Postcolonial Discourse Research Articles

Bahay Kubo as Iconography: Representing the Vernacular and the Nation in Philippine Post-War Architectures

ABSTRACTThe bahay kubo, or the traditional Philippine vernacular house, has been immortalised in popular and academic literature and arts as the quintessential representation of Philippine architecture. Architects of the 20th century continually used the bahay kubo as a source of inspiration for developing a supposed distinct Philippine architecture. This paper investigates the beginnings, contexts, and issues surrounding the development of the bahay kubo as a popular icon. Specifically, the paper analyzes the representation of the bahay kubo in the works of Filipino architects after World War II and its relationship with issues of nationalism and post-colonial subjectivity. The paper explores articles, books, built architectural work, expositions, and other representations of bahay kubo embedded in the public imagination. In the final analysis, the paper uncovers the implications and problematics of the canonisation of the bahay kubo as symbol and its relationship with the development of Philippine post-colonial discourse on nationalism.

Queer Latent Images, Post-Loyalism, and the Cold War: The Case of an Early Sinophone Star, Bai Yun

Queer Latent Images, Post-Loyalism, and the Cold War:The Case of an Early Sinophone Star, Bai Yun Wai-Siam Hee (bio) Bai Yun (1916–1982) was one of the most popular male stars in Shanghai in the 1930s and 1940s, going on to win broader fame across the Sinophone world in the 1940s and 1950s. Suffering from cancer, he committed suicide in 1982 in Sun Moon Lake, Taiwan. In his later years, he reflected that he was "In life a drifter; in death a wandering ghost" (Zhang, 7). After his suicide, there was nobody to claim the body. To this day there are no published scholarly essays on Bai Yun: he has attracted mention in the chapters of only a handful of monographs. Mainland Chinese scholars see him as an "idol-like actor" but wrongly believe that he came from Mainland China (Yan, 178). Actually, Bai Yun was born in Malaya and grew up in Singapore.1 I define Bai Yun as a Sinophone star, not only because of Bai Yun's background growing up in the Sinophone community in Singapore and Malaya but also because of his multilingual identity and ability to speak Cantonese, Mandarin, Hokkien, Chaozhouese, Shanghainese, English, Japanese, and Malay (Li Hanxiang 1983, 414). This allowed him to flit between Mandarin, Cantonese, and Amoy language films and to build a career traveling between Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. He was also one of the tiny number of Sinophone stars in the Cold War era who were able to connect Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. The fact that the folk tale adaptations he mainly starred in were free from sensitive political topics allowed him to circulate freely, piecing together the fragmented Chineseness of these four areas. In love films, Bai Yun was skilled at playing the "dashing young man" and won the title "Rudolph Valentino of the East" in the Shanghai [End Page 94] film world (Anon. 1939a).2 This, combined with the Chinese media making much of his overseas birth and part-German ancestry, made him a symbol of Western modernity in the imaginations of Chinese people during the Second Sino-Japanese War.3 On the other hand, cinemagoers in the Philippines voted Bai Yun "China's most handsome male star" (Anon. 1940a, 1): before and during the Cold War, Bai Yun had become a symbol of Chineseness in the imaginations of the Chinese diaspora. Shih Shu-mei (2007, 4) emphasizes that the Sinophone refers to "a network of places of cultural production outside China and on the margins of China and Chineseness." Bai Yun was regarded as a symbol of Chineseness by his overseas fans, but inspired polarized reactions in Mainland China itself. Even as he enjoyed the affection of countless adoring fans, he was also disparaged and insulted by his detractors (detailed later). Therefore, Bai Yun's Sinophone experiences were external to China, while simultaneously forming a network of cultural production located on the margins of China and Chineseness. His complex Sinophone experience both includes and externalizes China. David Wang's definition of the Sinophone, which includes Chinese overseas, Han Chinese, and Chineseness, is also suited to the case of Bai Yun. David Wang opposes the way in which Shih Shu-mei casts China—from the Qing to the Republic and on to the People's Republic—as an extension of imperial colonialism in its broad sense. He proposes what he calls a "post-loyalist discourse" to rethink Shih Shu-mei's overreliance on postcolonial discourse and the consequent exclusion of Han Chinese and Chineseness from the definition of the Sinophone. He observes that to a very great extent, to this day Malaysian Chinese people still willingly practice Chineseness and Chinese culture: "No matter whether in relation to the UK colonial government of the past, the current Malaysian authorities, or the Communist Mainland Chinese authorities, it is very hard to say that these Malaysian Chinese authors are being driven to create their Chinese-language discourses and works by post-colonialism" (Wang David 2015, 6). He therefore observes that "post-loyalism" is found throughout the Sinophone world, becoming the most important motive force for Chinese overseas in their rejection or embrace of...

INTEGRATED METHODOLOGY FOR TAKING INTO ACCOUNT THE VIEWS AND OPINONSOF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN THEIR INTERACTION WITH PUBLIC AUTHORITIES (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE YAMAL-NENETS AUTONOMOUS DISTRICT)

Developing democracy institutions and citizen participation in state affairs, the world community focuses on postcolonial studies, which allow us to identify new perspectives, set new priorities in various areas, in law and public administration among others. In Arctic countries, postcolonial discourse has an impact on the methodology of research related to indigenous issues, and this makes possible to understand specific picture of the world and ideas about what is happening in the world. Moreover, the traditions of Russian state and governance are specific and interaction between indigenous peoples and public authorities should be studied with a special research methodology which would reflect the peculiarities of domestic public law and aimed at solving legal issue and enrich public policy. The objective of the paper is to present a new integrated methodology that includes a system of philosophical, anthropological, socio-psychological methods, as well as methods of comparative analysis and scenario development methods to involve peripheral communities into decision-making process of planning the socio-economic development in one of Russia’s Arctic regions — the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District and to justify and further legislatively consolidate the optimal forms of interaction between public authorities and indigenous communities of the North. In 2020, the Arctic Research Center conducted a sociological survey in the Shuryshkararea of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District, which seems to limit existing approaches to identifying public opinion about prospects for developing villages and organizing life of their residents. Our proposed methodology for taking into account the views of indigenous peoples can help to overcome the identified limitations.

Сучасна література як художня репрезентація феномену „гібридної ідентичності”

The article considers the features of modern Western literature in postcolonial discourse. Emphasis is placed on researches that have formed the basis for understanding the phenomenon of multiculturalism in modern humanities. In this context, the concept of transculturation as a new worldview and a way of polemics with multiculturalism has been analyzed and the leading ideas have been singled out: „borderline identity”, hybridity, ambivalence, etc. The modern European literature is characterized as an artistic representation of the mentioned concepts, the so-called „borderline consciousness”, which underlies the hybrid worldview. The authors consider the phenomenon of cross-cultural (multicultural, transcultural) or postcolonial novel as one of the brightest phenomena of modern literary discourse. The dominant of creative work of cross-cultural authors is the identity crisis inherent in both the author and his or her character. In the proposed dimension, the work of immigrant authors in general and S. Rushdie’s novels in particular are considered as an artistic actualization of the theory of cultural hybridity, and the narrative of life „on the border” is defined as the most notable artistic strategy of modern literature.

A Non-Western Colonial Power? The Qing Empire in Postcolonial Discourse

A Non-Western Colonial Power? The Qing Empire in Postcolonial Discourse

Tango Dancing with María Lugones

Tango Dancing with María Lugones

Banaras in a Narrative of Nostalgia and Kitsch

An ethnographic study on the Indian city of Banaras, one of the “oldest continuously inhabited cities” of the world, helps us experiencing it as a multivocal, multilayered network of heritage, pilgrimage, and tourism that is either continually engaged with the revivalist construction of space or deconstructed by the postcolonial discourse envisaging a tangible and dynamic order of space. The article intends to make an analytical inquiry into pilgrimage, tourism, and heritage in the context of space and time, while relating it to the popular everyday event of Ganga Aarti in Banaras, which can be seen as a manifestation of nostalgic kitsch.

Casting the New Côte d'Ivoire: Ethnic Assertion and West African Orature in Azo Vauguy's <em>Zakwato</em>

In 2009 Ivorian poet Azo Vauguy published the book-length poem Zakwato, a myth that Vauguy translated out of its oral keeping and ethnic language, Bété, into written French. Vauguy presents Zakwato at a defining political moment. Côte d'Ivoire's first civil war (2002–07) ended with a 2008 reconciliation agreement. Vauguy's note of dedication to then-president Laurent Gbagbo offers Zakwato in support of an ideological position. Gbagbo and his supporters promoted a rigid nationalism, defined by the concept Ivoirité, which determined "Ivorian-ness" by ethnic affiliation. While studies of African poetry tend to situate works within a broad postcolonial discourse, recognizing ethno-cultural specifics is necessary for understanding how Vauguy provides an affective contour to the political rhetoric. Referred to as a neo-oralist by peers, Vauguy revives an Afro-Francophone literary tradition that was robustly developed in Côte d'Ivoire in the 1980s. An analysis of Zakwato and its conditions of emergence provides a non-metropolitan view of postcoloniality, offering an example of the local, on-the-ground complications that decolonial efforts face when trying to reconcile historical colonial interference with contemporary political restructuring.

The Orientalism of Arabs in Larry Charles Film’s The Dictator

This article aims to portray the Orientalism of Arabs in Larry Charles’s film The Dictator (2012). The research applies Edward Said’s Orientalism to define the Western perspective in representing the awful images of Arabs in the film. It also deploys post-colonial discourse and comedy film theory in defining the distorted images of Arabs which often represented not as its natural form in this comedy genre film. As the result – throughout many Western and Orientalist creations – Arabs are depicted as bomber, barbaric and lustful.

Post-Colonial Discourse on Siyasah in Islamic Criminal Law

Post-Colonial Discourse on Siyasah in Islamic Criminal Law

Феномен кроскультурного роману в постколоніальному дискурсі

У статті розглядаються особливості кроскультурного роману у постколоніальному дискурсі. Акцентується увага на дослідженнях, які утворили засади для осмислення феномену постколоніалізму сучасною гуманітаристикою. У зазначеному контексті аналізується сучасний кроскультурний роман та виокремлюються його провідні особливості: «межова ідентичність», гібридність, амбівалентність тощо. Творчість Дж. Кутзеє, С. Рушді, К. Ісігуро характеризується як художня репрезентація так званої «порубіжної свідомості», що є основою кроскультурного світогляду.

HYBRIDITY AND DEMARCATION BETWEEN THE HUMAN AND THE ARTIFICIAL IN THE «WESTWORLD» SF TV SERIES (2016–2018)

The purpose of the paper, which is original and promising for post-humanist studies, is to look into the hybridity and demarcation of the human and the artificial in the «Westworld» SF TV series (the USA) produced by Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan. Descriptive, cultural and historical methods, comparative analysis, postcolonial and mythopoetic approaches are applied for the research. The author discusses the criticism on hybridity and demarcation of the human and the artificial and the potential of modeling the interaction between humans and androids (AI) in «Westworld»; provides general information about the series and its symbols; traces the demythologization and remythologization of the frontier, the American Dream and the religious beliefs in the movie. Consequently, «Westworld» is argued to be a multilevel philosophical and psychological work rethinking Western civilization, American national myths, postcolonial discourse and feminism. The TV series show that violence is the dark side of the frontier myth, degradation – of the American Dream, and cruelty – of faith. All these manifestations of national mythology are associated with the body’s destruction or self-destruction. The androids mirror our worst and best qualities and follow human history and religion. Thus, the greater the hybridity of human and artificial is, the more accurate distinction between them becomes necessary. «Westworld» proves that it is love, sympathy, suffering, mortality, memory, dreams, faith, creativity, freedom, self-sacrifice, etc., that make us human. The film directors are aware of the responsibility of mankind for playing the God game and warn against excessive enthusiasm for post/transhumanism.

Företags försvar vid anklagelser om brott – betydelsen av den nordiska kontexten

AbstractIn recent years, several Swedish companies have been accused in the media, by NGOs, and via legal proceedings of engaging in criminal activities. Two of these companies, TeliaSonera and Lundin Petroleum have been the focus of substantial public attention. During the years following the revelations that TeliaSonera, a partly state owned telecommunications company, had committed bribery offences in Central Asia, the affair went from a public scandal in Sweden to a legal process in Sweden and abroad. Lundin Petroleum, a family owned oil company accused of participating in crimes against humanity in Sudan, has continuously denied the accusation by using a variety of denials and neutralizations. The current paper analyzes the strategies employed by these two businesses when defending themselves against allegations of criminal acts. Drawing on Stanley Cohen’s (2009) theoretical work on processes of denial and neutralization techniques, we have identified four main techniques used by the two companies to deflect allegations of criminal wrongdoing: literal denial; denial of knowledge; condemning the condemners; and appealing to a higher loyalty. In addition, we identify how the corporations emphasise their “Nordic values” by linking into a post-colonial discourse and justify their behaviour by relativising it. The article contributes to the discussion of neutralization strategies by pointing out the importance of the context in which a defence takes place.

Africa and Its Diaspora: History, Identities, and Economy, Samuel O. Oloruntoba

Reviewed by: Africa and Its Diaspora: History, Identities, and Economy ed. by Samuel O. Oloruntoba Nana Afua Y. Brantuo BOOK REVIEW of Oloruntoba, Samuel O., ed. 2017. Africa and Its Diaspora: History, Identities, and Economy. Austin, Texas: Pan-African University Press. 400 pp. Adorning the cover of Samuel O. Oloruntoba's edited collection, Africa and Its Diaspora: History, Identities and Economy, is a simple design—a map of Africa resting on top of a pattern akin to that of textiles woven throughout the African continent. Within the map, several words capture the themes of this monograph. The word diaspora, the biggest and boldest in font, is centered and surrounded by development, history, slavery, identity, immigrant, and other words. The cover, in its aesthetic consistency and deliberateness, functions as shorthand for the book's focus on reorienting the conceptualization and study of the African diaspora as grounded in Paul Zeleza's (2005) definition of diaspora as process, condition, space, and discourse.1 This collection and synthesis of papers from more than two dozen scholars of African and African diasporic studies foregrounds the significance of mirroring the complexity and multiplicity of African diasporic life and experiences in academic exploration and inquiry. Movement and mobility, and the myriad phenomena borne out of the two, are no strangers to the African diaspora, which, spanning time and place, occupies a distinct, multidimensional space within diaspora studies. Africa and Its Diaspora, published by Pan-African University Press—a platform dedicated to revitalizing discourse related to Africa and the African diaspora—functions as both an academic and a political project, which centers the perspectives of African and African diasporic scholars across fields and disciplines. Divided into five parts, it delves into aspects of development at the micro and macro levels: politics of identity and belonging, [End Page 144] the legacies of and challenges posed by slavery and colonialism, the arts and development, religion and development, and alternative development strategies. The chapters within each section employ various methods and methodologies in an attempt to give nuance to their respective populations and topics of inquiry. Section one brings forth a theme of resilience and (re)creation at both the individual and collective levels of the diaspora by way of biographical, ethnographic, philosophical, and survey research, while section two utilizes historical, archival, archaeological, and anthropological methods to approach and reapproach the effects of slavery and colonialism on and off the African continent. Sections three, four, and five take on several spheres of development. In section three, various artistic mediums form the basis of postcolonial discourse and analysis of sociopolitical and sociohistorical African and African diaspora experiences. Section four focuses on multiple ways in which religion, past and present, has influenced the social, physical, and political infrastructures of West African societies. The book concludes with a focus on alternative development strategies, addressing the causes of contemporary forced migration out of Africa, resituating traditional economic systems in place of microcredit and microfinance schemes, and other topics. This section includes discourse on the role of youth in development, the necessity of African integration in resolving complex political, economic, and social issues, and the need to critique and discard the neoliberal development agenda throughout Africa. Overall, this volume makes space for necessary discourse on the past, present, and future for Africa and the African diaspora, offering historical and contemporary analyses alongside proposed recommendations and resolutions for ongoing issues affecting African and African diaspora communities across borders. While the cohesion of the chapters may seem challenged by variation in the communities of focus, the volume in and of itself exhibits the continuum of identities across Africa and the African diaspora, regardless of point of departure, return, or transition. Nana Afua Y. Brantuo University of Maryland, College Park note 1. Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe. 2005. "Rewriting the African Diaspora: Beyond the Black Atlantic." African Affairs 104, no. 414 (2005): 35–68. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3518632. Copyright © 2019 The Trustees of Indiana University

JK ROWLING’S THE TALES OF BEEDLE THE BARD: A MAGICAL REALISM ANALYSIS

<p class="15" align="justify">Literature plays an important role in psychological and social development of a child. Literature stimulates children<span style="font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span style="font-family: Cambria;">s imagination and sharpens their awareness of the world around them. It teaches our children about values, norms, equity, and firmly establishes the qualities of tolerance, compassion, sharing, caring, and ability to solve conflict. Therefore, it is undeniably important to shed a light on what our children read as they will project what they read in stories through their behavior. Using a post-colonial discourse, the writer put forward a well elaborate analysis and findings of magical realism study on JK Rowling</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">’</span><span style="font-family: Cambria;">s short stories </span><em>The Tales of Beedle the Bard</em>. Moreover, the analysis focuses on how magical object describing the magical realism aspects is depicted as a part of human life and how it brings affects for the child readers. </p>

Tale Of A Pariah: Zoroastrian Worldview In Cyrus Mistry’s Chronicle Of A Corpse Bearer

The contribution of Parsee writers to the corpus of postcolonial discourse is singular. They are akin to the Jewish writers like Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud who sought to express their ethnic identity in artistic terms. The Zoroastrian worldview, which is life – affirming, provides sustenance to the Parsee community. The Parsee system of the disposal of the dead is unique. This paper attempts to study Cyrus Mistry`s novel Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer which deals with the trauma of a nussesalar, a corpse bearer. Phiroze, the centre of consciousness represents the khandhias, the ostracized among the marginalized Parsee community. His tale gives us a peep into the abysmal and turbulent psyche of the khandhias. It is the account of a pariah who rejects the Zoroastrian worldview and leads a life of his volition.

Living is Writing: Metaphors of representation in Hanif Kureishi’s The Last Word

Hanif Kureishi’s The Last Word (2014) is a fictional work that depicts the effort of a young journalist from London, Harry, to write the biography of a very famous author of Indian origin, Mamoon, who now lives in the quiet English countryside. Starting from the very beginning, with its symbolic title, the novel is built upon a metatextual framework as it discusses the power of words and narratives in a literary context. In particular, the thematic coordinates of the text incessantly creates intersections between the conceptual domain of writing, which includes its peripheral subdomains such as researching, remembering, but also the manipulation and revision of facts and stories. The overall effect is to hybridise the fields of narrative, (fictional) biography and authorship, and deliberately challenge the reader in the construction of meaning and the attribution of reliability to characters. Therefore, the governing megametaphor living is writing and its possible micro-articulations emerge as a network of rhetorical devices of representation and conceptualisation of life experience through the practice of writing and communicating. This paper intends to investigate the range of these metaphorical renditions in the novel, and their power to symbolically encapsulate lives in words (Mamoon’s life recorded and/or reinvented through words). The central argument is that such structures superficially serve to mirror reality and experience, blending the macro-concepts of writing and living, but in reality they are also endowed with the possibility to set off a sequence of ambiguities, given their ideological potential (i.e. biography writing as a process of adjustment and interpretation of facts in spite of claims of faithfulness). As readers are asked to apply a kind of “double vision” (Gavins 2007) to the text, various text worlds are generated, bringing to light the language continuum connecting the coterminous spaces of fiction and non-fiction and the key role of metaphor as a tool to approach the self and the other, and human existence at large. The purpose of this article is twofold, namely a) to take into account various metaphoric expressions originating from the central megametaphor in select extracts from the novel and b) to provide a preliminary examination of their ideological effects. Methodologically I follow an interdisciplinary frame that draws from stylistics, postcolonial discourse, biography studies and literary studies (Adami 2006; Ashcroft 2009; Bradford 1997; Browse 2016; Douthwaite 2000; Kovecses 2000, 2002; Stockwell 2009; Sorlin 2014).

Miyuan, (re)imaginings of the Japanese legacy, and the making of postcolonial discourse in 1990s Taiwan

Cet article analyse la réception dans les journaux et les magazines littéraires du roman Miyuan (Le jardin des égarements) publié par Li Ang en 1991, et ses convergences avec les débuts de la localisation des théories postcoloniales à Taiwan. En effet, si Miyuan est généralement considéré comme une œuvre-clef de la littérature dite « du 28 février », notre analyse tend à montrer que la phase initiale de réception dans la presse périodique ne s’est pas tant intéressée au roman dans son rapport aux événements du 28 février ni à la Terreur blanche, mais plutôt aux (ré)imaginations de l’héritage colonial japonais, ainsi qu’aux continuités et discontinuités ayant résulté de la transition entre le régime japonais et celui du Kuomintang dans des domaines aussi variés que le système scolaire, les questions d’ethnicité, les discriminations, les langues ou encore le jardinage. Ces débats furent parmi les premiers à surimposer dans une même grille de lecture une œuvre littéraire locale, les premières traductions des théories postcoloniales en chinois et le contexte de leur introduction sur la scène littéraire taïwanaise. En ce sens, elles préfigurent le plus large « débat de 1992 » auquel on fait généralement remonter le début des débats postcoloniaux à Taiwan, et contribuent à délimiter les rapports entre discours littéraire et travail de mémoire dans les années quatre-vingt-dix.

The quest for hermeneutics of appropriation as a thematic approach for critical biblical interpretation

This study attempts to promulgate a method called ‘hermeneutics of appropriation’ as a thematic approach of a scientific research. ‘Hermeneutics’ is not the same as ‘appropriation’; hermeneutics refers to a science of interpretation, whereas appropriation depicts an idea of adoption. Hermeneutics of appropriation employs themes (hence, thematic analysis) as opposed to contextual biblical hermeneutics that focuses largely on contemporary interpretation of biblical narratives. Thus, adopting the phrase ‘hermeneutics of appropriation’ presents the idea of a scientific interpretation of a theme that is applied in a differing context from which it originated. The present study aims at highlighting some dynamics that illustrate contextual biblical interpretation as a biased approach. Having presented such dynamics, the study will then suggest the employment of hermeneutics of appropriation in which relevant themes from the biblical text are utilised in a hermeneutical discourse. A dialogue with various previous contributions that conferred on contextual biblical hermeneutics will illuminate the above notion. With regard to hermeneutics of appropriation, representative examples of themes from the Judean postexilic context to be appropriated in the Zimbabwean postcolonial discourse comprises of two aspects: (1) geopolitical and socioeconomic crises and (2) Nehemiah’s social justice reforms. The latter consists of five subthemes: public hearing to rebuke the leadership, condemnation of usury, payment of tax, return of personal property to the owner and food donation to the needy.

THE ORIENTALISM OF ARABS IN LARRY CHARLES FILM’S THE DICTATOR

<p><em>This article aims to portray the Orientalism of Arabs in Larry Charles’s film The Dictator (2012). The research applies Edward Said’s Orientalism to define the Western perspective in representing the awful images of Arabs in the film. It also deploys post-colonial discourse and comedy film theory in defining the distorted images of Arabs which often represented not as its natural form in this comedy genre film. </em><em>The material object in this paper is The Dictator (2012) by Larry Charles. The formal object is the Arab representing by colonial bias. </em><em>As the result – throughout many Western and Orientalist creations – Arabs are depicted as bomber, barbaric and lustful.</em></p>