Mass Graves and Imagined Identities in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the construction of imagined identities of Zimbabwean nationhood in two televised documentaries, Nyadzonia Massacre and Colonial Era Atrocities, aired on Zimbabwe national television. Using qualitative semiotic analysis and borrowing from post nationalism, this article analyses how the two documentaries interweave memory and violence with the politics of nationhood and belonging during the Third Chimurenga in Zimbabwe. The paper also analyses how the films were packaged in order to undermine the semiotic resistance and autonomy of the viewer to create oppositional readership of the films.     

“9/11 is alive and well” or how critical terrorism studies has sustained the 9/11 narrative

ABSTRACT

This article argues that despite engaging in a powerful critique of the construction of the attacks of 11 September 2001 (or “9/11”) as temporal break, critical terrorism scholars have sustained and reproduced this same construction of “9/11”. Through a systematic analysis of the research articles published in Critical Studies on Terrorism, this article illustrates how critical scholars have overall failed to extricate themselves from this dominant narrative, as they inhabit the same visual, emotional and professional landscape as those they critique. After examining how CTS has reproduced but also renegotiated this narrative, the article concludes with what Michel Foucault would describe as an “effective history” of the attacks – in this case, a personal narrative of how the attacks did not constitute a moment of personal rupture but nonetheless later became a backdrop to justify my scholarship and career. It ends with a renewal of Maya Zeyfuss’ call to forget “9/11”.     

The alluring voice/the allure of film (theaters): the formation of the voice in the Japanese cinema of the prewar period

Abstract

Kitada Akihiro provides a historical overview of film presentation as a transient business, its migration into dedicated cinemas, and the concomitant rise and fall of benshi film explainer culture, as silent film incorporating a narrative developed out of simplistic ‘moving pictures,’ only to be gradually replaced by ‘talkies.’ He does so by following the career of Tokugawa Musei, one of the most prominent benshi of the 1920s and 1930s, from beginning to end; in describing the changes in audience composition and expectations, he outlines the transition from the showman-like VOICE「声」 to the more ‘talkie’-like voice «声».     

Absolute politics and judicious pragmatism: political culture in democratization by reforma

Comparing the political cultures of Spain and Greece before and during the dictatorships, the article seeks to explain the different outcomes of the regimes’ self-transformation attempts, the one that succeeded (Spain) and the other that failed (Greece, the little-known “Markezinis experiment”). Its position is that the abandoning of hard-line ideological stances that have been called “absolute politics”, which was the main contributor to the Spanish Reforma’s success, did not work in Greece due to the persistence of the post-civil war and pre-dictatorial cleavages in both elites and civil society, thus rendering the mellowing of confrontation lines and the consensual politics necessary for the negotiations and mutual concessions between elites and counter-elites unfeasible. The result was, in contrast to the Spanish reforma Pactada, a reverse to authoritarianism perpetrated by the hard-line officers, prolonging the regime for eight crucial months.     

Pseudo-communication and the return of the sophist: Thank you for smoking,at first sight

Abstract

The present era is one of pseudo-communication and overwhelming relativism, where, at best, the ability to persuade one's opponents or a potential audience of the ‘rightness’ (as opposed to the communicable ‘truth’) of one's position, is all important. A closer look at the recent film, Thank you for smoking, shows it to be a stalking horse for precisely this kind of pseudo-communication and relativism, and an all the more successful one in light of its rhetorical sophistication and entertainment value. However, this is no reason to give up on the old-fashioned notion of communication (or ‘truth’), even if one has to reject the illusion – so long entertained by Western philosophy – of unambiguously clear communication of the ‘truth’ in any univocal or absolute sense. Through an analysis of the film in question an attempt is made here to demonstrate that it is a supremely persuasive piece of sophistry in the sense that Plato gave to the term, but that today (given what one has learned from the post-structuralist thinkers), instead of rejecting it on this basis, one should appropriate its lessons in rhetoric and turn it against itself, showing how a complex notion of communication and ‘truth’ of a certain kind may be uncovered in its interstitial rhetorical spaces. This is of particular importance to South Africa, given the fact that ‘persuasive communication’ forms part of curricula in communication studies. The paper aims to show how short sighted the unqualified emphasis on ‘persuasion’ is, especially in South Africa.     

Between a croc and a herd place: Battle at Kruger and nature interpretation

Abstract

The article examines the popular YouTube clip Battle at Kruger and its National Geographic spin-off Caught on safari: The battle at Kruger. In seeking to account for the clip's popularity and National Geographic's motivations for making the hour-long feature, the author draws on the burgeoning studies of wildlife film in an effort to contextualise this new ‘eye-witness’ approach within the traditions of documentary films focusing on nature – particularly animals. Furthermore, do the clip and its online popularity suggest a new direction for wildlife documentary in an age of increasingly advanced filming technologies and digital broadcast platforms?     

From Freud to funny music in films: The case of Blazing Saddles

Abstract

This article contends that music creates comedy in film in two significant ways: first, by ‘setting us up’ and confirming our understanding of purely musical, cinematic musical, and cultural musical codes in the symbolic order of film, only to play with or subvert our established responses to such codes thereafter; and second, by a reliance on age-old rhetorico-musical techniques associated with musical comedy. An analysis of selected scenes from the film Blazing Saddles, directed by Mel Brooks and released by Warner Brothers in 1974, follows, wherein such techniques of musical comedy are shown to be evident. By way of reflecting on these techniques, some thought is given to Sigmund Freud's understanding of the continuum of humour involving play, jest and jokes, within the context of his notion of the principle of economy in psychical expenditure. Accordingly, the author concludes that the political discourse of Blazing Saddles is effective precisely because it is clothed in humour.     

Prevention,knowledge, justice: Robert Nozick and counterterrorism

ABSTRACT

This article explores questions of justice and moral permissibility of state action in counterterrorism through Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Using the case of the Berlin attack in December of 2016 and the ensuing political debate over whether potential terrorists could be put into preventive custody as an illustrative example, it engages Nozick’s argument on prevention, knowledge and justice. In Nozick’s fierce defence of individual rights, the state comes into being as an aggregate of individuals and their inviolable rights, and thus possesses no moral legitimacy of its own. Individual rights must therefore not be violated for the sake of common goods. In conjunction with his emphasis on free will and the ensuing unpredictability of human decision-making, the article highlights the Nozickian position as a powerful account against the justification of preventive custody, thereby providing a moral “fail-safe” in counterterrorism discourses that build on just war theory and utilitarianism.     

“Peace propaganda”? the application of Chomsky’s propaganda model to the Daily Nation’s coverage of the 2013 Kenyan elections

This article uses the third and fourth filters of Herman and Chomsky's Propaganda Model, namely, official sources and flak, to examine how the Daily Nation, which is the largest circulating newspaper in Kenya, covered the 2013 Kenyan elections. In the run up to the elections, several institutions, among them the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) of Kenya and the Media Council of Kenya (MCK), organised several workshops with media owners and journalists in the name of “peace journalism” to avoid a repeat of the 2007/2008 post-election violence. Although such efforts paid off because there was no physical post-election violence, questions have been raised as to whether this extensive peace training translated to “peace propaganda” making journalists and the media in general engage in excessive self-censorship in the name of peaceful elections thereby neglecting their watchdog role. Using the findings from a qualitative content analysis of the Daily Nation as a case study and semi-structured interviews with civil society organisations as media monitors, it can be arguably observed that the Daily Nation avoided any “contentious electoral issues” for fear of flak and relied overly on the IEBC and other government agencies as official sources of critical electoral information.     

Suid-Afrikaanse "alternatiewe" rolprente en die Suid-Afrikaanse sosio-politieke werklikheid. 'n Historiese,teoretiese en analitiese verkenning (Deel 1)

SUMMARY

The "alternative" film originated in South Africa because people or groups outside the apartheid establishment were unable to communicate through existing mass media structures, and their own communication channel had to be established.

The key question addressed in this article is whether the "alternative" South African film actually succeeds in making a contribution, on an intercultural level of communication, to the socio-political reality of South African society, and to what extent the film as communication medium succeeds in establishing positive intercultural communication? A study of four films is undertaken, according to Pieter J. Fourie's theoretical model (1983), whereby the content and shaping aspects of film images are examined from a contextual as well as an analytical point of view.

The value of the "alternative" film lies in the fact that the South African reality is seen from the perspective of the "black" or "coloured" person. For many years "whites", on account of their ethnocentric attitude and the absolutization of their values and norms, were never really aware of other race groups' values and norms, and were not interested in how these people experienced reality. In this regard the "alternative" film has a dual function significant to intercultural communication: on the one hand it offers self-expression – an important principle and starting point for intercultural communication – to people outside the apartheid establishment, and on the other hand, it gives whites within this establishment the opportunity to become acquainted with the worlds of other cultural and ideological groups.

If the South African film wants to present a model for reality, it will have to take into account the complexity of multicultural diversity without absolutizing certain people's cultural values and ideological perspectives. Communication should rather take the form of "dialogue".     

“More Symbolic—More Political—Than Substantive”: An Interview with James R. Clapper on the U.S. Designation of Foreign Terrorist Organizations

ABSTRACT

This article considers the status and value of the U.S. Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list via an extended and annotated interview with James R. Clapper, U.S. Director of National Intelligence during the administration of President Barack Obama from 2010–2017. In this interview,¹ Clapper reflects on the role and effectiveness of blacklisting for U.S. national security strategy. The article frames the interview within debates in recent political science and law literatures on blacklisting to situate Clapper’s views. Drawing on recent controversies—including the fraught relationship between the U.S., Pakistan, the Taliban regime, and the Haqqani network—Clapper speaks to the a) symbolism and foreign policy drivers of FTO listing; b) implications of the FTO list for peace negotiations; and, c) the cohesion of terrorist groups and the effectiveness of FTO listings. In reporting the interview thus, the article offers a rare direct insight to the causal reasoning of an elite security official with respect to a process that has, since its inception in 1997, been shrouded in ambiguity and controversy.     

Representations of crime,power and social decay in the South African post-colony in the film Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema (2008)

The film Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema, released on August 29, 2008, decries the proliferation of crime, violence and social decay in the South African post-colony. The aim of this article is to interrogate the banality in the use of violence and power in the South African post-colony. The filmic narratives of Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema reveal that behind the ‘rainbow’ façade presented by South Africa, one encounters festering poverty in ‘non-white’ communities, racial acrimony, broken promises, social and class struggles, and tales of betrayal of the majority of black people by the elite black leadership which now sit comfortably in the seats vacated by their former colonisers. An analysis of the narratives of the film Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema permits one to locate apartheid-based economic disparities as still haunting mainly ‘non- white’ local communities, although some whites have not been spared by the vicious new normal of poverty and the effects of corruption. This interpretation is further questioned in the film which shows that, after apartheid, the nationalist leadership encouraged a negative culture of entitlement. The irony in the film is that the masses are also tainted in so far as they commit crimes against other ordinary people and refuse to take responsibility or, rather in an escapist way, blame all the woes of the post-colony on apartheid. Thus, the narratives of Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema beg the question: What is going wrong with the dream of democracy for all, irrespective of race, that was the founding principle of the new nation?     

Painful Pleasure: The Politics and Aesthetics of Psychosocial Trauma in Impunity

Abstract

Continuous trauma syndrome (CTS) is the foundation for the characters in the film Impunity. The aesthetic choices in the narrative structure are an exploration of the discursive nature of violence and trauma in contemporary South African society. The theorising of continuous stress trauma provides the necessary challenge to the more conventional understanding of post-traumatic stress syndrome and informs the underlying analysis of the film. This analysis is offered in an interlocutory manner with psychology theorist Garth Stevens who provides a hermeneutic reading of Impunity that draws directly from his own research and others in the field of psychology. The paper is offered as an examination of an artistic research, film practice. The practice itself constitutes a theoretical expression which connects the aesthetic and structural choices of the film with the disciplinary observations made by Stevens. It suggests two theoretical approaches from different disciplines brought in conversation with each other to inform the reading of Impunity as artistic expression. The paper puts at its centre the discursive approach to the study of violence and trauma to suggest how the film’s structure and its aesthetics may be connected to research in the field of psychology.     

Arab Muslim Attitudes Toward the West: Cultural,Social, and Political Explanations

We utilize pooled data from Zogby International's 2002 Zogby, James. 2002. What Arabs Think: Values Beliefs and Concerns, Utica NY: Zogby International.  [Google Scholar] Arab Values Survey (carried out in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and UAE) in order to test for “cultural,” “social” and/or international “political” influences on Arab Muslim attitudes toward “Western” countries (Canada, France, Germany, UK, and USA). We find little support for “cultural” hypotheses to the effect that hostility to the West is a mark-up on Muslim and/or Arab identity. We find only limited support for “social” hypotheses that suggest that hostility to the West is predicted by socioeconomic deprivation, youth, and/or being male. We find the strongest support for a lone “political” hypothesis: hostility toward specific Western countries is predicted by those countries' recent and visible international political actions in regard to salient international issues (e.g., Western foreign policies toward Palestine).     

Understanding university student media preferences through the discourses of ‘realism’ and ‘quality’

Abstract

This article examines two of the explanatory discourses most often used by the youth in explaining their preferences for local or global media – those of ‘realism’ and ‘quality’. The article explores the ‘empiricist’ understanding of realism which seeks a correspondence, at a denotative level, between the ‘realities’ internal and external to the text, and argues that a desire for this correspondence, explains the youth's preference for local productions. However, the article also argues that ironically, in many instances, it is global, rather than local productions which most adequately reflect local lived conditions. The article also explores how many students' preference for global media is premised on the perceived superior ‘quality’ (understood in terms of production techniques) and that the discourse of ‘quality’ is one often used by South African media producers to explain the relatively poor state of the local film and television industries. Finally, the article highlights that an attraction to the ‘quality’ of American productions often coexists with a profound anti-Americanism.     

The rise of film production and the politics of the star system in South Africa

ABSTRACT

The rise of film production and the ubiquitous presence of the ‘new wave’ of South African films on the international scene in recent years have raised expectations amongst local film stars hoping to get their biggest break by taking leading roles in major South African productions. However, most of these films – particularly co-productions – have continuously used foreign stars in leading roles. As a result, local stars have constantly voiced concerns about the proliferation of foreign artists in leading roles in South African productions. Many explanations have been offered in trying to understand why filmmakers tend to cast a foreign star when a local one could probably do a better job (in, for example, portraying a local icon like Nelson Mandela) and still command a lesser fee. However, this article puts forward that most of these arguments are based on intuition rather than on the real dynamics and externalities governing this practice. The article attempts to make sense of this issue by arguing that the rationale for this practice stems from a film being a high-risk investment that it is driven by the broader financial imperatives of film production. The article offers empirical evidence to suggest that stars do not add economic value to the film, but to themselves (see Elberse 2005), since the bulk of the money goes towards their appearance fees. It is concluded that the traditional model guiding film finance and the logic behind it need to be looked at afresh, given the fact that several films have failed at the box office, both locally and internationally, despite featuring major foreign stars, compared to the massive success of some local films (e.g., Jerusalema, Tsotsi and Yesterday) with local stars in the leading roles.     

Re-visioning the “Eye in the Sky”: targeted drone strikes and an ethics of the encounter

ABSTRACT

The complexities which beset any attempts to ascribe a foundational ethic to matters of a political stripe are well known, and continue to provoke fierce debate within studies of international relations, geopolitics and security studies. Unsurprisingly, these questions have taken on crucial import within the sub-field of critical terrorism studies (CTS), as authors grapple with the range of counter-terrorism, counter-radicalisation and counter-extremism practices enacted by the Western state as part of an ongoing ‘War on Terror.’ And while much of this scholarship has been invaluable in problematizing the concept of ‘terrorism’ per se, normative questions have proven somewhat more elusive. Through a reading of the film Eye in the Sky, along with its take on the controversial counter-terrorism practice of targeted drone assassinations, this article reiterates the case for an ethical approach which takes radical difference as the basis for any engagement with the Other. Moreover, and following international relations authors of a poststructuralist lineage, it will be argued that supplementing Levinasian ethics with Derridean deconstruction can open up new and useful ways of approaching such seemingly intractable ethical conundrums.     

Kawabata and cinema: the ambivalence of knowledge,medium, and influence

Abstract

Many researchers have considered the involvement of Kawabata Yasunari in cinema and the medium's possible influence on his literature. Such approaches, however, tend to assume a definition of the motion pictures as visuality or montage that then influences Kawabata instead of first considering Kawabata's own conception of cinema, his own film theory. By analyzing his writings on film, including his film criticism, short stories involving cinema, and his involvement in the film A Page of Madness, this paper outlines Kawabata's conception of cinema and argues that he developed a portrait of cinema that posed it as a challenge to identity, perception and knowledge itself. Often associated with the female body, the movies became to Kawabata both an object of fascination and a threat, something ultimately to be controlled through literature and the literary subject. What influenced his literature was then perhaps this perception of cinema as posing an epistemic crisis. It is his ambivalence towards this challenge that can serve as a key for elaborating on Kawabata's complicated location within prewar modernism.     

Disquieting growth: urban space in Kawashima Yūzō's film Suzaki Paradise Red Light

This article examines how Japanese postwar cinematic texts manifest and comment upon contemporary political and economic events, and considers the usefulness of cinema for a more complete historical understanding of the period. In particular, it argues for the significance of fūzoku eiga, or ‘films of customs and manners’ by analyzing a representative text of that genre, Kawashima Yūzō's 1956 film Suzaki Paradise Red Light. Although Kawashima's film has been treated as an apolitical melodrama, a close textual analysis reveals it to be a counter-narrative to the success story of postwar economic recovery and growth that the Japanese state sought to promote. Key to this analysis is an examination of the urban space of the Suzaki neighborhood in Tokyo, as depicted in the film. Kawashima's tour of Suzaki addresses the issues of the economic stagnation within the metropolis, uneven development, and the liminal space of muen, or ‘no ties,’ which offers a brief refuge from an increasingly disciplined everyday life.     

Representing the West and “non-believers” in the online jihadist magazines Dabiq and Inspire

ABSTRACT

This article analyses how jihadist ideology groups discursively represent “the West” and “non-believers” in their online propagandamagazines. In doing so, it contributes to the field of Critical Terrorism Studies conceptually, by considering the voices of violent actors, and methodologically, by illustrating how linguistic tools of enquiry can advance current knowledge of jihadist ideology groups. Our work adopts a case study approach, focusing on the online magazines Inspire and Dabiq, which are part of the propaganda machinery of, respectively, Al-Qaeda and ISIS. The analysis reveals a number of similarities and differences in the discursive strategies that these twogroups use. On the one hand, both Inspire and Dabiq support and further construct an “us versus them” dichotomy thatpolarises differences between their jihadist ideologies and those of Westerners/non-believers. On the other, Dabiq’s discursiverepresentation of “the West” targets a wider variety of individuals and groups of people and geographical locations than Inspire’s. Additionally, Inspire places a greater focus on the pejorative construction of “the West” than Dabiq, suggesting that Al-Qaeda places more emphasis than ISIS on presenting “the West” as the enemy of jihad.