Introduction to Fucking Solidarity: Queering Concepts on/from a Post-Soviet Perspective

This article introduces some of the questions, activist and theoretical concepts featured in the special issue “Fucking solidarity: Queering Concepts on/from a post-Soviet Perspective”. It reflects on the usage and applicability of the term queer and queer concepts within post-Soviet and postsocialist spaces, by playfully using the “fucking” as critical term, to emphasize queer’s original potential to offend and disrupt within English language. It reflects on the possibilities of queer and feminist solidarities across the East/West divide that do not fall into the trap of (Western) hegemony or anti-Western sentiments. Framing queer solidarity as “working together,” it looks for the possibilities of egalitarian mutual support across national and cultural borders. Finally, it gives an overview of the texts collected in the special issue.

Sasandu Gong and Sasando Violin: Changing the Pentatonic Scales to Diatonic

This study aims to determine the main causes of changes in the scales that occur. Changes in the scale of the Sasando musical instrument are influenced by mass culture, popular culture and the development of the market industry which has led to the tendency of the people of NTT, especially the city of Kupang to lead to Western lifestyles as if starting to leave local traditions. Values, meanings and social functions of Sasandu Gong are diminished and will even disappear in future generations. The influence of colonialism is assumed to be the cause of the people of Kupang prefer something modern than local wisdom. Some articles, journals, books and even websites often talk about the implementation of local cultural values as a cultural heritage and traditional art which is the identity of the Indonesian people. The author uses the concept of Leela Gandhi and Edward Said in general to discuss efforts to undermine Western hegemony, in which the domination of Western powers over the Eastern world considers the East as weak and full of imagination. The qualitative method is used as an exploratory approach that relies on in-depth data analysis in the form of text obtained from the speakers. The research results are discussed in three (3) stages. First, from the Postcolonial perspective that the change occurred starting from the history of the entry of Christianity into East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) by the Dutch people. Second, musicologically, Sasando Violin experienced the development of scales with several variations made by Mr. Drs. Djony L. K. Theedens. Third, the physicality of the sound of the Sasas Gong changes in shifting functions, values, and meanings that existed before.

‘We read Hamlet together’

Inspired by Said’s methodology of contrapuntal reading, this article examines Edward Said’s reference to Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1604) in his memoir, Out of Place (1999) to shed light on his experiences of exile and displacement. We contend that Hamlet gives voice to Said’s incestuous desire and his inability, like that of Hamlet, to live up to the standards required of him by his dominating father who, like Hamlet’s father, is a ghostly figure that dominates Said’s life even after his death. We argue that while Said points out that Shakespeare is an extension of imperial authority, his readings of Hamlet with his mother destabilises the colonising force of Shakespeare and displaces Western hegemony over performance and interpretations.

Academics' conceptions of higher education decolonisation

The urgency for a decolonised university curriculum in South Africa, occasioned by student protests, demands interrogation of conceptions of decolonisation academic staff hold, seeing that the design and implementation of decolonised education rests largely with them. To determine the academics’ conceptions, the study adopted the interpretivist paradigm, using semi-structured interviews to solicit data from 13 purposively sampled academic staff at a South African university. Data analysis took a grounded analysis approach, where content analysed categories/themes emerged from the transcribed and coded data, not from apriori assumptions. Findings reflected both the conception of decolonisation as recentring and decentring. Findings also pointed to the ubiquitous use of the terms Africa and African(s) in defining decolonisation, conflating Afrocentric philosophy and Africanisation with decolonisation. Such findings represented the conception of decolonisation as a recentring of curriculum from the West to Africa as the centre. Other academics’ conceptions also represented a decentring of knowledge from Western hegemony without necessarily recentring it to African hegemony. Much advocacy was for achieving equality and parity between extant knowledges and hitherto marginalised local knowledges. There was also a manifest vacillation in respondents’ conception of decolonisation as they responded to the different questions, almost evincing a continuum between what can be termed a hard version and a soft version of the concept. The study recommends broader, intensive, institutional discussion of conceptual issues around curriculum decolonisation prior to implementation.issues around curriculum decolonisation prior to implementation.

Recognizing the Wealth of Knowledge in Inuit, First Nations, and Métis Communities

In this interview, Carol Rowan recounts how she moved up North to Inukjuak, because she sought to live and learn with Inuit. Following her union with Jobie Weetaluktuk in 1984, and the subsequent births of their three Inuit children, she developed pedagogical approaches informed by and rooted in Inuit ontologies and epistemologies. She discusses how written and spoken Inuktitut language holds culturally specific content. Moreover, she shares how living with land, engaging with Elders, speaking in Inuktitut, and using local materials of the place can serve to displace prevailing Western hegemony with deeper, more intimate understandings of local environments and lifestyles.

Learning Chinese: Walter A. Taylor, an American Architect in China (1923–27)

The American architect Walter A. Taylor, who was an Episcopal missionary in China from 1923 to 1927, intended to ‘desig[n] churches and other buildings that were Chinese and belonged to China’.2 Taylor found himself at a crossroads, between Christian architecture in his home country, the USA, which was experiencing a time of transition, and the birth of the Chinese Republic and its strong rejection of Western hegemony. This article investigates how Taylor tried to undertake his task, where he found inspiration and what this indigenized architecture looked like. I argue that, although his work aimed at participating in the shift towards indigenization, it bore the signs of Chinese culture as seen through the eyes of a Westerner and imperialism.

Behind the trend of Englishing the business names in Aceh, Indonesia: A postcolonial analysis

This study critically analyzes the recent trend of Englishing shop names in Aceh province. Borrowing Bhabha’s postcolonial theory, this study attempted to uncover the shop owners’ perceptions of privileging English and marginalizing local languages, even though their customers are mostly local. Data collection was by taking pictures and interviewing 20 owners of the shops, four females and 16 males. Results show that the 120 shop names in Banda Aceh and surrounding it are in English, modified English and Indonesian ordering, hybridized English and Indonesian ordering, hybridized English Acehnese language and English, English and English ordering, and mixed owner’s names and English ordering. They voluntarily mimicked the Western culture by using English names because they believe that English is marketable, modern, practical, flexible, familiar, and short for shop branding, while the local language looks not modern, unpractical, and weird. In conclusion, most shop owners in the two districts in Aceh negotiate the Western hegemony for the economic benefits.

Western Hegemony and Russia’s Eurasian Turn

According to some perspectives, it is difficult to imagine the collective West developing further relations with Russia beyond the regulatory and systemic – rather than the social – so long as their political systems remain divergent. At the same time, continued elements of Russian “Europeanness” raise fundamental questions about the future role and pre-eminence of liberal states – including Canada – in the contemporary international order, seeing as the Western-led liberal order appears to have failed to become synonymous with global order itself. As such, Russia remains a good case study for probing the extent to which a future world order must root itself in a monist frame in today's pluralistic world. This paper will seek to explore this question from a perspective rooted in the English School of international relations, with the aim of deriving conclusions regarding the liberal international order's ability to maintain its hegemonic position in global international society.