The Subject in Black and White: Afro-German Identity Formation in Ika Hügel-Marshall's Autobiography Daheim unterwegs: Ein deutsches Leben

2005 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-84
Author(s):  
Deborah Janson
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Black And White ◽  
German Identity ◽  
The Subject

scholarly journals Self-Abdication and Otherness in Philip Roth’s The Human Stain (2000)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Assia Mohdeb ◽  
Sofiane Mammeri
Keyword(s):  
Racial Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Racial Passing ◽  
The Core ◽  
Class Discrimination ◽  
The Subject ◽  
American Society ◽  
Definition Of

Identity, in one of its understanding, signifies a set of characteristics that make up a person’s ethical faithfulness to, identification with, and pride of one’s origin, tradition, and culture. Remaining true to one’s identity and being faithful to the core values of one’s culture is a complicated matter when it comes to a black living in white society like America, where color and racial identity are rudimentary prerequisites in self-definition and naming. Philip Roth’s novel entitled The Human Stain (2000) shows how some black figures undress their black identity to wear the prestigious white one to go onward with life as full selves, to have access to all the privileges the whites enjoy, and, above all, to live without the specter of race and the decisiveness of epidermal signs. The novel calls into question and revision such essentialist notions as other, class,andrace by describing the crises the subject or self undergoes in the light of racial prejudices, center-periphery relations, and class stereotypes. The present paper, then, addresses the act of self-abdication the protagonist, Silk Coleman, carries out to overstep the feeling of otherness and to dodge racial discrimination. The paper looks into the notions of selfhood and Otherness by negotiating the definition of the self and the distortion it undergoes in its encounter with the Other . The study aims at revealing, primarily, the effects of Black racial-passing, a common phenomenon in American society of the first half of the twentieth century, on familial relationships and cultural heritage. It also reveals the weight of gender and class discrimination in the individual’s identity formation and well-being.

scholarly journals Lisbon in the sixteenth century: decoding the Chafariz d’el Rei

Race & Class ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-81
Author(s):  
Stefan Halikowski Smith
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Public Square ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Black Residents ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Portuguese Society

An anonymous sixteenth-century painting of the King’s Fountain in the Lisbon Alfama, Chafariz d’el Rei, recently the subject of speculation over its provenance and date, has also been of interest because of its depiction of so many black and white figures together, from all social strata and walks of life and in many (often water-related) trades in a public square. It very obviously suggests that black residents of Lisbon at that time, if originating from the trade in slaves, had been able to make their way as freedmen and women into Portuguese society. With careful reading of the figures in the painting against other written and painted portrayals from the time, the author attempts to deduce if this was an accurate depiction of Lisbon in the 1500s, or whether the painter might have distorted reality to render Lisbon as a ludic or exotic space – or indeed to disparage it. The painter himself might well have come from northern Europe.

scholarly journals Postmigration. Mod et nyt kritisk perspektiv på migration og kultur

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (122) ◽  
pp. 181-200
Author(s):  
Anne Ring Petersen ◽  
Moritz Schramm
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Culture Industry ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Transformative Impact

The classical canon of ‘critical theory’ – the early Frankfurt School, Marxist and post-Marxist theories – has lead to a tradition of understanding cultural critique solely as a subversive critique directed against Western confidence in progress, normative concepts of the subject and identity formation, the culture industry etc. In studies of migration and culture, this notion of critique has manifested itself as a preference for the so-called ‘spaces in-between’ and a general rejection of all identity and subject constructions. Our own work in this field has made it increasingly clear to us that critical cultural theory and analysis can also be severely hampered by the subversive approach. Today, critical practice must thus entail taking the next step: to develop and discuss alternatives that can open new perspectives. In this spirit, the article accounts for the idea of a postmigrant perspective that aims at overcoming the dichotomy between ‘majority’ and ‘minorities’, and which makes it possible to take a fresh, but still critical, approach to the transformative impact of migration on society. After unpacking the idea of the ‘postmigrant’, the article proceeds to reflect on how a critical cultural analysis that applies a postmigrant perspective can contribute to developing a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of recognition and structural discrimination, thereby revitalising two classical themes in critical theory: suppression and recognition.

scholarly journals “So, it is about how negative it is?!” Understanding researcher/researched interactions as relations between intersectional social positions

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sune Qvotrup Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Geographical Location ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Minority Men ◽  
Powerful Mechanism ◽  
Insight Into

The article argues that interactions in qualitative interviews and ethnography can be analyzed as relations between intersectional social positions. It draws attention to the importance of class and geographical location in such analysis. It further argues that such interactions work through typifications, that they have a power dimension and that they entail processes of identity formation. The identities being offered through these processes can, however, be negotiated or resisted. The article then analyses such interactions as they were experienced in two research projects the author participated in: His PhD project about young marginalized ethnic minority men, and the collective project INTERLOC which focused on the interplay between gender, class, ethnicity and ‘race’ in an underprivileged Danish suburb. It is demonstrated that relationality influences the assumptions research participants have about the researcher. It is also demonstrated that the research encounter entails powerful mechanism of identity formation. The informants, however, sometimes resist these processes resulting in blurred and unstable, sometimes antagonistic, power relations. It is finally argued that analyses of such interactions can provide central insight into the subject studied.

scholarly journals The New Gulliver: Russian Mountains and Soviet Fantasmagoria

Slovo ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol To the East of Pixar :... ◽  
Author(s):  
Pascal Vimenet
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Roller Coaster ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
International Audience ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Homo Sovieticus

International audience Новый Гулливер (1935), первый черно-белый советскиймультипликационно-игровой фильм, режиссера Александра Птушко, не былдо сих пор предметом специального исследования. Нижеследующее являетсяего контекстуальным, биографическим, равно как и кинематографическим анализом. Творческий путь Птушко (1900-1973) дается в новом освещении, особенно 1920-30 годы, на которые приходится становление его кино.Осуществив постановку Это случилось на стадионе (1928) и Властелинбыта (1932), Птушко принял руководство секцией мультипликационногофильма на студии Совкино, ставшей Москинокомбинат, затем Мосфильм.Подробно рассматривается политико-культурный контекст, в период созданияего игрового фильма, между 1927 и 1935 годами, который сводит воедино всёмногообразие советского авангарда, но и является свидетелем торжествадогмы соцреализма. Фильм Птушко оказался восприимчив к теориям бурлескаоснователей Фабрики эксцентрического актера (ФЭКС). Превращениеперсонажей фильма Птушко в кукол-марионеток, символическое обыгрываниемасштабов могло зародиться в недрах этого движения. Но как сумел «НовыйГулливер», этот «фильм-сказка» обмануть политический контекст ипротивостоять сиренам соцреализма или отклониться от известныхшаблонных кодов? Птушко избирает философскую повесть, усугубленнуюполитическим памфлетом, что дает ему законное основание привязать чудесноек политическому. Смелая экранизация Свифта, московский дорогостоящийкинофильм, с его полуторатысячей шарнирных кукол, сотнями пластилиновыхфигурок, их сочетание с игровым кино, и два десятка массовых сцен претендуетна соперничество с «Кинг Конгом». Своим остроумием и развлекательностьюфильм Птушко вызывал восхищение Чарли Чаплина. Данное исследованиепрепарирует аллегорию – держащий каркас фильма, и стремитсяидентифицировать в кинопостановке всё то, в чем отголоском дают о себе знатьсоветские времена. И когда оказывается, что гимн лиллипутов, это воспеваниеотвратительного монархизма, жутковатым образом предвосхищает ОдуСталину 1939 года, то совершенно внятно становится, что Новый Гулливерне столько выставляет на показ всепобедительность homo sovieticus, сколькоделает из истории опасный аттракцион падений и взлетов и внедряет в неёсубверсивное понятие ухронии. The New Gulliver (1935), the first black and white Soviet animatedfeature film directed by Alexander Ptusko, has not been the subject of a specific studyso far. The following is contextual, biographical, as well as filmic analysis. It offers anew light on the route of Ptusko (1900-1973), especially on the 1920-1930 whichsees emerge his cinema. After having realized It Arrived at the Stadium (1928)and The Master of Everyday Life (1932), Ptusko took the lead of the section of theanimated film of the Sovkino studios become Moskinokombinat, then Mosfilm. Thepolitico-cultural context of the emergence of his feature film, 1927 and 1935, whichbrings together all the diversity of the Soviet avant-garde but sees the triumph of thedogma of socialist realism, is examined at length. Ptusko’s film seems receptive to theburlesque theories of the founders of the FEKS. The puppetisation of the characters inPtusko’s film, the symbolic games of scale, may have originated in this movement. Buthow could The New Gulliver, this « film-tale », have imposed itself in the politicalcontext and resist the realistic socialist sirens or divert certain codes? Ptusko choosesa philosophical tale doubled by a political pamphlet that authorizes him to link themarvelous to the political. An audacious adaptation of Swift, a Muscovite spectacular,The New Gulliver aims to compete, with its 1 500 puppets articulated, hundreds ofplastic figurines, their combination to the real shot and its 20 sets, with King Kong.Ptusko’s film provokes Chaplin’s admiration for his facetiousness. The study dissects theallegory that structures the film and seeks to identify in the staging of everything thatechoes the Soviet present. And when it appears that the Lilliputian hymn, the songof the hated kingship, anticipates in an unsettling way The Ode to Stalin of 1939, itbecomes certain that The New Gulliver, more than to demonstrate the invincibility ofthe homo sovieticus, transforms the history in a roller coaster and makes penetrate theexplosive concept of uchronia. Le Nouveau Gulliver (1935), premier long métrage d’animationsoviétique noir et blanc, réalisé par Aleksandr Ptouchko, n’a pas fait l’objetd’études spécifiques jusqu’ici. Celle qui suit est contextuelle, biographique, toutautant qu’analyse filmique. Elle propose un nouvel éclairage sur l’itinéraire dePtouchko (1900-1973), particulièrement sur les années 1920-1930 qui voitémerger son cinéma. Après avoir réalisé C’est arrivé au stade (1928) et Le Maîtredu quotidien (1932), Ptouchko prend la tête de la section du film animé des studiosSovkino devenus Moskinokombinat, puis Mosfilm. Le contexte politico-cultureld’émergence de son long métrage, entre 1927 et 1935, qui met en présence toutela diversité de l’avant-garde soviétique mais voit triompher le dogme du réalismesocialiste, est longuement examiné. Le film de Ptouchko semble réceptif aux théoriesburlesques des fondateurs de la FEKS. La marionnettisation des personnages dufilm de Ptouchko, les jeux symboliques d’échelle ont peut-être pris leur sourcedans ce mouvement. Mais comment Le Nouveau Gulliver, ce « ciné-conte », a-t-ilpu s’imposer dans le contexte politique et résister aux sirènes réalistes socialistesou en détourner certains codes ? Ptouchko choisit un conte philosophiquedoublé d’un pamphlet politique qui l’autorise à lier le merveilleux au politique.Audacieuse adaptation de Swift, superproduction moscovite, Le Nouveau Gulliverambitionne de rivaliser, avec ses 1 500 marionnettes articulées, ses centaines defigurines en plastiline, leur combinaison à la prise de vue réelle et ses vingt décors,avec King-Kong. Le film de Ptouchko provoque l’admiration de Chaplin, quien apprécie l’esprit facétieux. L’étude dissèque l’allégorie qui structure le film ets’attache à repérer dans la mise en scène tout ce qui fait écho au présent soviétique.Et quand il apparaît que l’hymne lilliputien, chant de la royauté honnie, anticipede manière troublante L’Ode à Staline de 1939, il devient certain que Le NouveauGulliver, plus que de démontrer l’invincibilité de l’homo sovieticus, transformel’histoire en montagnes russes et y fait pénétrer le concept explosif de l’uchronie.

scholarly journals Epistemic Roots, Universal Routes and Ontological Roofs of African “Ritual Archives”: Disciplinary Formations in African Thought

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-41
Author(s):  
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Development ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Image Theory ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
African Art ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Working Out

 One may compose an essay on another essay, and possibly an even longer one than the essay being studied, long as that one is, when one is confronted with one of those things one has to say something about after encountering them. “Ritual Archives”, the climatic conclusion of the account in The Toyin Falola Reader ( Austin: Pan African University, 2018), of the efforts of Africa and its Americas Diaspora to achieve political, economic, intellectual and cultural individuality, is a deeply intriguing, ideationally, structurally and stylistically powerful and inspiring work, rich with ideas and arresting verbal and visual images. His focus is Africa and its Diaspora, but his thought resonates with implications far beyond Africa, into contexts of struggle for plurality of vision outside and even within the West, the global dominance of whose central theoretical constructs inspires Falola’s essay. “Ritual Archives”, oscillates between the analytical and the poetic, the ruminative and the architectonic, expressive styles pouring out a wealth of ideas, which, even though adequately integrated, are not always adequately elaborated on. This essay responds to the resonance of those ideas, further illuminating their intrinsic semantic values and demonstrating my perception of the intersections of the concerns they express with issues beyond the African referent of “Ritual Archives”. This response is organized in five parts, representing my understanding of the five major thematic strategies through which the central idea is laid out and expanded. 316 Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju The first section, “Developing Classical African Expressions as Sources of Locally and Universally Valid Theory” explores Falola’s advocacy for an expanded cultivation of theory from Africa created and Africa inspired expressive forms. “Epistemic and Metaphysical Integrity in Ifá”, the second part, examines his argument for a re-centering of studies in classical African thought within the epistemic and metaphysical frames of those bodies of knowledge, using the Yoruba origin Ifá system of knowledge, spiritual development and divination as an example, an illustration I analyze through my own understanding of the cognitive and metaphysical framework of Ifá. The third unit, “Falola’s Image Theory and Praxis, Image as Archive, Image as Initiator”, demonstrates Falola’s dramatization of the cognitive possibilities of works of art as inspirers of theory, exemplified by a figurine of the Yoruba origin òrìṣà cosmology, the deity Esu. This is the most poetic and one of the most imaginatively, ideationally evocative and yet tantalizingly inadequately elaborated sections of “Ritual Archives”, evoking continuities between Yoruba philosophy, òrìṣà cosmology and various bodies of knowledge across art and image theory and history, without expanding on the ideas or building them into a structure adequately responsive to the promise of the ideas projected, a foundation I contribute to developing by elucidating my understanding of the significance of the ideas and their consonance with related conceptions and issues from Asian, Western and African cultures. I also demonstrate how this section may contribute to clarification of the nature of Yoruba philosophy understood as a body of ideas on the scope of human intelligibility and the relationship between that philosophy and òrìṣà cosmology, an expansive view of the cosmos developed in relation to the philosophy. This is a heuristic rather than an attempt at a definitive distinction and is derived from the relationship between my practical and theoretical investigation of Yoruba epistemology and Falola’s exploration, in “Ritual Archives”, of a particularly strategic aspect of òrìṣà cosmology represented by Esu. The distinction I advance between Yoruba philosophy and òrìṣà cosmology and the effort to map their interrelations is useful in categorizing and critically analyzing various postulates that constitute classical Yoruba thought. This mapping of convergence and divergence contributes to working out the continuum in Yoruba thought between a critical and experiential configuration and a belief system. The fourth section, “The Institutional Imperative”, discusses Falola’s careful working out of the institutional implications of the approach he advocates of developing locally and universally illuminating theory out of endogenous African cultural forms. The fifth part, “Imagistic Resonance”, presents Falola’s effort to make the Toyin Falola Reader into a ritual archive, illustrating his vision for African art as an inspirer of theory, by spacing powerful black and white pictures of forms of this art, mainly sculptural but also forms of Epistemic Roots, Universal Routes and Ontological Roofs 317 clothing, largely Yoruba but also including examples from other African cultures, throughout the book. Except for the set of images in the appendix, these artistic works are not identified, nor does the identification of those in the appendix go beyond naming them, exclusions perhaps motivated by the need to avoid expanding an already unusually big book of about 1,032 pages of central text. I reproduce and identify a number of these artistic forms and briefly elaborate on their aesthetic force and ideational power, clarifying the theoretical formations in which they are embedded and exploring the insights they could contribute to theory beyond their originating cultures. “Ritual Archives” is particularly important for me because it elucidates views strategic to my own cognitive explorations and way of life but which I have not been able to articulate with the ideational comprehensiveness and analytical penetration Falola brings to the subject of developing theory from endogenous African cultural expressions, exemplified by Ifá and art, two of my favorite subjects

scholarly journals XVII. Colour photometry.—Part II. The measurement of reflected colours

1888 ◽  
Vol 179 ◽  
pp. 547-570 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Zinc Oxide ◽  
White Light ◽  
White Card ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Total Luminosity ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Electric Light ◽  
Reflecting Surface

In our first paper on this subject we have shown how the luminosity of the spectra of various sources of light can be measured; and the present paper is an extension of the subject, dealing with the measurement of the light reflected from bodies in terms of the colours of the spectrum of the light illuminating them. By the method which we adopted in the first part of "Colour Photometry” this can be effected, and, indeed, we carried that out in several instances. The method then employed was very simple. If we wished to measure the illuminating value of the spectrum of light reflected from a metal, we placed it at an angle in front of the slit of the spectroscope, so as to reflect the light from the crater of the positive pole of the electric light through the photometer, and measured the luminosity of each part of the spectrum thus formed by the method we indicated in our paper. Again, in experimenting with Gorham’s discs, such as Maxwell employed, where it became necessary to determine the light reflected from the different coloured papers or cards used in the discs, the plan first adopted was to replace the receiving shadow screen of zinc oxide (see § VI) by the coloured papers, and again to make a luminosity measurement. This plan answered its purpose, but it was rather laborious. When two or three colours are combined by rotation to form a grey, and black and white sectors are combined to match that grey, in order to ascertain the total luminosity of each colour, the angular value of the sectors being known, it is necessary to refer the luminosity to that of some standard reflecting surface, which is naturally a white one. As the comparison light is coloured by falling on coloured paper, the value of the spectrum reflected from such paper could not by this first method be directly compared with that reflected from the white screen. In the case of a coloured screen, the curve of spectrum luminosity would therefore have to be reduced to that in which the comparison light was white. This difficulty was surmounted by making half the receiving screen white and half of the colour whose luminosity was to be measured, illuminating the shadow of the rod thrown on the coloured paper by the spectrum colour, and that thrown on the white card by the white light reflected from the surface of the first prism (§ XXVI). This did away with any reduction or calculation; but still an objection remained, as, for definite comparison, it was almost necessary that the same observer should always make the measurement.

Residual Vision in a Subject with Damaged Visual Cortex

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 502-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heinz Schärli ◽  
Alison M. Harman ◽  
John H. Hogben
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Visual Field ◽  
Target Stimulus ◽  
Striate Cortex ◽  
Light Flash ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Confidence Levels ◽  
Residual Vision ◽  
Visual Areas ◽  
The Subject

It is well known that a lesion in the optic radiation or striate cortex leads to blind visual regions in the retinotopically corresponding portion of the visual field. However, various studies show that some subjects still perceive certain stimuli even when presented in the “blind” visual field. Such subjects either perceive stimuli abnormally or only certain aspects of them (residual vision) or, in some cases, deny perception altogether even though visual performance can be shown to be above chance (blindsight). Research on monkeys has suggested a variety of parallel extrastriate visual pathways that could bypass the striate cortex and mediate residual vision or blindsight. In the present study, we investigated a subject with perimetrically blind visual areas caused by bilateral brain damage. Black and white stimuli were presented at many locations in the intact and affected areas of the visual field. The subject's task was to state, using confidence levels, whether the target stimulus was black or white. The results revealed an area in the “blind” visual field in which the subject perceived a light flash when the experimental black stimulus was presented. We hypothesize that a spared region in the visual cortex most likely accounts for these findings.

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