Identity Debate Research Articles

Paradigms, power, and identity: Rediscovering Orthodoxy and regionalizing Europe

AbstractIn an effort to explain, to predict and to manage the ways in which organized religion affects patterns of public contestation at the state and regional levels in post‐Cold War Europe, social scientists and policymakers have formulated a cultural map that divides Europe into two spaces incompatible by virtue of their historical experiences: one space is ‘modem’, ‘civilized’, Western Christian; the other space is ‘anti‐modem’, ‘uncivilized’, Eastern Christian. This paper proposes that a specific ‘orthodox’ version of Eastern Orthodox Christianity has gained ascendance in Euro‐American academic and policy discussions, in order to provide a cultural argumentation that supports political‐economic and military power objectives in post‐Cold War Europe. The paper claims that the ‘orthodox’ version of Orthodoxy is theoretically inaccurate and methodologically unsound, but is rooted in intellectual efforts to salvage a neo‐modernization paradigm as well as in Orientalist tendencies in Modem Greek and Central European identity debates. An alternative to the ‘orthodox’ conception of Orthodoxy is presented, along with suggestions for how to analyze and to manage the potential synergy between efforts at consolidating liberal democracies in European societies with an Eastern Christian tradition emphasizing personal freedom and human relationality.

Sexing the self: gendered positions in cultural studies

Faced with the seemingly enormous difficulty of representing `others', many theorists working in Cultural Studies have been turning to themselves as a way of speaking about the personal. In Sexing the Self Elspeth Probyn tackles this question of the sex of the self, an issue of vital importance to feminists and yet neglected by feminist theory until now, to suggest that there are ways of using our gendered selves in order to speak and theorize non-essential but embodied selves. Arguing for `feminisms with attitude', Sexing the Self ranges across a wide range of theoretical strands, drawing upon a body of literature from early Cultural Studies to Anglo-American feminist literary criticism, from `identity debates' to Foucault's `care of the self'.

Critiques [of “Black” or “African American”; What’s In a Name? by Johnny Washington

In “‘Black’ or ‘African American’: What9s in a Name?” Johnny Washington reminds us that on the appropriate name for Americans of African descent has been ongoing, with varying degrees of intensity, for a long time. In illustrating the ancientness of the debate, he referred to precedents of the current irruption. He observed that “Booker T. Washington advanced the ethnic identity debate” in the 1890s. He also pointed to twentieth century contributions to the labelling crisis by W. E. B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Alain Locke, and Stokely Carmichael. Yet, neither the debate nor the labels themselves are the core concern for Washington9s article. Rather, with emphasis on Locke9s concept of race in a social culture context and C. I. Lewis9s thesis on linguistic and sense meaning, philosophy and linguistics are the primary concerns of the article. The debate and the labels serve as incidental pegs for the analysis. Though still in the exploratory stage, the author9s juxtaposing of the debate against linguistic and philosophical theories is both interesting and illustrative.

Editor's welcome, PORTAL, Vol. 2, No. 2, July 2005

Welcome to the July 2005 issue of Portal, a special issue with the title ‘Strange Localities: Utopias, Intellectuals and Identities in the 21st Century,’ guest edited by Alistair Fox and Hilary Radner (both from the University of Otago, New Zealand), who convened an international colloquium on this theme in January 2004, and Murray Pratt (University of Technology Sydney, Australia). As Alistair Fox says in his introduction to the special issue, the twelve papers gathered under the ‘Strange Localities’ rubric provide rich insights into the ways by which ‘the contemporary utopian impulse is expressing itself, both in the search for utopia, and through the exposure of false utopias.’ With a broad geographical reach, and an equally broad critical gaze, the essays collected here shed new light on the critical, yet often ambivalent, role that identity politics play in myriad utopian projects, and also in such critical enterprises and epoch-defining processes as postcolonialism, postfeminism, postmodernism, transnationalism, multiculturalism, and economic and cultural globalization.
 
 In addition to the papers collected in the special issue section, this issue of Portal includes a number of essays that, while not addressing the special issue theme, also have much to say about the nexus between contemporary identity debates, intellectual practice, and utopian imaginaries. We are also pleased to introduce in the Portal Cultural Works' section two short chronicle-like pieces by Moses Iten, a young Australian writer.
 
 Paul Allatson, Chair, PORTAL Editorial Committee