What is Black British Feminism?

Young looks at the place of black feminists in today's academy in Britain, and poses some questions for contemporary self-identified black and white feminists based in that country. There is a new confidence among some black, professional Britons but infiltration into the academy remains problematic for many. Black British feminists and writers are largely absent in so-called postcolonial literary canons developed in the Anglo-American institutions, and by and large black British feminists are only offered fragile support by white feminists. Although African-American feminism offers intellectual sustenance and networks, the situation in the United States is very different, particularly as, there, black feminism has had much more impact and recognition. Discussions of the intersections of race, class and gender are rare in Britain outside black feminism, and there has been much less attention than in the States to black women's writing. Perhaps some kind of 'provisional essentialism' is still needed, for it is difficult for black feminist academics ever to feel the question of race is optional. It can be argued that 'blackness' is used to describe women of very different origins, and can obscure differential histories, but 'blackness' is always a political concept, not a register of national belonging. Black women have transformed British culture, but white feminists have largely failed to understand their problems. Attention to the social history of black women in Britain, and particularly to the creative work of black women writers, filmmakers and other cultural workers, is the place at which a new analysis should begin.     

East Is East and South Is South: The Cases of Sarojini Naidu and Arundhati Roy

Boehmer begins by outlining suggestive parallels between the doubly orientalizing reception of an Indian woman poet, Sarojini Naidu, in 1890s London, and the publicity and critical enthusiasm surrounding the appearance of Arundhati Roy's first novel, The God of Small Things , in the 1990s. Building on these century-broad connections, she goes on to observe how, despite its liberatory agendas, certain constructions within postcolonial criticism appear to emerge virtually intact out of the colonial discourses of the past: in particular, the conflation of biology and biography in representations of the writing of the South, and constructions of a singular oriental femaleness, and an extravagant oriental style. The second part of the essay examines more closely these seemingly 'neo-orientalist' underpinnings of postcolonial literary criticism located in the West, and then considers resistances to these, both in terms of cultural contextualization and verbal recalcitrance.     

Gettin’ Down Home With the Neelys: gastro-porn and televisual performances of gender,race, and sexuality

This article illuminates how performances of gender, race, and sexuality are integrated with representations of food and food performance in contemporary American cooking television. Interrogating the intersections of food, gender, race, sexuality, and performance, this essay explores how the cable-television show, Down Home with the Neelys, depicts a nouveau gastro-porn anchored in the perceived pornographic level of blackness itself. The author reveals the ways that food and performances of food become a medium of gendering and racialization employed by American popular media. Through the lens of reality television, shows like Down Home (re)produce a certain type of black heterosexuality and gendered enactments of domesticity and space, while challenging dominant televisual reflections of black love and labor. The author argues that the Neelys self-consciously employ a vernacular aesthetic performative of “down home” (a uniquely classed, temporally–spatially situated, and sexualized blackness) to exploit the phenomenon of gastro-porn in a highly lucrative performance that signals the entangled artifice of gender, race, and sexuality. More than offering culinary expertise and education, such cooking instruction reveals the pedagogy of gender, race, and sexuality as visual lessons of a complex and contradictory authenticity. This essay reveals television cooking shows as critical sites for considering the domestic laboring of gendered and racialized sexualities. In particular, shows like Down Home evince the ways that race continues to be rendered in visual terms and the enduring edibility of blackness.     

Here be monsters: a choreomaniac's companion to the danse macabre

Consider this a vade mecum: an invitation to “walk with me” through more or less uncanny terrains of worlds in the making in search, of(f) course, of monsters. The search will be delving into the areas of “creepypasta:” pieces of cursed prose and pictures that circulate online, waiting to contaminate and possess the next reader. Using a theoretical framework of posthuman and feminist theory, not least the work done by Jacques Derrida and Donna Haraway, this vade mecum asks what it might mean to engage ethically with that which is not supposed to exist, but which haunts us nonetheless. In other words: what does it mean to move, live and engage with spectres in digital times?     

Spaces of self-consciousness: Carla Accardi's environments and the rise of Italian feminism

“Spaces of self-consciousness” examines three environments created by the Italian artist Carla Accardi in light of an emerging feminist politics. Though better known as a painter, Accardi created these three-dimensional works during an era of political and social upheaval in which her own commitment to the Italian feminist movement began to take shape. Her environments were deeply imbricated both with her own experience of autocoscienza, or consciousness-raising, as well as with radical design proposals that rejected the current state of civilization. This article examines how these environments functioned as prototypes of the transient, anti-institutional spaces that she would later create as co-founder of Rivolta femminile, a historic Italian feminist collective, and examines a previously obscure moment in Carla Accardi's career.     

当代社会学视野下的消费

日常生活世界一个最深刻的社会变迁,在于人们和物品之间的关系发生了根本性的变化:随着物品从生产资料转变为消费品,人们也从生产关系中的某一类主体(所有者或劳动者),转变成为一个消费者。消费社会学由于关注到了消费过程诸环节中突生性社会机制和社会力量所具有的社会后果,其相对的学科优势和合法性是明显的。     

医患关系是一种特殊的侵权责任法律关系

医患法律关系性质的界定是正确理解法律、适用法律的基础。我国相关学说虽然多,但仅仅是站在某一个立场,或以某一现象为基础,难免会有失偏颇。理论界的研究尚欠深入,司法实践中也有不少问题。文章从法学的角度论证,医患法律关系的基本性质是民事法律关系,它不属于民事合同关系,而与侵权责任关系有相似,但由于医学科学和医疗行为的特殊性,它应是一种特殊的侵权责任法律关系。     

对海德格尔和列维纳斯死亡概念的比较分析

死亡是哲学的永恒主题。海德格尔将死亡定义为一种不可能的可能性。与此相反,列维纳斯将死亡界定为“可能性的不可能性”。海德格尔给“不可能性”以优先性,对他来说,作为此在的我们面对的死亡是一种无法超越的可能性。我们也可以说,海德格尔从死亡的角度观察生命。而列维纳斯则是将死亡与生命的观点一起考虑,因为他觉得只有生命才能为我们打开可能性;从生命的视角看,死亡是所有可能性的终结,即不可能性。     

共产国际、联共(布)与中共早期主要领导人的更替

中共成立后至1931年间,其主要领导人发生了几次大的更替。它们都是在共产国际与联共(布)的掌控下完成的。莫斯科在取舍中共主要领导人时,更多的是顺从自己的理论指向或自身利益的需要。按照莫斯科的意图来取舍中共的主要领导人,给中国革命事业和中共党的自身建设带来了两个主要弊端:一是共产国际、联共(布)的理论指向和自身利益不一定符合中国革命的利益;二是这样做的结果使中共主要领导人的更替完全围绕着莫斯科的意图来进行,党不能独立自主地选择自己的领导核心。两个弊端给中共领导的革命事业以及自身建设带来了不利影响。     

论环境健康与政府环境责任

通过分析自然环境对人体健康的影响,指出环境健康问题的严重性,而在环境健康问题越来越严重的今天,根据法律规定,政府负有不可推卸的环境责任,根据政府对环境责任的错误认识提出了要狠抓落实环境民主,改进现有政府环境理念,达到环境善治的观点。