Under the gaze of the state: policing literature and the case of Taslima Nasrin

Abstract

This article situates Taslima Nasrin, the controversial writer from Bangladesh, in a particular political and religious moment in the history of Bangladesh, to analyse the difficult relationship the postcolonial state shares with a writer whose work deliberately unsettles the issues of minority and of women and/in religion. The complex mosaic of Nasrin’s work, comprising as varied genres as newspaper columns, poetry and popular novels, has engendered, in the last ten years, unprecedented responses both for and against her writing. This has brought the issue of literature and its uneasy negotiation with state politics to the forefront of national debate. Despised by Islamists and fundamentalists, equally loved and loathed by the reading public, considered with caution by secular intelligentsia and fellow feminists, and ultimately banned by the state, Nasrin is a unique case in point. Her work, written under the gaze of the state defying the fundamentalist fatwa demanding her death, hence invites discussions on state censorship invoked using religious sensibility as a marker of literary judgement and the associated perils of women writing on women in a postcolony like Bangladesh.     

Neoliberalism and curriculum in higher education: a post-colonial analyses

In an era of internationalisation and globalisation, neoliberal agendas have now become important aspects of many institutional and national governments’ higher education policy. A major aspect of these neoliberal agendas is their impact on the curriculum. This paper critically examines the impact of neoliberal agendas on curriculum through a postcolonial and decolonising lens, drawing on research conducted in the African context to illuminate the theoretical analysis presented. Drawing on 48 semi-structured interviews and documentary analyses across three public universities in Ghana, we examine the relationship between neoliberal agendas, neo-colonialism and curriculum imperatives in African higher education. The analysis illuminates the ways that hegemonic discourses connected to neoliberal agendas re-privilege Western-oriented values and perspectives and impact the curriculum changes in African higher education institutions.     

迪伊：被动的矛盾体——《外婆的日用家当》的后殖民解读

艾丽丝·沃克在她的短片小说《外婆的日用家当》中形象地刻画了内心充满矛盾的黑人女性形象迪伊。迪伊从小接受了主流白人文化,白人文化在她心里的内化使她厌恶甚至看不起黑人文化。因此,黑人文化和白人文化的碰撞所产生的不可调和的矛盾使她渐渐脱离了传统的黑人家庭。然而,轰轰烈烈的黑人民权运动激励她去重拾象征黑人文化的百衲被,却遭到了母亲的拒绝。白人文化在她心里潜移默化的内化使她走上了精神的不归路,对黑人传统文化的盲目追寻也暗示了她的尴尬处境。     

Senegalese Art in U.S. Schools: Transporting Contemporary African Diaspora with Decolonized Perspectives

Abstract

This article investigates the ways in which global art making and cultural practices have been conveyed in U.S. schools and considers questions about how art education can engage in decolonization. This special issue's theme of Diversity, Globalization, and Education is approached through the window of visual art by examining the work of three contemporary Senegalese artists and one U.S. artist in the sociopolitical contexts of history and current events, and asserting ways in which curriculum in U.S. schools may be considered with a decolonizing lens by integrating the artists’ perspectives.     

From ‘no’ to ‘yes’: postcolonial perspectives on resistance to neoliberal higher education

Various scholars have suggested ways to resist neoliberal conditions in higher education (HE). In analysing current neoliberal policies and practices in HE, I suggest that postcolonial theories of resistance can enhance our ability as faculty and administrators to understand and ‘resist’ these policies and practices. In this article, I review four modes of postcolonial resistance as described by David Jeffress (2008), mobilizing a critique of resistance as writing and cultural practice and challenging the reactionary nature of subversion and opposition. I argue that we need to place emphasis on transformational resistance, or the creation of new ways of being, knowing and doing in HE in order to transform the academy.     

The rise of the unsaid: spaces in teaching postcolonial literature

Teaching postcolonial literature can be a daunting undertaking that teachers may try to avoid. This article explores three problems that teachers may confront in teaching postcolonial texts. The first problem deals with which literary text to choose and the criteria that may help teachers anchor their choices. Second, in response to the question of how teachers pedagogically assist students to correct preconceived notions and deconstruct stereotypes, this article proposes three stages of creating and recreating spaces that interact and ultimately assist students generate meaning. Students move from prior knowledge into an informed reality guided by the teacher and then into the world of the text in a process that involves collaborative learning, reinventing conceptual realities and the concretization of literary texts. Third, I examine how to approach postcolonial texts by utilizing Iser’s aesthetic act of reading. The work posits a teaching model of three phases that help students interact and eventually unlock assumed unfamiliarity with postcolonial texts.     

林语堂《吾国与吾民》的后殖民主义解读

在后殖民语境下文化身份依赖于他者的动态建构.林语堂从自身的文化间性身份出发,在《吾国与吾民》中建构了与西方相异的中国文化身份,修改了西方“中国形象”话语的负面成分,同时在某种程度上满足了西方人的期待视野,获得了西方读者的认同.     

蔡琰的歌——一个后殖民的隐喻

汤亭亭在《女勇士》重述了中国三国时期女诗人蔡琰的故事作为她处女作的结尾。她以一种轻松浪漫的笔调叙述蔡琰的俘虏经历,把她刻画成一个敢杀汉人的勇士,甚至把她又改写成一个汉匈两族文化差异的调和者,这些大胆的改写塑造了一个具有后殖民杂交性的蔡琰故事。这个故事的杂交性表达了作者对于华裔美国人打破自己失语沉默境地的渴望,隐喻着两代华裔美国人的矛盾的和解的可能,同时也流露出对美国种族之间相互融合与理解的期盼。     

Desiring development? Psychoanalytic contributions to antidevelopmental psychology

This paper explores how psychoanalytic ideas might support a project of critiquing the developmental paradigm as it influences, and links, models of economic and individual development on which educational policy and practice rely. After outlining the conceptual domain and questions at issue, the paper rereads some key claims about Enlightenment and its relationship with representations of immaturity as inviting scope for reinterpreting contemporary intensifications of developmentalism. This provides some further rationale and focus for the turn to psychoanalysis as a critical conceptual and methodological resource (although with some key qualifications). Ideas drawn from feminist and postcolonial engagements with psychoanalysis are used to inform discussion of two indicative texts about childhood, drawing on contemporary Lacanian interpretations that are applied to address the problematic of childhood, before finishing with some speculations on alternative modes of engagement with Enlightenment and developmental approaches.     

后殖民理论视角下中国传统文化导人英语课堂的必要性

跨文化交际是双方文化对等的交流。现在我国大学英语课堂大都实行的是单一的西方文化的输入,这种文化输入模式不能适应我们社会发展和国际交流的需要。笔者根据后殖民理论指出中国后殖民现象,并有力地阐述了在大学英语课堂中中国传统文化导入的必要性,指出大学生担负了传承和传播中国传统文化的重任,中国不仅要成为经济强国,也应该成为文化的强国。