Valuing the Earth and Each Other

In this short essay I briefly explore the utility of Marx’s theory for non-human nature and then proceed to consider his position on value after capitalism. Finally, I claim that many other types of theory contribute to the valuing of nature in the broad sense (beyond capitalism), and argue that proponents of these theories (along with Marxists) could not only learn from each other but also build affinity and solidarity in the construction of diverse economies and subjectivities. The “Leap Manifesto”, authored by representatives of Black Lives Matter, indigenous groups, unions, feminists, climate justice groups, and many others, is one example of the way forward.     

Pornography: Reflections upon past and current issues

Abstract

Summary: This article reviews historical and recent - and differing - responses from feminists in the developed and in the developing worlds, to the production and use of pornographic materials. It explores some of the possible reasons for changes in feminist analyses and posits future directions for feminist responses to pornographic materials, based on recent contributions to the debates.     

From a ‘terrorist’ to global icon: a critical decolonial ethical tribute to Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela of South Africa

This article examines Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela’s political life and legacy from the perspective of critical decolonial liberation ethics, which privileges a paradigm of peace, humanism and racial harmony and opposes the imperial/colonial/apartheid paradigm of war, racial hatred and separation of races. This system emerged in the 15th century and was driven by the desire to conquer, dispossess, colonise, exploit and segregate people according to race and, alongside imperatives of primitive accumulation, it informed the colonisation of South Africa and the imposition of apartheid. Mandela was a liberation fighter who provided an antidote to the colonial ideology of racial profiling and hierarchisation. What distinguished him from other freedom fighters was his commitment to the cause of human rights as early as the 1960s, long before it attained its status as a constitutive part of global normative order. When Mandela became the first black president of a democratic South Africa, his practical and symbolic overtures to whites and his reconciliatory politics aimed to call them back to a new inclusive humanity. Critical decolonial ethics logically enables a tribute to Mandela that privileges his commitment to a post-racial society and new humanism.     

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.     

Peripheral modernity and anti-colonial nationalism in Java: economies of race and gender in the constitution of the Indonesian national teleology

This analysis investigates the limits of colonial modernity in the 20th century Dutch East Indies at a time that coincided with the building of the Indonesian national project. I am interested in the constitution of the national teleology as an inexorable socio-political project, deploying specific racial and gendered economies. As a locus of investigation I choose the literary narratives of two celebrated Indonesian intellectuals (and participants in the anti-colonial struggle), Pramoedya’s Buru Quartet and Mangunwijaya’s Durga/Umayi. Were the impulses of anti-colonial resistance intrinsically national in their orientation? Through what erasures and re-appropriations has the nationalism/modernity paradigm become the medium of decolonisation?     

Traumata on Screen: Cinematic Views from Southern Africa

ABSTRACT

This special themed issue of Communicatio explores the profound transformation of the political, cultural and intellectual contours of Africa from the vantage point of African film and grounded within the theoretical and epistemological discourses of trauma studies, memory studies, postcolonial studies, and decolonial studies. The contributors are particularly interested in exploring the relational flows between African cinematic works and the social and imaginary circumstances of their production, engagement and representation. Through an explication of the screen and viewing cultures from Africa, this themed issue wishes to make three contributions. The first is to the already established but on-going scholarly work of trauma studies, but specifically from an African, cinematic vantage point. The second contribution is to the theoretical body of work on African cinema (and in this context, “cinematic” includes both film/television). And the last contribution is to the emerging view that culture is a “two-way street,” to put it colloquially: a reversal of the dominant “Western” direction of culture, with an emphasis on different tones of social values and contexts, that have been marginalised in mainstream popular culture discourses.     

Never late: Unwelcome desires and diasporas in Chavela Vargas’ last works

Theodor Adorno, and Edward Said after him, theorized late style as a discrepant musical orientation at odds with what is expected, desired, or current. Late work is musical work formulated by an older subject that refuses to retire quietly and with docility. While Adorno and Said discuss Classical-period music, the author is interested in engaging this concept in thinking about the recalcitrant rancheras and boleros of a lesbian, migrant, and aged musical performer of the early twenty-first century, Chavela Vargas (1919–2012). She examines a couple of Vargas’ last works, Cupaima (2006) and ¡Por mi |Culpa! (2010), paying particular attention to how her aesthetic choices continue to de-form the classic repertoire of rancheras and boleros. The entwining of beloved, familiar lyrics and melodies with details that recall invisible and hyper-visible subjects, namely migrants and indigenous communities, result in unexpected, repellent musicality. Inspired by feminist and queer theory, the author examines how her later body of work conveys an unbearable sonic assessment of contemporary struggles of those unwelcome, despised, and outside neo-liberal chronology.     

Confronting disillusionment: on the rediscovery of socialist archives in recent South African cultural production

In recent years, South African literature, art, and cultural criticism have been registering the feelings of disappointment, nostalgia, and of a general impasse that signify a crisis of postapartheid imaginations. At the same time, we can observe a turn in cultural production toward reexamining South Africa’s socialist archives and reconnecting them to the present-day predicaments and emerging social movements. Reading these processes in Imraan Coovadia’s latest novel, artworks by Haroon Gunn-Salie, and an exhibition by the Stellenbosch Open Forum, this article argues that they confront the feelings of postapartheid disillusionment by critically re-invoking memories of the 1970–80s socialist practices in South Africa and the transnational frameworks they involved. It argues that these changing approaches to the socialist archives can be read as a decolonial critique, which links the described trends in South African culture to other “post-dependence” (and specifically, post-socialist) contexts worldwide.     

“But how to speak of such things?”: decolonial love,the coloniality of gender,and political struggle in Francisco Goldman's The Long Night of White Chickens (1992) and Jennifer Harbury's Bridge of Courage (1994) and Searching for Everardo (1997)

This article presents an analysis of works by Francisco Goldman and Jennifer Harbury, which deal with “cataclysmic moments” of recent Guatemalan history. It explores gender relations in these works with reference to three themes: storytelling, communication and affective relationships. Conceptually, I draw on the notions of decolonial love, the coloniality of gender, and the world gender order as categories of analysis. I take Chela Sandoval's methodology of the oppressed as a guideline for my analysis, and look at the ways in which different types of storytelling perpetuate or question the coloniality of gender, at the consequences of intercultural misunderstandings produced by different readings of the coloniality of gender and the world gender order, and at the significance of a critical and liberatory practice of gender roles for decolonial love. The practice of decolonial love is an alternative to what Tzvetan Todorov has called “the dreadful concatenation,” which is a result of cultural encounters during the conquest of the Americas and which conceptualizes as “love” a feeling that sidesteps equality, an exercise in destruction and possession. The coloniality of gender and decolonial love are explored through their interactions with masculinities and femininities across the different case studies.     

Insurgent Bodies in Cultural Responses to Reproductive Justice in Chile and Ireland

Transnational solidarity and comprehensive critiques of colonial legacies and patriarchal systems united the cultural responses created during the campaigns for reproductive justice in Ireland and Chile in 2018. This article considers the performance piece ‘Abortistas’ by the Yeguada Latinoamericana in Chile and the poem ‘Granuaile’ by Róisín Kelly in Ireland. Taking a decolonial feminist approach, this comparative study explores the interstices of art form and geopolitically distinct territories to examine how the creative practitioners' discursive construction of insurgent bodies aids critique of the lived experiences of women and pregnant people under the restrictive reproductive laws of both countries.