Journal of Contemporary Poetics

Initial Pages

2025-12-30T10:40:20+05:00

Documentary Filmmaking Across the Analogue-Digital Divide: Reassessing Thom Andersen’s Filmography

2025-12-30T11:42:44+05:00

This paper examines Thom Andersen’s nonfiction filmography as a lens through which to understand the broader evolution of documentary film practice from the late twentieth century into the digital era. Analysing Andersen’s early workers including Red Hollywood (1996/2014), Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003/2014), and The Thoughts That Once We Had (2015), this paper argues that Andersen’s stylistic trajectory, from the classical documentary’s rhetoric of clarity and evidentiary authority, to the subjective, reflexive essayism of his later works, indexes a fundamental shift in the material and technological conditions of nonfiction filmmaking. Drawing on theoretical debates, the paper situates Andersen’s increasing reliance on montage, found footage, and digital databases within a changing media ecology shaped by online archives and accessible digital editing tools. Andersen’s films, I argue, constitute a micro-history of documentary film’s transition from celluloid to digital modes of production. In tracing this evolution, the paper positions Andersen’s oeuvre as an exemplar of how contemporary essay film affords a rethinking of essential cinematic concepts, such as authorship, representation, and cinematic truth, within the evolving industrial and aesthetic paradigms.

Keywords: documentary, fact, nonfiction, authorial agency, cinema, history

How Beautiful We Were: A Resistance Narrative Uncovering Political Ecology in Postcolonial Eco- Fiction

2025-12-30T11:50:29+05:00

This paper explores the intersection of political ecology and resistance narrative in Imbolo Mbue’s novel How Beautiful We Were (2021). I argue that political ecology is shaped by neoliberal policies such as slow violence and oil politics. I further contend that environmental degradation, colonial practices, and neoliberal policies exploit the indigenous lives of Kosawa and highlight the resistance narrative of the Kosawa people. My research finds support in the framework of political ecology by Eric Wolf, the concept of slow violence by Rob Nixon, oil politics by Dag Harald Claes, and resistance narrative by Joanna Wheeler. It develops a complex framework because my research contends that slow violence and oil politics contour political ecology. Therefore, my research argues that the selected fiction employs narrative resistance to foreground the entanglement of environmental injustice in colonial practices, ultimately indicating how storytelling becomes an instrumental tool of resistance to reclaim identity.

Keywords: Political Ecology, Neoliberalism, Oil Politics, Slow Violence, Resistance Narrative

Strategic Prompt Engineering and Discourse Bias: Analysing Political Rhetoric and Hallucination in LLMs

2025-12-30T11:58:28+05:00

As large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok increasingly shape digital communication, their role in generating political discourse demands critical scrutiny. This study investigates the effect of strategic prompt engineering on the behaviour of large language models (LLMs), with a particular emphasis on discourse bias and AI-generated hallucinations in politically charged contexts. Using 36 outputs generated from 12 systematically crafted prompts, the research examines how six rhetorical prompting strategies affect refusal patterns, gender asymmetries, and the emergence of hallucinated content across models. Findings reveal that prompt design can significantly bypass ethical safeguards and elicit biased or fabricated content, especially in Grok, while ChatGPT and Gemini maintain stronger moderation but still exhibit gendered refusal asymmetries. The study introduces the concept of strategic hallucination, fabricated outputs shaped by rhetorical framing, and highlights the implications of large language model (LLM)-mediated political rhetoric for democratic discourse. The study concludes with recommendations for ethical AI governance and safer prompt design practices.

Keywords: Prompt engineering, discourse bias, AI hallucination, political rhetoric, gender bias, content moderation

Decolonizing the Mind: Intellectual Colonialism in Canadian Indigenous Residential Schooling

2025-12-30T12:18:43+05:00

The present study draws on Canadian literature and the contributions of indigenous poets to the discipline, aiming to generate an indigenous voice in contemporary times. The present study aims to examine contemporary Indigenous Canadian poetry as a site of resistance to intellectual colonialism, which was produced through the residential school system. Using qualitative textual analysis, the paper analyses selected poems by Rita Joe and Alootook Ipellie to demonstrate how Indigenous poets reclaim silenced histories and reconstruct cultural identity through decolonial expression. In order to engage with the decolonial narrative, Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’O’s Decolonizing the Mind have been adapted as the comparative decolonial framework to examine processes of cultural erasure, linguistic dispossession, and epistemic violence within a Canadian settlercolonial context. By foregrounding Indigenous poetic voices and survivor narratives, the article argues that contemporary Indigenous poetry functions as a counter-discursive space that challenges colonial knowledge systems and reasserts Indigenous ways of knowing within Canadian literature.

Key Words: Contemporary Indigenous Poetry, Decolonising the Mind, Residential Schools, Cultural Erasure, Intellectual Colonialism.

A Transitivity Analysis of Imran Khan's UN General Assembly Address Environmental on Justice and Climate Responsibility

2025-12-30T12:30:02+05:00

This study examines how environmental values and climate responsibility are expressed in Imran Khan’s speech on climate change at the 74th United Nations General Assembly. Drawing on Halliday’s transitivity framework within Systemic Functional Linguistics, it analyses how the speech represents actions, perceptions, and responsibilities through particular linguistic choices. The analysis shows that material and mental processes are used most frequently, allowing the speaker to combine descriptions of tangible environmental threats with expressions of concern, urgency, and awareness. By highlighting Pakistan’s severe vulnerability to climate change despite its minimal contribution to global emissions, the discourse presents Pakistan as both deeply affected and ethically engaged. The speech consistently stresses fairness, shared responsibility, and the need for collective global action, especially from countries with higher carbon footprints. Overall, these linguistic patterns construct an environmental narrative grounded in justice, interdependence, and collective responsibility. The study illustrates how transitivity analysis can reveal the ecological values embedded in political discourse and enhance understanding of how environmental crises are framed and legitimised in international political communication.

Keywords: Climate change, Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG), Transitivity Analysis, Imran Khan’s speech, ecosophy, United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).