Despicable Others: Animated Othering as Equipment for Living in the Era of Trump

This essay comparatively examines U.S.-Russian and U.S.-Mexican interculturality in the Despicable Me movie franchise. We argue that cultural transformations of the main protagonists – Russian Gru and Mexican El Macho – are politically significant cases of U.S.-Russian and U.S.-Mexican interculturality, reflected and constructed by popular culture in general, and by animated cartoons in particular. Conceptualizing and analyzing animation as “equipment for living,” we demonstrate how these cases serve as epistemological and pedagogical tools of confirming U.S.-dominant ideology, and discursively and visually constructing (Russian and Mexican) Others the way that they are currently understood and treated in (the non-fictional) U.S. society.     

困境与超越:文化间性语境下中国武术传播之肯綮

采用文献资料法、逻辑分析法、比较法等对武术传播展开研究,运用文化间性的话语逻辑探寻武术传播与间性存在的关联,通过历史爬梳、文化观照、逻辑思考及解析理路“四重维度”的书写范式探讨武术传播的问题、路径及对策。研究认为:传播理念趋同性与传播形式的不完善性削弱了武术传播的文化空间;在武术跨文化传播进程中,东西方文化差异与“他者意识”中的刻板形象构成了武术文化“走出去”的主要阻碍。中国武术传播的间性思维与路径选择:“互识互补、视界融合”的文化理念彰显了武术传播的间性思维;“求同存异、美美异和”的文化姿态体现了武术传播的间性智慧;与“他者”文化对话共生的互通意识是武术传播与文化间性内在关联的直接体现。武术传播的文化自觉蕴涵着文化间性的初涌,两者之间的内在关联在多元共生文化环境下得以显现和引申。本文通过凝视和构建武术传播的文化间性,希冀对中国武术传播与发展提供依据和参考。     

“I Want to Feel That I Live in China”: Imaginaries and Hospitality in International Students’ (mis-)Encounters at a Top Chinese University

Research on international students’ experiences abroad has tended to rely on models of adjustment, integration and/or acculturation to describe their (mis-)encounters with different kinds of people (e.g., co-nationals, locals and other international students). This paper proposes to use the more fluid concepts of imaginaries and hospitality, leaving behind stages and phases of adaption and acculturation, and focusing on the influence of the Structure on their experiences. Based on a discursive pragmatic analysis of interview data with 20 international students at a top Chinese university, the authors review how the students describe the kind of hospitality experienced at this institution and the influence that it has on their (mis-)encounters. Culturalist, differentialist and essentialist imaginaries (static and fixed views of Chineseness) are often used to justify the lack of encounters and the “segregation” and somewhat “positive discrimination” that they experienced. However, the paper shows that, amongst others, the institutional hospitality management for international students leads to closed contexts of encounters and feelings of exclusion. Although the study serves as a case study and cannot be generalized to the many and varied experiences of international students in other universities in China, some recommendations are made to solve, at least in part, misconceptions about what interculturality and hospitality entail in the internationalization of higher education.     

Construction of educational knowledge with the Mapuche community through dialogical-kishu kimkelay ta che research

ABSTRACT

This paper reports the development of a Mapuche education programme in the context of indigenous demands and claims in relation to education, specifically the Bafkehce Mapuche community who live in the Araucanía Region of Chile. The central objective defined was to systematise, jointly with the indigenous community, the components defined as educational knowledge in order to generate a Mapuche education. The study was approached using the dialogical-kishu kimkelay ta che methodology, developed jointly with a Maci (responsible for ceremonies), two Kimches (sages), a Gütancefe (bone-setter), Mapuche teachers, and undergraduate teaching students and academics. The results show epistemic and gnoseological categories which differ from the westernised Chilean categories of education, thus allowing a Mapuche education programme to be generated in order to establish a dialogue between educational knowledge in the indigenous context and in the Chilean western context.