scholarly journals Rewriting the Nigerian Nation and Reimagining the Lesbian Nigerian Woman in Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees (2015)

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 111-128
Author(s):  
Ariadna Serón Navas
Keyword(s):  
Queer Studies ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Nigerian Woman ◽  
Black Lesbian ◽  
Building Project

This paper presents a revised paradigm of the postcolonial Nigerian nation through the exploration of the figure of the black lesbian in Nigeria. I argue that the reconceptualisation of Nigerian nationhood is enabled through the revision by Chinelo Okparanta in her debut novel Under the Udala Trees (2015) of subaltern and abject Nigerian womanhood carried out from a homoerotic or Afroqueer standpoint. The exploration of lesbian Nigerian woman(hood) from a literary stance clearly represents a valuable and subversive way of re-writing, re-constructing and re-conceptualising the postcolonial Nigerian nation so that othered subjectivities can also become part of the nation-building project. Okparanta, considered an Afrosporic and transcultural writer, interpellates the Nigerian nation in order to present us with post-abyssal configurations that transcend reductive and monolithic discourses. Drawing on the work of a wide array of scholars belonging to Postcolonial, Gender and Queer Studies —such as Neville Hoad, Ifi Amadiume, Lindsey Green-Simms, and Lee Edelman— I demonstrate how Okparanta’s novel can work as an example of resistance against hegemonic, heteronormative and Eurocentric representations of Africa.

“Forward to David the Builder!” Georgia's (re)turn to language-centered nationalism

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 522-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christofer Berglund
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
The Past ◽  
Building Project ◽  
The Rose ◽  
State Language

After the Rose Revolution, President Saakashvili tried to move away from the exclusionary nationalism of the past, which had poisoned relations between Georgians and their Armenian and Azerbaijani compatriots. His government instead sought to foster an inclusionary nationalism, wherein belonging was contingent upon speaking the state language and all Georgian speakers, irrespective of origin, were to be equals. This article examines this nation-building project from a top-down and bottom-up lens. I first argue that state officials took rigorous steps to signal that Georgian-speaking minorities were part of the national fabric, but failed to abolish religious and historical barriers to their inclusion. I next utilize a large-scale, matched-guise experiment (n= 792) to explore if adolescent Georgians ostracize Georgian-speaking minorities or embrace them as their peers. I find that the upcoming generation of Georgians harbor attitudes in line with Saakashvili's language-centered nationalism, and that current Georgian nationalism therefore is more inclusionary than previous research, or Georgia's tumultuous past, would lead us to believe.

scholarly journals El otro lado de la modernidad boliviana. "Vuelve Sebastiana" y la reconfiguración de las coordenadas espacio temporales para pensar la Nación

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 46-66
Author(s):  
Jaime Omar Salinas Zabalaga
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
National Imaginary ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
Building Project ◽  
The Relationship

This article discusses the film Vuelve Sebastiana (1953) by Jorge Ruiz, focusing on its ideological and aesthetic aspects. The analysis establishes connections between the idea of “nation” in the context of cultural transformation prompted by the economic and social policies of the National Revolution of 1952 and the way the Chipaya community is represented. The central argument is that "Vuelve Sebastiana" can be read not only in relation to the new national identity but as an expression of a new national imaginary regarding the indigenous communities of the Altiplano. The author proposes that "Vuelve Sebastiana" represents the nation through the temporal and spatial cartographies of a modern nation-building project, making visible some of its tensions and contradictions and allowing us to explore the imaginary that has redefined the relationship between the State and the indigenous communities of the Altiplano throughout the  second half of the 20th century.

scholarly journals Recent (Re)Visions of Canlit: Partial Stock-Taking

2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (s2) ◽  
pp. 273-289
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Rzepa
Keyword(s):  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Current State ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Building Project ◽  
Magazine Articles ◽  
Globalising World

Abstract This article approaches recent discussions on the state of contemporary CanLit as a body of literary texts, an academic field, and an institution. The discussion is informed primarily by a number of recent or relatively recent publications, such as Trans.CanLit. Resituating the Study of Canadian Literature (Kamboureli & Miki 2007), Refuse. CanLit in Ruins (McGregor, Rak & Wunker 2018), Luminous Ink: Writers on Writing in Canada (McWatt, Maharaj & Brand 2018), and the discussions and/or controversies some of those generated – expressed through newspaper and magazine articles, scholarly essays, but also through tweets, etc. The texts have been written as a response to the current state and – in some cases – scandals of CanLit. Many constitute attempts at starting or contributing to a discussion aimed at not only taking stock of, but also reinterpreting and re-defining the field and the institution in view of the challenges of the globalising world. Perhaps more importantly, they address also the challenges resulting from the rift between CanLit as implicated in the (post)colonial nation-building project and rigid institutional structures, perpetuating the silencings, erasures, and hierarchies resulting from such entanglements, and actual literary texts produced by an increasingly diversified group of writers working with a widening range of topics and genres, and creating often intimate, autobiographically inspired art with a sense of responsibility to marginalised communities. The article concludes with the example of Indigenous writing and the position some young Indigenous writers take in the current discussions.

scholarly journals The monumental landscape from below: public statues, popular interaction and nationalism in late nineteenth-century Amsterdam

Urban History ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (04) ◽  
pp. 722-746
Author(s):  
ANNE PETTERSON
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Methodological Challenge ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Public Monuments ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Building Project

ABSTRACT:Public monuments are considered an important tool in the nineteenth-century nation-building project. Yet while the intended (nationalist) message of the monumental landscape is often clear, the popular perception of the statues and memorials has been little problematized. This contribution analyses the popular interaction with public monuments in late nineteenth-century Amsterdam and questions whether ordinary people understood the nationalist meaning. With the help of visual sources – engravings, lithographs and the novel medium of photography – we become aware of the multilayered meanings and usages of the monuments in daily urban life, thus tackling the methodological challenge of studying the monumental landscape from below.

Taiwan's Self-Conscious Nation-Building Project

Asian Survey ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 513-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel C. Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Nation Building ◽  
International Trends ◽  
Urgent Task ◽  
Rising China ◽  
Building Project

Some Taiwanese nationalists express, with alarm, the view that their country is about to be absorbed into a rising China, yet they are paradoxically optimistic that broader international trends will make it possible to secure de jure independence as early as the end of the decade. Their first and most urgent task, in the process of thoroughly de-Sinifying the culture, is to imagine a new Taiwanese nation——a radical project that, in the aftermath of President Chen Shui-bian's reelection, is certain to roil cross-strait relations in the coming months and years.

Rebuilding the Navel of the Earth: Buddhist pilgrimage and transnational religious networks

2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 645-692 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID GEARY
Keyword(s):  
Nation Building ◽  
North India ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
Regional Networks ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Religious Networks ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Building Project

AbstractCentral to the modern rebirth of Bodh Gaya as the place of Buddha's enlightenment is the growing influence of Buddhist missionaries and transnational religious networks on this pilgrimage landscape in North India. Although this process began in the late nineteenth century, it was not until after India's independence that Buddhism became an integral part of the nation-building project and a key site of post-colonial diplomacy with neighbouring Asian countries. Symbolic of these international and diplomatic ties are the increasing numbers of foreign Buddhist monasteries and temples that have acquired land around Bodh Gaya. This paper seeks to document the historical and transnational religious processes that support the growing globalization of Bodh Gaya and to survey the institutional means through which monasteries have elevated the Buddhist memory of the site. In tracing these different national and regional networks of Buddhism, I argue that there is an underlying tension between Buddhist culture anchored in the national polity and the forces of globalization and religious experience that seek to transcend it.

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