume, as Hanson seems to negate his noticed presence by the title, cover, and poems that make up his collection. A close reading of the poems drawn from the theoretical insights of Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger, and Mikhail Bakhtin highlights the politics of presence and counters the logic of unnoticed presence linked to the unspecified or nothingness in Hanson‘s poetry. By engaging with deconstructive frames of Heidegger‘s subject and predication, Derrida‘s aporia and difference, and Bhaktin‘s unfinalizability, I produce a detailed decentring of presence and nothingness in relation to Hanson‘s poetic manifesto of unnoticed presence, recurring as the unspecified or nothingness, and variously constituted in the poems. This study, at some strategic points, identifies signs, deconstructs, and complicates the notion of nothingness as revealed in the poems. Following the deconstructive analysis of poems in this article, Hanson’s poetry appears to bear the dodgy phrase: unnoticed presence of things.

Embodied Voice and Sonic Silence: Womanist Activism in Alice Walker’s Meridian

Nodhar Hammami Ben Fradj — 2026-06-11

Alice Walker’s Meridian (1976) represents a pivotal work of narrative theory that deconstructs the patriarchal limitations of the Civil Rights Movement to articulate a distinct womanist model of revolution. This paper argues that Walker traces the protagonist Meridian Hill’s evolution from a silenced subject within intersecting structures of domination to a unique feminist practitioner. Forged in opposition to both bourgeois respectability and assertive masculinism, this practice redefines activism itself. It champions strategic silence and corporeal testimony, and reclaims sonic expression as primary instruments of revolutionary self-definition and public address. Employing an intersectional framework grounded in Black Feminist Thought and enriched by contemporary theories of sonic culture and embodied knowledge, this analysis demonstrates how the female protagonist illuminates the epistemic violence enacted upon Black women’s speech. The novel critiques institutions from the elite college to the activist cadre, while simultaneously proposing an alternative form of resistance rooted in folk memory and the Black female body. Walker contends that liberation begins with reclaiming ownership of one’s story and bodily autonomy, a process that transforms personal and historical trauma into the basis of an empowered and transformative womanist discourse.

Facing the Wall of Babylon: A Contrastive Analysis of the Transfer of Biblical Allusions in Two Spanish Translations of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Antonio Escobar-Tortosa — 2026-05-18

This paper investigates the translation of biblical quotations and intertextual allusions in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in two Spanish versions published in the early 1960s by Amando Lázaro Ros and Fernando Gutiérrez. Drawing on Mendoza’s framework of the reading intertext and Canetti’s distinction between explicit and implicit quotations, the study examines how fidelity to the 1960 Reina-Valera Bible is affected by translator ideology, literary competence, and contextual constraints such as Francoist censorship. Each analyzed fragment is evaluated in terms of the translators’ ability to preserve theological meaning, allegorical nuance, and narrative function. The findings indicate that Gutiérrez’s strong Judeo-Christian background facilitated more accurate and nuanced renderings of biblical allusions, while Ros, whose atheist stance and self-censorship conditioned his approach, frequently simplified or neutralized original references. These results reveal how ideological orientation and encyclopaedic competence intersect with translational choices, influencing not only textual fidelity but also the reception of religious and moral dimensions in the target culture. Furthermore, the study highlights the broader significance of intertextual and theological awareness in literary translation, suggesting that translator background plays a critical role in mediating cultural and religious content. By combining intertextual and translational analysis, this research contributes to Translation Studies and Stevenson scholarship, offering insights into the complex dynamics between source text, translator, and socio-historical context.

The Haves and Have-nots in the Family: Intra-classism in Zoë Wicomb’s October

Laura Gutiérrez González — 2026-06-01

Zoë Wicomb’s penultimate novel, October (2014), tells the story of fifty-two-year-old Mercia Murray, a woman who has lived in Scotland for twenty-five years. The novel mainly revolves around the concepts of homemaking, exile, return and (non)belonging. While in other Wicomb works the characters come from different families or backgrounds, most of October’s relationships are intra-familial, making class inequality the primary factor to distinguish the different characters. In this sense, Wicomb proves in October how the opportunities the characters are given throughout their lives can lead to almost opposite outcomes, even if they come from the same or a very similar background. Drawing on Bourdieu, Seekings and Wright’s theories on social class, this article aims to explore the classist attitudes displayed by the different characters, with particular focus on Mercia Murray. Postcolonial theorists such as Jacob Dlamini, Bhabha or Spivak – among others – will be used to support how Mercia’s classism contrasts the national preoccupation with race in post-Apartheid South Africa. Furthermore, it will be seen how class is an essential factor in the increase for upward mobility – a concept that has not been properly studied in postcolonial literature since it has been fundamentally focused on how race determines the individual position in society. Through the small sample of South African society Wicomb presents, this paper will focus on the concept of class, as it will also explore the inferiority complex and mimicry attitudes attached to less socio-economically developed individuals.

From a Female Gothic Heroine to a Postfeminist Gothic Villainess: The Ambivalent Characterization of the Young Female Protagonist in Ti West’s Pearl

Marta Miquel-Baldellou — 2026-05-14

American filmmaker Ti West has recently released a horror trilogy in which actress Mia Goth simultaneously plays the roles of Maxine, in the first and third parts of the trilogy, and of Pearl, in the first and second parts. After the release of the first film in the series, X (2022), and as a prequel to it, West’s second film Pearl (2022) focuses on the youth of its protagonist. Initially, the plot presents many of the conventions pertaining to the tradition of the female gothic, and particularly, to its first stage of development, in analogy with narratives that depict a young heroine who is threatened with confinement and struggles to escape labyrinthic passages and menacing landscapes in order to marry the man she loves and find her lost parent. Conversely, West’s film Pearl also displays illustrative traits of the postfeminist gothic, inasmuch as it involves a rupture with the tradition of the female gothic, since postfeminist gothic narratives encompass popular evocations of girl power, postmodern discussions of feminism, and political discourses of neoliberal individualism. This article aims to analyse the ambivalent character of Pearl in a contemporary cinematic narrative that blends features from the female gothic tradition and the postfeminist gothic, thus portraying Pearl as gender-compliant, but also, gender-subversive.

Revisiting Multiculturalism: Anti-Blackness and Practices of Solidarity in Sheila Murray’s Finding Edward

Silvia Pérez-Castelo — 2026-06-16

This article examines the limitations of Canadian multiculturalism through Sheila Murray’s Finding Edward (2022), arguing that the novel exposes how institutional narratives of diversity obscure ongoing structures of anti-Blackness. While multiculturalism has often been celebrated as a model of inclusion, this study engages with its critical reassessment in Black Canadian studies to demonstrate how racial inequality persists despite its official discourse. Through a comparative analysis of two Black protagonists whose lives span from the 1920s to the present, the article shows how the novel represents both historical and contemporary forms of anti-Black racism. It further argues that Finding Edward foregrounds practices of solidarity and relational resistance that challenge the limits of multiculturalism, suggesting alternative modes of community formation beyond state-sponsored diversity. By bringing literary analysis into dialogue with critical race perspectives, this article contributes to ongoing debates on multiculturalism in Canada, highlighting the role of contemporary fiction in rethinking anti-racist strategies.

“We are all commodities at Yaxaktun”: Resisting Oppression Through the Latina “Multiplicitous Selfhood” in The Daughter of Doctor Moreau

Ane B. Ruiz-Lejarcegui — 2026-04-30

This article seeks to analyse Silvia Moreno-García’s The Daughter of Doctor Moreau (2022) against the backdrop of posthumanism and Latina feminist philosophy, in order to show how the transgression of the human/animal dualism of Moreau’s hybrids, now embodied by his daughter Carlota, exceeds that explored in H.G. Wells’ original novel. Thus, this study demonstrates that Moreno-García’s historical re-contextualisation within the Caste War of Yucatán (1847-1901), far from simply retelling the story against a different, exotic background, provides an intersectional commentary on the sociocultural and political factors that enforce commodification. Carlota Moreau’s existence as part-jaguar and part-human—both white and Maya—converges various systems of domination: the reification of her body as a scientific project and the racial and patriarchal oppressions that surround it. Following Mariana Ortega’s concept of “multiplicitous selfhood,” this article analyses how the imagery of fragmentation and the politics of naming work in the novel to endorse liminality as a valid and legitimate state of being. Hence, diverging from Wells’ portrayal of hybridity as imperfect and incomplete, Moreno-García’s multiplicitous selves embrace, rather than shun, in-betweenness as a form of resisting from the margins.

The Lumpenproletariat in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn

Manuel Sanz Brea — 2026-06-25

A lumpenproletarian coterie populates Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Attention to the lumpenproletariat opens a new vantage point from which to grapple with the contours of race and class in the book. Twain’s lumpenproletariats (namely Pap, the duke and the king) abuse enslaved people to their advantage. This is a different but productive iteration of the classic Marxist take on the lumpenproletariat, predicated on their betrayal of salaried workers as long it pays off economically. Where there should be class solidarity, these lumpenproletariats in Huckleberry Finn trod down on enslaved people, who are their unpropertied fellows. Such rupture of class solidarity between the propertyless registers the pervasiveness of the racial capitalism of Antebellum America, where living on the margins of society did not preclude access to white privilege. Dissolute individuals displaced from the economic center of society and ensconced in atypical economic relationships feed off racial supremacy as much as the propertied or wage workers. Huck, also a lumpenproletariat, seems, on the contrary, able to press his class position into the service of an anti-racist ideology. As opposed to the other characters whose marginal class position allows them to benefit from institutionalized slavery, Huck breaks through his racist conscience thanks to the same relationship of production that corrupts them. Huckleberry Finn is a novel concerned with the progressive or reactionary potential of the lumpenproletariat, and ultimately favors the latter by having Huck’s racial justice convictions crumble down.

The Year He Died

Jose Fabián Elizondo — 2026-04-30

Home

Ghazaal Hashemi — 2026-06-13

Reflection

Monica Manolachi — 2026-06-18

Suffer, London!

Vladyslav Shapoval — 2026-06-18

The selected poems depict a three-month experience that the author undertook in London during his research stay at the London School of Economics and Political Science. They explore the themes of displacement, solitude, grief, and connection from the gay migrant man's perspective. Through the use of repetition, fragmentation, and lyric voice change, it is possible to observe how the articulation of body and mind as vulnerable sites in a big metropolitan city takes place. London, then, is not just an urban physical place but also an affective landscape where the wounding and transformation is possible.

Review of Berger, Edward, director. Conclave. Focus Features, 2024

Mohamed Amestas El Kammas — 2026-05-18

Review of Zhao, Chloé, director. Hamnet. Focus Features, 2025

Gema Jiménez-Palazón — 2026-05-23

Review of Victor, Eva. Sorry Baby. A24, 2025

Katarina Kocic — 2026-06-29

This review examines Sorry, Baby (2025), Eva Victor’s directorial debut, which blends dark comedy with a nuanced portrayal of trauma and recovery. Written, directed, and performed by Victor, the film follows Agnes, a literature professor navigating the aftermath of sexual assault, through a fragmented narrative structure that reflects the nonlinear nature of memory and healing. The review highlights Victor’s feminist reworking of Lolita (1955), a central intertext in both Agnes’s academic life and the film’s thematic framework. By inverting Nabokov’s narrative strategies, particularly the use of humor and irony, Sorry, Baby shifts narrative authority from perpetrator to survivor, framing humor as a coping mechanism rather than a tool of manipulation. Ultimately, the review argues that Sorry, Baby offers an empowering counter-narrative to exploitative depictions of sexual violence, reshaping how survivor stories can be told in contemporary cinema.

Review of Buckingham, David. The End of Information: Media, Knowledge and Education in a Post-Truth Age. Polity Press, 2026

Patricia García Santos — 2026-06-11

The Reconfiguration of Philip K. Dick's Uchronia: Frank Spotnitz on The Man in the High Castle

Paula del Carmen García González — 2026-06-22

This interview explores the creative and conceptual processes behind Frank Spotnitz's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle. Through a series of analytical questions, the conversation examines how the series reconfigures the novel's narrative, visual aesthetics, and cultural-ideological dimensions. Spotnitz reflects on the challenges of constructing an alternate history on screen, the role of visual world-building in shaping political meaning, and the ethical questions that guide his approach to adaptation. The dialogue also addresses the reception of the series across different cultural contexts and the contemporary relevance of Dick's uchronian framework in current debates on historical memory and authoritarianism. Overall, the interview offers insight into the creative decisions that inform the adaptation and highlights its significance within adaptation studies and contemporary media analysis.

Writing as Breathing: Hope, Resistance and Poetry, An Interview with Donya Abu Sitta

María Martín Ortega — 2026-05-29