Carnivalizing Imoinda’s Silence

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-86
Author(s):  
Kristina Huang
Keyword(s):  
Women's Literature ◽  
The West ◽  
Narrative Poetry ◽  
Performance Context ◽  
Critical Discourses

In this essay, I analyze Joan Anim-Addo’s libretto Imoinda, or She Who Will Lose Her Name (2008) and illustrate how its narrative poetry generates a speculative, gendered history around the slave past. Informed by Srinivas Aravamudan’s observation of parodic subversion in the afterlives of Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688), I return to Anim-Addo’s oeuvre in order to read Imoinda as a work that counter-writes the colonial gaze of “Western” knowledge. By centering on Caribbean carnival as the performance context for the libretto, I examine how histories of rebellion and survival carried out by enslaved Africans and their descendants unfold through the libretto’s narrative poetry. I argue that Imoinda, under the guise of artistic forms associated with “the West,” breaks from Eurocentric perspectives that misrepresented subaltern struggles while ushering forth the question of “who speaks?” in critical discourses. I conclude by aligning Anim-Addo’s Imoinda in relation to Sylvia Wynter’s conceptualization of “demonic grounds” to highlight a transformative epistemic space of Caribbean women’s literature.

scholarly journals Critica Literară Românească Din Perspectiva Metodelor De Analiză Autocolonială (1840-1939)

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
David Morariu
Keyword(s):  
Early Stage ◽  
The Self ◽  
Economic Report ◽  
The West ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Critical Discourses ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis study aims to analyze the Romanian critical discourses of the second half of the 19th century and especially of the first half of the 20th century, starting from the central concept of “self-colonization”, coined by Alexander Kiossev. The article opens with the conceptual delimiting of the phenomenon imposed by the Bulgarian theoretician and with the hypothesis that Romanian culture can be attributed to self-colonizing cultures. The demonstration of this hypothesis consists of three arguments. The critical discourses belonging to G. Ibrăileanu, E. Lovinescu and C. Dobrogeanu-Gherea highlight, firstly, some of the characteristics of this self-subordination relation. The way the first two emphasize the role of imitation, the necessity of adopting the foreign models and the way Gherea treats the dependence upon the West under an economic report, represent, briefly, the center of the first part of the demonstration. The second one brings to the fore Mihail Kogălniceanu and Titu Maiorescu’s profiles, their discourses being characterized by clumsiness and flaws so typical for a culture found in an early stage of its development. The last argument broadens the scope of the demonstration in the sense that the analysis focuses on social and economic delimiting. The purpose of this delimiting is to establish which are the areas that are more responsive to the manifestation of the self-colonizing phenomenon.

scholarly journals Let the people sing? Irish rebel songs, sectarianism, and Scotland's Offensive Behaviour Act

Popular Music ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen R. Millar
Keyword(s):  
West Coast ◽  
Social Function ◽  
The West ◽  
Irish Language ◽  
Cultural Perception ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Musical Discourse ◽  
Performance Context ◽  
Song Lyrics

AbstractIrish rebel songs afford Scotland's Irish diaspora a means to assert, experience and perform their alterity free from the complexities of the Irish language. Yet this benign intent can be offset by how the music is perceived by elements of Scotland's majority Protestant population. The Scottish Government's Offensive Behaviour Act (2012) has been used to prosecute those singing Irish rebel songs and there is continuing debate as to how this alleged offence should be dealt with. This article explores the social function and cultural perception of Irish rebel songs in the west coast of Scotland, examining what qualities lead to a song being perceived as ‘sectarian’, by focusing on song lyrics, performance context and extra-musical discourse. The article explores the practice of lyrical ‘add-ins’ that inflect the meaning of key songs, and argues that the sectarianism of a song resides, at least in part, in the perception of the listener.

“Everyone has their own reality”. “Realism” – topicality in the East and in the West at the end of the 1950s and the 1960s

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Irina Genova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Complex Dynamics ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
The West ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Critical Discourses

In the decade up to 1968, “realism” was a key ideological notion on both sides of the Iron Curtain. It was not unambiguous; it expressed misunderstandings and contradictions, and gave room for manipulative interpretations and diversion of meanings. The visions of “reality” and “realism” were often conflicting in national artistic milieus, as was the case in France. The Neo-avant-garde communities did not stay away from the dispute over the notion and Pierre Restany even appropriated it by using it to name the art group which he unified as an ideologist in 1960. The complex dynamics of the ideas in “the opponents’ field” was closely followed both in the East and the West. At international art forums the notion of “realism” played a role in different critical discourses. The opposing ideologies, through mediation and transfer, mutually modelled both its use by critics and the art practices themselves.

scholarly journals “Mirrors of Alienation”: West Bank Palestinian Women’s Literature after Oslo

1970 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 22-40
Author(s):  
Dorit Gottesfield
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Women's Literature ◽  
West Bank ◽  
Geographical Location ◽  
The West ◽  
Oslo Accords ◽  
First Intifada ◽  
Style Of Writing ◽  
New Generation ◽  
East Jerusalem

This article examines what characterizes the writing of three prominent young women writers from the West Bank whose work was published in the period following the first intifada and the Oslo accords: Hālah al-Bakrī from East Jerusalem, Amānī al-Junaydī from Hebron, and ʿĀʾishah ʿŪdah from Ramallah.The article shows how those new generation authors succeed in diverging from the ideological style of writing that was characteristic of the West Bank’s women writers who preceded them, while continuing to “exploit” their geographical location and voice the unique reality of life in the West Bank. It shows how these writers gaze as women (“others”) upon the reality and how they create an alternative version of reality and also of the past.

Rethinking Emancipation in a Critical IR: Normativity, Cosmology, and Pluriversal Dialogue

2021 ◽  
pp. 030582982110319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hartmut Behr ◽  
Giorgio Shani
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Herbert Marcuse ◽  
The West ◽  
Max Horkheimer ◽  
Critical Discourses ◽  
The Human Condition

This article seeks to reconceptualise emancipation in critically theorising International Relations (IR) by developing ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ versions of normativity and applying them as conditions for a pluriversal dialogue between different cosmologies. We start with the premise that ‘critical IR’ is both Eurocentric and a-normative, and argue that a normative engagement with critical discourses both inside and outside the West is necessary to recapture its emancipatory promise. Drawing on the work of Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse and Jacques Derrida, we develop ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ versions of normativity. The former, we argue, operates as a critical corrective of thick normative positions, reclaiming their openness to difference, while not making substantive moral or political claims itself. We then apply these version of normativity to examine the possibility of a global pluriversal dialogue between different cosmologies. Cosmologies, we argue, refer to sets of ontological and epistemological claims about the human condition that are inherently normative. ‘Thin’ normativity applied to the ‘thick’ claims of cosmologies prevents the essentialisation and hierarchisation of cosmological difference(s) by revealing and de-constructing the latter’s potentially discriminatory, exclusionary, and violent tendencies. In so doing, it facilitates a global inter-cosmological dialogue which we regard as the objective of a post-western, critical IR.

scholarly journals Creativity and Dissidence in Jordanian Women’s Literature

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (33A) ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Omnia Amin
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Women's Literature ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Arab Women ◽  
The West ◽  
Cultural Traditions

Contemporary Jordanian women writers have transported the act of writing into an act of dissidence to reflect their own perspectives and priorities shaped by a distinctive cultural and aesthetic formation. Writers like Huzama Habayeb, Afaf Batayneh, and Leila Elatrash speak with assertive voices about the confinement and even the abuse of Arab women. Their works reveal an unequivocal sense of pride in overthrowing all confinements, while at the same time condemning and combating the abusive excesses of patriarchy when it appropriates and exploits religious and cultural traditions to preserve its own material hegemony. Their discourse strives, with varying degrees of militancy, for an agenda that is quite dissident and threatening to the fabric of the traditional religious and social Arab norms. Some look at the West for a substitute model of their freedom of expression, while others seek an answer within the framework of Arabic culture. Their writing represents not only a fascinating phenomenon of articulating feelings and perspectives of their own by adopting a dissident stance in their use of language and narrative, but also a promise to extend and expand their scope of focus to an apparent militant and confrontational response to the discourse produced by male-made theocracies.

scholarly journals Forgotten Time and Valued Space: Montage Narrative in Republican Chinese Women’s Literature

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 875-883
Author(s):  
Yixin Liu
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Creative Writing ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Women's Literature ◽  
Modern China ◽  
The West ◽  
Narrative Strategy ◽  
Avant Garde

In the West, montage was originally practiced in avant-garde movements. Although montage was widely discussed in the Western context since its origin, this concept is also connected to the literature and culture of modern China in a certain way. Among the Republican Chinese writers, many women writers attempted to employ montage narrative in their creative writing. These writers transformed the montage narrative into a gendered one and used it to also secretly realise their attack on male neotraditional ideology. As a narrative strategy, montage provides a narrative possibility for women writers to deconstruct the prevalent discourse on gender roles, and to construct their identity, meanwhile conveying their innovative and unique understanding regarding feminism and modernity in modern China.

Enumeration and Identification of Asbestos Fibres in Water

1974 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 526-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Mudroch ◽  
J. R. Kramer
Keyword(s):  
Water Supply ◽  
Water Samples ◽  
Drainage Basin ◽  
Lake Superior ◽  
Research Work ◽  
List Type ◽  
The West ◽  
Asbestos Fibre ◽  
Amphibole Asbestos

Approximately 60,000 tons per day of waste from taconite mining, tailing, are added to the west arm of Lake Superior at Silver Bay. Tailings contain nearly the same amount of quartz and amphibole asbestos, cummingtonite and actinolite in fibrous form. Cummingtonite fibres from 0.01μm in length have been found in the water supply for Minnesota municipalities.The purpose of the research work was to develop a method for asbestos fibre counts and identification in water and apply it for the enumeration of fibres in water samples collected(a) at various stations in Lake Superior at two depth: lm and at the bottom.(b) from various rivers in Lake Superior Drainage Basin.

The fight to save Uganda’s White Rhino

1964 ◽  
Vol 2 (01) ◽  
pp. 6-12
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  
West Nile ◽  
White Rhino

In the West Nile District of Uganda lives a population of white rhino—those relies of a past age, cumbrous, gentle creatures despite their huge bulk—which estimates only 10 years ago, put at 500. But poachers live in the area, too, and official counts showed that white rhino were being reduced alarmingly. By 1959, they were believed to be diminished to 300.

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