African Women in Art

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nomusa Makhubu
Keyword(s):  
Women Artists ◽  
African Women ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Western World ◽  
Gendered Spaces ◽  
Creative Practice ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Women In Art ◽  
International Exhibitions ◽  
The One

The intersecting histories of African women artists are often found in three historical categories: traditional/classical, modern, and contemporary. As historical categories they mark the transitions in conceptualizations of gender, race, and class. Treated as a linear progression of history, these categories may, on the one hand, be useful in understanding the radical impact of imperialism and colonialism on African societies and specifically African women and their creative practices. On the other hand, however, they obscure the intricacies of intertwined creative practice, separating urban and cosmopolitan art forms from rural, localized ones, drawing more attention to art that circulates in market-driven international exhibitions, making it harder to comprehend and account for nuanced historical narratives of African women artists. Furthermore, the hangover of hypermasculine colonial bureaucratic structures not only displaced African histories but more specifically silenced gendered perspectives on art and creative practice in general. The modern African nation, though liberated, confined women to colonially constructed gendered spaces. However, through nationalist ideologies the figure of the woman—or at least as male artists generally portrayed her—came to symbolize rebirth and the rising nation. This artistic rendition of women did not materialize into the formal recognition of the work of women artists, making it possible to declare that “African women artists remain unknown to the Western world,” as art historian Freida Tesfagiorgis states. This is affirmed by the sparse literature on African women artists and analyses of their work. There are more resources about internationally recognized contemporary women artists than there are about modern women artists or women whose work has been foundational in the so-defined traditional category. These categories, then, are indicative not only of the gaps in art history but also of the incongruent methodological approaches to how that gendered history is constructed. In this article, these categories are used loosely to reflect on gender and creative practice in Africa.

Indonesian Literature’s Position in World Literature

TEKNOSASTIK ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Dina Amelia
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Western World ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
The Voice

There are two most inevitable issues on national literature, in this case Indonesian literature. First is the translation and the second is the standard of world literature. Can one speak for the other as a representative? Why is this representation matter? Does translation embody the voice of the represented? Without translation Indonesian literature cannot gain its recognition in world literature, yet, translation conveys the voice of other. In the case of production, publication, or distribution of Indonesian Literature to the world, translation works can be very beneficial. The position of Indonesian literature is as a part of world literature. The concept that the Western world should be the one who represent the subaltern can be overcome as long as the subaltern performs as the active speaker. If the subaltern remains silent then it means it allows the “representation” by the Western.

AFRICAN WOMEN AND FORBIDDEN GROUNDS: FEMALE SEXUALITY AND SELF-DETERMINATION IN AFRICAN LITERATURE

Imbizo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-54
Author(s):  
Oyeh O. Otu
Keyword(s):  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
African Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
African Women ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Sexual Repression

This article examines how female conditioning and sexual repression affect the woman’s sense of self, womanhood, identity and her place in society. It argues that the woman’s body is at the core of the many sites of gender struggles/ politics. Accordingly, the woman’s body must be decolonised for her to attain true emancipation. On the one hand, this study identifies the grave consequences of sexual repression, how it robs women of their freedom to choose whom to love or marry, the freedom to seek legal redress against sexual abuse and terror, and how it hinders their quest for self-determination. On the other hand, it underscores the need to give women sexual freedom that must be respected and enforced by law for the overall good of society.

Becoming fertile in the land of organic milk: Lesbian and queer reproductions of femininity and motherhood in Sweden

Sexualities ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (7) ◽  
pp. 1021-1038 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrika Dahl
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Family Formation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Organic Milk ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Lesbian Motherhood ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

This article draws on popular culture, ethnographic materials and mainstream commercials to discuss contemporary understandings of the relationship between fertility, pregnancy and parenthood among lesbians and other queer persons with uteruses. It argues that, on the one hand, same-sex lesbian motherhood is increasingly celebrated as evidence of Swedish gender and sexual exceptionalism and, on the other, queers who wish to challenge heteronormative gender disavow both the relationship between fertility and femininity, and that of pregnancy and parenthood. The author argues that in studying queer family formation, we must move beyond addressing heteronormativity and begin studying how gender, sexuality, race and class get reproduced in queer kinship stories.

The story of humanity and the challenge of posthumanity

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoltán Boldizsár Simon
Keyword(s):  
Human Subject ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
New Era ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The One ◽  
Better Than

Today’s technological-scientific prospect of posthumanity simultaneously evokes and defies historical understanding. On the one hand, it implies a historical claim of an epochal transformation concerning posthumanity as a new era. On the other, by postulating the birth of a novel, better-than-human subject for this new era, it eliminates the human subject of modern Western historical understanding. In this article, I attempt to understand posthumanity as measured against the story of humanity as the story of history itself. I examine the fate of humanity as the central subject of history in three consecutive steps: first, by exploring how classical philosophies of history achieved the integrity of the greatest historical narrative of history itself through the very invention of humanity as its subject; second, by recounting how this central subject came under heavy criticism by postcolonial and gender studies in the last half-century, targeting the universalism of the story of humanity as the greatest historical narrative of history; and third, by conceptualizing the challenge of posthumanity against both the story of humanity and its criticism. Whereas criticism fragmented history but retained the possibility of smaller-scale narratives, posthumanity does not doubt the feasibility of the story of humanity. Instead, it necessarily invokes humanity, if only in order to be able to claim its supersession by a better-than-human subject. In that, it represents a fundamental challenge to the modern Western historical condition and the very possibility of historical narratives – small-scale or large-scale, fragmented or universal.

La represiňn franquista. La historiografěa y el debate en torno a la memoria

2009 ◽  
pp. 99-117
Author(s):  
Carme Molinero
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Western World ◽  
New Order ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Repressed Memories ◽  
Legal Violence ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One

- In Spain the recognition of the "repressed memories" has earned a remarkable public presence since the '90s, similarly to what occurred in most of the western world. In the Spanish case the attention focused on the "memory of the defeated" in the Civil War, which had been systematically silenced during the almost forty years of dictatorship and, to a large extent, during the following two decades too. In parallel with that, in the last quarter of the century there has been an outstanding accumulation of historical knowledge on the many and complementary forms of repression. This has demonstrated the magnitude of physic violence - deaths, concentration camps, imprisonment, work exploitation - as well as legal violence - purging, fines, etc. Francoist repression was much stronger than the one practised by other New Order fascist regimes during peace time. These historical studies have also provided concrete background for movements which for many years have asked for re-cognition from the democratic institutions of victims of Francoism. Key words: Spanish Civil War, Francoist repression, Spanish Civil War historical studies, history and memory, memory public policies, physic and legal violence in Spanish Civil War.

Nationalization and Ethnicization

2021 ◽  
pp. 85-182
Author(s):  
Dieter Gosewinkel
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
World War ◽  
Emerging Democracies ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Fundamental Tension ◽  
Second World

The emerging world civil war is the subject of an extensive chapter on the interwar period and the Second World War. This phase was marked by a fundamental tension. On the one hand, there was the systematic codification and substantive expansion of political and social civil rights in the emerging democracies and social welfare states of Europe. Legal inequality between the sexes diminished; a social security net began to spread across all of Europe. On the other hand, these expanding rights were increasingly reserved for a country’s own citizens and thereby nationalized. This restrictive tendency escalated to the extreme with the race and class-based exclusion and extermination policies of the dictatorships in Europe’s “bloodlands” (Timothy Snyder) prior to the Second World War and intensified during its course. Citizenship changed its function and went from being an institution of governmental protection to one of discriminatory selection and extermination policy.

The Dynamics of Environmental Campaigns

2002 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatella Porta ◽  
Dieter Rucht
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
The Other ◽  
Western World ◽  
Environmental Movements ◽  
Common Pattern ◽  
Environmental Conflicts ◽  
Environmental Campaigns ◽  
The One ◽  
Different Levels

Environmental movements and their activities are studied from various angles, by different methods, and at different levels. While both detailed studies on single incidents of conflict and broad overviews of movements are available, relatively little work has been done at the intermediate level between these extremes. We argue that it is fruitful to engage at this level by undertaking comparative analysis of environmental campaigns. Such studies could help deal with inconclusive observations and findings on the changes of environmental movements during the last three decades. We hypothesize that indeed environmental activism has changed remarkably. By and large, conflicts are no longer marked by a relatively simple constellation of one challenger facing one target or opponent. Instead, we find a complex web of involved actors reaching from local to international levels. These actors tend to form broad alliances, and to link on different issues. Also, their activities are not restricted to only one arena or strategy but involve all available channels, arenas, and action repertoires to have an impact. Quite often, we observe loose coalitions of groups that act in an implicit division of labor, thereby playing on their respective backgrounds, foci, and experiences. Given the variety of actors, their organizational forms and tactics on the one hand and their different contexts on the other, it is unlikely that a common pattern of conflict will emerge across various issues and geographical areas. This is all the more true when comparing environmental conflicts in the Western and Non-Western world.

Behold the raking geison: the new Acropolis Museum and its context-free archaeologies

Antiquity ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 85 (328) ◽  
pp. 613-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitris Plantzos
Keyword(s):  
Focal Point ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Western World ◽  
New City ◽  
Idealised Model ◽  
The One ◽  
Context Free ◽  
Of Greece

In December 1834 Athens became the capital city of the newly founded Hellenic Kingdom. King Otto, the Bavarian prince whose political and cultural initiative shaped much of what modern Greece is today, sought to design the new city inspired by the heavily idealised model of Classical Hellas (see Bastea 2000). The emerging capital was from the outset conceived as aheterotopiaof Hellenism, a Foucauldian 'other space' devoted to Western Classicism in view of the Classical ruins it preserved. The Acropolis became, naturally, the focal point of this effort. At the same time, however, and as Greek nationalist strategies were beginning to unfold, Classical antiquity became a disputedtopos,a cultural identity of sorts contested between Greece on the one hand and the 'Western world' on the other (see Yalouri 2001: 77–100). Archaeological sites thus became disputed spaces, claimed by various interested parties of national or supra-national authority wishing to impose their own views on how they should be managed — and to what ends (Loukaki 2008). The Acropolis was duly cleansed from any non-Classical antiquities and began to be constructed as an authentic Classical space, anationalproject still in progress. As Artemis Leontis has argued in her discussion of Greece as a heterotopic 'culture of ruins', the Acropolis of Athens, now repossessed by architectural renovation and scholarly interest, functions'as a symbol not of Greece's ancient glory but of its modern predicament'(Leontis 1995: 40–66; see also McNeal 1991; Hamilakis 2007: 85–99).

Bilingual Education

1989 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 103-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arturo Tosi
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Bilingual Education ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Western World ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Language Spread ◽  
The One

In the past two decades bilingual education has become an educational movement and a field of academic inquiry of remarkable growth throughout the world. At first glance this appears to be the outcome of the increasingly hegemonic role of a few languages like English in the western world and countries economically affiliated to it, Russian in the multilingual republics of the Soviet Union, and Putonghua in the People's Republic of China. But a closer look at the first of these areas—the one better known to us—shows how complex the dynamics of language spread and language change are in diverse sociopolitical contexts.

scholarly journals Prognostic Ability of Practitioners of Traditional Arabic Medicine: Comparison with Western Methods through a Relative Patient Progress Scale

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-476 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bertrand Graz
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Clinical Outcome ◽  
Treatment Options ◽  
Health Centre ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
Western World ◽  
Medical Systems ◽  
Actual Patient ◽  
Traditional Practitioners ◽  
The One

The ancient Greek medical theory based on balance or imbalance of humors disappeared in the western world, but does survive elsewhere. Is this survival related to a certain degree of health care efficiency? We explored this hypothesis through a study of classical Greco-Arab medicine in Mauritania. Modern general practitioners evaluated the safety and effectiveness of classical Arabic medicine in a Mauritanian traditional clinic, with a prognosis/follow-up method allowing the following comparisons: (i) actual patient progress (clinical outcome) compared with what the traditional ‘tabib’ had anticipated (= prognostic ability) and (ii) patient progress compared with what could be hoped forifthe patient were treated by a modern physician in the same neighborhood. The practice appeared fairly safe and, on average, clinical outcome was similar to what could be expected with modern medicine. In some cases, patient progress was better than expected. The ability to correctly predict an individual's clinical outcome did not seem to be better along modern or Greco-Arab theories. Weekly joint meetings (modern and traditional practitioners) were spontaneously organized with a modern health centre in the neighborhood. Practitioners of a different medical system can predict patient progress. For the patient, avoiding false expectations with health care and ensuring appropriate referral may be the most important. Prognosis and outcome studies such as the one presented here may help to develop institutions where patients find support in making their choices, not only among several treatment options, but also among several medical systems.

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