Political Ambiguity Research Articles

From vagueness to clarity? Articulating legal criteria of digital content regulation in China

This research examines China’s laws and regulations on digital media content, which have developed and transformed along with the market-oriented media reform and Internet growth. It argues that there has been a continuous effort to articulate legal criteria of content regulation since the early 1980s. The body of laws regulating digital content today does not show across-the-board vagueness, but an ‘unbalanced’ development with elaborated rules in some legal areas, yet ambiguous stipulations in some others. The ‘vagueness’ of the law is part of the political and ideological ambiguity of China’s reform and development and will not be resolved independently of larger and more profound transformations of the Chinese state and society. The development of digital content laws in China can only make sense in specific historical contexts rather than by comparing against an idealized Western legal order.

House of the people? Afghanistan’s parliament in 2015

Afghanistan’s parliamentary elections in September 2005 marked the re-establishment of the legislature after a 30-year hiatus. Instead of connecting constituents to central government, however, it is argued here the Wolesi Jirga (lower house or WJ) has undermined accountability structures. This article analyses parliamentary processes by focusing on two examples of legislation that appeared in successive plenary debates in 2013 (the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) law and the electoral law). It argues, first, that Members of Parliament deploy political ambiguity in order to keep their political options open, simultaneously evading mechanisms that could hold them to account for their actions in parliament. Second, that historically and today, MPs’ role in Afghanistan has been less one of advancing legislation than advocating on the behalf of localised support bases. Third, however, that most damaging to parliamentary accountability are elite attempts to control the political process amid free-flowing resources. The article discusses the implications of these features and how they are gendered in relation to women’s strategic interests as well as behavioural roles of women MPs.

Opkomst en voortbestaan van de Derde Weg

In the 1990’s, the Dutch social democrats were trailblazers of what became known internationally as the politics of the Third Way, a new middle course between social democracy and neoliberalism. From the start, the Dutch Third Way distinguished itself from its Anglo-Saxon counterparts by its implicit character. The Dutch social democrat party (Partij van de Arbeid, PvdA) never fully embraced the Third Way and has sought to downplay the idea of a break with traditional social democratic thinking, combining Third Way practice with more classical social democratic rhetoric. The resulting political ambiguity, this paper argues, is at the centre of the present identity crisis of the social democrat party. Even though Third Way ideology has at times been declared dead, the range of attitudes, strategies and policy proposals that were introduced under its banner, still play a vital and prominent role in Dutch politics. While in the UK and the US, communitarianism was from the very beginning a defining feature of the Third Way, in the Netherlands this only came to the fore in 2012 under the leadership of Samsom and Asscher, and in the plea for a participation society under the Rutte II government. Leading us to conclude that the reports of the Third Way’s death are greatly exaggerated.

Sexuality, race and empire in Alan Hollinghurst’s “A Thieving Boy” (1983)

By returning to the very start of Alan Hollinghurst’s literary career, this article begins constructing a different narrative about this “gay” British author – one in which sexuality, race and empire are intimately connected, and in which sexual liberation is haunted by imperial histories of racial exploitation. Through a “contrapuntal” analysis of his 1983 Egyptian short story “A Thieving Boy”, the article complicates dominant “queer” interpretations which overlook the postimperial politics – the aesthetic negotiation of Britain after empire – at stake in his representations of race and nation. In particular, through a dialogue with Hollinghurst’s non-fiction, it interrogates the political ambiguity of the story’s postimperial rewriting of E.M. Forster’s (homo)sexual awakening. It concludes by exploring the implications of this rereading for conventional conceptions of “postcolonial” and “British” contemporary fiction.

Sri Lanka’s General Election 2015

Sri Lanka emerges from this latest election with a hung Parliament in 2015. A coalition called the United National Front for Good Governance (UNFGG) won 106 seats and secured ten out of 22 electoral districts, including Colombo to obtain the largest block of seats at the parliamentary polls, though it couldn’t secure a simple majority in 225-member parliament. It also has the backing of smaller parties that support its agenda of electoral. In the August parliamentary election, the former president Rajapaksa forces upped the nationalist ante and campaigned to win a majority of parliamentary seats with the votes of the Sinhala Buddhists only, but extreme appeals to nationalism failed to get traction in the elections among the Sinhalese. It is fair to say that the double blow against nationalism in the south was occasioned by the politics of good governance promoted by the UNP and its alliance in the election. In Sri Lanka’s eighth General elections, none of the two major political alliances- the (UNF), nor the (UPFA)- gained a clear majority in the election. More important, for the fourth time the fragmentation of seats among the major parties and regional level party has inaugurated a period of unstable coalition governments, creating an air of political and economic ambiguity in the nation as it enters a post- Mahinda Rajapakse era. This study is based on an interpretive approach. The data were collected from both primary and secondary sources. The study examines distinguishes the 2015 election from previous ones and what extent? What are the major factors leads to defeat the ruling party? However, this study argues that the election results are indicative not only of the decline of Mahinda Rajapakse era but also of a gradual transition toward good governance.

The Politics of Production in the Engineering Industry

This article seeks to connect work and politics in the engineering industry in the twentieth century. It is about how shared identities were created from overlapping and conflicting shop-floor interests and the political ambiguities generated by this experience. There is still much to be said for Hobsbawm’s account of how the workplace experience of the engineering craftsmen drew many to revolutionary politics but it captures only part of the story. The experience that led some craftsmen to the Communist Party persuaded others to disengage from politics and some to cut their links with craft altogether, joining the sections set up for the union’s industrial membership. Semi-skilled and unskilled workers were integrated in shop-floor trade unionism but, like the skilled men who opted for industrial membership, left the business of the ‘The Union’ to others. Militant trade unionism and the intensely political internal life of the union masked a deeper political alienation.

The sovereignty of human rights

Acknowledgments 1. Field Missions Human Rights as Moral Concepts Human Rights as Political Concepts Human Rights as Legal Concepts The Plan of the Book 2. Sovereignty and Structure Sovereignty and its Exercise Between the National and International Sovereignty and its Distribution 3. Human Rights: Three Generations or One? Generations as Chronological Categories Generations as Analytical Categories Civil and Political Rights as Monitors of Sovereignty's Exercise Social and Economic Rights as Monitors of Sovereignty's Exercise 4. International Law at Work Labor Rights as Instrumental Rights Labor Rights as Universal Rights Labor Rights and the Structure of International Law 5. The Ambiguous Appeal of Minority Rights The Moral Ambiguities of Minority Rights The Political Ambiguities of Minority Rights The Interdependence of Sovereignty and Minority Protection 6. International Indigenous Recognition Indigenous Territories and the Acquisition of Sovereignty Indigenous Recognition and the International Labour Organization Indigenous Recognition and the United Nations The Purpose of International Indigenous Rights 7. Self-Determination in Three Movements Self-Determination and the Legality of Colonialism The Many Paradoxes of Self-Determination Bridging International Law and Distributive Justice 8. Global Poverty and the Right to Development The Emergence of the Right Implementing the Right From Global Poverty to International Law The Right to Development and the Rise and Fall of Colonialism Bibliography Index

Contemplation and Criticism: Coleridge, Derrida and the Sublime

Recent criticism has often contrasted both deconstruction and Romantic idealism with diverse ‘progressive’ ideologies, whether historical-materialist in origin, or associated with the economic liberalism of British Whigs in the early nineteenth century. At the same time, however, Romantic idealism is often seen as involving a Platonic essentialism which distinguishes it from deconstruction as much as from historical materialism. My essay seeks to unravel these dichotomies and paradoxes, highlighting the political ambiguity of the advocates of Romantic-era political economy, as well as the anti-essentialist aspects of Coleridge's idealism, and the important elements it has in common with Derrida's questioning of ‘self-presence’ and logocentrism. The principal form of the sublime that I explore arises from Coleridge's and Derrida's recognition of the indefinableness of the origin of consciousness or the source of meaning in language – a recognition which, I argue, is progressive in its resistance to reductive and instrumentalizing definitions of humanity.

Heinrich von Kleist’s Novelle Die Verlobung in St. Domingo. Literatur und Politik im globalen Kontext um 1800 ed. by Reinhard Blänker

Reviewed by: Heinrich von Kleist’s Novelle Die Verlobung in St. Domingo. Literatur und Politik im globalen Kontext um 1800 ed. by Reinhard Blänker Sebastian Weirauch Heinrich von Kleist’s Novelle Die Verlobung in St. Domingo. Literatur und Politik im globalen Kontext um 1800. Edited by Reinhard Blänker. Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann, 2013. Pp. 236. Paper €29.80. ISBN 978-3826049385. Because of its portrayal of the Haitian Revolution and the associated controversy concerning Kleist’s political views on it, Die Verlobung in St. Domingo has lately gained a lot of attention. While in earlier scholarship the novella appeared as a precursor of postcolonial and deconstructive readings, it has nowadays become questionable whether it can be read in that way. Recent publications like Adam Soboczynski’s Versuch über Kleist (2007) or the essays in Heinrich von Kleist and Modernity (2011) have offered a more differentiated view on the ambiguous political assumptions that had an important impact on the author’s work. The eleven essays of the volume (revised and extended conference papers originally presented in Frankfurt an der Oder in Germany in 2011) give numerous examples of critical readings focusing on those political ambiguities in the Verlobung. The essays in this volume offer comparative and comprehensive readings of Kleist’s last novella and how political contexts and historical events did have a major impact on its main themes. All of the contributors make the impression to understand the novella’s views of revolution, race, and gender as ambiguous—yet their judgments regarding these topics appear to be quite different from each other. The first two essays of the volume give a vivid impression of the controversy about whether Kleist was a modern cosmopolitan writer free from the thought control imposed by political romanticism or if he was as hidebound as many intellectuals in Germany at that time. At the beginning of the collection Reinhard Blänker gives a compact summary [End Page 383] of the prehistory of the Haitian Revolution and in doing so shapes the main thesis of the volume: Haiti and the whole Caribbean played a major role in the global political world around 1800. To Blänker, who refers to Hall’s concept of postcolonialism, Kleist was a “Denker an der Grenze” (17). Subsequently he claims that Kleist might have been well informed about the political and military events on Haiti. While Blänker alleges that Kleist has a critical perspective on the Haitian Revolution understood in a modern way, the second essay of the volume by David P. Geggus comes to the contrary conclusion and shows that the author of the Verlobung was not at all aware of the political realities. In comparison to other literary works on the Haitian Revolution such as Wordsworth’s To Toussaint Louverture or Hugo’s Bug Jargal, Kleist’s Verlobung appears stereotypical to Geggus and should be best compared with German copper engravings of the revolution in Haiti showing the spectators “rasende dunkelhäutige Rebellen und unschuldige weiße Opfer” (34). The following three essays by Klaus Weber, Barbara Gribnitz, and Birgit Mara Kaiser provide readings that correspond to the controversy on the two different Kleists who are presented in the first essays. Klaus Weber reconstructs Alejo Carpentier’s perspective on the revolution in Haiti by summarizing a reading of the novel El siglo de las luces. Although his discussion of the concepts of magical realism, surrealism, and the “real maravilloso” (43) is informative for an understanding of Carpentier’s work, it does not add a new insight into Kleist’s. Gribnitz’s essay then compares the novella with black and white love stories, which were popular around 1800. To her, the hierarchy between superior white and inferior black bodies in the novella is generated by the characterization of the black body as a denaturalized and thereby female body. Kleist’s Verlobung, Gribnitz argues, combines different narratives of white (female) victims and black (female) traitors and brings them to mind in the ambiguous character of Toni. While Gribnitz’s solid approach to the novella is anything but new, Birgit Mara Kaiser’s essay focuses on Gustav von der Ried’s mental and perceptive structures by comparing the...

Political Ambiguity in Chinese Climate Change Discourses

China's political environment offers limited space for critical debates on domestic politics. In such a constrained environment, people tend to represent and articulate climate change issues without explicitly addressing their political aspects. The aim of this paper is to examine this political ambiguity in climate change discourses. Q methodology was employed to elicit the subjective positions of forty-five young and educated Chinese individuals. Three discourses were extracted: namely, prosaic environmentalism, co-operative economic optimism and actor scepticism. These discourses do not indicate critical intent and deep engagement in the political arguments regarding climate change. This raises concern about the growth of climate citizenship within the country.

Three different approaches to transparency in monetary policy

We present three different views of imperfect transparency in monetary policy: political transparency, economic transparency and constructive ambiguity. The first two show that transparency reduces the variability of inflation and the output gap but does not affect their average levels. But if the Central Bank is unable to commit to one particular set of preferences for all circumstances, then in line with the hypothesis of constructive ambiguity we find that both the levels and the variability of output and inflation will be affected – which means that this form of imperfect transparency could be used strategically. An empirical examination of these results, based on an index constructed by Eijffinger and Geraats, shows that macroeconomic averages are not much affected by transparency. But transparency appears to reduce the variability of inflation while increasing the variability of output. That suggests that Central Banks may in fact exploit constructive ambiguity when they try to be transparent.

Redemptive Ambiguity: 'Endless Talk' About John Brown as a Political-Theological Good

Political theology is concerned with the “theological origin[s] for political concepts.” One of its primary concerns is with the idea of sovereignty. The work of Carl Schmitt inaugurated the modern inquiry into sovereignty as a theological idea, but his account is insufficient for sovereignty as exercised in a liberal democracy. He considers only the need for a final decision, and not the possibility of continued discussion except as a banality.Others, notably Paul W. Kahn, have considered American sovereignty in light of military sacrifice, judicial review, public symbols, and memories of the Revolution, but they have done so primarily to show the limits of liberalism as an explanatory theory. Kahn notes that “[t]he founding virtue of the liberal ideal of the rule of law becomes freedom of speech: law is to secure the endless possibility of a proliferating discourse.” He also draws out some of the implications of free speech for the American notion of self-government as political sovereignty. Kahn does not demonstrate how liberal democracy’s plurality of opinions and proliferating possibility of an endless discourse is a political-theological good in its own right — one greater than the finality sought by Schmitt. Indeed, literature rarely considers the theological implications of political concepts. Where freedom of expression is the norm, there will be no godlike pronouncement that decides a public question once and for all. This “[e]ndless talk… with intense passion” serves two of God’s purposes: it heightens desire for his finality and is a resource for justice. Liberal sovereignty, by allowing endless talk, does not impose the finality Schmitt wants. It serves God’s will, rather than trying to usurp his place.Discussion of endless talk finds natural ground in an interminable public debate. One debate well known to Americans is the contested legacy of John Brown. Did Brown and his small band of raiders have the legitimate authority to undertake their raid on Harpers Ferry? They attacked the unjust system of slavery, which seems righteous, but they did so without state sanction, which introduces controversy. This is the kind of exceptional decision that lends itself to political-theological analysis, given its implications for sovereignty and indeterminacy.This paper analyzes two levels of decision: the sovereign decision of Brown’s trial, and the interminable moral debate about his authority. It will then consider the ambiguities of politics where there is a plurality of opinions. Finally, it will show how these ambiguities drive debate that serves God’s purposes. Endless talk allowed for by liberal sovereignty does not have the finality of Schmitt’s sovereign decision, but it does honor God’s will.

Investment timing under political ambiguity

In addition to economic risks, the economic success of investments often critically depends on the uncertain results of future political regime switches. Therefore, it is essential that policy makers, who design tax schemes or subsidy payments, understand the combined effects of risk and ambiguity on an investor’s investment behavior given subjective estimations and individual preferences. Using a practical example from the shipping industry, we set up a real options model that takes into account two sources of uncertainty, economic risk as well as political uncertainty regarding an imminent regime switch. We calculate the option value of the investment possibility subjectively estimated by the investor and derive the optimal investment-timing strategy. Furthermore, we analyze both the sole as well as the combined influence of economic risk, the investor’s subjective assessment of political risk and political ambiguity on both the option value and the investment-timing strategy.

Allison, J. Motherhood and Infertility in Ireland: Understanding the Presence of Absence. Cork: Cork University Press. 2013. €39.00 256pp. ISBN 978–1782–05003–2 (hbk)

Interestingly, the primary research underpinning this book was carried out in Ireland. Particularly in recent years, Ireland has had extensive media coverage, of which historical revelations on paedophilia, the abuse of women and the systematic denial of basic human rights on the part of both the church and the state provide just a few examples. From my recent small-scale research into abortion in Ireland and, as an Irish woman who grew up in the North, this book immediately drew my attention. There are numerous reproductive health issues that need to be addressed in Ireland at present and this book has a part to play in moving this debate forward. This book provides a distinguished contribution to the ever-increasing body of academic literature addressing reproductive health and inequality. As opposed to focusing on presenting empirical data in isolation Allison begins to address the moral discourses surrounding fertility, exploring the social, institutional and political challenges posed by infertility treatment in Ireland. Essentially, this publication provides a comprehensive and contextualised analysis of the lived experience of infertility in Ireland. Beginning with an overview of fertility in the Irish context, Allison goes on to create a sound historical base from which to move forward, specifically analysing the Irish Constitution (1937) and its definition of the unborn child from both scientific and theological standpoints. The concepts of fertility and infertility are placed in the socioeconomic context of Ireland and the overarching power struggles between nature, medicine, politics and religion. In exploring this further, the root causes of women's oppression in Ireland become apparent, and Allison explores feminist debates surrounding subjectivity and what she terms the collapsing subject position of ‘women’ and ‘mother’ in Irish society. Focusing on the ideal of motherhood identity in Ireland, Allison proceeds to highlight the assumptions and hetero-normative gender roles imposed on Irish women by the state, church and society as a whole. A detailed account follows of the clinical procedures, guidelines and scientific advancements in in vitro fertilisation and assisted reproductive technology treatment, illustrated with several personal narratives of infertility and its challenges. These narratives provide invaluable substance and bring the book to life. Allison explores the many contrasting lived experiences of infertility in single men and women and in heterosexual and homosexual couples. This broad range of experience is what adds great depth to this book and persuades the reader to accept this as a real and pertinent issue. In delving deeper into these experiences, class-based narratives begin to emerge and the stark contrast becomes apparent between those who can afford assisted reproductive healthcare and those who are excluded, because of their low income. Allison's book contributes significantly to the current wave of change sweeping across Ireland. It brings to the forefront experiences that, until recently, have very much existed only in underground movements and shrouded in secrecy and shame. This exploration of the public–private split brings to light the very real situation experienced by those faced with infertility and possible treatment options in the complex and shifting backdrop provided by Irish society. Those experiencing these issues at first hand are often caught between the conflicting public definition of infertility as unnatural and shameful and their own private construction of the process they need to take so as to fulfil their desires to start a family and have children of their own. In seeking to highlight the oppression faced by a range of infertile couples in Ireland, Allison raises profound debates in an engaging and thought-provoking way, allowing the reader to develop a critical understanding of these complex issues. This is invaluable reading for anyone studying this field, especially those interested in exploring the deep-rooted and intertwined influence imposed by the state and church on Irish society. The focus on the structural elements of oppression, as opposed to an individualistic analysis, allows the hetero-normative definition of family life in Ireland to be scrutinised. The struggle for equality and self-determination of reproductive rights for women has always been at the cutting edge of social change and it is a crucial component in the fight for equal rights across society as a whole. The significance of this book is that it re-asserts the need to engage more openly in public dialogue on the issue of fertility and infertility in Ireland and this analysis can, in turn, be employed to inform, influence and potentially reshape current political ambiguity. This book provides an important contribution to the field and I would thoroughly recommend it to students, practitioners and academics alike.

La réconciliation par l’histoire en Bosnie-Herzégovine L’impossible réception d’un modèle multiculturel européen

La reforme des systemes d’education et, tout particulierement, de l’enseignement de l’histoire est aujourd’hui percue comme un moyen indispensable pour atteindre les objectifs elargis de la reconciliation. L’histoire enseignee, a la fois matrice et reflet des representations sociales partagees sur l’identite collective d’une nation, doit contribuer a consolider la paix et a justifier les processus de justice distributive. Me centrant ici sur le cas de la Bosnie-Herzegovine, je mettrai l’accent sur l’ambiguite conceptuelle et politique qui a ete au cœur de l’ecriture du passe par les « transitologues ». Les institutions europeennes ont use d’un modele multi-perspectiviste et critique, herite notamment de l’histoire de la reconciliation franco-allemande, peu adapte a la realite institutionnelle de la BiH, echouant ainsi a produire un recit national commun.

Chinese middle classes: Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and China

Part I: Overview 1. Characterizing the Middle Classes in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and Urban China, Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao Part II: Changing Profiles 2. Profiling Middle Classes in Taiwan Today, Ming-Chang Tsai, Gang-Hua Fan, Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao and Hong-Zen Wang 3. The Profile of Hong Kong's Middle Classes: Continuities and Discontinuities, Tai-Lok Lui 4. Profiling the Middle Classes in Macao Today, Timothy Ka-Ying Wong and Po-San Wan 5. Profile of Middle Classes in China Today, Chunling Li Part III: Emerging Ethos and Lifestyles 6. Getting Uneasy: The Hong Kong Middle Class's Changing Psychology, Tai-Lok Lui 7. Comparing Socio-Economic Attitudes of the Middle Classes in Taiwan and Hong Kong, Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao and Po-San Wan 8. Homemaking and Middle Class Formation in Urban China, Suo Liu Part IV: Mobility 9. Taiwanese Middle Classes in Shanghai: Causes and Consequences of Skilled Migration, Yen-Fen Tseng 10. Professional Mainlanders in Hong Kong: Profile, Prospect, and Problem, Victor Zheng, Siu-Lun Wong and Cangbai Wang 11. Reality and Expectations: Social Mobility of the Macao Middle Classes, Po-San Wan and Kenneth W.K. Law Part V: New Politics? 12. The Political Ambiguity of Middle Class Activism in Taiwan: The Case of Urban Conservationists in Kaohsiung City, Ming-Sho Ho 13. Emergence of Middle Classes in Urban China Today: Will They Contribute to Democratization in China?, Shigeto Sonoda 14.The Making of the Hong Kong Middle Class in the 1997 Transition and Beyond: A Conflict Perspective, Alvin So

The Arab Spring exception: Algeria's political ambiguities and citizenship rights

The main contention of this paper is that the construction of citizenry in post-colonial Algeria is far from being a universal enfranchisement. Indeed, despite a frank declaration in favour of a modernist state- and nation-building after national independence in 1962, the elites in power have shown clear hesitations at cutting ties with the patriarchal order of traditional society, both in the public arena of an open unconditional democracy, and the private arena of the family structure, where gender roles have been approached along a mythical interpretation of scriptural Islamic laws marred with traditionalist mores regarding gender equality. The end result is the perpetuation of an ambiguous authoritarian political system whereby citizenship rights and the practice of open democracy are far from being universal. Rather, they are submitted to a highly clientelist system where citizenship becomes a barter good in exchange of a well-calculated social mobility where various social actors are erected as potential dangers for each other, and therefore in need of State patrimony (Chaliand, G. 1964. L'Algérie est-elle socialiste. Paris: Maspero; Harbi, M. 1980. Le FLN: Mirage et réalité: des origines a la prise du pouvoir (1945–1962). Paris: Editions Jeune Afrique). This essay attempts to demonstrate through the personnel status law, The Family Code published in 1984 and revised in 2005, that the construction of a full-fledged citizenry for both genders in Algeria has stumbled against the idiosyncratic interpretations of Shariʿa law by the very decision-makers who have otherwise opted for a modernist social project. The Algerian case is finally proposed as being a lesson in the art of political ambiguity in the context of the Arab Spring, and the difficulties therein at establishing democracy in the Arab region.

The Devil Rejoiced: Volk , Devils and Moral Panic in White South Africa, 1978-1982

The first four years of P.W. Botha's premiership in apartheid South Africa were plagued by intra-party politicking, renewed anti-apartheid resistance, economic instability, and Satan. Between 1978 and 1982, the heavy political rhetoric of “total onslaught” inflected perceived “moral onslaught” in a virulent moral panic over Satanism in white, and particularly Afrikaner, South Africa. With attention to its discursive and socio-political context, this paper seeks to explore the emergence of this distinct satanic moral panic in white South African history, arguing that it reflects the intense political and moral ambiguity of white society as the edifices of apartheid began to fracture.

The Comfort of Melancholy: Understanding the Experience of Absence at American Memorials

There's comfort in melancholyWhen there's no need to explainIt's just as natural as the weatherIn this moody sky today....Well I looked at the granite markersThose tributes to finality to eternityAnd then I looked at myself hereChicken scratching for my immortalityJoni Mitchell, Hejira, 1976The battle of Gettysburg and the 9/11 terror attacks, 150 years apart, produced memorials that share a common theme: each expresses absence as its memorial theme. The dead cannot be seen, even in sculptural form: they have vanished into abstraction. At Gettysburg, the dead and numbered in the thousands. Survivors saw their colleagues vaporized (Faust 128). The damage and poisonous stench after the three days of battle in 1863 created a discourse about death of the magnitude that circulated in the aftermath of 9/ 11. The title of the winning design for the 9/11 memorial-''Reflecting Absence-made explicit a theme that has implicitly made its way into public spaces of mourning in America since Gettysburg's response to its tragedy provided the visual vocabulary of absence: relying on combinations of earth, stone, water, and names, rejecting the figurai, they establish a memorial vernacular of the missing. Gettysburg, the 9/11 Memorial, and two others that express this visual trope-the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial-are all among America's most prominent memorial sites, and all evoke the comfort of melancholy.From Gettysburg to 9/11 : The Visual Language of Absence at American MemorialsGettysburg's Civil War burials were the result of America's first experience with mass mourning. The 9/11 Memorial shares with Gettysburg features that in 1863 were unprecedented: a shared community of mourners, still reeling from the enormity of the event, produced a message of equality and absence combined (Faust 69, 100-01; Haas 49; Wills 29-30). At Gettysburg's National Soldiers' Cemetery, the flat markers are identical in shape and typeface, and all are embedded in the soil. Unknown appears interspersed with names and ranks. The dead are indistinguishable from one another, the absent equally absent. Conveying the message of missing in turn relies on abstraction: its lines are rectilinear and nonfigural, inviting looking inward or imagining beyond. Precluding hero worship, Gettysburg relies on evenly spaced semicircles of headstones to convey its message. The first American memorial commemorating violent mass deaths evokes absence through abstraction.This same visual message is found at America's memorials to imponderable mass tragedies that occurred after Gettysburg: the attack on Pearl Harbor, represented by the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial; the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; and the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum. The U.S.S. Arizona visitors' center is a simple rectangular box built on the waters above the sunken ship Rising bubbles from the ship's leaking oil tanks, visible in an open well inside, and the round armament that once housed one of the ship's turrets are the only surface signs of the graveyard of the ship's rusting hulk below. The memorial structure does not touch the ship (Delgado 77). The bodies of the dead remain out of sight and out of reach. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial lists the names of the dead in order of their deaths on a planished wall embedded in soil. From the northwest approach, the nestled wall is invisible. The first memorial to mark a long war, rather than a single event, with the message of absence, the wall of names represents a variation on Gettysburg's heritage: the community marked the tragedy both of the deaths and of their political ambiguity (Haas 16).Other memorials to the lengthy process of war and their dead do not speak the language of absence. Memorials to the dead of World War II and the Korean War are exemplars of figurai presence, that to the Korean War Memorial literally, and that to World War II implicitly. …

Remediating Fassbinder in Video Installations by Ming Wong and Branwen Okpako

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s tackling of race, immigration, and interracial relationships in his early plays and films is often applauded for offering a prescient treatment of topics largely neglected in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His experimentation with and blending of both queer and leftist political styles appeals to contemporary critics and artists grappling with the continuing challenge of ‘decolonizing’ structures of racial feeling. Nonetheless, the politics of race in Fassbinder’s films from the early 1970s, including Whity (1970) and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), has also come under more skeptical scrutiny during the past decade. Critics have assessed Fassbinder’s aesthetic alongside the biographical and social context of his filmmaking career, and in particular, his relationships with men of color who also starred in Whity and Ali, among other films. Some note a troubling tension between the professed antiracist politics of Fassbinder and of some of his film characters, on the one side, and the way in which the camerawork allows and invites racist pleasures, on the other. Perhaps due to their very ambiguity, Fassbinder’s films offer compelling objects of attachment and resignification for contemporary artists of color working in Germany. In this article I discuss two video installations by Ming Wong and one by Branwen Okpako that engage films by Fassbinder as productive intertexts for their own artistic reflections on racial oppression, solidarity, and desire in contemporary Germany. Wong’s Lerne Deutsch mit Petra von Kant (Learn German with Petra von Kant, 2007) considers the consequences of appropriating camp, high melodrama, and masochism for dramatizing race and immigration. Can such an appropriation dismantle national or racialized identities, analogous to Bitter Tears’ dismantling of gender? Angst Essen/Eat Fear (2008) hones in on, and subtly revises, the sources of the film’s troubling political ambiguity. Okpako’s Seh ich was, was du nicht siehst? (Do I see something you don’t?, 2002) contextualizes the masochistic figure of Whity with a discussion of black actors’ working conditions. It thereby complements the parodic subversion of white fantasies with a consideration of the agency exercised by racialized subjects’ contending with racial difference in the art world and in so-called postracial societies more generally. The video installations highlight the aesthetic inventiveness of Fassbinder’s films, but also use the political shortcomings of his works and changes in the contexts of reception as opportunities for imaginative appropriations and creative openings.