Postfeminism and the South African Context through the Prism of a Bloodsoaked Imagination

ABSTRACT

Since its inception in 1982, postfeminism continues to be a highly contested concept in cultural, media and gender studies, due to its diverse interpretations by academics. While a specific definition is debatable, for purposes of this article, the meaning of postfeminism is articulated as a pluralistic and contradictory discourse that has a particular fascination with, and the erotic representation of, female bodies. It includes hyperfemininity, heterosexual love, and hypersexuality, as well as an emphasis on the maternal drive and domesticity. This articulation of postfeminism frames the discourse used to analyse the female heroines in Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. Furthermore, this article questions the (ir)relevancy of postfeminism to the socio-political realities in post-apartheid, postcolonial South Africa.     

Democracy or democrazy? Local experiences of democratization in Timor-Leste

Since gaining independence from Indonesia in 1999, Timor-Leste has been pursuing an agenda of democratization. However, in the villages of Timor-Leste traditional ideas of socio-political legitimacy continue to be strong. The purpose of this article is to examine how the new democratic ideals are being incorporated into local politics, where traditional law, or lisan, continues to guide the daily lives of the villagers. This article argues that democratization in this context should not be seen as integrating one ‘type’ of governance (liberal democracy) into a social structure that is informed by another ‘type’ of governance that is qualitatively different and in opposition to the first. Rather, evidence shows that communities are engaging within both spheres of governance simultaneously, as part of the everyday politics of village life. This article critically examines the areas where traditional and democratic institutional spheres come together, resulting in structured systems of mutual recognition, as well as the areas where the spheres have been in conflict. The author concludes that the fundamental areas of tension that have emerged between the spheres tend to be where notions of ‘respect-in-community’ as the basis for human security are threatened.     

Gender and ethnicity in the Soviet Muslim peripheries: a feminist postcolonial geography of women’s work in the Tajik SSR (1950–1991)

ABSTRACT

This article explores the articulation and experience of Soviet gendered ideology regarding work in the Tajik SSR, one of the Muslim Soviet peripheries, during the post-war period ending with Perestroika. Central Asian women’s work was used for economic purposes, as well as being a key driver for fulfilling the ideological objective of emancipating Central Asian women from religion and tradition. Through a feminist postcolonial geography approach, attentive to questions of discourse and material lived experiences, this article explores the ways in which gender and ethnicity were co-produced by Soviet ideology. Analysis of scientific publications produced by Tajikistani female researchers, and of women’s magazines from the 1950s, is contrasted with ethnographic data on workers from various collective farms and semi-urban places, including ‘work heroines’ (peshqadam). Our findings illustrate the hybrid nature of the Soviet regime, advancing theoretical debates on the use of postcolonial theory in Soviet Central Asia.     

“A world to win”: China,the Afro-Asian Writers’ Bureau,and the Reinvention of World Literature

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes Chinese contributions to the Afro-Asian Writers’ Bureau’s efforts to reinvent World Literature from an anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist perspective. The Afro-Asian Writers’ Bureau was founded as a counter-narrative to Eurocentric conceptions of World Literature and universal culture. The AAWB’s vision was inspired by a Marxian understanding of worldliness. Relying on Chinese archival materials, this article shows how Chinese representatives to the AAWB, including Zhou Yang and Mao Dun, shifted from an explicitly Soviet, socialist-realist model for World Literature inspired by Maxim Gorky to a progressively independent, nationalist course in the wake of the Sino-Soviet split. The story of the AAWB is one of competing universal visions. The Chinese contributions to the AAWB are also reflected in China’s current expanding cultural influence and soft power in the Global South.     

Language attitudes,generations, and identity in coastal Belize

This paper reports on a study of language attitudes and generational differences with respect to two varieties of Kriol, the Afro-Belizean language of Belize. We investigate attitudes toward Belize City Kriol and Punta Gorda Kriol with a special focus on differences across generations of Belizeans. We employed a verbal-guise test with 131 participants, collecting both quantitative and qualitative data, and found that BC Kriol was in general rated more highly than PG Kriol among two generations of those surveyed. We attribute this among other things to the fact that BC Kriol is considered to be the more traditional variety, and that this tradition translates into status and prestige at a time when the newly independent country is faced with fashioning a postcolonial Belizean identity.     

Colonial Existence,Home and Nationalism in the Narratives of British Cameroons’ Exiles in the United States

This article explores the personal meanings and public expressions of colonial existence, home and nationalism among exiles of British Cameroons from the standpoints of 11 biographies of British Southern Cameroons’ first-generation exiles living in the United States. Examining their narratives reveals why the exiles actively resist a public categorisation as being Cameroonians. This article provides a new type of research regarding British Cameroons’ exiles and their vision of the restoration of the statehood of British Cameroons, a former United Nations trust territory deserving its separate sovereignty and independence in accordance with the UN Trusteeship Agreement (1946) and UN Resolution 1514 of 1960 on the independence of colonial people. Significant about this study of the narratives of British Cameroons’ exiles is its focus on biography for portraying particular facets of nationalist resistance, including questions relating to the processes that surround the right to define the community one calls home.     

Un/clothing African womanhood: colonial statements and postcolonial discourses of the African female body

Using the examples of the partially unclothed African woman in Senegal's controversial African Renaissance Monument (2009) and the 2008 proposed Anti-Nudity bill in Nigeria, this article probes postcolonial African engagements with the female body. The essay proposes that such postcolonial African preoccupations with how the female body is presented and seen should be contextualised in the fray of postcolonial African endeavours to resignify Africa, in response to colonial discourses. The essays bind these preoccupations to an ideologico-discursive continuum that has produced and sustained the African female body as a rhetorical element of colonialism then postcolonialism.     

Close Encounters: Solidarity,Servitude and Postcolonial Feminist Affects and Affiliations

Abstract

This essay offers close readings of three texts that in different ways foreground the problems, possibilities and struggle involved in forging affective connections across difference between women: Kate Clanchy, What is She Doing Here? 2008, Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy, 1991a and Marlene Van Niekerk, ‘Labour’, 2004. The author argues that the incomplete and partial nature of affective moments represented in these texts signals possibilities for a cautiously redefined idea of affective feminist solidarity as it is mobilized in the intimacy of domestic spaces.     

Perceptions of self-legitimacy and audience legitimacy among prison officers in Ghana

Criminological research on legitimacy has focused almost exclusively on citizens’ normative assessment of legal authorities. However, this line of research neglects power-holders’ own assessment of their legitimacy or self-confidence in their moral validity of their claims to power. This paper examines the conditions on which prison officers as power-holders base their legitimacy claims. Data from semi-structured interviews and observation of prison officers in Ghana shows that prison officers in Ghana exude high power-holder legitimacy underpinned by favourable assessment of their “self-” and “perceived audience” legitimacy in the eyes of prisoners. While officers’ self-legitimacy was underpinned in their legal status (e.g., legality) and the uniforms (e.g., state insignia), perceived legitimacy was anchored in officers’ maintenance of authority via self-discipline, good and close officer–prisoner relationships, respect for prisoners as humans, and professional competence or making a difference in the lives of prisoners.