There Will Be Trouble

It is perhaps more relevant now than ever before to prepare the ground for a pedagogical discussion on theater curation. Theater festivals have recently become prominent in India. It is true that India has cherished a ubiquitous tradition of festivals—utsavs and mahotsavs—for hundreds of years. Take, for example, the staging of Kudiyattam at ancient Sanskrit koothambalams, which would last several weeks in a festival atmosphere; the touring circuit of Assam mobile theater, which has created festival-like events since the 1950s; or the Marathi (political) theater, which has an active culture of more than a century of traveling and festival-like events. These are not the kind of festivals I am interested in for the purpose of this article—they have a “traditional” logic built into their purpose—but the kind that have emerged along secular lines in post-independent and urban India. These “new” theater festivals are primarily sponsored by the state, are supported by public funds at the regional and national level, and are therefore open to public participation and scrutiny. These festivals, wherever they are held, commonly include a multilingual and multicultural itinerary of plays. The intent behind the selection is largely driven by the post-colonial project, which is to “put together” an idea of modern India by including plays that have a critical outlook—these could be contemporary scripts, modern adaptations of classical plays, and works that explore contemporary vocabularies of performance (body-based, post-dramatic, experimental, etc.). Currently, India has over a dozen of these new theater festivals of varying scale; each running annually, each claiming to show the best of contemporary theater. In the absence of a touring circuit, these festivals provide artists with the opportunity to travel, to seek new audiences, to mingle with peers and masters, to be written about, and to woo award committees. Festivals are now doing for theater what exhibitions have done for visual art; they are highly visible events that offer immense resources and the promise of further influence. Festivals seem to bestow legitimacy on artistic work of a kind not seen before.

Redefining Nationhood and Nationality through Historiographic Metafiction in the Shadow Lines

Purpose: Postmodernism is a general movement that developed in the late 20th century across the arts, philosophy, art, architecture, and criticism, marking a disappearance from modernism. The term has been more often used to describe a historical age which followed after modernity. Postmodernism is a period of uprising which refers to ups and downs in each walk of life and the different disciplines of knowledge be it literary work, philosophy, or science. Postmodern literature revokes some modern literary methods by transforming them. Historiographic Metafiction is a contradictory term that consists of two opposite categories such as history and metafiction. It is having dual representations because such writings reflect the reality as well as fictional position. An attempt is made by the Post-colonial Indian English writers to liberate Indian English literature from the foreign bondage. Historical events such as agitations, migration, movements, refugees, colonial hegemony; social-economic and cultural problems like encounter of the east-west, caste, and class became the concerns of the writers. Design/Methodology/Approach: This paper is prepared by making a study of Primary source and accumulating secondary data from educational websites and written publications. This qualitative research is carried out by studying and interpreting the existing knowledge on the subject. The paper tries to analyze the historiographic metafictional features as depicted in The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh. Findings/Result: After reviewing many articles, books and thesis it has been found that the paper aims to study Amitav Ghosh's notions like ‟ Nationhood and National distinctiveness in "The Shadow Lines” as a reminiscence novel, highlights a few historical happenings like the Second World War, the Swadeshi movement, and the Partition of India in 1947 and communal uprisings in Bangladesh and India. The ardent nationalism upheld by the protagonist that is the narrator’s grandmother is questioned and re-analysed. Ghosh searches for appropriateness of traditional identity such as nation and nationalism. Originality/Value: This paper makes a study of the major character Thamma with special reference to her concerns of Nationhood and Nationality. The identity of Thamma in the novel is given prominence being a woman she stands for her thoughts and identifies her as an individual who faced tragedy but still who had the courage to raise her voice till the end. Paper Type: Analytical Research paper.

Civilizational mnemonics and the longue durée: The Bulgarian case

Constructivist assumptions have dominated the field of memory studies, producing an avalanche of case studies focusing on the instrumental and expedient factors shaping memory politics. However, this constructivist bias has also yielded new blind spots. For one, it tends to privilege “events” and “contingencies” over the longue durée of a particular memory configuration. Two, it remains caught in a binary juxtaposition with some states adopting globally circulating mnemonic scripts, signaling universal aspirations, while other states pursue nation-centric approaches. To overcome these blind spots (and binaries), we propose two interrelated conceptual moves: first, we are taking the importance of enduring memory figurations into consideration. Second, we expand the nation-state focus by introducing the notion of “civilizational mnemonics,” which does not replace national memories, but frequently underwrites them. Bulgarian memory politics, our test case, is part of a complex nexus of imperial legacies and post-colonial discourses. Bulgaria has been a middle ground, accommodating competing imperial projects—Ottoman, Russian, and Western. These intersections allow us to draw general inferences about mnemonic tropes and their enduring salience.

Placing automobility in postcolonial cities: Towards an ontology of a displaced past

The mobility turn offers a rich terrain for research to investigate the exercise of politics and power in movement through attention to associated meanings and practices. Despite this, the ontologies that can anchor this research within a historical imagination remains largely uncharted. Happily for us, coming from the opposite direction history, and especially the field of transport history, has grappled with mobilizing history in the face of the mobility turn. Several scholars have offered “usable past” as a mode of mobilizing mobility cultures of the past to inform policy actors about future choices. But is the ontology of a usable past appropriate for countries enmeshed within pre/post/colonial histories of displacement in their society and culture? Employing a case of automobilization in the city of Bengaluru in India, this paper sketches an exposition of the “displaced past” in sedimented residues that continues to live and contest the enterprise of automobility.

A Suitable Paradigm: the Indian Founding and the world

What is the relevance of the Indian case for South Africa? And what should South Africans, and the rest of the world, make of the claim in Madhav Khosla’s India’s Founding Moment that we should recognize India as ‘the’ paradigm case for modern constitutional democracy? The constitutional projects of India and South Africa are naturally connected, but Khosla’s book helps to bring out what is perhaps the most important of the connections. Both are founded on an insistently democratic constitutionalism, in places where most inhabitants had long been told they were not suited or ready for democracy. Both display the conviction that boldly giving the vote to all, in these circumstances, is a powerful way to construct a democracy. This idea is crucial for understanding many aspects of both constitutions. This makes India a natural paradigm case for South Africa and many others. The stronger claim, that it is ‘the’ paradigm case and should succeed the United States to this status, can become more complicated once one tests it out globally (like the US claim). Finland and Ireland are especially strong and earlier examples of what Khosla sees as ground-breaking in India. Latin America’s somewhat different post-colonial trajectory makes India a more imperfect paradigm there. But that said, treating India and its founding as paradigmatic may well be the single best step to take for a more balanced view of the constitutional world, and this book’s elegant erudition makes it a real scholarly pleasure to do so.

Legacies and pitfalls amongst the African Evangelicals: A Kenyan experience from a historical perspective

The research study sets out to explore the contribution of the African Evangelicals in both the colonial and post-colonial Kenya to the social lives of the nation. Can’t it be viewed as a positive social influence or an ecclesiastical pitfall? In utilising a socio-historical design, it poses the question: how did the Evangelical European Missionaries demonstrate their theological and social influences in Kenya, and how did the post-missionary Evangelical-leaning leaderships play out? And was Muthirigu Dance an extremist reaction against the rigidity of the Evangelicals? Methodologically, this article will attempt to explore the Evangelical European Missionary Christianity, especially the Church Missionary Society that entered Central Kenya in the early 1900s, and assess the way in which they handled indigenous cultures of the local Africans. It has also attempted to critically explore their social influences in both colonial and post-colonial Kenya (1895–2021). The CMS has been given more emphasis in this article as an Evangelical society so as to help in bringing out the specific Evangelical activities in the Kirinyaga County of Kenya. Overall, the article has endeavoured to hypothesise that Eurocentrism was not the Evangelical problem, as there were diverse European missionaries, such as the High Anglican Church, the Roman Catholic and the Lutherans who were non-Evangelicals, and who were not necessarily dogmatic and rigid.Contribution: This study adhered to the HTS journal’s vision and scope by its focus on the histories of the Evangelical European Missionaries of the 19th and 20th centuries, their interactions with the local religio-cultures, and how it later played out amongst the Africans.

EN TORNO AL PANHISPANISMO Y LOS PANHISPANISMO(S) EN RELACIÓN CON SU RELEVANCIA Y COMPLEJIDAD TERMINOLÓGICA

Heredero de su historia (pos)colonial, el término panhispanismo requiere una compleja interpretación. Su trascendencia glotopolítica supone planteamientos ideológicos y lingüísticos de naturaleza semiótica que abordamos en este artículo. Hacemos un recorrido histórico del movimiento Panhispanismo desde sus orígenes hasta hoy y acotamos su aplicación al ámbito lingüístico otorgándole tres dimensiones, como actitud, variedad y rasgo compartido. En un marco aplicado a la enseñanza-aprendizaje de E-LE/L2, los panhispanismos léxicos son especialmente rentables. Presentamos los datos de su estudio y marcación como resultado del proyecto GEOLEXI en los cinco primeros temas de los inventarios de las Nociones específicas del PCIC. Abstract: Heir to its (post-)colonial history, the term panhispanism requires a complex interpretation. Its glotopolitical significance supposes ideological and linguistic approaches of a semiotic nature that we address in this article. We take a historical tour of the Panhispanism movement from its origins to the present time and narrow down its application to the linguistic field by giving it three dimensions, such as attitude, variety and shared trait. In a framework applied to the teaching-learning of E-LE/L2, lexical panhispanisms are especially profitable. We present the data of its study and marking as a result of the GEOLEXI project in the first five subjects of the inventories of the specific PCIC notions.

The inheritance of colonial penological practices in the postcolonial and apartheid periods: A histography of South Africa

Colonialism has had an influence on many sectors across the board in South Africa including the prison system among others. Its impact could be seen in the way prisoners were treated during the post-colonial era and apartheid era. This paper seeks to demonstrate the relationship between the colonial, post-colonial and apartheid penological practices by examining the treatment of prisoners during the said periods. Examination of this relationship may be useful in understanding what really informed the promulgation of racist policies during the post-colonial period and apartheid period. This paper contends that the legislation that was promulgated during the post-colonial and apartheid periods, which were legislative instruments on how prisoners were treated, were in fact a formalization and continuation of what had already being practiced during the colonial era. The following themes are central to this discourse: The colonial period between the 1840s and 1909; The post-colonial period between 1910 and 1948 and; The National Party era (apartheid era): 1948 – 1993.

Entangled political histories of twentieth-century West Africa: The case of Guinean exile networks

Following independence in 1958, hundreds of Guinean soldiers, students, and politicians fled their home country in order to build an opposition to President Sékou Touré in exile. This article examines how these exiles built regional and global networks in order to effect political change. In turn, West African states sought to manage exiles in order to apply political pressure on regional rivals. Despite their liminality in a region increasingly dominated by national politics and international organizations, exiles were at the centre of political contestations surrounding citizenship, sovereignty, and human rights that emerged in the three decades following decolonization. Their history underscores the importance of regional frameworks in shaping the post-colonial order in West Africa.

œuvre condéenne pour la jeunesse : entre échec littéraire et mises en scène de l’échec

Le présent article s’interroge sur la place de la littérature de jeunesse de Maryse Condé au sein de sa bibliographie générale, et dans la réception critique. La relative marginalisation de ces œuvres semble due à des facteurs spécifiques au secteur éditorial dans son ensemble –, et à d’autres facteurs propres à littérature francophone féminine, comme le manque de spécialistes dans le domaine et le manque d’instances de légitimation. Dans ce même corpus destiné, Maryse Condé déploie le plus souvent une écriture de l’échec, ce qui pourrait être interprété comme un écho de la faible visibilité institutionnelle des œuvres concernées. Quoi qu’il en soit, ces échecs dans la fiction sont certainement à mettre sur le compte des intentions réalistes d’un auteur qui ne cesse de renvoyer à la dureté d’un monde post-colonial auquel ses lecteurs seront ainsi préparés.