(Post)colonial Chronopolitics and Mapping the Depth of Local Time(s) in Global Literary Studies: an Itinerary to Guinea-Bissau

This article is an attempt at deconstructing the chronopolitics inherent to the (post)colonial way of thinking about the world. As it is argued, what should replace it is a vision of multiple, overlying temporalities and forms of time awareness, reaching deeper than a literary history reduced to the cycle of colonisation – decolonisation – postcolonial becoming, originating from just a single maritime event: the European exploration and conquest of the world. The essay brings forth a choice of interwoven examples illustrating the variability of local time depths, associated with a plurality of origins, narrations, forms of awareness and cultivation of cultural belonging. It shows the lack of coincidence between the dominant and non-dominant perceptions of the past in such places as the archipelagos of São Tomé and Príncipe, Maldives, the Gambia, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. Their ways of living the global time, as well as embodying significant texts (rather than simply preserving them) stretch far beyond the frameworks created by competing colonial empires, such as the Portuguese or the British one.

Introduction

The introduction establishes key arguments and questions at the heart of Muslims in Modern Europe. Being Muslim in Europe, it shows, was not simply a confessional identity or a matter of belief, but a legal category enshrined in decades of legal codes, institutionalized in the structures of state institutions, and embedded in European frameworks for political and cultural belonging. It demonstrates that Muslims in southeastern Europe were Europeans, and their histories need to be included as part of core European histories. Muslims in Europe were certainly victims of oppressive power structures, disingenuous negotiations, and discrimination. But they fought for the right to define the place of Islam in their states and societies, shaping the European project itself.

In Things we Trust: Hybridity and the Borders of Categorization in Archaeology

The aim of the article is to question essentialist con- structions of archaeological cultures with the help of Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of hybridity. Using house urns found in central and northern Europe as a case study, Bhabha’s hybridity concept is presented and discussed as an alternative to traditional archaeolog- ical concepts of cultural interpretation. Hybridity, which is also a key concept in postcolonial theory, offers an alternative key to the interpretation of cul- ture and suggests that no culture should be seen as static and homogeneous. The common understanding of house urns is therefore informed and challenged by the concept of hybridity, its alternative construction of culture and alternative ways to understand arte- facts. Inspired by the concept of hybridity, I argue that house urns deserve much broader interpretations than as mere manifestations of cultural difference or cultural belonging.

Transatlantic Climate and Gulf Stream Aesthetics

Daniel Williams, “Transatlantic Climate and Gulf Stream Aesthetics” (pp. 57–91) The Gulf Stream gained scientific prominence in the nineteenth century as a test case for theories about the dynamics of ocean currents and the equilibrium of transatlantic climate. Discourse about the current supplied descriptions, analogies, and myths that persist into the present. Triangulating oceanic, ecological, and transatlantic approaches to literary study, this essay argues that the nineteenth-century discourse of the Gulf Stream included a significant aesthetic dimension organized by a dialectic between stability and variability. First, the essay traces the Gulf Stream’s presence in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scientific writing and print culture, showing how memorable figures and vivid illustrations accentuated the risk of climate variability even as they charted an apparently stable oceanic system. Next, it considers the work of two poets separated by the ocean, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Sidney Lanier. While ostensibly using the Gulf Stream motif to reflect on geographic identity and cultural belonging, Hopkins and Lanier use formal and figurative techniques that register the threat of climate instability, offering a deeper sense of climate disquiet than the scientific materials on which they drew. Finally, the essay looks at the poetry of Derek Walcott, sketching the afterlife of the Gulf Stream discourse, extending its formal and figurative lineage, and renewing the present ecological urgency of thinking with an Earth-system process as a motif of climatic connection and obligation.

Navigating a heteronormative world: Cisgender women, transgender partnerships, sexual identity, and language

This article examines the relationship between language and sexual identity, using data collected from in-depth interviews with cisgender women who are in relationships with female-to-male transgender men. The data illustrate that many of the women have complex relationships with the labels that they use to describe their own sexual identity currently and in their past. When referring to their own sexual identities, cisgender women partners of trans men (a) are flexible with specific terms they use in order to respond to varying social contexts, (b) use specific terms to signify cultural belonging to or difference from different communities, and (c) use language as a suggestive action to others to question heteronormative assumptions. Further, this research highlights the importance of considering time in sexuality research, including the timing of the partnerships, and collecting data that reflect the individuals’ histories to analyze the connection between sexual identity and the use of language.

The Impact of Digitalization on Minority Music: Technological Change and Cultural Belonging among the Swedish-speaking Finns

This chapter looks at the impact of digitalization on minority music. According to an often-recurring optimistic vision, digitalization has led to larger cultural diversification and democratization, whereas critical voices claim that social and industrial structures have not changed radically after all. From a cultural perspective, a key question is to what extent the technological changes have affected cultural belonging and the relationships between identity and music. These questions are discussed by applying theories related to identity and digitalization on the Swedish-speaking population of Finland. Based on the material, it appears that digitalization incorporates both opportunities and limits for preserving and developing cultural practices that are connected to the ethnicity. As a complex aesthetic practice, music also offers a variety of means of negotiating identity, tradition, and locality. Thus, it would be a simplification to expect any single one-way causal connection between digitalization and culture.

Kandinsky-Clérambault syndrome: Narration and psychosis

Interpretation by means of retelling a story is an ordinary event in human life. However, under abnormal circumstances, e. g. delusions of the narrator, this process is altered and even distorted to various degrees in both qualitative and quantitative aspects. In such cases, the assumption of misrepresentation of the actual story emerges as most striking as it is in contradiction with the objective reality. In the current paper, I will focus on the discourse features in the narratives of patients with the Kandinsky-Clérambault syndrome since it provides some of the best cases that serve to support the main focus of my search, i.e. establishing to what degree we can believe the subjective interpretative narratives of mentally ill patients. This perspective, on its own, has given rise to some doubts in psychiatry as objective science. Our hypothesis is that there are clear-cut features of delusion, which can be outlined by linguistic analysis irrespective of the cultural belonging of the patient and described following the method of the omnipotence of language as a tool of semiotics. For our purpose, additional aspects of the problem will be developed in detail, such as the semantic levels in narration in general and outlined concepts of schizophrenia and delusion transparent in discourse carried out in any language.

Life as an Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Male Prisoner: Poems of Grief, Trauma, Hope, and Resistance

For Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, writing is predominantly about articulating their cultural belonging and identity. Published creative writing, which is a relatively new art form among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners, has not been used as an outlet to the same extent as other forms of art. This is, however, changing as more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rappers and story-writers emerge, and as creative writing is used as a way to express Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander empowerment and resistance against discriminatory and oppressive government policies. This article explores the use of poetry and stories written by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander male prisoners in a correctional facility located in southern New South Wales, Australia, to understand how justice is perceived by people who are (and have been) surrounded by hardships, discrimination, racism, and grief over the loss of their culture, families, and freedom.