From the Serengeti to the Bavarian forest, and back again: Bernhard Grzimek, celebrity conservation, and the transnational politics of national parks

This short piece focuses on the work of the German “celebrity conservationist,” Bernhard Grzimek, situating it in the context of historical and contemporary debates about the political and ecological importance of national parks. Grzimek’s role in the creation of Bavarian Forest National Park may not be as well-known as his public ministrations on behalf of the wild animals of the Serengeti, but in several ways his work in and for these two national parks, engaging with the fraught politics of the period, was intertwined. The essay looks at some of these overlaps, using them to make the case for national parks as complex geopolitical formations in which human and animal interests alternately collide and converge. The essay also makes the case for national parks as multi-scalar entities that need to be understood—politically and ecologically—in both local and global, both national and transnational terms. Finally, the essay cites the multiple roles of Grzimek to re-examine the ambivalent role of the celebrity conservationist as a media spokesperson and publicity-conscious advocate for the world’s wildlife.Este breve trabajo aborda la obra del “conservacionista” y al mismo tiempo “celebridad,” Bernhard Grzimek, al que se sitúa en el contexto de los debates históricos y contemporáneos sobre la importancia política y ecológica de los parques nacionales. Aunque el papel de Grzimek en la creación del parque nacional del Bosque Bávaro no sea tan conocido como el ejercicio público de su ministerio en favor de los animales salvajes del Serengueti, su trabajo en y por estos parques nacionales, comprometido con las tensiones políticas de la época, estuvo estrechamente ligado. Este ensayo analiza algunos de estos solapamientos y los utiliza para abogar por los parques nacionales como formaciones geopolíticas complejas en las cuales colisionan y a la vez convergen los intereses de humanos y animales. El ensayo también aboga por los parques nacionales como entidades multiescalares que requieren una comprensión—a nivel político y ecológico—en términos tanto locales y globales como nacionales y transnacionales. Por último, el ensayo cita los múltiples papeles de Grzimek para reexaminar el papel ambivalente del “conservacionista- celebridad” como portavoz ante los medios de comunicación y defensor, consciente de la publicidad, de la fauna de nuestro mundo

The neocolonialism of postcolonialism : a cautionary note

Why is it that, in a conspicuously neocolonial global environment, the terrn «postcolonialisrn)) has achieved such widespread acadernic currency? This paper analyzes the current vogue for postcolonial studies in western universities, presenting both a challenge to its commodified intellectual status and a defense of its capacity for cultural critique. «Postcolonialism,» the paper argues, does not imply that the colonial era is over; on the contrary, it confronts the «neocoloniality» of our present times

Globaloney

abstract to come late

Reevaluating the Postcolonial City : Production, Reconstruction, Representation

This foreword begins with a survey of the field of postcolonial studies, from its points of departure to its current situation and future directions. We 10 suggest that the field has long sought to problematize borders, particularly those that separate academic disciplines. The foreword also highlights the material consequences of border crossing for people of colour and other 'Others', examining Caryl Phillips’ case study of the migrant David Oluwale. Oluwale’s abhorrent treatment in Leeds necessitates discussion of the 15 burgeoning new current of postcolonial cities research, to which this special issue adds interdisciplinary perspectives. To explore whether or not global and postcolonial cities are actually synonymous, we return to the origins of postcolonial studies to suggest that the postcolonial city has a longer provenance than the global, and retains the double meaning of ‘post’ as 20 signalling both a coming after and a continuation. We go on to argue that the special issue demonstrates that postcolonial cities exclude even as they embrace, and produce both internal and external marginality. The foreword concludes by adumbrating potential problems with the special issue’s topic: its neglect of economics in favour of culture, its overlooking of the 25 postcolonial rural, and as terminology not coming from within but without

Asian Australian Writing

This special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing, the result of a collaboration with the South Asian Diaspora International Research Network (SADIRN) at Monash University, Australia, engages with Asian Australian writing, a phenomenon that has been staking out a place in the Australian literary landscape since the 1950s and 1960s. It has now burgeoned into an influential area of cultural production, known for its ethnic diversity and stylistic innovativeness and demanding new forms of critical engagement involving transnational and transcultural frameworks. As Wenche Ommundsen and Huang Zhong point out in their article in this issue, the very term “Asian Australian” signals a heterogeneity that rivals that of the dominant Anglo Australian culture; just as white Australian writing displays the lineaments of its complex European heritage, so hybridised works by multicultural writers from mainland China, Vietnam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Singapore and Malaysia can be read in terms of their specific national, ethnic, linguistic and cultural traditions. Nevertheless, this category’s primary location within the space of the host or Australian nation has determined its reception and interpretation. Marked by controversial representations of historical and present-day encounters with white Australian culture, debates on alterity, representational inequality, and consciousness of its minority status, Asian Australian writing has become a force field of critical enquiry in its own right (Ommundsen 2012, 2)

"The Book of Negroes’ illustrated edition: circulating African-Canadian history through the Middlebrow"

This article examines the 2009 deluxe illustrated edition of Lawrence Hill’s Commonwealth Writers’ Prize– and Canada Reads–winning novel The Book of Negroes, originally published in 2007. It relates the story of Aminata, a West African girl kidnapped and sold into slavery, and her experiences on an indigo plantation in the American south, followed by further displacements to Charleston, Nova Scotia, Sierra Leone, and London. In New York, as the Revolutionary War comes to a close, Aminata becomes the scribe for the Book of Negroes, documenting the Black Loyalists, as well as the slaves and indentured servants of white Loyalists, granted passage by the British to Canada. Hill has commented that the Book of Negroes is an important document about which Canadians are largely ignorant. This desire to circulate knowledge about African-Canadian history through the novel is particularly manifest in the illustrated edition of 2009, where a photograph of the Book of Negroes features prominently, along with countless other images and captions which supplement and interrupt Hill’s narrative. This article considers the significance and implications of this “keepsake” or “souvenir” edition, particularly its circulation of knowledge about African-Canadian history through visual pleasure