Alternative Discourses Research Articles

A Postcolonial Reading of a Diverse Craft Economy

This essay brings together J. K. Gibson-Graham’s diverse-economies framework and Kalyan Sanyal’s postcolonial capitalist development to unpack the heterogeneous economic processes of clay idol making practice in the Kumartuli neighborhood of Kolkata, India. This craft is rapidly getting transformed through state sanctions and corporate funding. Consequently, scholars have identified this encounter as this craftwork’s exposure to and absorption within capitalism. This essay unconventionally reads the differences within Kumartuli’s seemingly capitalist modes of production to make legible the absence of alternative discourses, thereby teasing out regimes of enterprises, coexisting class processes, and noncapitalist labor relations within a wage-labor setup. The paper examines the financial sector's sponsorship and the postcolonial state's development-driven governmentality, yet at the same time, identifies how they do not fully enroll the sector within capitalist production logic. Craft workers’ and women owner-artisans’ mundane counterhegemonic politics, which claims socio-economic justice, is seen as disrupting the processes of the accumulation economy.

Deflecting deliberation through rhetorical nihilism: “Stop the Steal” as an unethical and intransigent rival public

ABSTRACT In the weeks after the 2020 presidential race, Donald Trump and his supporters used Stop the Steal rhetoric to suggest that the election was stolen from the 45th president. I argue that Stop the Steal highlights the existence of a rival public, an alternative discourse community that deflected deliberation by refusing to engage in a debate with other publics and counterpublics. To constitute this rival public, Stop the Steal constituted itself through rhetorical nihilism, an argumentative style where any and all means are used to strategically discredit other publics and counterpublics for the purpose of gaining power in the public sphere. Leading up to the January 6, 2021 insurrection, the Stop the Steal rival public used rhetorical nihilism to stymie deliberation using three unethical argumentative means: (1) conspiratorial rhetoric, (2) arguments that spread mis/disinformation, and (3) paralipsis via rhetorical questions. The existence of this rival public highlights a modern public sphere where rhetors can deflect democratic deliberation by replacing logical debate based on facts with mis/disinformation. Although members of the Stop the Steal rival public professed to champion democracy, their use of rhetorical nihilism demonstrates a discourse community that sought to derail deliberation and undermine governing institutions for partisan goals.

Writing as Resistance

The paper analysed the novel Koogai (2015), written by Cho. Dharman. The paper looked at the alternative discourses in the text. The paper owed theoretical framework from Nancy Fraser’s idea of counterpublic. The paper dives deeper into the text to underline the relevance of language, motifs, myths and legends to create a counter narrative against the established narrative. I have attempted to provide an insight regarding how Dalit writers interrogate the casteist public sphere to posit writing as the means of registering protest and asserting their voices.

A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT ON KUNTOWIJOYO’S PENGILMUAN ISLAM IN REFERENCE TO ISLAMIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY

Kuntowijoyo is widely-known in Indonesia as the propagator of pengilmuan Islam discourse, which he declared as an alternative discourse from the Islamization of knowledge that he sees as trivial and reactive. In this article, we would like to assess Kuntowijoyo’s comprehension of Islamization of knowledge to analyze the relevance of pengilmuan Islam as his alternative proposal to it, from his own words with references to primary and secondary references, and contrast it with the actual proposal of Islamization of knowledge from its original thinkers. The result is that while Kuntowijoyo openly declares his opposition to the term, he still acknowledges the need for the Islamization of knowledge in certain key parts of his writings while still being polemical. This article unveils his true view on the Islamization of knowledge and the problem lies with his understanding of the discourse, which is significant to the consequences in Islamic education that his discourse will lead to a false sense of Islamic development in knowledge

(Un)doing home: exploring home-making and identity – an example of a project in a London higher education classroom

In this article we discuss the lived, embodied experience of home-making in relation to identity and belonging through the example of a service-learning project conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic in a higher education setting in London, UK. We also explore the notion of belonging-not-belonging as a cultural, material and embodied construct, inspired by critical pedagogy. We draw on posthumanism, new materialism, intercultural studies, (auto-)ethnography and creative practice research as possible lines of flight in deconstructing the dichotomy between home and a ‘foreign’ territory-other-than-home that sits at the core of intercultural discourses. We present this project as a possible alternative discourse to (un)do more traditional considerations of home-making as a much more complex construct; in the encounter with new territories, humans and other-than-human artefacts, objects, machines and landscapes, we argue that home-making is a continuous, never-finished process that moves the learner and their teachers continuously. We aim to bring to the forefront new emerging considerations of intercultural studies at the intersection with interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional discourses, breaking away from a more traditional and neoliberal view about what belonging means within the context of higher education.

The Peasant Question Under Nyerere’s Socialism

This essay is a succinct overview of the manner in which the first president of Tanzania attempted to address the peasant question in the country. In the immediate aftermath of independence (1961–1966), Nyerere’s government bought into the World Bank’s recommendation of village settlement schemes and range development to pull the peasantry and the pastoralist out of the backward, traditional agriculture to modern, more productive agriculture and pastoralism spearheaded by what the WB called progressive farmers. Selected ‘progressive farmers’ would be resettled in new environment administered by hired management which would teach them modern husbandry under close supervision. Village settlement scheme was established at a great cost. By 1966 it was clear that both these projects were disastrous. With the adoption of the country’s socialist blueprint, the government adopted the policy of ‘small is beautiful’, so to speak. Peasant agriculture would be improved through extension services and collective production in Ujamaa villages. Peasants were not particularly enthusiastic about Ujamaa villages. Very few were established making the party diehards, including Nyerere, exasperated. In 1973 the President ordered that living in villages was compulsory and thus began the forced villagisation from 1971–1974 by which time it was estimated that some five million people were forcefully resettled in the so-called development villages. In hindsight, it can be surmised that this move both discredited the Ujamaa project and Nyerere could have lost his peasant base. Beginning late 1970s and early 1980s the country experienced its worst economic crisis due to a variety of internal and external reasons providing imperialism and internal proto-bourgeoisies an entry point for imposing the notorious structural adjustment programmes. The essay briefly discusses the fate and the fight of the peasant under the subsequent neo-liberal phase predicated on the so-called free market, private property regime and private investment exposing the peasant to the vagaries of capitalism and its crisis. The essay ends with outlining some elements of an alternative discourse to spearhead the peasant struggle for autonomous, sovereign development. JEL Codes: P32, Q15, Q24

세상 끝에 있는 여성들의 공생적 에토스와 삶형태: 마가렛 애트우드의 매드아담 3부작

This paper analyzes the lives of women living in the climate crisis and pandemic disaster of the Anthropocene, as imagined in the MaddAddam trilogy by Margaret Atwood, using Donna Haraway’s Compostism, or a New Material Feminism. It also examines how Atwood presents a new human figure with the symbiotic ethos that prodigally, promiscuously, and opportunistically cooperates with multispecies in an era of mass death and extinction. New Material Feminism, in symbiosis, or the worldly articulation and alignment of multispecies, seeks to shift the paradigm by redefining the essential but previously disparaged feminine ethos―vulnerability, passivity, empathy, sharing, generosity, caring, commitment, gratitude, forgiveness, apology, holding, prodigality, promiscuity, opportunism, etc.―and placing it at the center of an alternative discourse beyond modern humanism. At the forefront is the Compostism of Haraway. This article is an attempt to find the worldly wisdom and ability to change the reality that continues as usual, in a symbiotic feminine ethos. To resist the modern humanism that caused the Anthropocene climate crisis and pandemic, we need a new ethics-onto-epistem-ology. It requires language, thinking, and behavior that are inappropriate for the prevailing patriarchal, capitalist culture. Now that possible things are useless and exhausted, we have to dream and try the impossible by raising the femininity of the ancient futures that were previously disparaged. The symbiotic ethos and form of life of the women in the novel open the door to a new story about the possibility of the symbiosis among those who are in a seriously unequal power relationship.

KESETARAAN DAN KESERASIAN GENDER DALAM AL-QURAN

The narrative about gender justice is dominated by the notion of gender equality. In the interpretation of the Koran, this has serious implications, including forcing the application of the method of "hermeneutics of suspicion", which in addition to bringing down the spirits of classical commentators (due to allegations of gender bias), but more than that it also undermines the sacredity of the Holy Koran. Written using worldview theory, this article presents and at the same time discusses alternative discourse for the assumption of gender equality, namely the idea of ​​gender harmony, which is actually an Islamic original narrative in responding to demands and / or guidance on gender justice.

The moral community of redistribution: interregional fiscal grievances in working-class urban Catalonia

ABSTRACT Nationwide interregional redistribution has recently become a salient political issue in several wealthy regions in Europe, to the point of becoming a powerful motivation for pursuing political independence. Catalonia is a case in point. Rather than focus on the core of the nationalist movement, the present ethnographic study approaches its margins: it examines how working-class second-generation immigrants from southern Spain living in Barcelona voice their disapproval of what they see as an unfair territorial redistribution within Spain that allows for generous social protection in their parents’ places of origin in the poor South at the expense of the hard-pressed workers in the productive North. The second generation’s critique of interregional redistribution is a way of denouncing economic hardships in the absence of an effective alternative discourse for explaining inequalities within Catalonia. However, rather than expressing some sort of welfare chauvinism following a nationalist Catalan–Spanish divide, these particular fiscal grievances can be better understood against the background of migratory memories and subjectivities, and particularly of the imagination concerning the urban–rural cleavage. Ultimately, this ethnographic case invites us to recognize multiple and embedded rationales of social sharing, which I attempt to encompass within the concept of the ‘moral community of redistribution’.

Embodying Colonial Ghosts in Postcolonial Italian Women's Writing

While Italian colonialism in Africa is an aspect of Italy’s history that has started to receive academic attention in the last three decades, it remains outside the collective memory of many Italians. In opposition to this lack of mainstream cultural awareness, a proliferation of literary works has been produced, predominantly by female writers with origins in Italy’s former colonies in East Africa, filling in the historical omissions and, importantly, providing a transnational voice to gendered experiences of colonial trauma. Many of these authors foreground the female corporeal experience of colonialism and its legacy. My PhD thesis explores the representation of gendered colonial trauma and its intergenerational transmission through the female body. I examine a range of literary texts by women writers with origins in Somalia and Ethiopia, dating from 2007 to the present. Their work ranges across contexts and languages (Italian and English), yet each narrates colonial history in a highly embodied way, providing an alternative discourse to the nostalgic, mythologising historiography offered by mainstream Italian literature from the post-war period to the present.

Patterns of Construction of Alternative Media Discourses About Refugee Waves From Syria and Ukraine

This paper examines the patterns of construction of alternative media speaking in relation to the refugee waves triggered by the military actions in Syria and Ukraine over the last 10 years. The paper is based on the understanding that language is not neutral and the patterns of speaking revealed in the media have a direct link to social relations and structures. This paper explores how different models of alternative speaking on the Syrian and Ukrainian refugee waves (what I call alternative discourses on the Syrian and Ukrainian refugee waves) function to legitimize and delegitimize certain state policies related to the adaptation and integration of Syrian and Ukrainian refugees.

What Lies Beneath the Successes of Hindutva: Reading the Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections 2022

What explains the success of the Bhartiya Janta Party in the 18th Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha election? Hindutva gets the due credit but the socio-political dynamics beneath Hindutva is often sidelined in political discussions. What makes Hindutva appealing? Is Hindutva a fixed ideology or an ever-evolving one? How does Hindutva correspond with the lived realities of people? How does Hindutva plug the alternative discourse of Social Justice? How does Hindutva redefine Dalit politics? While exploring these questions, the article seeks to shift the discourse from the site of culture-identity-ideology to the site of social and political-economic changes. While tracking the trajectory and nature of Hindutva politics, the article also indicates some of the trends that emerged during this election. Based on qualitative data, the article argues that it was essentially the dynamic nature of Hindutva that outwitted social justice politics.

Monopoli Lada dan Emas di Pantai Barat Sumatera: Konflik Internal Melayu dan Intervensi VOC dalam Narasi Hulubalang Raja Karya Nur Sutan Iskandar

In the Indonesia-centrism historiography devide et impera is generally understood as the intrigue of the colonizer to dominate the archipelago. Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC)'s cunning tactic is related to the colonialism of abundant natural resources in the archipelago. The historical narrative that emerged was that the VOC was accused of being the ringleader of dividing the nation in order to smooth out the ambitions of monopoly on spices and other commodities. The European Meneer was labeled as an antagonist who maneuvered in order to control the maritime trade network of the archipelago. On the other hand, in historical reconstruction, trade competition between brothers and/or local rulers tends to be ignored. In fact, their conflict (internal Malay) is more entrenched, massive, and latent. This article aims to explore medieval primordial conflicts along the West Coast of Sumatra. As a narrative balance, the novel Nur Sutan Iskandar, which takes the background from 1665-1668, is examined because it offers an alternative discourse about a dramatic chronicle between traders and rulers of Aceh and Minangkabau. In modern Indonesian literature, Hulubalang Raja (1934) is known as a historical literary work. From the perspective of New Historism, the conflict between Raja Adil and Hulubalang Raja is a representation of the Malay people. The colossal conflict between the Malays is understood as the author's literary strategy to trick Balai Pustaka 's censorship. In addition, the text of the story can also be interpreted as a message to the readers of the 30s decade who are experiencing contractions to realize the idea of a nation-state which will later be called "Indonesia". Instead of cornering the Kompeni , the main problems of the people of the archipelago at that time were exposed through colossal conflicts between the nation's children. In the romance narrative of the Balai Pustaka tradition, the dominant narrative is the internal conflict of the Malay. Meanwhile, the double storylines of the shortcut novels seem confusing and incoherent. However, the fictional building was related to the repression of the colonial side through Balai Pustaka which aggressively censored, tightened, and banned books that were considered subversive to the power of the Dutch East Indies.

Fake news by any other name: phrases for false content and effects on public perceptions of U.S. news media

ABSTRACT The term ‘fake news’ aims to delegitimize news and is weaponized by political leaders and partisan media. Research has noted the negative impact of the phrase ‘fake news’ yet little work has investigated alternative discourse. We explore whether the phrase ‘fake news’ is distinct from alternative phrases such as ‘misinformation’ and ‘false news.’ Using two experiments, we compare effects of these phrases on evaluations of trust and credibility regarding U.S. news media. Results indicate that ‘fake news’ exerts disproportionate negative effects on perceptions of news and journalists, when controlling for political ideology, compared to ‘misinformation.’ Effects are pronounced when the phrase is used by a politician. Findings challenge research to address the communicative underpinnings of the fake news phenomenon rather than focus on “fake news” as a varietal of misinformation. Insights are discussed for news organizations seeking to distance themselves from the term while providing audiences with accurate information.

Rescuing Public Health From the Global Capitalist Regime: The Public Health Liberation Movement in Taiwan

In the past, scholars of academic dependency have tended to focus their discussions on social sciences while treating other fields as separate. They suggest that in order to escape dependency, alternative discourse and autonomy should be developed. In this paper, we examine the Public Health Liberation (PHL) movement in Taiwan and theorize on the marketization and medicalization of the healthcare system since the 1980s as a dependency syndrome. The PHL was initiated by a group of public health scholars—with the second author of this paper being one of its key protagonists—and frontline public health practitioners after the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in 2003. Inspired by the mass mobilization model in public health in Asian and Latin American countries, particularly China, the Philippines, and Nicaragua, PHL trains grassroots public health educators, nurtures critical research, and has built a network of activists for radical public health reform in Taiwan. Based on participatory action research, this paper analyzes the emergence of this influential public health movement and situates it within the global context of neoliberal health reforms.

Cabaret as new journalism

In this paper the author attempts to extrapolate Bouwer's argument (Bouwer:1990) of cabanet as alternative discourse even further, and seeks to construct an exploratory argument that a measure of cabaret texts may be sufficiently journalistic In style and structure to be con sidered so-called New Journalism. The author seeks a common ground between cabaret and New Journalism by defining and tracing the his torical development of both phe nomena. Signs of Intertextuality are Identified and certain stylistic and structural elements of New Journal Ism are then operationalised In an exploratory and cursory Intertextual reading of selected South African cabaret texts. The paper does not postulate a rigid theoretical framework, but alms to stimulate further discourse and re search on the proposed Intertextual reading between cabaret and New Journalism.
 
 (This paper was read at a one-day seminar entitled Communications In teractions In Popular Culture at the Rand Afrikaans University on Au gust 14, 1992.)

Poetic Inspiration and Philosophical Self-Discipline: Metapoetic Allusions in Keats’s Hyperion

If Hyperion centers on the contrasting fates of Hyperion and Apollo—gods associated with music, poetic inspiration, truth and prophecy—the primary themes of power, loss, struggle, and suffering can be read metaphorically as metapoetic allusions to the succession of literary generations, articulating the nature of poetry and writing. When rewriting his unfinished Greek fragments into a first-person narrative in 1819, John Keats conducts a major reassessment of Moneta’s role in the project, the Roman equivalent of Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory and the mother of the Muses. He redefines Moneta’s relation to the poet-narrator, the poem’s main protagonist who is engaged in an increasingly self-conscious quest for knowledge of his true self and merits and who eventually undergoes a radical transformation into a superior Olympian god of music and poetry, replacing his Titanic predecessor. The goddess of memory and oral culture embodies an alternative discourse surprisingly decentered and polyvocal in nature. The conventional assumption that writing is a product of the solitary genius is obscured now by an interwoven fabric of discussion, feedback, narrative interventions, negotiations, and textual instability. In so doing, the second-generation English Romantic refutes the assumption that poetic power is a product of a heroic mind and philosophical solipsism rather than a result of a dialogic quest for knowledge.

Challenging power through social media

Robert Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980. However, in recent years, hehas faced serious resistance from ordinary citizens. This article examines subversive internetmemes that were created by ordinary Zimbabweans and posted on social media in the aftermathof Robert Mugabe’s collapse at the Harare International airport on 4 February 2015. Firstly, thestudy reads internet memes of the Mugabe fall as forms of resistance to the regime. Secondly,it interrogates the methods that internet memes use to challenge official discourse. Thirdly, thestudy critically analyses the various ways in which internet meme creators imagine and representZimbabwe under the Mugabe regime. The article argues that internet memes of the “Mugabe fall”express subversive views that undermine the regime through humour, exaggeration, satire andother stylistic devices. Internet memes present an alternative discourse that counters the officialnarrative promoted by the regime.

‘Poison Rainbows’: The Speculative Jurisdiction of Okorafor's Lagoon

Oil spills in the Niger Delta have been at the centre of both legal and literary imaginings as among the most acute examples of modern environmental degradation. In her novel Lagoon, Nnedi Okorafor responds to what Rob Nixon describes as the ‘slow violence’ inflicted by the oil industry on non-human persons. This article will cast the study of law and literature into the future and show how the speculative jurisdiction of Okorafor's africanfuturist writing provides an ‘alternative discourse’ to legal scholarship and identifies the accordance of legal personhood as a tool with which to build back towards Lagoon's ‘radical futurity’ of posthuman rights and protection.

Scholars Raising their Voices Up: An Approximation to Discourses of Hegemony and Resistance in ELT in Colombia

In the last few years, Colombian ELT scholars have become aware of the importance of discourse for the dissemination of ideologies and agendas. As a result, the number of studies on this area has shown an unprecedented growth. Nevertheless, few investigations have explored and analyzed both sides simultaneously so as to display not only the types of hegemonic discourses that have permeated the field but also those which have recently emerged in response to such a situation. Considering these elements, this paper reports on a qualitative case study carried out with the purpose of analyzing the latest types of hegemonic discourses and discourses of resistance that have taken place in elt in Colombia. After analyzing the data gathered, which consisted of empirical and conceptual articles, as well as linguistic policies emitted by the Colombian Ministry of Education (men), the results showed that discourses revolving around bilingualism (understood as the English-Spanish relationship), identity, and native speakerism have been a recurrent aspect in the Colombian elt field. Yet, findings also suggest that, especially in the last decade, elt scholars have been resisting these discourses by promoting alternative ones that acknowledge initiatives in different areas of knowledge. In light of these aspects, it is recommended to keep resisting and promoting an agenda of decolonization so that alternative discourses, as is the case of those that acknowledge the incorporation of epistemologies that have been historically overlooked, continue gaining traction within the field.