Transnational Dialogue Research Articles

Shirakaba and Rodin: A Transnational Dialogue between Japan and France

This essay examines the role ofShirakaba(White Birch, 1910-1923) as an art magazine that aspired to create new audiences and foster the exchange of ideas by providing an alternate space to address diverse views about modern art, literature, theory, and identity. In addition to introducing European modernism to Japan through the writings of western artists, authors, and thinkers,Shirakabacreated access to and direct exchange of artwork with a number of artists such as Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), Heinrich Vogeler (1872-1942), Max Klinger (1857-1920), and Bernard Leach (1887-1979). Among these,Shirakaba’stransnational dialogue with the French sculptor Auguste Rodin was the most significant. I argue thatShirakaba’sdiscourse with Rodin not only facilitated new forums for the public access and display of modern art in Japan, but also was emblematic of its humanist ideology rooted in artistic subjectivity and self-expression.

Russian and Western scholarly perspectives on EU–Russia relations in Justice and Home Affairs: how ‘indigenous’ is the Russian scholarship?

ABSTRACT The paper explores the state of academic dialogue between the Russian and Western scholarly communities studying the European Union (EU)–Russia relations in Justice and Home Affairs (JHA). By analyzing the citation patterns of the academic articles on the EU–Russia cooperation in this area, we arrive at the conclusion that the Russian scholarship mostly does not engage in a transnational academic dialogue with the Western counterparts. In other words, it has turned into a sealed ‘indigenous’ scholarly community. And what is more, it is also disintegrated within itself since the Russian scholars do not refer to the research produced by their compatriots either. To qualitatively substantiate our findings, in the last section of the paper, we review the universe of all articles written on the topic in Russian to distinguish five trends typical of the research published in Russian academic journals. We believe that these features are the result of the lack of engagement with the Western scholarship and simultaneously the cause which prevents the communication between the two scholarly communities. This, in turn, undermines the accumulation of the transnational multifaceted policy-relevant expertise essential for normalizing the relations between Brussels and Moscow in general and in JHA in particular.

Presidential Term Limits in Latin America: A Critical Analysis of the Migration of the Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendment Doctrine

Abstract Across a number of countries including Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua, incumbent presidents in Latin America have recently sought to amend their constitutions to eliminate or weaken presidential term limits. In some cases, these efforts to extend terms have been part of broader projects to consolidate power, weaken other state institutions, and tilt the electoral playing field in favor of incumbents. From a legal perspective, these cases are interesting because they highlight the limits of tools limiting constitutional change, such as eternity clauses and the unconstitutional constitutional amendment doctrine, to constrain potentially anti-democratic or anti-liberal forms of constitutional change. Although constitutional texts in most of these cases gave courts ample ammunition to reject attempts to eliminate term limits or at least to force those changes down more demanding paths, courts did not stand in the way of most of these efforts and in some cases even used the doctrines to eliminate rather than protect term limits. The case studies highlight the extent to which the “superficial” spread of doctrines controlling constitutional change may fail to block, and indeed may promote, forms of constitutional change that threaten liberal democratic constitutionalism. It also suggests possibilities for deepening the effectiveness of transnational dialogue on these issues.

Men and anti-violence initiatives: transnational feminist reflections from Afghanistan and Pakistan

This article looks at how international development’s rhetoric for enlisting men to take up anti-violence against women’s work is translated into reality. Based on fieldwork conducted in Afghanistan and Pakistan, I argue that whilst there have been success stories of men’s behaviour changing, the localisation of gender concepts and ideas into local frameworks has not been as successful. Furthermore, inattention to how gender relations are shaped by conflict and violence results in the dilution of feminist values around work on violence against women. This inattention also privileges middle-class men’s activism at the expense of activism by women and men from lower-socioeconomic backgrounds. The article concludes with a call for further transnational feminist dialogue and interventions in the area of men’s involvement, so that current and future initiatives are critical, reflexive and relevant.

LAS LETTERS DE JOHN TALBOT DILLON (1781) Y EL ESSAI SUR LA LITTÉRATURE ESPAGNOLE (1810) EN LOS INICIOS DE LA HISTORIOGRAFÍA LITERARIA ESPAÑOLA

Thomasina Ross advertía ya en 1823 que el Essai sur la littérature espagnole (1810), era un «gross plagiarism» de las Letters from an English traveller… (1781) de John Talbot Dillon. El presente artículo analiza la relación textual entre ambas obras, enmarcándolas en los orígenes de la historiografía literaria española. A través de una exploración de las diversas fuentes nacionales (en especial los Orígenes de Velázquez, 1754) y extranjeras utilizadas por Dillon y el autor del Essai, también se ofrecen conclusiones al respecto de: 1) cómo nacen y evolucionan las primeras historias de la literatura española en un constante diálogo que superó nuestras fronteras; 2) cómo a principios del XIX la imagen de España y su literatura vive un importante cambio en el que destacaron los viajeros británicos desde el último tercio del siglo XVIII, y el propio Dillon en particular.

Challenging Turbulent Times: Towards a Framework for Girl-Led Transnational Dialogues to Combat Sexual Violence

Claudia Mitchell – PhD, James McGill Professor, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Email: Claudia.mitchell@mcgill.ca
 Turbulent times in relation to sexual violence in the lives of girls and young women call for solidarity and global action. One of the effects of globalization is the increased recognition of a borderless world that, in some ways, erases the boundaries between 'over there' and 'over here', challenging some of the distinctions behind a Global North and a Global South. In this article, I offer an analysis of the issues behind sexual violence, which frame the possibilities for research teams working with girls and young women across the Global North and the Global South. At the same time, I highlight the possibilities for learning more about North-North and South-South interactions. What would such an approach entail and what kinds of strategies are useful for sustaining such a strategy in combating sexual violence? In particular, how can such a framework support dialogue? In order to address these questions the article suggests a practical framework which draws on the findings from a Canada-South Africa project, Networks for Change and in particular focuses on the importance of advocating for a public voice for girls and young women that is framed within an activist agenda. The article refers to this approach as a 'circles within circles' approach, arguing for both bringing together girls and young women who have been involved in participatory visual work from a number of country contexts, and ensuring that the circle puts girls and young women at the centre.

Inter-parliamentary Cooperation in the EU and outside the Union: Distinctive Features and Limits of the European Experience

Abstract The article draws comparisons between inter-parliamentary cooperation in the European Union and at the international level. It recognises that, notwithstanding a strong international imprint, inter-parliamentary relations in the EU have gradually experienced somewhat distinctive pushes, deeply embedded in the unique constitutional arrangement of the Union. On the one hand, the composite nature of EU constitutionalism, and its impact on parliaments’ relationship with the democratic oversight rationale, have exercised a major influence on the aims and scope of inter-parliamentary cooperation. On the other hand, from the organisational point of view, the distinctive structure of parliamentary representation in the EU has pushed inter-parliamentary arrangements into a multi-layered design, consisting of a large variety of vertical formats. The article argues that inter-parliamentary cooperation in the EU is expected to act as a sui generis practice when compared to apparently similar forms of transnational dialogue amongst parliaments. In theory, at least, the EU sets ideal conditions for fulfilling an authentic collective parliamentary dimension, instrumental to the democratic oversight of the executives. Instead, focusing on the practice, the full potential of EU inter-parliamentarism is not yet fulfilled, for two set of reasons: the unresolved ambiguities over its contribution to parliamentary democracy and the lack of a real capacity to depart from the formats of international parliamentary institutions.

Exporting South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Global Arts Corps' Truth in Translation

Since the late twentieth century, nations shifting from a repressive regime to a liberal democracy have turned to transitional justice mechanisms, such as truth commissions, to help bridge this gap. With Truth in Translation , a 2006 musical about South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a case study, this essay explores the benefits and drawbacks of theatre about transitional justice. American director Michael Lessac devised Truth in Translation with a South African cast, and premiered the musical in Rwanda before traveling to the Balkans and Northern Ireland to facilitate forgiveness and dialogue between people on opposite sides of conflict. The musical dramatizes the lives of eight language interpreters as they direct the flow of information at the commission and soak up the painful memories of South Africa's past. In developing Truth in Translation , the cast became actor/interpreters, liminal figures who improvised scenes and characters by combining interpreter interviews with their own apartheid experiences. These actor/interpreters performed the difficult act of interpreting as a metaphor for reconciliation and forgiveness. Lessac's company, Global Arts Corps, has since used the musical as the prototype for two other transnational performance projects, one in Northern Ireland and the other in Cambodia. Rather than providing a roadmap to forgiveness or post-conflict transnational dialogue, the essay argues that Truth in Translation 's true contribution lies in staging the myriad difficulties and ambiguities of transitional justice for its international audiences of survivors and perpetrators.

The Ethics of Transnational Feminist Research and Activism: An Argument for a More Comprehensive View

Feminist activism undertaken by global Northerners operating in the global South must contend with dilemmas around the ethics of imposing alien values and of ethnocentrically assuming that the cultures of the global North are superior to those of the global South. Such ethnocentric bias has frequently affected transnational feminist activism and commentary, as well as Northern governments’ immigration and international relations policies. To counteract this problem of ethnocentric bias, feminist scholars have proposed various methods by which to ethically undertake transnational feminist practice. Subaltern feminist activists have also undertaken particular measures to respond to the marginalization, sensitivities, and social pressures they face. In this essay, I argue that in order to ethically engage in transnational feminist research and activism, the Northern activist should adhere to five principles: namely, distancing oneself from problematic values and from feminism used as a cover for ulterior motives, discovering common viewpoints and then building upon these, engaging in advocacy that is fully absent of coercion, counteracting discourses that could further stigmatize underprivileged communities, and operating in a spirit of acceptance that both oneself and the other may be transformed through the process of transnational dialogue, a dialogue that is itself a matter in which no one party is completely right or wrong.

International Conference “Black Studies in Europe”

The first edition of the international conference Black Studies in Europe: A Transnational Dialogue aimed to question the many ways in which Black Studies developed as an academic field in European countries. Building on American scholarship and literature of black people and black experiences in the US, which have dominated academia and black activism since the 1960s, the participants took part in roundtables and discussed how to establish theories and epistemologies relevant to European con...

CULTURAL DIPLOMACY IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

The main objective of this study is to highlight the upgraded role of culture in the policy of each country participating in the modern international system. The contribution of culture in policy making strategies is particularly promoted by the development of cultural diplomacy, which plays an important role in current international relations. Cultural diplomacy is an instrument of crucial importance for the transmission of culture and national values. The main role of cultural diplomacy is to promote the trans-national dialogue between different cultures and nations, particularly between the West and the Muslim world. The motivation for this study has been the fact that over the last decades several events (for instance, modern wars that have been influenced by ethnic, cultural and religious beliefs) highlighted the emergence of the critical role of culture in modern international politics. In this study, emphasis is placed on the goals and aspirations of developing cultural diplomacy. Cultural diplomacy can be conveniently used as a flexible and universally accepted means of approaching countries with which diplomatic relations are tense or, sometimes, even non-existent. After World War II, the structure of international relations underwent significant changes and a growing tendency towards cultural disagreements was observed. In this context, it seems that culture has evolved to a powerful factor in the field of international relations, a factor of continuously increasing influence and importance. Modern developments in the field of international relations show that the 21st century will be a golden age for the further development of cultural diplomacy.

INTERNATIONAL LAW IN THE TURKISH LEGAL ORDER: TRANSNATIONAL JUDICIAL DIALOGUE AND THE TURKISH CONSTITUTIONAL COURT

Much has been written on the increasing significance of domestic courts in the international realm. However, the role of the Turkish constitutional judges in determining and orienting the relationship between international law and Turkish domestic law has rarely been subject to legal analysis. Literature on the involvement of the Turkish judges in transnational judicial dialogue is also almost non-existent. As far as the existing Turkish literature is concerned, much of the contemporary writing on the subject tends to focus on the hierarchical position of international agreements in the Turkish legal order. This paper intends to fill an important gap in the scholarship by providing an analysis of the decisions of the Turkish Constitutional Court (TCC) and by illuminating the TCC’s role as implementers or non-implementers of international law, and the scope of their participation in transnational judicial dialogue. Relevant sub-questions concern the extent to which the stance of the TCC’s judges may or may not alleviate concerns of the international community on the rule of law in Turkey, and whether their engagement in international law is substantial enough to limit and moderate the excesses of different political forces, including those in power, engaged in the domestic power struggle.

Gutiirrez Naranjo On Limits in Law and Limits of Law

While private law defines limits to the effects of contracts, there also are limits to what the law can achieve. This article reflects on the implications of the CJEU’s judgment in the Spanish case of Gutierrez Naranjo, concerning the temporal effects of nullity of unfair ‘floor clauses’ in mortgage contracts. To what extent can the powers of national highest courts be restricted by the CJEU in fields that are governed by a combination of national rules of private law and EU law? And to what extent should socio-economic factors be taken into account in adjudication? In particular, attention is paid to questions of Kompetenz-Kompetenz, the importance of the socio-economic context of the case, the ideas of justice underlying the interaction of national private law and EU law and the added value of transnational judicial dialogues for handling complex legal questions on the interface of different legal orders.

Introduction

The striking emergence of ‘consumer society’ in the Low Countries during the twentieth century came about in two waves. The first – from around 1920 until the 1960s – saw the discovery of the individual figure of the consumer. During the second, postwar wave, the notion of a society made up of consumers took hold. Commonalities between the Low Countries and other parts of the world facilitated a transnational dialogue about the place of consumers and the shaping of a society which could accommodate them. The crucial role companies, officials and civic organisations played in shaping consumer society calls attention to the limitations of a perspective focused primarily on individual consumers. This special issue highlights how a focus on the rise of consumer society yields a fruitful integration of questions of economy, politics, and citizenship, and forces us to rethink the position the Low Countries in a transnational context.

Emiliano F.B. Mundrucu: Inter-American revolutionary and abolitionist (1791–1863)

ABSTRACTThis article explores transnational dialogues between peoples of color in Brazil, Spanish-speaking South America, Haiti, and North America on issues relating to revolution, abolitionism, diplomacy, and civil rights in the nineteenth century. By focusing on Emiliano Felipe Benício Mundrucu (1791–1863), a Brazilian pardo who traveled and lived in Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, and the United States, this paper discusses the unique socio-economic, racial, and political perspectives that educated, polyglot, and unusually well-traveled peoples of color brought to debates on abolition, civil rights, and broader hemispheric-wide questions of black identity in this period. It also explores their involvement in transnational revolutionary activity in the early nineteenth century, discussing how Mundrucu, along with other Brazilian secessionists, solicited the help of the young, radical republics of Haiti and Gran Colombia to challenge the Brazilian monarchy in Rio de Janeiro and establish a federalist republic in the north east of the country.

The transnational imagined community of the black press of Sao Paulo and Chicago, 1900-1940s

Abstract This article explores the use of the concept of a transnational imagined community as a theoretical tool for the study of the black press of São Paulo and Chicago from 1900 to 1950. In doing so, I aim to connect the local with the global; associating the uniqueness of the historical trajectories of these specific Afro-descendant communities, to the commonalities of the struggles endured by members of the black Diaspora in the Americas. The paper's macro-narrative is informed by the story of capitalism's structural changes in the late 19th and early 20th century. These transformations provided the necessary socio- political conditions for the development of the black press; a press that aimed to articulate a counter-hegemonic discourse on race, different from the mainstream press, the 'white men's press'. At a micro-level this paper proposes the use of the black press in the Amercas as a door to understand how a fraction of the afro-descendant community in São Paulo and Chicago - namely the black middle class - negotiated race and citizenship through a complex process of national and transnational dialogue, both locally and globlly. Overall, despite the limitation of 'the black press' as a primary source due to its limited circulation and audience, the black press offers a unique opportunity to depict afro-descendants everyday urban life in two rapidly modernizing cities.

Outputs: the promises and perils of ethnographic engagement after the loss of faith in transnational dialogue

This essay investigates one important artefact of meeting knowledge production: outputs. It does so through the example of the activities of the members of Meridian 180, a community of Pacific Rim intellectuals collaborating on transnational legal and policy issues. For the members, the particular kind of knowledge production facilitated by Meridian 180 constitutes a response to the failures of international bureaucracy to generate and sustain a fabric of global relationality. The group's various attempts to address the imperative for ‘output’ illuminate both aspects of the meeting as an organizational form, and the challenges and opportunities meetings present for ethnography. The wider underlying theme of the essay concerns the ethical purposes and promises of ethnographic styles of engagement after the loss of faith in transnational dialogue.

Soft law: New tools for governing emerging technologies

ABSTRACTAs governments around the world struggle to govern a multitude of emerging technologies, they often seek to harmonize their regulatory approaches. But there are at least 10 different reasons why nations may seek to harmonize their oversight of a specific technology, and discerning which of these rationales will apply to a specific technology is critical for selecting the optimal harmonization approach. The traditional approach is the negotiation of formal international treaties, but, as exemplified by the challenges of cybersecurity, such treaty-based approaches are too resource-intensive and difficult to be effective for most technologies. Accordingly, a new generation of more informal international governance tools are being explored, often grouped under the term “soft law.” They include private standards, guidelines, codes of conduct, and forums for transnational dialogue.

The Preter-National: The Southeast Asian Contemporary and What Haunts It

Southeast Asian modern art has thus far been historicized largely within national historical frameworks. The region's contemporary art has been pulled, sometimes unwillingly, into those national frameworks, even as it enters a global market and takes part in a more transnational dialogue. What is the geography proper to contemporary art? And what insights might a regional perspective afford about art that speaks to a world beyond the nation, but resists outright assimilation under the rubric of ‘the global’? This essay proposes a calibration of three art historical frames – national, regional and international. I argue that far from meaning transcendence of national frames, even where artists intend it, contemporaneity compounds and complicates them. I examine two specific manifestations of contemporaneity, one that emerged at the height of the Cold War in the work of a Sino-Thai modernist, Chang Sae-tang; the other in the broaching of Cold War trauma in art and film of the ‘post-historical’ twenty-first century. Neither ‘contemporary’ can be understood without its respective national framing, but that framing alone proves inadequate for describing the complex histories, subjectivities, and formal choices with which Southeast Asian artists have grappled. If studies of modern art demanded recourse to specific national histories, the study of contemporary art will require no less specific histories of the international.

Editors’ Introduction

Editors’ Introduction Jordana Blejmar and Cecilia Sosa This special issue is the result of a series of screenings titled Meeting the Directors: Dialogues Between New Argentine Cinema & Theatre, held in 2013 at Senate House in London. A joint venture between the Institute of Latin American Studies and the Institute of Modern Languages Research, both part of the University of London, the screenings were open to the general public and were designed to explore the dialogues and exchanges taking place between the so-called New Argentine Cinema and the less-well-known New Argentine Theatre. The series was the first time that such a range of diverse experimental productions had been shown in the United Kingdom alongside conversations with the young directors, who were either present at the venue or interviewed via video conferences on the day of the screenings. This special issue builds on those conversations, identifying an upcoming genre in contemporary Argentine cultural production, one that is marked by a hybrid aesthetics, a blending of fact and fiction, a playful spirit, and transnational dialogues that take place on both stage and screen. The various contributions included in this publication highlight the innovative uses of technology, humour, live music, and dance in this up-and-coming body of work, one that, over the last few years, has challenged the rigidity of generic boundaries. The essays engage critically with a particular series of films and theatrical pieces by directors such as Romina Paula, Lola Arias, Mariano Pensotti, Alejo Moguillansky, Matías Piñeiro, Edgardo Dieleke, and Daniel Casabé, among others. While most of these pieces were screened at Senate House, some of them, such as Campo minado (Minefield), which debuted in 2016 in the UK, were included especially for this issue. It is our contention that together these works exemplify the emergence of a fresh and exciting generational, transnational, and trans-disciplinary voice within Argentine performing arts. [End Page 9] Beyond New Argentine Cinema and Biodrama While the emergence and development of the so-called New Argentine Cinema during the 1990s and the new millennium have received considerable attention from local and international scholars, critics have suggested that this trend has recently reached a standstill. As Jens Andermann has pointed out: “[A]fter the cusp of social and political emergency in Argentina had passed and the initial excitement had worn off, critics could predictably do little but detect the ‘exhaustion’ of the very movement they had conjured up” (xxi). Thus, Andermann concludes, “the time has perhaps arrived for looking at new Argentine cinema without the capital letters” (xxi). In contrast to the arguable exhaustion of New Argentine Cinema, a community of Argentine theatre-practitioners and young filmmakers has fashioned a unique and lively creative space within both the domestic market and major international festivals. In the current post-New Argentine Cinema period, this collection of essays addresses the way in which cinema and theatre have been experiencing a fruitful exchange of interests, directors, writers, castings, and audiences, giving room to a new circuit that renovates and enhances both art forms. More specifically, this dossier examines how a playful overlapping of documentary and fiction has managed to push forward and reanimate not only the ostensible wave of neo-realist stories and dry humour introduced by New Argentine Cinema, but also a particular form of documentary theatre that has come to be known as “biodrama.” The term was originally coined by director Vivi Tellas to describe a series of biographical pieces in which performers re-enacted episodes of their real lives on stage. As Philippa Page points out in her contribution, Tellas coined the term “biodrama” in 2002 as a response to the critical aftermath of the economic and political crisis of 2001. Page argues that biodrama “uses theatre to explore the possibilities of rebuilding a sense of community [. . .] in what was, at the time of its inception, a severely debilitated post-crisis social fabric.” For Tellas, the return of experience was also the return of the personal, albeit a particular type of self, one immersed in politics and culture. Many of the films and theatrical plays studied in this issue could arguably be considered enhanced forms of biodrama. However, they have acquired...