Identity Politics Past and Present

This new book in Critical Discourse Studies uses detailed and systematic analysis of the discursive construction of Austrian identities across a period of 20 years – from 1995 to 2015 – to trace the re-emergence of nationalism in the media, popular culture and politics, and the normalization of far-right nativist ideologies and attitudes. Contradictory and intertwined tendencies towards re-nationalization and trans-nationalization have always framed debates about European identities, but during the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015, the debates became polarized. During the COVID-19 pandemic, nation states first reacted by closing borders, while symbols of banal nationalism proliferated. The data, drawn from a variety of empirical studies, suggests changes in memory politics – the way past events are remembered – are due to a range of factors, including the growth of migrant societies; the influence of financial and climate crises; changing gender politics; and a new transnational European politics of the past. The authors assess the challenges to liberal democracies and fundamental human and constitutional rights, and analyze how the pandemic contributes to a new re-nationalization across Europe and beyond.

Beyond race?

While at the moment the world seems to be divided along racial lines and ‘race’ appears to be a central axe of social inclusion and exclusion, in this article we ask whether it is thinkable to go ‘beyond race’. We want to explore the idea of going ‘beyond race’ in four different ways: (1) ‘Beyond race’ as a demographic reality when people of mixed origin form the majority of population; (2) ‘Beyond race’ in regard to policies that aim at combatting inequalities also along color lines, yet are no longer dependent on a notion of race. (3) ‘Beyond race’ in terms of political mobilizations, e.g. the possibility or desirability of anti-racist movements not grounded in identity politics and (4) ‘Beyond race’ as a conceptualization of race that is decoupling biology and culture, or even to stop thinking in racial categories altogether, yet without de-politicizing any marginalised group’s, history and experience. We are aware that this questioning of race, and by implication of ethnicity, may be a typical hang-up of two authors based in Europe. We have invited authors from different parts of the world, and with different academic backgrounds to reflect in a commentary on the issues we raise and to explain their position.

“‘It ain’t have no sort of family life for us here’”: Community and its Discontents in Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners

<div>Sam Seldon's The Lonely Londoners depicts an emergent collectivity of black immigrants who lead literally and metaphorically subterranean lives in 1950s Britain. Against the backdrop of a city undergoing an ambivalent transition from colonial metropole to postmodern cosmopolis, Seldon's "boys" remain largely inscrutable to and estranged from not only white Londoners but also one another. Critics have associate a depoliticized preoccupation with the everyday and eschewal of critical consciousness in Seldon’s work with widely critiqued features of Anglophone modernism. The present analysis suggests several reasons why political collectivity remains elusive to Seldon's black male immigrant characters. Specifically, they face discriminatory access to the labor market and social services, loci of possible solidarity with working-class white Londoners where formal political resistance might be coordinated. These systemic pressures combined with an atmospheric racism cause many of the boys to internalize the racialist, individualist, consumerist, and heterosexist attitudes and behaviors of the dominant white culture, which they adopt as survival strategies, in effect undermining black group identity and cohesion. If a note of optimism is to be sounded amid the many challenges to inter- and intraracial community the novel presents, it is in the potential undoing of black cultural nationalism that cultural theorist Paul Gilroy sees as a crucial step in the making of an egalitarian, convivial postcolonial world. The novel contests the homogenizing impulses of essentialist identity politics by portraying the heterodox, sometimes paradoxical, affinities that emerge between characters and communities.</div>

“‘It ain’t have no sort of family life for us here’”: Community and its Discontents in Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners

<div>Sam Seldon's The Lonely Londoners depicts an emergent collectivity of black immigrants who lead literally and metaphorically subterranean lives in 1950s Britain. Against the backdrop of a city undergoing an ambivalent transition from colonial metropole to postmodern cosmopolis, Seldon's "boys" remain largely inscrutable to and estranged from not only white Londoners but also one another. Critics have associate a depoliticized preoccupation with the everyday and eschewal of critical consciousness in Seldon’s work with widely critiqued features of Anglophone modernism. The present analysis suggests several reasons why political collectivity remains elusive to Seldon's black male immigrant characters. Specifically, they face discriminatory access to the labor market and social services, loci of possible solidarity with working-class white Londoners where formal political resistance might be coordinated. These systemic pressures combined with an atmospheric racism cause many of the boys to internalize the racialist, individualist, consumerist, and heterosexist attitudes and behaviors of the dominant white culture, which they adopt as survival strategies, in effect undermining black group identity and cohesion. If a note of optimism is to be sounded amid the many challenges to inter- and intraracial community the novel presents, it is in the potential undoing of black cultural nationalism that cultural theorist Paul Gilroy sees as a crucial step in the making of an egalitarian, convivial postcolonial world. The novel contests the homogenizing impulses of essentialist identity politics by portraying the heterodox, sometimes paradoxical, affinities that emerge between characters and communities.</div>

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.

“The World Had Forgotten about Us”: Heterotopian Resistance in Richard Flanagan’s Wanting and Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip

This article explores how the different forms of heterotopias present in Richard Flanagan’s Wanting (2008) and Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip (2006) articulate problematic identity politics and cultural memory. In Wanting, the collocation of Mathinna’s story with that of the lost Franklin expedition offers a form of reclaiming. This article argues that Flanagan’s novel moves from heterotopias of deviation to a crisis heterotopia, displacing and debunking the compensation function of the colonial heterotopia to highlight the crushing of Aboriginal identity. This shifting heterotopia is doubled by Mathinna’s heterotopic carceral body, that is, body as confined space, which qualifies the act of reclaiming. In Mister Pip, heterotopias concern cultural memory as the island of Bougainville, secluded from the rest of the world, turns into the repository of the villagers’ culture juxtaposed with the reading of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1860–1861). This article argues that Jones’s creation of a palimpsestic heterotopia allows him to resist Eurocentric views as well as to actualize postcolonial concepts. Jones’s novel calls for a dynamic appropriation of literature. Matilda’s ‘Pacific version’ of Pip’s story reflects the cracks in the Victorian and contemporary exploitations of the island. Readers’ immersions in these heterotopias do not provide an escape from but a thoughtful commitment to the past.

The shifting landscape of African-Pentecostalism in Kenya

I define African Pentecostalism as the Pentecostal thread that embraces some elements of African culture, without necessarily admitting it. It embraces some elements of the African heritage consciously or unconsciously. This research article sets on the premise that African Pentecostalism is the ideal phrase when referring to Pentecostalism in Africa. This drives us to consider the uniqueness of Pentecostalism in Africa rather than generalising its presence. This article seeks to demonstrate that African Pentecostalism in the 21st-century Kenya has undergone paradigm shifts in various dimensions, which includes leadership structuring, political orientations, modes of disciplining, eschatological concern, structural make-up, economic domain, health concern, ecumenical relations, gender relations, identity politics, theological education, poverty concern, use of science and technology, and general practices. Has the religious outfits that referred the earthly concerns as temporal tents and largely focused on the ‘eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands’ (2 Cor 5:1) appreciated the necessity of God’s kingdom and will-being ‘done on earth, as it is in heaven’ (Mt 6:10)? In light of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19), has the ecclesiastical model that was too conservative become liberal in nature? The methodology includes interviews with selected people who are connected to this topic, participant observation and through an extensive review of the relevant literature.

COVID-19 and the Wuhan Diary –how does the overseas Chinese community react to group criticism?

We conduct an online survey to explore how Chinese people living in Germany perceive and react to group criticism in the context of the debate on the Wuhan Diary, a chronicle about life during the lockdown in Wuhan. We find that the majority rating of the book is a lukewarm “neither like nor dislike.” Most participants are open to criticism in principle and do not agree that the book only spreads so-called “negative-energy”. However, many participants were skeptical about the objectivity of the book and concerned about its potential use by so-called anti-China forces, even though the degree of blind patriotism is relatively low in our sample. The factors influencing the book’s evaluation are intriguing: perceived Western sentiment, media exposure and uncritical patriotism all affect COVID-19-related conspiracy beliefs, which in turn lead to a more negative evaluation of the book. A cluster analysis reveals two groups which differ in terms of properties like blind patriotism, belief in certain conspiracies, and also demographic parameters. Our results shed light on identity politics, motivated beliefs, and collective narcissism.