Cultural Anxieties Research Articles

The dilemma between innovation and authenticity in safeguarding intangible cultural heritage: Community agency in preserving Suzhou pingtan

In safeguarding an intangible cultural heritage (ICH), the community is often considered passive and only part of the policy implementation system. While acknowledging the lack of a connection with contemporary audiences in many examples of ICH, such as pingtan (评弹), authenticity-seeking is still a widely accepted goal in safeguarding ICH. But from an authenticity-seeking perspective, attempts to create innovative pingtan are often the target of criticism. This article observes that amid the competing narratives of pursuing authenticity and embracing innovative experimentation, preservation of and innovation in pingtan have developed to disentangle pingtan from a unified conceptualization. Conflicts about preservation and innovation are the enabling forces that allow diverse cultural ideas to be communicated, leading to interactions and experimentation that defy easy definition. Analysis of the contradictions behind an insistence on an authentic form of pingtan suggests that authenticity-seeking is more about cultural anxieties over the changing identity of a city, with pingtan as a tool for such negotiations. This article calls for a more nuanced understanding of community agency in safeguarding ICH. Innovative practices to safeguard ICH may also challenge the concept of community, resulting in fluid, developmental, and mutually sustaining interactions.

Thrills of Twilight: Flappers in Edith Wharton’s Twilight Sleep (1927)

Abstract This article explores the tumultuous 1920s, a decade of vibrant urban culture that witnessed the birth of a new female figure, the flapper. The young flappers, who were products of fin-de-siècle urban modernity, were caught in-between conventional backgrounds and eccentric self-definitions, in the liminal twilight zone of their indeterminate desires. In Edith Wharton’s Twilight Sleep (1927) the flappers Nona Manford and Lita Cliffe Wyant are tied to the bodily gratifications of dancing, sports, alcohol, and sex, a cause for cultural anxiety, particularly when nonheteronormative. The homoerotic relationship between Nona and Lita becomes exposed through Nona’s gaze resting on Lita and her sensual body. Wharton’s flappers immerse themselves in sensory experiences that just like those of others are “permeated with social values,” according to David Howes. The way Nona and Lita engage their senses and explore sensations reflect their social status as their lives move on, extravagantly, with the fast beat of jazz, which in Nona’s case is later contrasted by immobility as she lies in her bed physically and emotionally wounded. In the end, Nona and Lita are pressured toward conventionality, but before then, they are most alive when engaged in the thrills of twilight that send tremors through their bodies.

Anthropocentrism and Inheritance in Our Mutual Friend: Return, Recognition, Reanimation

Abstract In decentering “Man,” a category long rhetorically constructed as the privileged species of a divine creator, Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection necessitated a reexamination of how human subjectivity should be represented in fiction. This article uses the example of Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend (1864) to track and scientifically contextualize how anthropocentrism is constructed and interrogated in fiction after publication of On the Origin of Species (1859). Competing nineteenth-century theories of species transmutation recognized physiological fluidity and variation within species and type, yet unlike Darwin, they sought to define uniquely human qualities of mind. Literary narratives, such as Dickens’s final completed novel, engaged this intellectual project—attempting to stabilize a dominant form of human subjectivity while recognizing shifting varieties of being. Protagonist John Harmon is oddly vacant as an imagined human consciousness; his actions create or resolve conflict within the story, but he fails to demonstrate any stable motivation. Depicting the initial misrecognition, and eventual recognition, of an English heir newly returned from abroad, Our Mutual Friend articulates cultural anxieties about the potential mutability of identity and type and the origins and durability of English dominance. Its post-Darwinian model of consciousness challenges traditional realist valorization of the individualistic, agential subject.

Liars, scammers and cheats: con(fident) women and post-authentic femininities on television

ABSTRACT In this paper, we analyze the conjuncture framing the recent rise of media representations of female con artists, looking at two recent examples of the trope on television: Inventing Anna (a fictionalized account of con artist Anna Delvey) and The Dropout (a fictionalized account of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes). We situate the new visibility of women who lie, scam and cheat on television within a set of distinct yet interlocking cultural anxieties: about the “believability” of women’s speech in the aftermath of the #MeToo movement; about the capacities for inauthenticity, artifice, and deception inherent to digital media culture; about the con logics of contemporary global capitalism; and about the pernicious role that white women’s believability plays within everyday operations of white supremacy in the United States. Read through this lens, the “post-authentic” con woman becomes legible as an ambivalent backlash text: a parable that warns about what happens when (white) women are taken at face value and allocated the benefit of the doubt. In a contemporary popular feminist context where women have been implored to be confident, self-assured, and self-possessed “girlbosses”, shows like Inventing Anna and The Dropout reposition the con(fident) woman as a figure of necessary cultural suspicion.

Evolution of Pandemic Discourse: Portrayal of Diseases, Public Healthcare and Culture Anxiety in Pandemic-Themed Film

The pandemic-themed film reveals how quickly a virus spreads and kills hundreds or perhaps millions of people. It also highlights the horrible conditions surrounding the outbreak, especially the collapse of the country's healthcare system. The film also depicts the newly discovered infectious sickness as the interconnectedness of animals, the environment, and humans. The pandemic cinema in the past contains attributes such as illegal immigrants, public healthcare, and zoonoses in its narrative conventions. In the present films, the contemporary global issue have encroached on an ignorance on environmental issues among the government, the industry players, and the public on health and the high possibility of viruses spreading due to the activities of industry. This paper aims to assess the evolution of the portrayal of diseases and public healthcare that reflects cultural anxieties in pandemic cinema and what messages that these films convey. After screening seventy films with pandemic themed released within hundred years, only six films were analysed using Altman’s syntax approach. The findings found that, given the current state of the virus, this kind of film encourages viewers to understand pandemics as the result of pathogens attacking social interactions, interpersonal relationships, and other aspects of society.

Queer Renaturalisations: Guy Hocquenghem’s Contradictory Nature Politics, Between Identity and Desire

Queerphobic discourses variably frame nature as defined by reproductive heterosexuality or as defined by unruly desires that civilised heterosexuality promises a progress away from. This article argues that both these politicised determinations of nature follow the logic of ‘renaturalisation’ – a strategy that invokes nature and the natural to reinforce a normative process – and that the ambiguity in nature discourses stems from the conflictual construction of queerness as both social and antisocial. Because queerness oscillates between being a recognisable identity and a critique of everything social, nature discourses used to justify heteronormative ontologies are contradictory and must change according to the context of the argument. Excavating a theory of renaturalisation from Guy Hocquenghem, this article suggests that queer politics should take nature seriously not because nature is inherently progressive or conservative but because this very duality materialises through cultural anxieties around queerness.

Unveiling Body Politics: The Grotesque and Alienated Representation of the Monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein explores on the complexities of body politics and societal norms through the narrative of Victor Frankenstein and his creation, the monster. This research paper analyzes the novel through the lens of rejection, Otherness and the societal constructs of beauty and acceptance. The research investigates on the intricate intersections of various discourses in shaping the notion of “black body” throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Furthermore, it highlights on how Shelley’s portrayal of the hideous and marginalized body of the monster in her text aligns with the ideological constructions of black bodies. The monster, with his physical deformities and alien appearance, serves as a powerful symbol of the Other, highlighting society’s tendency to fear and ostracize those who are different. Drawing on Julia Kristeva’s concept of “the abject,” Michel Foucault’s notion of “biopower,” and Freud’s idea of “uncanny,” this paper searches how Shelly’s text reflects broader cultural anxieties and critiques societal norms. Through a detailed analysis of textual evidences, including direct quotes from the novel, this paper examines the implications of the monster’s rejection to socio-cultural norms and the societal forces that shape his identity. The paper concludes that exclusion of Frankenstein’s creation from the society directly stems from the societal constructs and responses towards bodies. Perception of bodies reflects more about the culture observing them than bodies themselves. In its essence, Frankenstein stands as a poignant narrative about the dangers of marginalization and the importance of empathy and acceptance in a diverse society. This paper underscores the critical need to understand how societal constructs shape perceptions of marginalized bodies, paving the way for future research to explore these dynamics in contemporary contexts and to develop strategies for fostering greater inclusion and acceptance.

The Materiality of Absence in Paul Auster’s Poetry and Fiction

ABSTRACT Through mapping the blank landscapes and stones in Paul Auster’s writing, and through the employment of a framework that reads Auster alongside twenty-first-century theories of minimalist aesthetics, this article demonstrates how his early poetry and later fiction frequently explore a politics of erasure. The intersection of an austere literary style with contextually flat representations of crumbling stones, work, and conspicuously omitted power structures affords a previously unacknowledged environmental context underpinning Auster’s thinking. By recalling his early poetry and later novels that dramatise comparable scenarios of labour and loss under the shadow of external threat, I explore how frequent representations of erasure echo environmental and cultural anxieties related to memory and future uncertainty.

Age-verification technologies and the censorship of online pornography in Canada: a critique of Bill S-210: An Act to Restrict Young Persons’ Online Access to Sexually Explicit Material

ABSTRACT Written in the style of an opinion editorial, this short article serves as a critical examination of Bill S-210, which proposes to restrict minors’ online access to sexually explicit material in Canada through age-verification technologies. Framed within the historical context of obscenity law and the feminist sex wars, the article underscores the impact of censorship and anti-pornography feminism on queer businesses and sexual expressions. Emphasizing the need for comprehensive sexual education rather than increased censorship, it critiques the impracticality of age-verification technologies as well as contemporary cultural anxiety around youth sexuality and the perceived need to ‘protect’ women and minors from pornography. Urging a re-evaluation of the Bill in light of its broader sociopolitical implications, the article cautions against rash policy decisions that may further stigmatize alternative forms of sexual expression, specifically queer, feminist, and fetish pornographies.

Knowing more, worrying less? Internet use eases public concern about immigrant cultural threat

The concern regarding the impact of cross-border migrants on a nation's culture is a key factor that hampers local acceptance of immigrants. In this light, mitigating cultural anxieties can enhance immigrant acceptance to some extent. This paper contends that the internet facilitates people to consume immigration information through digital media, thereby reducing unjustified concerns about the cultural implications of immigrants. Leveraging a cross-national survey spanning 17 Western countries, we find that internet use is indeed negatively associated with perceived immigrant cultural threat. This association remains to hold across several robustness checks. Follow-up analyses indicate that internet use can alleviate immigrant cultural concerns for those with regular left-wing digital media exposure, but not for those who consume right-wing digital media frequently. Additionally, social media use and personal ideology are also found to have moderating effects, with internet use being less effective among individuals who use social media heavily or are ideologically right-leaning. This paper sheds light on the role of the internet in fostering inter-group understanding and alleviating out-group discrimination.

Postapocalyptic Fiction and the Problem of Cultural Anxiety

Postapocalyptic Fiction and the Problem of Cultural Anxiety

Oh India! Pornography, Postcoloniality, Transnational Assemblages

The essay locates three instances of hypersexual imagery in Indian cinema, casted to adult scenes, deemed equivalent to pornography with particular reference to the logic of transnational global capitalist image. In contrary, the essay also draws the discursive logic of negation of the desiring sex(usual) image of Indian actor, engendered a space of domesticity, Indianness, sexual obscenity, cultural anxiety and moral panic. Thus, this imagination builds into argument, a point of analytical disjuncture, debating sex, gender and sexuality in India that disturbs, subverts and remakes the popular culture driven by the logic of repression/liberation with, bemusing women and national(ist) image to that of the complexity of emerging economic globalization and transnational consumer/capitalist market.

Immigration and integration policy change in France during Sarkozy’s era

This paper sheds light on the factors behind the introduction of restrictive immigration and integration policy in France between 2002 and 2012, which is closely associated with Nicholas Sarkozy and his party Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). Using the evidence from semi-structured interviews, conducted with The Republicans (UMP) elected representatives, political advisors and civil servants, the paper argues that the introduction of restrictive immigration policies is explained not only through electoral pressure from the radical right Front National, but also by publics’ perceived economic concerns, cultural anxieties around Islam, as well as the effects of the EU integration. The paper also contributes to immigration policy liberalisation scholarship, by highlighting the importance of non-economic benefits migration brings, which take a form of soft power, as a way to increase French influence (rayonnement) in the world, contrary to the previous literature that explains liberalisation from economic advantages of skilled migration.

Why Autocracies Fear LGBTQ+ Rights

Abstract: During the past decades, the rights of sexual minorities have been subject to both expansion and resistance at domestic and international levels. This essay investigates the resistance to sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) rights by focusing on the position of autocratic regimes in international organizations. It examines the history and evolution of discussions regarding SOGI within the United Nations (UN) and presents an analysis of the positions taken by countries in all SOGI resolutions adopted by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). Democracies and autocracies are clearly divided on the topic of LGBTQ+ rights, with the latter vehemently opposing proposals to expand sexual minorities' rights. This autocratic resistance is rooted in fears of empowered minorities challenging the status quo and the perceived threat of SOGI rights as a gateway to broader liberal values. By leveraging cultural anxieties and joining forces with other nondemocratic regimes, autocracies exploit traditional values to resist the expansion of international liberal norms. The United Nations must adopt policy recommendations aimed at countering opposition to SOGI rights by emphasizing the universality of human rights, combating cultural relativism, and reframing the national sovereignty argument to garner broader support for SOGI rights.

Resistance, Conformity, and Negotiation to Socio-cultural Anxieties: A Semiotic Reading of Female Aswang Characters in Selected Philippine Horror Films

The Philippines has a rich tradition of folklore, often portrayed in horror films to reflect cultural anxieties and hegemonic ideologies to circumvent political censorship. Among the most popular horror genres in the country is Aswang. This study examines the depictions of female Aswang in Aswang (2011), Corazon ang Unang Aswang (2012), and Maria Labo (2015) through Barthesian Semiology. Female aswang characters and their narrative exposition were analyzed on a micro, meso, and macro level. In the micro level, the Filipina aswang as a cultural reject tries to resist male chauvinism through her transformation towards her true nature, gaining control over her life, and divergence from the societal norms. On the other hand, she is represented in aswang films as someone who is being boxed with societal prescriptions, depicted as the weaker one, and is governed by her emotion. The meso level discusses how the female aswang is viewed in the context of her community, and how the latter affects her perception of herself and her decisions in life. The three films underscore the expectation on women to be domesticated, and the lead characters portrayed how women respond to these societal standards. Additionally, the macro level investigated how female aswang characters are discursively positioned in relation to socio-cultural struggles in the past and present to uncover their hegemonic constructs on poverty, injustices, mental health, and historical distortion. Keywords: Aswang, horror films, Philippine folklore, semiotics, socio-cultural anxieties.

The dress and commercial image of the American ‘Fat Lady’, 1850–1920

In this article, I analyse the genre of ‘Fat Lady’ photographs popular between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. I assert that there is an archetypal appearance that developed in the 1860s and was standardized by the 1880s, consisting of certain dress, grooming and posing practices that emphasized their subjects’ sizes and presumed social status. Fatness was a performance that these women were employed to embody – one that straddled the lines between corporeal deviance and normality. Freak shows reveal cultural anxieties about bodies. The way Fat Lady performers were costumed reflected concerns about fatness taking up too much space and visibility as well as fatness rendering people immature and androgynous, thereby challenging established sex-role differences; it also revealed the potential erotic allure of extreme body size. Over a century of popularity, Fat Lady performers came to rely on costumes inspired by evening dress, childrenswear and then lingerie, all of which grew scantier as time progressed. Existing cartes de visite, cabinet cards, posters, advertisements, reports from journalists and side show insiders, and rare interviews with the performers themselves provide material for close analysis.

Ideas of Statecraft in Philip Sidney’s <i>The Defense of Poesy</i>

Philip Sidney was a famous courtier, soldier, poet and patron in Elizabethan England. As the best work of literary criticism in the English Renaissance, Sidney’s <i>The Defense of Poesy</i> not only contains rich poetic, philosophical and aesthetic values, but also permeates with comments and suggestions on current politics, implying advanced ideas of statecraft. Studying <i>The Defense of Poesy</i> in the context of social, political and cultural anxiety in England in the late 1570s and early 1580s, this article attempts to reveal Sidney’s creative motive and governing ideology. The adherence to ethical values shows his belief in “building the state with political virtue”; the praise of the heroic epic reveals the determination to “protect the state with military force”; the prospect of national poetics presents the vision of “strengthening the state with national culture”. Sidney reinterpreted the function of poetry and the responsibility of poets at the time of national crisis. Discussing politics in the name of poetry, Sidney expressed his efforts to create a political poetics aiming to serve the state, and demonstrated the beautiful political vision of building a “golden world” of heroic, solidary, independent, and united England. Throughout his life, Sidney turned the ideas of statecraft into an act of serving the country. After his early death in battle, he was hailed as the cultural icon and national hero of England.

Press X to Pet: A Critical Analysis of Dog-Petting Mechanics in High-Profile (MMO)RPGS

ABSTRACT Within high-profile RPGs, dogs (and other nonhuman animals) often cannot be petted. This state of affairs has been changing, though, in response to player demand. In this article, I argue that players want pet-type animals categorized as petable to maintain anthropocentric notions of the relationship between humans and animals. Pairing the idea of petability with that killability, I examine Alice, a German shepherd, from The Last of Us 2 (2020), Fortnite (2017) patch 8.40 (2019), and Patrick Lenton’s (2016) viral Twitter thread about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011). Each of these texts features very different reasons for dogs being present and very different ways the player can interact with these in-game dogs. Using the notion of killability to examine the role of pet-type animals, the implicit beliefs about the place and purpose of dogs are made explicit within game worlds. These examples of ‘pet-able’ dogs speak to cultural anxieties surrounding companionate human–animal relationships. Incapable of interacting with pet-type animals in friendly or familial ways, players either must acknowledge the arbitrariness of anthropocentric friend/object divides or reassert the (il)logics of contemporary American anthropocentrism and demand the ability to press X to pet.

Cultural Anxiety in East Asian Clouded by “Tradition” and “Modernity”—Based on Chinese Scholars’ Studies on Religion Mixture in Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s Kirishitanmono

Cultural Anxiety in East Asian Clouded by “Tradition” and “Modernity”—Based on Chinese Scholars’ Studies on Religion Mixture in Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s Kirishitanmono

The toponym Bulawayo and ideologies of Ndebele language purism in Zimbabwe

Abstract Linguistic and cultural anxieties have characterized the Ndebele language and culture due to the various hegemonies the people have gone through. The Ndebele as a nation were born out of the Mfecane migrations. In their migration up north they encountered various linguo-cultural groups that posed the risk of possible linguistic and cultural attrition. Upon settling in what is known as Zimbabwe today, the speakers of Ndebele were a minority among other language groups which they had conquered militarily. Both colonial conquest and the subsequent Shona triumphalist and nationalist discourses and policies placed Ndebele in a disadvantaged social and political position which threatened its existence. This paper establishes that all these factors fed into the Ndebele linguistic anxiety, which is manifested in various tense encounters, especially on social media platforms. Data for the study were collected through observations and unstructured interviews. Using the prisms of linguistic purism ideologies and linguistic analysis, the paper analyzes the attitudes towards and the grammar of the various renditions of the toponym. The paper establishes that, while political tensions foment the linguistic tensions around the phonology and morphology of the toponym, there are some idiosyncrasies that are influenced by the mother tongues of speakers and this creates some of the transphonological and morphological changes that infuriate Ndebele speakers.