Heterotopic and Neo-Victorian Affinities: Introducing the Special Issue on Neo-Victorian Heterotopias

The introduction to this special issue on Neo-Victorian Heterotopias investigates the affinities between the spaces designated by Michel Foucault’s ambivalent and protean concept of ‘heterotopia’ and the similarly equivocal, shifting, and adaptable cultural phenomenon of ‘neo-Victorianism’. In both cases, cultural spaces and/or artefacts prove deeply intertwined with chronicity, at once juxtaposing and blending different temporal moments, past and present. Socially produced sites of distinct emplacement are exposed not just as culturally and historically contingent constructs, but simultaneously enable forms of resistance to the prevailing ideologies that call them into being. The fertile exercise of considering heterotopias and neo-Victorianism in conjunction opens up new explorations of the Long Nineteenth Century and its impact on today’s cultural imaginary, memory and identity politics, contestations of systemic historical iniquities, and engagements with forms of difference, non-normativity, and Otherness.

EL DISCURSO SUBVERSIVO DE PATRICIA ESTEBAN ERLÉS EN EL CONTEXTO DE LO FANTÁSTICO FEMINISTA

La poética fantástica de Patricia Esteban Erlés (Zaragoza, 1972) constituye una contestación al ideario conservador asumido por nuestro imaginario cultural. Así lo demuestran características relativas a la selección y el tratamiento de los personajes, la temática, la construcción y la significación del espacio narrativo, el modo de abordar la monstruosidad derivada de la realidad sexista, las propuestas formales y la apuesta por el hibridismo genérico. Su análisis estará imbricado con reflexiones sobre la consolidación de esta línea de lo fantástico feminista en las últimas décadas en el ámbito de la narrativa en español y sobre la posible existencia de un canon de autoras, tanto en español como en otras lenguas, que haya podido influir en esa fragua de lo fantástico escrito por mujeres con una clara perspectiva política, en la que lo no mimético se convierte en una herramienta ideológica de denuncia social y genérica. Abstract: Born Zaragoza, 1972, Patricia Esteban Erlés’s poetics of fantastic represents a contestation to the conservative ideology assumed by our cultural imaginary. This is demonstrated by some characteristics related to the selection and treatment of characters, the subject, the construction and the signification of the narrative space, the approach to monstrosity as derived from sexist reality, the formal proposals and the inclination towards generic hybridism. Its analysis will be interweaved with reflections on the consolidation of this trend of the feminist fantastic in the last decades in the Spanish narrative panorama and the possible existence of a female writers canon, both in Spanish and other languages, that could have influenced the forging of the fantastic written by women with a clear political perspective in which non-mimetic genres have become an ideological tool for gender and social denunciation.

Cultural and geological heritage in time elapsed during historical Kingdoms in Yogyakarta Special Region, Indonesia

Yogyakarta, Indonesia is known for its kingdom government system for all its living history; since 8-10th century Mataram Hindu-Buddhist temples to the present Muslim Ngayogyokarto Hadiningrat. Those stretch of history resulted in many artefacts and chronicles. A cultural imaginary line that linking Merapi Volcano in the north and the Indian Ocean in the south through the Yogyakarta Palace in the middle has a sacral geo-cultural heritage, explaining a prosperity gentle volcanic town, a beautiful scheme of the open panoramic features with several temples standing on the plain and mountainous landscapes in between the rest of earthquakes and the volcanic eruptions. Many temples were partly buried under volcanic materials, and some others show evidence of being shaken several times by earthquakes. Boulders of volcanic materials varying in size and shapes are present in the plain of Yogyakarta, near Cangkiringan, Ngemplak and Ngaglik. Landslides exposed many geological features, such as faults, rock formation and stratigraphy, and some unstable slopes. Cultural and geological heritages at Yogyakarta Region were created over the time.

Inês de Castro on Youtube

Since the fourteenth century, when Inês de Castro was laid to rest in her magnificent tomb in the Monastery of Alcobaça, artists have told the tragic story of the Galician noblewoman who was assassinated for political reasons and became Queen of Portugal after her death. Inês embodies beauty, love, innocence, and saudade, and figures prominently in the lusophone cultural imaginary. Plays, novels, poetry and feature films offer representations of the Dead Queen that range from tragic and defiant to sentimental and trite. In new media, the moving im- ages that currently vie with iconic figurations of the legendary colo de garça are YouTube videos about the love of Inês and Pedro. Responding to homework assignments in Portuguese history or literature courses, primary and secondary school students engage with the love story and create new narratives – plays, animation, and videos – that attract thousands of viewers. In this paper, I consider a selection of YouTube videos made by Portuguese and Brazilian students that tell the familiar love story in a unique way, taking varying degrees of poetic license with their sources, the medieval period and the medieval woman. Some are original and irreverent while others simply glorify dead poets. Through a feminist lens, I analyze the mediated embodiment of Inês de Castro and interrogate the inflexible and hierarchical binary dualisms of man/woman, masculine/feminine, and public/private to posit a fluid conception of historical adaptation and the gendered representation of iconic figures. Image Credit: Still of Encenação D. Pedro e D. Inês

Un homme est mort. Escritura fílmica de la Historia a través del cine de intervención social

El fascinante legado del cineasta René Vautier (1928-2015) choca con la escasez de referencias académicas a su obra, a pesar de su inmenso valor histórico. Vautier es un exponente clave para ilustrar las fisuras del paradigma historiográfico actual, que excluye voces y opiniones cuyo rol es instrumental para reescribir la Historia. Llevó siempre al límite su pasión por la realidad y la verdad histórica, lo que derivó en una interminable lista de problemas institucionales. A través del caso de estudio del impacto social y artístico de su documental Un homme est mort, esta investigación indaga en las razones por las que hay artistas que han sido irrelevantes para la academia francesa, al mismo tiempo que los poderes establecidos perseguían su obra, a través de peligrosas medidas que atacaban directamente a la libertad de expresión, como restricciones legales, censura o recortes económicos. Estas políticas restrictivas derivaron en un empeoramiento sustancial de las condiciones de rodaje, en la autocensura y, al quedar fuera del circuito de exhibición oficial, redujeron el impacto potencial en las audiencias. Además, al no haber existido oficialmente, estas películas no optan de manera automática a los programas de conservación pública. En definitiva, se produjo una alteración del marco conceptual que debería haberse generado a largo plazo en las relaciones entre arte y sociedad, entregándonos un imaginario cultural construido de espaldas a una parte esencial de la Historia (del arte). The captivating artistic legacy of René Vautier (1928-2015) clashes with the lack of research on the impact of his extraordinary career, given the notable value of his work. Vautier is a key example that illustrates the cracks in the schemas of traditional historiography, unable to recognise the plurality of voices and opinions that should be taken into account to rewrite History. The taste for reality and historical truth so taken to the extreme in his films resulted in a large list of institutional problems. Through the analysis of the social and artistic impact of one of his very first films, Un homme est mort, we will understand why some artists were considered secondary or irrelevant by the French academia. They were also pursued by the Establishment with extremely dangerous measures in regard to freedom of expression such as legal constraints, censorship or financial cuts. These restrictive policies first led to lower quality filming material, smaller crews, fewer projects or self-censorship; but it also implied an alternative exhibition circuit which diminished the scope of audiences. As they never existed officially, these films do not benefit from public conservation programs automatically. In addition, it altered the conceptual leap with long-term implications for art and society since our common cultural imaginary has been built without a significant piece of art history.

Old Media, New Gigs: The Discursive Construction of the Gig Economy in Australian News Media

This article analyses the representation of the gig economy in three Australian newspapers from 2014 to 2019. ‘Gig work’ is defined as short term, contract or freelance employment and is seen by many social institutions as the future of work. Drawing on a corpus of 426 articles, Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory is used to examine the construction of the ‘gig economy’ in the cultural imaginary. Five key elements emerge, including: demographics of workers; working conditions; workers’ rights; resistance and regulation; and change and disruption. Despite multiple competing discourses evident across the newspapers, each constructs the gig economy as an inexorable phase in the evolution of the relationship between capital and the worker. The article critically analyses the construction of the discourse, including the difficulties of regulating gig economy platforms and the narrative of inevitability used to describe changes to work and life brought about by technology.

The Lutheran Imaginary That Underpins Social Democracy

Scandinavian social democracy is increasingly upheld as an alternative that could reform capitalism. The Nordic Model produces income equality, low-conflict politics, and happy people. When half of young Americans express that they would prefer “socialism,” they generally mean to live in a society that provides for its citizens as the Nordics do. Such aspirations are complicated by how social democracy can be viewed as a secularized form of Lutheranism, the Protestant creed that the Nordic region embraced in the 16th century. Lutheran norms and values carried into the modern era and made possible social democracy's two distinguishing features: fascist corporatism and socialist redistribution. A strong state facilitates statist individualism, which empowers individuals vis-à-vis employers, parents, and spouses. The outcome could be cross-culturally salient, as it brings people closer to our species' fission-fusion baseline. Yet in the modern environment, only Nordics seem to have a cultural imaginary that makes compelling the politics that drive such high levels of both productivity and egalitarianism. The region's storytelling reflects this Lutheran past and is used to negotiate modern adaptations. A better understanding of social democracy could help prevent that demands for “socialism” motivate a turn to actual socialism.

Leaving the group: Bologna as an urban mythscape for 1990s Italian youth

Since the end of the 1970s, Bologna has represented an ‘urban mythscape’ for left-wing subcultural youth in the Italian cultural imaginary. This article examines representations of spaces of encounter and conflict for young people in Bologna in Silvia Ballestra’s La guerra degli Antò (1992) and Enrico Brizzi’s Jack Frusciante è uscito dal gruppo (1994). Set in the 1990s, these novels mark a significant change in Bologna’s urban mythscape, in that they do not refer back to the 1970s like the majority of cultural representations of youth set in Bologna. The protagonists’ desire to ‘leave society’ and withdraw into private spaces reflects an evolution in representations of Italian subcultural youth, which mirrors the emergence of Italian ‘Generation X’ and their experience of social and political commitment.

The International Advertising Framework in the Covid-19 CrisisCase Study in Germany, Italy, Spain and United Kingdom

Transculturation describes the phenomenon of merging and converging cultures. Quantifying culture in advertising helps to define the relevant emotional palette a brand can use with a particular audience, as emotions are often conveyed by culture and drive engagement, brand recall and purchase intent. What is more, International Advertising strives for being more cost efficient by merging cultures despite if their own idiosyncrasies. Framed in the Worldwide COVID-19 crisis and the divergent country responses to it, we used the Hofstede method to affirm that the only way to drive engagement, brand recall and purchase intent in International Advertising is plotting countries with similar cultural imaginary