Carmen Goes Postcolonial,Carmen Goes Queer: Thinking the Postcolonial as Queer

Karmen Gei (2001) by Senegalese filmmaker Joseph Gai Ramaka is the first African adaptation of Carmen. The film garnered attention for its indulgent sexuo-erotic rhetoric and its reinvention of Carmen as a bisexual libertine. Most critical assessments of Karmen Gei have accordingly applauded Joseph Gai Ramaka's ‘daring’ and ‘innovative’ intervention into the political and heteropatriarchal landscape of postcolonial Senegal, a country with a strong, increasingly radicalised, Moslem majority and a nascent yet burgeoning homophobia. Yet the peculiar trajectory outlined in the title of my essay, whereby Bizet's Carmen travels to the African postcolony and gets queered by/in the postcolonial moment, grounds the queer in the postcolonial and asserts that the queer is organic to the postcolonial. More precisely, the postcolonial adaptation of Bizet's Carmen offers a theoretical template for rethinking the interface between the postcolonial and the queer by showing how Carmen goes effortlessly if not inevitably queer in the postcolony as a result of intrinsic postcolonial modalities of power, resistance and subjectivity.     

Postcolonial remembering in Taiwan: 228 and transitional justice as “The end of fear”

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the contested dynamics of postcolonial remembering in Taiwan. Focusing on the long-suppressed 228 massacre in particular and the White Terror period in general, we bring Taiwan’s postcolonial remembering into international and intercultural communication studies by analyzing two contemporary sites: Taipei’s 228 Memorial Museum and the Cihu Memorial Sculpture Park. As our case studies demonstrate, Taiwan’s postcolonial remembering offers unique indications of how public memory work can help move a culture toward a sense of reconciliation, thus promoting what one of our collaborators called “the end of fear.”     

Multinational Going Cultural: A Postcolonial Deconstruction of Cultural Intelligence

Abstract

Cultural intelligence (CQ) has emerged as a popular construct for understanding and dealing with the problems of cross-cultural adjustment and cross-cultural communication that transnational corporations face. In this article, we critique the discursive moves through which CQ is presented as a competitively advantageous tool for global organizations, deconstruct its theorization and measurement, and discuss its role in perpetuating transnational hegemony. This article thus exposes the implicit relationship between academic knowledge production and transnational organizational practice that maximizes profits while simultaneously downplaying transnational globalization's oppressive consequences such as job vulnerability, unemployment, and exploitation.     

Interrupting the Discourse of Development: On a Collision Course with Postcolonial Theory

This article examines the possibility of an engagement between the discourse of Development and postcolonial theory. To open up a space for this kind of engagement, the article proposes first that, while there is no singularity of project within the field of Postcolonial Studies, there is a productive set of debates; and second that the necessity of questioning Development as an idea springs out of these debates around the nature and existence of Postcoloniality itself. It attempts to show how the critiques which have currency within postcolonial theory can be used to deconstruct Development and expose the mechanisms and tropes of power which Development as a discourse has in common with colonial discourse and modernity as a project. The scope of this article is to lay the groundwork for a continued engagement of Postcolonial with Political Studies, and in particular with the discourse of Development.     

Centrifugal Logics: Eagleton and Spivak on the Place of 'Place' in Postcolonial Theory

In this paper, I contest the analytic relevance of the term ‘eurocentrism’ to the contemporary phenomenon of globalisation by examining a distinction between ‘place’ and ‘space’. The clash of these two concepts is explored in a controversial review of Gayatri Spivak's latest book by Terry Eagleton. I argue that Eagleton's understanding of Marxist theory implies an intellectual placed at the centre of a sphere of cognitive sovereignty, and that his critique of Spivak consists in suggesting that, by removing herself from this centre, she has rendered her own discourse unintelligible. In contrast, Spivak, as (in part) a poststructuralist, emphasises space over place. I discuss the gains and losses – as well as the dangers – involved in such an emphasis, and conclude by insisting that poststructuralism cannot be a universally applicable meta-theory, but is in fact ideally suited to attesting to the place in which it finds itself.     

China Looks Abroad: Changing Directions In International Science

This essay describes China’s participation in international science organizations during the past two decades. It argues that, whilst progress has been made, serious problems remain. It concludes that increased attention to communication and exchange, and the creation of a favourable international image in science and technology are important priorities for China.

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At the Heart of Feminist Transnational Organizing: Exploring Postcolonial Reflexivity in Organizational Practice at World Pulse

This article extends research on transnational feminist networks (TFNs), organizations that bring women together across national borders for collective action. A case study of World Pulse, a TFN with online community members from 190 countries that aims to amplify women's voices globally, reveals the nonprofit organization engages in ongoing reflexive practices to negotiate tensions related to voice. Using the analytical lens of postcolonial reflexivity, two themes of reflexive practices were identified: speaking from within (direct and formal inclusion of members’ voices) and speaking for (staff displaying ethical consciousness around members’ voices). Questions TFNs can ask to promote reflexivity are proposed.     

Lope de Aguirre,the Tyrant,and the Prince: Convergence and Divergence in Postcolonial Collective Memory

Abstract

In Latin America, collective remembering is shaped by stories of colonizers whose voracious ambitions left an indelible mark on the landscape and its people. This essay examines a set of narratives about a legendary colonizer, Lope de Aguirre, that continue to be invoked in the collective imagination on the island of Margarita, in Venezuela. Drawing on Bormann's Symbolic Convergence Theory and Bakhtin's work on cultural discourse, this analysis shows that on the one hand, the narratives converge to support official records of Aguirre as an archetype of colonial brutality. Yet on the other, alternate versions of the stories reveal a more discordant picture, one that complicates Aguirre's character and reevaluates his influence on the island and in the wider context of Latin America.     

Performing arts as a club good: Evidence from a nonprofit organization

This paper combines perspectives on nonprofit organizations, clubs and club goods, demand for performing arts, and demand for charitable contributions to consider relationships between nonprofit organizations in the performing arts and their patrons. A broad view is taken of factors influencing demand for club goods, charitable donations, and for the live performing arts. These are integrated in a model of demand for the outputs and services of nonprofits in the performing arts. Data from a single institution is used to test hypotheses. Conclusions are drawn for organizational policy and economic theory.     

Prediction as an Impediment to Preparedness: Lessons from the US Hurricane and Earthquake Research Enterprises

No matter one’s wealth or social position, all are subject to the threats of natural hazards. Be it fire, flood, hurricane, earthquake, tornado, or drought, the reality of hazard risk is universal. In response, governments, non-profits, and the private sector all support research to study hazards. Each has a common end in mind: to increase the resilience of vulnerable communities. While this end goal is shared across hazards, the conception of how to get there can diverge considerably. The earthquake and hurricane research endeavors in the US provide an illustrative contrast. The earthquake community sets out to increase resilience through a research process that simultaneously promotes both high quality and usable – preparedness-focused - science. In order to do so, the logic suggests that research must be collaborative, responsive, and transparent. Hurricane research, by contrast, largely promotes high quality science – predictions - alone, and presumes that usability should flow from there. This process is not collaborative, responsive, or transparent. Experience suggests, however, that the latter model – hurricane research - does not prepare communities or decision makers to use the high quality science it has produced when a storm does hit. The predictions are good, but they are not used effectively. Earthquake research, on the other hand, is developed through a collaborative process that equips decision makers to know and use hazards research knowledge as soon as an earthquake hits. The contrast between the two fields suggests that earthquake research is more likely to meet the end goal of resilience than is hurricane research, and thus that communities might be more resilient to hurricanes were the model by which research is funded and conducted to change. The earthquake research experience can provide lessons for this shift. This paper employs the Public Value Mapping (PVM) framework to explore these two divergent public value logics, their end results, and opportunities for improvement.     

The universities between their internal and external enemies: Thoughts on Professor Conrad Russell's Academic Freedom

Discussion

The universities between their internal and external enemies: Thoughts on Professor Conrad Russell's Academic Freedom     

The trope as trap: ideology revisited

Abstract

Beginning with Wallace Stevens, the influence of Simone Weil’s philosophy of decreation on American poetry has been substantial, if often underestimated. Focusing on recent volumes by Jorie Graham and Anne Carson, I suggest that this use of Weil’s philosophy presents a new way of understanding a dominant trend towards the metaphysical and difficult in modern American poetry. In various and divergent ways, both poets’ work explicitly points towards a decreated world and explores the ways in which poetry replaces prayer when God is absent. Both in form and content, this work expands upon and illuminates ideas put forth by thinkers such as Blanchot and Nancy, but it is primarily through an understanding of Weil and decreation that such work can best be approached. For Carson and Graham, poetry is the best expression of the imminent void; by placing their work in a definite Weilian context, it is possible to reveal their claims about the nature of truth, God and the material world more fully.     

从《世说新语》看思想对话与文学批评

《世说新语》是六朝著名的笔记小品,其中记载着当时的名士清谈,从中可以考见汉魏以来名士通过思想对话促进文学批评的情状,展现了名士的思想风采,他们通过对话调和儒道,解放思想。文学批评的现实品格与机锋活跃,都是对话之产物。更重要的是,它使两汉思想与文学批评定于一尊的情况得到改变,开创了中国古代文学批评的诗话传统。