Counter-hegemonic Space Research Articles

Intersectional methods to study the intellectual production of a Black female samba composer

We discuss the concept of love presented in a set of songs composed by Brazilian samba singer Dona Ivone Lara about romantic and sexual relationships. Popular music is a pervasive kind of media, reflecting ideas, values, power relations, practices, prejudices and privileges. Black music in the diaspora has been a counter-hegemonic space of knowledge production which provides insight into cultural, social, economic and political matters. To analyze the songs, we created a methodology which intersects themes and categories, reflecting upon the complexity of Black women's experiences depicted in Lara's intellectual production. Adopting an intersectional approach, we concluded that the combined oppressions of gender, race, age and class in Brazil have an important influence in the melancholic aspect of banzo in her songs. The results also show that love, for Lara, is not a fixed or permanent feeling, but a cycle, renewed and reinvented in practice and in constant motion.

PLES KAO HETEROTOPIJA PROTIV HEGEMONISTIČKOG DISKURSA TRAUMATIČNIH ISKUSTAVA

In this paper, we explore the dance as a practice and “Other” space, a counterhegemonic space which is affected by the existing social ordering, or existing power of traumatic discourse which is some kind of imposed discourse, while simultaneously resisting it. To explore these premises we will use Michel Foucault`s concept of heterotopia and apply it on the analysis of the dance as an artistic practice and possibilities to understand dance as a heterotopia in which dominant hegemonic discourses are reversed, and as a counterhegemonic space, as authors Christofidou and Milioni, emphases, that has a potential to disrupt and deconstruct hegemonic discourses of the past traumatic experiences or events. We argue that in order to be able to heal the traumas that are engraved in the body, and to understand the body as an expression and a canvas on which a crisis is outlined, we need bodily memories and stories, both those of survival, trauma and wounds, and those of healing. We demonstrate how dance may provide a counterhegemonic space, enable the reconstruction of the place of traumatic events, that are imprinted in body, into places of communication and reconstruction of the meaning, and how can dance invite individual to reflect on their identity and connect their fragmented self. Here we emphasize the meaning of movement – dance that opens the statics of the body to kinesthetic empathy, which in turn allows us to enter the spaces of unspoken body stories. The ethics of touch, proximity, and the ethics of the space between two bodies and what in these spaces "between" means to be, to be in that "not yet" (about-to-be) lead us in this direction. We assert that our bodies are both self-constituted as well as shaped by the collective, the society and history (personal or collective), and that we know by acting, primarily through the body, in synergy with the mind and the environment (enactive approach).

Becoming and being goth: How goths remember the scene’s transition from the eighties into the nineties

Goth emerged from post-punk, and by the 1980s became an identifiable feature of the popular music scene and wider popular culture. Fuelled by the success of bands such as the Sisters of Mercy, goth music and culture spread around the world, interacting with wider alternative, gothic fashions. At the end of the 1980s, goth reached a peak of interest followed by retrenchment into the alternative, subcultural spaces from which it had emerged. Nonetheless, it survives. In this article, we interview goths who became active in the 1980s and who remain engaged in order to understand how they became goths and what goth meant to them then. Using memory work, we are interested in how these goths construct their own histories and mythologies, and what this might tell us about the political and sociological importance of goth as a counter-hegemonic space at a time of globalization, consumption and commodification. We explore how they remember goth emerging from the post-punk scene with its radical politics and alternative, anti-mainstream culture. We examine the way these individuals remember becoming goth and their awareness of being in a goth scene. We then show how they remember and construct stories of when goth retrenched in an alternative underground that reconstructed the counter-hegemonic politics of punk and post-punk. Finally, we show what happened in the late 1980s and early 1990s and argue that the scene, or that part of the scene represented by our goths, is following a dialectical path carved out of the neo-Gramscian concept of negotiation when faced with the culturally and aesthetically hegemonic effect of a dominant culture.

Holding space for an Aboriginal approach towards Curriculum Reconciliation in an Australian university

ABSTRACT Since Universities Australia’s Indigenous Strategy recommended a sector-wide approach to ‘closing the gap’ between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, universities have grappled with how to do this. Resisting mainstream approaches to curriculum development that eschew any kind of relational accountability (Wilson, Shawn. 2008. Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Manitoba: Fernwood Publishing) requires entering difficult relations of power and occupying space to transform the act of curriculum development itself. This paper is the second in a series understanding Jindaola, a programme led by a Local Aboriginal Knowledge Holder within one Australian university. It ‘hacks’ the curriculum development space with staff through Aboriginal way towards Curriculum Reconciliation, building knowledge-based relationships between disciplinary and relevant Aboriginal Knowledge. We deliberately and controversially enact this type of relationship, by temporarily bringing the Foucauldian lens of ‘heterotopia’, and interview data from 30 participants, to describe how Jindaola usurps the neocolonial remit to embed Indigenous Knowledge, and creates and holds a counter-hegemonic space to decolonise curriculum development.

Medical Students in a Talking Circle: the Popular Extension Dialogues with Potiguara Indigenous People

Abstract: Introduction: University extension projects with socially excluded populations can be a strategy for the training of professionals in the cultural and social diversity of the Brazilian population. The practice of Popular Health Education (PHE) through university extension is one of the possibilities to foster dialogic interactions between teaching and the community and has been a space for the development of health education with social commitment. The Îandé Gûatá Extension Project was created in Paraíba in 2013, based on the principles of PHE and Popular Extension, focusing on the meeting between Potiguara indigenous people and Medical students. This study aimed to evaluate the learning built by this project students’ for their medical education. Method: Therefore, a qualitative approach research was developed through the analysis of discursive practices, using the talking circle technique at the end of the project cycle. To analyze the material, linguistic repertoires were identified from the subjects’ speech and three sets of meanings were built: extension university as a counter-hegemonic space of medical education; building skills for the future doctor; relations between health and culture in care. The linguistic repertoires were discussed based on theoretical references, such as popular health education, indigenous health and competences in medical education. Results: According to the students, this project allowed them gains in the attributes of: knowledge, as it allowed reflections, identification of gaps and greater understanding about the health-disease process in the context of the indigenous population; allowed gains in the ability of making and receiving criticism, teamwork and dialogue between different cultures; and allowed gains in attitudes, broadening the attitude of professionalism, the comprehension and performance on ethical issues and the construction of social commitment. Conclusion: Therefore, they highlight both the development of general competences for the future doctor, but also more specific ones, such as cultural competence. Moreover, the challenge of dialoguing in the polarity: aiming to reduce the distances within the same institutional space; cultural conflicts; and understanding and acting in an emancipatory education. This group of students wished, with the indigenous community, that these distances would be lessened, in a collective commitment aimed at producing change and social transformation.

Medical Students in a Talking Circle: the Popular Extension Dialogues with Potiguara Indigenous People

Abstract: Introduction: University extension projects with socially excluded populations can be a strategy for the training of professionals in the cultural and social diversity of the Brazilian population. The practice of Popular Health Education (PHE) through university extension is one of the possibilities to foster dialogic interactions between teaching and the community and has been a space for the development of health education with social commitment. The Îandé Gûatá Extension Project was created in Paraíba in 2013, based on the principles of PHE and Popular Extension, focusing on the meeting between Potiguara indigenous people and Medical students. This study aimed to evaluate the learning built by this project students’ for their medical education. Method: Therefore, a qualitative approach research was developed through the analysis of discursive practices, using the talking circle technique at the end of the project cycle. To analyze the material, linguistic repertoires were identified from the subjects’ speech and three sets of meanings were built: extension university as a counter-hegemonic space of medical education; building skills for the future doctor; relations between health and culture in care. The linguistic repertoires were discussed based on theoretical references, such as popular health education, indigenous health and competences in medical education. Results: According to the students, this project allowed them gains in the attributes of: knowledge, as it allowed reflections, identification of gaps and greater understanding about the health-disease process in the context of the indigenous population; allowed gains in the ability of making and receiving criticism, teamwork and dialogue between different cultures; and allowed gains in attitudes, broadening the attitude of professionalism, the comprehension and performance on ethical issues and the construction of social commitment. Conclusion: Therefore, they highlight both the development of general competences for the future doctor, but also more specific ones, such as cultural competence. Moreover, the challenge of dialoguing in the polarity: aiming to reduce the distances within the same institutional space; cultural conflicts; and understanding and acting in an emancipatory education. This group of students wished, with the indigenous community, that these distances would be lessened, in a collective commitment aimed at producing change and social transformation.

Baba Jukwa’s Facebook page: A possible counter hegemonic space for political transformation in Zimbabwe

This study focuses on how the Baba Jukwa Facebook page has been appropriated as a potential counter hegemonic space for the circulation of public opinion during the run up till post 2013 harmonised elections in Zimbabwe. This current study wishes to explore the role played by social media in Zimbabwe in the run up to the 2013 election especially on Facebook through participation on the Baba Jukwa page. Focus will be on the nature of the discourses in the posts and how the participants on the page engaged in debates around these posts. I will also interrogate how the discourses in the posts on the Baba Jukwa Facebook page were taken up by the main stream media and how it also clashed with dominant political discourses as enshrined in government publications and web-sites. This will shed light on the impact of the page and how it enlarged the public sphere in the country as a counter hegemonic platform.

Zines at Work

As an alternative media form, zines give voice to marginalized communities where the creators articulate ideologies and experiences often overlooked in mainstream society. This article examines Filipina/o diasporic identity construction through a visual and textual analysis of .45 Kaliber Proof, a zine created in the early 2000s by Anakbayan Seattle, a progressive Filipina/o American youth organization. Zines have become a counter-hegemonic space where politically-based Filipina/o diasporic identities are made visible. In analyzing the layouts, texts, and images of various issues, two overarching themes emerge in the zine: a reflection of the Filipina/o American community in the us and a connection between the history and conditions of the Philippines to the Filipina/o diaspora in the United States. These themes ultimately led to a retelling of the Filipina/o experience, transforming .45 Kaliber Proof into a tool to subvert the current hegemonic culture in the Philippines and the us.

Drag acts of transitional performance: sex, religion and memory in Pedro Almodóvar's La mala educación and Ventura Pons's Ocaña, retrat intermitent

This article explores the category of memory in relation to the body, sex and religion in the post-Franco transitional years through a queer theoretical framework. Focusing on Pedro Almodóvar's La mala educación (2004) and the Catalan documentary Ocaña, retrat intermitent (1978) by Ventura Pons, this work considers how the role and performance of drag and cross-dressing in both films function as a technology of memory to rethink the body as script and religion as sex. Drawing on queer theoretical frameworks, this article argues that the embodied subject in drag subverts the normative trajectories of memory and, in the context of post-Franco Spain, poses challenges to religion, politics and body, in effect, reimagining the body's relationship to memory to produce a counterhegemonic space. In other words, the desire for memory is the desire for experience, which becomes foregrounded through the affective performance of the queer and transgressive subjects present in both films.

Caring for Sex and the Power of Attentive Action: Governance, Drama, and Conflict in Building a Queer Feminist Bathhouse

Abstract This article considers the deployment of care as a modality of power that works to augment and sustain the autonomy of a counterhegemonic space. Focusing on a women’s bathhouse, a space intended for casual, experimental sex, the article maps the exercise of care—reframed nonnormatively, and thus in contrast to the prevailing approach in feminist care ethics—as weighted attentiveness. Care’s power is manifested in various ways within a bathhouse site. This article focuses on organizers’ governmental exercise of care in pursuit of an alternative sexual democracy and public, and on the civil interactions of participants that both mirrored and contested the bathhouse project. It argues that the dynamic interaction between governmental and civil deployments of weighted attentiveness exemplifies care’s power in establishing not only the distinctiveness but also the heterogeneous and evolving character of an otherwise marginal site.

Reagan's Rainbow Rodeos: Queer Challenges to the Cowboy Dreams of Eighties America

During the 1980s, both Hollywood and the Reagan administration attempted to resurrect frontier masculinity by rewriting the Vietnam War and rehabilitating its defeated hero: the straight-shooting cowboy. But a quarter-century before Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (2005) collided in the space of myth-making with America's latest cowboy president, individuals opened a counter-hegemonic space that challenged social marginalization in the public sphere. Picking up where subversive westerns from the late 1960s had left off, the little-known artist Delmas Howe and the founders of the International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA) resisted the imposition of a rigidly heterosexual cowboy mythology and met the Reagan-era cowboy revival on a queer frontier. Examining John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969), Andy Warhol's Lonesome Cowboys (1969), Howe's series of paintings entitled Rodeo Pantheon (1977–91), and the founding and rise of the IGRA (accompanied by interviews with IGRA participants), this article uncovers a rainbow rodeo that has challenged America's cowboy dreams.

Reagan's Rainbow Rodeos: Queer Challenges to the Cowboy Dreams of Eighties America

Abstract

Rethinking TESOL From a SOL's Perspective: Indigenous Epistemology and Decolonizing Praxis in TESOL

In this paper, as a 'SOL' of TESOL, I examine the conjunction between TESOL and colonialism, its manifestation in the South Korean context, and how to create a counter-hegemonic space to envision decolonizing TESOL praxis through explication and repudiation of such colonial discourse in TESOL. In particular, I focus on decolonizing knowledge production in TESOL through "indigenous epistemology," an epistemology of the colonized informed by indigenous ideas and local practices (cf. Dei & Asgharzadeh, 2000; Gegeo & Watson-Gegeo, 2002), as an alternative paradigm for TESOL analysis. Political evocation of indigenous epistemology to challenge the Western canon prevalent in TESOL contributes to academic decolonization of TESOL as a global industry, and ELT theories and pedagogies.