Gender, Genre, and the Idea of the Nation

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 549-558
Author(s):  
Saradindu Bhattacharya
Keyword(s):  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Moral Integrity ◽  
Popular Cinema ◽  
English Class ◽  
Female Protagonist ◽  
Sociopolitical Context

Abstract This article examines the construction of and contestation over the idea of the nation through contemporary popular cinema in India. Building on his experience of discussing the Bollywood spy thriller Raazi (2018) in an English class, the author proposes that “reading” the film in terms of gender and genre can not only help students apply modes of textual analysis to narratives in other media but also alert them to the location of such narratives within larger discursive frameworks of defining national identities. Raazi presents a critical and ideological counterpoint to the generic conventions of the spy thriller within the increasingly polarized sociopolitical context of the Indian subcontinent. The film presents an unlikely female protagonist as both the physical agent and the psychological subject of the violence integral to the “action” of an espionage film. It also interrogates the oppositional relation between the patriotic “self” and the foreign “other” that lies at the basis of the militaristic conception of the nation and ultimately reveals the shared human vulnerability of both to the traumatic effects of pursuing the idea(l) of nationalism at the expense of individual moral integrity. Thus a close reading of the film's narrative structure and conventions, as well as a critical engagement with the historical context of its production and reception, can be pedagogically fruitful ways of understanding and critiquing the processes through which a nation is collectively imagined into being.

scholarly journals Noble Polish Sexuality and the Corrupted European Body

Intersections ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Randi Gressgård ◽  
Rafał Smoczynski
Keyword(s):  
Sex Education ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Moral Integrity ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Good Citizenship ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Empty Signifier ◽  
Political Divide

This article attends to the instrumentalization of gender and sexuality in recent Polish political campaigns. Locating current political debates in a cultural-historical context of long-established hierarchical divides, it conceives of gender and sexuality as ‘empty signifiers’ deployed in political struggles (for hegemony) over notions of civic responsibility, good citizenship and articulations of Europeanness. Similarly, it takes ‘Europeanness’ as an empty signifier, without any essential meaning, arguing that these signifiers are key to understanding recent mobilizations around moral frontiers in Polish politics. Illustrative examples serve to elaborate how LGBT rights and sex education are instrumentalized among self-proclaimed liberals as well as rightwing nationalists, seeking to guarantee the moral integrity of the nation according to an antagonistic logic. On both sides of the political divide, we witness a self-orientalizing positioning towards the European ‘core’, whether phrased in terms of sexual modernity or Christian civilization.

Theorizing Excess and the Abject

Making Icons ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Coates
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Julia Kristeva ◽  
National Identities ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Impact

This chapter establishes a theoretical framework for chapter 7, which deals with characterizations and tropes that resist categorization. Using Art Historical theorizations of the abject, including the work of Hal Foster and Julia Kristeva, abject bodies and national identities are explored in the historical context of early post-war Japan. The impact of abject imagery on the spectator is hypothesized using Ella Shohat and Robert Stam’s account of the ‘schizophrenic spectator.’ Case studies include Teshigahara Hiroshi’s Woman of the Dunes (Suna no onna, 1964).

Stacking in Cricket: A Figurational Sociological Reappraisal of Centrality

1997 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Malcolm
Keyword(s):  
Race Relations ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
National Identities ◽  
High Status ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
Norbert Elias ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Developmental Analysis

This paper examines the phenomenon of stacking in the sport of cricket. It is argued that cricket is a particularly revealing case study of “race” relations in Britain because of the diversity of “racial” groups that play it and the variety of national identities that are expressed through it. Data presented show that the two minority “racial” groups in British cricket are stacked in different positions; Asians as high-status batters, and Blacks as low-status bowlers (pitchers). The author uses the work of Norbert Elias to argue that stacking can best be explained, not in terms of positional centrality, but through a developmental analysis of cricket that focuses on historical class relations and Imperial relations in the Caribbean and Indian subcontinent.

scholarly journals National Deadlock. Hot Nationalism, Dual Identities and Catalan Independence (2008–2019)

Genealogy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Alejandro Quiroga ◽  
Fernando Molina
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
National Identities ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Global Recession ◽  
Independence Movement ◽  
Dual Identities ◽  
Political Divide

The article explores the transformations of Spanish and Catalan national identities and the growth of the pro-independence movement in Catalonia following the 2008 global recession. It argues that the Great Recession provided a new historical context of hot nationalism in which Catalanist narratives of loss and resistance began to ring true to large sectors of Catalan society, whereas the Spanish constitutionalist narratives seemed increasingly outdated. The article also shows the limits of the process of mass nationalization by both the Catalan and the Spanish governments and the eventual ‘crystallization’ of an identity and political divide between pro and anti-independence supporters which split Catalan society down the middle and led to a sort of national identity deadlock.

scholarly journals Feminism and the Public Sphere in Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

1998 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel K. Carnell
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Century Model ◽  
Separate Spheres ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cultural Power ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Different Levels

The bipartite narrative structure of Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) has been interpreted recently as an attempt to subvert the traditional Victorian rubric of separate spheres. Reconsidering this novel in terms of Jürgen Habermas's concept of the eighteenth-century public sphere broadens the historical context for the way we understand the separate spheres. Within Brontë's critique of Victorian gender roles, we may identify a reluctance to address the Chartist-influenced class challenges to an older version of the public good. In hearkening back to an eighteenth-century model of the public sphere, Brontë espouses not so much a twentieth-century-style challenge to the Victorian model of separate spheres as a nineteenth-century-style nostalgia for the classical liberal model of bourgeois public debate. At the same time, the awkward rupture in Brontë's narrative represents the inherent contradictions between the different levels of discourse-literary, political, and scientific-within the public sphere itself and the complex ways in which these contradictions are both accorded and denied cultural power.

Drumming, Language, and the Voice in South Asia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard K. Wolf
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Concert Music ◽  
The Public ◽  
South Indian ◽  
History Of ◽  
Indian Classical Music

This book explores drumming and other instrumental traditions that are interconnected over vast regions of South and West Asia. The traditions considered here qualify broadly as functional music rather than concert music and include the public instrumental music of weddings, funerals, and religious holidays. The book examines patterns that pervade functional music of South Asia and to some extent North and South Indian classical music and how performed texts are related to their verbal or vocal models. It also considers what it means in particular contexts for musical instruments to be voicelike and carry textual messages. This chapter discusses the broad historical context in which voices and instruments have been co-constructed in the history of the Indian subcontinent and regions west. Many examples from South India are included to help create a picture that transcends the bounds of Muharram Ali's travels.

scholarly journals The Flame of Sinai

2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-134
Author(s):  
Ahmed Afzaal
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Heavy Load ◽  
Crucial Step ◽  
Similar Work ◽  
Francis Fukuyama ◽  
Language Studies ◽  
Islam And Modernity

The current surge of attention and sensitivity to Islam in western academiaand popular culture often boils down to the question of Islam’s compatibility– or lack thereof – with modernity. The issue is by no means a simpleone, and is further complicated by the fact that both “Islam” and “modernity”are made to carry a heavy load of multiple definitions that are alsosusceptible to ideological uses and abuses. Such influential American commentatorsas Francis Fukuyama, Daniel Pipes, and Bernard Lewis havebeen unanimous in their diagnosis that while Judaism and Christianity havecome to terms with modernity, Islam has so far failed to take that necessaryand crucial step. In the larger context of modern Muslim history, however,the question is almost two centuries old; it was repeatedly grappled with inthe past and continues to occupy a prominent place in the Muslim consciousness.Sheila McDonough’s new book on Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) can be approached with reference to this particular discourse, for thequestion of Islam and modernity was perhaps the most important factor thatmotivated and shaped Iqbal’s creative output – a body of ideas whose revelancehas tremendously increased in the six decades since his death.While Iqbal’s poetic and intellectual genius has been greatly celebratedand widely acclaimed, both within the Indian subcontinent and abroad, it canbe safely contended that his true potential as the twentieth century’s mostimportant post-critical Muslim philosopher is yet to be discovered. In view ofhis work’s creativity, depth, and visionary reach, the number and quality ofEnglish-language studies on Iqbal’s thought leave much to be desired. In thiscontext, McDonough has done a remarkable service by making the intellectualand imaginal contours of Iqbal’s consciousness accessible to a new generationof Muslim and non-Muslims readers, many of whom have been recentlysensitized to the question of Islam’s relationship with modernity. Mixing herserious erudition with a loving sensitivity and an almost artistic gift for discerninginterconnections, McDonough skillfully blends together the accountsof the vicissitudes of Iqbal’s personal life, his turbulent socio-historical context,and his sometimes shocking ideas to paint a colorful picture of his life,times, vision, and struggle. The Flame of Sinai is sure to become a classic,alongside a similar work by another Western admirer of Iqbal, namely, the lateAnnemarie Schimmel’s book Gabriel’s Wing. Incidentally, both of thesecharming titles come from Iqbal’s own symbolic imagination ...

scholarly journals War Memories and the Refusal of Male Dominance in Shakir's "Oh, Lebanon"

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 118
Author(s):  
Hassan Ali Abdullah Al-Momani
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Female Gender ◽  
The United States ◽  
Male Dominance ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Arab Culture ◽  
Female Protagonist ◽  
War Memories

This study investigates the role of the war memories in the construction of the female gender identity in Evelyin Shakir's "Oh, Lebanon," in which the female protagonist refuses to belong to her Arab identity when she lives in the United States because of the brutal war memories she witnesses in Lebanon. Such memories make the protagonist unable to accept her submissive gender role in the Arab culture. In other words, these memories of war motivate the protagonist to revolt against her father's will and to choose her own way of building her identity away from the influence of her Arab culture and traditions. The methodology of this paper is based on a close reading analysis of some quotations from Shakir's short story which will be analyzed to see how the war memories in Lebanon have influenced the construction of the protagonist's gender identity. The study concludes that the trauma of war motivates Arab female gender to react against the male dominance and traditions because war, with its dark memories, might uncover that hidden desire in female's subconscious mind to feel unlimited or constrained with the male dominance.

scholarly journals THE RED THREAD IN LEILA S. CHUDORI’S NADIRA AND PULANG (Benang Merah dalam Novel Nadira dan Pulang karya Leila S. Chudori)

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 131
Author(s):  
Alberta Natasia Adji
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Julia Kristeva ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
True Self ◽  
Reading Technique ◽  
Death Of A Parent

Novel Nadira (2015) dan Pulang (2012) karya Leila S. Chudori merupakan dua novel yang dianalisis dalam tulisan ini. Keduanya sama-sama bercerita tentang sebuah keluarga yang berjuang melawan ikatan-ikatan sosial yang kompleks, yang terpusat pada tema-tema cinta yang hilang, kematian orang tua, dan pemikiran idealis sang tokoh utama dalam proses pencarian jati dirinya. Walaupun politik kerap menjadi tema utama dalam karya-karya Leila S. Chudori, kisah- kisah tersebut sejatinya selalu diceritakan melalui perspektif sebuah keluarga. Kajian ini berusaha mencari benang merah dari kedua novel tersebut dengan menggunakan teori intertekstual yang dikemukakan Julia Kristeva dan dengan metode pembacaan cermat (close reading technique). Hasil penelitian merujuk pada perjuangan keluarga yang terdapat dalam kedua novel yang terkait erat dengan struktur  naratif  yang merepresentasikan nilai-nilai budaya kekeluargaan Indonesia dan masih memiliki kecenderungan kental dalam menentukan pilihan hidup seseorang, bahkan seringkali membalik arah hidup mereka.Abstract: Leila S. Chudori’s Nadira (2015) and Pulang (2012) are two novels analyzed in the research. Both  tell the story of a complicated family struggling against social bindings and complexities, centered on the loss of love, the death of a parent figure, and the heroine’s idealistic views the process of finding her true self. Though politics has always been a major force in both of Leila S. Chudori’s most notable works, it is always told from the point of view of a family. This study aims to trace the red thread between those two literary works by applying Julia Kristeva’s intertextual theory and close reading technique in analyzing both novels. The result  of the research shows  that the family struggles contained in both novels are closely related to the narrative structure, which represents the dominant cultural values of Indonesian extended family in determining one’s way of life that often leads to their downfall.

scholarly journals Confessing Love to the Nation: Audrey Yu Jia Hui’s Works and Identity Reconstruction

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Alberta Natasia Adji ◽  
Diah Ariani Arimbi ◽  
Adi Setijowati ◽  
Nur Wulan ◽  
Kukuh Yudha Karnanta
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Multiple Identities ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Social Attitude ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Reading Technique ◽  
Identity Reconstruction ◽  
The Reformation

 This article addressed identity reconstruction through an analysis of two of the most prominent fictional works by one of the Chinese Indonesian young writers, Audrey Yu Jia Hui. In encompassing the idea of identity rewriting, I addressed Hui’s second and third novels respectively, Mellow Yellow Drama (2014) and Mencari Sila Kelima (Searching for the Fifth Principle, 2015), through the post-structural concepts of Derrida’s deconstruction, and also in relation to cultural studies views on identity. The works were analyzed through close-reading technique. The novels were published during the Reformation (Reformasi) era, where politics had served to be a profound aspect that directed the cultural identity and social attitude of the society. In a range of aspects, from narrative structure to their deeper themes, Hui’s literary works were found to draw on a distinguishable set of strategies which enabled Hui to establish her own identity as someone who was liberated, culturally accepted and free to embrace local colors. This article also showed that Audrey Yu Jia Hui’s narratives have served as an acceptance of an individual’s multiple identities, which often depends on the problem at hand as well as the context of choices.

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