Postcolonial Identity Research Articles

\u2018Where Art Thou?\u2019: Ethnocracy, Toponymic Silence, and Toponymic Subjugation in the Harare Commemorative Landscapes During the Mugabe Era (1980\u20132017)

This article explores the post-colonial national identity formation using place names that commemorate the nation’s past in Zimbabwe. Place name alterations that the new political elites implemented at independence in 1980 were aimed at disassembling relics of the deposed regime and craft a new national identity. The commemorative landscapes of Harare, as a national capital, constitute a strategic medium in the constitution of national identity. Ethnicity dominated the political landscape in Zimbabwe. The two main political parties, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), have been aligned with the two supertribes, Shona and Ndebele, respectively. The article explores how the ruling ZANU (PF) government whose leadership was largely Shona used a meta-narrative modelled around discourses of exclusionary autochthony and a partial presentation of the liberation war history that projected ZAPU as having made an insignificant contribution to the liberation war to construct a national identity. It concludes that the use of exclusionary definitions of belonging and a one-sided presentation of the war past that projected ZANU as having contributed more to the liberation war entrenched Shona ethnic chauvinistic tendencies and propagated ZANU (PF) political hegemony. Using the theoretical lens of critical toponymy, the article argues that politically motivated place renaming efforts usually select from the past aspects that serve present political purposes.

Made Visible: Contemporary South African Fashion and Identity curated by Kathryn Gunsch

Made Visible: Contemporary South African Fashion and Identity curated by Kathryn Gunsch

The Violence of Othering and (non-)Indigenous Revival: Aammton Alias’ The Last Bastion of Ingei: Imminent as Postcolonial Speculative Fiction of Brunei Darussalam

This paper examines an Anglophone Bruneian novel, The Last Bastion of Ingei (2016), by Aammton Alias, as postcolonial speculative fiction. Employing the double lines of enquiry provided by the Orientalist colonial gaze and ideology of progress, I discuss symbolic and materialist aspects of the violent processes of othering experienced within the Bruneian nation. The novel delineates the way that a colonial mindset undermines indigenous and minority identities. I contend that the hybridity of human-hantu relations functions as a strategy of resistance by collapsing demarcated boundaries between self and alien other. A further revival of the cultures of indigenous Malays, non-indigenous Ibans, and Penans within Brunei exhibits the extent to which the novel’s project of decolonization is promoted. Furthermore, a dystopian world of conflict is rejected in an ultimate desire for utopian peace and happiness as the novel calls for a suturing of social and racial divisions. To this end, a unified nation is yearned for via speculative scenes of reconciled relations of its family members. Hence, I argue that this novel offers a valuable critique of the conditions of postcolonial identity through contested powers, spaces and voices through its speculative narrative plot.

Xenophobia and subaltern theatre in post-colonial African identities

ABSTRACT This study is a rhetorical criticism of the relationship between theatre, the concept of subalternity and xenophobia in post-colonial African identities. It places theatre in the frame of nativism, belonging and migration in Africa. Cases of apartheid and colonial system in South Africa and Zimbabwe, respectively, demonstrate the use of theatre in advancing antagonism against colonialism by using topics of identities and nationhood. This characteristic has manifested in contemporary subaltern theatre in challenging xenophobia, political rhetoric and ethno-politico narratives in post-independent Africa. The study analyses Burn Mukwerekwere Burn (2008), a play by Blessing Hungwe based on the 2008 xenophobic attacks in South Africa.

Raça

Este artigo faz uma análise sobre raça e mestiçagem na construção da identidade pós colonial no Brasil enquanto ferramenta de poder para justificar a subalternização e apagamento de negros e mestiços na formação da sociedade. Inserimos o pensamento de Geraldo Rocha que compreende ser o mestiço sertanejo um exemplo da autêntica identidade nacional. Por meio de revisão bibliográfica, analisamos esse processo de positivação de um mestiço e as influências teóricas que permitiram essa positivação

Restitution of African colonial artefacts: A reassessment of France’s post-colonial identity

This article aims to investigate the way the French government has utilized the restitution of African colonial artefacts to reshape its postcolonial identity. The decision to return African artefacts to their country of origin is studied from a national perspective, shedding light on the postcolonial evolution of the French society, and from an international perspective, placing this decision within the structure of international relations. This article demonstrates that the restitution of African colonial artefacts is part of a political strategy aimed at addressing the national and international criticisms directed towards the French government without having to implement the structural reforms necessary to truly resolve them.

Periphery and Intimacy in Anti-Imperial Culture and Politics

In the late period of nineteenth- and twentieth-century French imperialism, French thinkers, artists, and colonists had long held a fascination with the “others” inhabiting France’s colonies. Intimate contact and cross-cultural encounters led to descriptions and often violent differentiations of these groups that helped define French identity. But what might we learn by employing a “postcolonial praxis” that seeks new ways of interrogating identity from anti-imperial actors? Taking the perspectives of three key anti-imperialists—Frantz Fanon, Ousmane Sembène, and Simone Lellouche Othmani—this article unearths their perceptions about France and French identity. For these figures, France could represent either an unfulfilled promised land or a place of exile. Frenchness, likewise, ran the spectrum from a set of desired if unattainable qualities, an immoral culture to be resisted at all costs, to a national identity to be deployed for political strategy. This radical approach turns Frenchness into an “other” while contributing to the emergence of new postcolonial identities. At the same time, it demonstrates how three important definitions of France and of Frenchness depended upon both peripheral positionality and intimate access to French culture.

Witnessing gendered testimony: Reader ethics in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India

Much of Cracking India’s scholarship focuses on how the text provides a representation of gendered trauma during Partition. These analyses, however, overlook the reader’s role, which minimizes literary works to analyzable objects rather than interactive opportunities. Following the work of postcolonial trauma scholars such as Steph Craps, Abigail Ward, and Jay Rajiva, I argue that postcolonial trauma narratives are crucial spaces of testimony in which the ongoing traumatic effects of colonialism intersect with reader engagement. Using Dori Laub’s trauma interview model, I examine how Bapsi Sidhwa uses the narrative techniques of perspective, time, and presence in Cracking India to implicate the reader as a witness in gendered postcolonial trauma affecting women. In pairing the examination of how narrative technique engages the reader as a witness with current scholarship on gender in Sidhwa’s novel, I show how such consideration of the reader speaks to how gendered violence contributes to postcolonial identity formation over time.

Postcolonial Civic Identity and Youth (dis)organizing Environment: A Growth into Citizenship Analysis

The fluid realities of youth in postcolonial nation-states can reflect changing and challenging landscapes. Their engagements with environment, for example, are not only elaborated in social, political, and economical contexts, but also generated through values, beliefs, and identities. This article adds to contemporary debates by positing that discussions on postcolonial civic identities have to be accompanied by youth narratives and their considerations on nature, time, and digital world(s) by taking Malaysian youths as examples. Specifically, it attempts to theorize youth civic identity within postcolonial context(s) by scrutinizing personal narratives that are symbiotically yoked with discourses on ecology and technology. Through administering personal narratives at a suburban district in West Peninsular Malaysia, this paper opens ‘windows’ into what it means for youths to participate in civic projects. Reading these narratives from the lens of growth into citizenship , their wide-ranging experiences in civic affairs can be understood in four ways, namely, recognition, responsibilities, reconciliation, and reciprocity. Two of these emerging themes, recognition and responsibilities, will be discussed in this article. Our attempt at depicting postcolonial civic identity, therefore, is part of a large-scale investigation on civic mindedness that will compel us to reflect on unofficial, continuous accounts of youth reflecting on a sense of belongingness and what the future might bring.

Queer Fiesta

The Andean patron-saint fiesta is an iconic folkloric celebration often considered as a religious syncretic and hybrid expression of popular culture that brings together Spanish and Indigenous influences. Within fiestas, danzas (dance-dramas) represent both embodied devotional offers that include gendered costuming and dancing and representations of folklore as an ideology sustained by the idea of a heterosexual nation. In this article, I address queerness as a set of epistemologies and a privileged terrain to perform and contest the hybridity of fiestas producing a performance practice I term ‘queer hybridity.’ To do so, I focus on the work by Bolivian drag collective La Familia Galán as performers in La Paz’s La Fiesta del Gran Poder as Waphuri Galán, a danza character they created in 2001. I analyse queerness in tandem with hybridity and ask what it means for a queer subject to perform in a hybrid space like the patron-saint fiesta, while navigating folkloric narratives that position gender and sexual non-normativity as a danger to tradition. I read the clashes between queerness and normativity in fiesta as meaning-making encounters that do not attain to hybridity as a post-colonial identity but instead materialize the queer remaking of a hybrid performance form. I propose different new hybrid categories that are created as a result within the fiesta logics of ritual cross-dressing, devotion, temporality and cultural heritage, but also beyond fiesta time and space. Ultimately, I argue that the construction of the character of the Waphuri Galán by La Familia Galán and the effect it has had in Bolivian folklore and LGBT politics underscore the importance of queer epistemologies as contributing and sustaining ways of knowing in fiesta hybridity and its change over time.

How Power Dresses: The Gendered Aesthetics of Uniform A Comparative Case Study of Contemporary Women Heads of State and/or Government in Australia, Indonesia, and the Philippines

The clothed body, whether dressed thoughtfully or not, performs a social narrative of gender, wealth, status, nationality, and occupation embedded within a larger network of intersectional positionalities. Clothing conveys a set of values of not only the individual but also of the cultural politics of their milieu. For women Heads of State and/or Government, who are uniquely situated to project a diverse intersection of identities as well as access clothing choices socially unavailable to their male counterparts, a nuanced analysis of the garment choices of these professionals on the international stage yields significant findings about how women negotiate their roles as politicians, national figures, religious or areligious representatives, and as individuals. Three contemporary case studies of women Heads of State and/or Government in office between 2000 and 2013 from Australia, Indonesia, and the Philippines interrogate these strategic choices of clothing by holistically cataloging and then analyzing the style, color, and pattern of the attire of each figure. Contextualized within their respective cultures and histories, the ways in which their clothing serve to mimic masculine color coding as seen by Australia’s Prime Minister, re-entrench religion within politics as seen by Indonesia’s President, and ‘self-Orientalize’ the national, post-colonial identity as seen by the Philippine’s President, each woman’s clothing informed her leadership and vice versa. This thesis analyzes the complex negotiations between identity, power, and politics through clothing for women political leaders. How do women Heads of State and/or Government visually communicate national narratives of identity and express political authority through their aesthetic wardrobe choices? How do these clothes project inscriptions of femininity, modesty, religiosity, development, and the national self? Discovering these strategies can provide a foundation for future study of the occupational uniform of women in historically masculine roles as well as the power of the national body as represented by women to reflect but also perpetuate particular socially normative ideals of the modern empowered woman across cultures.

The ethno-metapragmatics of CHOSEN/CHOSUN: The intertextual gap and post-colonial politics in Asia

Drawing upon the case of NHK's (Nihon Hoso Kyokai, Japan's public broadcasting organization) metalinguistic debate in the 1970s on how the Korean Language should be referred to, this research examines why Japan and North/South Korea came to develop different views on the meaning of “Chosen [tʃɔːsæn]” and discusses the social implications of this debate for postcolonial identity politics. The study adopts the theory of critical discourse analysis to understand how the metalinguistic debate is tied to the socio-political identities of Zainichi (ethnic Koreans in Japan). It is my contention that South Korea's desire for modernity is ingrained in the ethno-metapragmatics of Chosen/Chosun, of which temporality (colonial Korea) and spatiality (North Korea) should be overcome in the construction of the nation's master narrative. I also argue that Japan's insistence on Chosen as an innocuous term reflects institutional disidentification of Zainichi.

The representation of postcolonial identity in The Age of Shadows and Lust, Caution

The representation of postcolonial identity in The Age of Shadows and Lust, Caution

Neoliberal Pedagogies and Indian American Youth: Constructing Academic Identities in Central Texas

Centering the voices of Indian American high school students, this investigation utilizes postcolonial theory, Orientalism and cultural identity in diaspora to engage the ways five Indian American students form academic identities. Participants formed academic identities in relation to neoliberal pedagogic contexts and interactions with curricula and educators, demonstrating the fluid, antagonistic, and culturally related nature of their academic identities mired in mimicry, mockery and ambivalence. Participants’ insights highlight the negotiations of prescribed ways of knowing/being particular to their high school space, and their own agentic decisions within these dynamics construction notions of self-efficacy related to hard work and resiliency in the contemporary neoliberal moment.

Postcolonial Theology and Intersectionality

Many two-thirds-world Christian theologians have turned to postcolonial theory as a more indigenous theoretical way of addressing the sinful effects of colonialism in its various manifestations. These theologians employ, in particular, the postcolonial concept of hybridity as a way of accounting for the complicated political agency of the "subaltern" (oppressed) subject. This concept emerged out of the postcolonial experience to describe the ways in which subaltern subjects sometimes embrace and confront the "master's tools" when constructing new postcolonial identities. What could look like support of the oppressor may, in fact, be a complex process of formulating and activating subaltern agency in relation to colonialist as well as indigenous cultural practices, languages, attitudes, and religions. This essay argues that these are forms of intersectional theologizing.

Идентичности и национальные варианты политики памяти (к итогам дискуссии)

The article summarizes the main results of a recent discussion on the relationship between national identities and national variants of the politics of memory in relation to global historical events of the 20 th century. This discussion took place from April 1 to June 30, 2020 as part of the annual Internet conference of the Altai School of Political Studies. The introduction to the article provides a brief overview of the main directions of already existing research on this topic in Russian and foreign literature. The content of the 30 reports submitted to the Internet conference is characterized, in which the comprehension of events that have left a deep imprint on the public consciousness (world wars, revolutions, the collapse of empires and multinational states, processes of decolonization, Cold War, etc.) is considered. For a specific analysis, the reports are selected that are closest to the chosen topic. They are divided into three semantic blocks: 1) Identities and comprehension of the past in the context of a pandemic; 2) Postcolonial identities and working through the past; 3) The trauma of genocide: the identities of “perpetrators” and “victims”. The analysis shows that the comprehension and historical assimilation of a number of events is still far from complete. In many countries, the "politics of memory" in relation to the most important historical events and symbols is used in the construction of national identities, in the legitimization of the most important steps in domestic and foreign policy. On the other hand, the formed national identity can significantly influence the memory policy pursued in the country. Therefore, further comparative study of the variants of “memory politics” used in the world, associated with the formation of identities, is an urgent scientific task.

Polish Literature and National Identity: A Postcolonial Perspective by Dariusz Skórczewski

Reviewed by: Polish Literature and National Identity: A Postcolonial Perspective by Dariusz Skórczewski Agnieszka Jezyk (bio) Dariusz Skórczewski, Polish Literature and National Identity: A Postcolonial Perspective ( Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2020). 341 pp. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-1-58046-978-4. The past is never dead. It's not even past. William Faulkner After the death of Zygmunt Krasiński (1812–1859), the Polish national poet and one of Poland's Three Bards (together with Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki), his fellow Romantic lyricist, also a painter, Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821–1883) wrote a letter containing a sentence that later became a famous and included the painfully relevant maxim: "We can only argue or love but we are not able to differ beautifully and strongly." This apothegm accompanied me from the start as I read the book by Dariusz Skórczewski, an associate professor of Polish literature at the Catholic University of Lublin. Speaking from a strong ideological position of Christian personalism about East-Central Europe, a region still new to postcolonial studies, the author presents a clear and consequential vision of Polish literature and demonstrates rhetorical passion, which is so infrequent in academia. Engaging [End Page 325] and original, Skórczewski's publication may stir some controversy, as it is surely one of the most thought-provoking projects in Polish studies available in English that you will have the pleasure to read this year. In this review, I will present the author's unique perspective and some of the reasons that one could disagree with his vision, but also why Polish Literature and National Identity: A Postcolonial Perspective is a must for enthusiasts of all things Polish. Divided into eleven chapters and an afterword, the book consists of three thematic parts. In the first part (chapters 1–4) the author discusses the theoretical issues related to postcolonialism in Poland and East-Central Europe. Among these topics are the significance of Christian personalism for postcolonial studies and its connections with Marxism, the history of discourse in the Polish context (from the partitions by Russia, Prussia, and Austro-Hungary in the eighteenth century to the communist period and dependence on the USSR in 1945–1989), the question of identity and West/East opposition, and the positionality of the intelligentsia in the situation of dependence. In the second part (chapters 5–8) Skórczewski focuses on the representations of Self and Other in concrete examples from Polish literature (work by Witold Gombrowicz, Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki, Paweł Huelle, and Andrzej Stasiuk). The final section (chapters 9–11) concerns the postcolonial identity of Poles, especially as viewed in the texts of Anglo-American academics. Skórczewski begins with the history of postcolonial studies in Poland that originated in the second half of the 1980s and early 1990s. The first Polish translation of Edward Said's Orientalism (1991) did not attract much attention. The author registers a serious interest toward the topic among Polish academics with the switch of focus to Central and Eastern Europe, more precisely with Ewa Thompson's Imperial Knowledge: Russian Literature and Colonialism (2000). Initially, Polish academics were skeptical about the postcolonial approach. On one hand, postcolonialism was perceived as "another oddity of Western culture" but on the other hand, especially among some younger scholars, it also "tasted of something exotic" (P. 1). Distrust in the method was partially caused by what the author himself views as a matter of legitimate concern, namely, the danger of framing Polish experience in postcolonial terms as a way to "simply rename, or rebrand, existing categories of analysis, as suggested by research into communism and totalitarianism" (Pp. 2–3). A productive application of the postcolonial approach entailed a focus on historical situations of dependence, such as the periods [End Page 326] of partitions and communist rule in Polish history, and Skórzewski duly concentrates on these periods in his analysis. He believes that the postcolonial approach in studies of East-Central Europe is not only refreshing but also necessary, because it allows one to go beyond studies of totalitarianism, communism, and postcommunism. It offers a perspective on the region from the vantage point of the "cultural and mental effects...

A study of Postcolonial Narrative in The Remains of the Day

The winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 2017, Kazuo Ishiguro，is a famous contemporary Japanese-British novelist who, together with Salman Rushdie and V. S. Naipaul, is known as the “Three Giants of Immigrants” in British literature. His novel, The Remains of the Day , was published in 1988 and won Booker Prize in 1989. The Remains of the Day takes two World War and typical British manor as the background and uses the first person retrospective narration form to describe the postwar British butler Stevens in the face of the historical change, the master replacement and some other series of events. The protagonist Stevens has gone through a process of identity change in different background, which is also the process of re-rebuilding identity through various events. As one of Kazuo Ishiguro’s representative works, The Remains of the Day is successful in its unique narrative strategy. Based on narratology theory and Said’s post-colonial identity theory, this paper attempts to explore the subject of the protagonist’s identity behind the text by virtue of Stevens’ unreliable narration, so as to show the process of his subjectivity, identity loss and identity reconstruction.

Reforming Borders of the Imagination: Diversity, Adaptation, Transmediation, and Incorporation in the Global Disney Film Landscape

The transmediation involved in recent Walt Disney Company productions including A Wrinkle in Time, Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarok, Coco, and Moana engage with a process of visualizing the nonvisual in ways that have heretofore differed from past Disney offerings. These films respond to calls for increased diversity, unlocking the potential of imagined spaces on a global scale. Although it addresses postcolonial identity politics that are both salient and fraught in the current geopolitical climate, such diversity nevertheless serves Disney’s corporate interests, (re)producing a colonizing progression decentralized from the nation-state but rooted in projection of culture. As Disney adapts new narratives, it also engages in a process of incorporation, absorbing these narratives into the larger framework of the overarching corporate structure of the “magic kingdom”—intended to designate a cultural home for childhood, imagination, and reminiscence of how things were and what they might become. I contend that Disney’s incorporation of new narratives extends greater access to imaginary spaces while producing a homogenizing effect on global media culture.

Nzinga Mbandi: From Story to Myth

The figure of Queen Nzinga Mbandi continues to be appreciated in fictional and/or historical narratives as a myth of postcolonial Angolan identity, allowing a continuous approach as to what concerns the modes of cultural representation. In this article, the works of Manuel Pedro Pacavira, Nzinga Mbandi (1975), Pepetela, A gloriosa família: o tempo dos flamengos (1997) and José Eduardo Agualusa, A Rainha Ginga e de como os africanos inventaram o mundo (2014) will be analyzed, as these authors, in different moments of the recent Angolan history, look at this emblematic figure, drawing on historical information produced by Cavazzi, Cadornega or Jean Louis Castilhon, among others. The works now in analysis reiterate the mythical figure of resistance to the European invaders, which was Nzinga Mbandi, or a strong orientation towards the nationalist exaltation supported by it, an evident strategy which, by the rescue of figures and cultural practices, is defined as a means to affirm negritude.