Cet article interroge la manière dont les idéologies de la guerre froide ont participé à la construction d’un discours public sur la place sociale des femmes dans la Tanzanie nouvellement indépendante, qui se proclame socialiste et non-alignée. Pour ce faire, il retrace les références explicites et implicites au capitalisme, au socialisme et au marxisme dans les discours sur les femmes publiés dans la presse nationale swahiliphone. Ces imaginaires sont mobilisés avant tout pour construire des modèles et contre-modèles féminins, notamment les (...) figures de la paysanne travailleuse et de la séductrice urbaine. Toutefois, alors que l’Année de la femme des Nations unies (1975) encourage le gouvernement tanzanien à préciser ses politiques d’émancipation des femmes, des articles viennent repenser les liens entre cette ambition et les socialismes, mondiaux et tanzanien. (shrink)

MARINA PAOLA BANCHETTI-ROBINO is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Florida Atlantic University. Her areas of research include phenomenology, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and zoosemiotics. Her publications have appeared in such journals as Synthese, Husserl Studies, Idealistic Studies, Philosophy East and West, and The Review of Metaphysics. She has also contributed essays to The Role of Pragmatics in Contemporary Philosophy (1997), Feminist Phenomenology (2000), and Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology on the Perennial (...) Issue of Microcosm and Macrocosm (2006). She co-edited Philosophies of the Environment and Technology (1999) and is currently working on a book-length project entitled The Birth of Science Out of the Spirit of Myth: A Historico-Phenomenological Re-Examination of the Crisis of the European Sciences. BERNARD BOXILL was born in Saint Lucia, West Indies where he received his primary and secondary education. He studied philosophy at the University of New Brunswick, Canada and at the University of California, Los Angeles where he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy in 1971. He has published numerous articles, a book, Blacks and Social Justice (1992), and is professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ED BRANDON was born and educated in England, studying philosophy and linguistics at The University of York, England, and later philosophy at The University of Oxford with the late John Mackie. After teaching in Sierra Leone and briefly in England, he went to teach philosophy of education at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica in 1978. From 1992 he has been attached to a policy unit of the Vice-Chancellery, based at the Cave Hill campus in Barbados, where he has been assisting since 2000 with a new major in philosophy. His academic work can be accessed from http://cavehill.uwi.edu/bnccde/epb/personalpage.html CAROLYN CUSICK is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. She is a founding member of the Phenomenology Roundtable. Her research focuses on feminist epistemology, Africana philosophy, and phenomenology. LEWIS GORDON is President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. He is Laura H. Carnell Professor, the most distinguished chair, at Temple University, where he holds appointments in philosophy, religion, and Judaic studies and directs the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought and the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies. He is also Ongoing Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Government at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. He is the author of several books, including the award-winning Her Majesty's Other Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neocolonial Age (Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times (Paradigm, 2006), An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), and co-editor of A Companion to African-American Studies (Blackwell, 2006) and Not Only the Master's Tools: African-American Studies in Theory and Practice (Paradigm, 2005). CLEVIS HEADLEY is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University, director of the Ethnic Studies Certificate Program, as well as director of the Master's in Liberal Studies. Professionally, he serves as the Vice-President and Treasurer of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. Professor Headley has published widely in the areas of Critical Race Theory and Africana philosophy. He has also published in Analytic philosophy, focusing specifically on Gottlob Frege. PAGET HENRY is Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Brown University. He is the author of Caliban's Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy, Peripheral Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Antigua, and the co-editor of C. L. R. James' Caribbean. Professor Henry also serves as the editor of the C. L. R. James Journal, and has published numerous articles on the political economy of the Caribbean as well as on African, African-American, and Afro-Caribbean philosophy. ESIABA IROBI is Associate Professor of International Theatre/Performance Studies at Ohio University, Athens. His groundbreaking book: A Theatre for Cannibals: Resisting Globalization on the Continent and Diaspora since 1441 will be published by Palgrave Macmillan, London, in 2007. He has been invited to be an External Resident Fellow at the prestigious Dartmouth College Humanities Institute for the 2007-2008 academic year. CHIKE JEFFERS is a graduate student in the Ph.D. program of the Philosophy Department at Northwestern University. His interests are in Africana philosophy, social and political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of religion and aesthetics. He is originally from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. CATHERINE JOHN is Associate Professor of African Diaspora Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Her book Clear Word and Third Sight: Folk Groundings and Diasporic Consciousness in African Caribbean Writing was co-published by Duke University Press and UWI Press in 2003. She has published several articles on Caribbean literature and culture and her current book project is entitled The Just Society and the Diasporic Imagination. She spends her summer working in Woodside, St. Mary, Jamaica helping with a summer school for children and participating in the community's emancipation celebration. KENNETH KNIES is a doctoral student in philosophy at Stony Brook University. His areas of focus are phenomenology and ancient philosophy. He is also a contributing editor for Political Affairs magazine. EDIZON LEN is a photographer and coordinator of the Fondo Documental Afro-Andino at the Universidad Andina Simòn Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador. In 2006, he was curator of the photo exhibit "The Color of the Diaspora" presented at the Cultural Center of the Catholic University of Ecuador and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He is currently completing his doctorate at the Universidad Andina Simòn Bolivar with a focus on Maroon thought. REKHA MENON is Associate Professor of Art History at State University of New York, Buffalo State. She is the author of Seductive Aesthetics of Post Colonialism (forthcoming). Her area of research focuses on current philosophical investigations in colonial and neocolonial aspects of Indian art, artistic/cultural practices and philosophies and their relationship to Western arts and philosophies. Her manuscripts under review are: Ashamed of Our Nakedness, Is There Ever a Naked Body? Ambivalence in Contemporary Indian Expressive Aesthetics and Insatiable Desire. MICHAEL R. MICHAU is a Ph.D. candidate in the Philosophy and Literature Program at Purdue University, and during the 2006-2007 school year, a lecturer in the Department of Comparative Studies and Department of Philosophy at Ohio State University. He is the co-founder and co-secretary of the North American Levinas Society. CHARLES W. MILLS is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He works in the general area of oppositional political theory, and is the author of numerous articles and three books: The Racial Contract (Cornell University Press, 1997), Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race (Cornell University Press, 1998), and From Class to Race: Essays in White Marxism and Black Radicalism (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). MABOGO P. MORE is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He has published articles on African philosophy and social and political philosophy in a number of academic journals, such as South African Journal of Philosophy, Dialogue and Universalism, Alternation, Theoria, and African Journal of Political Science. MARILYN NISSIM-SABAT, Ph.D., M.S.W. is Professor Emerita and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Lewis University. Dr. Nissim-Sabat is also a psychotherapist in private practice. She is the author of numerous book chapters and papers in the fields of philosophy (Husserlian phenomenology), psychoanalysis, feminism, and critical race theory. Citations of her works can be found on her website: marilynnissim-sabat.com. FREDERICK OCHIENG'-ODHIAMBO is a Senior Lecturer of Philosophy and Coordinator of the discipline at The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados. His major research areas are African philosophy and social philosophy. He has published several articles on philosophic sagacity. IVAN PETRELLA is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Miami. He is author of The Future of Liberation Theology: An Argument and Manifesto (SCM Press, 2006) and editor of Latin American Liberation Theology: The Next Generation (Orbis Books, 2005) as well as co-editor of the series Reclaiming Liberation Theology (SCM Press) RICHARD PITHOUSE is a research fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. He is editor of Asinamali: University Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Africa World Press, 2006). SATHYA RAO is Assistant Professor in French translation at the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta, Canada. His research fields include: theory of translation, continental philosophy, postcolonial studies, discourses on Africa, and Francophone cinema and literature. He has published articles in various peer-reviewed journals and written chapters in several collective books such as: De l'Ecrit Africain a l'Oral le Phenomene Graphique Africain, Simon Battestini (Ed.) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2006) and Thèorie-rèbellion. Un Ultimatum, Gilles Grelet (Ed.) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2005). He has a co-edited a book on Francophone African cinema L'Afrique fait son cinema (Montreal: Memoires d'encrier, forthcoming). Sathya Rao is vice-president of the International Non-Philosophical Organisation (INPhO), member of the Canadian Association of Translatology (CATS), coordinator of the research team Poexil, and Secretary of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. He is co-founder of an online journal Alternative Francophone. CATHERINE WALSH is Professor and Director of the doctoral program in Latin American Cultural Studies at the Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador. Her research interests include the geopolitics of knowledge, interculturality and concerns related to the Afro-Andean Diaspora and the production of decolonial thought. Among her recent publications are Pensamiento crìtico y matriz colonial (Quito: Abya Yala, 2005), "Interculturality and the Coloniality of Power. An 'Other' Thinking and Positioning from the Colonial Difference," in Coloniality of Power, Transmodernity, and Border Thinking, R. Grosfoguel, J.D. Saldivar, and N. Maldonado-Torres (Eds.) (Durham: Duke University Press, forthcoming) and "Shifting the Geopolitics of Critical Knowledge: Decolonial Thought and Cultural Studies 'Others' in the Andes," Cultural Studies (forthcoming). KRISTIN WATERS has published widely in the areas of race and gender. Her anthology Enlightened Conversations: Women and Men Political Theorists (Blackwell, 2000) challenges political theorists to be more inclusive of race and gender in their research and teaching. Her book Black Women's Intellectual Traditions: Speaking Their Minds, co-edited with Carol Conaway (University of Vermont Press, forthcoming), addresses the varied intellectual traditions of black women's thought that spans more than two hundred years in North America. She is currently Professor of Philosophy at Worcester State College and Visiting Research Associate at Brandeis University. (shrink)

Postcolonial Liberalism presents a compelling account of the challenges to liberal political theory by claims to cultural and political autonomy and land rights made by indigenous peoples today. It also confronts the sensitive issue of how liberalism has been used to justify and legitimate colonialism. Ivison argues that there is a pressing need to re-shape liberal thought to become more receptive to indigenous aspirations and modes of being. What is distinctive about the book is the middle way it charts (...) between separatism, on the one hand, and assimilation, on the other. These two options present a false dichotomy as to what might constitute a genuinely postcolonial liberal society. In defending this ideal, the book addresses important recent debates over the nature of public reason, justice in multicultural and multinational societies, collective responsibility for the past, and clashes between individual and group rights. (shrink)

This review article puts two recent publications —Existence and Heritage: Hermeneutic Explorations in African and Continental Philosophies by Tsenay Serequeberhan and What Fanon Said. A Philosophical Introduction to His Life and Thought by Lewis R. Gordon—in conversation with Achille Mbembe’s renowned On the Postcolony, first published in French in 2000, in English in 2001, and here reviewed in the 2015 Wits University Press edition. The opportunity for such a literary dialogue to take place across fifteen years is occasioned both by (...) the latest South African edition of On the Postcolony, which in itself invites a fresh reading of Mbembe’s manifesto on postcolonial authoritarianism in Africa, as well as by the different potential outcome of the postcolonial condition that Gordon and Serequeberhan envision and propose with respect to Mbembe. I argue that while Mbembe’s pessimistic portrayal of the postcolonial present is one whereby it is difficult to envision transformation, both Serequeberhan and Gordon’s books offer a rich philosophical terrain from which to imagine possible futures, grounded in notions of dialogue and solidarity, that, however, vary significantly for each author. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Colonial Figures and Postcolonial ReadingSuvir Kaul (bio)Jenny Sharpe. Allegories of Empire: The Figure of Woman in the Colonial Text. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993.Sara Suleri. The Rhetoric of English India. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992.Biologists tell us that racialism is a myth and there is no such thing as a master race. But we in India have known racialism in all its forms ever since the (...) commencement of British rule. The whole ideology of this rule was that of the herrenvolk and the master race, and the structure of government was based upon it; indeed the idea of a master race is inherent in imperialism. There was no subterfuge about it; it was proclaimed in unambiguous language by those in authority. More powerful than words was the practice that accompanied them....—Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (1946)Sara Suleri begins The Rhetoric of English India with a critique of “some of the governing assumptions” of the field of colonial cultural studies, which she sees as subject to a debilitating “concept-function”: “While the representation of otherness has long been acknowledged as one of the must [sic] culturally vexing idioms to read, contemporary interpretations of alterity are increasingly victims of their own apprehension of such vexation. Even as the other is privileged in all its pluralities, in all its alternative histories, its concept-function remains too embedded in a theoretical duality of margin to center ultimately to allow the cultural decentering that such critical attention surely desires” [1]. Suleri enumerates some of the problems attendant upon “alteritist” methods of reading: “While alteritism begins as a critical and theoretical revision of a Eurocentric or Orientalist study of the literatures of colonialism, its indiscriminate reliance on the centrality of otherness tends to replicate what in the context of imperialist discourse was the familiar category of the exotic.” In its single-minded devotion to the analysis of difference, alteritism runs the risk of “representing ‘difference’ with no attention to the cultural nuances that differentiation implies. Instead, alteritism reads to reify questions of cultural misapprehension until ‘otherness’ becomes a conceptual blockage that signifies a repetitive monumentalization of the academy’s continuing fear of its own cultural ignorance” [12].In her account of academic processes, Suleri is surely right in claiming that, “in contravention of the astounding specificity of each colonial encounter... contemporary critical theory names the other in order that it need not be further known” [13], thus providing theoretical models and vocabularies whose easy portability and schematic applicability become the reasons for their institutional success. Now that a loose affiliation of texts, revisionary reading practices, and literary histories are being institutionalized (particularly in departments of English) under the disciplinary rubric of colonial and postcolonial discourse studies, such a questioning of the protean versatility [End Page 74] and analytical usefulness of notions of “otherness” or alterity is timely. 1 In much academic writing, the critique of colonial discourses ends where perhaps it should begin, by positing the many forms of alterity that are invoked in the writing of the imperial, nationalist, or even subaltern subject. Particularly in the work of literary theorists, this dynamic of self and other proves entirely compelling when charted in and through textual representation, and the metropolitan archive, both literally and figuratively open in our moment of decolonization, provides ample opportunity to think about the reiterated motifs of “civilization” and “barbarism,” modernity and its antecedents, trade and empire, warfare and conquest.Yet what is to make such intellectual work “postcolonial” in any significant sense? Today, “postcolonial studies” in the Anglo-US academy often suggests simply the opening up of a new archive or a bringing together, in different ways, of various interpretative or reading techniques developed by poststructuralist theorists. There is little evidence that such intellectual work derives any of its critical functions and polemical urgencies from the present-day cultural and intellectual life of the “postcolonial” nation or nations whose historical legacy is under study. Metropolitan concerns and agendas dictate the nature and process of inquiry, rather than a more appropriate sense of the pressing issues that have priority in the national debates of once-colonized countries. What is required is a different... (shrink)

This book addresses the challenges of living together after empire in many post-colonial cities. It is organized in two sections. The first section focuses on efforts by people of multiple faiths to live together within their contexts, including such efforts within a neighborhood in urban Manchester; the array of attempts at creating multi-faith spaces for worship across the globe; and initiatives to commemorate divisive conflict together in Northern Ireland. The second section utilizes particular postcolonial methods to illuminate pressing issues (...) within specific contexts—including women’s leadership in an indigenous denomination in the variegated African landscape, and baptism and discipleship among Dalit communities in India. In the context of growing multiculturalism in the West, this volume offers a postcolonial theological resource, challenging the epistemologies in the Western academy. (shrink)

This book addresses the challenges of living together after empire in many post-colonial cities. It is organized in two sections. The first section focuses on efforts by people of multiple faiths to live together within their contexts, including such efforts within a neighborhood in urban Manchester; the array of attempts at creating multi-faith spaces for worship across the globe; and initiatives to commemorate divisive conflict together in Northern Ireland. The second section utilizes particular postcolonial methods to illuminate pressing issues (...) within specific contexts—including women’s leadership in an indigenous denomination in the variegated African landscape, and baptism and discipleship among Dalit communities in India. In the context of growing multiculturalism in the West, this volume offers a postcolonial theological resource, challenging the epistemologies in the Western academy. (shrink)

Review of Arvind-Pal S. Mandair, Religion and the Specter of the West: Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality, and the Politics of Translation Content Type Journal Article Pages 499-501 DOI 10.1007/s11841-011-0250-8 Authors Brian K. Pennington, Division of Humanities, Maryville College, 502 E. Lamar Alexander Pkwy, Maryville, TN 37804, USA Journal Sophia Online ISSN 1873-930X Print ISSN 0038-1527 Journal Volume Volume 50 Journal Issue Volume 50, Number 3.

La réflexion sur l’éthique et la déontologie des médias en Afrique de l’Ouest suscite diverses questions. Il convient d’abord de clarifier les concepts pour alimenter le débat qui a ses moments forts, notamment pendant les périodes électorales.D’un côté, les professionnels de l’information, les acteurs des médias mettent l’accent sur la nécessaire liberté de la presse et peuvent être en porte-à-faux dans leur pratique avec la philosophie et les règles de la profession. D’un autre côté, différentes institutions, que ce soit les (...) institutions gouvernementales, la société civile ou de « simples » citoyens, s’appuient sur les médias, mais les interpellent au sujet d’une liberté qui ne saurait être sans responsabilité.Il s’agira donc de contextualiser l’environnement d’intervention des médias et d’examiner les réponses données aux problèmes posés y compris par les citoyens dans leurs rapports aux médias. La mise en place d’une législation et de structures institutionnelles – que ce soit les organes de régulation, dans leur diversité, ou de manière plus problématique, les organes d’autorégulation ou le tribunal des pairs – montre qu’il existe une dynamique à prendre en compte dans le dévelop­pement des médias en Afrique de l’Ouest.Enfin, nous nous attaquerons à quelques défis, qu’il s’agisse de la formation des professionnels, de la pratique des médias en période de conflit ou des technologies de l’information et de la communication, pour montrer que l’éthique et la déontologie sont au cœur du développement démocratique en Afrique de l’Ouest et en sont un élément constitutif. (shrink)

"Partant de ce fait que la philosophie africaine connaît aujourd'hui un important développement et fait l'objet de nombreuses publications, l'auteur examine le champ de questions et l'espace de débat que constitue l'activité philosophique en Afrique pour présenter ici à la fois un "précis" de cette activité et un exposé de ses propres réflexions sur les thèmes les plus importants autour desquels elle s'organise. L'on peut considérer en effet, constate-t-il, que pour l'essentiel quatre grandes questions constituent les enjeux majeurs de la (...) réflexion philosophique africaine : premièrement celle de l'ontologie en relation avec les religions et l'esthétique, deuxièmement celle du temps plus particulièrement de l'avenir et de la prospective, troisièmement celle de l'oralité et des implications de sa transcription/traduction, quatrièmement enfin celle, politique, des socialismes. Ces grandes questions posent aussi celle, fondamentale, et qui les traverse, des langues et de la traduction."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Sugirtharajah, seorang pakar biblika kelahiran Sri Lanka, yang mengajar di Universitas Birmingham, U.K., dan dikenal sebagai godfather penelitian pascakolonial dalam bidang Alkitab, menambahkan suatu karya inovatif lagi pada daftar tulisan-tulisannya yang sudah sangat mengesankan. Perhatiannya untuk suara penafsiran pinggiran sudah diketahui dari karyanya yang paling terkenal, Voices from the Margin (1991). Meskipun Alkitab berasal dari Asia, namun kebanyakan peneliti-an tentang Alkitab dan juga tentang pengaruhnya sepanjang sejarah, terfokus pada Eropa dan Amerika, dengan meminggirkan Asia. Itu mendorong S untuk mengadakan penelitian (...) tentang Alkitab di Asia, khusus-nya sejarah penerimaannya. Ia menyadari bahwa dampak Alkitab terhadap kebudayaan Asia minim bila dibandingkan dengan pengaruhnya atas kehidupan dan kebudayaan di Eropa. Itu menjadi sangat tampak dalam uraiannya tentang peran Alkitab dalam sastra Asia (bab 7) di mana kutipan, tokoh, dan cerita Alkitab jarang muncul, dan bila ada, lebih banyak dipakai sebagai kritik terhadap kolonialisme Barat atau institusi kekristenan.... S mengakhiri tulisannya dengan menegaskan bahwa prinsip sola scriptura, Alkitab saja, tak punya pasar di Asia yang cenderung membaca Alkitab bersama dengan yang lain, Bhagavad Gita, Dhammapada, Analecta (mengapa di sini Alquran tak disebut S?). Hermeneutika Asia yang diselidiki oleh S, menolak kecenderungan kolonial yang ada baik dalam Alkitab sendiri dan lebih lagi dalam interpretasi kekristenan Barat: Kebudayaan dan masyarakat Asia tidak bergantung pada nilai-nilai kristiani untuk pemerintahan dan pengembangan yang baik.... Di Asia Alkitab adalah salah satu di antara banyak teks yang berwenang (hlm. 259). Tugas kita, menurut S, adalah membebaskan Asia dari klaim monopolistis kitab suci tertentu. Tugas ini mendesak di saat para fundamentalis dari semua agama memakai kitab sucinya untuk membenarkan kekerasannya terhadap yang lain. S bahkan mempertanyakan monoteisme yang dapat menekan perbedaan dan mengabaikan kemungkinan pusat-pusat yang banyak (p. 260). Ia tidak menganjurkan untuk kembali kepada penyembahan banyak dewa-dewi tetapi men-dorong kajian terhadap spirit politeistis yang mendorong toleransi, kemurahan hati, dan koeksistensi. Pembaca tentu bertanya: di mana sesungguhnya posisi S di medan diskusi pluralisme dan inklusivisme, berkaitan dengan cara dialog antaraagama, dan ditantang untuk memikirkan posisinya sendiri. S mengakui bahwa banyak hal mengenai Alkitab di Asia masih perlu diselidiki. Lima belas abad pra-kolonial dibicarakan dalam dua halaman saja. Alkitab yang oleh gereja Nestorian tanpa kekuatan apa pun disebarkan ke India, Sumatra, dan China cuma dihormati tetapi tinggal tidak diterjemahkan selama belasan abad; kabarnya hanya diketahui melalui liturgi. Ada pula kesan bahwa Asia dalam karya S terutama Asia Selatan dan Asia Timur. Asia Tengah (bekas bagian-bagian USSR) memang dari awal tidak dimasukkan dalam penelitiannya, tetapi juga Asia Barat Daya dan Asia Tenggara yang multi-agama hampir tidak disentuh. S mungkin tidak mengetahui beberapa penelitian tentang penerimaan Alkitab di Indonesia yang sudah dipublikasikan oleh Lembaga Alkitab Indonesia. Namun demikian, apa yang disajikan sungguh menarik dan penting, serta membuka mata dan jalan bagi penelitian yang lebih luas. (Martin Harun, Guru Besar Ilmu Teologi Emeritus, Sekolah Tinggi Filsafat Driyarkara, Jakarta). (shrink)

For the time being African philosophy is treated regularly in research and in teaching at two European scientific institutions: at the University of Vienna and at Erasmus University Rotterdam. In October 1993 there have been held two conferences of Western and African philosophers at both universities. Eleven African and nine Western scholars participated as speakers in these conferences. Four African speakers gave lectures at the Vienna and at the Rotterdam conference. The Vienna conference dealt with general questions of postcolonial (...) philosophy in Africa. The conference at Rotterdam focused on the processes of democratization in African countries since 1989. This volume contains the papers of both conferences. En ce moment la philosophie Africaine est traité regulièrement dans les recherches et dans l'enseignement à deux instituts scientifiques Européens: à l'Université de Vienne et à l'Université Erasme de Rotterdam. En Octobre 1993 deux conférences de philosophes Occidentals et Africains ont été organisé aux deux universités. Onze savants Africans et neuf savants Occidentals ont participé à ces deux conférences. Quatre savants Africains ont présenté des communications à tous les deux conférences de Vienne et de Rotterdam. La conférence Viennoise s'occupait de questions générales de la philosophie postcoloniale en Afrique. La conférence de Rotterdam focusait aux procès de démocratisation dans des pays africains depuis 1989. Se trouvent en ce volume les contributions à les deux conférences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.2 (2004) 105-115 [Access article in PDF] Intimacy and Monumentality in Chandigarh, North India: Le Corbusier's Capitol Complex and Nek Chand Saini's Rock Garden Sharon Irish School of Architecture University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Chandigarh's Le Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India, by Vikramaditya Prakash. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002, 179pp., $35.00 cloth. The seventh century poet and philosopher Dharmakirti wrote (...) of the path we each must make: No one behind, no one ahead, The path the ancients cleared has closed. And the other path, everyone's path, easy and wide, goes nowhere. I am alone and find my way.1The image in Figure 1 shows the bottom of a concrete ramp that angles back upon itself as it connects two levels of the government complex in Chandigarh and ends in a grassy hillside that has several dirt paths cutting across it. The concrete ramp begins just to the left of Le Corbusier's Assembly Hall (Figure 2). What I hope is evident from just two images is the contrast between the curving, unplanned path that pedestrians have made as they leave the bottom of the ramp, and the axial, monumental path implicit in the organization of the large concrete plaza in front of the Assembly Hall. One is informal and intimate because of the many footprints that have worn away the grass; the other is formal and monumental in its carefully controlled framing of a sculptural presence. They are two very different paths, offering different rewards as we wander upon them.As Vikramaditya Prakash's book, Chandigarh's Le Corbusier, emphasizes, the Capitol Complex derived from Le Corbusier's personal mythology, transmogrified somewhat by the site, the politics, and the climate. Le Corbusier "considered it the true mission of modern architecture to reestablish the aesthetic and poetic forms necessary for the liberation and deliverance of...modern man."2 Le Corbusier's monumentalism, then, was imposed on Chandigarh's landscape and the inhabitants with the assumption that he knew best what architecture was appropriate for "liberation." While there are many aspects of his designs to appreciate and admire, his buildings only indirectly address the visitor, preferring uncanny to intimate relationships.3 [End Page 105] Click for larger viewFigure 1 The bottom of the ramp leading into a path toward the Trench of Consideration, Capitol Complex, Chandigarh. Photo by the author. Click for larger viewFigure 2 Façade of the Assembly Building, Le Corbusier, 1953-61, Chandigarh. Photo by the author. [End Page 106]For six months in 1999, I lived in Chandigarh within a few blocks of Le Corbusier's government complex and another compelling place, the nearby and unrelated Rock Garden. While the paths at the Government Complex are, for the most part, empty, those in the Rock Garden are not and provide chances for intimate interactions that are only hinted at underneath Le Corbusier's concrete ramp. Poignant informality in Le Corbusier's government sector exists in areas that were never completed according to plan.4 Its predominant monumentality provides a useful contrast to the intimate spaces of the Rock Garden.In the 1950s, two men, Le Corbusier and Nek Chand Saini, began two very different projects within a kilometer of each other in Chandigarh. Le Corbusier's Capitol Complex started in the very highest government circles with Prime Minister Jawaharwal Nehru: the plan was to build a new state capital for a newly divided Punjab in a newly independent India. In architectural history, Chandigarh is well known and well studied due to its planning and design. Nek Chand's Rock Garden (under construction since 1958, and open to the public since 1976) began as an illegal private project by one man to give form to his imagination. This essay is my impressionistic response to these two projects.Monumental buildings often function powerfully as icons or as proud isolated structures. Visited on ceremonial occasions, they can provide visually compelling backdrops to large-scale... (shrink)

A lire comme on lit un roman policier : comme une analyse complexe mais systématique qui vous entraîne là où vous ne voudriez pas aller. L'argumentaire met aux prises philosophes, historiens du moderne et du global, Schmitt, Bourdieu et Foucault. Il fait apparaître qu'émerge, derrière notre dos, un État-monde de classe articulé au Système-monde impérialiste. Une anti-utopie, donc. Une thèse réaliste, qui n'est pas celle d'un État mondial. Ou bien comme on lit un recueil de nouvelles liées les unes aux (...) autres : comme autant de mises en perspective du même sujet. On peut ainsi scruter chaque chapitre pour lui-même. Les uns s'adressent aux économistes, d'autres aux sociologues et aux politologues, d'autres encore aux féministes, altermondialistes, théoriciens du discours ou chercheurs du postcolonial, d'autres enfin aux historiens, juristes ou géographes. Ils prennent chaque destinataire sur son terrain "scientifique" particulier. En y impliquant chaque fois le philosophe, c'est-à-dire aussi le citoyen. Il n'y a qu'une seule idée, un seul paradigme : une théorie. Il s'agit bien sûr de transformer le monde, mais en commençant par le comprendre, là où Marx a en partie échoué. C'est donc aussi une refondation du marxisme qui est proposée. Ce livre est le quatrième d'un ensemble publié aux PUF - Que faire du Capital?, 1985, Théorie Générale du droit, de l'économie et de la politique, 1999, Explication et reconstruction du Capital, 2004 - qui a fait l'objet de traductions en une dizaine de langues étrangères. (shrink)

Nick Joaquin, one of the Philippines’ pillars of literature in English, is regrettably known locally for his nostalgic take on the Hispanic aspect of Philippine culture. While Joaquin did spend a great deal of time creatively exploring the Philippines’ Hispanic past, he certainly did not do so simply because of nostalgia. As recent studies have shown, Joaquin’s classic techniques that often echo the Hispanic influence on Philippine culture may also be considered as a form of resistance against both the American (...) neocolonial influence and the nativist brand of nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s. Despite the emergence of Gothic criticism in postcolonial writing, Joaquin’s works have rarely received the attention they deserve in this critical area. In this context, this paper explores the idea of the Gothic in Joaquin’s writing and how it relates to Joaquin being the “most original voice in postcolonial Philippine writing.” In 1972, the University of Queensland Press featured Joaquin’s works in its Asian and Pacific writing series. This “new” collection, Tropical Gothic, contained his significant early works published in Prose and Poems plus his novellas. This collection’s title highlights a specific aspect of Joaquin’s writing, that of his propensity to use Gothic tropes such as the blending of the real and the fantastic, or the tragic and the comic, as shown in most of the stories in the collection. In particular, I examine how his novella interrogates the neurosis of the nation—a disconnection from the past and its repercussions on the present/future of the Philippines. (shrink)

As a searing narrative which grapples with the trauma of the past, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) has managed to garner quite considerable critical acclaim. Acknowledging the nuances of documenting the violence inflicted upon the Igbo people in Nigeria in the 1967-1970 war, this postcolonial text convincingly rethinks the narrative of trauma beyond the event-based paradigm. Out of responsibility, its pressing demands for justice against the enduring effects of colonialism typify postcolonial trauma theory’s (...) attempt at probing into the everyday suffering of African subjects. Reading Adichie’s text through Michael Rothberg’s notion “traumatic realism”, this article examines the novel’s attempt to both document the past and to implicate the Western reader. To resist objectification, the novel sets out to redirect the attention of the reader toward the “pogroms” committed on racial grounds. The main focus will be on Ugwu’s re-writing the enduring effects of colonial violence in post-generational terms and of blurring the boundaries between the extreme and the everyday. Keywords: trauma-realism-documentation-the public-commodification. (shrink)

A reconsideration of the crucial historical role of slavery in the consolidation of the global regime of capital accumulation provides a vital source of Marxian critique for our postcolonial present. The Atlantic slave trade literally transformed African men and women into human commodities. The reduction of human beings into human commodities, or ‘human capital’ – indeed, into labour and nothing but labour – which was the very essence of modern slavery, served as a necessary prerequisite for the consolidation and (...) perfecting of what Marx called ‘labour in the abstract’, and requires us to re-situate enslaved labour as the defining and constitutive limit for how we comprehend labour as such under capitalism. The production of labour in the abstract, or labour ‘in general’, depended nonetheless upon concrete productions of sociopolitical difference, particularly the branding of race. The term ‘Black’, which was devised to literally and figuratively brand the flesh of enslaved people, was also contrived to signify their particular sociopolitical condition of brutal degradation as the ultimate limit for the subjugation of labour. Blackness names that limit. Thus, Blackness is in fact necessary for apprehending labour as such under capitalism. Marx’s scathing critique of wage labour is always haunted by the long shadow of slavery as its limit figure. If we comprehend labour to be the antithesis of capital, then to the extent that Blackness names the ultimate condition of labour’s subordination and subjection to capital, we need to recognise the tendency for all labour under capital to be pressed toward a sociopolitical condition of Blackness (or approximating Blackness), where Blackness does not name any kind of essential identity but the racialised sociopolitical condition of that subordination/subjection. Consequently, the labour theory of value – which has always been in fact, more accurately, a value theory of labour – must be complemented with what we might posit to be a racial theory of labour. Such an ostensibly historical perspective on the foundational role of slavery in the genesis of capitalism is no mere scholastic exercise in the historiography of ‘primitive accumulation’, however, but rather must be re-purposed toward the ends of elaborating what has remained an as-yet underdeveloped Marxian theory of migrant labour. Extrapolating key insights from Marx’s corpus for the formulation of a racial theory of labour, this essay is ultimately concerned with the ways that slavery supplies capitalism with a defining horizon for all labour, and thus how this insight might instructively serve to comprehend the racialised subordination of migrant labour within our global/postcolonial sociopolitical order. (shrink)

Paul Hirst’s defence of liberal education and his forms of knowledge thesis are likely to seem out of step with contemporary calls to decolonize knowledge by ‘delinking’ it from ‘Western’ Enlightenment traditions. In view of the decolonial challenge, and emphasizing too that Hirst’s work should be located in its time, we consider the extent to which his account of liberal education still has a place in the postcolonial era. We outline Hirst’s defence of liberal education and how it changed (...) over time, and show how philosophy of education in the tradition in which he has been so influential departed from Hirst’s account of liberal education, with some of these trends anticipating postcolonial imperatives. While there is a pressing need for attention to the significance of colonialism in philosophy of education, the discipline has moved on and diversified considerably over the last half century, including by developing more expansive conceptions of liberal education with the potential to contribute to the postcolonial project. Some elements of Hirst’s defence of liberal education are compatible with the postcolonial project, but it would need adjustment to make it relevant to the postcolonial era. After addressing the postcolonial critique of liberal thought in general as complicit in colonialism, we conclude by assessing what contribution Hirst’s conception of liberal education could make to the postcolonial project, noting a degree of openness to aspects of the decolonial project. (shrink)

How can Scripture address the crucial justice issues of our time? In this book Mark Brett offers a careful reading of biblical texts that speak to such pressing public issues as the legacies of colonialism, the demands of asylum seekers, the challenges of climate change, and the shaping of redemptive economies. Brett argues that the Hebrew Bible can be read as a series of reflections on political trauma and healing -- the long saga of successive ancient empires violently asserting their (...) sovereignty over Israel and of the Israelites forced to live out new pathways toward restoration. Brett retrieves the prophetic voice of Scripture and applies it to our contemporary world, addressing current justice issues in a relevant, constructive, compelling manner. (shrink)

Decentering Rushdie argues that postcolonial studies has consistently underestimated the investment of the English-language Indian novel in the nation by focusing on a handful of texts that conform to Western assumptions about the bankruptcy of the postcolonial nation-state. Taking Salman Rushdie’s work as the sign of a presumed homology between postcolonialism and a postmodern distrust of totality, Jani demonstrates that his novels are hardly representative of the range of Indian writing in English. Instead, in a series of expert (...) readings of less well-known texts, he demonstrates the commitment to the decolonising project that exists even within the inevitably cosmopolitan worldview of Indians writing in a colonial language. Situating his work within foundational debates in postcolonial studies, this review demonstrates the fresh light he sheds on the vexed relations among historical location, political ideology and literary form. (shrink)

On 29 March 2017, the United Kingdom Government notified the European Council of its intention to withdraw from the European Union legal order. On 31 January 2020, the UK entered a transition period, during which it remains bound to the EU Treaty Framework. This review essay examines the near three-year period of the UK’s attempted cessation from the EU. It argues that what is most striking about the Brexit case is that it reveals the extent to which EU member states (...) remain bound by ideologies and tropes developed during the era of European colonisation—even in their relationship with each other. The review essay draws upon Brenna Bhandar’s Colonial lives of property: Law, Land and racial regimes of ownership, Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson’s Rule Britannia: Brexit and the end of empire, and Eva Mackey’s Unsettled expectations: Uncertainty, land and settler decolonization to show how Brexit bears upon themes that have long preoccupied postcolonial scholars working in a variety of contexts and geographical locations. From the Brexit example, the review article highlights the persistence of colonial projects of invention and the appropriative techniques and tropes that attend these and, above all, it highlights the necessity of decolonial violence. (shrink)

Beberapa puluh tahun yang lalu Steven McKenzie menjadi editor sebuah kumpulan karangan yang berjudul To Each Its Own Meaning: An Introduction to Biblical Criticism and their Application (1993). Dalam bunga rampai itu dibahas metode-metode penelitian lama yang berfokus pada latar belakang sejarah teks (penelitian sumber, sejarah tradisi, jenis sastra, peredaksian), cara-cara penelitian literer yang lebih baru (seperti penelitian strukturalis, pasca-strukturalis, naratif, atau reader’s respons) dan beberapa yang lain (penelitian ilmu sosial, kanonik, atau retorika). Dalam dua puluh tahun sejak terbitan itu (...) banyak pendekatan baru berkembang, misalnya, dalam symposia pertemuan para pakar Alkitab nasional dan internasional, dan dalam banyak monograf, bunga rampaidan artikel Jurnal. Untuk membantu pembaca mengikuti perkembangan cepat itu, kini McKenzie & Kaltner menerbitkan New Meanings for Ancient Texts. Mereka memilih sembilan pendekatan yang makin berpengaruh dan meminta kepada pionir-pionir utama setiap pendekatan untuk memberi deskripsi pendekatannya yang jelas bagi non spesialis dan mengilustrasikannya dengan meneliti satu atau beberapa teks contoh. Judul bab dari beberapa di antara kesembilan pendekatan itu barangkali segera ditanggap pembaca, karena sudah lebih lama dikenal. Misalnya, “Psychological Biblical Criticism” (D. Andrew Kille, pp. 137-154) dan “Ecological Criticism” (Norman Habel, pp. 39-58). Pendekatan-pendekatan ini agaknya dimuat di sini karena mengalami pergeseran paradigma dalam beberapa dasa warsa terakhir. Juga tidak baru di telinga pembaca akademis adalah “Postcolonial Biblical Criticism”(Warren Carter, pp. 97-116) dan “Postmodernism” (Hugh Pyper, pp. 117-136). Postmodernisme yang membongkar cerita-cerita besar seperti sejarah keselamatan Alkitab dan mau menyadarkan pembaca bahwa banyak jawaban kita selama ini sesungguhnya kurang pasti daripada dikira, meluas di dunia tafsir Barat; sedangkan penelitian Alkitab pascakolonial yang meneliti hubungan dominasi dan subordinasi dalam teksteks Alkitab dan dampaknya dalam sejarah kolonialisme dan lanjutannya dalam masa pasca-penjajahan, sekarang ini menjadi sangat aktual dalam distorsi relasi antara Selatan dan Utara. “New Historicism” (Gina Hens-Piazza, pp. 59-76) tidak lagi mencoba merekonstruksi realitas sejarah di belakang teks (seperti dilakukan oleh Historical Criticism), tetapi dengan cara yang multidisipliner meneliti teks sebagai representasi dari realitas kultural, sosial, politik, dan sebagainya, sambil melepaskan distingsi antara literatur dan sejarah, juga antara pengarang dan pembaca, antara arti dulu dan arti sekarang. Dekat tetapi berbeda dengan itu “Cultural-Historical Criticism of the Bible” (Timothy Beal, pp.1-20) meneliti bagaimana kata, kiasan, objek dan ide dalam Alkitab menerima bentuk dan artinya dalam konteks kebudayaan tertentu yang memproduksikannya atau mereproduksikannya. “The Bible and Popular Culture” (Linda Schearing and Valerie Ziegler, pp. 77-96) kurang berfokus pada Alkitab sendiri tetapi menganalisa bagaimana teks-teks tertentu berfungsi dalam ungkapan-ungkapan budaya rakyat, lelucon, iklan, komik, seni, film, dll., juga mengingat pergeseran yang kini terjadi dari budaya teks tertulis ke apropriasi visual. “Disability Studies and the Bible” (Nasya Junior and Jeremy Schipper, pp. 21-38) dan apa yang disebut “Queer Criticism” (Ken Stone, pp. 155-176) meneliti Alkitab dari situasi kelompok-kelompok tertentu, entah mereka orang-orangcacat yang banyak muncul dalam teks-teks Alkitab yang dapat dimengerti lebih baik dari dalam pengalaman invaliditas; atau mereka yang dari sudut seks dan jender berada dalam posisi yang tidak menguntungkan atau bahkan ditolak. Di sini a.l. tempatnya penelitian Alkitab komunitas gay and lesbian, dan lebih awal feminisme......................... Apakah bunga rampai tentang pelbagai pendekatan baru ini penting untuk seorang yang sudah cukup puas dengan metodenya selama ini atau yang menerima Alkitab sebagai buku yang mempunyai otoritas terhadap dirinya dan jemaatnya? Keberatan (kita) yang sudah lama diajukan terhadap pendekatan tersebut, pada akhir setiap karangan dengan jujur dikemukakan dan diberi tanggapan singkat. Membaca contoh-contoh penafsiran dalam bunga rampai ini, saya sering merasa diajak ke dalam suatu perjalanan yang berbelit-belit. Tetapi setelah beberapa tikungan muncul juga pemandangan menarik dan berharga yang belum pernah saya perhatikan selama ini. Selain itu, setiap artikel mulai dengan pengantar umum tentang, misalnya, fenomen postmodernisme, ilmu ekologi, atauqueer criticism yang sudah lebih lama dikembangkan di akademi umum, dan baru sekarang mulai dipakai juga untuk analisa teks-teks biblis. Pengantar-pengantar itu saja memberi gambaran menarik tentang masalah-masalah yang dewasa ini digumuli dalam komunitas global. Setuju atau tidak, mengetahuinya penting untuk keduanya. (Martin Harun, Guru Besar Ilmu Teologi Emeritus, Sekolah Tinggi Filsafat Driyarkara, Jakarta). (shrink)

En Zambie et en Tanzanie, une génération de travailleurs est en train d’atteindre l’âge de la retraite : il s’agit de ceux qui, aux côtés de leurs collègues chinois, ont construit dans les années 1970 le chemin de fer TAZARA, reliant le bassin minier (Copperbelt) zambien à l’océan Indien. Façonnés dans leur jeunesse, ces « nouveaux ouvriers » ont souscrit à la promesse et à l’édification de nations socialistes en Afrique de l’Est, avec l’espoir d’une retraite qui assurerait leurs vieux (...) jours et soutiendrait leurs familles. Mais, prenant leur retraite en pleine époque de néolibéralisme économique, ils expriment leur frustration et leur déception, estimant que l’Etat ne reconnaît pas leur contribution passée à un grand projet. Confrontés à des licenciements ou à des retards dans le versement de leurs pensions, les travailleurs du TAZARA se mobilisent, et mobilisent leurs souvenirs individuels et collectifs, pour obtenir à la fois une reconnaissance et une meilleure sécurité matérielle. (shrink)

In ‘Existence and Heritage,’ which was published by the State University of New York Press in 2015 as part of its series on philosophy and race, Tseney Serequeberhan sets out on what he calls hermeneutic explorations of African and Continental philosophies. It uses Hans-Georg Gadamer to reflect on different traditions; and a reading of Martin Heidegger and Karl Marx for postcolonial Africa. He concludes with a conception of thought as openness, drawn from his reading of Frantz Fanon. In it, (...) he reveals many of his personal sympathies and antipathies; some of which, even though acceptable to some or even many, appear as assumptions or premises in the book with little or no argumentation. Overall, ‘Existence and Heritage’ is an interesting book that is worth reading. If the aim is to provoke us into debating some of the claims mentioned above or the objective of African philosophy, it does that. If, however, the aim is to convince us to embrace Serequeberhan’s own views enumerated above, then I am afraid the book falls short. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Indian Science Fiction: Patterns, History and Hybridity by Suparno BanerjeeBarnita BagchiSuparno Banerjee. Indian Science Fiction: Patterns, History and Hybridity. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2020. xiii + 256 pp. E-book, ISBN 9781786836670.Suparno Banerjee’s monograph examines science fiction (henceforth SF) from India, a country that has a rich and fascinating tradition of SF. This is a book that will be of interest and value to scholars and students in (...) higher education of utopia, dystopia, and speculative fiction, and to readers across disciplines interested in SF as a mode. It is quite clear today that Darko Suvin’s canonical definition of SF as cognitive estrangement, an interplay between the familiar and the strange, and its emphasis on the novum that is created in SF, has been enriched with further attention to context, including postcolonial contexts. Whose familiarity in cognition are we speaking about, and what happens when contexts are not necessarily hegemonic Anglo-American or Western ones? Indeed, even in Western contexts, science is not a given, but an element that always has political, historical, and ideological overtones. The novum, too, as with the term utopia, is moored in the contexts of the text.Banerjee’s book is one among several excellent monographs on Indian SF that have been published in the 2020s: Sami Ahmad Khan’s Star Warriors of the Modern Raj: Materiality, Mythology and Technology of Indian Science Fiction (2021) and Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee’s Final Frontiers: Science Fiction and Techno-Science in Non-Aligned India (2020) come to mind. Khan adopts a refreshing fan’s guide to Indian SF register in his monograph, discussing mythology, materiality, ideology, and technology, and he coins the abbreviation TransMIT to capture his approach. Mukherjee’s book examines how Indian SF syncs with or questions the technological and scientific paradigms of India under Nehru and the Non-Aligned Movement; arguing that Indian SF needs to be seen as semiperipheral, the book also applies concepts from energy humanities [End Page 586] to Indian SF in an arresting way. Suparno Banerjee’s monograph is a solidly grounded work in its clearly explained choice of corpus, and a methodology that elicits particularly generative insights in a number of areas, including the epistemological status of science in Indian SF, the importance of SF written in bhasha or non-English Indian languages, the interplay between past and future in Indian SF, analysis of how Indian SF imaginatively represents the Other, and attention to Indian women writers of SF.Banerjee offers a lucid and useful chronology of Indian SF in four historical periods: 1835–1905, 1905–47, 1947–95, and 1995–2019. The period from 1835 to 1905 offers the first specimens of Indian SF, primarily in the form of future histories that question colonialism, in the utopian mode, and adventure tales and stories with scientific and technological elements. The establishment of a British education system, starting in the 1820s, gave an impetus to the birth of Indian SF. Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s “Sultana’s Dream” was published in 1905, a year that heralds the second period lasting until Indian independence. In this period, SF starts appearing not just in the English, Bengali, and Hindi languages, as in the first period, but also in a number of other Indian languages, such as Assamese, Marathi, and Tamil. Children’s and youth magazines develop from the 1920s, spaces where science writing and SF both appear. Nationalist, anticolonial stances emerge, challenging western hegemony, in the 1940s. In the early post-Independence period, the nationalistic elements become even stronger, and SF interacts quite strongly with older forms of fantastic writing such as myths, fairytales, and ghost stories. This third period, Banerjee argues, is the golden age of bhasha SF. From the 1990s English-language SF again becomes very prominent in India and its diaspora, though SF in bhashas continues to flourish.Banerjee examines fiction not just from post-Independence India, but also from colonial British India, and diasporic Indian writing. SF written primarily in Bengali, English, Hindi, and Marathi is examined and, when possible, the book also brings into its ambit of analysis SF written in the languages Assamese, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada. Reflexivity about the corpus of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 376-379 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Cervantes, the Novel, and the New World Cervantes, the Novel, and the New World, by Diana de Armas Wilson; 254 pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, $74.00. In Cervantes, the Novel, and the New World, Diana de Armas Wilson describes and analyzes the link between the birth of the New World in European consciousness and the expression (...) of that consciousness in the novels of Cervantes. Those of us whose teaching includes works from both Peninsular and Spanish American literature have long felt the need for a study that goes beyond a cataloging of Cervantes's references to the world beyond Europe, and those Cervantine scholars among us have variously hinted at and side-stepped the fullness of this issue. As it was with those exemplary figures of the age of exploration she examines, it is to Professor de Armas Wilson's great credit that she has risen to the challenge. Her analysis is well-organized, reasoned, thoughtful, and readable.De Armas Wilson's knowledge of previous and current research in Cervantine studies as well as genre, colonial and postcolonial, and gender studies is impressive. She also admits to participating "in the kinds of critique currently associated with cultural studies, although not without reservations regarding the alleged presentism of that discipline or its tendency to turn primary texts into commodities." I would respond that de Armas Wilson's concerns and techniques in this study are precisely the tools we need to help us define "cultural studies" to our students and to ourselves as scholars of various literatures and cultures.To begin her study, de Armas Wilson mentions many of Cervantes's literary and personal references to geographies, customs, and other contacts with the [End Page 376] world outside Spain. The first chapter, "The Americanist Cervantes," focuses on that material and includes a brief review of recent research--the latest "grande escrutinario" (Don Quijote, Part I, Chapter VI)--regarding what works might have been in Cervantes's library and/or the texts potentially available to him. Professor de Armas Wilson looks at Cervantes's references and the texts available to him through three lenses: imitation, influence, and intertextuality. She sees these methodologies as interdependent and argues that: "the intertextual practices in this book--based on a revised concept of intertextuality that includes the notion of agency and participates in a historical project--are as American as its central topic." (Finding myself in the process of completing this review on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I can only wonder what texts will not be influenced by the "historical project" of this day.)In the second chapter, "The Novel about the Novel," de Armas Wilson surveys Cervantes's status in Continental and Anglo-American criticism, reminding her readers of the polemic between scholars of the ancient novel and those who, bent on refusing to accept the Greco-Roman works as novels, designate them "romances." De Armas Wilson's contention that the Persiles is a "long exemplary novel," is convincingly depicted. Her arguments are based on the fact of the fictional time of the Persiles being within fifty years of the time when Cervantes wrote it, "its self-conscious theorizing, its rationalizing of 'miracles,' and its avowed imitation of Heliodorus' Aethiopica." She is not alone in arguing that Heliodorus' novel is the antithesis of a romance of chivalry. On these bases de Armas Wilson speaks not only to those who may not have recognized the importance of the Persiles because it has been called a romance (an often "despised or despicable" genre), but also to those of us who view consideration of the Persiles essential to an understanding of Don Quijote, if not a key to comprehending the major goals of all of Cervantes's works and his expression of the consciousness of his day.De Armas Wilson continues by arguing for "coevolutionary histories of the novel as alternatives to evolutionary ones." She bases her argument on echoes of widely disseminated accounts of happenings in the New World, (most significantly those of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Heavy TrafficDenis DuttonIt was the Reverend Sidney Smith who said, “I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.” Thirty years ago that remark was still a joke. These days, it’s a downright plausible idea, one with a distinctly postmodern ring. If the objects of experience are nothing but constructions, inventions of our cultures and mind-sets, that must go as well for all the books (...) we read—including those books which urge this fact on us. To read them is to construct them, to write them for yourself. But wait—that can’t be a fact, because facts are just prejudices too. Takes your breath away to realize how far scholarship has come.These thoughts drifted through my mind reading The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology, edited by George E. Marcus and Fred R. Myers (University of California Press, $48.00 cloth, $17.95 paper). It comprises a long introduction plus eleven chapters which “explore the boundaries and affinities between art, anthropology, representation, and culture, casting a critical, ethnographic light on the art worlds of the contemporary West and the ways they give value to cultural form—in short, a “‘traffic’ in culture.” It is not easy to make out a consistent thread in the essays themselves. Carol Vance offers a fine discussion in the form of four small essays on censorship, the NEA, Jesse Helms, and so forth. There is no discernible connection with anthropology, and I cannot see why these pieces are included. Nancy Sullivan, described as a Ph.D. candidate in Fred R. Myers’s NYU anthropology department, struggles with her cumbersome account of the artworld in the last generation. Again, I can detect no hint of how anthropology has helped her understand the artworld. Hal Foster makes a cameo appearance of only a few pages, a kind of postmodern arabesque with lots of big words. Christopher B. Steiner revisits material [End Page 283] presented in his book, African Art in Transit, which is squarely in the field, and Steven Feld agonizes about appropriation of world music into commercial music business while telling some interesting tales about a radio program he produced of music from Papua New Guinea. The feminist Judith L. Goldstein does a late-capitalist, “late-postmodernist” job on women’s makeup, with much reliance on Fredric Jameson but no anthropology I can discern, despite the fact that she gave a version of it at an American Anthropological Association conference. If we really have reached “late-postmodernism” we can only be thankful. Molly H. Mullin’s account of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century enthusiasm for American Indian artifacts, on the other hand, may begin with clichés about “élite responses to the rise of consumer capitalism,” but it soon settles down to a solid account of the people and problems of trying to achieve recognition of Indian handicrafts as art. This was made possible, we learn, by much devoted work from people who were multiculturalists before the word existed, white Americans whose actions were based on a love of Indian cultures and arts, rather than postcolonial theory and the school of resentment. All the issues of art vs. craft, the relation of tourism to artistic development, authenticity, and so on, were raised in the 1920s and 30s, with sophistication not often seen today.But to figure out how it all is supposed to tie together, we have to turn to the book’s explanatory introduction. This is so turgidly vague that when I was done I felt like invoicing the authors for my time. These pages are peppered with half-assertions I’d half want to dispute if their meaning were plainer, and a few that are plain enough to be flat-out wrong. Among many examples: “Ironically, the very category of ‘art’—as opposed to ‘the arts’—goes unexamined in its own hierarchies of sense, so that various forms of popular performance, in which disinterested contemplation does not necessarily reign supreme, are excluded.” Excluded? Notice that irritating passive voice: who, I’d like to know, has left popular performance unexamined and excluded? What are “hierarchies of sense”? The sentence carries no reference. In... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Socially Engaged BuddhismBrian KarafinSocially Engaged Buddhism. By Sallie B. King. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009. 192 pp.In a chapter on the philosophical and ethical foundations of the socially engaged Buddhist movement, Sallie King retells a story from the Burmese liberation struggle against military dictatorship. The story was originally told by Aung San Suu Kyi (b. 1945), the Burmese Buddhist activist who is one of the several representative (...) figures (heroes and heroines) of King’s synoptic account of the modern tradition of Engaged Buddhism. An activist against the dictatorship, Uncle U Kyi Maung, being interrogated by officers of military intelligence as to why he had joined the National League for Democracy, the organization headed by Aung San Suu Kyi, Uncle Maung replied: “For your sake” (p. 32).This story of Buddhist resistance can stand as a representative anecdote for King’s useful history of Engaged Buddhism. The context is one of political oppression and torture, abuse of human rights and repression of democracy, and the attempt to respond to this historical situation from a perspective rooted in the traditional Buddhist spirituality of Asia in a fashion that makes that spirituality relevant to the crises of modernity. The interrogated activist responds to the threat of torture with courage rooted in a Buddhist spiritual practice, and thus is able to assert a political stance grounded in a compassionate recognition of his interdependence with the so-called enemy who is temporarily holding power over him. This constellation of factors illustrates the phenomenon of Engaged Buddhism: It is a form of Buddhist spirituality, not a departure from tradition but an application of traditional ideas—of compassion, interdependence, impermanence, no-self, karma, and others—to the modern period, and specifically to a modern Buddhist Asia riven by war, political oppression, ecological crisis, and capitalist globalization in economics and culture. [End Page 215] This application of Buddhist spirituality to modern Asian (and global, though King’s focus is on Asia) history represents an alternative form of politics, and specifically of political resistance: nonviolent, nonadversarial, rooted in indigenous Asian cultures rather than imported from the West (as would be the case with the various Marxist and liberal political ideologies also at play in the colonial and postcolonial period that saw the development of engaged Buddhism). This is a political resistance, in King’s presentation, grounded in compassion rather than justice, and thereby offering to global observers a significantly different slant on modern politics than the Western ideologies and movements, secular as well as religious.“Engaged Buddhism” as a term, says King, was coined by Thích Nhất Hạnh (b. 1926) in the context of the war in Vietnam. This was to be a form of Buddhism that drew on the traditional sources (wisdom that knows interdependence/emptiness and compassion that acts on that wisdom) but found skillful means to intervene concretely in the multiple crises related to the war: in the form of social service work including education, but also political activism to address the underlying causes of the war. King demonstrates with this example of Thích Nhất Hạnh and Vietnam the combination of traditional Buddhist ideas with modern contexts of practical application that characterize the movement as a whole. The template of the “four noble truths” is foundational to Thích Nhất Hạnh’s thought—suffering, its causes, the cessation of suffering and the path to that cessation. But in a world of war and political oppression the causes of suffering cannot be only located intra-psychically—yes, the afflictive mental states of greed, hatred, and delusion are the ultimate sources, but the deluded collective hatred that issues in war must be seen as a relatively autonomous factor calling for its own analysis and response. If the orphans of a bombed-out village can be said to suffer from afflictive mental states it is really the minds of those carrying out the bombing who must be transformed, and this obviously requires intervention into the political realm, given that the war makers are not themselves usually willing to sit down and explore the causes of their unskillful behavior. Hence, engaged Buddhism is Buddhism in... (shrink)

Penser le pathos de la vie sapientiale africaine à la lumière de la phénoménologie de Dominique Kahang, c'est chercher à fonder des certitudes d'une "philosophie du sentir" de toute une culture et d'une tradition. Réfléchir sur la philosophie sapientiale de la maturité revient à déceler les défis éthiques, politiques et épistémiques de la gestion de la postcolonie par les "élites africaines", écartelées entre l'autonomie et une situation géopolitique et néolibérale qui marginalise l'Afrique. Il s'agit en effet de déployer, à la (...) lumière de la phénoménologie radicale de la vie de Michel Henry, trois questions fondamentales, dont l'articulation n'est pas une évidence : quelle est l'essence de la vie dans la conception négro-africaine? En quoi consiste la visée de maturité du Muntu dont la maturité se révèle dans le langage symbolique initiatique, porté par l'intelligence de la rationalité symbolique? Comment la pensée du "sentir" qui est au coeur de la réflexion de Kahang peut-elle promouvoir le vivre-ensemble dans un horizon cosmopolitique universel? En s'interrogeant sur la visée phénoménologique de maturité de la vie africaine, cet ouvrage montre que la pensée de Kahang reste fortement imprégnée par une expérience de la temporalité de l'homme africain, capable d'assumer son destin devant l'histoire. Par ailleurs, elle s'affiche clairement comme une phénoménologie politique, qui stimule l'éveil de conscience de tout homme opprimé qui se découvre dans l'épreuve de la vie, celle qui s'autoaffecte dans les contingences, les enjeux de savoir et de pouvoir. Soucieux de bâtir un Etat de droit, un espace public en Afrique, enrobé dans les valeurs républicaines et démocratiques, Kahang appelle à construire une éthique du pouvoir et de la responsabilité, fondée sur les principes de reconnaissance et de justice. (shrink)