Cultural Genealogy Research Articles

Little girl/Hummingbird/Homme-plante: women and poetics in Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism and the essays of Suzanne Césaire

ABSTRACT Since its publication in 1950, Aimé Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism has remained influential for its incisive reframing of the European “civilizing mission.” Nevertheless, feminist interventions have problematized the masculine nationalist project upon which both the essay and the wider Négritude movement rest. The recent surge of critical interest in Suzanne Césaire demonstrates a desire to—recuperate-as Kara Rabbitt phrases—it-the “missing mother” of Martinican cultural genealogy. In this paper, I will reckon with the gender gap separating the two Césaires, thinking through poetics as a gendered political epistemology in their essays. Beginning with Aimé Césaire and Discourse on Colonialism, I focus on his central rhetorical device of formal repetition, specifically anaphora, and draw on the work of Brent Hayes Edwards to argue that the anaphoric line is entrenched in a masculinist narrative of freedom, rhetorically foreclosing on gender consciousness. From there, I undertake a close and comparative reading of selections from Suzanne Césaire's oeuvre against Discourse, noting divergences in their varying figurations of colonized and racialized women. Considering new scholarship on Suzanne Césaire's influence and ecopoetics, including the work of Anny-Dominique Curtius and Lauren Nelson, I propose her posthuman ecopoetics as a source of gendered epistemology.

“INTENSIVE MOTHERHOOD” - INSIGHTS INTO THE CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE CONCEPT

As intensive motherhood is considered as the most influential contemporaneous maternal model, especially in Western societies, but also in other parts of the world, a succinct exploration of the cultural genealogy of this concept is carried out, with the purpose to shed light on its past and present meanings and effects for women. Navigating through the sets of social values, norms and expectations formed in different stages of the history regarding the role of women, we become more able to assess the current implications of intensive motherhood not only for working women, but also in terms of social and gender relations, focusing our attention both on the strengths and to the possible negative implications of the concept.

Endangered Languages: A Sociocognitive Approach to Language Death, Identity Loss, and Preservation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Summary Sociolinguists suggest language death entails significant cultural, personal, and ecological loss. Socio-cultural and socio-political factors exacerbate language erosion and encourage supplantation by another more dominant language. Hence, we ask: what are the sociocognitive principles which make language death hurtful and symbolic? Within this article, we attempt to outline a sociocognitive account of language death, situating the Hallidayan perspective of language as a “social-semiotic” system alongside a Cognitive Linguistic approach. We further contextualise language as inseparable from culture, drawing insight from the sociological thought of Bourdieu. We contend that language death entails psychological trauma, representing the destruction of cultural genealogy and the loss of knowledge intrinsic to personal self-imagery and identity. To this end, we present a case study of the Māori languaculture in Aotearoa (New Zealand), tracing the impact of colonialism and marginalisation to current efforts and ambitions to ensure the languacultural survival of Māori and reclaim space in Aotearoa as a respected knowledge system and means of expression, particularly in the socio-technical age of artificial intelligence (AI) and the Web. We argue that our analysis bodes practical implications for language maintenance and revitalisation, concluding that sociolinguistic practitioners should consider a socio-cognitivist as well as socio-technical paradigm for language intervention. In closing, we discuss leveraging AI technologies towards language heritage, archival, and preservation to limit the destructive impact of the death of a language.

Cultural Genetics in Ettutthokai (Eight Anthologies)

The term "Culture" was coined at a later stage. This terminology is found in the Sangam literature in terms such as attributive, worthy men, ill-mannered, etc. It was in Tamil Nadu that the Tamil people, the primitive people, originated. It is the unanimous decision of historians that the human race originated. It was the Tamils who emerged in the early times and attained the maturity of civilization and the knowledge of life that led them to become the greatest in culture. Therefore, it can be realised that the Tamil race was the race that brought civilization and culture to the world and trained them. There are certain unique features and characteristics of such a Tamil race. Tolkappiyam and Sangam's works of literature are considered to be the oldest books available to us today. It is divided into internal and external parts. Also, it can be seen that the concept of cultural genetics refers to the lifestyles of people. Culture can be defined as the absorption of traditional customs and rituals of the people. Through its poetry, the Etthutthokai has captured the cultures of the ancient peoples. Following a good culture, it becomes an ideal platform for people to achieve higher goals in their lives. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the modern cultural genealogy of the ancient peoples is aligned with today's texts and the current status of cultural traditions by befitting the culture of ancient people.

German Fears in Economic Modelling

For Expo 58, the first World’s Fair after WWII, Wilhelm Krelle constructed a simulator of the economic circular flow—one of the material manifestations of the distinction between economic goals and the mechanics bringing them about that informed the mentality of many neo-Keynesian economists after WWII. In this article, I present a cultural genealogy of this mentality through the unusual career path of Wilhelm Krelle, a genealogy that reveals a deeply German experience. In contrast to the opposition between economic reasoning and the normative sphere, I show how Krelle’s preference for mechanical economic modelling was nourished by Prussian values of militarism, nationalism, and the Protestant faith.

Yogic style in motion: experiments in power and knowledge

ABSTRACT In this essay I speculate on the idea that literary style can be informed by concepts of yoga and can constitute a yogic textual practice in its own right. As a popular practice around the world, yoga is often considered a set of embodied pursuits that promote holistic health and spiritual advancement. Yet yoga also claims a long tradition in South Asian philosophies as a modality of knowledge. Drawing on remediated concepts from these traditions, I theorise a form of yogic style that integrates changing genealogies of textual practice with attention to structures of power. This understanding of yogic style resonates with a twenty-first-century decolonising effort in Indian literature to animate the power of Indian cultural genealogies, while it contests a parallel tendency to manufacture mystiques of Indian civilisational belonging that legitimate the hierarchies and exclusions of majoritarian populism.

Pagan motifs as the manifestation of anti-modernism in the novels of N. Gaiman “American Gods” and A. Rubanov “Mahogany Man”

The subject of this research is the “pagan” images in modern mass culture in the context of the novels “American Gods” by the English writer Neil Gaiman and “Mahogany Man” by the contemporary Russian writer Andrey Rubanov. The goal of this article lies in the analysis of the US and Russian experience of assimilation and integration of pagan heritage in the context of mass culture of consumer society. Research methodology employs the methods offered by Eric Hobsbawm in his theory of “inventing traditions”. Thus, the author perceives pagan motifs as one of the “invented traditions” of the modern literature of consumer society. The scientific novelty lies in the comparative analysis of actualization of pagan images in the English and Russian literature of consumer society in the novels “American Gods” by N. Gaiman and “Mahogany Man” by A. Rubanov.  Analysis is conducted on the “pagan” images in the context of ethno-futuristic discourse defined as an alternative to modern serial identities of consumer society. It is demonstrated that in the literary texts of mass culture, pagan motifs have multiple and heterogeneous origins and cultural genealogies, localized in the classical heritage and popular culture simultaneously. The author believes that pagan images in the prose of mass culture actualize the problems of identity crisis, as well as the erosion of ethnic traditional cultures in globalizing society. It is suggested that visualization of literary texts may become the key trend in the development of pagan images in the mass literature of consumer society.

СИБИРСКАЯ СТЕПЬ В ЭСТЕТИЧЕСКИХ ПРАКТИКАХ МОДЕРНА (КОНСТАНТИН БАЛЬМОНТ – МАРИНА ЦВЕТАЕВА)

Statement of the problem. The problems of the article are addressed to the methods of cultural development of the vast Siberian steppes in Russian modernism, to the methods of overcoming cultural entropy. The purpose of the article is to describe the parameters of the “steppe” texts by M. Tsvetaeva and K. Balmont, to identify their cultural genealogy. Review of scientific literature on the problem is associated with solving specific problems: identifying ways of authorizing the Siberian text in the poetics of a particular author (works by A. Smith, E. Korkina, and V. Marosha). Research results. The article is devoted to the Siberian texts by K. Balmont and M. Tsvetaeva. In the collection of works by Balmont entitled “Blue Horseshoe. Poems about Siberia”, the perception of the Siberian steppes is built around the concepts of “distance”, “width”, and “freedom”, characteristic of Balmont’s poetry, in principle. In Tsvetaeva’s poem “Siberia”, the steppe theme appears twice: in the exposition of the poem, and also in the second part (the image of the Barabinsk steppe). The sources of Tsvetaeva’s steppe imagery can be considered her individual perception Blok’s “Scythianism”, her direct empirical experience of experiencing the Crimean steppes, as well as her keen interest in the Eurasian theory at the time of writing the poem. Conclusions. Spatial entropy does not become an obstacle for an artist of the modernist formation in the cultural development of space. Each poet creates his own image of the Siberian steppes, based on the available poetic tools, synthesizing creative methods.

Practice Diffusion

AbstractDiffusion is traditionally examined at a macro level, measured by adoption (e.g., sales), or at a micro level, assessed by consumer characteristics (e.g., adopter types). We address diffusion at a meso level focusing on how a practice disseminates across extended time and cross-cultural and cross-national space. We conduct an historical analysis and ethnographic inquiry of the dispersion of an indigenous practice, surfing, and the consequences of practice diffusion on practice reproduction. Our data suggest practice diffusion is not the wholesale adoption of a practice. Rather, a practice emerges across diverse cultural and national contexts through adaptation, fueled by processes of codification and transposition. We find that the movement of practice elements (meanings, materials, and competences) and their dynamic linkages (transposition, codification, and adaptation) enable a practice to (re)emerge across broad historic epochs and complex sociocultural landscapes. This study reveals how a practice evolves through shifts in power between practice carriers and noncarriers and results in distinct forms of reproduction (demarcation, imitation, acculturation, and innovation) that can mask the cultural genealogy of a practice. The continual maintenance and evolution of a practice depend on its strength of alignment and embeddedness within systems of practices that make up the social fabric of everyday life.

Ibsen, Power and the Self: Postsocialist Chinese Experimentations in Stage Performance and Film

Ibsen, Power and the Self: Postsocialist Chinese Experimentations in Stage Performance and Film

A Māori and Pasifika Label—An Old History, New Context

The term ‘Māori and Pasifika’ is widely used in Aotearoa, New Zealand to both unite and distinguish these peoples and cultures. As a collective noun of separate peoples, Māori and Pasifika are used to acknowledge the common Pacific ancestry that both cultures share, whilst distinguishing Māori as Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa (New Zealand), and Pasifika as migrants from other lands in the Pacific region. The term ‘Māori and Pasifika’ is a ‘label’ established in New Zealand to combine the minority cultural populations of both Māori, and Pacific migrant peoples, into a category defined by New Zealand policy and discourse. Migration for Māori and Pasifika to Australia (from Aotearoa) has generated new discussion amongst these diasporic communities (in Australia) on the appropriate collective term(s) to refer to Māori and Pasifika peoples and cultures. Some believe that in Australia, Māori should no longer be distinguished from Pasifika as they are not Indigenous (to Australia), while others believe the distinction should continue upon migration. Through the voices of Samoan and Māori researchers who reside in Australia, insider voices are honoured and cultural genealogy is privileged in this discussion of the label ‘Māori and Pasifika’ in the Australian context.

Stock or Soil? The Growth of Early American Literature

Stock or Soil? The Growth of Early American Literature

A tale of two cities: The discursive construction of ‘place’ in gentrifying East London

AbstractIn recent years, the East End of London has been dramatically transformed from a poor, working-class area, to one of the most fashionable neighbourhoods in the world. Adding to a growing body of research which examines the sociolinguistic dynamics of gentrifying neighbourhoods, this article draws on data from two ethnographic projects to examine how young people from the gentrified (i.e. working-class) and gentrifier (i.e. middle-class) communities index place attachment in East London. I demonstrate that for the gentrified community, place attachment is related to the ethnic and cultural genealogy of the immediate, local neighbourhood. Whilst for the gentrifiers, place identity is associated with the cosmopolitan economic and social opportunities of the city. I argue that whilst these communities occupy the same physical neighbourhood, these discourses suggest that they conceptually and socioculturally reside in two very different cities. (Gentrification, place, space, East London)*

The 7th Lawrence R. Schehr Memorial Award Winning Essay

Popular music abounds in Afropean literature, yet to date scholars have primarily read novels’ musical elements through author biography. In this article, I focus narrowly on the rich musical peritexts and musico-literary intermediality of two novels by Insa Sané: Du plomb dans le crâne (2008) and Daddy est mort…: Retour à Sarcelles (2010). In addition to the abundant diegetic musical references, both novels also feature two structural musical layers. I argue that these three musical elements constitute critical sites through which the novels’ narratives, which center around young, black, male protagonists who seek to escape vicious circles of violence through recognition, emerge. Ultimately, these novels’ musical elements situate the narratives’ discussions of black masculinity within much broader conversations transpiring between French and African American communities, thereby providing a much larger cultural genealogy to supplement the characters’ fraught literal ones.

Familiar Pixels: Imag(in)ing the Dead and the Political in Israel/Palestine

ABSTRACTOn July 2, 2014, a Palestinian teenager, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, was brutally killed. Although his murderers eventually confessed, the month following Mohammed's death was full of indecision about the crime and its perpetrators. During this period, Israeli and Palestinian publics latched onto Mohammed's selfies as intimate touchstones for comprehending who he was, what led to his death, and what subsequent action should be taken. This archive of images, however, inspired different understandings of Mohammed; among Israelis and Palestinians, conflictual voices emerged from the same pictures, making incompatible testimonials about Mohammed's identity and his victimhood. Central to the politics surrounding Mohammed's death were how such personal modes of perception—hearing him, seeing him, sensing him—inspired and legitimated radically different political claims and ambitions. Pausing on the ways that individuals grasped Mohammed in his images, in this article I unravel the cultural genealogies and social affordances that affected Israeli and Palestinian forms of visual apprehension. I argue that the most seemingly mundane moments of individual encounter—when Israelis and Palestinians caught sight of Mohammed at everyday digital interfaces—substantially inflected political landscapes and the contours of social understanding, laying the groundwork for further conflicts, including Israel's 2014 invasion of Gaza that occurred a month after his death. [death and dying, mediation, visuality, sexuality, Israel/Palestine]

Locating authenticity- The Politics and Poetics of Authenticity: A Cultural Genealogy of Sinhala Nationalism by Harshana Rambukwella

Sri Lanka Journal of Social Sciences (SLJSS) publishes social science articles on topics relevant to Sri Lanka in particular and South Asia in general. The journal also has a website at http://www.nsf.gov.lk/.

La rinascita della tragedia dallo spirito del blues nel teatro di August Wilson

Born in 1945 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, August Wilson was the most prolific and represented African American playwright of the twentieth century. His Century Cycle, a series of ten plays that chronicle the lives of African Americans from the early 1900s to the late 1990s, is an expression of Wilson’s spiritual realism, a form of drama that, while adhering to some conventions of the Western realist tradition, also introduces elements of innovation inspired by blues music and Yoruba cosmology. This essay analyses the double cultural genealogy of Wilson’s work to show how, despite respecting the Aristotelian principle of mìmesis, his playwriting draws on a quintessentially black aesthetic. In conceiving of theatre as a ritualistic performative context where music and words intertwine, Wilson restored what Friedrich Nietzsche regarded as the authentic spirit of Greek tragedy – the harmony between Dionysian and Apollonian – while at the same time injecting an African American ethos into the Western theatrical canon.

유리 집(Glass House)의 문화적 계보학: 세르게이 에이젠슈테인과 발터 벤야민 겹쳐 읽기

유리 집(Glass House)의 문화적 계보학: 세르게이 에이젠슈테인과 발터 벤야민 겹쳐 읽기

ВОССТАНИЯ РАБОВ-МУСУЛЬМАН И КРИСТАЛЛИЗАЦИЯ ГРАЖДАНСКОГО ПЛЮРАЛИЗМА В БРАЗИЛИИ

The article considers a series of revolts and rebel movements of black slaves in Brazil during the first third of the 19th century. The role of the Muslim community in the abolitionist processes of the largest South American state is highlighted. The author explores the process of formation of a multi-ethnic and multi-religious civil society in Brazil as a result of the revolutionary activity of enslaved African immigrants. A panoramic view of the search by the black population for new dimensions of identity and cultural genealogy of Afro-Brazilian religious practices is given.

Zora's Legacy: Black Love as Critical and Creative Inquiry

Zora's Legacy: Black Love as Critical and Creative Inquiry