Heterotopic Heritage in Hong Kong: Tai Kwun and Neo-Victorian Carceral Space

The prison is specifically identified by Michel Foucault in his essay, ‘Of Other Spaces’ (1967), as an exemplar of “heterotopias of deviation”. Reified in neo-Victorian production as a hegemonic space to be resisted, within which illicit desire, feminist politics, and alternate narratives, for example, flourish under harsh panoptic conditions, the prison nonetheless emerges as a counter-site to both nineteenth-century and contemporary social life. This article investigates the neo-Victorian prison museum that embodies several of Foucault’s heterotopic principles and traits from heterochronia to the dynamics of illusion, compensation/exclusion and inclusion that structure the relationship of heterotopic space to all space. Specifically, I explore the heritage site of the Central Police Station compound in Hong Kong, recently transformed into “Tai Kwun: the Centre for Heritage and the Arts”. Tai Kwun (“Big Station” in Cantonese) combines Victorian and contemporary architecture, carceral space, contemporary art, and postcolonial history to herald the transformation of Hong Kong into an international arts hub. Tai Kwun is an impressive example of neo-Victorian adaptive reuse, but its current status as a former prison, art museum, and heritage space complicates the celebratory aspects of heterotopia as counter-site. Instead, Tai Kwun’s spatial, historical, and financial arrangements emphasize the challenges that tourism, government funding, heritage, and the art industry pose for Foucault’s original definition of heterotopia and our conception of the politics of neo-Victorianism in the present.

Identity and the Language in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names

Humans have been migrating for centuries. This paper tries to delineate the formation of hybrid identities using the transnational theory of migration in a postcolonial context. Throughout the colonial and the postcolonial history, the voices of migrant experiences have been overlooked. They had accepted their position as silent spectators to their own stories without a voice, without opinion and without choice. Their Silence was being read as a form of acceptance and approval without delving much into the social, political and economic milieu of the era. This paper aims at understanding the dynamics of language and the choice of the migrant community to rise above their status as silenced subjects and oppressed people and share their experiences. It intends to explore the language differences and the search for an identity in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names which tells the story of a diasporic African teenager who tries to grapple with the host country culture while still holding to the memories of her homeland and a yearning to go back home. The paper tries to understand the search and development of a hybrid and transnational identity of the migrant.

Conclusion

This chapter pursues the following questions: (1), was the Emergency a parenthesis, a turning point or was the difference between it and the periods that bookended it more a matter of degree? And (2), how exceptional was this episode for the average Indian? It compares the Emergency to the post-independence period of democracy that preceded it, as well as to the decades following it. The chapter places India’s first experiment with authoritarianism and the regime itself in a broader historical perspective. In sum, the conclusion interprets the Emergency and positions it in India’s postcolonial history.

Archives and History in The Gambia

The Gambian archives, established in the 1960s, have rich and valuable resources for deeper study and teaching of the history of The Gambia and the subregion. The collections are representative of a substantial amount of The Gambia’s precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial history on a range of subjects, including settlement patterns, migration, family histories, folktales, myths, legends, proverbs, songs, religion, early colonial trading in The Gambia, histories of the ethnic groups and their cultural ceremonies, history of individuals, nationalists politicians, postcolonial political parties, and World War II. Although these sources can be valuable to students, international researchers, and specialists, there is a great need for their care and maintenance.

Are IFRS acceptable for a developing country with specific business culture: Sudanese accountants' attitudes

Developing countries are faced with a lot of challenges in providing high-quality financial reports based on modern accounting regulations and practices. With its specific colonial and postcolonial history of socioeconomic relations, Sudan is one of a few countries that has not adopted the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) either as a mandatory or as a voluntary financial reporting framework. Focusing on a sample of 142 respondents, the attitudes towards the obstacles and possible benefits of introducing the IFRS in Sudan expressed by accountants working in the industry sector are examined in the paper. This research study has shown that Sudanese accountants are highly aware of the needs and benefits of the IFRS adoption. The respondents predominantly agree that the IFRS adoption would increase the FDI inflow, reduce frauds and other unlawful activities, and improve the comparability, reliability and transparency of financial information, which currently is not the case. However, the research shows that accountants in Sudan also express a high degree of skepticism, given the numerous restrictions that they believe would make the introduction of the IFRS more difficult.

Africa and the Shaping of International Human Rights

Africa throughout its postcolonial history has been plagued by human rights abuses ranging from intolerance of political dissent to heinous crimes such as genocide. Some observers consequently have gone so far as to suggest that human rights are a concept alien to African cultures. The International Criminal Court (ICC)’s focus on Africa in recent years has reinforced the region’s reputation as a hotspot for human rights violations. But despite Africa’s notoriety concerning human rights, Africa and the Shaping of International Human Rights argues that the continent has been pivotal for helping shape contemporary human rights norms and practices. Challenging prevailing Eurocentric interpretations of human rights’ origins and evolution, it demonstrates that from the colonial era to the present Africa’s peoples have drawn attention to and prompted novel ways of thinking about human rights through their encounters with the world at large. Beginning with the depredations of King Leopold II in the Congo Free State in the 1880s and ending with the ICC’s current activities in Africa, it reveals how African events, personalities, groups, and nations have influenced the trajectory of human rights history in intriguing and critical ways, in the end enlarging and universalizing a major discourse of our time.

Shanguhyia, M.S. & Falola, T. (Eds.). (2018). The Palgrave Handbook of African Colonial and Postcolonial History. Palgrave Macmillan, 1362 p

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Islam and Statism: At the intersection of the State of Medina, Modern Statism and the Islamic State

Since the Arab Spring and the rise of Islamic State, it has become a topic of discussion whether there can be a state based on Islamic principles or values. This paper argues that in modern times there cannot be a state claiming to be Islamic. So the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or simply the Islamic State were all misnomers. After the Hijra in 7th century CE, the short lived State of Medina incorporated some of the Islamic principles and it too did not last long enough so as to appreciate the feasibility of a State that was Islamic. However, this paper doesn’t deny the fact that the States cannot espouse Islam as a directive principle in their state policy or declaration of Islam as the state religion. Nonetheless, it is argued that no state can be Islamic post the peace of Westphalia (1648). Therefore, in the 21st century there cannot be any actualization of any Islamic State unless the postcolonial history is normatively challenged. The so-called Islamic state that emerged in Syria & Iraq was a coalition of rebel forces and Mujahideen groups that tried to form a caliphate based on Islamic socio-politico and economic principles, however a futile attempt. For any new Islamic State or a caliphate to emerge, the notion of Westphalian demarcation of boundaries stands as the greatest challenge against it.