Postcolonial Studies

This paper traces, often drawing on autobiographical examples, the temporal migrations of educational experiences in the language of the other. As a documented Canadian and British citizen, an immigrant with an ex-appropriated proper name traced to Guyana’s indentured Chinese cane reapers, and thus, an imperial and postcolonial subject with certain identity disorders here in America, Canada, and elsewhere, how is a migratory subject subjected to the language of the other? More specifically, how might one learn, via currere, from a migrant subject’s educational experiences of appropriation and alienation in the language of the other?

""NOTE: This was slated to appear in "Frontiers of Literary Studies in China" (Brill Press but controlled/owned by HEP in China/Beijing; edited by Zhang Xudong). But was cut/censored at the last minute by a wise Party editor for mentioning Mao and the Cultural Revolution too much [which it doesn't really do, but I digress].  It now finds a happy home in a longer-standing, bilingual, Shanghai-based journal instead.  Such are the vagaries of publishing in China-- not that speech is so free elsewhere either.



Abstract: With a few exceptions much of the knowledge of modern China produced in the world either ignores or demonizes the Mao era. On the cultural front things are not much better, whether we are speaking of the “Seventeen-year’s Literature” or the culture of the 1960s and 1970s. The negation of the Mao or radical era is, in short, a crucial part of contemporary Sinological-orientalism. There is however a recovery and reorientation project underway that seeks to restore the complexity of the Mao decades and its pursuit of an alternative, agrarian, and socialist modernity.  As part of this project I offer an appropriately Foucaultian and Marxist notion of Maoist discourse. By framing that era in terms of its past Maoist discourse we can at least begin to take the revolution and its culture more seriously in its own terms and self-understanding. This has the added advantage of explaining the productive power and subjectivity of Chinese Maoism and its culture without recourse to the Cold War/colonial notion of “totalitarianism.” Yet Maoist discourse, like China’s “alternative modernity,” remains concepts more often announced than substantiated. The rich, challenging work of the rural writer Zhao Shuli offers us an ideal case study of what Maoist discourse was in cultural-philosophical terms. The second part of this essay offers a reading of selected short fiction from Zhao in terms of how it draws on and illuminates Maoist discourse, resulting in a literary art of remarkable political complexity and contextual detail. With Zhao it is “politics in command” in a genuine sense; this is not a flaw but its entire point.

KEYWORDS : Zhao Shuli    orientalism    left-wing literature    rural labor    Marxism

Daniel Vukovich (胡德) works at Hong Kong University in the School of Humanities, where he teaches post-colonial, literary, and cultural studies with an emphasis on the PRC and “China-West” issues.

标题：对毛泽东时代话语的一种厚重描述：以赵树理为例
摘要：在当今世界对现代中国的知识生产中，毛泽东时代要么被忽视要么被妖魔化；而在文化领域内，提起“十七年文学”或上世纪六七十年代的文学时，事态也不见更好。对这激进时代的否定可谓是当代东方主义式汉学的关键内容，但当下学界也有一种试图恢复并重建的努力，将毛泽东时代的追求作为一种另类的农业社会的现代性，对其复杂性加以探讨。本文试图从福柯理论与马克思主义的角度研读毛泽东时代的话语方式，将所述时代置于其自身的语境阐释其生产力与主体性，以区别于当下将这一时代置于冷战-殖民观念之下的阐释视野。赵树理小说创作为我们从文化哲学层面阐释这个时代提供了理想的个案，本文第二部分即以赵树理的短篇小说为例。作者认为赵树理的小说，以其具有高度政治复杂性的艺术自觉，达到了真正意义上的“政治挂帅”的文学。
关键词：赵树理      东方主义    左翼文学    农民    马克思主义
作者：胡德（Daniel Vukovich），香港大学人文学院副教授，主要从事后殖民、文学、文化等领域的教研工作。电邮：vukovich@hku.hk
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""This article discusses the question of the Polish nation's self-definition in the Positivist period both in belles-lettres and in journalism, which were dependent to a great extent on the colonial discourse. It is argued that crucial metaphors of “wildness,” “savageness” or “backwardness” stem from orientalising labels created by the colonisers. Examination of this issue requires some basic introduction to historical and anthropological ideas which date back to the Age of Enlightenment. The aim of this paper is to shed light –
by analysing literature examples such as Ludwik Powidaj, Cyprian Kamil Norwid, Maria Konopnicka, Eliza Orzeszkowa and Henryk Sienkiewicz – on the so called “colonial trauma”, which has condemned the Polish image to resentful ideology. Furthermore, the paper will provide arguments in favour of subscribing to the postcolonial studies in Central and Eastern Europe.""

Football was once characterised as one of the most dynamic and illuminating domains of globalisation, and thus of cosmopolitanisation, making it a fertile locus for social researchers’ debates in the last few decades on a wide range of topics. To this regard numerous accounts on how globalisation, chiefly its economic and cultural dimensions, impacted and changed football were presented, focusing primarily on the commodification, commercialisation and mediatisation of football. Fandom as an integral part of the football culture was also central to these debates. In this regard, in this paper I will discuss the invention of a ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘local’ identities of two rival Brazilian football clubs’ fans through their chants. I will argue that between different processes of inventing the other within football fandom, as sexualisation, mediatisation, commodification, Internacional and Grêmio fans are primarily interested on aspects regarding ‘cosmopolitanisation’ and ‘localisation’ of their identities. I will demonstrate how Internacional fans from 2010 onwards constructed their ‘cosmopolitan’ identity in opposition to Grêmio’s ‘localised’ identity by creolisation/cosmopolitanisation their chants. In opposition to Grêmio’s ‘localised’ identity which bore mostly Argentinian and Uruguayan cultural aspects, Internacional fans sought to differentiate themselves and create a ‘cosmopolitan’ identity by mostly incorporating international tunes to local lyrics. I will further argue that Edward Said’s Orientalism is an useful framework to discuss the geographical other, and that his theories are still under theorised within the sociology of football, and in particular to fandom and globalisation. I will conclude by pointing out that while the processes of othernisation between football club fans are already well discussed in the area, the theorisation of these processes within football club fans is still at the field’s margins and thus require further analyses.

Russia can be considered both an empire and a subaltern, a duality reflected in Russian foreign policy, especially its promotion of multipolarity. Voices that claim to speak for the subaltern cannot always be trusted, since they often silence and oppress rather than emancipate and empower others.

"Neoliberal economics have emerged in the post-Cold War era as the predominant ideological tenet applied to the development of countries in the global south. For much of the global south, however, the promise that markets will bring increased standards of living and emancipation from tyranny has been an empty one. Instead, neoliberalisation has increased the gap between rich and poor and unleashed a firestorm of social ills.

This book deals with the post-conflict geographies of violence and neoliberalisation in Cambodia. Applying a geographical analysis to contemporary Cambodian politics, the author employs notions of neoliberalism, public space, and radical democracy as the most substantive components of its theoretical edifice. He argues that the promotion of unfettered marketisation is the foremost causal factor in the country’s inability to consolidate democracy following a United Nations sponsored transition. The book demonstrates Cambodian perspectives on the role of public space in Cambodia's process of democratic development and explains the implications of violence and its relationship with neoliberalism.

Taking into account the transition from war to peace, authoritarianism to democracy, and command economy to a free market, this book offers a critical appraisal of the political economy in Cambodia.
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Reviews:

Gunn, G. C. 2013. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 43.1: 188-191.

Brickell, K. 2011. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 52.3: 372-374.

Percival, T. 2011. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 32.2: 270-272.

Christie, R. 2010. South East Asia Research, 19.2: 349-372.

Ordóñez de Pablos, P. 2010. International Journal of Asian Business and Information Management, 1.4: 65-66."

The presenters on this panel draw on Michael J. Shapiro’s notion of violent cartography to articulate the political and cultural enmities in their respective geographical regions of study. According to this conceptual geopolitics, the range of images that drive and complicate these territories also constitute grounds for inclusion and exclusion, giving rise to shifting modes of violence. The research presented in this panel explores new dimensions in this process of enmity-formation. First, Anusorn Unno will examine the production of enmity in Siam, and in Cold War and present-day Thailand, with a focus on the “Red Shirt” movement. Next, Frank Cibulka will discuss the sources of the different modes of violence that can be identified in the Philippines. Turning back to Thailand’s “Red Shirt” movement, Noah Viernes will examine the connections between violence and its representation by mapping the genealogy of street scenes in Bangkok after the 2006 coup. Finally, Alvin Lim will conclude by looking at the psychological roles of desire and memory in the formation of national identity, with a focus on the fantasmatic emergence of the Cambodian nation and its concurrent production of violence. After these presentations, David Toohey will serve as discussant.

"The oeuvre of the Kalahari Studio (Cape Town), Drostdy Ware (a division of  Grahamstown Pottery, Grahamstown) and Crescent Potteries (Krugersdorp) is investigated within the historical context of the 1950s, a watershed period that witnessed crucial developments in South African cultural and political history. This dissertation elucidates the historical development, key personnel, the ceramics, as well as relevant technical information related to the Kalahari Studio, Drostdy Ware and Crescent Potteries. This dissertation analyses the broader socio-political and ideological paradigms that framed South African art-making, as well as the international design trends that influenced the local studio ceramics sector. The establishment and demise
of the South African studio ceramics industry and requests for tariff protection were considered within this context. Significant primary research was conducted into the present status of South African studio ceramics from the 1950s in the collections of our heritage institutions. Wares of all three of the studios reveal a predilection for figurative imagery, especially
images of indigenous African women and iconography derived from reproductions of Southern San parietal art. Imagery of African women is considered within the framework of the native study genre in South African painting, sculpture and photography from 1800-1950 and Africana ceramics from 1910-1950. Images of San parietal art are investigated within their historical context of a growing public and academic interest in the Bushmen and a surge in publications containing reproductions of San parietal art. Some images of African women and San parietal art conform to pejorative and theoretically problematic modernist cannons of the'other', while some  are subversive and undermine the dominant pictorial and ideological artistic
conventions."