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North Macedonia: A Nation and Cinema in Transition

Vessela S. Warner

in Contemporary Balkan Cinema: Transnational Exchanges and Global Circuits

Adjusting to the economic hardship after 2008 by tapping into international markets and business cooperation, North Macedonian cinema has maintained a steady focus on its cultural branding and world ... More

Adjusting to the economic hardship after 2008 by tapping into international markets and business cooperation, North Macedonian cinema has maintained a steady focus on its cultural branding and world image. While the genre and thematic variety of documentaries and shorts testifies to the unceasing interest in and demand of cinematic self-expression, the few feature films produced each year display a rather safe balance between entertainment and national self-assertion. This chapter discusses several recent films which mediate the political and cultural currents in this liminal space through the categories of national-recollective, national-symbolic, and national-reflective to understand the multiple and merging national narratives.Less

Making Space for Making Space: Jeff Lemire’s Essex County and the Canadian Alternative

Jocelyn Sakal Froese (ed.)

in The Canadian Alternative: Cartoonists, Comics, and Graphic Novels

This chapter employs a framework informed predominantly by queer theory in order to untangle the complex structures that Lemire uses in writing the Canada that he does, and ultimately suggests that ... More

This chapter employs a framework informed predominantly by queer theory in order to untangle the complex structures that Lemire uses in writing the Canada that he does, and ultimately suggests that the text contains the possibility for another, less conservative Canada than the predominately white, masculinist and heteronormative model that appears on the surface. Lemire's text acts dually as one that writes a particular kind of Canada: one that makes claim to rural life as freeing, that centralizes particular forms of masculinity, and that makes claims to rightful ownership and occupancy on behalf of those citizens with ties to the land rooted equally in settler lineages and a combined commitment and ability to make the land productive. In accordance with the logics of extermination that make up the foundation for modern settler sexualities, and by extension modern settler structures of power, indigenous populations are necessarily excluded from all markers of proper occupancy that the text puts forth.Less

India and Indians in SF by Indians and Others

Uppinder Mehan

in Dis-Orienting Planets: Racial Representations of Asia in Science Fiction

Uppinder Mehan, in “India and Indians in SF by Indians and Others,” examines the representation of India in recent science fiction in the works of contemporary writers outside India, such as Ian ... More

Uppinder Mehan, in “India and Indians in SF by Indians and Others,” examines the representation of India in recent science fiction in the works of contemporary writers outside India, such as Ian McDonald’s River of Gods (2004) and Cyberabad Days (2009). Mehan makes comparisons to the SF of Indian writers such as Anuradha Marwah’s Idol Love (1999), Manjula Padmanabhan’s Escape (2008), and Rimi Chatterjee’s Signal Red (2005) and how they effortlessly explore concerns in their science fiction that are beyond the received images of India and Indians and surface knowledge available to the casual observer. Mehan interrogates the distorted and truthful reflections of Indian culture in science fiction.Less

Postcolonial TV: El tiempo entre costuras [The Time In Between] (Antena 3, 2013–14); El Príncipe (Telecinco, 2014)

Paul Julian Smith

in Dramatized Societies: Quality Television in Spain and Mexico

Chapter 4, the last on Spain, deals with post-colonial TV, a subject as yet little studied. Having explored the halting media relationship between the Spanish metropolis and its one time Moroccan ... More

Chapter 4, the last on Spain, deals with post-colonial TV, a subject as yet little studied. Having explored the halting media relationship between the Spanish metropolis and its one time Moroccan protectorate, the chapter gives a close account of two exceptional series. The first is a lush historical romance set in the 1930s, which takes the woman’s work of sewing as a metaphor for international relations. The second is a gritty police drama exploring the drug and terror gangs in the contemporary Spanish enclave of Ceuta. Both series are shot and set in North Africa, a region that embodies a bloody heritage for Spain and which recent cinema has failed to investigate.Less

Conclusion

Vineet Thakur

in Postscripts on Independence: Foreign Policy Ideas, Identity, and Institutions in India and South Africa

This chapter summarizes the findings of the book. It compares the Indian and South African cases and finds ideational and institutional similarities and differences in the two experiences.

Introduction

Véronique Machelidon and Patrick Saveau

in Reimagining North African immigration: Identities in flux in French literature, television and film

Retracing and resisting the long and controversial use of the terms “beur” and “post-beur” first coined by literary critics of immigration literature and cinema, this preface affirms the central ... More

Retracing and resisting the long and controversial use of the terms “beur” and “post-beur” first coined by literary critics of immigration literature and cinema, this preface affirms the central place of a new generation of authors with roots in North Africa, who use French as their language of choice in film, television, or literature in order to break the chains of ideological, literary, memorial, spatial, gender, sexual and ethnic constraints. These new writers and filmmakers stage identity in flux, undermine the ideological division of cultural space, engage in postmemorial work, and collapse clichés and stereotypes. The preface continues to define the orientation of the whole volume, which does not seek to examine literature in contrast with film or television, but instead emphasizes the common strategies and themes that bridge the generic divide and define the joint cultural corpus dedicated to the issues of immigration to France and of post-colonial heritage. The preface further outlines the theoretical perspectives used in the essays and pays tribute to the works of Fiona Barclay, Stuart Hall, Alec Hargreaves, Will Higbee, Marianne Hirsch, Benjamin Stora, Carrie Tarr, and others.Less

‘Qui fait la France?’ New configurations of Frenchness in contemporary urban fiction

Steve Puig

in Reimagining North African immigration: Identities in flux in French literature, television and film

This essay traces the change in focus from beur literature in the 1980s to urban literature in the 1990s onwards. Whereas beur literature showed characters torn between their original culture and ... More

This essay traces the change in focus from beur literature in the 1980s to urban literature in the 1990s onwards. Whereas beur literature showed characters torn between their original culture and their adopted culture, urban literature presents characters claiming and asserting their belonging to France and refusing to be confined to racist stereotypes. Relying on a collection of short stories entitled Chroniques d’une société annoncée published in 2005 by a group of writers named Qui Fait la France?, Puig shows how the short stories give fresh and different representations of people living in the banlieue.Less

The Maghreb and the Occident: Towards the Construction of an Occidentalist Discourse

Zahia Smail Salhi

in Occidentalism: Literary Representations of the Maghrebi Experience of the East-West Encounter

This chapter attempts to construct a non-biased definition of Occidentalism and argues that the term is still an evolving concept being constantly nourished by the ongoing relationship between Orient ... More

This chapter attempts to construct a non-biased definition of Occidentalism and argues that the term is still an evolving concept being constantly nourished by the ongoing relationship between Orient and Occident. It rejects the view that Occidentalism is the exact reverse of Orientalism and contends that there are many Occidentalisms as expressions by diverse ‘Orientals’ about their equally diverse encounters with the Occident. Occidentalism is therefore, the multi-conceptions produced by multi-nations not only as a reaction against Orientalism, but also as the position of at least four continents out of six, vis-à-vis Western civilisation and as Westernisation. The chapter brings into discussion scholarly views from both Orient and Occident on the issue of Occidentalism and concludes that the differing facets and meanings of Occidentalism in different theoretical perspectives and settings should be interpreted as a sign that testifies to the power of the concept rather than its inadequacy.Less

Africa–Britain: a short history

Graham Harrison

in The African presence: Representations of Africa in the construction of Britishness

This chapter provides an overview of the history of British-African interaction. It begins with pre-modern interactions which were very sparse. It goes on to focus on slavery as a major starting ... More

This chapter provides an overview of the history of British-African interaction. It begins with pre-modern interactions which were very sparse. It goes on to focus on slavery as a major starting point in British-African relations. It then proceeds to review abolitionist politics, missionary travels, colonialism, decolonisation, and post-colonialoism. It highlights the centrality of Christianity and liberalism in the ways that the British thought about Africa.Less

Rebouco: Postindependence Art and Angolan Socialism

Delinda Collier

in Repainting the Walls of Lunda: Information Colonialism and Angolan Art

Chapter Three shifts into the immediate post-colonial period and artists’ active use of Painted Walls of Lunda and other anthropological texts in art and the cultural policies of the newly ... More

Chapter Three shifts into the immediate post-colonial period and artists’ active use of Painted Walls of Lunda and other anthropological texts in art and the cultural policies of the newly independent Angolan government. These artists sampled from the global Marxist discourse of “O Homem Novo” (The New Man) during the Cold War.Less

Colonial Legacies, War Memories, and Political Violence in Taiwan, 1945–1947

Victor Louzon

in In the Ruins of the Japanese Empire: Imperial Violence, State Destruction, and the Reordering of Modern East Asia

In this chapter Victor Louzon turns our historiographical focus to the violence of decolonization in Taiwan, namely the 1947 uprising known as the February 28 Incident. Louzon details how the revolt ... More

In this chapter Victor Louzon turns our historiographical focus to the violence of decolonization in Taiwan, namely the 1947 uprising known as the February 28 Incident. Louzon details how the revolt broke out, and places the incident in the context of memory wars in Taiwan since. His chapter delves into the politics and geopolitics the incident, highlighting both the KMT brutal suppression of the revolt, and the experience of Taiwanese at the center of the revolt, many of whom had been mobilized by the Japanese army and paramilitary structures. His work redirects our attention to the experience of “remobilized” Taiwanese and the repertoire of actions and symbols invoked from the imperial era which defined the incident. Even more his work suggests new insights into broader transnational questions of the imperial roots of mobilization and militarization in Cold War Asia.Less

A Theory of European Military Intervention

Catherine Gegout

in Why Europe Intervenes in Africa: Security Prestige and the Legacy of Colonialism

Chapter one first defines military intervention. It can occur with or without the consent of the targeted government and/or the United Nations, be direct or indirect, and be characterized as liberal ... More

Chapter one first defines military intervention. It can occur with or without the consent of the targeted government and/or the United Nations, be direct or indirect, and be characterized as liberal and humanitarian. This section also situates military intervention among other seven other types of intervention: economic, political, cultural, institutional, legal, medical, and environmental. The following section discusses the theory of European military intervention, based on insights from realism, constructivism and post-colonialism. The realist approach is essential for explaining European intervention in Africa, as it takes account of motives such as security, economics, prestige and also, if an intervening state faces limited threats on these three counts, humanitarianism. Constructivism is used to uncover the norms of legality and Eurocentrism. Post-colonialism highlights the importance of history for the understanding of policy decisions on intervention, introduces the concept of neo-colonialism, and helps to address and refine the issue of Eurocentrism, which to date remains under-researched in the literature on international relations.Less