How to translate ‘Cultural Revolution’

Abstract

In the Chinese Cultural Revolution – the epicenter of the last great political sequence at worldwide level in the 1960s and 1970s – the flashing of unprecedented possibilities of post‐party politics was entangled with the epochal closure of a network of political culture. The Cultural Revolution proves to be extremely refractory to historical investigation because it undoes the established conceptual bridges between history and politics, bridges that all other social sciences crossed for studying politics. Therefore, new theoretical perspectives and new protocols of investigation are required, and not only for those events, but in the last analysis for the study of all political situations. The author discusses three main points for finding a new perspective. First, a basic distinction should be stressed between the intermittent nature of politics – one of the rarest modes of subjectivity, which exist only in singular intellectually inventive sequences – and the structural invariance of the state, despite the incessant historical mutations of its particular forms. Moreover, the relationships between the present state of depoliticization and the previous political situations deserve close analysis. The hypothesis is that the concrete form of the state in a given moment is the hollow imprint of the last great political sequence, or that it is shaped by a reactive de‐politicization. Finally, the declarations and the related behaviors of the actors during the events are the major analytical elements in the study of politics. However, the Cultural Revolution was marked to an unprecedented degree by increasing dissonances and, finally, irremediable ruptures between the processes created by the subjective declarations and the same network of political culture within which they were formulated.     

The Changing Media Representation of T. E. Lawrence and Celebrity Culture in Britain, 1919–1935

Abstract

This article presents a new analysis of representations of T. E. Lawrence to explore how the media created celebrity identities in interwar Britain. Examining his appearance in seventeen national newspapers and in newsreels between 1919 and 1935, it shows how earlier press depictions that borrowed from Lowell Thomas’s portrayal of him as the mythical ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ were disrupted by a nascent media-driven celebrity culture which aimed to uncover intimate details of the lives of the so-called ‘real’ people that were believed to exist behind the outward personae of the famous. By the late 1920s, the press’s attention had switched from Lawrence as an imperial adventurer to focus on the intensely private man who lay behind the public image of the ‘Blonde Bedouin’. This shift in emphasis denoted a significant change in the way celebrities were presented by the news media in interwar Britain. Journalists intensified their exposure of celebrities’ private lives to amplify the empathetic connection between the public and the famous at a time when new modes of self-fashioning were configured through expression in private, domestic life. This shift was also informed by growing anxieties regarding how public figures communicated their social authority to the new audiences of the interwar mass media, newspapers and newsreels exposing famous people’s private lives to generate emotional connections with members of the public which would strengthen concepts of social leadership and trust.     

Reynolds' New Masterpiece

ABSTRACT

Joshua Reynolds' 1775 portrait of Mai [Omai], the first Pacific Islander to visit Britain, has attracted much public attention since 2001, when it sold for a near record-breaking £10.3 million. Omai's recent celebrity is based on the view that it is not only an ‘icon’ of British art but also of crucial significance as a reminder of an enlightened world we have lost. The critical heritage of Reynolds' Omai, however, indicates a rather more complex aesthetic and historical assessment. This article analyses the sources of the disjuncture between past judgements and today's soaring esteem. In doing so, it introduces for comparison another much-neglected Reynolds portrait of a New World traveller, entitled Scyacust Ukah.     

Introduction

ABSTRACT

This introductory essay identifies the major themes of the special issue, emphasizing both indigenous peoples' anticipation of how imperial modernity hailed them and their determination to work with as well as against it. The mobility, and restlessness, of the actors examined in the essays that follow helped to guarantee this defensive agency and to produce a shared grammar of engagement and resistance across disparate native communities in the nineteenth and twentieth-century worlds they travelled through.     

Does the subaltern speak? Migrant voices in digital Europe

ABSTRACT

This article examines a number of digital initiatives where refugees and migrants speak with/to Europe in the context of the “migration crisis.” The analysis of four institutional and grassroots initiatives illustrates digital Europe’s symbolic articulations of borders that divide people and territories. As argued, the mediated visibility and voice of refugees and migrants matter precisely as the order of appearance (in Arendt’s terms) in digital Europe represents a fundamental dimension of the continent’s communicative order: revealing who speaks and who is silenced, which actors are heard and which are sidelined in the context of Europe’s “migration crisis.” The incorporation of refugee and migrant voices in digital Europe shows that voice does not guarantee recognition; rather, its incorporation reveals the complex politics of digital representation: on occasions challenging hegemonic power structures but most often digitally reaffirming bordering power and its symbolical articulations.     

Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s films: pursuing and escaping history

Abstract

This article situates Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s films in the post Cold‐War global setting. It discusses two common interpretive approaches to Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s films – French auteurism and ‘national allegory’ – and puts these two approaches within their historical context of Cold‐War and post Cold‐War global politics. The article places the rise of Hou Hsiao‐Hsien’s films parallel to the rise of the mainland fifth generation of film directors, pointing out that their apparently opposite directions – Hou Hsiao‐Hsien going political in his Taiwan trilogy and the fifth generation film directors going apolitical – are part and parcel of the same phenomenon of alternative politics in its particular contexts and the reconstruction of a new identity politics. Particular attention is given to Hou’s Taiwan trilogy, Flowers of Shanghai, and Coffee Jikou.     

The ‘truth politics’ of anti‐North Koreanism: the post‐ideological cultural representation of North Korea and the cultural criticisms of Korean nationalism

Abstract

This essay questions the ‘truth politics’ of anti‐North Koreanism in which a ‘genuine’ figuration of North Korea is presumed to be achievable at the popular level. I define the truth politics of anti‐North Koreanism as the political‐cultural discursive formation obscuring the ideological powerfulness of anti‐North Koreanism that hinges on ‘the normality of nationalism’. The truth politics reinscribes and reinforces the populist and functionalist belief in national unification that justifies developmentalist agendas for North Korea. As an alternative, I discuss the post‐colonial cultural criticism that calls into question the identity politics of popular nationalism, which implicitly performs along the lines of the Sunshine Policy guidelines to naturalize the normality of nationalism under economic developmentalism. The questionable formation of nationalism prevents South Koreans from gaining self‐reflexive access to the way in which heterogeneous tropes of the nation rupturing in the discursive practice of popular nationalism are exploited. But I also critically interrogate the analytical framework presumed within the criticism, because it constrains its own scope and abilities of questioning the truth politics of anti‐North Koreanism the criticism ostensibly targets.     

Conviviality as a politics of endurance: the refugee emergency and the consolations of artistic intervention

ABSTRACT

Against the impasse of despair in the public response to the refugee emergency, artistic interventions emerge to offer fleeting significant opportunities for restorative and reparative action. This article takes up conviviality as a conceptual tool to understand artistic interventions to the forced migration and asylum issues that variably aim for healing, empathy, and reflexivity. Drawing on comparative research consisting of interviews of artists in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States and textual analyses of their performances, we discuss specific motivations and diverse representational practices that aim to enact togetherness-in-difference. We discuss the potentials and risks of convivial artistic productions, which we argue produce a politics of endurance that, as Feldman has said, helps “people live better with circumstances they cannot change.”     

The Prince of Wales Versus Clark Gable

ABSTRACT

In the 1920s and 1930s Americans avidly consumed news of Edward, Prince of Wales, through a variety of media: mass circulation newspapers and magazines, radio, the gramophone and film. This article argues that the Prince of Wales' popularity in the United States between the wars sheds light on key changes in the meaning of citizenship following mass enfranchisement in the Anglo-American world. It argues also that media representations of the Prince of Wales contributed to the creation of an Anglophone culture of celebrity, which would become a primary means by which Britons and Americans came to know each other in the inter-war years.     

Participation as policy in local cultural governance

ABSTRACT

This article takes on participation not as taking part in cultural activities per se but in cultural policy-making, by studying the transformation and institutionalisation of participatory processes. Focusing on Switzerland, a federalist country where local and private actors play key roles in cultural policy, several processes by which different actors participate in local cultural policy-making are explored. Top-down procedures, such as formalised mandatory consultation procedures or the inclusion of cultural actors in administrative expert committees, coexist with bottom-up grassroots initiatives that can complement or even supplant traditional participatory processes. Furthermore, certain alternative modes and concepts of participation, such as the “cultural council”, circulate between different cases, across levels of state and in time. Participatory processes in cultural policy-making need to be seen as public policies in their own right, which can aim to depoliticise policies and procedures. Furthermore, actors need certain resources in order to participate, and venues aimed at opening participation do so in a restrained framework, focusing mostly on artistic and cultural elites rather than encourage larger citizen participation.     

Male Bonding and Female Pleasure: Refining Masculinity in Japanese Popular Cultural Texts

Over the past few decades, alternative constructions of masculinity have entered the Japanese popular cultural scene. These definitions are slowly chipping away at traditional constructions of gender and creating new subjectivities through which men and women may choose to define their gendered identities. This article explores some of these changing constructions through a case study of 1 particularly popular male celebrity, young male actor and singer Kimura Takuya. Examining his appearances on various Japanese media sites-from television dramas, to popular magazines, to concert videos-this article attempts to identify the different codes of masculinity emerging from Kimura's diverse characters, and considers their possible significance within the larger Japanese popular cultural environment in which they are distributed and consumed.     

Popular Politicians: The Interaction Between Politics and Popular Culture in the Netherlands, 1950s–1980s

ABSTRACT

From the late 1950s onwards, the Netherlands witnessed a transformation of the emotional codes of politics. A culture of political leadership marked by notions of duty and restraint, made way for self-expression and authenticity. This article argues that the interaction between the spheres of politics and popular culture played a vital role in this transformation. The practices and discourses of popular culture became a significant part of the repertoire through which politicians articulated representative claims. The article traces how politicians negotiated their interaction with popular culture, started to cultivate a private persona and eventually turned into political celebrities.     

Screen violence and partition

ABSTRACT

Recent film and television treatment of South Asia from UK producers have introduced new angles on the violent politics of colonial past, whether this be the activities of the East India Company in the early days of Empire, or about Partition, at the ostensible Raj’s end. The controversy over Gurinder Chadha’s 2017 film Viceroy’s House is taken as an opportunity to consider the new South Asian film and television studies and the emergent scholars that are challenging conventional media studies models. The co-constitution of here and there is given as an analytic lens through which to comprehend representation and stereotyping in films “about” politics in South Asia, and the view taken is that a debilitating divide and rule, via mechanisms of representation, remains strongly in place, despite the fighting efforts of the new South Asian media scholarship.     

A national culture for Pakistan: the political economy of a debate

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between (national) culture and state formation, arguing that the former is effectively a field of contestation where struggles over hegemony between various classes and social blocs are played out. Cultural nationalism has been the pre‐eminent form of nationalism in the twentieth century, particularly within the anti‐colonial and postcolonial contexts. Since this form of nationalism lends itself to moral regulation by ruling classes in a way that civic or political nationalisms do not (given its ability to produce and manipulate emotional affect) it becomes imperative to understand its relationship to power and to the project/process of state formation. This paper uses the case of postcolonial Pakistan as a lens through which to explore and analyse the complexities of this relationship during the early years of the Pakistani nation‐state. Using primary material – Constituent Assembly Debates and the texts of important intellectual debates on culture during this period – I show the different ways in which Pakistani culture was defined at this time, the politics and interests behind these various articulations, and their ultimate impact on state formation.     

Kuala Lumpur,July 2005

Abstract

This paper is a study of the impact of the Thai ‘Sixties’ on present day Thai politics, especially that of the ‘Peoples Movement’. In doing so, the study concentrates on looking at the influence of both political ideas and movements and the role of some important political actors from this period. Internationally, the Sixties Movement was characterised by a general rise in the struggle of oppressed groups on a global scale. Central to this struggle was the role of students and a new generation of activists in labour and peasant organisations. This took the form of movements against racism, sexual oppression and especially imperialism. Activists from this period are now to be found playing important roles in political systems throughout the world. However, their present day role is often in contradiction to their original beliefs during the Sixties. In Thailand, the ‘Sixties’ movement has helped to shape both the policies of the present Thai Rak Thai government and the nature of the Peoples Movement. Any understanding of the present Thai political scene has to include an examination of the mass‐movements that continue to struggle for democracy and social justice, together with the nature of various ruling class factions. Thai Rak Thai grew out of a need to deal with the effects of the 1997 Economic Crisis. Its Populist policies reflect a need to balance conflicting class interests in order to buy social peace. Many of the activists within Thai Rak Thai and those within the social movements are people of the October Generation who cut their teeth during the Thai Sixties. Their political beliefs and strategies reflect the events of the last 30 years in different ways. The Thai Sixties will continue to influence Thai politics and society in the years ahead.     

States of emergency as an Inter-Asia issue

Abstract

Proposing “state of emergence” as an Inter-Asian issue that still lingers on as an affective state of emergency, the essay grapples with the politics of affect lurking in the entertainment sector as well as in real politics.     

From passivity to a new border-crossing subjectivity

Abstract

1997 as a global media spectacle about Hong Kong’s handover of its sovereignty from Britain to China is now almost forgotten; yet Hong Kong is still caught between the politics of time and memory too complex to be captured under simple post‐colonialist notion such as ‘hybridity’. This paper tries to put in perspective a (post‐)colonial cultural politics of counter‐memory in Hong Kong cinema by investigating its decades‐long investment in a sub‐genre built around the motif of undercover‐cop. Specifically, the example of the blockbuster Infernal Affairs series is analyzed in details, with particular attention to its innovative plot, to show how the ‘structure of feeling’ about Hong Kong’s political fate is embedded in the films underpinning their local box‐office success. The allegorical reading of the film series attempted in this paper also connects the discussion about the ‘political unconscious’ of Hong Kong, now and in the past, with the wider problem of how the future political subjectivity of Hong Kong will take shape.     

Religion and Politics in English Monastic Towns

ABSTRACT

This article tackles religion and politics as different aspects of a variety of social practices within a common culture. It examines thie political and religious climate of English provincial towns with a monastic presence in the period before before 1540. It demonstrates the extent to which monastic interests were fused with those of local elites, and argues those elites sought to undercut the process of dissolution and to preserve something of the monastic framework through the unfolding crisis. It challenges the notion of a natural dialect between traditional religion and provincial politics and uncovers a dynamic of negotiation productive for both constituencies before and after the Dissolution.     

Shifting spaces,frozen frames: trajectories of queer politics in contemporary India

Abstract

This paper is a comparative reading of two Malayalam films The Journey (Sancharram, 2004) and The Wandering Bird Does Not Cry (Deshadana Kili Karayarilla, 1986) as representative of differing trajectories of queer politics in the Kerala public sphere. It uses an analysis of the representative strategies of these two films, to interrogate the limits of a universal language of sexual identity politics. The paper places the two films in the different historical contexts in which they are produced, and deploys a film from an earlier time period to problematize some of the assumptions of contemporary queer politics. For this purpose it undertakes a close reading of the cinematic codes of both these films, especially the spatial arrangements in the films. I argue that the location of Sancharram in the LGBT discourse in India and abroad makes it so enmeshed in setting up an established meaning for the term ‘queer’ that the process of queering becomes one of stabilizing a chosen form of desire as the ideal one. In this process of setting up a stable trajectory for queer desire, it also freezes the spatial and social terrains of Kerala. The process of queering that Deshadana Kili Karayarilla undertakes is not one that attempts to set up a particular subject position as the queer subject position. It sets out to trouble the naturalized construction of the heterosexual couple and injects a sense of instability into the social sphere itself. The paper examines how some of the taken‐for‐granted assumptions of transnational queer politics, like the celebration of visible bodies, gets radically questioned when we turn to non‐metropolitan sites of analysis. It aims to look at how cultural texts can embody different modes of sexual politics, as activists struggle to coin strategies to articulate the political possibilities of non‐normative sexual practices in Kerala today.     

Malay(sian)’s image in Indonesian media prior to Konfrontasi era December 1962

This article presents the Malay(sian)’s image in Indonesian media in the early days of the Indonesia–Malaysia conflict at the beginning of 1960s. The dispute started when Tunku Abdul Rahman announced his plan to include Singapore, Brunei, Sarawak and North Borneo into the Federation of Malaya. Yet Indonesia regarded it as the British’s neocolonialist project. Left-wing nationalists expressed their opposition to this plan in their daily, Bintang Timur, with illustrations made by Delsy Syamsumar (1935-2001). His artworks may represent how Malaysia was seen by Indonesian artists during the dispute. On the other hand, most of Syamsumar’s artworks demonstrate his sympathy with Azahari, Borneo’s local political leader, who staged the insurgence against the plan on 8 December 1962. This article intends to highlight Syamsumar’s pioneering artworks, picturing the Indonesia–Malaysia dispute published in Bintang Timur in December 1962.