#ania loomba

[beguines]

In 1942, shortly after emerging from underground activities, communist activists were caught up in redressing the food crisis, and organizing public rallies demanding controlled-priced food as prices rose and shortages became palpable. The worst off was Bengal, which was devastated by famine during 1942 and 1943; nearly four million people are estimated to have perished here from starvation and disease in the following three years. The famine galvanized communists into action, both politically and culturally. In the face of colonial censorship, they were among the first to publicize the disaster. Their analysis of the famine anticipated Amartya Sen's groundbreaking book, Poverty and Famines, which argued that famines are political not natural events, and that they have less to do with shortages offood than its unfair distribution. They spearheaded relief efforts, setting up food kitchens and shelters for those rendered destitute by the famine, while organizing political actions to demand rice at controlled rates.

Communist women were in the forefront of famine relief efforts, and their work catalysed the formation of a new kind of women's political organization—one which moved beyond the ambit of existing nationalist women's organizations, and simultaneously pushed the Communist Party to engage with women's political activities. But famine relief activities also cemented the formation and spread of the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) and the Communist Party's Central Cultural Squad, as well as local cultural squads. The Bangalore unit of IPTA was formed in 1941, the Bombay unit in 1942, and the all India organization in May 1943. IPTA was not formally the cultural front of the Communist Party, but in practise it functioned like one. During the famine, the organization came into its own, as activists and artists graphically detailed the suffering the famine entailed, and, in the process, shaped new forms of art, cultural performance, and political outreach. As they did so, they travelled to different parts of the country, forging new political and artistic ties among themselves as well as their viewers. For women activists, singers and actresses, these efforts allowed novel experiences—performing before enormous audiences; travelling to different parts of the country; training, rehearsing and living with each other and male comrades; and becoming part of experimental artistic endeavours that remain important landmarks in the history of public and political performance in India.

Ania Loomba, Revolutionary Desires: Women, Communism, and Feminism in India

[leohtttbriar]

[...]

[...]

"The Great Indian Vanishing Trick – Colonialism, Property, and the Family in A Midsummer Night's Dream," Ania Loomba

[necromancer-mango]

hey, i just wanted to say thank you for making that survey and putting together all of those resources, it must have taken an incredibly long time and so much effort. im trying to decide where to start with the resources, so i figured id ask if you have any favorites among them? i hope you have a great day : D

 Hi! This is really sweet, I wanted to make sure that if I was gonna be doing a project like this, might as well be thorough.

 I’ll be grabbing from the various documents, these are general things that I specifically want to get across.

So Xiran Jay Zhao does these youtube videos that go into the cultural references in popular Asian media like the Disney Mulan movies and whatnot (If you have time at any point I’d suggest checking them out). More specifically, they did a video in response to the Atlanta spa shootings, specifically discussing the hypersexualization of Asian women, Anti-Asian immigration laws, how Chinese labor was used to build the transcontinental railroad, as well as kind of touching on how the PRC is portrayed by Western journalists and how the ways in which they report contribute to AAPI hate especially due to Covid right now. There is a fundraiser with the video, the names of the victims, and a crap ton of resources so if you just need to jump off from somewhere you can also look at the links in the video description - On Anti-Asian Hate Crimes - And How You Can Help

This article touches on the history of the term Asian American and is basically about the recent AAPI hate crimes - Why This Wave of Anti-Asian Racism Feels Different

If you are not familiar with what Orientalism is, read Edward Said’s Orientalism. There is a brief excerpt that can serve as an introduction to such a topic - Said, Orientalism, Introduction.

There is also an excerpt from Ania Loomba's "Colonialism/Postcolonialism" which specifically talks about how the knowledge we acquire about other people and cultures gets twisted by our own perceptions and biases, and how the West’s perception of “the other” allows the West to assert their own narrative of what “the other” is like historically and culturally, and how in doing so the West makes “knowledge” about other places that is inherently biased as hell.

Continuing with this specific topic, there is the Asians Represent Podcast, who did quite a few episodes on Orientalism in D&D specifically.

Patricia Park's "The Madame Butterfly Effect: Tracing the History of a Fetish" Is a really good article that talks about how Asian women are fetishized. This article does talk about porn, sex, and genitals so I’m giving a general NSFW warning for this, but it is a very comprehensive article. If you don’t want to read this specific one due to the warning, just snag a different one in the Yellow Fever doc.

I’m also going to suggest "The Culture of Cute" by Cathay Lau as well as this one Tumblr post about Chowder from "Check Please" and the tendency for Asian men to be infantilized (If i ever hear about someone calling a Masc/Asian men their “pretty boy”, “baby boy”, or Fem/Asian women “inherently submissive”, “innocent and naive”, hypersexual and “exotic”, or whatever the fuck uwu cinnamon roll bullshit I’m coming for your skeleton).

Writing with color also has this resource - "Avoiding Fetishizing East Asian Men"

I think looking at the fetish/fetishization tag on the writing with color blog is A Good Idea in general, this happens a lot to people of color overall.

There may be a chance that some of you have already seen @/antidotefortheawkward’s  "White is a Mourning Color" comic. If you haven’t here’s a link.

If you want to get into the model minority myth "The Asian American Paradox"  breaks down misconceptions about the myth. There is also Chip Chang’s “Are Asian Americans even people of color?” which talks about how Asian Americans were sort of elevated to like an honorary white status in order to use us as a wedge against other racial minorities.

I would suggest just picking one of the articles on the Colorism and Concepts of Beauty document about colorism if it’s not something you are familiar with, as well as an article about beauty standards. Beauty standards are kind of strange since you can absolutely see a trend of wanting pale skin, larger eyes, etc in East Asia, this existed before the Europeans came knocking so some of it isn’t really “oh they wanna look like white people” but I would argue that beauty standards very much shift towards Eurocentric beauty for the Diaspora in the West. At the same time ppl will fetishize our facial features while also saying that they’re ugly or too strange, It’s really fucking gross.

Check out something on the Martial Race/Warrior Gene and Martial Arts document, the Anime document, and the ATLA and LOK document if you don’t really understand why those documents are there. I’d say, if you don’t know about what China did to Tibet, check some of the articles in the ATLA and LOK document, there are also links about the Laogai camps and Tibet in the Resources to get you started with research doc.

Look at the poc profiles from the Writing with color tumblr, those will be in the Interviews, personal accounts, poc profiles document.

Also if you like slam poetry, I sort of dumped a bunch of links in the specific document but I’ll snag a few.

Alex Dang

"When They Adapt My Life Story"

"Broken Tongues"

Summer Durant

"Future Not Fetish" 

Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan

“This Is Not A Humanizing Poem”

Franny Choi

“POP! goes KOREA!”

Also gonna bump Connor’s "bias, media, and blaseball" article which is not specific to API but I would recommend reading it.  

Also just gonna recommend Fansplaining’s "Race and Fandom Revisited: Part 1" and "Part 2"

[noshitshakespeare]

I would be interested in knowing more of how to understand/approach early modern dramas, Shakespeare especially, but other writers from his time too if you know more about them, fron the angle of race/other. Do you have resources/references on how to approach early modern drama this way? I do realise this might be a broad topic, I'm looking to expand my readings and the way I approach/read Shakespeare as a non-black POC who is very fond of his works.

As you’ve said yourself, this is a really huge topic. And as you may imagine, it’s one that’s been getting more focus now than ever (though it has existed as a topic of interest since at least the 1980s). I don’t think I could do justice to the topic in just Shakespeare, let alone in all early modern drama. But let’s see if I can make a reasonable start. 

Because the term ‘race’ didn’t signify what it does now, and because Shakespeare was living in a time before England established itself as a major centre for slave trade, the first thing to be aware of is the difference of understanding. We can’t unproblematically apply modern standards and notions of race and other any more than we can talk about Shakespeare in terms of our modern understandings of sexuality and sexual identity. This isn’t to say that people didn’t notice colour, as can be seen from the terms like ‘blackamoor’ that were being used, but the question of otherness was, then as now, caught up in the more complex issue of religion, and colonisation. Because the Ottoman empire was one of the greatest powers in the world at the time, and Islam was perceived as a major threat to the European countries, difference in skin colour could also denote a difference in ideology (I talked about this a little in relation to Othello once). But sometimes an equal threat was perceived in those who didn’t look different, but who didn’t hold similar beliefs. 

Given that your question is about otherness in general, this is very relevant, and broadly speaking, we can categorise otherness in terms of 

Those who come from abroad

Those who look different (black, brown, even a slightly different shade of white)

Those who have different belief systems (Jewish people, Islamic people, Catholic people)

Those who look different and have a different belief system. 

What to make of early modern treatments of this difference is very difficult, because there isn’t a homogenous viewpoint. There’s never been a time when everybody thought the same thing, and so one can find all sorts of perspectives on race and otherness in early modern writings. Some are missionary perspectives, seeing difference as a mark of heathenism, and wishing to ‘help’ them by converting them, which went hand in hand with those who considered them subjects to be colonised and ‘civilised’ (see for instance Richard Hakluyt, Reasons for Colonisation, 1585). But there were people even at the time who saw the colonial project for what it was, and denounced the cruelty of the conquistadores (Bartolomé de las Casas’ The Spanish Colonie, translated into English in 1583 is a very interesting read), and even people like Michel de Montaigne, who admired what seemed to be a state of prelapsarian paradise in the people of the new world (see ‘Of Cannibals’). In the other direction, looking from Europe towards the East, the great and far superior power of the Ottoman empire manifests itself in a kind of awe, fear, and Islamophobia, but less in a desire to civilise or convert. Often you’ll even find in military and conduct guides a favourable description of the Ottoman nations to the detriment of European cultures. Part of this might have something to do with the fact that Elizabethan England had treaties with the Ottoman empire, but it might be a tactic to shame to west into better practices too. 

Many scholars now attribute the notion of ‘otherness’ in the early modern period as part of the creation of ideas of ‘nationhood’ in a time when nationalism was really beginning to take shape. It’s an age-old notion and one that Shakespeare points out in Henry V that patriotism and national unity is made stronger by demonisation of others. By contrasting themselves with the Catholics, the Protestants could define their own faithfulness, by contrasting themselves with Jewish and Islam religions, the Christian nations could achieve a more unified identity, and by comparing themselves to the less ‘civilised’. In that sense, sometimes more fears are expressed in relation to those one can’t differentiate easily by physical characteristics, like Jewish people, or, for that matter, Irish people.  In fact, there are some very interesting depictions, for instance in The Merchant of Venice or Marlowe’s Jew of Malta in which the so-called Christians condemn the ‘other’ (Barabas, Shylock) for things they do themselves. Barabas, while playing the stereotypical bogeyman of a Jew, will criticise the Christians for their hypocrisy in the way they quote the bible to steal his money: ‘Will you steal my goods? / Is theft the ground of your religion?’ (I.ii.95-96). Shylock is accused of cruelty for essentially buying Antonio’s flesh, even though the Christians have ‘many a purchased slave / Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules, / You use in abject and in slavish parts’ (4.1.89-91). The same applies to more physically different characters. Aaron from Titus Andronicus is a problematic character, almost a cardboard cutout of an evil villain, but though he’s undeniably cruel, so are so many other characters in Titus, and strangely, while internalising the idea that black = moral blackness, he nevertheless shows more love for his child than Titus (who kills his own son), and questions ‘is black so base a hue?’ (4.2.73)

This is all to say that there’s no single approach to studying race and otherness in Shakespeare and other early modern writers. The treatment of the other will differ depending on the writer, the play, and even between characters in the plays, because it wasn’t a straightforward topic then any more than it is now. So the best thing you could do would be to familiarise yourself with the discourse that surrounds the subject without committing yourself too much to one view as being more correct than another (it’s a good scholarly approach to avoid bias as much as possible). Unfortunately, the books on the subject tend to be quite hardcore academic. But here’s a short list if you want to get started on something. 

Miranda Kaufmann,  Black Tudors: The Untold Story 

This is great for a more general readership and helps to break preconceptions about what the early modern period in England was like, but it’s not strictly about Shakespeare or drama

Catherine Alexander and Stanley Wells, Shakespeare and Race 

An essay collection, which is academic, but gives a broader scope than a monograph

Jonathan Gill Harris, Foreign Bodies

Quite hard, but very good for a wider approach to ‘otherness’ rather than being limited to skin colour. Does focus on drama alongside history. 

Ania Loomba,  Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism

A classic. Again quite hard, and somewhat inflected by modern notions, but very useful. 

Miranda Virginia Mason Vaughan, Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500-1800

Good if you’re interested in performance history and the actual presentation of blackness on stage, including blacking up. 

Kim Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England

Hardcore academic stuff, and more history-based about the beginnings of the colonial project and slavery. 

Patricia Akhimie, Shakespeare and the Cultivation of Difference: Race Conduct and the Early Modern World  

Covers that question of building national identity and deliberate emphasis of race or difference.

Mary Floyd-Wilson, English Ethnicity and Race in Early Modern Drama

Like the one above, this is broadly about the way English ethnicity is created by othering. 

Sujata Iyengar, Shades of Difference: Mythologies of Skin Color in Early Modern England

Deals with the ways early modern people understood colour in comparison to our own notions. 

Nabil Matar,  Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery

Looking eastward and southward at the relationship between Europe and the Ottoman empire as well as Africa

Daniel Vitkus,  Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean

Another work on the relation between England and Islam, and deals very well with the British sense of inadequacy in comparison to the Ottoman Empire, as well as their fears about others who don’t have distinctly racial characteristics.

Jerry Brotton,  This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World

A history book that charts the incredible trade and political relationship the court of Elizabeth had with the Ottoman Empire. 

Ayanna Thompson,  Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America

Jumping to the present, this is more about how Shakespeare is used in America now, especially focusing on pop culture and the representation of racial issues.

For a more casual approach, and one that’s about as up-to-date as can be, you could check out the #ShakesRace hashtag on Twitter. All the scholars and theatres are using it for discussion, or for advertising new books, new conferences, talks and podcasts on this subject, though the focus is, as you may imagine, more on colour than otherness more generally. 

[munkamouse]

My Brother is experiencing a political awakening! Hooray! To celebrate, here is a hodgepodge of some PDFs I have archived, since I dug them up anyway. 

On Action:    “Prepare and Repair: taking action and keeping safe at rallies, protests, and direct actions" 

"Beating the Fascists; The untold story of antifascist action" by Sean Birchall  

On Race:   

"Women, Race, and Class" by Angela Davis 

"This Bridge Called My Back; writings by radical women of color" "The Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by Paulo Friere 

"Critical Race Theory An Introduction” Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic

"Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston 

"Medical Apartheid" by Harriet A. Washington 

"Colonialism/ Postcolonialism" by Ania Loomba

On Capitalism: 

"Capitalism Realism: Is there no alternative?" by Mark Fisher

"Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber

[lo-lynx]

Dorne and the sexualised other

TW: Racism, sexism

Long time, no post! Life got in the way, I haven’t really had the time to sit down and write things like this for fun. But here’s some new analysis, this time about A Song of Ice and Fire! In George RR Martin’s world of A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF) the reader can find many aspects that rings true even in our (unfortunately?) dragon free world. Some of those are the sexism and racism that characters face. In this text I want to focus on one such, namely the way characters from the ASOIAF kingdom of Dorne are described. By analysing the sexualised racism levelled at Dornish characters I don’t mean to say that George RR Martin is racist, if that is the case is a whole other discussion, but I want to show how he has incorporated that aspect from our world into ASOIAF. Some day I might write a similar text on how the culture of the Dothraki is described, or that of the Summer Isles. Here I’ll just quickly touch on the Summer Isles, but the main focus will be on Dorne and how characters from Dorne is described in relation to gender, sexuality and race.

Many researchers have studied how colonialist discourse have influenced how the sexuality and gender of people from different parts of the world are viewed (Loomba 2005, 152). Indigenous women from the Americas and Africa were often portrayed during colonial times in art etc as naked and close to nature, while women from the “Orient” were often described as clothed in riches. At the same time “Orient” men were often described as feminine and prone to sexual “perversions (ibid, 156). Loomba writes that one reason for this focus on gender and sexuality was the perceived danger of cultural and racial mixing. By demeaning other races/cultures’ sexuality, the race boundaries and power structures could be maintained. This view on the racial other’s sexuality as both exotic and dangerous was hardly contained to Europe during the 19th century, however. As bell hooks writes about contemporary society:

 Certainty from the standpoint of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the hope is that desires for the ‘primitive’ or fantasises about the other can be continually exploited, and that such exploitation will occur in a manner that reinscribes and maintains the status quo. (hooks 2015, 22)

That is to say, in our contemporary society there is still a white longing for the racial other, a longing to experience that which is considered primitive and exotic (ibid, 27). This sexualisation does not, however, eradicate the very real politics of racial dominance (ibid, 28). Rather, as hooks writes, by fucking the other one asserts one’s power and privilege (ibid 36). So, while black men can be fetichised, described as wild, erotic and strong, their bodies are also subjected to daily violence. Black women have also, both historically and today, been the subject of racial fetishization (Hobson 2003). The black female body has been described as wild, savage, and closer to nature than that of the white western woman. So, on the whole, there have throughout our world’s history (and still today) existed several different ways to describe the racial other’s sexuality that in different ways serve to maintain the power differences of white supremacy.

Now, how is Dorne and its inhabitants described in ASOIAF in relation to this? While we are introduced to some of the Dornish characters in the third novel (namely Oberyn and his paramour Ellaria), the fourth novel A Feast with Crows, brings a whole new focus to the kingdom. This begins in the prologue when Leo Tyrell talks to Alleras about his parentage and says: “Your mother is a monkey from the Summer Isles. The Dornish will fuck everything with a hole between its legs.” (Martin 2011, 10). Leo then goes on to call Alleras a “mongrel” (ibid, 11). In both these comments we can see a quite typical of the sexualised view of the racial other that I described above. Alleras’ black mother from the Summer Isles is likened to a monkey, and his Dornish father is described as promiscuous and willing to have sex with anything. The black woman is described as sexual and animalistic, and the Dornish man is described in the way that “Orient” men were often described; as sexually perverted. By doing this Leo Tyrell obviously means to put himself above Alleras and establish his superiority. This is particularly interesting since Leo Tyrell is from a house and region (The Reach) that has been at war with Dorne for centuries (ibid, 267). By creating a racial division between themselves and the Dornish they are perhaps able to legitimise their hatred of them. The next quote I want to look at is also from the point of view of a Reachman, Arys Oakheart: “In the Reach men said that it was the food that made Dornishmen so hot-tempered and their women so wild and wanton”. (ibid, 271) This is of course also in line with how men of colour are described as wild as strong, and women of colour as exotic and sexual. It’s also interesting in light of how Arys in this very same chapter longs after the Dornish princess Arianne, who is described both as very sexual, exotic and richly clad, thus embodying several stereotypes of racial other women. Arys being attracted to this “exotic” woman can be seen as a case of him wanting this fetichised racial other, someone who is part of a group that has been sexualised by his countrymen in order to claim superiority over them. As bell hooks says, by sexualising the other one establishes dominance and power of them. I’m not saying that is what Arys is consciously trying to do in this instance, but that he has internalised the views of Dornish people that he has been brought up with.I have here tried to show how views of the racial other from our own world seems to be in use in the world of ASOIAF as well. Dornish characters are sexualised and described as wild, almost animalistic. In general characters of colour seems to be described as more sexual, closer to nature, less civilised. This is very similar to how colonial discourses have been used to legitimise racial oppression in our own world. Much more could obviously be written on this topic, but for now this is how I will end this text.

References

Hobson, Janell. 2003. ‘The “Batty” Politic: Toward an Asthetic of the Black Female Body’ Hypatia. 18(4):87-104

hooks, bell. 2015. ”Eating the other: Desire and Resistance.” In Black Looks: Race and Representation, ed. by bell hooks. Routledge: New York. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Loomba, Ania. 2008. Kolonialism/Postkolonialism: En introduktion till ett forskningsfält. Translation Oskar Söderlind. 2 ed. Stockholm: Tankekraft. [This is the Swedish translation of the book Colonialism/Postcolonialism]

Martin, George RR. 2011. A Feast for Crows. Random House: New York.

[princess-of-france]

I was tagged by the lovely @je-suis-em-jee. Thank you! :)

Rules: tag 9 people you’d like to get to know better

Top 3 Ships: Henry V/Catherine of Valois, Emma/Knightley from Emma, Mary/Matthew from Downton Abbey

Lipstick/Chapstick: Matte lipstick, always

Last Song: “What This World Is Coming To” (Nate Ruess, feat. Beck)

Last Movie: Little Women (dir. Greta Gerwig)

Reading: Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism (Ania Loomba)

3 Random Things That Make Me Happy:

My Curious Incident cast! They opened in triumph on Friday night, and I love them dearly.

On Thursday, I’m headed to my favorite place in the world, Ashland, OR. (This one is bittersweet, because it’s my last trip to OSF before I move to Raleigh.)

I just ate an ice cream sandwich while listening to my favorite podcast and it was beautiful.

Tagging: @measureformeasure @snug-the-joiner @beingshakespeare @armbandhammock @beatriceinmessina @if-you-come-a-knockin @paleokw @earlymodernlesbian @dragonauri and anyone else who wants to do it!

[beguines]

The feminist dictum "the personal is political" was coined to challenge the privileging of organized or public action and to insist that acts relegated to the domestic and private are crucial to destabilizing and changing the social order. In that sense, its most radical thrust was to question the conceptual bifurcation of these two spheres. However, many strands of feminist scholarship, in describing the 'private' domain excluded by a narrowly understood 'public sphere', have ended up treating the two as distinct. The bifurcation of private and public – a benchmark of liberal thought – is only deepened if we do not also simultaneously insist that the political is also deeply personal. And vice versa. As Nivedita Menon puts it, "the existence of a private realm is dependent on the very discourse which posits its distinction from the public. The 'private', already deeply penetrated by the 'public', is in fact constructed and maintained by it".

Ania Loomba, Revolutionary Desires: Women, Communism, and Feminism in India

[literarystudies]

Hi! Do you have any secondary sources/ critical literature papers on post-colonialism in Nigeria, please? Thank you :))

Yesss I have loads I could recommend! Here are some of my favourites:

Chinua Achebe - English and the African Writer

Chinua Achebe - An Image of Africa

Richard Olaniyan - A History of Oral And Written Storytelling In Nigeria

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - African “Authenticity” and the Biafran Experience

Simon Gikandi - Chinua Achebe and the Invention of African Culture

Ngugi wa Thiong'o - The Writer in a Neocolonial State

Ngugi wa Thiong’o - Decolonising the mind: the politics of language in African literature

Obi Nwakanma - Metonymic Eruptions: Igbo Novelists, the Narrative of the Nation, and New Developments in the Contemporary Nigerian Novel

Omotayo & Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju - Models in the construction of female identity in Nigerian postcolonial literature

Abdul JanMohamed - Manichean Aesthetics

Elleke Boehmer - Stories of Women: Gender and Narrative in the Postcolonial Nation

Biko Agozino and Unyierie Idem - The Militarization of Nigerian Society

Basil Davidson - Modern Africa: a social and political history (chapter 4 and 13 in particular)

Ashcroft et al. - The Empire Writes Back

Also check out Ania Loomba’s work - though she focuses more on postcolonial studies in India, she’s written a lot about the impact of British colonialism in general, which is relevant to Nigerian postcolonial studies. I’m currently reading this one.

Bonus:

a lecture by Gikandi

and this timeless talk by Adichie (though your teacher / professor has probably already made you watch this haha)

Hope this helps! 🌻

[shakespearesglobeblog]

Shakespeare & Race Symposium speakers. 

Our Shakespeare & Race festival culminates in an international symposium - Shakespeare and Race Across Borders: A Scholarly Symposium

This ground-breaking conference brings together scholars from the disciplines of race, Shakespeare, theatre and performance studies to discuss the ways in which race is taught at university, discussed in the critical field and represented in performance.

Keynote speakers for the symposium comprise Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and UCLA, she coined the term “intersectionality” and is a leader in the intellectual movement of Critical Race Theory.

Professor Luke Harris is Associate Professor of American Politics and Constitutional Law at Vassar College and co-founder of the African American Policy Forum.

Professor Ian Smith is a professor of English and teaches at Lafayette College. His current research project, Black Shakespeare, examines Shakespeare’s interest in social and political racial identities.

Professor Ayanna Thompson has written extensively on the subject of Shakespeare and race. Ayanna is the 2018-19 President of the Shakespeare Association of America and Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies at Arizona State University.

Professor Arthur L. Little is an Associate Professor of English at UCLA and author of numerous articles on Shakespeare, race and justice.

Professor Kim F. Hall (Barnard College) will also be on the panel. Kim is Lucyle Hook Professor of English and Professor of Africana Studies at Barnard College, University of Colombia. Kim delivers this year’s Sam Fellowship Lecture. 

Other keynote speakers:

Professor Devon Carbado teaches at UCLA School of Law and has won numerous teaching awards, including the inaugural Fletcher Foundation Fellowship.

Professor Ania Loomba is the Catherine Byson Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania where she researches and teaches early modern literature, race and feminist theory.

Professor Joyce Green MacDonald is the Associate Professor of English at the University of Kentucky.

See the website for a full list of speakers.

[expressionisfree-blog]

Living Dolls.

I strongly agree with the blog post ‘Art Kills Sex-drives and is Anti-                 Feminist?’ For many reasons, I also hold the view that pornography should not be considered an art. Moreover, I think that we can also link this in with last week’s topic on representation as we often see women represented as a sort of living doll in today’s society. Pornography dehumanises women encouraging those who are watching to view women as sexual objects. However, I believe that this is not only limited to the pornography industry but also extends to mainstream media in general. As mentioned in the blog ‘Is Beauty Wrong?’ we see clearly for instance the effect of beauty contests on the representation of women as mere commodities to be judged on something as insignificant as their physical appearance.

In a survey undertaken by one thousand woman on the representation of women in the media by the Geena Davis Institute and JWT London shows, Dan Solomon asserts that over three-quarters of women agreed with the statement “the sexualization of young girls and women creates the idea that if they aren’t pretty, they don’t matter” and that they are taught to believe that ‘their bodies are their primary source of value.”

Therefore, it would appear that society’s representation of women is demeaning and potentially harmful as they are pressurised into looking and acting a certain way. Women are constantly exposed to the idea that this must adhere to a certain criteria in order to be consider ‘normal’. They must dress a certain way, be thin but still have curves, listen to specific music, have a successful career and the list goes on. They are constantly pressurised into socially constructed idealised representation of what a woman ought to be like.

This week, I was particularly interested in the extract from Roddy Doyle’s 1996 novel The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. Here we see the main character Paula wrestling with what she knows deep down to be true, in this case that she does not deserve the brutal sadistic treatment she receives from her husband, with what she has been taught to believe which is that she has brought this nightmare of a marriage on herself. We see her bitterly recalling her position as “a young, attractive woman with a loving attractive husband who was bringing home the bacon with a smile on his handsome face.” (Roddy, 168) We see her experiences transform from this flawless version of a conventional marriage to a woman absolutely broken by the abuse that she receives, “I was brainwashed and braindead, a zombie for hours, afraid to think, afraid to stop, completely alone (176)”. She begins to resent herself as her view of herself changes from this attractive figure to someone who is “wet and fat and white” (171). She continues “He hated what he saw…I told him I’d soon have my figure back, after the baby was born (172).” It is almost as if she is blaming herself for no longer fitting society’s ideal of a ‘perfect woman.’

Paula’s struggle to present herself as a victim is seen throughout, “But sometimes I can’t help thinking that I could have avoided it…Instead I provoked him. And now, here I am (169)” It is as if she believes that her sole purpose was to serve him. Is this what women are led to believe? That there place in society is to meet the needs of men? Even Paula, who has been viciously abused, is unable to present herself as innocent. She is still convinced that she is somehow at fault and that he is blameless, “I needed him to punish me. I was hopeless and stupid, good for only sex… (177)”

This representation of women as ‘good for only sex’ is seen in today’s society in many ways including in advertising but especially in pornography. This idea of women as being completely submissive to men, however, is most certainly not a new concept. We see women struggling against the representations of their gender throughout the ages. An example is in the Victorian writing “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning in which the duchess is murdered for not fitting the model of society’s perfect wife. She simply does not fit the mould of the passive subordinate wife of the Victorian era and therefore must be disposed of.

It is seen also in Shakespeare’s Othello. Iago is able to manipulate Othello’s perception of Desdemona until he views her as no longer his virtuous wife but rather an unfaithful whore: “Impudent strumpet!” (4.2.80) Iago is able to play on the common representation of Italian women at the time as sexually decadent in order to heighten Othello’s suspicions. Indeed, Ania Loomba, in Othello, Race and Colonialism states “Venice was repeatedly pictured as a city full of whores”. As the play goes on, Iago’s misrepresentation of Desdemona proves too great causing Othello’s entire view of his wife to become completely distorted leading to her tragic demise. Shockingly, it has been argued that Desdemona was the one at fault due to the fact that she essentially went against her expected gender role. Phillip C Kolin, Othello New Critical Essays points out that “Desdemona’s fractious naysayers have assailed her for a host of wrongdoings, including disobeying her father; backchatting with Iago in act 2.1; lying to Othello about the handkerchief; pressing Cassio’s suit with unflattering ardour; admiring Lodovico as a ‘proper man’ in act 4.1…Several critics cite Desdemona for violating Elizabethan/Jacobean law and propriety by denying her father and running off with the Moor.” Thus it would appear that some people believed that Desdemona was simply being punished for failing to comply with the Jacobean ideal of women and therefore consequently also failing to adhere to the common representations of women at that time.

This clearly shows that women throughout time have had to fight against the representations of themselves in society whether it be the perfect subordinate woman of eras such as Jacobean and Victorian society or the sexual ‘living doll’ of modern society portrayed particularly in the pornography industry. It is an ongoing battle that is ever-changing and ever-lasting.

Bibliography

Soloman, Dan. “New Study On The Representation of Women In Media Sadly Confirms What We Already Knew” FastCompany. February 24 2017. Web. Accessed 20 November 2017

Doyle, Roddy. The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. London: Penguin Books, 1997. Print.

Browning, Robert. ‘My Last Duchess.’ Dramatic Lyrics. London: Dodo Press, 2009. Print

Shakespeare, William. Othello. New York: Oxford World’s Classics, 2006. Print.

Loomba, Ania. Shakespeare, Race, and Colonisation. USA: Oxford University Press, 1998. Print.

Kolin, Phillip. Othello New Critical Essays New York and London: Routledge, 2002. E-book.

 -Shannon Wylie

[dusunumsel]

Edebiyat, Kolonyalizm ve Postkolonyalizm

“…Burada senin cesaretinden laf açmanın tam da sırası/ Kalabalık caddelerde hürlüğün şarkısına katılırken ki/ Padişah gibi cesaretti o alımlı değme kadında yok/ Aklıma kadeh tutuşların geliyor/ Çiçek Pasajında akşamüstleri/ Asıl yoksulluk ondan sonra başlıyor/ Bütün kara parçalarında/ Afrika hariç değil,” diyor şair, bir girizgah yapmanın zorluğunu sezinleyince hemen onun dizelerine sığınıyorum fakat genişletmek gerek, ‘dahil’ olanları; Asya, Okyanusya belki Güney Amerika, vesaire... Yelkenler fora edilmiş, büyük bir iştahla ilerliyor batılı us, dünyanın bilmem neresine, karanlığın bağrına, baharatın kokusuna, ipeğin yumuşacıklığına. Küreklerin yerini buharlı çarklar alıyor, iskorbütten ölen denizci sayısı giderek azalıyor, büyüyor küçük kıtanın hoyrat elleri, zihni, midesi. Kendine yeni ufuklar bulmak hasretiyle dolup taşıyor, merak ediyor; yabanı, vahşiyi, ilk insanı! Avrupa kendi tinini bilgiyle keşfediyor. Bilgi, hem bir kalem hem bir kılıç batının elinde, hem ışık, hem karanlık, hal böyle olunca işin seyri değişiyor. Uygarlık, üst bilinç, modernite… Batı ahlaki bir görev üstlendiğini bahane ederek, kendi içinin karanlığını keşfe çıkıyor. Çok öncesi, daha Ortaçağ’ın karanlık bulutları henüz Avrupa’nın üzerindeyken, yeni kıta Amerika keşfediliyor ve nice keşif, talan, yağma. Bu keşifler sayesinde bir başkası ile karşılaşıyorlar, ötekiyle. Kıyım sürüyor, kıyım dinince asimilasyon başlıyor. Gayatri Spivak bu süreci “ötekinin asimilasyon yoluyla tanınması” olarak betimliyor, dünyanın “uygarlaşması,” etnosantrik bir temsil ya da sahneye koyma yoluyla gerçekleşiyor. Batılı us, epistemolojik ve ontolojik olarak ayrı biri olarak tanımlıyor ötekiyi ve onu ‘insan’ kılma gayretine girişiyor! Sonra bir daha büyük bir merak baş gösteriyor, seyahatler artık sadece kolonileşmek üzere, zenginliği sömürmek adına yapılmıyor, böylelikle ‘öteki’ imgesi zihinlerde dolaşmaya başlıyor, zihinlerden kitaplara, resimlere, heykellere taştıkça temsilleri çeşitleniyor ‘öteki’lerin. Haremler, arzusu dinmeyen kadınlar, hamamlarda sürdürülen sefahat… Hugo, Goethe, Nerval, Flaubert kalemleri ile bu yeni keşfi ölümsüzleştiriyor. Louis Massignon gibi kimileri Doğu’nun tahayyül edilen, resmedilen gibi olduğunu kabul etmeyip bunların birer önyargı olduğunu ileri sürüyor ama arzunun çığlıklarına yenik düşüyor cılız sesleri. Oryantalizm, Doğu'yu işaretleyerek Batı'yı merkez haline getiriyor. Ereği gerçek oluyor böylelikle. Koloniler, sömürünün, zulmün başkenti oluyor. Kan oluk oluk akıyor. Kara kıta, tamtamlarına vurarak şarkılarını söyleyen insanların kıtası olmaktan çıkıyor. Werner Herzog’un ‘Fitzcarraldo’ filminde olduğu gibi, halatlara yapışan eller yalazlanıyor, nasır tutuyor öfkeler. Vaziyetleri ve bahtları en az derileri kadar kara insanlar bu zulmü yaşıyorlar uzun yıllar. Batının batı ile savaşında bile kurban ediliyor nicesi, milyonlarca insanın kanı, kara toprağın üzerinde kan çiçeklerini yeşertiyor. Batı sahillerinden Afrika’nın içine bir hançer gibi saplanan Kongo Nehri, bütün zehrini avına boca etmek isteyen bir yılan gibi kıvrılarak özgürce akarken, batılı us onu gafil avlıyor, zehri kendi içine akıtıyor kara kıta. İkinci Leopold’un gemileri nehir yatağında, beyaz gövdeleri sık ormanların arasında dolanmaya başlıyor. Bir vakit sonra Joseph Conrad, uçları mızrak gibi sivriltilerek göğe bakan bıyıkları ile bu coğrafyaya ayak basıyor. Uzun, yorucu yürüyüşler, notlar, dinlenilenler, görülenler… 1902 yılında Conrad, seyahatinden bir hikaye yaratarak yayınlıyor “Karanlığın Yüreği.” Yazdıklarım boyunca vurguladığım ‘karanlık’ Conrad’ın ilhamıyla... Kitap büyük tartışmalara sebep oluyor. “Manzara resminde ressamın ağacın büyüdüğü toprakla olan ilişkisini, toprağınsa gökyüzüyle ilişkisini yakalamış olması gibi, Karanlığın Yüreği’nin sanatı da beyaz adamın Afrika’nın sömürülmüş barbarlığıyla olan huzursuz, rahatsız ve gerçekdışı ilişkisini sonsuz sayıdaki perdeleriyle yakalamasından kaynaklanır; Avrupa’nın dizginlerinden kurtulmuş, tamamen silahlandırılmış ve tropik ülkelere “aydınlık güçlerin elçisi” olarak “sömürge ırklardan” kar sağlamak için gönderilmiş beyaz adamın disiplininin çürüyüşünün ince bir tahlilini yapar,” diyor Edward Garnett kitap ile ilgili olarak. Böylelikle yazarın bir hiciv girişiminde bulunduğunu söylüyor, buna benzer birçok yaklaşım geliştiriliyor. Edebiyat eleştirmenleri ve konunun uzmanları Conrad’ın eserinin muazzamlığını vurgulasalar da hikayenin temeli olan sömürgecilik meselesinden ziyade, dilin, üslubun harikuladeliği üzerine eğiliyorlar ya da Conrad’ın ustaca sömürgecilik eleştirisi yaptığını yazıyorlar. 18 Şubat 1975’te Massachusetts Üniversitesinde Nijeryalı yazar Chiuna Achebe, batı edebiyat kanonunun övgülere mazhar olan eseri “Karanlığın Yüreği”ni yerden yere vuruyor, Conrad’ın “kör olasıca bir ırkçı” olduğunu ve romandaki ırkçı göndermelere duyarsız kalan eleştirmenlerin de bu ırkçılığa ortaklık etiğini söylüyor. “Karanlığın Yüreği Afrika’yı “öteki dünya” olarak gösterir: Avrupa’nın ve dolayısıyla medeniyetin karşıtı; insanın yüce zekasının ve adabının coşkulu bir hayvanlık tarafından alay konusu edildiği bir yer. Kitap Thames Nehri’nde başlar; bu sakin ve huzurlu ırmak “günbatımında kımıltısız, kıyılarında yaşayan ırka çağlar boyunca yaptığı hizmetlerden sonra (…) dingin ağırbaşlılığı içinde yayılıyordu.” Ancak asıl hikaye Kongo Nehri, yani Thames’in tamamen zıttı olan bir yerde geçmektedir. Kongo Nehri bir “muhterem nehir” değildir. Kimseye hizmet etmemiştir ve tatlı bir emeklilik hayatı sürmemektedir. Irmak boyunca ilerlemenin, “dünyanın yaradılışının ilk günlerine (…) doğru yol almak gibi” olduğunu yazar. Yani Conrad iki nehrin birbirinden çok farklı olduğunu, birinin iyi, birinin kötü olduğunu mu söylemektedir? Evet, ama asıl mesele o değil. Conrad’ı kaygılandıran farklılık değil, altında yatan hısımlık, ortak soy düşüncesidir. Çünkü Thames de bir zamanlar “dünyanın karanlık yerlerinden biriydi.” Şimdi ise o karanlığı alt etmiştir, gün ışığındadır ve huzur içindedir. Ancak ilkel akrabasını, Kongo’yu ziyaret edecek olsa unutmuş olduğu karanlığının ucube yankılarını işitmesi, doğduğu dönemin cinnet haline geri dönmesi işten bile değildir,” diyen Achebe tartışmalara kapı aralıyor. Bana kalırsa metnin ırkçılık dozu bir hayli fazladır, esasen yazarın eleştirmek yerine bu fikirlere sahip olanın kendisi olduğunu sezinlememe karşın Conrad’ın diğer yapıtlarını esaslı bir biçimde değerlendirmeden doğrudan bir saptama yapmak bir hayli zor. Conrad’ın kitabındaki ‘kuzeyin güneyi fethi’ temasını tersine döndüren ise Tayeb Salah’ın “Kuzeye Göç Mevsimi” adlı yapıtı. Salah, ustaca bir kurgu ile kara kıtanın fatihini yaratıyor. Kimi eleştirmenlere göre Salah’ın karakteri İsa peygambere benzer; kitapta bahsi geçen bir babası yoktur, akrabası, komşusu yoktur, yalnızca annesinden bahsedilir kitapta, dolayısıyla tanrının oğludur fakat dünyaya iyilik, güzellik ve doğru ahlakı buyurmaya gelmemiştir. Bütün güneyliliği ve egzotikliğine rağmen batının şeytani aklına sahiptir o tıpkı “Karanlığın Yüreği”ndeki Kurtz’un sömürme iştahının, bütün aklına rağmen ilkel benliğinin vahşiliğine dayanması gibi. Sömürgeciliğin bıraktığı mirası sorunsallaştıran bir yapıttır. Sorunsallaştırırken bir tersine okumaya başvurur. Kitapta şöyle bir bölüm bulunmaktadır: “…Diz çöktü ve ayağını öptü. ‘Sen, Mustafa, benim sahibim ve efendimsin’ dedi. ‘Ve ben Suzan, senin kölenim.’ Ve böylece, sessizce, ikimiz de kendi rolümüzü seçtik. O köle kız olmuştu ben de onun sahibi. Banyoyu hazırladı, içine gül esansı döktüğü sularla yıkadı beni. (…) aba giydi ve başörtüsü taktı, göğsüme, bacaklarıma, boynuma ve omuzlarıma masaj yaptı. Emir verircesine ‘Gel buraya’ dedim. ‘Emredersiniz efendim’ dedi ince bir sesle. Fantezinin, sarhoşluğun ve deliliğin içinde can çekişirken onu aldım o da kabul etti.” Mustafa Said’in buyurgan hali onu Kuzeyli kadınlar karşısında bir tanrı kılar, tıpkı Conrad’ın kahramanın güneyli kadınlar nezdinde tanrılaşması gibi fakat tanrılaşarak ironik bir biçimde sömürgeciye dönüşür. Ania Loomba, sömürülen siyahi halkın sömürgeciye dönüşmesinin sebebini Frantz Fanon’un tespitine başvurarak açıklar: “Fanon, eril çocuğun annesini arzuladığı Ödipal senaryo yerine, siyah adamların beyaz kadınlara sahip olma fantezisini kolonyalizmin birinci sahnesi olarak önerir: ‘Kıpır kıpır ellerim şu beyaz göğüsleri okşadıklarında, beyaz medeniyeti ve saygınlığı kavramakta ve onları bana ait kılmaktadır.” Böylelikle siyahi adam beyaz kadına sahip olarak, beyaz kadına ait kültüre ve onun üzerinde yaşadığı topraklara da sahip olduğu kanısına varmaktadır. Mustafa Said, zekası ile büyüleyerek etrafını sardığı beyaz dünyayı ‘penisi ile fethetmeye girişecektir.’ Mustafa Said gücünü batılı ustan alır ve yine onun bedenini ve zihnini ele geçirmeye girişmiştir. Kitaplığı batı kaynakları ile doludur, Edward Said’in ifadesiyle Mustafa Said “İngilizlere, İngilizce okuyup yazarak meydan okuyan savaşçıdır.” Kimi düşünürler Mustafa Said’in “kendi cinsel fetihlerini, sömürgeciliği tersine çeviren, sömürgecilik karşıtı bir direniş aracı olarak” yorumlanması taraftarıdır. Edebiyatın bu iki başyapıtı üzerinden bir dönüşümü izlemek elbette ufuk açıcı ancak tarihin kanlı mirasının yansımalarını bugün hala başka biçimlerde görmek mümkün, kesin kopuşlardan, ayrılışlardan ziyade bir süreklilik arz eden tarihsel serüvenimizde oryantalizmin, kolonyalizmin ve postkolonyalizmin meselelerinin tartışılır olması ve insanlık serüveninin bu geçmiş birikimi tartarak ilerlemesi büyük önem arz etmektedir. Read the full article

[bigyack-com]

Mira Nair, Naseeruddin Shah among 300 signatories extend support to students protesting CAA-NRC: ‘Our silence ends now’ - bollywood

More than 300 prominent individuals, including filmmakers Mira Nair, Nandita Das, actors Naseeruddin Shah, Ratna Pathak Shah, Jaaved Jafferi, Homi K Bhabha, Partha Chatterjee, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, TM Krishna, Ashish Nandy, and Gaytri Chakravorty Spivak, among others, have signed an open letter, expressing their solidarity with the students of India who have been protesting Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and against the National Register of Citizens (NRC). Extending their support to the students, the signatories said in their letter, “We stand in solidarity with the students and others who are protesting and speaking out against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and against the National Register of Citizens (NRC). We salute their collective cry for upholding the principles of the Constitution of India, with its promise of a plural and diverse society. We are aware that we have not always lived up to that promise, and many of us have too often remained silent in the face of injustice. The gravity of this moment demands that each of us stand for our principles.” Also read: Shah Rukh Khan: ‘I am a Muslim, my wife is a Hindu and my kids are Hindustan’. Watch video Here is the complete text of the letter: An open statement from members of the Creative and Scholarly Community in IndiaWe are artists, filmmakers, writers and scholars. Our work reflects people’s lives, struggles and hopes. We offer our dreams to everyone.But what dream can show us the way in the midst of the present nightmare? Our vision for this nation demands that we speak up now, in the name of our democracy and the constitution that protects it. We stand in solidarity with the students and others who are protesting and speaking out against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and against the National Register of Citizens (NRC). We salute their collective cry for upholding the principles of the Constitution of India, with its promise of a plural and diverse society. We are aware that we have not always lived up to that promise, and many of us have too often remained silent in the face of injustice. The gravity of this moment demands that each of us stand for our principles.The policies and actions of the present government, passed quickly through parliament and without opportunity for public dissent or open discussion, are antithetical to the principle of a secular, inclusive nation. The soul of the nation is threatened. The livelihoods and statehoods of millions of our fellow Indians are at stake. Under the NRC, anyone unable to produce documentation (which, in many cases, does not exist) to prove their ancestry may be rendered stateless.  Those deemed“illegal” through the NRC may be eligible for citizenship under the CAA, unless they are Muslim.Contrary to the stated objective of the government, this does not appear to be a benign legislation, only meant to shelter persecuted minorities. The list of exclusions seems to indicate otherwise. Why are minorities from other neighbours like Sri Lanka, China and Myanmar excluded? Isit because the ruling powers in these latter countries are not Muslim? It appears that the legislation believes that only Muslim governments can be perpetrators of religious persecution. Why exclude the most persecuted minorities in the region,the Rohingya of Myanmar or the Uighurs of China? This legislation only acknowledges Muslim perpetrators, never Muslim victims. The aim is transparent: Muslims are the unwelcome Other.This is state-sanctioned religious persecution, and we will not condone it. In Assam and the Northeast, and in Kashmir, the indigenous identity and livelihood is threatened as never before, and we will not condone it. The response of the government and law-enforcement agencies to the distress of its citizens has been callous and high-handed. India has seen the most Internet shutdowns of any democracy in the world. Police brutality has left hundreds injured, including many students from Jamia Milia Islamia University and Aligarh Muslim University. Several citizens have been killed while protesting. Many more have been placed in preventive detention. Section 144 has been imposed in numerous states to curb protests. We need look no further than Kashmir to see how far this government is willing to go to suppress democratic dissent. Kashmir is now living under the longest Internet shutdown ever imposed by a democratic government. Enough is enough.Those of us who have been quiet in the past, our silence ends now. We will be clear-sighted in our dissent. Like our freedom fighters before us, we stand for a secular and inclusive vision of India. We stand with those who bravely oppose anti-Muslim and divisive policies. We stand with those who stand up for democracy. We will be with you on our streets and across all our platforms. We are in solidarity.” Here is a list of some the signatories: Rahman Abbas, Anvita Abbi, Ajayan Adat, Ramona Adhikari, Faraz Ahmad, Anvar Ali, Zaheer Ali, Lalitha Alilu, Shimit Amin, Jyothi Ananthasubbarao, Vidya Das Arora, Sushila Bahanda, Vikas Bajpai, Ritwik Banerjee, Sudeshna Banerjee, Sumanta Banerjee, Susan Barton, Aamir Bashir, Amit Basole, Rakhi Basu, Dev Benegal, Homi Bhabha, Amit Bhaduri, Madhu Bhaduri, Nabakumar Bhattacharyya, Akeel Bilgrami, Rani Day Burra, Sundar Burra, Meena C. K., Priya Sarukkai Chabria, Suresh Chabria, Amitabha Chakrabarti, Pariplab Chakraborty, Sudhir Chandra, Civic Chandran, Indu Chandrasekhar, R.K. Chandrika, Partha Chatterjee, Shoma A. Chatterji, Salil Chaturvedi, Amit Chaudhuri, Neel Chaudhuri, Vasundhara Chauhan, Rajendra Chenni, Anuradha Chenoy, Kamal Chenoy, Zasha Colah, Naresh Dadhich, Vasudha Dalmia, Sumangala Damodaran, Swati Dandekar, Arpita Das, Nandita Das, Vibha Puri Das, Maya Dayal, Naina Dayal, Deena VJ, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, Sudhanva Deshpande, Meera Devidayal, J. Devika, Asish Dey, Dipak Dholakia, Arundhati Dhuru, Xavier Dias, Anju Dodiya, Atul Dodiya, Jean Dreze, Lillete Dubey, Avalokita Dutt, Indranee Dutta, Walter Fernandes, Arunima G., Karen Gabriel, Ramakrishna Gampalahalli, Leela Gandhi, Mridula Garg, Geetika, Amitav Ghosh, Jayati Ghosh, Persis Ginwalla, Roshmi Goswami, Sheela Gowda, Srinivasa Gowda, Meena Gupta, Rajiv Gupta, Atul Gurtu, Rajan Gurukkal, Leela Hansda, Saba Hasan, Zoya Hasan, Sohail Hashmi, Shabnam Hashmi, Vinita Hembrom, Nataraj Honnavalli, M. G. Husain, Shamsul Islam, Sameera Iyengar, Vikram Iyengar, Jaya Iyer, Jaaved Jaferi, Bharati Jagannathan, Jagmani, N.D. Jayaprakash, K.P. Jayasankar, Pervin Jehangir, Dhirendra Jha, Ram Naresh Jha, Mary John, Mary Joseph, Rajesh Joshi, Jane K., Sushi Kadanakuppe Srinivas Kakkilaya, Vimala Kalagar, Priya Kalapurayil, Rina Kamath, Kalpana Kannabiran, Aman Kanwar, Harsh Kapoor, Ram Kapoor, Geeta Kapur, Manju Kapur, Aruni Kashyap, Suhit Kelkar, Sonal Kellogg, Mukul Kesavan, Faisal Khan, Habib Khan, Shah Alam Khan, Devaki Khanna, Ayesha Kidwai, Santosh Kiro, K John Koshy, Mridula Koshy, Teresa Kotturan, Ancilla Kozhipat, Pradip Krishan, Sumi Krishna, T.M. Krishna, Amitadyuti Kumar, Ashutosh Kumar, Kirtana Kumar, Radha Kumar, Sandhya Kumar, Sitanath Lahkar, Basanti Lakra, Jyotsna Lall, Swapna Liddle, Ania Loomba, N. S. Madhavan, Surabhi Sharma, Jatin Sheth, Mira Shiva, Geetanjali Shree, Dilip Simeon, Devika Singh, Savithri Singh, Preeti Sinha, Sachidanand Sinha, Shantha Sinha, Kita Sinku, Jawhar Sircar, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, M. S. Sriram, K. V. Subrahmanyam, Kadayam Subramanian, Sumita, Vivan Sundaram, Sehba Taban, Deepika Tandon, Kiran Tandon, Vikram Tandon, Anand Teltumbde, Anita Thampi, Romila Thapar, P. K. Michael Tharakan, Susie Tharu, Asha Tirkey, Palo Tunti, Ananya Vajpeyi, Vamsi Vakulabharanam, Achin Vanaik, Sankar Varma, Sushma Varma, Sushma Veerappa, Prem Verma, Gauri Vishwanathan, Asha Vombatkere, Sudhir Vombatkere, Salim Yusufji, Ajit Zacharias. Follow @htshowbiz for more Interact with the author @swetakaushal Read the full article

[wksbyks]

No human utterance could be seen as innocent. Any set of words could be analysed to reveal not just an individual but a historical consciousness at work. Ania Loomba, Colonialism / Postcolonialism #wksbyks https://ift.tt/2FXeEmU

[insideanairport]

Aimé Césaire’s “Discourse on Colonialism“

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The publication of "Discourse on Colonialism” in 1955 was simultaneous with the Bandung Conference, which is considered a major event in the history of decolonial thinking and acting. Publication of this short book paved the way for Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. Through this process of evolution, postcolonialism was matured from its Marxian context to a broader and more encompassing discourse. Fanon was a student of Aimé Césaire. Although Fanon is associated with postcolonialism the most, it was Aimé Césaire who paved the way for Fanon, Said, Spivak, and Bhabha. Aimé Césaire’s early engagement with movements such as Negritude, Surrealism and many anti-capitalist organizations led to his political career at Martinique with the support of the French Communist Party (PCF). His intellectual career is intertwined with his political career which lasted until 2001.

In terms of methodology, Césaire is very much a Marxist, yet sometimes he is using Nietzschean (pre-postmodern postmodern) methods concerning science and universalist scientific thinking. He criticized the European and especially French humanists who theoretically justified colonialism and imperialism. The best example that he mentions in the Discourse is Renan, a racist humanist. An idealist philosopher who paved the way intellectually for colonialism. The burning quote that is extracted from Renan is probably the most racist quote I have ever read in academic texts and is taken from a book title La Refonne intellectuelle et morale [The Intellectual and Moral Refound].

Césaire also criticized M. Mannoni’s psychoanalysis thinking (especially regarding colonialism) as well as Bantu philosophy and its inherent racism, which was aimed to monopolize all the glory for the European race. However, in the Discourse, Césaire describes the European humanists as those “chattering intellectuals who are born stinking out of thighs of Nietzsche”. We also have to remember that Nietzsche seriously attacked Renan as comedian of the moral ideal in “On the Genealogy of Morality”.

Reading classical texts by Césaire and Fanon we realize that the history of postcolonial theory is as much entangled with psychoanalysis as it is with Marxism. This is however from an era in which not only intersectionality but the whole movement of poststructuralism and gender studies didn’t exist. The universities and especially the French philosophical establishment were stuck in universalism and scientific objectivity of pure knowledge. 

Césaire is criticizing M. Mannoni’s existentialism. He believed that M. Mannoni was using existentialism to blame the victims of colonization rather than the colonizers. M. Mannoni perceived French government as moderate in solely arresting the Madagascan deputies during the Madagascans revolts of 1947. Maud and Octave Mannoni were a French psychoanalyst couple who were later associated with Lacanian circle. Octave Mannoni spend some time in Madagascar and returned to France after WWII. He was inspired by Lacan and published some psychoanalytic books and articles. Similar to Aimé Césaire’s criticism of M. Mannoni, Octave's book "Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization" was criticized heavily by Fanon:

“[O.] Mannoni argued that all colonization is based on a relationship between psychological types: the authoritative white man and the dependent black one. Fanon began to see how European models of psychoanalysis located all psychotic conditions in individual psyches while ignoring very real material conditions – such as racism or colonialism. Fanon himself would observe that it was the lived experience of the blacks that induced psychotic behavior.” 

"In another psychoanalytic interpretation, Mannoni argued that when the native, black man dreams of guns, they are essentially phallic images. Fanon is outraged at this interpretation of the gun as a mere symbol. One cannot see only symbolism when the threat is very real, he believed. Fanon argued that the rifle in the hands of the colonized (in his dreams) is no Freudian symbol, or phallic metaphor – it is a real rifle he is dreaming of and one which can injure the black body (Black Skin: 79). One cannot lose sight of the real and be trapped within such fancy symbolism.” (1)

Similar to Nietzsche, Fanon shifts the debate from the individual psyche (conciseness) to a social relation. "The Oedipal is not, in the case of the Africans, rooted in the family (as Freud famously proposed), but in the social.” Pramod K. Nayar writes in his book on Fanon.

Today, we know that racism is not always as simple as a binary of black/white, yes/no, rather it’s a huge spectrum of cultural understanding-misunderstanding by the privileged whites that leads to hate and violence. Racism is not only the skinhead white nationalism of Neo-Nazis in Europe and KKK in the United States or the neo-fascist Islamophobes in India. Theoretical racism was and still is present in many universities and institutions around the world. In the context of post-war Europe, Césaire identified racism and Nazism as something within each and every European. He reminds us that its always easy to blame Hitler, Rosenberg, Jünger, and others. As Hitler is someone who made the white man look bad, who humiliated the white people in the most immediate way. He generated the killing and barbarism that was reserved for the non-whites.

“Yes, it would be worthwhile to study clinically, in detail, the steps taken by Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished, very humanistic, very Christian bourgeois of the twentieth century that without his being aware of it, he has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his demon, that if he rails against him, he is being inconsistent and that, at bottom, what he cannot forgive Hitler for is not crime in itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation of man as such, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the blacks of Africa.” (2)

Europe is Moving Toward Savagery

In 1955 Césaire challenged the notion of White Supremacy, asserting that there is nothing superior in whites. He had argued that all non-Western societies were superior to European ones. (3) Césaire talked about the boomerang effect of colonialism. When the “civilized” people want to forcefully civilize the natives they in return become the savages through this forceful violence. He argues that the Idea of barbarism is a European invention. He places ‘Africa’ as the binary opposite of ‘Europe’. He comes up with the iconic mathematical equation Colonization = Thingification, which as its predicate we can discern the archaic colonial justification of colonialism; Christianity = civilization and Paganism = savagery. We all have seen the recent video of a white drunk pastor who is attacking and insulting the black hotel workers in Uganda. That incident can be another visible example of the continuation of this mentality.

Simultaneously, as a Marxist, Césaire analyzed capitalism and bourgeois societies which were very immediately observed in those days of post-WWII. In the Discourse, he asserts that both the Nation and Man is a construction, a bourgeoisie phenomenon. On page 43 he asserts: "I am talking about millions of men in whom fear has been cunningly installed, who have been taught to have an inferiority complex, to tremble, kneel, despair, and behave like flunkeys."

Césaire criticizes knowledge production as well as ethnography as something that only West studies and talks about the rest of the non-Western countries. The ending of the Discourse could have been timelier if he was using the same ending as the interview with René Depestre:

“I remember very well having said to the Martinican Communists in those days, that black people, as you have pointed out, were doubly proletarianized and alienated: in the first place as workers, but also as blacks, because after all we are dealing with the only race which is denied even the notion of humanity.” (2)

Bib.

1. Nayar, Pramod K. Frantz Fanon. s.l. : Routledge, 2013. 2. Césaire, Aimé, Pinkham , Joan and Kelley, Robin D.G. . Discourse on Colonialism. Aimé Césaire, Joan Pinkham, Robin D.G. Kelley : s.n. 3. Loomba, Ania. Colonialism / Postcolonialism (New Critical Idiom). s.l. : Routledge , 2005 (first published 1998).

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[princess-of-france]

20 in 20 Book Tag

Tagged by the luminous @thelibraryiscool. Thank you, angel! ♥

Rules! Choose 20 books you want to read or goals you want to achieve in 2020. That’s it! It can be a mix of books and goals, or 20 books, or 20 goals...it’s up to you. Then tag some friends to play along.

**I’m gonna edit this a bit to include plays, because that’s mostly what I read and I’m coming up on a Restoration project. Here’s 10 and 10.

All for Love; or, The World Well Lost (John Dryden)

Venice Preserved; or, A Plot Discovered (Thomas Otway)

The Provoked Wife (John Vanbrugh)

The Beaux’ Stratagem (George Farquhar)

The Clandestine Marriage (David Garrick)

She Stoops to Conquer; or, The Mistakes of a Night (Oliver Goldsmith)

The Rivals (Richard Brinsley Sheridan)

Adapturgy (Dr. Jane Barnette)

Shakespeare, Race, & Colonialism (Dr. Ania Loomba)

Shakespeare Inside: The Bard Behind Bars (Amy Scott Douglass)

Goals for 2020:

Finish the first draft of Henry V, Part 2 in time for the 600th anniversary of Henry’s and Catherine’s wedding (June 2nd)

Finish the screenplay for my ‘60s film adaptation of Love’s Labour’s Lost

Direct another Shakespeare

Travel to a new place

Lay the groundwork for a Way of the World rep showcase

Learn how to write shorter emails

Read at least one play a week

See at least one play in each town/city I visit

Learn how to cook at least three more meals

Keep in touch with my friends, since none of us are in the same place

Tagging: @lizbennett2013 @measureformeasure @harry-leroy @suits-of-woe @skeleton-richard @dedraconesilet @ardenrosegarden @themummersfolly @stripedroseandsketchpads and anyone else who wants to do it! Only if you want to, obv :)