Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1515/culture-2020-0003
Adebukola O. Dagunduro, Adebimpe A. Adenugba
Abstract Women’s activism within various ethnic groups in Nigeria dates back to the pre-colonial era, with notable heroic leaders, like Moremi of Ife, Amina of Zaria, Emotan of Benin, Funmilayo Kuti, Margaret Ekpo and many others. The participation of Nigerian women in the Beijing Conference of 1995 led to a stronger voice for women in the political landscape. Several women’s rights groups have sprung up in the country over the years. Notable among them are the Federation of Nigerian Women’s Societies (FNWS), Women in Nigeria (WIN), Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND) and Female in Nigeria (FIN). However, majority have failed to actualize significant political, social or economic growth. This paper examines the challenges and factors leading to their inability to live up to people’s expectations. Guided by patriarchy and liberal feminism theories, this paper utilizes both historical and descriptive methods to examine these factors. The paper argues that a lack of solidarity among women’s groups, financial constraints, unfavourable political and social practices led to the inability of women’s groups in Nigeria to live up to the envisaged expectations. The paper concludes that, for women’s activist groups to survive in Nigeria, a quiet but significant social revolution is necessary among women. Government should also formulate and implement policies that will empower women politically, economically and socially.
{"title":"Failure to Meet up to Expectation: Examining Women’s Activist Groups in the Post-Colonial Period in Nigeria","authors":"Adebukola O. Dagunduro, Adebimpe A. Adenugba","doi":"10.1515/culture-2020-0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2020-0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Women’s activism within various ethnic groups in Nigeria dates back to the pre-colonial era, with notable heroic leaders, like Moremi of Ife, Amina of Zaria, Emotan of Benin, Funmilayo Kuti, Margaret Ekpo and many others. The participation of Nigerian women in the Beijing Conference of 1995 led to a stronger voice for women in the political landscape. Several women’s rights groups have sprung up in the country over the years. Notable among them are the Federation of Nigerian Women’s Societies (FNWS), Women in Nigeria (WIN), Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND) and Female in Nigeria (FIN). However, majority have failed to actualize significant political, social or economic growth. This paper examines the challenges and factors leading to their inability to live up to people’s expectations. Guided by patriarchy and liberal feminism theories, this paper utilizes both historical and descriptive methods to examine these factors. The paper argues that a lack of solidarity among women’s groups, financial constraints, unfavourable political and social practices led to the inability of women’s groups in Nigeria to live up to the envisaged expectations. The paper concludes that, for women’s activist groups to survive in Nigeria, a quiet but significant social revolution is necessary among women. Government should also formulate and implement policies that will empower women politically, economically and socially.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":"4 1","pages":"23 - 35"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/culture-2020-0003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44513816","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-01DOI: 10.1515/culture-2020-0008
Esther Sánchez-Pardo
Abstract In Sisyphus Outdone (2012), Nathanaël’s particular tribute to Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), the reader faces a challenging hybrid text in which the verbal and visual dimensions intermingle to produce an idiosyncratic type of narrative. Fragmentary, elliptical, a web of quotations, dictums, and meditations on the difficult condition of the individual in the current image-saturated scenario of the first decades of the 21st century, the text manages to propose a rigorous reflection upon crucial aspects of representation from History and temporality, to the Subject now, photography, catastrophe theory, architecture, failure and translation, among the most salient. Sisyphus, I suggest, exhibits a strategic photopoetics which operates as a self-reflective mechanism contributing to the persistence of an impermanent liminal subject and to the (re)production of textuality and the proliferation of voices against silence.
{"title":"Photopoetics: Sisyphus Outdone, the Apostrophal Subject and the Elusive Image","authors":"Esther Sánchez-Pardo","doi":"10.1515/culture-2020-0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2020-0008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In Sisyphus Outdone (2012), Nathanaël’s particular tribute to Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), the reader faces a challenging hybrid text in which the verbal and visual dimensions intermingle to produce an idiosyncratic type of narrative. Fragmentary, elliptical, a web of quotations, dictums, and meditations on the difficult condition of the individual in the current image-saturated scenario of the first decades of the 21st century, the text manages to propose a rigorous reflection upon crucial aspects of representation from History and temporality, to the Subject now, photography, catastrophe theory, architecture, failure and translation, among the most salient. Sisyphus, I suggest, exhibits a strategic photopoetics which operates as a self-reflective mechanism contributing to the persistence of an impermanent liminal subject and to the (re)production of textuality and the proliferation of voices against silence.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":"4 1","pages":"84 - 95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/culture-2020-0008","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49318631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-01DOI: 10.1515/culture-2019-0015
Javier Martín
Abstract Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (2003) is a very dark dystopian fable which introduces the reader to a post-apocalyptic scenario in which the planet Earth is on the edge of destruction, and human beings have been almost completely eradicated and substituted for a new, genetically-engineered, race. In this article, I am going to analyse the fundamental role phallogocentrism plays in the destruction of humanity and in the creation of a new world order populated by primitive but more ecological creatures.
{"title":"Dystopia, Feminism and Phallogocentrism in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake","authors":"Javier Martín","doi":"10.1515/culture-2019-0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2019-0015","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (2003) is a very dark dystopian fable which introduces the reader to a post-apocalyptic scenario in which the planet Earth is on the edge of destruction, and human beings have been almost completely eradicated and substituted for a new, genetically-engineered, race. In this article, I am going to analyse the fundamental role phallogocentrism plays in the destruction of humanity and in the creation of a new world order populated by primitive but more ecological creatures.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":"3 1","pages":"174 - 181"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/culture-2019-0015","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48849927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-01DOI: 10.1515/CULTURE-2019-0017
Michael Mcmillan
Abstract This article aims to explore, how the struggle over the sacred and the secular is enacted within the material culture of the front room as an index of the double consciousness that takes place in the black every day. The scared is often reduced to the purely religious, but unshackling it, and engaging with the sacred as a spectrum of spiritual experience that illuminates its dialogic relationship with the political, and therefore the secular. Reclaiming the sacred provides a critical praxis towards decolonising the legacy of coloniality in the context of postcolonial modernity. As a cultural institution of self-making, valorising the material culture of the front room as a space of black interiority resists the racist trope that we live on the street, and have no homes to go to, with families and values. This interiority has shaped, and been shaped by the cultural politics of postwar Caribbean migration, and reveals the rich complexity of “black domestic life” that the “generality of society” rarely understands. Connecting the spiritual with the political provides a psychic recuperation towards resisting and healing from trauma as a process in an ongoing structuring of colonial power, cultural imperialism, and racial violence. This article will draw on research in curating my installation-based exhibitions, The West Indian Front Room (2005-06) and Rockers, Soulheads and Lovers: Sound Systems Back in da Day (2015-16).
{"title":"Dub in the Front Room: Migrant Aesthetics of the Sacred and the Secular","authors":"Michael Mcmillan","doi":"10.1515/CULTURE-2019-0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/CULTURE-2019-0017","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article aims to explore, how the struggle over the sacred and the secular is enacted within the material culture of the front room as an index of the double consciousness that takes place in the black every day. The scared is often reduced to the purely religious, but unshackling it, and engaging with the sacred as a spectrum of spiritual experience that illuminates its dialogic relationship with the political, and therefore the secular. Reclaiming the sacred provides a critical praxis towards decolonising the legacy of coloniality in the context of postcolonial modernity. As a cultural institution of self-making, valorising the material culture of the front room as a space of black interiority resists the racist trope that we live on the street, and have no homes to go to, with families and values. This interiority has shaped, and been shaped by the cultural politics of postwar Caribbean migration, and reveals the rich complexity of “black domestic life” that the “generality of society” rarely understands. Connecting the spiritual with the political provides a psychic recuperation towards resisting and healing from trauma as a process in an ongoing structuring of colonial power, cultural imperialism, and racial violence. This article will draw on research in curating my installation-based exhibitions, The West Indian Front Room (2005-06) and Rockers, Soulheads and Lovers: Sound Systems Back in da Day (2015-16).","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":"3 1","pages":"184 - 194"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/CULTURE-2019-0017","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41434154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-01DOI: 10.1515/culture-2019-0006
Alison Mc Letchie
Abstract This article contextualises the adoration of la Divina Pastora (Siparia Mai) in Trinidad with the racially charged politics of the island nation. Using interviews and participant observation, it demonstrates the importance and unique nature of this practice which allows people of many faiths share in the space that is la Divina. This religious, cultural and social space is one of many on the island where diversity is celebrated, unlike the political arena where race-baiting is used to rally the electorate. The article uses various theories of race to analyse why Hindus and Catholic devotees are willing to share access while their political leaders seem unwilling and/or unable to do the same meaningfully. The paper concludes that while no current theory of race sufficiently explains the la Divina experience but that She embodies the national hegemonic ideal which politicians claim they embrace but which they do little to encourage because doing so will undermine their political base.
{"title":"La Divina Pastora, the Dougla Madonna","authors":"Alison Mc Letchie","doi":"10.1515/culture-2019-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2019-0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article contextualises the adoration of la Divina Pastora (Siparia Mai) in Trinidad with the racially charged politics of the island nation. Using interviews and participant observation, it demonstrates the importance and unique nature of this practice which allows people of many faiths share in the space that is la Divina. This religious, cultural and social space is one of many on the island where diversity is celebrated, unlike the political arena where race-baiting is used to rally the electorate. The article uses various theories of race to analyse why Hindus and Catholic devotees are willing to share access while their political leaders seem unwilling and/or unable to do the same meaningfully. The paper concludes that while no current theory of race sufficiently explains the la Divina experience but that She embodies the national hegemonic ideal which politicians claim they embrace but which they do little to encourage because doing so will undermine their political base.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":"3 1","pages":"62 - 74"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/culture-2019-0006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41521567","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-01DOI: 10.1515/culture-2019-0014
K. Tembo
Abstract Be it Pride of Baghdad (2006), Ex Machina (2004), Runaways (2003), The Private Eye (2013) or Saga (2012), the comic book author Brian K. Vaughan is renowned not only for the scope of the projects in his oeuvre but the nuance with which he portrays his characters, many of which are of types that usually receive less mainstream attention than their white, heteronormative, superhero counterparts. This paper will perform a close reading of Agent 355 as she appears in Vol. 1-10 of Y: The Last Man. As an analytical framework through which to parse the character, it will make recourse to the literary, cultural, and theoretical concepts associated with the magical negro. In doing so, this paper will analyse and explore the ways in which Vaughan’s writing simultaneously countermands and reinforces these stereotypical stock character arrangements in a precarious balancing act. Strong, intelligent, and determined in her expression and use of agency, 355 often fulfils the function of the magical negro, sanctified, and infused with black girl magic. On the other hand, Agent 355’s entire characterisation is also simultaneously circumscribed within the strong black woman stereotype replete with noble suffering and enduring perseverance.
{"title":"Magical Negress: Re-Reading Agent 355 in Brian Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man","authors":"K. Tembo","doi":"10.1515/culture-2019-0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2019-0014","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Be it Pride of Baghdad (2006), Ex Machina (2004), Runaways (2003), The Private Eye (2013) or Saga (2012), the comic book author Brian K. Vaughan is renowned not only for the scope of the projects in his oeuvre but the nuance with which he portrays his characters, many of which are of types that usually receive less mainstream attention than their white, heteronormative, superhero counterparts. This paper will perform a close reading of Agent 355 as she appears in Vol. 1-10 of Y: The Last Man. As an analytical framework through which to parse the character, it will make recourse to the literary, cultural, and theoretical concepts associated with the magical negro. In doing so, this paper will analyse and explore the ways in which Vaughan’s writing simultaneously countermands and reinforces these stereotypical stock character arrangements in a precarious balancing act. Strong, intelligent, and determined in her expression and use of agency, 355 often fulfils the function of the magical negro, sanctified, and infused with black girl magic. On the other hand, Agent 355’s entire characterisation is also simultaneously circumscribed within the strong black woman stereotype replete with noble suffering and enduring perseverance.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":"3 1","pages":"161 - 173"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/culture-2019-0014","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46943467","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-01DOI: 10.1515/culture-2019-0013
Helena Oikarinen-Jabai
Abstract In this essay I discuss artworks by a sample of young people with a Muslim background who participated in the Numur—Islam and I exhibition, which was organised as part of the Young Muslims and Resilience (2016-2018) research project. Art exhibitions were staged in November 2017 and March 2018 with eighteen young adult participants/co-researchers. Their artworks included video and textile installations, photo collages, paintings, calligraphy and poetry, dealing with issues such as faith, dialogues between religious communities, gender, belonging and sexual diversity. Here I concentrate on some works by the participants who stated that they leaned on Sufism or spirituality in their working processes, or whose works expressed qualities that may be reflected through the spectrum in which rhizomes of Sufi ways of understanding human existence in the world are present. In their artworks, the participants created fresh ideas about possible encounters, which I interpret as being linked to modern and postmodern ideas of relationships between spaces and “becoming communities.” Likewise, these ideas can be traced to our common philosophical heritage, which is partly based on spiritual mystic thought and practices of different religions. By using art, the participants could embody this legacy, create spaces for themselves and open landscapes for discussions between Muslim believers and people with different religions and worldviews.
{"title":"Young Finnish People of Muslim Background: Creating “Spiritual Becomings” and “Coming Communities” in Their Artworks","authors":"Helena Oikarinen-Jabai","doi":"10.1515/culture-2019-0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2019-0013","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this essay I discuss artworks by a sample of young people with a Muslim background who participated in the Numur—Islam and I exhibition, which was organised as part of the Young Muslims and Resilience (2016-2018) research project. Art exhibitions were staged in November 2017 and March 2018 with eighteen young adult participants/co-researchers. Their artworks included video and textile installations, photo collages, paintings, calligraphy and poetry, dealing with issues such as faith, dialogues between religious communities, gender, belonging and sexual diversity. Here I concentrate on some works by the participants who stated that they leaned on Sufism or spirituality in their working processes, or whose works expressed qualities that may be reflected through the spectrum in which rhizomes of Sufi ways of understanding human existence in the world are present. In their artworks, the participants created fresh ideas about possible encounters, which I interpret as being linked to modern and postmodern ideas of relationships between spaces and “becoming communities.” Likewise, these ideas can be traced to our common philosophical heritage, which is partly based on spiritual mystic thought and practices of different religions. By using art, the participants could embody this legacy, create spaces for themselves and open landscapes for discussions between Muslim believers and people with different religions and worldviews.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":"3 1","pages":"148 - 160"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/culture-2019-0013","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43754250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-01DOI: 10.1515/culture-2019-0002
S. Huber
Abstract If narratives that uphold secular humanism have led to an “unparalleled catastrophe” as Sylvia Wynter notes in an interview with Katherine McKittrick, then it is time to unwrite them. In this essay, I examine the dead as a category that exceeds metaphysical classifications of subject and object and provides alternate possibilities of communication and hybridity. To do so, I call on work by Claire Colebrook, Jacques Derrida, John Durham Peters, Eve Tuck, and Unica Zürn, among others, with the cultural work and words of Sylvia Wynter as a guide and galvanising force. Here, I repopulate the life/death seam with gorgons, witches, fates, and revenge stories. If ghosts are seen simply as other beings, albeit taboo ones like bacteria, or require alternate cultural narratives like villains, or exist both in the symbolic sphere of the mystical and the so-called natural world like roses, what kinds of methodologies can be opened? What do the dead have to say and how do we listen?
{"title":"Villains, Ghosts, and Roses, or, How to Speak with the Dead","authors":"S. Huber","doi":"10.1515/culture-2019-0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2019-0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract If narratives that uphold secular humanism have led to an “unparalleled catastrophe” as Sylvia Wynter notes in an interview with Katherine McKittrick, then it is time to unwrite them. In this essay, I examine the dead as a category that exceeds metaphysical classifications of subject and object and provides alternate possibilities of communication and hybridity. To do so, I call on work by Claire Colebrook, Jacques Derrida, John Durham Peters, Eve Tuck, and Unica Zürn, among others, with the cultural work and words of Sylvia Wynter as a guide and galvanising force. Here, I repopulate the life/death seam with gorgons, witches, fates, and revenge stories. If ghosts are seen simply as other beings, albeit taboo ones like bacteria, or require alternate cultural narratives like villains, or exist both in the symbolic sphere of the mystical and the so-called natural world like roses, what kinds of methodologies can be opened? What do the dead have to say and how do we listen?","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":"3 1","pages":"15 - 25"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/culture-2019-0002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46001941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-01DOI: 10.1515/culture-2019-0009
Swapna Gopinath
Abstract Indian urban public spaces have witnessed massive transformation post liberalization and globalization. In 2017, city spaces offer novel experiences and unravel new political dynamics in tune with the paradigm shifts in socio-political, economic and cultural domains. The city was shaped by the colonial and later modernizing forces, is being foregrounded in the postmodern, postcolonial discourses, and its public spaces therefore emerge as significant components in the social developments as witnessed in the new millennium. Ganesh Utsav in Mumbai is closely linked to India’s history of political struggle against British colonialism. There has been a phenomenal growth in its popularity and visibility, as a festival for ten days, encapsulating the whole city, transforming its identity as a financial capital of the country to a multiple layered carnival ground, with processions and festivities involving the majority of its population. Post globalization and neoliberalisation, the festival has transformed itself, assumed an identity uniquely political along with the rise of the right wing to power. My paper will be an attempt to critically evaluate this festival and the paraphernalia of sacredness that encapsulates the city space for ten days every year. While the spatial identity of religious practices is fascinating to observe, the ten-day festival of Ganesh Utsav builds a fabric of the sacred and profane across the city. The theoretical tool used in this study is Foucault’s heterotopias and Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of assemblage. The de/re-territorialising aspects of these spaces will also be examined.
{"title":"Heterotopic Assemblages within Religious Structures: Ganesh Utsav and the Streets of Mumbai","authors":"Swapna Gopinath","doi":"10.1515/culture-2019-0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2019-0009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Indian urban public spaces have witnessed massive transformation post liberalization and globalization. In 2017, city spaces offer novel experiences and unravel new political dynamics in tune with the paradigm shifts in socio-political, economic and cultural domains. The city was shaped by the colonial and later modernizing forces, is being foregrounded in the postmodern, postcolonial discourses, and its public spaces therefore emerge as significant components in the social developments as witnessed in the new millennium. Ganesh Utsav in Mumbai is closely linked to India’s history of political struggle against British colonialism. There has been a phenomenal growth in its popularity and visibility, as a festival for ten days, encapsulating the whole city, transforming its identity as a financial capital of the country to a multiple layered carnival ground, with processions and festivities involving the majority of its population. Post globalization and neoliberalisation, the festival has transformed itself, assumed an identity uniquely political along with the rise of the right wing to power. My paper will be an attempt to critically evaluate this festival and the paraphernalia of sacredness that encapsulates the city space for ten days every year. While the spatial identity of religious practices is fascinating to observe, the ten-day festival of Ganesh Utsav builds a fabric of the sacred and profane across the city. The theoretical tool used in this study is Foucault’s heterotopias and Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of assemblage. The de/re-territorialising aspects of these spaces will also be examined.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":"3 1","pages":"106 - 96"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/culture-2019-0009","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48076002","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-02-01DOI: 10.1515/culture-2019-0011
Babette B. Tischleder
Abstract The New Materialisms constitute a rich field of critical inquiry that does not represent a unified approach; yet there is a general tendency to theorise objects by highlighting their agency, independence, and withdrawnness from human actors. Jane Bennett speaks of “thing power” in order to invoke the activities of “nonsubjects,” and she suggests to marginalise questions of human subjectivity and focus instead on the trajectories and propensities of material entities themselves. This essay takes issue with Bennett’s and other New Materialist thought, and it also offers a critical engagement with Bruno Latour’s notion of nonhuman agency. In his recent work, Latour has been concerned with the question of how we can tell our “common geostory.” Taking up his literary example (by Mark Twain) and adding one of my own (by William Faulkner), this essay argues that our understanding of the powers of rivers and other nonhuman agents remains rather limited if we attend primarily to the mechanics of storytelling in the way Latour does. Rather, it is the aesthetic and experiential registers of literary worlding that offer alternative venues for imagining nonhuman beings and our interactions with them in the era of the Anthropocene.
{"title":"Theorising Things, Building Worlds: Why the New Materialisms Deserve Literary Imagination","authors":"Babette B. Tischleder","doi":"10.1515/culture-2019-0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2019-0011","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The New Materialisms constitute a rich field of critical inquiry that does not represent a unified approach; yet there is a general tendency to theorise objects by highlighting their agency, independence, and withdrawnness from human actors. Jane Bennett speaks of “thing power” in order to invoke the activities of “nonsubjects,” and she suggests to marginalise questions of human subjectivity and focus instead on the trajectories and propensities of material entities themselves. This essay takes issue with Bennett’s and other New Materialist thought, and it also offers a critical engagement with Bruno Latour’s notion of nonhuman agency. In his recent work, Latour has been concerned with the question of how we can tell our “common geostory.” Taking up his literary example (by Mark Twain) and adding one of my own (by William Faulkner), this essay argues that our understanding of the powers of rivers and other nonhuman agents remains rather limited if we attend primarily to the mechanics of storytelling in the way Latour does. Rather, it is the aesthetic and experiential registers of literary worlding that offer alternative venues for imagining nonhuman beings and our interactions with them in the era of the Anthropocene.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":"3 1","pages":"125 - 134"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/culture-2019-0011","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42719758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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