Marginal Voices Research Articles

“Esther Weren’t No Harlot”: Rape and Marriage in Go Tell It on the Mountain

To consider how James Baldwin resisted racialized notions of sexuality in his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, I employ a number of black feminist critics—including Saidiya Hartman, Patricia Williams, Hortense Spillers, and Patricia Hill Collins—to analyze three under-studied minor characters: Deborah, Esther, and Richard. Those three characters are best understood as figures of heterosexual nonconformity who articulate sophisticated and important critiques of rape and marriage in America at the turn of the twentieth century. Baldwin thus wrote subversive theories of race and sexuality into the margins of the novel, making its style inextricable from its politics. Baldwin’s use of marginal voices was a deft and intentional artistic choice that was emancipatory for his characters and that remains enduringly relevant to American sexual politics. In this particularly polarizing transition from the Obama era to the Donald J. Trump presidency, I revisit Baldwin’s ability to subtly translate political ideas across fault lines like race, nationality, and sex.

We Will Not Be Silent: Amplifying Marginalized Voices in LIS Education and Research

AbstractThis article focuses on the role of LIS faculty and researchers in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. Key points include our responsibility to educate ourselves about marginalization and silencing; to help our students build theoretical, practical, and ethical foundations for engaging with communities in ways that prioritize their needs and uphold the values of the profession; to amplify the voices of people systematically targeted by the presidential administration’s policies and actions; and to engage in public discourse about the implications of current administrative policies as related to the core values of LIS, such as the right to privacy, access, freedom of speech, and intellectual freedom. The article draws parallels between social oppression, as demonstrated in campaign rhetoric and presidential policy, and institutional oppression within library spaces.

Gender and older LGBT* housing discourse: the marginalised voices of older lesbians, gay and bisexual women

PurposeThis paper is a conceptual discussion of the marginalisation of the voices of older lesbians, gay and bisexual (LGB) women, within the collective discourse of “older LGBT* housing”. The purpose of this paper is to critically interrogate its (in)equality implications and to consider ways in which they might be overcome.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual discussion that draws on the social justice model of equality developed by Nancy Fraser, specifically the domains of resources, recognition and representation.FindingsThe housing needs, wishes and concerns of older LGB women are often marginalised while at the same time those of older gay men are privileged. Older LGB women’s preferences for gender- and/or sexuality- specific housing are silenced within collective homogenising discourse – by researchers and activists alike – which mobilises a “mainstream” or “LGBT*-specific” binary about housing options.Research limitations/implicationsResearch findings which do not include the voices of older lesbian, gay and bisexual women are inherently flawed. There is a need to ensure their voices – across the older age spectrum – are included.Practical implicationsThe voices of older LGB women in relation to older age housing need to be better heard so that they can be better resourced.Social implicationsThe marginalisation of older lesbian, gay and bisexual women’s voices in relation to older age housing has profound equality and human rights implications.Originality/valueCritical discussions about the gendering of older LGBT* housing discourse are long overdue. This paper seeks to open a dialogue about these important issues.

Photovoice and Photodocumentary for Enhancing Community Partner Engagement and Student Learning in a Public Health Field School in Cape Town

Background: Field school research, which begins by considering community partners as pedagogues and thus exploring their perspectives on student learning, is uncommon. Photovoice is a method for self-expression of such marginalized voices. Purpose: Describe the photovoice to photodocumentary process and present results of its evaluation. Methodology/Approach: We employed photovoice with the local guides who accompany community health research field school students in Cape Town. Guides were prompted to take photographs of what students may not see or understand about their community. These were discussed at three workshops and developed into a photodocumentary for inclusion in the curriculum. Twenty-one students completed an open-ended questionnaire. These, and student/staff discussions, were thematically analyzed. Findings/Conclusion: Students reported learning about cultural practices which otherwise would not be visible to them. They felt greater connection to their guides who they saw in a new light, and became aware of how topic-specificity drew attention away from overarching characteristics of community life. Questions raised might be better explored through facilitated discussion rather than question-and-answer sessions alone. Implications: Field schools depend on academic–community partnerships. Photovoice can create space for community partner reflection on student learning and the co-creation of effective pedagogical tools valued by students.

Le rôle de l’oubli dans les pratiques commémoratives à l’exemple des 750 ans de Berlin en RDA en 1987

The archives of the Berliner Haus für kulturelle Arbeit, an institution of the GDR charged in the 1980s to prepare the 750 years commemoration of the birth of the city Berlin, show that a lapse of memory played a significant role in the production of the past which characterized this commemoration, that we analyze, within the meaning of Paul Connerton, as a set of “commemorative practices” which form the social support of the common memory. The typical case of the GDR where the memory is shared with West-Germany is interessant, because these ceremonies are significant by their assertions but also by their silences. We show how a lapse of memory was built in the GDR, and how this lapse of memory prescribed by the Berliner House of cultural work aimed at developping a feeling of common membership, an identification with the east-german State and with the socialist ideology, while overlooking of broad sides of history. Some categories of analysis of the family memory are transposed: whereas in the case of the family memory, the rewriting of history obeys a tacit law which is that of the family unit to preserve, memory construction in the case of the Berliner House of cultural work also rests on a unit to consolidate: a national unit. The corollary of this instrumentalisation of the past is that it was necessary to describe a linear historical evolution, with a direction and a sense of history. The objective was to promote a teleological approach of history, guided by the principles of the historical materialism. However, we also show that marginal critical voices could sometimes appear, in order to denounce the aporias of this speech on the past.

On the aesthetics of mimicry and proliferation: interrogations of hegemony in the postcolonial public sphere

This article examines innovative modes of interrogating spectacles of State power in postcolonial dictatorship novels. Authoritarian power in the postcolonial public sphere perpetuates itself through practices that reiterate the prerogatives of State reason, national progress, national unity and the indispensability of the potentate. All these are mobilized and deployed in order to produce indocile subjects socialised by dominant ideologies. Given that discourses of resistance have often ended up re-enacting modes of hegemonic power, authors employ tactics of resistance based on slender narrative and non-totalizing subversive acts that nevertheless constitute an unsettling menace to symbolic fabrics of dictatorial power. Using the theoretical approaches elaborated by Achille Mbembe, Homi K. Bhabha and Michel de Certeau, this paper examines narrative deconstructive practices that aim at opening up the postcolonial public sphere for the expression of marginal voices without endowing literary texts with explicit political teleologies. Examples are taken from the novels of Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Sony Labou Tansi, Ahmadou Kourouma and Garcia Marquez. The article concludes that subversive reactions to postcolonial State power thrive on a threatening hybridity and a subversive collocation of significations like profanity/mythology, banality/exceptionality, life/death, laughter/lamentation that find their valence in the context of excessive and pervasive State power.Keywords: subversion, mimicry, rumours, postcolonial, dictatorship

That All May Enjoy Abundant Life: A Theological Vision of Flourishing from the Margins

At the onset of the twenty-first century, American Christian feminist theologian, Sally McFague, in her book Life Abundant, challenged North Americans to move from a consumer mentality to a planetary theology that glorifies God in and through all of creation. The privileged are urged to shift from affluence and over indulgence to restraint, in order that all people may benefit. McFague points out that there is no single solution to the crisis facing humanity and the cosmos. This article, reflecting on the stories, hopes and struggles of marginalized women in India, offers one response to envision abundant life for all. It presents a theological view of flourishing from the vantage point of the excluded and oppressed. How do marginal voices challenge people at the centre and how can those at the margins be enabled to experience abundant life in relation to God, others and the entire ecosystem?

Beyond the Centre: women in nineteenth-century Iceland and the grand narratives of European women’s and gender history

ABSTRACTIn recent years, women’s and gender historians have paid attention to the dissonance between the grand narratives of European women’s history and the history and experiences of marginal regions and countries. This article discusses the challenge of writing women’s history from the margins—Iceland—into the framework of the grand narratives of European women’s and gender history. It is argued that this framework grounded in theories of progress and modernisation is too narrow, offering little space for different or marginal voices from rural societies. Using the case study of the ‘ordinary’ woman Sigríður Pálsdóttir (1809–1871), the article argues that more voices from the margins and different histories, broaden our understanding of the multi-vocal and multi-levelled history of women in Europe.

Elephant or Elebird?: dialogic formation of truth and subjectivity in Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hatches the Egg & Horton Hears a Who!

The voice of the other seems to become more than just a marginal voice in Dr. Seuss’s Horton stories. Throughout these two narratives the character of this big elephant constantly reinforces the marginal voice of the other through a dialogic relationship. Horton the elephant cannot and will not stand a ruling voice. He persistently searches for the other. He is big and he does big things for small things. His acts of compassion and solicitude can best be explained through Mikhail Bakhtin’s views on dialogism and language. The aim of this essay is to analyse the mentioned stories in the light of Bakhtin’s theories on discourse and subjectivity. All through both of these books in children’s literature, readers can detect the dialogic formation of truth and subjectivity as Horton experiences the clash of marginal with dominant. Margin crosses the borders of the centre and therein lies the rub.

Listening and the ambiguities of voice in South African journalism

ABSTRACTPolitical theorists like Bickford (1996) and media theorists like Couldry (2006) have introduced the concept of listening as a complement to long-standing discussions about voice in democracies and in the media which serve the democratic project. This enhanced understanding of voice goes beyond just hearing into giving serious attention to, in particular, marginalised voices. This article reports on an investigation into the ways in which mainstream and community media in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, understand listening as an important part of their role as journalists. Interviews probed the attitudes of journalists and editors towards listening, and also interrogated their own understandings of their role in South Africa, particularly in relation to young people who are finding their political “voice”. The research showed that “listening” as a journalistic practice is seldom understood in anything more than common sense ways and is certainly not an organising principle of reporting and disseminating news. This results in journalism that is events focused, often sensationalist and whose agenda is set powerfully by political actions and actors in the environment. The power of being heard is almost solely in the hands of the journalists, who regard themselves as “the voice of the people”, without actively providing a space for listening to the voices of community members. But, within this generalised environment, there are two very interesting projects in which journalists and editors are actively listening to the issues and stories of citizens and letting them set agendas.

Thinking intersectionally with/through narrative methodologies

abstractThis article explores the potentially productive relations and tensions between narrative methodologies and intersectional research. The following questions are explored: How might narrative approaches be productive tools for intersectional research? How does intersectionality challenge and potentially extend current modes of narrative inquiry? What are the tensions of thinking intersectionality with/through narrative and vice versa? While a substantial (and contested) literature exists on intersectionality, particularly in feminist theory, there is currently a lack of clarity about how to ‘do’ intersectionality at the level of research practice and methodology. Several conceptual frameworks have been developed, including those by Crenshaw (1991), McCall (2005) and Prins (2006), but their methodological implications remain vague. Furthermore, although narrative has previously been put forward as a method of analysis particularly well suited to intersectional research (Phoenix and Pattynama, 2006; Ludvig, 2006; Cole, 2009), the rationale and implications of this merger have not been well developed.This article explores the entanglements (Barad, 2007) produced by putting narrative inquiry and intersectional approaches in conversation with one another. It argues that narrative approaches potentially offer rich methodological tools for intersectional analyses, particularly in relation to their ability to grant epistemic privilege to marginalised voices (Mohanty, 2013) and trace the multiple and contradictory stories and experiences of research participants and their emphasis (in some variants) on the ethics of listening (Gilligan et al, 2003). Intersectional approaches also challenge and extend narrative methodologies in fruitful directions. In particular, intersectional thinking shows the limitations of focusing only on individual experience and textual story-telling, and highlights the methodological importance of finding ways to explore and analyse the material, structural and political realities that co-construct lives/narratives.

Social Media for Social Justice

ABSTRACTAs the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, we are tasked with stimulating a national dialogue on race and helping to foster a spirit of reconciliation and healing. This directly impacts our social media practice and how we engage with digital audiences. It helps us reach new audiences, highlight relevant museum collections, create participatory experiences, and confront issues of race and social justice. We believe that all museums can participate in online discussions about race and social justice to create inclusive digital spaces that welcome all visitors. Museums can and should use their unique collections and individual missions to help their audiences make connections to our shared American history by telling stories outside the common narrative. This article illustrates the way one museum uses its collections, programming, and storytelling to uplift marginalized voices in the digital sphere.

Pathways of Creativity in Contemporary Newfoundland and Labrador ed. by María Jesús Hernáez Lerena

Maria Jesus Hernaez Lerena, ed. Pathways of Creativity in Contemporary Newfoundland and Labrador. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2015. Pp. xiii, 341. 52.99 [pound sterling]. Pathways of Creativity in Contemporary Newfoundland and Labrador is a significant contribution to scholarly criticism on the cultures of Canadas most easterly province. All of us working in cultural fields connected to Newfoundland and Labrador owe a debt of gratitude to Maria Jesus Hernaez Lerena, the Spanish academic who compiled and edited twelve essays from eminent local scholars, artists, and commentators. In her introduction, Hernaez Lerena wonders if as an outsider she can find a safe observing position between, on the one hand, the romantic [of Newfoundland and Labrador] and, on the other, the to believe in the existence of untroubled idylls (1). Far from being an obstacle, her outsider perspective brings a refreshing curiosity and newness to the study, compelling the local contributors to reevaluate taken-for-granted assumptions about the cultures of the island and Labrador. productive tension between reverie and reluctance that Hernaez Lerena identifies runs through many of the book's chapters. collection is remarkable for a number of reasons. First, although the book is weighted toward literary scholarship, it also includes chapters on film, theatre, visual art, and oral storytelling traditions. Such transdisciplinarity in the context of scholarship on Newfoundland and Labrador is innovative and provides a breadth of reference that asks readers to link various creative endeavors. Of special note in this regard are essays by Jamie Skidmore and Noreen Golfman on Newfoundland theatre and film, respectively. Both Skidmore and Golfman offer an overview of creative works in the province and outline some of the central concerns for scholarly criticism. This is the basic pattern of many of the chapters, and so the collection offers a broad view of both the province's creative cultures and how these cultures are understood by critics. Along with its transdisciplinary perspective, the collection is also unique in the way it prioritizes marginalized voices, including those of Indigenous, women, and Labradorian artists. inclusion of writers and artists from Labrador is especially important, because in the context of Newfoundland and Labrador political, economic, and cultural discourses, Labrador is all too often an afterthought. Roberta Buchanan's essay, The Aboriginal Writes Back, reverses the colonial gaze by examining autobiographical writing by Abraham Ulrikab, an Inuk, alongside Wayne Johnston's historical fiction Navigator of New York. Robin McGrath's chapter, The Diarist Tradition among Labrador Aboriginal People, is likewise an important contribution in the way it theorizes and interprets writing from Labrador Inuit, Innu, and Metis. Valerie Legge's entry focuses on writing from women travelers to Newfoundland and Labrador and how such writing shapes discourses about the province. …

Women as Symbols of National Honour and Masculinity in Crisis in Chaman Nahal's Azadi

The simultaneous Independence and Partition of India is considered to be the single most traumatic experience, a cataclysm that forever changed the contours of the country and the lives of the people. In the Punjab it resulted in a mass migration that dislocated millions. In the large-scale insensate, communal violence that followed Partition became a defining moment in shaping and strengthening a communitarian consciousness wherein religion became the prime explanatory category of nationhood. While Independence in India and Pakistan is celebrated, there has been a collective amnesia about the event despite the harrowing experiences the refugees testified to. Accompanying the official Indian erasure of the violence has been the historiographical lacuna on the moment until recently. Historical debates centre round the causes and the high politics of Partition but are unable to deal with violence. Moreover, this does not deal with the narrative of popular history. To deal with history from below and to recover marginal voices, history has become revisionist. Subaltern studies and Feminist research have focused on recording the oral testimonies of Partition survivors and witnesses. Revisionist feminist historiographers have investigated women's experiences of the violence and have shown how it became a gendered narrative of displacement which led to the realignment of family, community and national identities. They have also investigated the violence women were subjected to by men of their own as well as the other community and within their own families as they became symbols of national honour. Similarly, men too experienced violence during the Partition but questions like what happens to men's roles, male bodies and conceptions of masculinity remain unanswered and hidden. Ashuman voices are silent on the violence, historians have observed that literature has stepped in to supplement the lacuna. Based on his personal experiences of the Partition, Chaman Nahal's Azadi deals with the gendered, sexual violence women faced while on the move in kafilas or foot convoys. The other, embedded in the narrative, is about a little dealt aspect of Partition violence: violence committed on male bodies. This paper will show how both women and men faced violence from the perspective of a male writer and whether Nahal has succeeded in his enterprise or not.

Putting Lives on the Record: The Book as Material and Symbol in Life Writing

This article develops an understanding of role of life writing in putting marginalized voices on by examining material and symbolic history of book and its relationship with life writing. Taking two key points in history of book as its focus, article argues that the record is a material and symbolic performative site that authorizes a life writer's claims to knowledge and experience. Through a reading of Jean-Paul Sartre's 1963 autobiography Les Mots ( The Words ) article demonstrates importance of book to how life writers and scholars of life writing conceptualize cultural, political, and social importance of telling stories from life.

We Will Not Be Silent: Amplifying Marginalized Voices in LIS Education and Research

We Will Not Be Silent: Amplifying Marginalized Voices in LIS Education and Research

Locating Co-presence in Media Messages about Global Warming

ABSTRACTThis paper responds to recent calls for alternative approaches to the analysis of environmental communication that uncover overlooked voices in the discussion of environmental issues. Borrowing core principles from critical rhetoric, it suggests a way to categorize media messages according to how human–nature relationships are constructed in media discourse. The paper illustrates how, in presenting contrasting and often oppositional constructions of human–nature relationships, the media messages examined articulate three recurrent (but not equal) discourses on global warming. These discourses include (1) nature-as-out-of-reach discourse, (2) nature-as-antagonist discourse, and (3) nature-as-co-present discourse. By juxtaposing these discourses, the paper shows how environmental communication scholars can engage in critical realism and political advocacy to illuminate latent public discourse that holds the potential to champion marginalized voices of nature and accentuate the interconnectedness of humans and the environment.

Playing on the Same Pitch

Sports journalism’s perceived proximity to fandom has posed professional problems relating to status, prestige and standards. Sports journalists are now seeing performative aspects of their occupational practice appropriated by fans using digital platforms. This paper outlines a study that involved in-depth semi-structured interviews with UK print sports journalists to explore what fan blogging has meant for their occupational identity. This study found sports journalists did not consider fan bloggers to be a threat to their professional distinctiveness. Bloggers seeking to emulate sports journalism’s daily beat routines were seen as conflictive. However, participants considered the occupation to be safeguarded by privileged accreditation to professional sport and access to resources. The study also discovered sports journalists held nuanced attitudes towards bloggers and did not necessarily see them as inferior. Sports journalists saw a value in bloggers with niche, writer-driven interests providing complementary content to mainstream media. Sports journalists could legitimise blogs through acceptance and adoption while asserting their own cultural dominance. There were positive indications this expansion and diversification of the sports section of print media websites could lead to a range of perspectives and exposure of marginal voices. Participants also indicated blogging had become an entry route into the occupation.

Magic in Islam

What if someone wrote an introduction to Islam that was “not Sunnī-centered,or male-centered, or law-centered” (p. 4)? What if it did not focus on a theoreticalArab Muslim heartland and “let only the classical male theologians andjurists speak” (p. 4)? And what if “magic became the primary lens that informedthe author’s priorities” (p. 4)?Magic in Islam is what would happen. Through “magic,” Knight pokesholes in narratives about Islam held by Muslims (such as the notion of a monolithic,static Islamic orthodoxy) and the general populace (such as the “clashof civilizations” narrative). Title aside, Magic in Islam is really about AmericanIslam, not magic; that is, it implicitly compares Islam’s esoteric heritagewith the dry, hyper-logical brand of Islam popular in American MSAs and atISNA, as well as “Protestant-ish” assumptions about Islam in the broaderAmerican discourse. Knight presents himself as neither a specialist in nor apractitioner of the esoteric, and readers expecting a catalogue of Muslim occultpractices will be disappointed (and perhaps enraged). Instead, he acts as awide-eyed observer guiding the reader through the curiosities of Muslim heritage.Knight did not invent this genre, nor is his main contribution in presentingoriginal research. Rather, his main contribution is in making abstruseacademic texts meaningful to the non-specialist, and in a way that is engagingand fun.From this angle, Magic in Islam is similar to his other projects, such asThe Taqwacores (2004) and Journey to the End of Islam (2009). However,while his writing here is still playfully irreverent, it is considerably toneddown, with only an infrequent swear word or allusion to an indelicate act.Hence, despite its potentially heterodox subject, it is more likely to agreewith conservative sensibilities. Ironically, it is also far more grounded in orthodoxy.While Knight proposes to “let the intro come through marginalizedvoices” (p. 4), particularly loud voices include those of orthodox giantssuch as al-Bukhari and Ahmad ibn Hanbal, as well as less-orthodox but stillmainstream-enough voices such as those of al-Kindi and Ibn al-‘Arabi. (Thisis in contrast to truly marginalized voices, such as those of amulet sellers,jinn exorcists, or women.) Nonetheless, the writing is mature and thoughtful,and I would be comfortable using it as a supplementary textbook in an “Introductionto Islam” class ...

Practicing Convict Criminology: Lessons Learned from British Academic Activism

Joanne Belknap’s recent ASC presidential address included a critique of Convict Criminology’s activism. A number of concerns were provided, although of particular importance here are, first, Belknap’s concerns regarding the absence of ‘marginalized voices’ in the Convict Criminology network. Second, the issue of defining how non-con academics function as Convict Criminology group members. This paper responds to these criticisms. Specifically, we discuss the question of ‘representation’ in BCC and our attempts to remedy this issue. We also draw attention to the academic activism that British Convict Criminology is conducting in Europe. This includes a detailed discussion of the collaborative research-activist activities that involve non-con as well as ex-con academic network members. We demonstrate how these collaborations explain the vital group membership role that non-con academics assume in the activism of Convict Criminology.