Myths Of Identity Research Articles

“Furia Albanica” - The Last Myth for the Preservation of Albanian National Identity

Myths, although social constructs, are necessary means for constructing and preserving national identities. Sports and football in particular, have shown to be one of strongest myths of national identity, and thus, of a national unity. This is true for Albanians, and in particular for the Albanians living in Kosovo, due to the process of establishing a new state identity parallel to the existing national identity. The aim of the paper is to present the specific case of Kosovo, whereas a national football team upholds the main myth for a unified Albanian community, and the challenges brought about by Kosovo’s acceptance to the UEFA, in regard to the preservation of national identity. The theoretical review will reflect upon myths, its relation with sports and football in particular, and semantics behind the notion of nation and state, as used by the Albanian language. Through the comparative method, similar examples will be presented whereas the football myth has become the strongest national pride. Lastly, through the quantitative method, selected results of a survey conducted for the author’s main PhD thesis will be presented, in regard to affiliation with a national football team. The paper will reveal that a national team may and usually serves as the strongest imaginative community of what we call a nation. In cases such as Kosovo, it is actually the strongest myth, parallel to other symbols, such as the national flag, capable of mobilizing masses. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n4p533

Serving Up Chineseness: Myths of Authenticity and Identity in Kylie Kwong’s Cookery Texts

This paper seeks to examine the form and content of the culinary television programmes and cookbooks of Australian-Chinese celebrity chef and restaurateur, Kylie Kwong. It will utilise Bill Nichols’ theory of “The Challenge of Persuasion” to demonstrate how Kwong’s cookery show, Kylie Kwong: Cooking with Heart and Soul, is not just about food and cooking, but embodies particular ideologies and “myths,” as theorised by Barthes, about Chinese culture and identity. It also draws upon selected excerpts from Kwong’s cookbooks and food memoir, Kylie Kwong: Recipes and Stories (2003) and My China: A Feast for the Senses (2007), to unpack their representations of Chinese culture and identity. My aim is to elucidate how Kwong’s cooking show and cookbooks transcend their pragmatic function to become representational tools that carry specific meanings about Chineseness, both in terms of its production and consumption.

「回歸」的文化焦慮─1995年的《今天．香港文化專輯》與2007年的《今天．香港十年》

In 1995, Leung Ping-kwan was invited to be guest editor of ＂Special Issue on Hong Kong Culture＂ in literature journal Today. Leung explained his concept in the introduction to the special issue, at the same time he also expressed his anxieties. Leung tried to resist the cultural anxieties in Hong Kong during the run-up to the territory's handover to China by means of the selection of works in the special issue, which includes Leo Ou-fan Lee's discussion of the marginality of Hong Kong culture, Liu Yi-chang's discussion on the origins of Hong Kong literature starting from Wang Tao, and Rey Chow's Postcolonial Self-Writing as ＂Neither Roots nor Hybrids＂. After 12 years, Yip Fai was guest editor for the ＂Hong Kong Ten Years Special Issue＂ in Today's 2007 summer issue in retrospection of the first decade since the handover. In the introduction to the special issue, Yip wrote that it was a ＂retrospective on the thoughts and observations by Hong Kong people during the past ten years＂. The special issue looks into the myth of identity upon the territory's ten year's anniversary of the handover through the selection of short stories including ＂Translucent Human＂ by Yau Ching and ＂Mermaid＂ by Dorothy Tse Hiu-hung, film criticism by Shum Long-tin and social movement criticism by Chow Sze Chung. By analyzing the ＂Special Issue on Hong Kong Culture＂ and ＂Hong Kong Ten Years Special Issue＂ of Today in 1995 and 2007 respectively, this thesis discusses how the issues of ＂locality＂ in literature creation and criticism have evolved before and after the ＂handover＂ in 1997, and how was Hong Kong's ＂ handover ＂ to China represented and narrated in the works selected in these two special issues.

British musical modernism: the Manchester Group and their contemporaries

British Musical Modernism explores the works of eleven key composers to reveal the rapid shifts of expression and technique that transformed British art music in the post-war period. Responding to radical avant-garde developments in post-war Europe, the Manchester Group composers - Alexander Goehr, Peter Maxwell Davies, and Harrison Birtwistle - and their contemporaries assimilated the serial-structuralist preoccupations of mid-century internationalism to an art grounded in resurgent local traditions. In close readings of some thirty-five scores, Philip Rupprecht traces a modernism suffused with the formal elegance of the 1950s, the exuberant theatricality of the 1960s, and - in the works of David Bedford and Tim Souster - the pop, minimalist, and live-electronic directions of the early 1970s. Setting music-analytic insights against a broader social-historical backdrop, Rupprecht traces a British musical modernism that was at once a collective artistic endeavor, and a sounding myth of national identity.

Rise of a Japanese Chinatown: Yokohama, 1894–1972 by Eric C. Han

Reviewed by: Rise of a Japanese Chinatown: Yokohama, 1894–1972 by Eric C. Han Robert Eskildsen Rise of a Japanese Chinatown: Yokohama, 1894–1972. By Eric C. Han. Harvard University Asia Center, 2014. 266 pages. Hardcover $39.95/£29.95/€36.00. Eric Han has painted a wonderful historical portrait of Yokohama Chinatown. Perhaps not unlike the brushstrokes of an Impressionist painting, the details of his study sometimes have less impact when they are viewed up close, but from a broader perspective they convey a powerful image of Chinatown as a place where a prominent ethnic minority in Japan has negotiated its complex identity. In narrating the development of a Chinese community in Yokohama from the 1890s to the 1970s, Han investigates “the creation of mental categories of belonging, both national and local” (p. 5). His story thus combines two elements: the assimilation of Chinese expatriates into the citizenry of Yokohama and the emergence among them of a Chinese national [End Page 211] identity. The book’s most important message is that the Chinese of Yokohama resisted totalizing narratives of national identity and refused to see their identities as Chinese and as Yokohama residents as mutually exclusive. That flexible perspective contributed to the distinctive character of Yokohama Chinatown even as it undermined Japanese myths of national identity, and Han ends with the speculation that more recent Chinese arrivals to Chinatown may be able to negotiate their identity through a new iteration of this strategy. Han starts his narrative in the 1890s, around the time the treaty port system in Japan was nearing its end. He focuses on questions of nationalism and national identity, and later of migration, to explain the complicated process through which members of the Chinese community in Yokohama developed their identity as Chinese. Meanwhile he largely sidesteps issues of trade and diplomacy, which is perhaps why he does not engage with important recent works that overlap with his study, for example Pär Cassel’s discussion of extraterritoriality among the Chinese and Japanese and Urs Matthias Zachmann’s treatment of changing views of China among the Japanese elite between the Sino- and Russo-Japanese Wars.1 Notwithstanding this limitation, his account of identity formation among the Chinese of Yokohama is complex, weaving together details and insights from the politics and culture of China during the twentieth century, the widely varying provincial cultures that expatriate Chinese brought with them to Japan, and the economic and political changes that faced them in their adopted country. Chapter 1 deals with the changes in the treaty port system around the time of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 and the influence of this war on the identity of the Chinese residents of Yokohama. The main point of the chapter is that whereas this identity became more national and more totalizing as a result of the war, it still remained diverse and hybrid. Conflict between China and Japan provoked harassment of the Chinese in Yokohama and constrained the activities of Chinese traders. When the two countries broke off relations, the Chinese consulate in Yokohama closed its doors, depriving the local Chinese of both extraterritorial protection and diplomatic representation. The Japanese government in turn enacted laws that placed the Chinese under its jurisdiction and denied their commercial advantages, prompting some to leave Yokohama. Many remained behind, however, and as Han illustrates they were a complicated lot: not all of them were actually Chinese and not all of them actually lived in Chinatown, or even in Yokohama. The diverse examples he cites show that the Chinese community was a hybrid where people partook of multiple identities. Chapter 2 describes the period from the end of the Sino-Japanese War to the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, when events in China as well as political interactions between China and Japan deeply influenced the formation of national identity among the [End Page 212] Yokohama Chinese. Defeat in the Sino-Japanese War profoundly destabilized politics and society in China, provoking unsuccessful attempts at reform and rebellion, and the effects of that turmoil spread beyond the country as rebels such as Sun Yat-sen and reformers such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao fled to Yokohama to escape suppression...

‘Un roi en fuite: Le Mogho Naba Boukary Koutou pendant la pénétration française en pays mossi’

Abstract The year 1896 has remained engraved in the collective memory of the Mossi people. Indeed, this date has marked the forfeiture of the sovereignty of the emperor of the Mossi; the Mogho Naba Wobgo also called Boukary Koutou. The French colonial power has defeated and chased him out of his kingdom territory, thanks to the firepower that had been blown fiercely by Voulet Chanoine, one of the French brutal colonizers. Boukary Koutou knowing that he will not overcome these invaders, decided to run away, which can be considered as kind of ‘marronnage’ under the tropics, leaving behind him more questions than answers for his subjects. This unprecedented run away left wounds and stigmates that shook the Mossi collective core identity for which it is still yearning for healing and restoration. This article aims to depict the concept of identity myth and crises in conjunction with France conquest in Africa. Eliade, Jung and Kerenyi theories provide insights to understand the construction of the Mossi Identity myth through the findings of Guilhem et al., Kawada (2002), Hien and Salo. The objective of this article will be to witness the great impact of domination on collective identity evolution and perception.

Primitive miasmas and the iconography of the future in Fritz Lang’s Frau Im Mond (1929)

There is much to support the notion that Weimar cinema is ‘haunted’ by Germany’s recent past (see Eisner, 1969, The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt, London: Thames & Hudson). Similarly, Elsaesser argues convincingly that Weimar cinema is preoccupied by what he determines to be an ‘historical imaginary’ (2000a, Weimar Cinema and After: Germany’s Historical Imaginary, London and New York: Routledge). This focus, however, rather neglects Germany’s attraction to Modernism in a range of cultural forms, even if it must be conceded that the particular genre of science fiction plays only a small role in Weimar film. In an unofficial trilogy of films completed during the second half of the 1920s, Fritz Lang examines specific aspects of identity and national myths in past, present and future: first in Die Nibelungen (1924), then Metropolis (1927) and finally in his homage to Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, Frau im Mond/Woman in the Moon (1929). In this article, I consider how Frau im Mond has been largely overlooked in serious studies of Lang’s work, but I contend that his foray into ‘serious’ science fiction is worthy of greater scrutiny, not least because in its miasmic symbolism and its preoccupation with atavistic rivalries and petty jealousies it fits rather more neatly into the Langian canon than has hitherto been assumed.

Producing and consuming celebrity identity myths: unpacking the classed identities of Cheryl Cole and Katie Price

We investigate the ways in which celebrity identity myths are created, shaped, interpreted and utilised by media, celebrities and consumers. Two working-class female celebrities, Cheryl Cole and Katie Price, provide our focus, and we draw on an analysis of articles in the popular press, celebrity autobiographies and qualitative data collected with 16- to 18-year-olds. We find that class-infused celebrity identity myths (‘celebrity chav’) are constructed in terms of glamour, allure and charisma but also vulgarity, repulsion and ordinariness. Young consumers interpret these myths based on judgements of taste, morality, connection and worthiness and utilise them in order to support the identity goals of distinction, affirmation, belonging and enhancement.

Naturalizing Neoliberalism and the De-Mexicanization of the Tequila Industry

Although scholars agree that nationalism remains an important aspect of the new vocabulary of neoliberalism, little is known about how these discourses operate on the ground and in particular contexts. In this paper, we investigate how a specific adaption of national identity, one that underscores the values of cultural integrity, is used to naturalize neoliberal shifts in the tequila industry. Tequila has long circulated in the images and myths of Mexican identity. However, in the last two decades, the Mexican government has increasingly relied on tequila's reputation as the nation's ‘spirit’ to obscure changes in tequila regulatory policies that are linked to broader neoliberal changes in Mexico. Extralocal actors—in particular, multinational companies—have more influence over the direction the industry is taking and the institutions that regulate it, while tequila production is increasingly untethered from the communities and traditions that make it distinct. Here, we examine how private and public actors mobilize the language of authenticity, place, and quality to justify the adoption of neoliberal measures in the tequila industry.

Cherry Leonardi. Dealing With Government in South Sudan: Histories of Chiefship, Community and State. Woodbridge, Suffolk, U.K.: James Currey, 2013. xvi + 253 pp. Map. Photographs. Bibliography. Index. $80.00, £45.00. Cloth.

Cherry Leonardi. Dealing With Government in South Sudan: Histories of Chiefship, Community and State. Woodbridge, Suffolk, U.K.: James Currey, 2013. xvi + 253 pp. Map. Photographs. Bibliography. Index. $80.00, I45.00. Cloth.Recent journalistic accounts of conflicts in the new state of South Sudan have tended to interpret them as between the age-old antagonistic of the Dinka and the Nuer. An earlier and influential generation of anthropologists and Africanists (notably E. E. Evans-Pritchard and Godfrey Lienhardt) described the southern Sudanese region as one of leaderless stateless societies. More recent historians' accounts have seen tribes and chiefs as inventions of colonial rule, with imagined myths of identity and creation. Many have argued that local chiefs have existed at least since the colonial era-but were they in reality the representatives of local groups or of the central government? Accounts of the southern Sudanese independence movements have described the changing relationships between the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement/ Army (SPLM/A) and those who were seen, or saw themselves, as local chiefs. The complex and contradictory nature of political power in southern Sudan exemplifies and perhaps even exceeds that of the rest of Africa. Anyone seeking to understand this complexity, rather than applying any of these old cliches, will now have to start with Leonardi's important and sophisticated book.It is perhaps not an easy read for those who know nothing of earlier literature on the region, and journalists or students with little knowledge of South Sudan might do better to start with more straightforward works such as Douglas Johnson's The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars (James Currey, 2012). But Leonardi's book will for a long time be central to any deeper understanding of political structures in the newest African country. She traces the twentieth-century history of political leadership in the region in a comprehensive, theoretically sophisticated, and empirically detailed manner that has not been attempted before by the many historians and anthropologists who have written about South Sudan.The work is based on three urban centers-Juba, Yei, and Rumbek- which were at the heart of post-1900 regional political developments such as military slavery, colonialism, and nationalism. The author's qualitative research in the area and archival knowledge provide a detailed account of how state-or statelike-structures were created on the ground in a remarkably unwelcoming environment. …

Empire of Vines: Wine Culture in America. By Erica Hannickel (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013) 298 pp. $39.95 cloth

This provocative book analyzes the pre-Prohibition history of American grape growing and winemaking in the context of imperialist expansion. It does not break new ground; other books—particularly Thomas Pinney, A History of Wine in America, From the Beginnings to Prohibition (Berkeley, 1989) and Lukacs, American Vintage: The Rise of American Wine (New York, 2000)— cover much the same territory. Instead, it shifts focus away from the story of wine per se to an account of wine as one example in a larger, more complex story of national identity. Unfortunately, Hannickel subverts her project by treating interpretations of that identity as unquestioned facts, and by inventing facts to fit her interpretations. Her argument becomes increasingly predictable; it is as much about her own political views as about wine.Those views see American history as a record of imperialist conquest disguised by rhetoric upholding various myths of nature’s beneficence in a new world Eden. Hannickel contends that the ways in which people talked about grapes and wine contributed to the attractiveness of this rhetoric. Whether in New York, the Ohio Valley, or California, the language used to describe grape growing “was generative of nineteenth-century American national identity and ideal visions of urban and rural life” (17). It was, however, always a masquerade. Such language failed to depict reality; in fact, it deliberately hid reality from view. To Hannickel, what really happened was simply violent conquest and exploitation, and she is most interested in the reasons why Americans did not see what was happening all around them.The problem with this view is not just that other interpretations of American history are equally plausible but also that Hannickel distorts the story of American wine in order to make it fit her political viewpoint. Viticulture in nineteenth-century America was largely a series of failures; only California wine near the close of the period could even approach the style and quality of European wine. Most other American wines were unpleasant to drink. The literature of American wine is replete with questions about why a land filled with so much natural bounty yielded such bad wines (the answer concerns vine diseases against which fragile European grape varieties never developed an immunity). Hannickel ignores this issue, instead arguing that wine and grapes became symbols of American efforts to justify an empire of bourgeois consumerism.Three of the myths of American identity that Hannickel sees as implicated in the wine industry are the Dionysian myth of nature as alternately bountiful and wild, the imported myth of terroir (the interaction of environment with plant genetics), and the Jeffersonian myth of an agrarian republic. Not surprisingly, she thinks that all three of them served to conceal the realities of empire building. Whether or not she is correct (the story appears to be much more complicated), the specifics of her argument do not work. Although certain American writers, including early winemakers, described the country in Edenic terms, no one envisioned it as a locus for a new Dionysus. Similarly, early grape growers paid attention to locale, but they did not focus on terroir, as that word had not yet acquired its contemporary meaning in French, let alone English. Moreover, Thomas Jefferson certainly tried to grow grapes for wine, which he praised as a gift of nature, but he, like many others, failed. For that very reason, he ended up with a collection of European, not American, wines at Monticello.In Empire of Vines, Hannickel advances an intriguing, though flawed, thesis that is as much about American politics as American wine or wine culture. She wants to give the wine grape in nineteenth-century America a cultural significance that far exceeds its actual social or economic significance. Wishing for something, however, does not make it so, and a great deal of this book is just that—wishful thinking.

National identity and important Australians

Aspects of the national narrative of an advanced industrialised nation are examined in this research. Nationally representative survey data suggest the most important collective figures for Australian identity are the Anzacs, colonial free settlers and post-Second World War immigrants, while sporting heroes have a negligible influence upon what it means to be Australian. Although many Australians have ancestors who were transported, the convict ‘stain’ persists, while indigenous people are also under-represented in Australian identity myths. The most important individual Australians are not the heroes, saints or sages of an earlier ‘golden era’ nor contemporary sporting heroes, but political leaders, medical doctors and scientists who have (had) actual rather than mythical influence upon the everyday lives of Australians.

Charlie is so ‘English’-like: nationality and the branded celebrity person in the age of YouTube

The YouTube celebrity is a novel social phenomenon. YouTube celebrities have implications for the social and cultural study of celebrity more generally, but in order to illustrate the features of vlogging celebrity and its wider dimensions this article focuses upon one case study – Charlie McDonnell and his video ‘How to be English’. The premise of YouTube – ‘Broadcast yourself’ – begs the question ‘but what self?’. The article argues that the YouTube celebrity is able to construct a celebrity persona by appealing to aspects of identity, such as nationality, and using them as a mask(s) to perform with. By situating Charlie’s ‘How to be English’ in the context of establishing celebrity, the article argues that the processes of celebrification and ‘self-branding’ utilise the power of identity myths to help assist the construction of a celebrity persona. Use of masks and myths allows for one to develop various aspects of their persona into personas. One such persona for Charlie is his ‘Englishness’. As the social experience of ‘Broadcasting yourself’ necessarily asks one to turn ordinary aspects of their person into extra-ordinary qualities, Charlie’s use of Englishness allows ‘being English’ to become a mythological device to overcome the problem of ‘self-promotion’.

On the Trans-Siberian with Sylvester Stallone: National Identity and Brand Identity in Post-socialist Russia

In our short paper we look at how certain brands in post-socialist Russia appeal to consumers’ patriotism in order to build brand identity. In order to ensure thematic coherence, we restrict our discussion to the alcohol sector. In the first part, we analyse the packaging of certain vodka and brandy brands. Our focus then shifts to beer and specifically the Facebook page of AB-InBev’s ‘Siberian Crown’ brand (entitled ‘The Map of Russian Pride’). Our paper is conceptual, and we use a visual studies methodology following Schroeder (2002) and Manning (2010). As we demonstrate, a number of brands in today’s Russia generate certain types of myths, both about Russia and Russianness and – by extension – about themselves as brands. They do so by recreating the past, or rather, by carefully selecting from that past those elements which contribute to the grand narrative that is both the brand, and the nation. Our paper’s contributions lie in a number of areas. First of all, it adds to the literature on social media networks, and especially to discussions of the role those networks play in branding. Second, it explores the relationship between building brand legitimacy and (re)constructing national identity. Third, and perhaps most importantly, it extends the pioneering work on ‘iconic’ branding by Holt (2006) into a non-Western context. Given our findings, more work clearly needs to be done on the difference that social networks make to brands, on the role they play both in legitimizing the brand and in promoting myths of national identity – not just in Russia but in a wide variety of markets.

Exploring sexual harassment and related attitudes in Beninese high schools: a field study

Sexual harassment severely impacts the educational system in the West African country Benin and the progress of women in this society that is characterized by great gender inequality. Knowledge of the belief systems rooting in the sociocultural context is crucial to the understanding of sexual harassment. However, no study has yet investigated how sexual harassment is related to fundamental beliefs in Benin or West African countries. We conducted a field study on 265 female and male students from several high schools in Benin to investigate the link between sexual harassment and measures of ambivalent sexism, gender identity, and rape myth acceptance. Almost half of the sample reported having experienced sexual harassment personally or among peers. Levels of sexism and rape myth acceptance were very high compared to other studies. These attitudes appeared to converge in a sexist belief system that was linked to personal experiences, the perceived probability of experiencing and fear of sexual harassment. Results suggest that sexual harassment is a societal problem and that interventions need to address fundamental attitudes held in societies low in gender equality.

Every Little Girl Can Grow up to Be Queen: The Coronation and the Virgin in the Garden

A. S. Byatt's The Virgin in the Garden is a bildungsroman that explores its heroine, Frederica Potter's, complicated coming of age during 1953, the year of the Coronation of Elizabeth II. Likewise, the Coronation itself can be considered a bildungsroman of Elizabeth, and of Britain. Both novel and Coronation link the development of individual young women to that of the nation: on the one hand, they are constrained by an ideology of domesticity that channels them into marriage and motherhood; on the other, they derive symbolic – and perhaps some real – power through the way national myths of identity revolve around their likeness.

A Playmaking Research Journey Into Canada's North: Kangiqsujuaq

In 2009, two white women from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (a playwright and a director/dramaturg), went to the community of Kangiqsujuaq in Nunavik, Northern Quebec, to conduct play development research for a theatre for young audiences piece called Beneath the Ice. The women were aware that the project raised complicated ethical issues, including appropriating voice and story, potential cultural and community misrepresentation, reinscribing Canadian identity myths concerning the North and Inuit people, essentializing and stereotyping identities, and possible neocolonial relationships. This is a discussion of how the artists tried to approach the project with care, respect, and artistic integrity; how the research journey augmented their perceptions of the North and Northern people; and how the playwright exposed her Southern position through the script's narrative and characters.

Mythologies identitaires et « idéologie (auto)biographique » dans l’écriture mémorielle du post-totalitarisme roumain

AbstractHaving survived an age in which legitimizing political narratives have smothered personal histories, Romanian writers are now increasingly interested in personal memoirs. The identity myths of post-war writing surface in the life stories published after 1989, emerging in a context that favors “the return of the repressed.” The mythology of “resistance via culture” is conditioned by an (auto)biographical ideology. It is latent in the personal writings of the “East-Ethic revisionists” and manifest in publications that advocate political dissidence via the aesthetic. The resultant myth-laden histories perform a therapeutic function in the authors’ profound inner identity reconstruction and a restorative function concerning their public image.

Mansfield as 'Man Alone?' Katherine Mansfield's Reading Experiences in Wartime Britain and France

John Mulgan's novel Man Alone (1959) has perpetuated the iconic Kiwi myth of masculine identity founded on isolation, solitude, and rugged individualism. However, the novel is replete with descriptions of Johnson's reading practices connecting this man 'alone' to the world around him. From his first arrival in Auckland to his departure for Spain, newspapers play a key role, linking Johnson to job opportunities and workers' rights, informing him of events beyond New Zealand, situating him in the here and now. Reading provides moments of distraction from the stultifying routine on Stenning's farm and frames his employer's death. And from a store of old magazines and illustrated papers, reading aloud becomes a defining act of sociability that links Johnson to the old loner Bill Crawley. Johnson may warn his reader against spending too much time alone, but it is a solitude punctuated by print and one that, through print, defines his relationship to others and the world at large.

Ethnoforgery and Outsider Afrofuturism

This essay detours from Afrofuturism proper into ethnological forgery and Outsider practices, foregrounding the issues of authenticity, authorship and identity which measure Afrofuturism’s ongoing relevance to technocultural conditions and the globally-scaled speculative imagination. The ethnological forgeries of the German rock group Can, the work of David Byrne and Brian Eno, and trumpeter Jon Hassell’s Fourth World volumes posit an “hybridity-at-the-origin” of Afrofuturism that deconstructs racial myths of identity and appropriation/exploitation. The self-reflective and critical nature of these projects foregrounds issues of origination through production strategies that combine ethnic instrumentation and techniques, voices sampled from radio and TV broadcast, and genre-mashing hybrids of rock and funk along with unconventional styles like ambient drone, minimalism, noise, free jazz, field recordings, and musique concrete. With original recordings and major statements of Afrofuturist theory in mind, I orchestrate a deliberately ill-fitting mixture of Slavoj Žižek’s critique of multiculturalism, Felix Guattari’s concept of “polyphonic subjectivity,” and Marcus Boon’s idea of shamanic “ethnopsychedelic montage” in order to argue for an Outsider Afrofuturism that works along the lines of an alternative modernity at the seam of subject identity and technocultural hybridization. In tune with the Fatherless sensibilities that first united black youth in Detroit (funk, techno) and the Bronx (hip-hop) with Germany’s post-WWII generation (Can’s krautrock, Kraftwerk’s electro), Outsider Afrofuturism opens up alternative routes toward understanding subjectivity and culture—through speculative sonic practices in particular—while maintaining social behaviors that reject multiculturalism’s artificial paternal origins, boundaries and lineages.