Place Attachment and Alienation from Place: Cultural Displacement in Gentrifying Ethnic Enclaves

Commercial gentrification often accompanies residential gentrification. Both processes contribute to the real or perceived threat of displacement for longtime residents of ethnic enclaves experiencing gentrification. Cultural displacement is a related concern among residents who may experience a declining sense of ownership, control, or belonging as newer residents and commercial establishments move into their communities. Yet, other longtime residents experience an increased sense of safety as their neighborhoods gentrify and they may appreciate the new amenities gentrification brings. I highlight the symbolic significance of local businesses in gentrifying neighborhoods and identify two different patterns of longtime residents experiencing their communities as something alien to them—a phenomenon I call alienation from place. Alienation from place may be a product of social and cultural displacement or may be alleviated by changes to a neighborhood accompanying gentrification processes, a posteriori alienation from place and a priori alienation from place, respectively.

Edward Said’s Memoir Out of Place: Postcolonial Tenets, Dissonant Voices, and Divided Loyalties

Edward Said’s Out of Place (1999), a memoir written after his diagnosis with leukemia in 1991, was begun in 1994 to document his sense of cultural displacement and imminent death. This article examines the divided loyalties and dissonant voices Said vents in this book through the lens of cultural theories. It argues that such a conflicting vision can provide a proper context for understanding Said’s contributions to cultural studies and literary theory via the construction of the other, the out of place, at the levels of language, religion, environment, and homeland. Said presents himself as a postcolonial subject par excellence with divided loyalties and “unhomely” feelings. He uses a confessional mode to convey a constant sense of exile and identity crisis. Said’s life negotiated the postcolonial parlance he preached in his academic life, which offers a unique case on the relationship between theory and practice. The memoir emerges not only as an autobiographical text but equally as a contribution to literary theory and overlapping postcolonial discourses. Thus, this autobiographical memoir is useful for the literature classroom due to its theoretical value as well as non-fictional import.

The Theme of Diaspora in the Novel of Jhumpa Lahiri

The paper on the Indian Diaspora, discussion of multiculturalism in relation to the theme of alienation, identity and multiculturalism in the novel of Jhumpa Lahiri. The term of “Diaspora” is used to refer such people or population to leave their own homeland and settled down to another place which is so far from their own traditional homeland. Jhumpa Lahiri writes about Diaspora and alienation and between the memory of homeland and the new land, the immigrants are in a permanent mental and emotional war between the myth and customs of the old world and; freedom of the new one. In her novel, “The Namesake “(2004), she writes about the generation gap between immigrants, conflict of east-west beliefs nostalgia, cultural displacement loss of identity, alienation and despair.

Cultural Displacement and Palliative Measures: An Exploration of Dramatic Literature

ABSTRACT One of the realities and experiences of contemporary African people is the continual cultural conflict and eventual displacement of their culture in the process of struggling to find a balance in getting the best of modern life or experience without losing the indigenous legacies. This study aims at examining symbolic representation of cultural conflict as well as exploring the possibility of coexistence of the culture of both the coloniser and the colonised using Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman. The study concludes that in order to minimise conflicts the respect for other people’s culture is imperative. However, African people must put their culture first above any other conflicting culture, re-embrace the best Yoruba cultural heritage, and imbibe the best of Western culture to make the society a better place.

Finding the roots of neo-traditionalist populism in Poland: ‘Cultural displacement’ and European integration

This article investigates the roots of populism in Poland in its current traditionalist-conservative fashion. In contrast with the liberal hegemony and, more specifically, with its ‘true European values’, right-wing populists in Poland claim to speak in the name of those people who refuse this external system of values and who experienced a ‘cultural displacement’. The article examines whether the consensual process of European Union (EU) integration has created room for a populist moment. Particular emphasis is given to the importance of culture in the construction of an alternative neo-traditionalist project. While the post-structuralist literature on populism has mostly focused on Western Europe and socio-economic demands, the concept of neo-traditionalism reveals the confrontation between two different blocs also in Central-Eastern Europe. The author analyses the neo-traditionalist discourse in Poland, most notably produced by the conservative party Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS), as a counter-hegemonic project. Opposing mainstream EU values, PiS appealed to ‘ordinary Poles’ and adopted a traditionalist-conservative narrative. The article will show how the neglect of a neo-traditionalist world view by the European elite and the threat to identity posed by liberal and individualistic values have been exploited by right-wing populists to forge a new common sense.

Semiotics of Clothes in Postcolonial Literature

The present study intends to examine the link between clothes and cultural identities in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Hema and Kaushik” (2008). It will argue that Lahiri explores her protagonists’ cultural displacement through their items of clothing. We want to suggest that the protagonists’ clothes are employed in each narrative as signifiers for the characters’ cultural identities. The study will further show that each item of clothing could be loaded with the ideological signification of two separate cultures. In other words, it aims to demonstrate how ideology imposes its values, beliefs, and consequently its dominance through the dress codes each defines for its subjects. Moreover, it intends to suggest that the link between clothing and identity is most visible and intense in the case of female immigrant characters rather than men. Drawing on Luptan’s structure of the Cinderella line, we will explore Lahiri’s protagonists’ cultural transformation from simple ethnic girls to stylish American ladies through their items of clothing. The study will conclude that the “Cinderella line” does not work in Lahiri’s realistic stories the way it does in fairy tales and romance fiction.

Conflict Between Tradition and Modernity in Manju Kapur’s ‘A Married Woman’

‘A Married Woman’ is a genuine work of Manju Kapur, which tells the story of honest love, set at a time of political and religious upheaval, narrated with an intelligence for anyone who has known life's responsibilities. It shows a sincere feminine confession about her personality cult in the personal allegory of traditional marriage. Manju Kapur has depicted her women characters in the novel as they are leading their life in the patriarchal setup of the society. Manju Kapur has narrated frankly the emergence of not just an essential Indian sensibility but the depiction of cultural displacement in the culture where individualism and protest have often remained separate ideas and marriage and the woman's role at home is a central focus. What happens when the old customs lose their power and the woman no longer believes her life should be determined in this narrow fashion is the underlying theme of Manju Kapur' s absorbing second novel, A Married Woman, in which her protagonist, Astha Vadera, undergoes profound changes against the backdrop of an India that is also evolving. This research paper attempts to show the shift in values and how women have started acknowledging themselves as the co-equals of man.

The Vision Expands—Isaiah 40–66

“THE VISION OF ISAIAH” (Isa 1:1) expands vastly in these chapters, which date from a period some two centuries after Isaiah of Jerusalem. Thus, they show with striking clarity how a given prophetic tradition continued to command attention among new generations of hearers and to develop in new situations—specifically, in the last years of the Babylonian exile (Isa 40–55) and in postexilic Jerusalem (Isa 56–66). These chapters merit heightened attention even now, because they focus on an experience that is tragically common in our time: geographical and cultural displacement on a massive scale. They deal also with the subsequent difficulties of rebuilding a culture and sustaining faith. Accordingly, these chapters are the first part of the Bible to offer a developed theological response to a particular spiritual despair: that God has turned away or is impotent. Less acutely, they address spiritual disappointment: that God’s promises seem not to have been fulfilled for the present generation. A prominent theme of this prophetic response is the nature of vocation—not just individual vocation but also the corporate vocation of a people to serve YHWH....

Nostalgic Gangsters and the Mafia Filone

This chapter examines a filone of mafia films that proliferated in Italy between 1972 and 1974, and analyses how they inherit, recycle and perpetuate a number of pre-existing popular myths that frame the mafia as a repository for elegiac nostalgia. Transatlantic myths that crystallised in The Godfather are themselves shown to emerge from traditions of representation and stereotyping, in which the mafia film has always acted as a chronicle of cultural displacement. The Italian mafia film, meanwhile, is shown to be a component part of a broader tendency to stereotype the 'backward' southern regions of Italy as a window into the nation's history and a forum for taking stock of the contemporary moment in relation to a benighted past. The mafia filone of 1972-1974 is thereby seen to be an illuminating document of production decisions, marketing ploys and ruminations on the state of contemporary Italy.