Multicultural Belonging and a Potent Silence

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harrod J. Suarez
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
The Will ◽  
Liberal Multiculturalism ◽  
The Aesthetic

The fourth chapter produces readings of Carlos Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart and Brian Ascalon Roley’s American Son. Bulosan’s novel explores the tensions between the aesthetic and political through the question of gender as well as the reverse—strategies through which the narrator seeks national and transnational belonging. This discussion frames the analysis of American Son, which may be read as a revision of the terms of national belonging through the liberal multiculturalism of Los Angeles in the 1990s. But it is a maternal figure whose silence emerges as the novel’s most potent force, deployed as an act that thwarts not just the conclusion to a coming-of-age tale, but also and especially the will to speech and visibility that often structures ethnic identity politics.

On the Will of the People: Notes on the Political “Theory” of Populism

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claus Offe
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
The Political ◽  
The People ◽  
National People ◽  
The Will

The “will of the (national) people” is the ubiquitously invoked reference unit of populist politics. The essay tries to demystify the notion that such will can be conceived of as a unique and unified substance deriving from collective ethnic identity. Arguably, all political theory is concerned with arguing for ways by which citizens can make e pluribus unum—for example, by coming to agree on procedures and institutions by which conflicts of interest and ideas can be settled according to standards of fairness. It is argued that populists in their political rhetoric and practice typically try to circumvent the burden of such argument and proof. Instead, they appeal to the notion of some preexisting existential unity of the people’s will, which they can redeem only through practices of repression and exclusion.

Transcending the Sublime: Arctic Creolisation in the Works of Isaac Julien and John Akomfrah

Films on Ice ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helga Hlaðgerður Lúthersdóttir
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
White Male ◽  
Art Installation ◽  
The North ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Art Works ◽  
Colonial Legacies ◽  
Contemporary Film ◽  
The Aesthetic

This chapter examines the aesthetic strategies and political impetus of contemporary film artists who challenge the notion of an Arctic explorer as a heroic white male, striding forth on his own to conquer the white sublime. Focusing on Isaac Julien’s video and art installation True North (2004) and John Akomfrah’s The Nine Muses (2010). Luthersdottir foregrounds the myriad ways in which these films and art works partake in a creolisation of the white Arctic. The chapter thereby foregrounds an overlooked and complementary historical and cinematic record, which is explicit about the significance of identity politics and colonial legacies in the north, rather than reifying established representational norms.

Empathy TV

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alisha Gaines
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Reality Television ◽  
Trade Books ◽  
Racial Reconciliation ◽  
Reality Show ◽  
Racial Impersonation ◽  
Middle Class Families ◽  
The U.S

The fourth chapter takes on the televisual rescripting of Sprigle, Griffin, and Halsell with a reading of the FX cable series, Black.White., a 2006 reality television show where two middle class families—one black and one white—“switched” races to experience racial difference. This chapter attends to how Black.White. moves the genealogy of empathetic racial impersonation from the theatrical stage, newspaper, trade books, and film to the visual logics of television. This shift reveals an investment in empathetic racial impersonation at a moment dominated by the changing discourses about race and race relations in the 21st century. Importantly, this chapter expands discussions of racial experimentation beyond the U.S. South. Set in Los Angeles, this “reality” show spuriously reinscribes the black/white binary even though Los Angeles has long been recognized as a multiracial city. By focusing on the fraught relationship between the two families, this chapter contends that Black.White. dramatically exposes the limits of empathetic racial experimentation as a tool of racial reconciliation. Ultimately, it evidences an empathetic failure in the cross-racial promise supposedly demonstrated by this seemingly new, but ultimately decades old, impersonation experiment. It also considers the histories and politics of whiteface.

The Moral Aesthetics of Compulsory Ultrasound Viewing and the Theological Future of Abortion

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Hovey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Us States ◽  
Moral Response ◽  
Abortion Debate ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Aesthetic

By law, women seeking abortions in some US states must undergo compulsory ultrasound viewing. This article examines the moral significance of this practice, especially as understood by pro-life religious groups, in light of Foucault’s recently published lectures on ‘The Will to Know’ and the place of the aesthetic. How does the larger abortion-debate strategy of ‘showing’ and ‘seeing’ images—whether of living or dead fetuses—work as an aesthetic form of argument that intends to evoke a moral response in the absence of reason-giving? The article draws on recent, parallel debates regarding disgust before concluding with a theological response to the priority of will over knowledge and vision over action as commentary on the future of abortion debate and law, especially in the United States.

Sexual and Aesthetic Reproduction in

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-162
Author(s):  
Paul Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Reproduction ◽  
Will To Live ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Aesthetic

Malone's narratives are investigated through their relation to Schiller's and Schopenhauer's championing of aesthetic contemplation. Although Beckett follows Schopenhauer in his condemnation of the will-to-live, particularly as represented by procreation, it is argued that the narratives of Malone reveal an inability to create pure, disinterested, aesthetic objects. The paradigms of fictional creation adopted by Malone are infected by modes proper to sexual reproduction and therefore fail to release Malone from time and the will. It is argued that the reproductive motifs within demonstrate Beckett's subtle rejection of the aesthetic optimism of Schopenhauer and Schiller.

Racial Recalibration

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-309
Author(s):  
Margaret Rhee
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
New Media ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Racial Formation ◽  
Emergent Technologies ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
Racial Knowledge ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Artistic Career

Widely recognized as the first video artist, Nam June Paik’s artistic career from the 1960s onwards is often understood through his pioneering appropriation of technological developments such as the television and video. Paik foresaw not only the aesthetic potential of video, but also other emerging technologies, such as robotics. While his work in robotic art is less commonly analyzed, it sheds significant light on his position not only as a foremost artist of new media but also on discussions concerning his ethnic identity. This essay demonstrates how, in the 1964 creation of robot K-456 and tv Bra for Living Sculpture, the artist deployed the strategy of racial recalibration—a racial formation that occurs through aesthetic tinkering, hacking, and recreating with emergent technologies that re-wires racial knowledge of the Asian American as robot.

Wrestling with “Half Gods”: Biblical Discourse in Mary Austin’s The Ford

2018 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 653-668
Author(s):  
John Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Water Transfer ◽  
Owens Valley ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
And Gender

Mary Austin’s novel The Ford recounts the water transfer from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles in the early twentieth century. Previous critical analysis of the text has focused on its vision of regional development and its concern with gender roles, while largely ignoring the novel’s extensive use of biblical narratives and symbolism. In this article I examine Austin’s use of these narratives, in particular the story of Jacob’s wrestling with God, in order to better understand the racial and gender diversity that complicates the protagonist’s coming of age.

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