Otherness and Marginal Spaces: Beyond Politics and Race in Contemporary African Novels

Imbizo ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Nyongesa ◽  
Murimi Gaita ◽  
Justus Kizito Siboe Makokha

Many postcolonial literary scholars associate otherness with the political and racial marginalisation of groups. Indomitable postcolonial voices such as Frantz Fanon and Edward Said take this trajectory, thereby negating other aspects of otherness that come with severe consequences for characters in literary works. Current scholarship on otherness focuses on any placement of groups at the margins without emphasis on the political and racial elements explored by Fanon and Said. Othering is viewed as either the inability to see people who are different as part of one’s community or a failure to see oneself as part of the community. This article extends the second argument that otherness goes further than discrimination against a group as a result of race and political ideology. Using postcolonial theory, the article analyses other aspects of otherness by comparing three primary texts: Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood (1979), Nuruddin Farah’s Close Sesame (1983) and Brian Chikwava’s Harare North (2009). The ideas of Fanon (1961), Rorty (1993) and Powell and Menendian (2016) will form a theoretical basis of interpretation.

Author(s):  
J. Daniel Elam

Homi Bhabha (b. 1949) is among the founding generation of scholars of “postcolonial theory” as it emerged in the U.S. and U.K. academies in the 1980s and 1990s, and is currently the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of English and American Literature and Language. Bhabha’s intellectual emergence coincided with the emergence of “postcolonial theory” in the 1980s and 1990s. Bhabha’s particular contribution to postcolonial critique is unique in successfully combining the fields of post-structuralism, history, and psychoanalysis, and in relationship to the texts and histories of British rule in South Asia. Bhabha is best situated within an often-overshadowed strain of postcolonial theory committed to the recovery of universality rather than the demand for particularity, a lineage that includes Frantz Fanon and Edward Said. Bhabha’s key concepts and terms, especially “ambivalence” and “hybridity,” have been taken up across many fields under the rubrics of postcolonial and/or diasporic intervention. Bhabha’s writing and theoretical arguments are based primarily in perpetual negotiation, in opposition to negation. Understanding this key intervention makes it possible to grasp the full scale of Bhabha’s driving concerns, theoretical conceptions, and political commitments.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-47
Author(s):  
Eduardo Acuña Aguirre

This article refers to the political risks that a group of five parishioners, members of an aristocratic Catholic parish located in Santiago, Chile, had to face when they recovered and discovered unconscious meanings about the hard and persistent psychological and sexual abuse they suffered in that religious organisation. Recovering and discovering meanings, from the collective memory of that parish, was a sort of conversion event in the five parishioners that determined their decision to bring to the surface of Chilean society the knowledge that the parish, led by the priest Fernando Karadima, functioned as a perverse organisation. That determination implied that the five individuals had to struggle against powerful forces in society, including the dominant Catholic Church in Chile and the political influences from the conservative Catholic elite that attempted to ignore the existence of the abuses that were denounced. The result of this article explains how the five parishioners, through their concerted political actions and courage, forced the Catholic Church to recognise, in an ambivalent way, the abuses committed by Karadima. The theoretical basis of this presentation is based on a socioanalytical approach that mainly considers the understanding of perversion in organisations and their consequences in the control of anxieties.


2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 431-437
Author(s):  
Meredith L. Weiss

Much of the work of political science revolves around institutions—the structures through which politics happens. Leaders enter the frame, of course, but often as institutions in human form: presidents, premiers, populists, and mobilizers who serve to channel and direct who does what and what they do, much like an agency or law. We might trace this pseudo-structural, largely mechanical reading of human agency to political scientists of an earlier era: the behavioralists of the 1950s and 1960s. James C. Scott began his career as just such a scholar. For his dissertation-turned-book, Political Ideology in Malaysia: Reality and the Beliefs of an Elite, Scott surveyed a gaggle of Malaysian bureaucrats to examine, effectively, the extent to which their values and assumptions supported or subverted the new democracy they served. Although itself fairly prosaic, that work foreshadows the political grime and games that soon pulled Scott in more promising directions theoretically, whether scrutinizing Southeast Asia or global patterns: disentangling structure from norms, finding agency around the margins of class and state, and rethinking how power looks and functions.


2021 ◽  
pp. 001458582110054
Author(s):  
Guylian Nemegeer ◽  
Mara Santi

This article argues that Gabriele d’Annunzio’s Notturno conveys a conscious political and cultural message which is consequent of his long-lasting political commitment to the nation. This political value of the book has been mainly overlooked. Therefore, the first part of the article shows the locations of the political and war-related content, and how the book can be considered as a war diary. Moreover, the first part of the article relates the Notturno to d’Annunzio’s political project for the nation at the time when the book was composed (1915–1921). The aim of this part is to dispel the enduring critical misinterpretation of the Notturno as an intimate collection of memories and visions and to foreground its national value. The second part of the article addresses the roots of the Notturno’s political message from a literary point of view by relating it to the national commitment underlying d’Annunzio’s works since the 1880s. This commitment is based on the revalorization in the author’s literary works of the Italian national past, in particular of the 16th century, where d’Annunzio continues and renews the national storytelling of the Risorgimento.


1977 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Gordon ◽  
Paul Whiteley

2020 ◽  
pp. 52-57
Author(s):  
Эдиль Канатбеков

В статье рассматривается политическая культура Кыргызстана как одна из важных основ политической жизни общества. Уделяется внимание на необходимость развития политической культуры общества, как фундаментальной основы цивилизации, основ существования общества и общественных отношений. В работе анализируется сущность политической культуры. Описывается проблема формирования политической культуры Кыргызстана как одной из актуальных тем, на протяжении многих лет. Рассматривается формирование и становление политической культуры Кыргызстана, как очень трудоёмкий и долговременный процесс, обусловленный определенными аспектами политико-культурологического характера. Политическая культура конкретной общности состоит из представлений индивидов, их взглядов, политических ценностей, политической идеологии и символики, политических норм, стандартов, стереотипов. Каждый субъект страны являясь гражданином так или иначе становиться свидетелем и даже участником политической реальности, тем самым на основе этих элементов и опыта человек формирует собственный взгляд и определяет для себя систему ценностей и линию поведения. Макалада Кыргызстандын саясий маданияты коомдун саясий турмушунун маанилүү негиздеринин бири катары каралат. Цивилизациянын фундаменталдык негизи, коомдун жана коомдук мамилелердин негиздеринин маңызы катары коомдун саясий маданиятын өнүктүрүү зарылдыгына көңүл бурулган. Изилдөө ишинде саясий маданияттын маани-маңызына анализ жүргүзүлгөн. Кыргызстанда саясий маданияттын калыптануу көйгөйү көп жылдардан бери актуалдуу темалардын бири катары эсептелинет. Кыргызстандын саясий маданиятынын калыптанышы жана калыптануусу саясий жана маданий мүнөздүн айрым аспектилерине байланыштуу өтө эмгекчил жана узак мөөнөттүү процесс катары каралат. Белгилүү бир коомдун саясий маданияты жеке адамдардын идеяларынан, алардын көз караштарынан, саясий баалуулуктарынан, саясий идеологиясынан жана символдорунан, саясий нормаларынан, стандарттарынан, стереотиптеринен турат. Өлкөнүн ар бир субъектиси, ошол өлкөнүн жараны болуп туруп, кандайдыр бир жол менен саясий чындыктын интригасынын күбөсү, ал тургай, катышуучусу болуп калат, ошентип, адам ушул элементтердин жана тажрыйбанын негизинде өзүнүн көз карашын калыптандырат жана өзү үчүн баалуулуктар системасын жана жүрүм-турум линиясын аныктайт. Тhe article considers the political culture of Kyrgyzstan as one of the important foundations of the political life of society. Attention paid to the need to develop the political culture of society as the fundamental basis of civilization, the foundations of the existence of society and social relations. The paper analyzes the essence of political culture. The article describes the problem of forming the political culture of Kyrgyzstan as one of the topical issues for many years. The article considers the formation and formation of the political culture of Kyrgyzstan as a very labor-intensive and long-term process, due to certain aspects of political and cultural character. Тhe Political culture of a particular community consists of individual representations, their views, political values, political ideology and symbols, political norms, standards, and stereotypes. Each subject of the country, being a citizen, in one way or another becomes a witness and even a participant in the intrigue of political reality, thereby the basis of these elements and experience, a person forms his own view and defines for himself a system of values and a line of behavior.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Shi ◽  
Chongwu Xia ◽  
Philipp Meyer-Doyle

Although prior research on shareholder activism has highlighted how such activism can economically benefit the shareholders of targeted firms, recent studies also suggest that shareholder activism can economically disadvantage nonshareholder stakeholders, notably employees. Our study extends this research by exploring whether shareholder activism by institutional investors (i.e., institutional investor activism) can adversely affect employee health and safety through increased workplace injury and illness. Furthermore, deviating from the assumption that financially motivated institutional investor activists are homogeneous in their goals and preferences, we investigate whether the influence of institutional investor activism on employee health and safety hinges on the political ideology of the shareholder activist and of the board of the targeted firm. Using establishment-level data, we find that institutional investor activism adversely influences workplace injury and illness at targeted firms and that this influence is stronger for nonliberal shareholder activists and for firms with a nonliberal board. Our study contributes to shareholder activism research by highlighting how the political ideology of shareholder activists and boards affects the impact of shareholder activism on stakeholders and how shareholder activism can adversely affect the health and safety of employees. Furthermore, our paper also contributes to research on workplace safety and the management of employee relations and human capital resources by highlighting the detrimental effect of a firm’s ownership by investor activists on its employees and how the board’s political ideology may enable a firm to reduce this risk.


PMLA ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 113 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maeera Y. Shreiber

What is the location of Jewish identity? Cultural studies has provoked reexaminations of many long-standing tropes of ethnic and religious identity, including that of exile. Such inquiries have potentially explosive consequences for the already vexed notion of Jewish identity, especially in the context of an American experience. This essay means to trouble the relation between Jewish identity and the problematic marker of exile, within the contexts of cultural and postcolonial theory, drawing on the work of Jewish and non-Jewish thinkers, including Alain Finkielkraut, Daniel Boyarín, and Edward Said. This analysis allows for a sustained consideration of a diasporic poetics—an alternative aesthetic model for imagining community and the attendant terms of belonging. The experimental Yiddish-English bilingual verse of the contemporary poet Irena Klepfisz serves as a paradigmatic example of such a vision that challenges the familiar opposition between home and exile. Yiddish, a notoriously inclusive language and a by-product of the Diaspora, is central to her inquiries into the relation between individual and collective identities and into the role gender plays in the construction of such entities.


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