Half and Half: An (Auto)ethnography of Hybrid Identities in a Korean American Mother-Daughter Relationship

Abstract

This essay focuses on how immigrant mothers and second generation interracial daughters construct, perform, and negotiate racial and ethnic hybrid identities. Placing my mother's experiences in dialogue with my own experiences, I (auto)ethnographically examine how we navigate our mother-daughter relationship and intercultural and interracial identities in relation to discourses of Asian American-ness. I identify three sites for identity formation: location, language, and the dialectical tension of assimilation-preservation. I argue that the enactment of a racial self is not always a conscious part of one's identity. Rather, we each enact racialized cultural identities that are contextually performed and continuously shifting.     

PATHWAYS TO CREATIVITY

Focusing on the ‘talent pathways’ outlined in the 2008 Department of Culture, Media and Sport Creative Britain report, this article explores how different forms of creative agency are positioned to make a ‘contribution’ to the creative economy. Drawing on Paul du Gay's concept of personhood, case studies on digital gaming explore the formation of two forms of personhood – creative consumers and creative workers. Specifically, these forms of creative agency are analysed in terms of their connections on the ‘talent pathway’, and the transitions that see creativity and talent as inherent in all individuals and in need of channelling and directing. The creative-consumer case study unpacks the digital games industry strategy of enrolling fan-creators within their commercial operations. This case study reveals the increasing importance of co-production for the creative economy, and the extent to which diverse cultural practices are facilitated and positioned. Higher education Games Design courses will then provide the case study for examining how the creative-consumer can be positioned to make a productive contribution to the creative economy as a worker. Within this context, the formation of fans/students into a creative worker or industry-ready worker is evident. Through tracing different forms of creative agency and how they are connected to make a contribution to the creative economy, this article explores the governance of creative agency and economic subjects.     

How to Make your Audience Suffer: Melodrama,Masochism and Dead Time in Lars von Trier's Dogville

Abstract

Both fans and critics of Lars von Trier's work would likely agree with his capacity to make his audience suffer. This essay canvasses the devices through which the suffering of women in von Trier's melodramas is rendered excruciating to watch. Drawing on Deleuze's influential account of masochism, the first part of the essay discusses how von Trier's film Dogville foregrounds the complicated relationship that suffering has with pleasure and power. The second part of the essay focuses on the temporal dynamics of melodrama and the creative ways in which Lars von Trier disturbs the rhythms of suffering on screen. In particular I argue that von Trier introduces intervals of ‘dead time’ that make the passage of time itself painful to the audience and that open up a larger cultural history of temporal disorder. This part of the essay looks back to von Trier's early experiments with time in Psychomobile 1: The World Clock (2000) and forward to more recent innovative play with time and movement in Melancholia (2011) to make the case for rethinking the temporal dimensions of mediated suffering and the significance of time in the work of Lars von Trier.     

Nietzsche,Tragedy, and Liberal Moral Psychology

Abstract

This essay discusses Nietzsche's tragic moral psychology and its significance for liberal political philosophy. In the essay, I sketch out what I view to be the basic features of Nietzsche's tragic psychology, which is strongly opposed to the Socratic and Stoic traditions, and I show how this perspective can be distinguished from the moral psychology that informs liberalism's position on issues such as personhood and political history. I conclude with a few suggestions for viewing Nietzsche's thought as a necessary corrective to a certain dogmatism that still inhabits liberal theory, in this way enabling liberal thought to conceptualise human nature and the human good in more creative and complex ways.     

Slumdog Millionaire Meets “India Shining”: (Trans)national Narrations of Identity in South Asian Diaspora

Abstract

This study uses the filmic text Slumdog Millionaire to examine how the tension between the nation and the transnational was communicated within South Asian diaspora. Findings from the textual analysis of commentary in the New York Times, The Guardian and the Times of India show that identity is articulated in purist as well as hybrid ways among South Asian diasporans. A lack of comfortable fit between cultural identity and place is evident. The analysis also shows that diasporic identity, hybridity, nation-state, and transnational forces work in particular configurations to raise consciousness about subaltern oppressions and exclusions within multiscalar operations of power and representation in globalizing conditions. Implications for intercultural communication and transitions are discussed.     

Ontological violence: Catherine Malabou on plasticity,performativity, and writing the feminine

ABSTRACT

Catherine Malabou's opinion of non-essentialist models of gender identity and art is unambiguous: in her words, they are ‘catastrophic’ to women and to artists (Malabou [2014]. ‘Sujet: Femme'. de(s)générations des féminismes 21, 29-38: 135). What, then, are the implications of Malabou's hallmark concept of ‘plasticity’ on theories of performativity? Has plasticity come to supplant performativity, just as Malabou believes that it has come to supplant Derridean writing? Or if, as Malabou suggests, philosophical concepts are inherently plastic, may we maintain that performativity was always already plastic? In the following article, I read Malabou's work on writing alongside her work on the feminine in order to question how plasticity and performativity might be examined together to theorise the ways in which the discursive and the material interact in the production of subjectivities. By highlighting the performativity at play within Malabou's own writing about the end of writing, I propose that her work challenges her claim that literature cannot deconstruct philosophy. In response to Malabou's anti-essentialist plastic theory of the essence of woman, I underline the parallels between performativity and plasticity and suggest that the two concepts overlap in their mutual configuration of identity and form as mutable and transformable.     

Neoliberal values & queer/disability in Margarita with a Straw

ABSTRACT

Margarita with a Straw is an Indian movie about a queer/disabled woman exploring her sexuality. The article uses textual analysis with a discursive formation approach to analyze how the protagonist’s queer/disabled identity is constituted vis-à-vis intimate partnerships alongside the promotion of neoliberal values. One relationship with an able-bodied white man takes place within a caregiving dynamic that challenges her independence. The other relationship with a disabled South Asian woman creates an interdependence that bifurcates their identities as disabled-and-queer. The article argues that the promotion of neoliberal values in the context of queer/disability is about independence from dependence on sociopolitical systems.     

Identity,Communication, Inclusion: The Roma and (New) Europe

Abstract

Based on the theoretical concepts of imagined communities (Anderson, 2006), public sphere (Habermas, 1962/1991), and muted groups (Kramarae, 1981), this essay looks at issues of identity and identity formation of the largest European minority—the Roma, or Gypsies. The essay argues that, similarly to the European identity project, the Roma are actively building a transnational identity without abandoning national identities. Although this model can be a valuable blueprint for increasingly globalizing societies, it is neglected as a possibility because of Roma's marginal social status. Further exploration of self-organized Roma identity-construction is advised.     

Stigma,agency, and motherhood: Exploring the performativity of dual mother–female sex workers identities in Kathmandu,Nepal

ABSTRACT

Drawing upon the lived experiences of 35 female sex workers (FSW) in Kathmandu, Nepal, this article explores the performativity of sex work–mother dual identities. Performativity presents a way to rupture proscribed singular identities of being a sex worker and highlight agency through the act of expressing dual identities. Global South research has established a link between mothers’ vulnerability and the likelihood of sex work becoming the means of livelihood. Thematic analysis highlights performativity of the dual identities as well as highlighting agency of FSWs to navigate economic necessity, stigmatized societal conditions, gender inequalities, and motherhood through performativity of dual identities.     

Buscando para nuestra latinidad: Utilizing La Llorona for Cultural Critique

Abstract

This essay analyzes the contemporary constructions of Latina/o identity, Latina/o gender and Latina/o nationality as evidenced in the self-proclaimed “first major studio comedy to reflect the Hispanic cultural experience in America,” Chasing Papi. The contradictions between the film's progressive mission and the film's representations are teased out by a cross-reading of the film's usage of the popular Chicana/o mythic figure, La Llorona. Invoking La Lorona as muse and means, we find that the Latin Lover stereotype succeeds in its anti-assimilationist task while concurrently furthering confusion on who and what is a U.S. Latina/o. However, the authors also demonstrate how cultural cross-readings can provide hope out of delimiting discursive constructions.     

Identity Mobilization Practices of Refugees: The Case of Iraqis in the United States and the War in Iraq

Abstract

This study illustrates the narrative construction of diasporic refugee identities in times of sociopolitical tensions. Specifically, this paper is concerned with how Iraqi refugees living in the United States constituted their identities through narrating in times of the War in Iraq. Gergen's social constructionist approach towards narrating and current theorizing in diaspora studies build the theoretical bases for the analysis. Narratives were collected through participant observations, interviews, and group discussion in the Pacific Northwest of the United States before, during, and after combat operations in Iraq were declared to be over by President Bush. The paper answers three questions. First, which events triggered the construction of Iraqi refugee identities in the United States? Second, what is the role of narrating in constituting Iraqi identities? Third, do the Iraqi narrators construct diasporic imaginations and if so, how? The findings show that the narrative construction of being Iraqi and a refugee was a relational achievement and situated response. The respondents constructed imaginations of transnational communities that included Iraqis in Iraq, Iraqis in refugee camps, and Iraqis in the United States. By integrating their emerging political voices in the United States with their political resistor identities in Iraq, the narrators made salient transnational links between being Iraqi, a displaced person, and a member of U.S. society, disrupted political discourses about Iraqis in the United States, and affirmed moral values.     

A Multimodal Approach to Identity: Theorizing the Self through Embodiment,Spatiality, and Temporality

Abstract

This article problematizes the theoretical assumption of communication-as-symbolic that delimits the way identity is theorized. I argue that deconstructing identity requires moving beyond the symbolic construction of social categories, and instead focusing on how a perceptual and embodied subject is constituted through communication. Informed by Merleau-Ponty's phenomenologically driven approach to critical inquiry, I present a multimodal approach that reveals how perceptual subjectivity and the reflexive body are constituted within, and constitutive of, the symbolic mechanisms of social construction. Utilizing various examples pertinent to intercultural communication, I theorize cultural identity through the perspective of communication-as-embodied.     

The Strange Meshing of Impersonal and Personal Forces in Technological Action

Abstract

Many critical approaches ascribe a deficit of meaning to technology. The theory of technological action developed in the paper treats technology as an important, eventful terrain for collective life. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s idea of problematisation, it places contemporary technological actions in settings suffused by power relations. It finds in the work of Gilbert Simondon ways of explaining how technological action overflows social norms, forms, identities and structures. Based on analysis of processes of abstraction and concretisation in a spectrum of symptomatic examples, it contends that cultural theory should develop understandings of the potentials that give rise to technological acts as a way of being with others. The paper suggests how cultural theory can engage with the specificities of these actions.     

Space Making: Chinese Transnationalism on the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands

Abstract

As the U.S.-Mexico border becomes more diverse and militantly guarded, interactions between various cultural groups grow more frequent and convoluted. This article describes the ways in which a group of Chinese transnationalists as recent arrivals (re)construct the meanings of El Paso in quotidian interactions. Recurrent themes on the ways in which participants constructed El Paso as an unauthentic American space are discussed. I argue that spatial identities are products of various forces and further reconceptualize the natural connections between place, people, and culture.     

Neoliberalism,Nationalism, and Intercultural Communication: A Critical Analysis of a Japan's Neoliberal Nationalism Discourse under Globalization

Abstract

This paper attempts to draw implications of neoliberalism for intercultural communication by critically analyzing a Japanese neoliberal nationalism discourse. In January 2000, a governmental report proposed adopting English as an official language of Japan. Utilizing the notion of representation as a methodological lens for the analysis, this essay first examines how Japanese culture and communication, which have played key roles in asserting Japanese “uniqueness” along with the Japanese language, are redefined in the report. This essay then investigates how Japan's relations with Asia and the West—two significant discursive “Others” for constructing Japan's identity—are depicted in the text and situate the representation of Japanese culture and communication in the discursive triad for further contextualizing the analysis.     

Can they all be ‘Shit-heads’?: learning to be a contrarian investor

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to explain one of the sensibilities or dispositions that novices learn in the process of becoming financiers, namely, to be a contrarian. We will review investment pitches from an American undergraduate collegiate investment fund, interviews with some members of the club, and field notes from a few of their outings, and treat instances of their contrariness as moments in their process of going from non-investors to investors, moments in which they experiment with and learn new social habits, identities and practices. Moreover, we connect this contrariness with a much longer tradition in the formation of an identity and subjectivity as an investor. More than any simple technology of thought to be deployed in a particular situation, contrarianism is a thoroughgoing mode of framing and understanding life, both in investment contexts and beyond, which we suggest was born between the 1880s and 1940s and has persisted in various forms to this day. This paper offers two instances of how someone becomes contrary, and suggests that contrarianism may be a fairly typical way for humans to make sense of financial markets.     

Korea's blacklist scandal: governmentality,culture, and creativity

ABSTRACT

This essay focuses on the relationship between culture and governance, exploring how the practice of government has invoked conflicts and crises in the Korean culture industries. The Park Geun-Hye regime used culture as a central engine to boost Korea's national economy by adopting the new slogan, ‘Creative Korea’, to embody the country's national values within the international community. However, the regime's constant emphasis on creative economies came under attack when it was discovered that the Ministry of Culture and Tourism abused its authority by censuring 9,473 artists who were critical of the regime. Through an analysis of journalistic interviews with artists, critics and cultural practitioners, this paper examines how the relationships of governmentality, culture and creativity have been negotiated in the process of regime change. In addition, this paper explores how the Korean Wave phenomenon – the transnational expansion of Korean popular culture – during the past two decades has reshaped the society's perception of the governor–governed relationship within the cultural sphere.     

Collective memory and sacred space in post-genocide Rwanda: Reconciliation and rehumanization processes in Mureithi’s ICYIZERE

ABSTRACT

We assess Mureithi's 2009 documentary, ICYIZERE: hope (Motion Picture, Josiah Films), as a document of representational space and collective memory. We argue that the post-genocide reconciliation workshop represented in the film embodies and constructs a sacred/secular space. The reconciliatory space is produced through (1) negotiations of dialectical tensions between past/present as well as individual/collective memory, and (2) (re)presentations of rehumanization within the workshop whereby participants (and audiences) can (re)interpret the Other. We analyze the rehumanization process in the documentary via identity widening theory (Ellis, D.G., 2006, Transforming conflict: Communication and ethnopolitical conflict. Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers) and empathetic human interaction. Finally, we detail how the documentary situates participants within a transformative space of negotiated memories of the genocide with current day reconciliation efforts.     

White America's Construction of Black Bodies: The Case of Ron Artest as a Model of Covert Racial Ideology in the NBA's Discourse

Abstract

Hybridization scholars have shown that the implosion of culture in response to globalization has led nations to feel threatened and thus reclaim their cultural differences. Nouvelle Star, the French version of American Idol, is a powerful representation of this process. The global format which emphasized popularity and emotions was rejected to showcase traits considered to be distinctly French: intellectualism and musical taste. By exploring the franchise's history and analyzing Nouvelle Star's episodes and audience responses, this paper describes how global similarities and national differences were produced in a movement of cultural hybridization.     

Editor's Statement: On (Not) Feeling Rebellious

Abstract

This study is a mixed methods analysis of how French-Muslims respond to a French law banning the wearing of religious symbols in French public schools. In summer 2007, 356 French-Muslims were surveyed, and 20 of those Muslims were interviewed for this analysis. The statistical analysis reveals religiosity to be a significant predictor of French-Muslims’ negative sentiment toward la Loi 2004-228, the ban on the wearing of religious symbols in French public schools. In the interviews, French-Muslims express how they perceive la Loi 2004-228 as stifling Islamic religious identity and freedom, and leading to religious and political struggles in France. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the current situation in France represents a struggle over assimilation and how the issue of and controversy over Muslim immigration has spread throughout the European Union.