Postcolonial Struggles Research Articles

Losing the Battle and Awareness of Unveiling the Postcolonial Struggle Against Western Philosophical Hegemony in Indonesian Aesthetic Textbooks

Objective: The objective of this research is to explore the hegemonic construction of Western philosophical concepts in Indonesian aesthetic textbooks, the methods of their construction, and the factors reinforcing this hegemony. Theoretical Framework: In this topic, can be analyzed through key postcolonial and orientalist frameworks, including Edward Said's concept of orientalism, which examines how Western discourses construct and dominate Eastern identities. Method: This study employs a qualitative research methodology with a naturalistic paradigm, utilizing a hermeneutic approach and descriptive qualitative analysis based on the Miles and Huberman model. Results and Discussion: The results show that Western hegemony is evident in the content of aesthetics textbooks in Indonesia, both in the substantive content domain of the subject matter and the figures. This hegemonic construction is propagated through persuasive methods. The enduring nature of Western-biased knowledge construction, mainly fuelled by the orientalist-postcolonial system, significantly reinforces this hegemony. Therefore, this research underlines the scenario of culture losing the battle and especially the effort to build awareness of unveiling the struggle to overcome the dominance of Western philosophy that is permeating Indonesian aesthetic education. Research Implications: The study reveals that Indonesian aesthetic textbooks heavily feature Western philosophical concepts, constructed, and reinforced through persuasive, non-coercive methods. Utilizing a qualitative research approach, it uncovers that Western hegemony is evident both substantively and in the representation of key figures within these textbooks. This enduring Western bias, perpetuated by orientalist systems, significantly influences Indonesian aesthetic education, highlighting the deep-rooted nature of this hegemonic knowledge construction. Originality/Value: This study offers original insights into the pervasive influence of Western philosophical concepts in Indonesian aesthetic textbooks, highlighting their construction and reinforcement through persuasive methods rather than coercion. Employing a qualitative methodology with a hermeneutic approach and descriptive analysis, it uncovers the substantive and figure-level dominance of Western ideas, driven by orientalist systems. This research contributes valuable understanding of the enduring nature of Western-biased knowledge construction in Indonesian aesthetic education, emphasizing the need for a critical re-evaluation of curricular content.

Toward a Critical Non-Humanism in Postwar Japan

Toward a Critical Non-Humanism in Postwar Japan

Ukraine and the global south: The ambiguities of a postcolonial perspective

With the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion Ukraine started actively utilize the trope of postcolonial struggle in its external strategic communication. Such positionality was intended to take relations with the global South to a new level. The aim of this article is twofold: empirically, it seeks to discuss how the idea of postcolonialism in its policy-oriented interpretation contributes to the positional rapprochement of Ukraine and the global South. The author argues that employing such narrative has its logic but also significant limitations. Conceptually, the article unpacks three different interpretations of the concept of post-coloniality in academic literature and analyses how they are applicable to Ukraine’s postcolonial posture.

Existence and Dynamics of The Islamic-Malay Sultanate Across The Malacca Strait: A Multifaceted Exploration Of Non-Western Ir Theories

The historical interactions among the Malay sultanates/kingdoms across the Malacca Strait offer a fascinating glimpse into the world of international relations beyond the Western lens. Based on the desire to build a non-Western IR theory, this study has highlighted the rich tapestry of cultural diversity, postcolonial struggles, local agency, alternative ideas, and hybridity that characterized the diplomatic landscape of these kingdoms. The struggle for power, strategic cooperation, and regionalism among the Malay kingdoms were deeply rooted in their cultural heritage, challenging the conventional narratives, and showcasing the resilience and adaptability of non-Western societies in shaping their international relations. As we reflect on these historical dynamics, it becomes evident that the lessons from the past continue to resonate in the contemporary global landscape, emphasizing the importance of embracing diverse perspectives and recognizing the agency of all nations in shaping the course of international relations. This study delves into the intricate historical interactions among the Islamic-Malay kingdoms in the Malacca Strait region. Employing a diverse array of non-Western International Relations (IR) theories, the research sheds light on the multifaceted dimensions of the diplomatic landscape in pre-modern Southeast Asia. Through an extensive library research approach, which involved the analysis of classic manuscripts and texts relevant to the topic, this study unveils the nuanced power struggles, strategic alliances, and regional cooperation mechanisms that shaped the Malay kingdoms' international relations. By delving into these historical records, the research provides a comprehensive understanding of how cultural context, postcolonial perspectives, local agency, alternative ideas, and hybridity influenced the diplomatic maneuvers of the Malay kingdoms, challenging conventional Western-centric narratives and showcasing the richness of non-Western IR theories.

Eruptions: Poulomi Basu and the art of renewal

This paper considers the vision and practice of Indian born transmedia artist Poulomi Basu. It takes Basu's exhibition ‘Eruptions: a decade of creation' (SIDE Gallery 2021) as a starting point to explore her use of analogue and digital photography, film, print, and virtual reality (VR) as tools for collaboration and storytelling with women in India and Nepal. The artist's interview and accompanying images showcase the evolution of Basu’s work and imagination through the projects To Conquer Her Land (2009-12); Blood Speaks: A Ritual of Exile (2013-18) and Centralia (2010-21). Exposing the contemporary injustices and the disinheritance brought by British colonial divisions of land and power, including those along religious lines, the multifaceted stories within these works respond to an important critical juncture. They look back to the past as well as to the present post-colonial struggles in which the complexities and contradictions of tradition are brought firmly into question.

"Nicht Vergangenes, was das Herz noch reut": Exile, memory, and the search for home in Herold Belger's Writings

The article considers the German-language writings of the ethnic German Kazakh writer, Herold Belger, and explores whether his literary output can be understood as a model for moving beyond the postcolonial struggle for ethnic, cultural, and political autonomy in favor of intercultural encounters. Belger’s enunciation of cultural diversity and differences at the margins of Soviet cultural life gestures towards a relational and fluid conception of identity, one that eschews dogmatic nationalism. Various theoretical perspectives, such as Bhabha’s third space theory, Rothberg’s multidirectional memory, and Boym’s notions of nostalgia, shed light on Belger’s essay “Aul” and novel Das Haus des Heimatlosen.

Whiteness, upper-class authenticity and legitimacy in the Gulf: ‘expatriation’ as a struggle in social ranking

ABSTRACT This article discusses the social position of ‘expatriation’ in Abu Dhabi, in terms of the ranking struggles that distinguish it from the Emirati population, in cultural practices and in the workplace. It shows how strategies, discourses and practices of distinction involve racialised representations of social hierarchies within a transnational space and emphasises the alignment of whiteness, upper-class authenticity and deservingness. This distinction can be seen as a post-colonial struggle over social ranking between racialised segments of the upper classes, characterised by the feeling of losing some of the economic, political and symbolic advantages that colonisation used to guarantee to white migrants.

The Theatre of Sa’dallah Wannous: A Critical Study of the Syrian Playwright and Public Intellectual ed. by Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and Robert Myers

Reviewed by: The Theatre of Sa’dallah Wannous: A Critical Study of the Syrian Playwright and Public Intellectual ed. by Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and Robert Myers Samar Zahrawi (bio) Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and Robert Myers (eds). The Theatre of Sa’dallah Wannous: A Critical Study of the Syrian Playwright and Public Intellectual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. xxi + 233. $99.99 hardback, $80.00 ebook. The Theatre of Sa’dallah Wannous is the first book in the English language to paint a well-rounded picture of the dramatic art, intellectual background, and theatrical impact of the most significant modern Arab dramatist, Sa’dallah Wannous (1941–97). Generally speaking, the book first situates Wannous within Syrian, Arab, and world contexts and analyzes Wannous’ use of Brechtian techniques to induce critical thinking and promote social and political change. Second, it provides a reading into the thematic content of Wannous’ drama caused by his frustration with the multiple political failures of his time. Third, it delves into the directors’ theatrical experience while staging Wannous’s plays. Fourth, it profiles Wannous the intellectual, the man, and the father through surveying his library and recording memoirs about him by two of his close friends and daughter. Editors Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and Robert Myers have adeptly brought together the work of multidisciplinary experts, including literary scholars, directors, creative writers, and close acquaintances. The resulting volume will appeal to scholars in the field of theatre, literature, culture, and the relation of authority to social change. It will also be of value to anyone interested in contemporary Syria and the Arab world. The book is unique in critiquing Wannous’ theatre and thought and tracing the organic connection between political, social, historical, and personal factors that contributed to Wannous’s creativity. It studies the role of Wannous’s theatre in envisioning and impacting culture during postcolonial and contemporary Syria and adjacent countries. It also registers changes in societies and measures the extent to which theatre and literature still matter today Locating the work of Wannous within the theatrical movement in the Arab world and world theatre, this book allows readers to define the disciplines and modes of thought in a new way. It identifies the post-colonial struggle with authoritarianism and the political events that influenced Wannous such as the partition of Palestinian Land upon the creation of the State of Israel (Nakba), the loss of more land to Israel due to the war of June 5th 1967 (Naksa), the Camp David Accords (Egypt and Israel peace treaty in 1978), and the continuous struggle for peace and political equity. In “Part 1 - Situating Wannous,” Marvin Carlson surveys the history of the Arabic world since the Arabic renaissance (Nahda) in Cairo, Damascus, and Beirut, starting with Marun al-Naqqash and Abu-Khalil al-Qabbani and moving up to Wannous’s time. Carlson studies the influence of European [End Page 336] theatre practitioners on Wannous and his inclination to favor Brecht’s methods over Ionesco’s, at the same time drawing from folkloric tradition to develop a genuinely Arab theatre. He also considers Wannous as a major author not just in the modern Arab world but in the theatre repertoire around the world. Robert Myers and Nada Saab study, in more detail, the influence of Bertolt Brecht and other Brechtian practitioners on Wannous, as well as Wannous’ innovative use of Arabic traditional modes while adapting Brechtian techniques. Myers and Saab investigate the way Wannous used Brechtian techniques in his Theatre of Politicization such as estrangement effect, frequent use of metatheatre, the use of narrations, and characterization through class and profession as opposed to the creation of character through psychological development. They also point to Wannous’ break away from the direct influence of Brecht and Marx in the later plays of the 1990s, when he drew upon Chekhov, Shakespeare, Sufi rituals, and other sources of inspiration. “Part 2 - Reading Wannous” studies the significance of Wannous’ best-known and most-produced plays about politics, history, and theories of theatre. Zeina Halabi provides a post-structural study of Wannous’ ten-year silence that came as a reaction to multiple political and personal catastrophes culminating in the Camp David peace treaty accord between...

Energy justice for whom? Territorial (re)production and everyday state-making in electrifying rural Indonesia

This article seeks to examine the material implications of the emergence of an energy justice (energi berkeadilan) vision in Indonesia, paying particular attention to the state’s spatial practice to achieve such a vision in the form of rural electrification programs including the deployment of off-grid decentralised renewables. Informed by semi-structured interviews, participant observation and secondary data analysis, we contribute to the growing conversations on geographical political economy of energy transitions by closely attending to the multiple space-making processes characterising the Indonesian government’s pursuit of their energy justice vision. Inspired by Henri Lefebvre’s ideas on state space and territory, we begin by unravelling the historical connection between the rise of energy justice vision and the Indonesian state attempts to maintain and expand its territorial reach through rural electrification, as evidenced throughout the country’s contemporary political economies and its earlier history of postcolonial struggles. We simultaneously unpack various legal mechanisms and instruments underpinning the government’s efforts to deliver energy justice promises by way of universal electricity access, demonstrating the centrality of such strategies in the (re)production of state territories. Through inquiring how energy justice is mobilised by (and for) the Indonesian state, our study illustrates that such everyday state-making processes entail a calculative technique as another form of territorial intervention that obscures the reality of socio-spatially uneven and fragmented electricity access in rural Indonesia. Such findings, we suggest, reveal the contradictions in the state’s repositioning as a main enabler of energy access provision and, more broadly, a socially just energy transition.

English medium instruction in Moroccan universities: implications for multilingualism, linguistic dependency and epistemic justice

ABSTRACT In an era of internationalisation and globalisation, many institutional and national governments’ higher education policies have embraced neoliberal agendas that encourage the use of English as a medium of instruction (EMI). Due to the postcolonial struggles of the Global South, it is important to critically examine the entanglement of EMI with the cultural politics of English and the colonial relationship between the Global North and Global South. This study takes as its departure point the notion that EMI might entail linguistic governmentality in perpetuating the linguistic, cultural and epistemic superiority of Anglo-Atlantic spaces. This paper seeks to unearth and analyse the complexity of EMI teaching in the Global South, specifically in Morocco as a postcolonial context. This study draws on focus group discussions with 24 university professors to get deeper insights into their perceptions of the significance and the implications of using EMI in Moroccan universities.

"A peaceful country": Refugees, masculinities and anti-radical national identity in early postcolonial Botswana

Here, we tell the story of early postcolonial Botswana's struggles to refine its citizenship model in the midst of a hostile political environment between the 1960s and 1980s. While being one of the "most peaceful" countries in the region at the time, and in order to stem the tide of militant immigrants, the majority of whom were men, Botswana opted to narrow its citizenship model. Many refugees and exiles were denied citizenship because their "radical masculinities" appeared to present a threat to the existing peace in the country. The article deals with the important question of how Botswana's historically rooted, patriarchal gender regime influenced the country's refashioning of its citizenship model against the backdrop of the influx of exiles and refugees of wars of independence. We draw largely from existing scholarship on Botswana's role in the liberation struggle. In addition, the extant refugees archive, letters to the editor of the Kutlwano magazine, Seretse Khama's speeches and the Botswana Citizenship Act of 1982/1984 provide primary accounts of how the government and the public attempted to develop and achieve a peaceful, anti-radical national identity during this tumultuous period.

South Asians in “Asia’s World City”: Postcolonial Identity Struggles and Art Participation in Hong Kong

Hong Kong, being the “Asia’s world city”, the government proclaimed itself committed to enhancing an inclusive society. However, critics have been questioning the effectiveness of its policy in bringing social inclusion as many South Asians in Hong Kong have to deal with post-colonial identity struggle in everyday life. By using participant observations and interviews, I will discuss how South Asians engage in community art which enables them to find other realms of (self-)representation beyond those delivered by the state and its failed promise of institutionalised assimilatory multiculturalism. Despite the policy shortcomings, a “dual” Hongkonger identity was found in minority descendants, facilitated by participating in community art activities. This article contributes to the knowledge of cultural inclusion, to understand its empowerment and potential conflicts in community art participation, and to invite more academic discussions on multiculturalism in the context of Hong Kong.

Decolonization, Freemasonry and the rise of ‘homosexuality’ as a public issue in Cameroon: The return of Dr Aujoulat1

Abstract Relating to academic debates on the emergence of moral panics over homosexuality in several parts of Africa, this article examines rumours on homosexuality as a political issue that connects colonial pasts and postcolonial struggles in Cameroon. We link current struggles over homosexuality to broader debates about the question of Cameroon’s decolonization from France. The article focuses on the figure of Dr Louis Paul Aujoulat, a French colonial official in Cameroon who played a crucial role in the country’s decolonization in the 1950s. Aujoulat died in 1972, but recently, he made a ‘return’ in rumours and public debates in a new role: he is now accused of having ‘sodomized’ the emergent new elite of Cameroon, thus introducing homosexuality; moreover, he is linked to Freemasonry and occult initiation rites. Our aim was to show how a particular decolonization trajectory—very rocky in the case of Cameroon—is related to the present-day moral panic about a supposed proliferation of homosexuality. Freemasonry and its special history on the African continent—notably its role in maintaining the coherence of Françafrique between France and its former colonies—is a severely understudied topic. Its linkages to same-sex practices and illicit enrichment give the Cameroonian case a wider relevance. We argue that the new rumours on Dr Aujoulat define him as a key figure in linking Freemasonry, homosexuality and illicit enrichment to present-day issues of state governance, citizenship and elite misrule in Cameroon.

From Open Data to “Grounded Openness”: Recursive Politics and Postcolonial Struggle in Hong Kong

This article maps the parameters of an emerging field of struggle around “openness” pertaining to digital data in the postcolonial smart city. Whereas colonial governance operated in relative secrecy with archives not quite available to ordinary citizens, what do we make of current institutions from government departments to banks flaunting their commitment to Open Data? Looking at data activism in Hong Kong, this article highlights the (post)colonial histories that have shaped the reception of Open Data in this context. More so, it explores the ways in which the techno-materialities of data infrastructures affect and reconfigure postcolonial struggle. Building on Kelty’s discussion of “recursive publics” and Hui’s account of recursivity, my notion of recursive politics underscores the mutuality of social history and techno-materiality. While recursive politics can contribute to technodiversity, I analyze how such politics weigh up against the political and ethical investments of postcolonial struggle.

1968 in an Expanded Field: The Frankfurt School and the Uneven Course of History

ABSTRACTNo longer capable of serving as a nodal point of a single coherent narrative or as a marker for parallel events across national borders, “1968” is best understood in a tense relation to “1967”. Juxtaposed rather than reconciled, they can only be brought together in a dynamic field of conflicting forces still in play even after a half century has passed. Such an approach alerts us to the relativization of what seems to be a punctual moment in a single historical space–time continuum. To understand the role of the Frankfurt School in the German “1968” is therefore to situate its history in the expanded field that includes the very different events of “1967”, which resist incorporation into a unified narrative. It is to register the importance of 1967 in generating its negative relationship to aspects of the German 1968, and in colouring its attitude towards post-colonial struggles and the discourse they have spawned. By expanding the field in this way, we will avoid turning 1968 into an isolated monument on a pedestal that masks its connection to the multiple historical contexts that can set it into motion and help us understand its importance today.

Unsettling Diasporas: Blackness and the Specter of Indigeneity

Unsettling Diasporas: Blackness and the Specter of Indigeneity Sandra Harvey (bio) [T]he wake has positioned us as no-citizen … with no state or nation to protect us, with no citizenship bound to be respected. Christina Sharpe, In the Wake In her much-celebrated The Transit of Empire, Chickasaw critical theorist Jodi Byrd begins a chapter on colonial multiculturalism with a story about land desecration and grave robbing that has stuck with me for years. As she writes, around the turn of the 20th century, archeologist Charles Peabody hired black workers to excavate mounds within the Mississippian Ceremonial Complex. These were burial sites, sacred land that the Choctaw and Chickasaw tend. The Mother Mound, Ninih Waiya, is the site of creation for the Choctaw who are called to be its stewards (Osburn). The 1830 forced removal of the Choctaw to what is currently called Oklahoma was disastrous not only for the violence enacted on their living bodies but for the violent attempt to sever care between the Choctaw, the land, and their deceased relatives dwelling within the land. One elder described the nightmare of removal in the following way: “We were to cast away the bones of our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, for the wild dogs to gnaw in the wilderness, our hunters could kill no more meat; hunger and disease would follow; then confusion and death would come … The vengeance of the offended spirits would be poured out upon this foolish nation” (Akers, “Removing” 133). When a Choctaw dies, one spirit holds vigil over their remains to ensure proper care. The other spirit, the shilup, travels west to the “Land of Death.” For the Choctaws, forced removal to the west literally meant being relegated to the land of the dead where they would potentially be unable to reach the afterworld (Akers, “Living”). Peabody’s anthropological craft emerged from the American settler colonial and slave owning project and perpetrated this project’s violence simultaneously upon three peoples: he instigated and oversaw the removal of Choctaw and Chickasaw ancestors from their mounds, and he also recorded exploited black workers in song as they carried out the bulk of the grueling physical labor.1 What struck me and continues to weigh on me in this story is the ethical/political relationship of black peoples and, in a more abstract sense, blackness, to the mounds, to the sanctity of the land which we inhabit, and its relatives in this so-called “New World.” This essay represents an attempt at contributing to the many traditions and conversations that try to better understand and enact this relationship, its nuances, and the ethical/political possibilities, both those opened up and foreclosed within its contexts. Drawing on the practices and histories of our ancestors and our interactions with the indigenous peoples of these lands, scholars within western hemispheric Black Studies continue to ask ourselves, how does black life fit into (or not) the histories and ongoing conquest and colonization of peoples and their homelands?2 The question is salient, in part, because of how foundational ideas of diaspora have come to be for both black intellectual history and black politics. The term often conjures up an existential pull or directionality, a persistent elsewhere that renders black existence, especially but not solely outside of Africa, permanently and always already “unrooted.” In one sense, this has been reduced to a deleterious trope within certain diasporic black political circles that engage a projection of Africa rather than Africa itself as an actual, present constellation of geographies, global capital, colonial ties, and post-colonial struggles. In these balancing moves, an uninterrogated or a carelessly interrogated loss or alienation and desire for or recovering of Africa, mirroring the trope of black colonial “unrootedness,” is paradoxically ingrained in the episteme of what Congolese philosopher and cultural anthropologist V.Y. Mudimbe calls the European project of “Africanism.” Here, Africa as image or object arises only as either completely inaccessible to the descendants of transatlantic enslavement and other black diasporic subjects, or romantically awaiting rediscovery or historical recovery. Yet, diaspora has also been the organizing force of Pan African politics, black internationalism, and other black transnational solidarity efforts. It has come to strengthen lateral...

Italo Calvino’s Colour Blindness and the Question of Race among Einaudi Intellectuals

Italo Calvino is acknowledged as an important voice in post-war Italian literature. Together with other important Einaudi intellectuals, such as Elio Vittorini and Cesare Pavese, Calvino helped shape the narratives around, and the legacy of, the Italian resistance and anti-fascism. Through his work as an editor at Einaudi and his membership of the Communist Party, Calvino was strongly involved in post-war debates on inequality and societal change. This article investigates the connections between these interests of Calvino and important Einaudi intellectuals with reflections on Italy’s colonial past and the struggle for civil rights and racial equality (especially in the United States). The Marxist framework through which Calvino approached these matters made him somewhat colour blind, causing him to erase differences and disregard possible connections between colonial and post-colonial struggles for civil rights.

Health Communication and Citizenship Among Sex Workers in Mysore, India: Beyond “Centers” and “Margins”

In the last couple of decades, there has been a significant turn towards critical and “culture-centered” approaches to health communication. Through the lens of critical ethnography, this paper aims to unsettle dominant Eurocentric and exclusionary notions of citizenship tied to a legislative and juridical framework of rights--as entitlements and obligations emanating from the “nation-state”. Instead, by focusing on the communicative practices of members of Ashodaya Samithi, a sex worker collective responding to local forms of discrimination and violence and susceptibility to the HIV infection, we disrupt dichotomous notions of political “centers” and “margins” by emphasizing how local forms of resistance and transnational alliance-building constitute complex socialities that enable sex workers to navigate risks, demand services, expand their rights and freedoms, while fulfilling individual and collective responsibilities. We argue that, in the “developing” world, emergent forms of citizenship are more likely to be found not in some concentrated center of cultural authority like the nation-state, or its ancillaries, but in more dispersed sites where postcolonial struggles may appear as uncivil, coarse, insurgent, impure, ambiguous, marginal, and thus threatening to more purified, populist portraits of nationhood redrawn by politicians and health officials. This paper highlights alternative voices often blocked by the dominant discourse, thereby potentially re-centring health communication in marginalized spaces. By juxtaposing field data and theory, this paper also aims to demonstrate how to engage in Critical Health Communication research with rigor and quality.

Chinese Uhuru

Mao’s most famous statement about postcolonial struggle came in response to the Congo Crisis of the 1960s, yet China’s understanding of and involvement in that conflict has been largely ignored. Based on briefly declassified archival sources and long-forgotten cultural works, this essay examines the significance of China’s engagement in the heart of Africa. A close reading of the spoken-word drama War Drums on the Equator (1965) reveals the importance of mobilizing “subjugated knowledge” in asymmetrical conflict.

Marxism and Architectural Theory across the East-West Divide

Architectural theory as we know it today is informed by Western, neo-Marxist theories. But throughout history Marxism has influenced architectural thinking in many more ways than just through this well-known intellectual trajectory. Distinct forms of Marxist architectural theory have been articulated in countries where orthodox Marxism was the foundation of political theory or where Marxism inspired revolutionary or postcolonial struggles. This Special Collection of <em>Architectural Histories</em> examines architectural theory and its Marxist imprint in the Second and Third World from the 1950s to the 1980s, the interconnections between these different countries and traditions and the entanglements with postcolonial or anti-imperialist theories. It offers a preliminary inventory of what was going on where, and who were some of the key figures. It provides the groundwork for a more precise mapping of the worldwide impact of Marxist thinking on architectural discourse.