Nationalism and the Imagination

Nationalism is produced by tapping the most private attachment to ground for the purposes of the most public statecraft. It is predicated on reproductive heteronormativity: birthright. To "naturalize" is to legalize a simulacrum of displaced birth, which becomes an actual birthright for the next generation. Today's globalized world calls for a reinvention of the abstract state-structure for proper constitutional redress still to be available. It must be persistently cleansed of the emergence of nationalism through education. We are looking for a critical regionalism with trans-frontier jurisdiction. The international civil society has no social contract

¿Puede hablar el subalterno?

This article was originally published in Cary Nelson and Larry Grossberg (eds.) Marxism and the interpretation of Culture. University of Illinois Press. Chicago. 1988. Also, in the book, A critique of postcolonial reason. Toward a history of vanishing present. Harvard University Press. Cambridge. There is another Spanish translation published in Orbis Tertius. VI. 1998: 175-235 (Argentina). Translation from English by Antonio Díaz G., student of anthropology at the National University of Colombia. Revised by Santiago Giraldo and María Teresa Salcedo, researchers at ICANH.  Este artículo fue publicado originalmente en Cary Nelson y Larry Grossberg (eds.). Marxism and the interpretation of Culture. University of Illinois Press. Chicago. 1988. Además, en el libro, A critique of poscolonial reason. Toward a history of vanishing present. Harvard University Press. Cambridge. Existe otra traducción al castellano publicada en Orbis Tertius. VI. 1998: 175-235 (Argentina). Traducción del inglés de Antonio Díaz G., estudiante de antropología de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Revisada por Santiago Giraldo y María Teresa Salcedo, investigadores del ICANH

Las humanidades, la democracia y la política del conocimiento en la educación superior

This chapter is divided into three somewhat disjointed parts. I have not tried to create artificial transitions. The first section is an edited transcript of only part of what actually happened at the podium ¿can the subaltern speak?. The second part is something like a prepared paper. The third part is answers to a series of questions generated: how can the humanities produce the intuitions of democracy in the broadest possible race, class- and gender-diversified sector of the population? What is it to teach the humanities? What is the in-built aporia of democracy? How do we confront the inevitable corporatisation of the entire education system? What is the role of the curriculum? What is the relationship between class, race, and liberal education in our countries? What is the relationship between a will to social justice and enforcement? What is it to interpret a history of violence and use it without accusation or excuse within the broadest interpretation of the academy? Why is national liberation not a revolution? How do we combat the anthropocene? Este trabajo está dividido en tres partes de alguna manera inconexas. Mi intención no fue crear transiciones artificiales. La primera sección es una transcripción editada de sólo una parte de lo que realmente sucedió en el estrado, lo orienta la pregunta ¿pueden los subalternos hablar ?. La segunda parte se asemeja a un artículo preparado. La tercera parte contiene las respuestas a una serie de preguntas: ¿De qué manera pueden las humanidades poner de manifiesto las intuiciones de la democracia en el más amplio sector racial, de diversificación de clase y de género de la población? ¿Qué significa enseñar las Humanidades? ¿Qué es la aporía integral de la democracia? ¿De qué manera nos enfrentamos al inevitable corporativismo de todo el sistema educativo? ¿Qué rol tiene el currículo? ¿Qué relación existe entre clase, raza, y educación liberal en nuestros países? ¿Qué relación existe entre una voluntad de justicia social y su ejecución? ¿Qué significa interpretar una historia de violencia y usarla sin acusación o excusa dentro de la interpretación más amplia por parte de los académicos? ¿Por qué la liberación nacional no es una revolución? ¿De qué manera combatimos lo antropocéntrico?

Body burdens: the materiality of work in Rita Wong's 'Forage'

Rita Wong’s work is fundamentally concerned with exploring and exposing the entanglement of economic, subjective and ecological exploitation. Wong is an Asian Canadian writer who, as a critic, has addressed theories of work and labour, both in regards to Asian racialization and labour in literature, and the ‘work’ of the writer within and against capitalism. This chapter, however, focuses on Wong’s poetry, specifically her 2007 collection 'forage'. Much of the poetry collected in forage addresses the social and environmental injustices of global capitalism by following the disguised and mystified routes of supply chains to reveal the materiality of work. The forms and techniques of Wong’s poetry—including ruptured lyric, found text, open field poetics and citation—reveal the movement of materials around the world, at the same time as they attend to the experiences of migrant and indentured workers exposed to noxious materials and degraded environments. Before poetry is discussed, however, it is necessary to introduce the theories of transcorporeality and slow violence. This theoretical framework will help reveal how Wong’s poetry advances a new way of seeing work and exposing capitalist complicity in human suffering and environmental damage by making visible the materiality of labour exchange. Materiality emerges as a fundamental consideration in any theory of work, proposing a counter-narrative to theories of full automation, deterritorialisation and dematerialisation

Traces of the (m)other: deconstructing hegemonic historical narrative in Teat(r)o Oficina Uzyna Uzona's Os Sertões

This article focuses on the way in which renowned São Paulo-based theatre company Teat(r)o Oficina Uzyna Uzona deconstructs hegemonic historical narrative in their 2000 - 2007 25 hour-long production of Euclides da Cunha’s seminal Brazilian novel Os sertões (“Rebellion in the Backlands”), an account of the War of Canudos (1896-1897), the first major act of State terrorism carried out by the nascent Brazilian Federal Government on the country’s subaltern population. The Teat(r)o Oficina’s epic adaptation fuses events from the colonial period, the military dictatorship and contemporary 21st Century São Paulo to relate the repetitive cycles of misappropriation, oppression and resistance that have characterized the history of Brazil and its people over the centuries. However, any fatalistic view of victimhood as an essential aspect of Brazilian subjectivity is radically challenged by the vibrant, rhythmic, material impact of the theatrical super-signs underpinning the performance text. Drawing on Julia Kristeva’s notion of the semiotic - the pre-linguistic, illogical, rhythmical materialism of language intimately related to a primordial relationship with the abject mother – I shall suggest that it is the rhythmic, libidinal force of the performance and its extensive use of the cultural manifestations of Brazil’s subaltern population that imbues Os Sertões with the silent presence-as-absence of the abject Brazilian (M)Other – the Black, Indigenous and Mestiza matriarchal line whose alternative discourse is often barred from hegemonic accounts of Brazilian historiography. Her silent heritage is embodied on stage by the members of the Oficina, who reclaim an alienating national heritage for themselves by transforming the often tragic tale of Brazil’s past into a joyous celebration of tenacious vitality

Estudios postcoloniales : ensayos fundamentales

278 p. : il. ; 22 cm.Libro ElectrónicoEste libro presenta una amplia panorámica de los estudios postcoloniales, un campo heterogéneo de prácticas teóricas que se ha ido constituyendo en el mundo académico anglosajón a partir de la mitad de la década de 1980. Se ofrecen aquí traducidos al castellano dos de los textos fundamentales que pueden situarse en el origen de los estudios postcoloniales —el de Gayatri Spivak, «Los Estudios de la Subalternidad. Deconstruyendo la historiografía » (1984), y el de Chandra Talpade Mohanty, «Bajo los ojos de Occidente» (1985). Las intervenciones de Ella Shohat y Stuart Hall documentan la discusión que se desarrolló, con particular intensidad a lo largo de la primera mitad de la década de 1990, sobre el «significado de lo “post” en el término postcolonial». Los artículos de Dipesh Chakrabarty, Achille Mbembe, Robert Young, Nirmal Puwar, Sandro Mezzadra y Federico Rahola dan cuenta, por último, de la evolución del debate en los últimos años a partir de distintas perspectivas teóricas y posiciones «geográficas».índice INTRODUCCIÓN. Sandro Mezzadra 15 1. Estudios de la Subalternidad. Deconstruyendo la Historiografía. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak 33 2. Bajo los ojos de Occidente. Saber académico y discursos coloniales. Chandra Talpade Mohanty 69 3. Notas sobre lo «postcolonial» Ella Shohat 103 4. ¿Cuándo fue lo postcolonial? Pensar al límite. Stuart Hall 121 5. La historia subalterna como pensamiento político. Dipesh Chakrabarty 145 6. Al borde del mundo. Fronteras, territorialidad y soberanía en África. Achille Mbembe 167 7. Nuevo recorrido por (las) Mitologías Blancas. Robert J. C. Young 197 8. Poses y construcciones melodramáticas. Nirmal Puwar 237 9. La condición postcolonial. Unas notas sobre la cualidad del tiempo histórico en el presente global. Sandro Mezzadra y Federico Rahola 26

Obscurity and Gender Resistance in Patricia Duncker's James Miranda Barry

publication-status: Submittedtypes: Article© 2012 by Taylor & FrancisSince his death in 1865, military surgeon James Barry has alternately been classified as a cross-dressing woman or as an intersexed individual. Patricia Duncker’s novel James Miranda Barry (1999) poses an important challenge to such readings, as it does not reveal any foundational truth about Barry’s sex. Resting on obscurity rather than revelation, the text frustrates the desire to know the past in terms of gender binaries and stable sexual identity categories. Drawing on feminist and queer theorisations of the relation between gender and time, this essay demonstrates that Duncker’s use of obscurity opens up alternative strategies of gender resistance.The Wellcome Trus

Once a feminist: Lynne Segal on Grace Paley’s The Little Disturbances of Man

The following contributions came in response to a request, sent to a number of key figures in feminism today, to write on a text that had been formative for their thinking as feminists. The chosen text could be a theory, a novel, an artwork, a performance, a poem: one that had stimulated, or even revolutionised, their ideas. As we hoped, this project has created a selection of texts central to our many and different experiences as feminists. I used to say that Margaret Drabble's The Garrick Year was the story of my life, in my early twenties, as if I was just a creature of time and circumstance. I read The Garrick Year sometime between October 1965, when my first child was born, and the end of 1967, before my marriage disintegrated. Like the heroine Emma Evans, I married a successful actor, had a child, and followed his career—which in the novel led Emma to Hereford for a summer season of plays