Postcolonial Media Theory

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Llamas-Rodriguez ◽  
Viviane Saglier
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
The Past ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Material Conditions

The postcolonial intellectual tradition has proved crucial to articulating cultural, film, and media formations from the geographical and theoretical perspective of (formerly) colonized people and countries. The object of media studies has expanded significantly beyond the screen in the past decades, including a renewed attention to non-visual media and an emerging attention to the material conditions of possibility for media representations. In this new mediascape, postcolonial theories and concepts potentially repoliticize media theory by questioning Western assumptions about technological progress and innovation. Postcolonial theories of media force a rethink of the tenets of traditional media theories while, at the same time, media theories demonstrate the centrality of media, in all its forms, to understanding the postcolonial condition.

The Sociability of History in French Grand Opera

2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-55
Author(s):  
Peter Mondelli
Keyword(s):  
Historical Sources ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Materialist ◽  
Text Production ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
New Material ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
French Grand Opera ◽  
Grand Opera

Abstract French grand opera relied heavily on historical sources for its stories, settings, and characters. This article reexamines why representations of the past captivated Parisian audiences. For these spectators, history was not just a purely factual discourse about what happened centuries ago, it was also a social phenomenon. As such, grand opera's appropriation of historical subjects depended on new social spaces formed by new patterns in text production and consumption. When these spaces first emerged, historical grand opera became socially feasible, and as they were transformed, the genre began to wane. Focusing on Auber's La Muette de Portici, this article reconsiders the emergence of historical grand opera in terms of such material conditions of possibility. It then outlines how new material conditions in the middle decades of the nineteenth century reshaped attitudes toward operatic history, drawing on the historical materialist philosophy of Walter Benjamin to clarify the effects of these social and technological changes.

Mind the Gap

2017 ◽  
pp. 249-265
Author(s):  
Veronika Pöhnl
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Cultural Media

This chapter discusses similarities of and differences between the epistemological premises of ANT and “German Media Theory”. The applicability of ANT for media investigations and the compatibility of ANT concepts in Media Studies have been discussed intensively for several years now. The profound similarities as well as the critical differences in the study of the material conditions of human culture have also stimulated current reconsiderations and reformulations in “Cultural Media Studies,” as German Media Theory is most commonly called in Germany. The following article gives a brief overview on most recently published approaches to cultural techniques and intersections of media and techno-philosophy that are increasingly being translated into English and therefore also internationally accessible, alongside with the discussion concerning their compatibility with ANT.

Transportation, Transformation, and Metaphoricity

2019 ◽  
pp. 28-51
Author(s):  
Veronika Pöhnl
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Cultural Media

This chapter discusses similarities of and differences between the epistemological premises of ANT and German media theory concerning concepts of transmission. The applicability of ANT for media investigations and the compatibility of ANT concepts in media studies have been discussed intensively for several years now. The profound similarities as well as the critical differences in the study of the material conditions of human culture have also stimulated current reconsiderations and reformulations in cultural media studies, as German media theory is most commonly called in Germany. The chapter gives a brief overview of recently published approaches to cultural techniques and intersections of media and techno-philosophy that are increasingly being translated into English and therefore also internationally accessible, alongside with the discussion concerning their compatibility with ANT in respect of cultural transmission.

The Sociability of History in French Grand Opera: A Historical Materialist Perspective

2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-55
Author(s):  
Peter Mondelli
Keyword(s):  
Historical Sources ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Materialist ◽  
Text Production ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
New Material ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
French Grand Opera ◽  
Grand Opera

Abstract French grand opera relied heavily on historical sources for its stories, settings, and characters. This article reexamines why representations of the past captivated Parisian audiences. For these spectators, history was not just a purely factual discourse about what happened centuries ago, it was also a social phenomenon. As such, grand opera's appropriation of historical subjects depended on new social spaces formed by new patterns in text production and consumption. When these spaces first emerged, historical grand opera became socially feasible, and as they were transformed, the genre began to wane. Focusing on Auber's La Muette de Portici, this article reconsiders the emergence of historical grand opera in terms of such material conditions of possibility. It then outlines how new material conditions in the middle decades of the nineteenth century reshaped attitudes toward operatic history, drawing on the historical materialist philosophy of Walter Benjamin to clarify the effects of these social and technological changes.

The Language of Quarrels

Paragraph ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-96
Author(s):  
Alexis Tadié
Keyword(s):  
Current Issue ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Oral Discourse ◽  
Material Conditions

This essay proposes to analyse the mechanisms of quarrels from a theoretical perspective largely informed by linguistics, and more specifically, by pragmatics. It connects with some of Jean-Jacques Lecercle's argument in the current issue, but takes the analysis in different directions. Looking at a number of examples of quarrels, this paper purports to identify the different participants and parameters in the development of a quarrel. These include speakers (authors), texts (more often than oral discourse), institutions that (might) adjudicate, an audience and rules, as well as material conditions under which disputes develop. These parameters provide a framework, rather than a rigid construction, within which speakers may change positions. Special attention is given to the beginnings of a quarrel (what counts as the start of a quarrel?) and to the ends of a quarrel (do they end, or simply cease to be of interest?). The essay concludes on the dynamic of quarrels, which precludes modellization.

Theodore W. Schultz. The Economics of Being Poor. Oxford: Blackwell. 1993. ix+340 pp.+ Index. Hardbound. £ 40.00.

1995 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-85
Author(s):  
Mir Annice Mahmood
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Logical Sequence ◽  
Standards Of Living ◽  
Economic Journals ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Demand For Children

Improving the material conditions of the poor has been the main focus of economic policy formulation for the past fifty years or so. Thus, in this connection, a vast body of literature has been published which deals with such issues as identifying the poor and suggesting remedies to alleviate their lot. The book by Theodore W. Schultz deals specifically with the economics of the poor. The book is primarily a collection of articles the author wrote over a fortyyear period (1950-1990), and these have been published previously in a number of leading economic journals. The articles have been grouped under three headings: "Most People Are Poor"; "Investing in Skills and Knowledge"; and "Effects of Human Capital". The articles basically deal with the concept of human capital. There is a logical sequence to the articles that make up this book; the poor are identified and steps are then suggested to improve their standing. Issues such as women's economic emancipation and the demand for children are highlighted in the collection of articles dealing with these two subjects. By investing in themselves through education, the poor raise their level of skills, and thus their level of wages/salaries, allowing them to enjoy higher standards of living.

Memory Practices in the Classroom

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Ahlrichs ◽  
Katharina Baier ◽  
Barbara Christophe ◽  
Felicitas Macgilchrist ◽  
Patrick Mielke ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Schools ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
History Education ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
The Past ◽  
Online Videos ◽  
Memory Practices

This article draws on memory studies and media studies to explore how memory practices unfold in schools today. It explores history education as a media- saturated cultural site in which particular social orderings and categorizations emerge as commonsensical and others are contested. Describing vignettes from ethnographic fieldwork in German secondary schools, this article identifies different memory practices as a nexus of pupils, teachers, blackboards, pens, textbooks, and online videos that enacts what counts as worth remembering today: reproduction; destabilization without explicit contestation; and interruption. Exploring mediated memory practices thus highlights an array of (often unintended) ways of making the past present.

Ethical infrastructure: Halal and the ecology of askesis in Muslim Russia

2021 ◽  
pp. 146349962110597
Author(s):  
Matteo (Teo) Benussi
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Consumption ◽  
Complex Environments ◽  
Inner Self ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Material Religion ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
Inherent Quality ◽  
Methodological Ground

This article explores the ecology of late-modern askesis through the concept of ‘ethical infrastructure’: the array of goods, locales, technologies, procedures, and sundry pieces of equipment upon which the possibility of ethicists’ striving is premised. By looking at the ethnographic case of halal living among Muslim pietists in post-Soviet Tatarstan (Russia), I advance a framework that highlights the ‘profane’, often unassuming or religiously unmarked, yet essential material scaffolding constituting the ‘material conditions of possibility’ for pious life in the lifeworld of late modernity. Halalness is conceptualised not as an inherent quality of a clearly defined set of things, but as a (sometimes complicated) relationship between humans, ethical intentionality, and infrastructurally organised habitats. Pointing beyond the case of halal, this article syncretises theories of self-cultivation, material religion, ethical consumption, and infrastructure to address current lacunas and explore fresh theoretical and methodological ground. This ‘ethical infrastructure’ framework enables us to conceptualise the embeddedness of contemporary ethicists in complex environments and the process by which processes of inner self-fashioning change and are changed by material worlds.

Marx and the mirage of change: Notes from South Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 194277862110478
Author(s):  
Sagie Narsiah
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
The Past ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
Spatial Content

There is little doubt that the understanding of the dynamics of capitalism has been enriched by Geography. Moreover, geographers utilizing Marxist/Marxian lenses have provided valuable insights into the spatial content of the system. Over the past two decades or so, geographers in no small way have contributed to the demystification of capitalism/capitalist development in its neoliberal incarnation – change as mirage. Furthermore, poverty, inequality, unemployment and related social ills are directly linked to the system. Indeed, they are produced by the system. In this paper, the geographical evolution of the capitalist system in South Africa is examined. Critical thinkers, among them Marxists, influenced the theorization of the relationship(s) between capitalism, apartheid, class and race. In this paper, I focus on the spatial aspects, which in my view have been neglected. I reflect on various historical periods – the apartheid era and the post-apartheid era, in particular. What is apparent is that neoliberalism in South Africa has entered a phase which I label “accumulation by corrupt means”. The class basis of this strategy is examined. Critical (Marxist) geographers are shaped by the direct experiences of material conditions. I describe my experiences in this regard.

Ontological Captivity

differences ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 85-113
Author(s):  
Andrés Fabián Henao Castro
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Ontological Difference ◽  
Detention Center ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
Penal Colony ◽  
Political Critique ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Broad Understanding

Departing from where Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of Martin Heidegger’s gender-neutral Dasein left off, this article argues for “ontological captivity” as a critical analytic for questioning Being under conditions of racial capitalism. Based on a broad understanding of the Black Radical tradition, the author argues for the importance of connecting the analysis of ontological difference with the political critique of concrete historical and material conditions that structurally link what it means to be human to overlapping and mutually reinforcing technologies of capture. From the slave ship, the plantation, the reservation, the prison, the detention center, the penal colony, and the concentration camp to the ways in which injurious signifiers fix the body and arrest its mobility, ontological difference should be unthinkable outside a confrontation with its material conditions of possibility and impossibility. These are the material conditions that, from W. E. B. Du Bois’s analysis of the “color-line” to Calvin Warren’s analytic of “onticide,” from Lewis Gordon’s “antiblackness” to Nelson Maldonado-Torres’s “coloniality of being,” and from Hortense Spillers’s “being for the captor” to Zakiyyah Iman Jackson’s “ontological plasticization,” call for a political rather than an ethical interrogation of Being.

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