Pockets of Change
Adaptation and Cultural Transition
Contributions by Indy Clark, Samantha Fordham, Jacinta Kelly, Cathi Lawrence, Helen Machalias, Ivy McDaniels, Alexandra Paterson, Toni Risson, Sarah Thomasson, Mary Trabucco, Prithvi Varatharajan Edited by Jane Stadler, Peta Mitchell, Adam Atkinson, Tricia Hopton
Publication date:
29 April 2011Length of book:
202 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9780739165331
The twelve essays collected in Pockets of Change locate adaptation within a framework of two overlapping, if not simultaneous, creative processes: on the one hand, adaptation is to be understood as an acknowledged transposition of an existing source-that is, the process of adapting from; on the other hand, adaption is also a process of purposeful shifting and evolving of creative practices in response to external factors, including but not limited to other creative works-in other words, the process of adapting to. This book explores adaptation, then, as an active practice of repetition and as a reactive process of development or evolution. The essays also extend beyond the production, transformation, and interpretation of texts to interrogate the values and practices at work in cultural transition and transformation during periods of social and historical change.
Collectively, the papers theorize adaptation by taking on three tasks: first, to examine the conditions under which the two processes of adaptation operate; second, to give an account of the space and moment in which the processes unfold (the "pockets" of the title); and finally, to examine what emerges from pockets of adaptation. While adapting from and adapting to are both processes that appear to preclude innovation in the way that they acknowledge and depend on external sources, Pockets of Change demonstrates that adaptation is productive. It not only references prior texts, attitudes, practices and media, but it also invites us to re-visit the past and to re-think the present in new ways, potentially giving narrative space to muted or occluded voices.
This book therefore brings together an innovative and varied range of approaches to, interpretations and uses of adaptation, challenging the assumption that an adaptation is simply either a "re-make" or the act of turning one medium into another. Adaptation, then, names not only the means by which texts are transformed, but also the space in which that transformation takes place. T
Collectively, the papers theorize adaptation by taking on three tasks: first, to examine the conditions under which the two processes of adaptation operate; second, to give an account of the space and moment in which the processes unfold (the "pockets" of the title); and finally, to examine what emerges from pockets of adaptation. While adapting from and adapting to are both processes that appear to preclude innovation in the way that they acknowledge and depend on external sources, Pockets of Change demonstrates that adaptation is productive. It not only references prior texts, attitudes, practices and media, but it also invites us to re-visit the past and to re-think the present in new ways, potentially giving narrative space to muted or occluded voices.
This book therefore brings together an innovative and varied range of approaches to, interpretations and uses of adaptation, challenging the assumption that an adaptation is simply either a "re-make" or the act of turning one medium into another. Adaptation, then, names not only the means by which texts are transformed, but also the space in which that transformation takes place. T
The guiding metaphor of this volume, that of pockets as reservoirs or niches of knowledge that will expand Adaptation Studies, usefully invokes ecological and evolutionary paradigms as tools in Adaptation Studies. Starting with Julie Sanders' preface, which praises the trans-disciplinary rapport of Adaptation Studies with sociology, business studies, and performance studies, this collection consistently seeks to open up adaptation studies from 'literature on screen' to a field that examines the processes rather than the products of intertextuality and interculturality.This collection of essays marks a pocket of resistance to Adaptation Studies as we have known it. As it does not just pay lip service to the interaesthetic, intertextual, intermedial and, above all, intercultural expansion of Adaptation Studies, this volume is set to mark the next turning point in Adaptation Studies. Going far beyond established theories of adaptation, this collection is full of surprises and will be opening up new vistas in the field. Never before has a collection of essays so fully embraced the diversity of adaptation (theatre, poetry, literature, film, shows and exhibitions, consumer culture). Turning to 'adaptation' as a necessary attitude, condition, procedure and strategy in cultural and aesthetic survival, rather than merely a text based on other texts, the volume makes abundantly clear what Adaptation Studies could be in the future. All in all, this wide-ranging volume has an almost global scope -with case studies ranging from all over the Anglophone world, from New Zealand and Australia to India and Britain. It is unashamedly heterogeneous, almost eclectic - and this is precisely why it will become a standard point of reference for the growing aspirations of Adaptation Studies to become one of the key fields in the current redefinition of cultural and aesthetic analysis.