Exit 11 05/06

Exit 11

Writing Instructors’ Praise for Exit 11

“As a managing editor, it is a matter of great pride and pleasure to publish this double issue. Our writers, editors and administrators stayed committed to this project. The editorial meetings involved regular reflections and debates on what we value in students’ essays. Those discussions and deliberations also helped us grow as teachers of writing. Exit 11 displays the strong team work of the editors alongside the academic caliber of NYUAD students.”

SWETA KUMARI

“Returning to Exit 11 as a managing editor after three years reminded me why I founded this journal in the first place, to showcase and celebrate the teaching and learning of writing as a mode of expression and knowledge sharing by our Writing Program faculty, instructors and most importantly, the students. The variety of essay topics and writing styles in this double issue exhibit not only the wide range of topics covered in the First Year Writing Seminars each year but also the unique interests and expressions of our students. This publication is a labor of love and dedication of the editorial team to the teaching of writing and celebrating our students’ learning, regardless of the unprecedented challenges we faced in the past two years due to the pandemic and loss of our dear colleague and friend Ken Nielsen. This Issue is a tribute to him for his years of service in shaping the Writing Program where it is today.”

ASMA NOUREEN

“Exit 11 serves as a testament to the amount of progress students are able to make in their writing within the span of one short semester. If I had to put it down to three words, I would say it is exciting witnessing the range of astute and innovative topics and approaches, inspiring watching the growth students are making, and rewarding to watch their hard work be recognised in the form of published essays”

AIESHAH ARIF

“One of the qualities of a well written essay is ‘flow’ which aids comprehension even if the reader is only scanning. In technical terms, this means the essay has achieved cohesion which is an elusive quality even for weathered writers. Exit 11 essays portray this cohesion, connectedness of ideas, with great authority. The essays in the anthology are accessible models for teaching analytical frameworks and writing effective introductions. Using student essays as models makes the idea of writing an essay less daunting for a student in First Year Writing Seminars; the idea is: if my peers can achieve this level of excellence, so can I.”

NEELAM HANIF

“The existence of Exit 11 is a great way to think about audience as being more than just the class professor. When we read an essay in this journal that piques our curiosity, we intuit the often difficult to grasp concept of ‘motive’. Therefore, my favourite essays in the journal are the ones that fluidly integrate motive and make me forget I’m reading a class paper. Exit 11 also shows how the different FYWS, regardless of the topic, hold the same core values, but also how many kinds and genres of writing ultimately get published.”

SAMIA MEZIANE

“Having worked with Sohail Karmani’s course “Power and Ethics in Photography” over the past several years, it has been a joy to see students’ photography appear as the cover of several issues of Exit 11; this has allowed students to connect with the writing contained inside, while appreciating how the volumes are bound by the places and spaces they had been, felt, and reflected upon, communally. It is really a physical manifestation representing how space cultivates writing.”

ZACHARY SHELLENBERGER

“For me, Exit 11 showcases the alchemy of writing, the magic that happens between the blank page and a finished, polished essay. Initial impressions, unformed thoughts and shadows of ideas become sophisticated opinions and revelatory insights that not even the writer knew they were capable of manifesting. Not only does it represent the breathtaking range of material covered across the First Year Writing Seminars, but it’s a fantastic resource for both instructors and students.”

RACHEL WOBUS

“The essays contained within Exit 11 always contain something of the magic that happens inside the classroom–the moments where students bring their whole selves to an assignment. As an instructor, having a resource like this one–where I can show my students exactly what I mean, and how others in their shoes have approached similar questions– is invaluable as we make the leap between knowing and doing the work of writing.”

JAMIE ZIPFEL

“The perspectives and the depth of understanding displayed within the pages of Exit 11 are a testament to the exceptional intellectual curiosity and scholarly rigor fostered within the academic environment of NYUAD. Exit 11 not only serves as a source of inspiration and admiration for fellow students in learning the art of expression but also provides a valuable resource for instructors seeking exemplary work to showcase to future students. As educators, we are constantly in search of outstanding examples of academic writing, and Exit 11 presents an exquisite collection that embodies the ideals of creativity, technical precision, well-researched scholarship, and profound intellectual inquiry that we hope to see more of from the writers of tomorrow.”

AMANDA LEONG

“One of the joys of teaching writing is seeing the techniques that you introduce in the classroom help bring alive a learner’s ideas on the page. It is also in how they develop, adapt or even discard these ideas as they grow as a writer. Exit 11 is a great testimony to the process of writing as embodied in the FYWS.”

DAVID ALLWAY

“Exit 11 showcases the incredible, diverse, and important work students produce in the span of one short semester, and represents in similar ways the value of guidance and support throughout the process, whether in the writing class or for the collection itself. Exit 11 is a testament to the writers whose craft has developed in critical and personal ways and to the FYWS that creates the curated space for this development. There is little that is more fulfilling for a writer than to see their work published, as they are able to put out what they have produced to an audience that may feel more real than the instructor and their peers, and inspire other writers through the creativity and ingenuity of their voices and thoughts.”

MARWA MEHIO

“Readers of Exit 11 will only get to read the final, polished versions of the essays. However, behind each essay there is a tremendous amount of thought and effort that goes into the process of creating it. Each one is a product of time spent reading and engaging with sources, thinking critically about when and how to enter the academic conversation, doing further research as needed to extend the conversation, and weaving these elements together into the draft versions. During the process of finalizing their essays, the authors have received feedback from peers, professors, and the editorial team, and decided how to incorporate that feedback into the final versions that you have before you. Each essay, then, is a testament to the writing process itself—sometimes messy and challenging, but also a powerful means of giving voice to the diverse interests and perspectives of the authors.”

YUSUF SAMARA

Exit 11: A Journal of the First Year Writing Seminars

Issue 05 & 06, 2020–2021 & 2021–2022

Executive Editor Marion Wrenn

Managing Editor Sweta Kumari

Assistant Managing Editors Asma Noureen & Rachel Wobus

Senior Editors Aieshah Arif / Haewon Yoon / Hind Saddiki / Jamie Zipfel / Lee Gurdial Kaur Singh / Marwa Mehio / Yusuf Samara

Associate Editors Amanda Leong / David Allway / Idil Barre / Kimberly Specht / Neelam Hanif / Samia Ahmed / Samia Meziane / Zachary Shellenberger

Contributing Editors Camilla Boisen / Claire Whitenack / Emily Cole / Ken Nielsen / Najwa Belkziz / Piia Mustamaki / Sabyn Javeri Jillani / Samuel Mark Anderson / Soha Sarkis / Sohail Karmani / Sun-Hee Bae

Photo Editor Sohail Karmani

Student Assistants Ria Golovakova & Tracy Vavrova

Founding Editor Asma Noureen

Cover Photographer Sultan Farooq

Design Consultant Minbar.co

Printer Royal Printing Press LLC

A big thank you to Awam Ampka, Dean of Arts & Humanities, for his enduring support of the Writing Program. We also wish to thank our previous Dean, Kalle Taneli Kukkonen, as well as Bryan Waterman, Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Academic Development & Associate Professor of Literature. The digital conversion of Exit 11 was deftly overseen by Cyrus Patel, Global Network Professor of Literature and Professor of English, to whom we send our thanks. Our gratitude also goes to Kate Nordang, Program Manager; Holly Spence, Administrative Assistant, as well as Nisrin Abdulkhadir, Senior Administrative Coordinator who have supported this publication in various ways. And a special thank you to all our readers and writers.

This issue is dedicated to Dr. Ken Nielsen, our friend, colleague and mentor. Dr. Nielsen was both an ally and an architect of writing across the curriculum and the NYUAD Writing Center.

15

Table of Contents

Introduction – Marion Wrenn

PHOTOGRAPH: Bukhoor – Sultan Farooq

Essay 1

23 The Romanticization of Violence: Pain’s Relation to Beauty – Azka Noor

27 Uncovering the Hypocrisy: The Trans Inclusion Debate – Fatima Rija Nadeem

33 “Like a Paper Boat Down a River”: Memory and Identity in “The Immigrant’s Song” – Fatma Alrebh

39

Defying the Colony: The Post-colony’s Assertions of Superiority Over the Colony Through Expressions of the State – Irem Naz Celen

44 Translation Analysis: Semantics of the Yoruba Bible Translation – Morenikeji O. Adedayo

49 The Significance of the Inexpressibility of Pain to Activism Against Structural Violence – Moyosoreoluwa Olatosi

54 On Judgements Involving the Language-Thought Relation: A Call for Specificity – Sarah Al-Towaity

PHOTOGRAPH: Sun Gilded Pedals – Jenna Al Taher

64 The Indian Political Boutique – Aiswarya Sudheer

70 The Perils of Pretext: Las Casas and Legitimizing Violence – Bianca S. Mandapat

76 “Harmless” Movies and Why They Matter: Race, Class, and a Bunch of Crazy Rich Asians – Emily Yoo

84 A Body for a Body: Disparities in Attaining Morally Sound Status Through Sati – Gaya Menon

90 My Trauma, Your Trauma, Our Trauma – Jess Ma

96 Debunking Luso-Tropicalism Through the African Lisbon Tour – Julia Vieira Branco

105 Critical Analysis of the Connection between French Universalism and the Representations of Race, Gender, and Religion in Dilili in Paris – Kristina Sisiakova

114 Rethinking Languages – Lisa Brighenti

121 The Kafala System in Lebanon: Modern-Day Slavery – Nour Mrad

128 Malleability of Ethnic Identity and the Rwandan Genocide – Rashik Chand

135 Literature as Witness to Human Suffering – Shu Min Tan

142 The Hundred-Foot Journey: Serving A Platter of Orientalist Discourse – Sophie Biervert

152 The Violence of Love: How Religious Communities Harm Their Own – Vanessa Medina Vázquez

PHOTOGRAPH: Smoke and Solitude – Aadil Zakarya

162 The 858 Archive: Remembering, Forgetting and the Quest for Social Justice – Amal Surmawala

171 Honor Crimes in Pakistan: The Role of Forgiveness in Exonerating Offenders – Azka Noor

180 Ideologically Far-Right, Spectacles Online – Baoyuan Zhang

192 A Comparison Study Between Colonial Education and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India – Bruna Araujo Pereira

200 The Participatory Culture of the Qarahunj People During the Velvet Revolution of Armenia – Elina Aghabekyan

213 Conversation about Bacha Bazi: Afghanistan’s “Open Secret” – Fiza Gulzar

222 Language Policy and the Development of the Filipino Language – Jason Cruz

237 Plaza Yesterday, Plaza Today, Plaza Tomorrow – Juan Piñeros

247 Theology of Genocide: How the Catholic Church Sanctioned Mass Slaughter in Rwanda – Kotryna Karpauskaite

256 Masculinity in Advertising: Gillette’s Use of the #MeToo Movement to Transform an Aging Brand Identity – Kunal Gautam Satpute

265 Contextualism through the eyes of Jean Nouvel: the Louvre Abu Dhabi – Marta Pienkosz

PHOTOGRAPH: Threads of Time – Leen Kharouf

277 The Thieves that Smile: A Feminist Analysis of Shabake Khanda – Negaar Rowan

286 It’s not “just a meme, bro”: The Influence of Casteist Memes and Their Role in Creating Ideological Echo Chambers – Nobel Prasad Rimal

296 Fostering. Ridiculous. Ideas. Enrooted. In. Depthless. Sarcasm.: Audiovisual Translation of Verbal Humor from English to Hindi in Friends – Priyamvada Daga

305 Out of One, Many: How Social Class Influenced Migrant Integration During the Windrush Era – Ryan Smith

317 Deconstructing Nobuyoshi Araki: The Degrading Portrayal of Women in Photography – Shehryar Ahmed Subhani

328 Reconstructing ‘Women’ with Genocide – Shu Min Tan

338 One Wor(l)d – What a Dying Language Leaves Behind – Sofia Encheva

349 Issues of Racial Representation: The Intersectional Discrimination of Asian-American Women – Sophia Leow Alegre

361 Driving and Urban Experience: Can Driving Generate Urban Experience in a City? – Sungsu Kim

370 Kinbaku: Artistic Bondage or Societal Hostage? – Terry Chen

380 Violence and Identity in the Mexican Anti-Femicide Movement – Vanessa Medina Vázquez

391 Structural Rebuild to Semantic Transfer: Translations of Lord Byron’s “The Isles of Greece” in Classical and Vernacular Chinese – Yiyang Xu

PHOTOGRAPH: Balancing Progress and Nature – Sultan Farooq

407 Notable Submissions

Introduction

The much-beloved belief that “every writer needs a reader” fuels the work we do in NYUAD’s First-Year Writing Seminars (FYWS). It informs the way we think about writers, readers, and writing as a form of critical thinking and communication. We not only cherish that idea, we put it into practice in one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse academic settings in the world. First-Year students are joining a student population representing 115 nationalities, a group of people who speak more than 110 languages. So, as you read these essays, you are participating in a long chain of engaged transformations: these authors were once brand-new first-year students; as students in FYWS they became authors of original essays; and now you are becoming a reader of their wonderful work. If you are a student in one of our FYWS then, as you read Exit 11, we hope you’ll feel the implicit message in its pages: welcome to NYUAD. You are joining an amazing conversation-- as a reader and a writer.

It is hard to understate the value of learning to write clearly, powerfully, and well. It is equally hard to understate the necessity of learning to read widely and wisely. One of the things you will learn in a First-Year Writing Seminar is to read closely, to pay attention. This is the first step in learning to write for a reader, and it is sometimes the first thing we forget to do. As a result, the FYWS create opportunities for students to slow down and reckon with an array of complex, challenging, transformative texts. That sense-making impulse unifies the collection of essays included in this volume. Read for the steady heartbeat of the work we asked these students to do: Pay attention. Be curious. Read closely. Envision your reader. Make arguments. Make sense.

If you are reading this introduction, then Exit 11 is at your fingertips; and it is there, perhaps, because of a class assignment. You’ve been asked to read an essay or two in these pages. If so: courage. These pieces unfold in surprising ways. They will not only show you what it looks like when an author makes a thoughtful, persuasive argument about the significance of a chosen source or cultural practice, they’ll invite you to participate in that sense-making

project. “What’s most rewarding about teaching FYWS, as well as reading the Exit 11 entries,” notes Dr. Piia Mustamaki, “is no doubt getting to witness the students’ own critical thinking flourish. This is also what I value the most in an essay, the powerful result of an imaginative, intellectual pursuit expressed confidently in the student writer’s own voice.” As our faculty and instructors will attest, part of the pleasure of teaching in the Writing Program is the way we see first-year students find their own voices as they become attuned to the demands of scholarly writing. Part of the pleasure of reading these essays is in the way each writer situates their ideas among the ideas of others in order to create a sense of urgency and context for their analysis. We hope these wellcrafted essays inspire you to craft your own.

But some student readers have found Exit 11 daunting. Some read these essays under the mistaken impression that their authors sat down and penned the first draft as if it were the last and best draft in one swoop and then simply handed the essay to the Exit 11 team. Ask any author– or writing instructor, or faculty member, or peer tutor– and we’ll all attest: these essays evolved over time, with patience and diligence, and with the nimble, tenacious revision work of their authors.

As our dear colleague, the late Dr. Ken Nielsen, would say, the best essays “are curious, engaging, and, oftentimes, imperfect. They provide you a sense of the writer and take the reader’s experience seriously. They argue and they allow the reader to disagree.” Dr. Nielsen was an ally to his students, friends, and colleagues, and he was a chief architect of our writing curriculum and the NYUAD Writing Center, where he served for 9 years. His belief that excellence has many forms of expression amplified the notion I cite above– that “every writer needs a reader.” We will miss him. This volume is dedicated to his life and legacy as a champion for writing that engages a reader in the development of an author’s ideas.

How are essays selected for Exit 11? The essays in this volume were competitively selected via a democratic editorial process, where every member of the editorial board votes on the merits of the submissions we received. We cast a wide net and sought essays from the array of classes that make up the First-Year Writing Seminars: from “Slavery after Slavery” to

“Saving Strangers” and “Graphic Violence”; from “Imagined Geographies” and “Writing About the Languages We Speak” to “Taste, Culture, and the Self”; from “History, Memory, and Forgetting” and “Living Cities” to “Power and Ethics in Photography”; from “The Politics of Spectacle,” and “Real and Imagined: Women’s Writing Across Worlds” to “Protest Art” as well as “The World of Babel.”

Though the course themes vary widely, the essays form a coherent collection. Crucially, the essays included in this volume transcend their status as a “homework assignment” and reveal their authors as thoughtful human beings making sense of sources, asking analytical questions, using evidence to make sense of the very questions they’ve posed.

Let these essays teach you about the work of making creative, complex, (ir) reverent, ethically-sourced and cited arguments. Learning correct citation format sounds like it might put you to sleep, right? With the rise of artificial intelligence and chatbots like ChatGPT, such seemingly mundane tasks might be the first thing we want to hand over to our machines. But discovering, integrating, and citing sources is essential to critical reading and original human thinking. We’ll show you how close reading and library-based research can reward your curiosity, and how a powerful essay can stage the work of your mind on the page.

In fact, you may notice that each essay follows a different citation format. The varying citation styles reflect the fact that our faculty draw upon their individual research methodologies, artistic practices, and areas of expertise to craft their seminars. Instead of collapsing all of the essays into a single format for an Exit 11 “house style,” we opted to showcase the various modes of citation so readers get a better sense of the logic and purpose of accurate citation within a range of disciplines. As a student at NYUAD, you will soon make a decision about what you want to study, and once you choose your major you will learn to craft arguments using the style and conventions of the field or discipline you choose. Learning to decipher, attempt, and use those conventions is one of the goals of FYWS: we hope you’ll learn to “read” the university and its many disciplines for the way they make arguments, too.

And we’re here to help. The team of Writing Program Faculty members, Writing Instructors, Writing Center consultants, and Peer Tutors who assist and serve students in the FYWS are poised to help you see what you are capable of – and then push beyond that limit. The FYWS are designed to help you develop a persuasive and compelling presence on the page. We’ll help you find your voice and express your ideas as a thinker and a scholar, as a reader and a writer.

MARION WRENN EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF WRITING, ARTS & HUMANITIES, NYUAD

Bukhoor is a cherished part of Emirati culture. It is a substance that is burned to create a pleasant fragrance in homes and to scent clothing during special occasions. Emiratis use bukhoor to welcome guests, purify the air, and promote a sense of well-being. The scent creates a peaceful atmosphere and is generally used in celebrations and other ceremonial events. This photograph was taken at an Emirati household in Dubai where bukhoor was being used in preparation of a wedding.

“Bukhoor” by Sultan Farooq

Essay 1

The Romanticization of Violence: Pain’s Relation to Beauty

AZKA NOOR

AY 2021-2022

Blood stained, battered faces of soldiers in battle, the stench of blood almost tangible as the camera focuses on flesh hanging out from open wounds, with music crescendoing in the background. The use of such aesthetic choices when depicting violence in the media we consume today leads to an eroticization of that violence. Hence, raising the question of why such aesthetic choices are made to begin with. In Charred Lullabies , Sri Lankan anthropologist Valentine Daniel reflects on the inherent characteristics of recording acts of violence and how they always run the risk of being “fattened up into prurience” (4). Whatever the intentions of recounting such events, they often end up being a spectacle for the world to see. Building upon Daniel’s claim, I argue that violence is inherently romanticized in the media and representations of art. By focusing on the intricate relationship that exists between beauty and pain, I analyze the underlying reasons for this romanticization and dissect why this has become such a common phenomenon. Thus, I make the case for how deeply intertwined pain and beauty are, especially when represented in the media and how that makes the glamorization of violence inevitable.

Violence is often narrated and understood through the instances of pain that permeate and define any violent events. The exploration of that pain is thus the basis of most attempts at chronicling stories of violence. As a result, the acknowledgement of pain’s existence often takes center stage when violent events are recounted through different media platforms. Pain, however, refuses to express itself to the public in its true form, owing to the fact that each person’s pain is unique and particular to their specific internal embodied experiences; “Pain stops at the skin’s limit” (Daniel 139). Even if two people have a shared experience that results in pain, there is no guarantee that the pain they feel will be equal or comparable in any way.

Only the individual can know what their pain truly feels like. As a result, expressing pain is a herculean task in itself. Because of its particularity, pain becomes unrepresentable.

What allows pain to shift from its unrepresentable state and be communicated is the experience of terror. Daniel argues that through terror, pain is able to find an exit into the world of language and representation. Without its existence, pain would remain isolated and unrepresented. For in pain’s deepest and most initial level of experience, “one is unlikely to find any effect of culture” (142). In those moments, pain acts as an agent that strips the victim of their collective identity and leaves behind nothing but an excruciating sense of alienation. A sense of belonging to a community or a group no longer exists, for the particularity of pain makes victims feel as if they are alone in their experiences and the lack of understanding from others pushes them into a state of isolation. Only once the victim relives those moments of pain through terror, or what Daniel specifies as “therapeutic terror” can the process of deindividuation occur (144). Through this experience of terror, the individual finds a way to let out pain, something that is nearly impossible beforehand. “The terror in question, remembered or relived terror, dislodges pain from its fixed site” and “shows pain a way out of its static particularity into a domain of inexhaustible virtuality, a domain that is home to beauty as well” (144). Thus, by providing an outlet for the individual’s pain, terror allows pain to be expressed and this is where it finds a union with beauty.

While terror allows pain to be let out and “find its freedom in the semeiosis of culture” (Daniel 144), what furthers this freedom and gives pain representation within culture is “the aesthetic”, which is defined by Daniel “as something located in signs that are difficult, if not impossible, to represent” (135). He furthers this definition by mentioning aspects generally associated with the aesthetic such as “the beautiful, the pleasurable, and the tasteful” (136). However, he goes on to make a case for pain to be included within this association, arguing that it fulfills the quality of being unrepresentable and unsignifiable. This unrepresentability is essentially what relates beauty and pain with each other: neither can ever truly be

described to their fullest extent and thus both elude the boundaries of language. The aesthetic, which consists of such unsignifiable signs, is what helps them be communicated to the world. For it is aesthetic forms such as poetry, theater, and film that allow signs like beauty and pain to be depicted, as seen by the abundance of poetry that followed the Sri Lankan civil war (146). Without integration with the aesthetic, pain and beauty, while still constituting the basic characteristic of inexpressibility, are worlds apart from each other. While beauty is unrepresentable due to it being inexhaustible in its description, pain is unrepresentable due to its uniqueness. That is to say, beauty opens itself up to so many possibilities and objects that it can never fully be expressed. Pain, on the other hand, closes in on itself due its extreme particularity (139). The aesthetic brings beauty and pain together. Once pain enters the realm of beauty through terror, art forms are what provide pain and beauty a platform to be voiced and communicated to the world, which is how all these unrepresentable signs come together under the aesthetic. As a result, the aesthetic becomes the common denominator that ultimately links beauty and pain.

The representation of pain through aesthetic forms, which are often the different forms of media we consume, is where the romanticization of pain and violence truly becomes an issue. While art and the aesthetic form allow for pain to be represented, they are structured in a way that leads to its objectification. Showcasing pain to the world means attributing it to objects the world can relate to. This act is bound to strip pain of its distinctive individuality. Consequently, representing pain through such material forms leads to it being considered as something materialistic in itself. This materiality is what allows for pain to be romanticized. Poetry, painting, and all other aesthetic forms often rely on beauty to create an effect of wonder on their audience. Consequently, anything expressed through these forms is embroiled in that beauty; “Through poetry, theater art, and other aesthetic forms, beauty is wrung out of terror” (Daniel 153). The representation of terror, pain, and violence thus becomes somewhat of a spectacle when expressed through these platforms. In trying to make these works appeal to the public, a sense of grandeur and extravaganza is often attached to them, resulting in the audience romanticizing what is being shown. The ‘flowery’ language used in poetry and the cinematography of film are both examples

of tools used to glamorize and make a performance out of violence and pain. The existence of beauty within most aesthetic forms is essential. Thus pain, pleasure, beauty, terror all become one and the same when they find their depictions through works of art.

In light of the above discussion, it becomes clear how deeply entangled beauty and pain are; one cannot be separated from the other, particularly in representations of art. As such, perhaps finding a way to represent pain without it being cloaked in beauty and glamor is near impossible. To try and separate it from this aspect of beauty would mean for pain to revert back to its isolated state. And to do so would mean stripping the victims of their voice and their right to let out their pain and express it to the world. However, a thin line exists between expressing one’s pain and making it a spectacle for the world to delight over. While using media to narrate occurrences of unjust violence is important, realizing that the resulting romanticization and idealization of violence can have detrimental consequences is equally important. Romanticizing pain and violence leads to a reduction in the significance of that pain; people are unable to understand the horrific effects historically violent events may have on the victims. All that the audience takes away is how enchanting and beautiful they find the depiction of that pain. As such, there should be a conscious effort to make sure accounts of violence are not being created and consumed solely for pleasure and there is an acknowledgment and apprehension towards the horrors attached to them. Violent events should not only be recounted for the purpose of entertainment but to give a voice to the victims, so that they may find solace in finally being able to express their pain and no longer feel alienated from the outside world.

WORKS CITED

Daniel, E. Valentine. “Introduction.” Charred Lullabies. Princeton University Press, 1996, pp. 3-11.

Daniel, E. Valentine. “Embodied Terror.” Charred Lullabies. Princeton University Press, 1996, pp. 135-153.

Uncovering the Hypocrisy: The Trans Inclusion Debate

FATIMA

RIJA NADEEM AY 2020-2021

“I am supposed to be okay after everything that happened because they tell me this is what I was made for” (Khan, 2016). About five years ago, Julie Khan, a trans rape victim was pushed to the precipice for daring to speak out. Khan’s experience speaks to a deeply embedded prejudice against transgender people around the globe, especially when it comes to the denial of sexual offenses against them. But what was perhaps more shocking in Khan’s case was that, among other groups, feminists too were advocating for trans exclusion from their spaces. Since inclusion is a crucial premise of feminism today or the movement for equality of all genders, it is questionable for certain feminists to bar trans women from the cause.

If the first wave of feminism was about political power and the second about personal, the third wave can be argued to be about intersectionality, diversity and inclusion. Adding to the debate about feminism and inclusion, recently, JK Rowling, a self-proclaimed feminist and acclaimed children’s writer made a series of transphobic remarks on Twitter followed by a blog post justifying her views. The crux of her argument lies in her ardent belief that transwomen are not women so they should not be included in the debate about feminism. There is a sound connection between trans women like Khan feeling othered and feminists like Rowling advocating for their exclusion. If feminism provides an inclusive platform of support and women’s writing also seeks to break the tradition of silence imposed on women, then why are influential writers and feminists like Rowling excluding transgender women? This essay highlights the flaws in the argument presented by Rowling, underscores inclusion as an essential pillar for feminism, and portrays how the relationship between the silence imposed on trans women by feminists is synonymous with the silence imposed on women that women’s writing aims to eradicate.

JK Rowling advocates for trans exclusion based on several hollow arguments, explaining how trans women’s different life experiences and the active use of inclusive language in feminist discussions endanger the cis women around them. Her blog post read, “ I’ve read all the arguments about femaleness not residing in the sexed body, and the assertions that biological women don’t have common experiences, and I find them, too, deeply misogynistic and regressive” (Rowling, 2020). This statement shows Rowling’s belief that women’s experiences are tied to biology. She believes since trans women have lived as males previously, they have benefited due to male privilege while disregarding the fact that the male identity stamp only aggravates their problems. Many aspects of male privilege are excessively damaging to trans women. In her YouTube video titled, “Do Transgender Women Have Male Privilege?”, a trans woman who goes by the handle Jessie Gender recounts the harrowing effects of male privilege. She discusses how having male privilege may, for instance, mean that transgender people would have been psychologically pressured to speak louder, compelled to display aggression, and match up to other stringent standards of masculinity (Gender, 2018). Furthermore, Japanese-American activist Emi Koyama allows us to further invalidate this argument once we realize “not all women are equally privileged or oppressed” (Koyama, 2020). That is to say, even cis women who do share the same anatomy, do not share identical experiences. As Koyama argues, thinking otherwise overlooks the oppression that fellow women partake in against other women. She writes, “To suggest that the safety of the Land would be compromised overlooks, perhaps intentionally, ways in which women can act out violence and discrimination against each other” (Koyama, 2020). Even more crucially she notes how the notion of trans women exclusion is also racist: arguing that ‘the presence of trans women in all female spaces can be triggering for cis women’ undermines how “white skin is just as much a reminder of violence as a penis” (Koyama, 2020). Thus, if one considers the true picture of male privilege for trans women and the varying experiences of all women, it’s simple to see Rowling’s claims fall apart.

While different women may have varying motivations to get involved, the cause of feminism that all women collectively strive for is to be heard. Rowling states the use of inclusive language “strikes many women as dehumanizing and demeaning” (Rowling, 2020). Here she claims that inclusive terminology aims to

erase cis identities whereas the trans activists are trying to create an atmosphere of inclusion for themselves rather than attempting to seize the narrative. Her constant reassertion that transwomen must be excluded because their presence shifts the focus from ciswomen also reflects her regressive strategy, to forcibly minimize trans problems. Despite supporting trans exclusion, she claims she respects the trans community. Koyama challenges how the notion of respect is starkly different from the ‘commitment’ to take action as the former merely involves placing the burden on the trans-community to advocate for their cause. Rowling proves Koyama’s point when she sarcastically remarks: “It isn’t enough for women to be trans allies. Women must accept and admit that there is no material difference between trans women and themselves” (Rowling, 2020). In precise terms, the entirety of her argument rests on her fervent belief that transwomen are not women, which in itself is flawed according to her own statement above.

However, when an influential public figure with a devoted fan following like Rowling is involved, the consequences stemming from this orthodox, conventional, and seemingly rigid viewpoint can be far reaching. Rowling’s Harry Potter series received critical acclaim and was undoubtedly a cornerstone of many people’s childhood, therefore her publicly transphobic stance is bound to alienate her fans from the transgender community. Additionally, Rowling’s status as a women’s writer with a huge young and female following confers certain responsibilities on her. Undeniably, her voice has the power to persuade and mold opinions of impressionable fans.

Feminism, ever since its inception, has evolved from a movement developed exclusively for and by white cis women discussing select issues to a movement now resting on a more inclusive framework with a focus on equality. Therefore, it is hypocritical of prominent feminists to rank ciswomen and their issues as more important and discriminate between genders based on biology when the feminist fight of today is for universal gender equality. When discussing the vulnerability of the trans community in her blog post, Rowling confessed, “I want transwomen to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe” (Rowling 2020). Her words highlight who and what in her opinion the cis women fight is against: trans women. She was concerned for the

safety of ciswomen because predatory men choosing to dress as women might exploit the situation once trans women are granted access to female-only spaces. Thus implying only ciswomen require sheltering, when there is a commonality in the troubles faced by the two marginalized sections of society. As reinforced in Koyama’s article such a viewpoint enables the ‘silence(ing)’ and ‘sacrifice(ing)’ of some women “to make room for the more privileged women” (Koyama, 2020). Rowling tweeted, “If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives” (Rowling, 2020). Here again tying womanhood to sex, she sets the basis of discrimination on biological differences. However, doing so ridicules both trans and cis women alike by reducing women to mere body parts. While it is possible to acknowledge that cis women may have different body parts, that does not mean that cis women are superior to trans women. Regardless of what constitutes their bodies, oppressed women everywhere deserve for their voices to be advocated under the feminist umbrella.

JK Rowling and other trans-exclusionary feminist writers, namely Germaine Greer and Chimamanda Adichie have imposed the same tradition of silence on trans women which they have been actively fighting to eradicate for cis women. In a 2015 interview with BBC, Greer states “a great many women do not think that post operative or even non post operative male to female trans sexual people look like, sound like or behave like women” (BBC, 2015). It can be derived from the aforementioned statement that Greer’s outlook on transgender people is too simplistic or even dismissive of their struggles. Trans women believe that a person’s sex and gender is determined by a host of factors other than genetics. Adichie, on the other hand, rests her argument against trans women on their experiences. Nair Shalini (2021) critiques Adichie’s stance by analyzing her statements extracted from several sources. The article quotes Adichie,

I think if you’ve lived in the world as a man, with the privileges that the world accords to men, and then sort of switch gender, it’s difficult for me to accept that then we can equate your experience with the experience of a woman who has lived from the beginning in the world as a woman, and who has not been accorded those privileges that men are (as cited in Shalini, 2021).

The flaws in this argument, as with Rowling’s, are the assumption that all men have the same experiences as do all women, which is not accurate. Additionally, it is imperative to note, as the article points out, Adichie’s argument pattern is one that has been used by trans exclusionary radical feminists over and over. By unflattering references to personal struggles, she shifts the focus of the debate. Similarly, Rowling deflects attention from trans women by acknowledging the silencing of cis-women: “Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else” (Rowling, 2020). It is ironic of Rowling, an established female writer who calls herself a feminist and has broken this tradition of silence by becoming one of the most successful authors of her time, to enforce the same shackles on an oppressed minority. Rowling and many of the cis women she fights for have been at the receiving end of hate and misogyny. Due to similar suffering, one would believe such women to be greatly sensitive towards trans women and try to comprehend their plight. Being an advocate for free speech it is disturbing to see her actively participating in the hushing up of the trans community and thus covertly negating the prominent tenet of feminism which calls for amplifying suppressed voices.

By utilizing Koyama, I have analyzed JK Rowling’s comments about trans women and the tradition of silence imposed on the trans community to help clarify how some feminists are trans-exclusionary. Since Feminism and women’s writing both work to shatter the tradition of silence imposed on women and highlight the significance of inclusion, it is vital to bring such hypocrisy of trans exclusionary feminists and female writers to light. This task becomes increasingly important when big influential writers are the ones in question. Feminism should be maintained as an all-inclusive platform utilized by all gender identities to further their motive of being heard so that no one is compelled into silence.

REFERENCES

Germaine Greer: Transgender women are ‘not women.’ (2015, October 24). [Video]. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-34625512.

Jessie Gender. (2018, August 1). Do transgender women have male privilege?

[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xejiO6Z98bQ

Koyama, E. (2020). Whose feminism is it anyway? The unspoken racism of the trans inclusion debate. The Sociological Review, 68(4), 735–744. https://doi. org/10.1177/0038026120934685

Nair, S. (2021, July 1). Chimamanda Adichie’s essay and the rise of trans exclusionary feminism. The WIRE. https://thewire.in/lgbtqia/chimamandaadichies-essay-and-the-rise-of-trans-exclusionary-feminism

Rowling, J.K. (2020, June 10). J.K. Rowling writes about her reasons for speaking out on sex and gender issues. JKRowling. https://www.jkrowling.com/ opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sexand-gender-issues/

Saleem, S. (2016, 7 September). “I wasn’t made to be raped and ridiculed” - trans woman makes a stand in Pakistan. The Guardian. https://www. theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/ sep/07/i-wasnt-made-to-be-raped-and-ridiculed-trans-woman-makes-astand-in-pakistan

“Like a Paper Boat Down a River”: Memory and Identity in “The Immigrant’s Song”

FATMA ALREBH

AY 2020-2021

Tishani Doshi’s “The Immigrant’s Song” details the adversity and hardships experienced by immigrants as they go on living far from home, thrust between past, present, and future. Doshi’s poem illustrates an important, yet often overshadowed, aspect of the immigrant experience. Although some pieces centered around immigration may choose to deal with the cultural clash experienced by immigrants, Doshi shines a light on the issue of nostalgia and reminiscing, choosing instead to focus on fond memories that will likely never come back. Nostalgia literally means the pain caused by reminiscing about the past, as the poem’s speaker realizes that their own children and grandchildren may never get to experience these fond memories. Thus, “The Immigrant’s Song”, on the first read, may seem to be asking readers to let go of their past in favor of living in the present. Throughout the poem, however, the speaker continually recalls the past, creating a dichotomy between the poem’s apparent primary theme and the reader’s actions. Eventually, through the usage of images, symbols, and poetic devices that illustrate the dichotomy between the immigrant’s old and new life, Doshi makes it clear that she is urging readers to do the direct opposite of forgetting - to remember the past and let it live, influencing not only the present, but also the future. The poem argues that, through speaking of the past, one’s memories can shape and live on through the future.

Tishani Doshi sets up her speaker as a person who vocally supports letting go of the past; however, through having them speak about past, present and future, in that order, she shows how their actions oppose what they say. Doshi’s chronological structure of the poem allows her to clearly paint the contrast in the speaker’s life prior to and after immigrating; which in turn

enables the reader to understand the speaker’s thought process. Although “The Immigrant’s Song” is composed of one continuous stanza without any formal separations, the poem can contextually be divided into four different parts, each dealing with a different subject but contributing to the overall meaning. The first 15 lines make up the first part, dealing with the speaker’s past. Lines 16-26 have the speaker tell the recipient what they should be doing, to “speak of our lives now” (16) - to speak of the present. The next eight lines (27-34) imagine the speaker’s future. The last part (35-44) has the speaker reflect on the nature of their memories. Doshi’s speaker - an immigrant - is portrayed addressing the reader about what they think the appropriate way to deal with the past is. The speaker is urging readers to let go of the past and never to speak about it. Through the usage of the pronoun “us” several times throughout the poem, it becomes clear that the intended recipient is an immigrant as well, or a person who has been through hardship and persevered. Having come from a different culture, the speaker cannot help but view their new environment through the lenses of their past, despite trying to push these memories away. Doshi’s poem may seem like a simple poem detailing the past, present, and future of an immigrant. However, Doshi’s use of a chronological sequence allows her to draw on the speaker’s experience in each of those time frames in order to drive home a far more important lesson - one about remembrance.

The first part makes clear the speaker’s stance on the past by having them repeatedly instruct recipients never to speak of it. But it is not that simple. While the speaker outwardly instructs the recipient not to remember their past nor to speak of it by using the anaphora “let us not” repeatedly in lines 1, 7, 13, and 15; the speaker is also continually defying this point throughout the poem by recalling memories, both pleasant and unpleasant, from their life prior to immigrating. The first part describes the speaker’s life prior to immigration; it is thus rife with simple flashbacks that evoke powerful emotions. By using candid and fond images such as “when coffee beans filled the morning / with hope, when our mothers’ headscarves / hung like white flags on washing lines” (2-4), “long arms of sky / that used to cradle us at dusk. / And the baobabs - let us not trace / the shape of their leaves in our dreams” (6-8), and “the noise of those nameless birds, / that sang

and died in the church’s eaves” (9-10), the speaker highlights the simple pleasures present in their home country, despite the suffering they endured. The usage of “white flags” to describe headscarves in line 4, for instance, suggests surrender, a feeling of hopelessness; in lines 2-3, on the other hand, the speaker explains how “coffee… filled the morning / with hope”. The speaker explains how despite the hardships and adversity present in their homeland, just the simple smell and taste of coffee are enough to bring them hope. This hyperbole can be taken as an indication of the determination and strength needed from those who have left their homelands behind in exchange for a more peaceful life. According to the speaker, these memories should not mean anything to them in the present, and are thus not worth remembering; a point breached as the speaker themself recall said memories. Furthermore, the mention of baobabs specifically is intriguing. “And the baobabs—let us not trace / the shape of their leaves in our dreams” (7-8), the speaker instructs. Baobabs are symbols of power - trees that grow and thrive where the environment is extremely tough. Baobabs are symbols of life and perseverance. Similarly, the speaker was able to live through their harsh past and persevere in their current life, despite the hardships. However, baobabs also represent longevity and history, having witnessed generations of people and a multitude of stories.

This begs the questions: why baobabs? As symbols of history, don’t baobabs speak directly against what the speaker is arguing? Furthermore, why would the speaker speak of the simple hopes, such as coffee, present in their homeland if they are trying to forget and move on? The answer, as it would become apparent, is that the speaker does not want to forget - the speaker wants to keep on living and pass on their story and legacy. In the first section, it may appear that Doshi is simply explaining the speaker’s background and past. However, upon remembering that it is the speaker who is recalling the past, a particular question raises itself: why would the speaker speak fondly of the past if they are instructing other immigrants not to speak of the past at all? The speaker seems to somewhat contradict themself, especially in this first part. This leads the reader to question whether the speaker’s advice of forgetting the past is actually legitimate or if the poem contains a coded message. “LIKE

As it turns out, the poem abounds with contradictions. For example, Doshi then has her speaker describe very plainly the details of their present life; however, the speaker still recalls the past even when talking about the present, hinting that past and present are interconnected - that the speaker cannot, and should not, remove themself from their past. This part of the poem describes the speaker’s present life, post-immigration. It attempts to turn a blind eye to the past and everything it stands for; it stops telling the recipient what should not be done and starts explaining what should be done - focusing on the present and how it should be lived. It starts with the speaker addressing the recipient directly by saying, “let us speak of our lives now”. The speaker goes on chronicling the present the same way they did the past yet we only end up with four lines of description, one of which presents a very stark contrast to all the previous images. The speaker mentions “gates and bridges and stores” (17) when describing the present. This series of industrial, man-made images - as compared to all the rural images in part one - is meant to highlight the different environment which immigrants find themselves in, almost as if they were thrust somewhere completely different. Furthermore, the speaker does not go the extra mile to paint their pictures in the recipient’s mind, as done in part one; they are instead plainly mentioned in passing. In this part, the speaker tries to explain their reasoning behind forgetting about the past: they must not “burden [their current companions] with stories / of war or abandonment” (21-22). Yet, once again, the speaker goes on to recall said stories. It can be inferred that the speaker’s silence about the past is employed as a strategy to run away from its haunting memories which becomes increasingly clearer when the speaker uses euphemisms such as “stolen from their beds” (12) and “disappeared” (14), instead of speaking the truth directly. However, the speaker decides to stop speaking of their past memories - good and bad - completely. The speaker’s contradiction - advising silence and nonetheless speaking - reinforces the poet’s claim that immigrants should not abandon their pasts. In fact, the inability of the speaker to mention the present without recalling the past hints that one’s past is integral to their identity, hence influencing not only the present, but also the future.

The speaker’s perception of a future where they don’t fully speak about their past proves to be bleak, an indicator that the speaker actually wants to speak about the past. This third part deals with the speaker’s hopes and predictions about the future. It imagines the kind of lives their children and grandchildren will lead, as they grapple with the fact that they don’t know their own past. This part contains the only piece of dialogue in the whole poem: “tell us about it, they might ask” (31). It is as though the poet, through the speaker’s own grandchildren, is addressing the recipient, begging them to break their silence. The speaker considers telling their grandchildren “of the sky and the coffee beans, / the small white houses and dusty streets” (33-34). The mention of the sky and coffee beans is a callback to the first part of the poem, where the speaker recalls how the smell of “coffee beans filled the morning / with hope” (2-3), and how “the long arms of sky / … used to cradle us at dusk” (5-6). The speaker’s own imagining of a future where they do not speak of the past is desolate, full of grandchildren who “speak / in forked tongues about the country / [they] once came from” (28-30), suggesting that they do not know their own origins. This bleak image of the future is a sign that even the speaker themself isn’t fully convinced by the idea of not speaking of the past. The fact that the speaker is imagining the future yet still believes that they would retain the memories of the past drives home the point that the past, present, and future are interconnected, and that one cannot simply forget their own past.

The poet then reminds the readers of how fragile, ethereal, and significant memories are. The third part is not the only instance in the poem where we see the speaker express doubt about the notion of forgetting the past. In fact, the very last part makes a direct comparison between the immigrant’s memories and a paper boat floating down a river. A paper boat’s nature is flimsy and delicate, especially to water - it would not survive long, and would eventually sink and disappear, just like the speaker’s - and immigrant’smemories if left unspoken. The speaker may hope that somehow, before sinking, the paper boat will pass their story to the water, indicating that the speaker wants their story - their song - known, not kept silent. This realization extends to the audience of the poem - immigrants. While the overall mood of the poem is introspective, morose, and reminiscent, this

last part, as the poet goes all out in asking immigrants to speak up, is seen as more hopeful and optimistic. Here, Doshi is instructing immigrants to speak their story and to allow themselves to live through these stories. Through the usage of the paper boat metaphor, she explains that immigrants should not only remember, but also speak of their past in order to allow it to live on through the future, so that “[they] might hear [their] whole life fill the world” (42-43).

Through the usage of simple sentence structures and a straightforward meter, the poem may give the impression of having a clear and straightforward central idea; the speaker is advising the recipient not to speak of the past. Yet, the central idea is hidden behind an extended list of contradictions. What the speaker actually does is contradictory to this advice. In addition to actually speaking of the past throughout the poem, the speaker also contemplates the destiny of their memories in the last paragraph. The speaker tries to focus on living in the present and ignore the past; however, the poem proves that the past is just as important as the present; for our past shapes our present, thus influencing the future. The speaker’s main argument, that immigrants must not burden others with stories about war or abandonment, unravels the moment the speaker recalls the past; this way, the poet proves that memory is a part of identity. The past, present, and future are all relevant. The past is always with us; it persists. The speaker may seem to invite our silence, but the poet is urging recipients to speak.

WORKS CITED

Doshi, Tishani. “The Immigrant’s Song.” Everything Begins Elsewhere, Bloodaxe Books, 2012.

Defying the Colony: The Post-colony’s Assertions of Superiority Over the Colony Through Expressions of the State

IREM NAZ CELEN AY 2021-2022

The postcolony is a system that is fed by its past. Defined by a complex character of its history and its people, postcolony brings together what is left by the colony and local communities in order to introduce a system. As the Cameroonian philosopher and political theorist, Achille Mbembe defines it, the postcolony is “characterized by loss of limits or sense of proportion” (119) and “the state’s obsession with remaking the past in its own image” (120). Thus, the spectacle of the postcolony is manifested in the expressions of the state through excessiveness and self-imagining. These two pillars of the postcolonial state, combined with the special relationship of postcolonial subjects, are studied in depth at Achille Mbembe’s On The Postcolony. Drawing upon Mbembe’s observations on postcolony with a Foucaultian lens, I argue that the postcolonial state aims to challenge its colonial past and defy the colony by employing excessiveness and self-imagining as its unique characters. Through this effort, the post-colonial spectacle appoints the defiance of the colony and reimagining the colonial rule in itself as its main purpose.

One way that this excessiveness of postcolonial stands out in the expression of the postcolonial state is the usage of the language. In the case of postcolonial Cameroon, where the colonial French language still dominates communication, the study of the language plays an integral role in deciphering the postcolonial identity of the state. The postcolony is excessive in its word choice. In On The Postcolony, Mbembe observes that Cameroon’s head of state is referred to continuously as “His Excellency Mr. Paul Biya,” attributing a ceremonial role to the status. This ceremonial role creates a self-imagined spectacle of a powerful and dependable leader, and showcases that language

is also used and amended to reflect the excessiveness in the postcolony. On top of being excessive, the postcolonial language continuously practices the colonial language and attempts to claim the colonial language as its own. Colonial language even comes to define the niche systems of the postcolony and provides a better understanding of the post-colonial identity, both on daily referrals and academic analysis. This phenomenon of the colonial language is even in the arguments made for defining the power dynamics of the postcolony, as Mbembe states “In the postcolony, the commandement seeks to institutionalize itself, to achieve legitimation and hegemony (recherche hegemonique), in the form of a fetish” (103). In this case, “commandement” is provided in the colonial language only. The term is also not elaborated on text but as an informative footnote as it is deemed that the French version possesses the utmost explanatory character in the context of postcolonial Cameroon. On top of the colonial language being the most suitable medium for explaining the postcolonial identity, throughout the text, it is seen that French definitions next to English terms, such in the case of “hegemony,” are not only a supplementary addition but also required to contextualize the postcolonial state. Thus, the colonial language is not only used to reflect the excessiveness of postcolony but is also claimed as postcolony’s own to fully unravel the postcolonial identity.

More sophisticated tools of expression in the postcolonial state are the forms of celebration and success in international politics that actively utilize selfimagining and excessive characteristics of the postcolonial spectacle. Being a front-running user, the government deploys the most spectacular examples of such celebratory public events and aims to oversell the accomplishments of the leaders. In postcolonial Cameroon, just by attending the United Nations General Assembly, news outlets celebrate the head of state Paul Biya for accomplishing a marvelous win for the country, despite his speech being short and deprived of any idea concerning international politics (116). Moreover, as seen in official communications by the government, the public was invited to celebrate the arrival of Paul Biya back to Cameroon (116), signaling a selfimagined and excessive spectacle of the postcolonial that takes the form of celebrations. On another visit of Biya to Belgium in May 1989, it was reported that “Belgium could no longer hide its impatience and eagerness to honor

the Cameroonian presidential couple” (117). Similarly, the visit of six new ambassadors to Cameroon was described in the official newspaper as “nothing but glory for Cameroonian diplomacy” (117). This desire to celebrate the minor notes in international politics is integral to the postcolony. The postcolonial state’s exaggerated expression in celebrations is a reoccurring practice, and thus this expression of celebration “has had time to routinize itself…on each occasion…in light of how such events are seen by the rest of the world, and turn it into a source of prestige, illusion, magic” (117). With the usage of self-imagined success reflected upon celebrations and international politics, postcolony establishes the spectacle of a successful state, especially compared to the colonial past, and imposes this narrative of success, and therefore superiority, over other former colonialist countries as well.

The punishment and law enforcement with the dynamics of the state, the public, and the law enforcers are also other tools that the postcolonial state utilizes for expression. Colonialism also possessed the punishment, “as a relation of power based on violence, intended to cure Africans of their supposed laziness” (113). Showcasing a similarly tangled relationship to violence in the colony, throughout the postcolony criminal bodies “join in the displays and ceremonies of the commandement” (114). Moreover, the postcolonial state does not lose any opportunity to create these “ceremonies.”

The police, soldiers, and government representatives, or in other words the state, enforce the law excessively as observed in the public execution of two malefactors in Cameroon who were executed with 12 bullet shots each (113). This supportive relationship between the state and law enforcers gains strength with the addition of the public, which in this case, after the public execution, “broke into frenzied applause, as if it was the end of a good show” (113). This intriguing relationship between public execution and the statement of power according to philosopher Michel Foucault gains a characteristic in which “the punishment is carried out in such a way as to give a spectacle not of measure, but of imbalance and excess; in this liturgy of punishment, there must be an emphatic affirmation of power and of its intrinsic superiority” (Foucault 49). Postcolony uses excessive force in the context of public execution in order to create the spectacle of law enforcement and exercise the state’s power at the perfect environment to advertise for the postcolony.

With that focus, the postcolony utilizes the same tools of violence as the colony, blurring the difference between the two, and further showing that the postcolony is only reimagining the colonial execution of violence to fit it into the postcolonial narrative. Thus, the postcolony manages to create “the ceremonies” of punishment for reaffirming its power, and through its excess, it aims to overpower the colonial way of punishment.

However, such conditions of life tend to turn the attention to the postcolonial public and their perception of the postcolony, questioning whether the excessive and façade characteristics of postcolony offer a satisfactory way of living. Similarly, trying to define the public stance on the postcolony can not offer enough insight into the understanding of the postcolonial public. Usage of one-word categorizations are not enough to decipher it, and according to Mbembe, there is more to discover than attributing one of the two opposing characteristics to the postcolonial public “such as resistance vs. passivity” (103). This argument showcases that in the post-colony, the public’s stance is not just a matter of obedience or rebellion. On the contrary, the public is “flexible enough to negotiate as and when necessary” (104). The public plays into the tools of postcolony’s façade spectacle. In short, the postcolonial public and government engage in a special relationship of opportunities with each other and evolve through each experience. As a result, the postcolonial exaggeration goes untouched while the postcolony keeps on constructing its self-imagined and excessive identity that is superior to the colony, and the public experiences its own unique opportunities.

With each postcolonial tool and characteristic it utilizes, the postcolony aims to create a façade image of a spectacle. Through this process, postcolony uses the tools of postcolonial expression to redefine and emphasize further the postcolonial success and superiority, especially over the colony. The excessive and self-imagined expressions of language, celebrations and success in international politics, punishment and the law enforcement are utilized to embrace the victory over the colonial past, even if this exaggerated reflection is only recognized by the postcolony itself. All of the excessive qualities of the tools used for expression of the postcolonial state work to establish and assure the successful and impressive condition

of the postcolony, and the public plays along with the façade that is the postcolony. The postcolonial state is thus able to win over the colonial past, by depicting a bright and colorful postcolony, rich in ability, and political and state power. However, in order to make higher prosperity, compared to the colony, a reality, the current situation needs change and renovation in the context of modernization in the postcolony. The drive for better circumstances and higher life quality must be realized as the new goals of the postcolony, instead of a crafted superiority over the colony, for the creation of a postcolony that is not defined or shackled by the colonial past.

WORKS CITED

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Vintage Books, 1995.

Mbembe, Achille. On The Postcolony, University of California Press, 2001, pp. 102-141. DEFYING THE COLONY

Translation Analysis: Semantics of the Yoruba Bible Translation

MORENIKEJI O. ADEDAYO

AY 2020-2021

A good translation replicates the source text’s energy, texture, and voice in the target text, employing all the target language’s resources. When this complex process is carried out in a factual communicative situation, then it is possible to say that translation has reached its ultimate goal (Hernández et al., n.d.). The example of translation that I examine is the Yoruba translation of the King James Version Bible by Samuel Ajayi Crowther, completed in 1888. He was an Oxford-trained Nigerian bishop and linguist. The original text for the translation is the English translation of the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Genesis, precisely the King James Version published in 1611 under the patronage of King James I of England. It is a story about the creation of the earth and the first appearance of humans. The translation is mostly in the Egba Yoruba dialect, which is different from the universally accepted Yoruba dialect. Crowther’s motivation behind the translation was to spread the Christian religion while supporting the British army during abolition crusades and expeditions. This paper aims to determine if Crowther’s idiomatic translation successfully conveyed the original text’s message through his word choices. I argue that Crowther’s translation style greatly suits his overall mission and the time period during which it was written because it represented the original text in the target culture and prioritized the nuances of the target culture through language over a more literal translation in service of the Christian ideology. By the use of a foreword and titles to guide the reader throughout the translation, his decision to replace words that are synonymous or representative of those in the original text, and the effect of the fabricated words in conveying familiarity to the target language, Crowther is able to maintain the message of the source text.

Even from the preface, the translator successfully inserts himself into the translation by providing a guide for people to understand Christianity. He

includes a preface and section titles that were not present in the original to introduce the reader to the Book of Genesis and call attention to important stories. The preface [Ọ̀rọ̀ Iṣaaju] (Bibeli Mimo, 1888, Gẹn Ọ̀rọ̀ Iṣaaju) introduces the reader to the content and significance of the book of Genesis, highlighting significant events in a list and dividing the chapters into the creation and the start of sin, and the story of the ancestors of the children of Israel. Subsequently, the Yoruba reads, “Ìtàn bí a ṣe dá ayé” [The story of how we came to life] (Bibeli Mimo, 1888, Gen. 1) as the title of the first chapter of Genesis. Likewise, before Gen. 2:5, the Yoruba reads “Ọgbà Edẹni” [Garden of Eden], which precedes the story of the formation of the Garden of Eden and the first appearance of man. These insertions serve as navigation guides, help establish the purpose of the story and present the context of this foreign religion, Christianity, to the Yoruba people.

Moving from the preface to the main text, paraphrasing is a common technique that Crowther uses to explain concepts that do not exist in Yoruba to help the reader gain an in-depth understanding of these concepts. For example, where the Yoruba reads, “Aiye si wà ni jũju, o si ṣofo; òkunkun si wà loju ibú: Ẹmi Ọlọrun si nràbaba loju omi” [And the earth was without any shape, and it was empty; and darkness was on the face of the deep: The spirit of God floated over the surface of the water] (Bibeli Mimo, 1888, Gen. 1:2), the KJV has, “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (King James Bible, 1611/1987, Gen. 1:2). Void means to be empty, and to be without form is to be without a shape. Crowther translates the word “fruitful” (King James Bible, 1611/1987, Gen. 1:22) as “Ẹ ma bi si i” [give birth to more children] (Bibeli Mimo, 1888, Gen. 1:22). He also translates the word “sanctified” (King James Bible, 1611/1987, Gen. 2:3) as “o si yà a si mimọ́” [made it holy] (Bibeli Mimo, 1888, Gen. 2:3). Using these phrases, he describes unfamiliar words, such as void and sanctified, to the reader with simple definitions making interpretation of the Bible’s message easier.

In addition to explaining unknown terms to enhance comprehension, the translator sometimes uses words closely related to those found in the original to evoke a vivid image in the reader’s mind. Where the translation reads, “Ní

atetekọṣe Ọlọrun dá ọrun ati aiye” [In the beginning God created the heaven and life.] (Bibeli Mimo, 1888, Gen. 1:1), the KJV has, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.”(King James Bible, 1611/1987, Gen. 1:1).

“Aiye’’ means life in Yoruba, while the Yoruba for the earth is ilẹ-aiye, which means land of life. In the same way, where the Yoruba reads, “Ọlọrun si pè imọlẹ ni Ọsán, ati òkunkun ni Oru. Ati aṣalẹ ati owurọ̀ o di ọjọ́ kini” [And God called the light afternoon and the darkness midnight. And the evening and daybreak became the first day] (Bibeli Mimo, 1888, Gen. 1:5), the KJV has, “And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day” (King James Bible, 1611/1987, Gen. 1:5).

The word ‘ojo’ means day in Yoruba, but he uses the word ‘osan,’ which means afternoon, to represent the time at which the sun is visible. Similarly, the night is translated as midnight and the morning as daybreak. His choice seems intentional as there are Yoruba words that exist for those words he replaced. Ultimately, his actions add more specificity to the original words’ context, forming a clearer picture of the Bible in the Yoruba context.

With precision and clarity at the center of his translation, he employs synecdoche to represent ideas from the original text with words that convey their central purpose. Where the Yoruba bible reads, “And God said, Let the land bring forth a farm, plants that produce fruits, and fruit trees that will produce fruits of their kinds: that will have seeds in on the land: and it was so” (Bibeli Mimo, 1888, Gen. 1:11, my translation), the KJV has, “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.” (King James Bible, 1611/1987, Gen. 1:11). “Farm” is used to represent grass, and “plants” is used to represent herbs. The word “cattle” in the original (King James Bible, 1611/1987, Gen. 1:25) is translated into “ẹran-ọ̀sin ” [livestock] (Bibeli Mimo, 1888, Gen. 1:25). He used words that were more common to the people, who were predominantly farmers, and translated the meaning better in relation to the environment.

In maintaining a connection with the people, Crowther, the author of the Yoruba Holy Bible (Bibeli Mimo, 1888, Gen. 2) created Yoruba words similar to those in the original text to add a sense of comfort and familiarity to the

language. In some cases, Ajayi Crowther converted the word’s individual phonetics to its corresponding phonetics in Yoruba. For words ending with -n or -l, the letter “i” was added to the end. For words ending with -m, the letter “u” was affixed to the end to match the Yoruba speech stress pattern (see Table 1). Yoruba words did not exist for names and geographical locations found in the original text. Hence, the translator made up Yoruba words with similar sounds to preserve the original text’s spirit during the rendering process. Now, these fabricated words can only be found in subsequent Bible translations and are not used in colloquial Yoruba language.

Table 1

Examples of Transformations of English Words to Phonetically Similar Yoruba Words

Word in King James Bible, 1611/1987

Havilah (Gen 2:11)

Euphrates (Gen 2:14)

Gihon (Gen 2:13)

Adam (Gen 2:19)

Translation in Bibeli Mimo, 1888

Hafila (Gen 2:11)

Euferate (Gen 2:14)

Gihoni (Gen 2:13)

Adamu (Gen 2:19)

There is no doubt that Ajayi Crowther’s translation style made the Yoruba translation a success. His recognition of the vital role that language plays in broader social and cultural contexts made him decide to substitute, insert and create words in his translation to help reflect the exact message of the source text as completely as possible. His functional approach enabled him to see translation as a communicative action carried out by experts in intercultural communication (Kolawole, 2013). As a result, he served efficiently in his role as a bridge between the English language and religion and his native people, the Yorubas.

REFERENCES

Bibeli Mimọ [The Holy Bible]. (S. A. Crowther, Trans.). (1888). YouVersion. https://my.bible.com/bible

Hernández, H. G., Méndez, R. F., & Vallejo, J. D. P. (n.d.). The Linguistic Analysis in a Translation. Translation Directory. https://www.translationdirectory. com/articles/article1427.php

King James Version. (1987). BibleGateway. https://www.biblegateway.com/ versions/King-James-Version-KJV-Bible/ (Original work published 1611)

Kolawole, S. O. (2013). Functionalist Theories and Their Relevance to Yoruba Bible Translation. Time Journal of Arts and Educational Research, 1(3), 13–20. http://timejournals.org/journals/tjaer/archive/2013/October/abstract/ Abstract.html

The Significance of the Inexpressibility of Pain to Activism Against Structural Violence

MOYOSOREOLUWA OLATOSI

AY 2020-2021

One of the most continuous forms of violence that has been prevalent in our society is structural violence, where an institution harms its citizens at scale. Elaine Scarry in The Body in Pain argues that there is a positive relationship between the presence of pain and the absence of voice, which makes pain inexpressible. The pain that marginalized groups are forced to endure is not only life-long, but a good example of how pain exhibits its inexpressible nature by stripping its victims of their voice. For people who are structurally oppressed by society, the struggle of overcoming structural violence is centered around communicating their pain and getting their voices heard— a process hampered by the inexpressibility of pain. Scarry’s argument creates a foundation for answering pertinent questions relevant to the representation of structural violence and activism: what is the significance of pain due to marginalization, and why is so much of activism dedicated to expressing, representing, and documenting pain, despite its inexpressible nature? If the presence of pain means the absence of voice, does the presence of voice lead to the absence of pain? I argue that the role that representations of violence play in society can be elucidated by emphasizing the societal significance of the inexpressibility of pain and by analyzing representations of structural violence as avenues through which pain’s inexpressibility can be overcome. This inexpressibility lies in the divide it creates between the privileged and the marginalized, thus highlighting how the ability of these representations to communicate pain helps activism narrow the divide between the privileged and the marginalized.

First, analyzing pain’s structure helps us understand what makes it so inexpressible. Pain is an experience deeply ingrained in its victim because the

victim is the only one who is able to fully experience the physical, mental, and emotional dimensions of pain. This experience is non-transferrable to other inhabitants in the individual’s environment because pain “has no object in the external world” (Scarry 5). Consequently, there is a divide between the body in pain and individuals separate from it. It is practically impossible for an observer of violence to grasp the depths of pain that violence embeds into its victims. Another characteristic that makes pain non-transferrable is its ability to destroy language and arrest the voice of its victim. Scarry asserts that the force of pain is so invasive and destructive that it forcibly reduces a person’s language scope to the kind of simple sounds, wails, and cries that an individual makes before they are able to grasp the syntax of language (4). This inability to verbalize creates a further barrier between the body in pain and the outside world. In other words, the presence of the pain means there is an absence of voice. Although Scarry emphasizes the effects of physical pain, I argue that the voice-destroying characteristic of physical pain applies to all types of pain. The ability of pain to destroy language and the victim’s voice makes pain inexpressible, and it is this inexpressibility that allows the pain caused by structural violence to achieve the destructive and divisive effects it wrecks upon marginalized groups in the society.

Pain caused by structural violence manifests in the divide it creates between the privileged and the marginalized. Privileged individuals often struggle to understand, sympathize with, or work towards alleviating the structural, prejudice-based violence that plagues marginalized communities. Human beings frequently fail to adequately place themselves outside their own spheres of privilege, and as a result, are unable to fully comprehend the dayto-day struggles that less privileged people experience. This failure is credited, in part, to the inexpressible nature of pain. Such pain creates a barrier between the body in pain and individuals isolated from such pain. Thus, the inexpressibility of pain creates a gap in communication that prevents the voices of marginalized groups from reaching the people who could break down the structural violence causing the pain. This gap in communication widens as the factors of oppression become increasingly complex, such that they appear unfathomable to people who simply do not have access to the pain caused by oppression.

The inexpressibility of pain has significant consequences for activist organizations that seek to dismantle oppression via political structures, which are the only channels by which structural oppression can be dismantled. For example, Amnesty International and similar organizations’ “ability to bring about the cessation of torture depends centrally on its ability to communicate the reality of physical pain to those who are not themselves in pain” (Scarry 9). Their goal is not just to communicate pain to people who are not experiencing it, but to also convince them to be active about assisting victims, rather than passively consuming representations of violence (9). The ability to communicate pain, and invoke sympathy or guilt strong enough to catalyze change, is crucial for many activist groups. Sympathy is a valuable worldly self-extension that gives pain a place in the world (50). Moreover, the ability to articulate pain plays an important role in exposing structural violence— an essential tool for closing the divide between the marginalized and the privileged.

Scarry highlights the idea that there are avenues through which the body can find its voice and mitigate the effects of pain and its inexpressibility. Representations of structural violence make it possible for violence and pain to become tangible entities that can be preserved, and thus continuously consumed by an audience. Communicating the pain of oppression promotes awareness of structural violence, allowing activists to foment motivation to fight for social justice. It may appear counterintuitive to attempt to close this divide by expressing pain, a phenomenon that is inexpressible. Finding ways to express pain despite its inexpressible nature is a logical and necessary response that can be utilized in narrowing the divide.

To understand the motive behind expressing the inexpressible (in this case pain), we must first understand that “pain has no voice, but when it at last finds a voice, it begins to tell a story” (Scarry 3). This story is embedded in the inseparability of “the difficulty of expressing physical pain, the political and perceptual complications that arise as a result of that difficulty, and the nature of human creation” (4). There are certain avenues through which the body finds a voice in order to communicate pain. Modes of expression such as writing, reenactment, visual art, documentaries, and so on are all ways

that bodies tell the story of their pain. Pain destroys a person’s world and forces them into isolation, but the victim’s body can receive some degree of healing if they are able to increase the scope of their own world and succeed in penetrating the external world. Actions that allow a victim of pain to penetrate the outside world with their story give them a kind of “worldly self-extension” (50). Through worldly self-extensions, the victim can draw on the power of sympathy which, according to Scarry, “lessens the power of sickness and pain [and] counteracts the force with which a person in great pain or sickness can be swallowed alive by the body” (50). In other words, once a victim finds some way to increase the scope of their world which has been broken down by pain, they can draw on the powers of sympathy to counteract the destructive force of the pain within their body. Of course, such sympathy is contingent on the willingness of people with privilege to offer it, making representations of structural violence all the more important.

Once the existence of an avenue through which the body in pain can resist the destructive power of pain has been established, we can logically process how and why marginalized people strive to express their pain to the outside world as well as the necessity of representing this pain. Pain begs to be expressed. There is a dire need for one who has experienced torture to find some level of justice, understanding, and/or consolation. Hence, if there is even the slightest possibility of expression, the body in pain will seek it. Historically, marginalized groups and individuals have documented their pain in order to project and preserve their voices which were once lost in pain. This compulsion to represent violence erupts from the inexpressibility of pain and the resulting difficulty of representing violence in a way that does justice to the severity of said pain. Furthermore, when it comes to activism, representations of structural violence narrow the communication gap between the marginalized and the privileged. The nature of activism is such that its force is strengthened by the number of people behind its cause. Successful representations of violence aid activism by inciting motivation to fight for social justice. Although privileged individuals will never be able to fully internalize pain caused by oppression, representations of violence can bring them closer to understanding structural violence with the aim of narrowing the divide between the marginalized and the privileged.

Additionally, representations of violence are tangible entities that can be preserved. This preservation is necessary because the mental image of pain is not nearly as sharp and well retained in the observer or listener’s mind as it is in the victim’s mind. To ensure that an account of pain is not forgotten, invalidated, or watered down, creating a tangible and preservable representation of structural violence helps prevent the force behind activism from dwindling as time elapses.

The prevalence of structural violence in today’s world and debates over whether it should be represented at all make those representations especially important. There are debates on the actual significance of representations of violence to the marginalized community, and a concern that there is an oversaturation of creative works that retell historical stories of oppression, whose benefits may not outweigh the trauma that it could potentially provoke in marginalized communities. Moreover, no amount of finding the voice can fully take away the effects of pain or change violence that has already occurred. While this fact might inspire hopelessness, I argue that we need to come to terms with the fact that the purpose of finding the voice through representations of violence is not to eradicate the remnants of pain or change the past. Rather, it is about helping marginalized victims find strength and solidarity amidst their pain. Communicating their pain to those isolated from it helps close the divide between the marginalized and the privileged. Building people’s resistance to perpetual structural violence increases their motivation to fight for social justice. Within this essay, I have highlighted how pain’s inexpressible nature makes pain hard to hear and understand, as well as how representations of violence can enable activism. I believe that these are significant reasons why we need to continuously study how to represent violence accurately, and why works like Elaine Scarry’s are important in a world where violence has silenced so many.

WORKS CITED

Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford UP, 1985.

On Judgements Involving the Language-Thought Relation: A Call for Specificity

SARAH AL-TOWAITY AY 2020-2021

The question of the relationship between language and thought has been one of a particular historical allure, partly because of the interest in investigating the link between the higher order faculties of human language and cognition (Hinton, 2020). One ultimately runs into the dilemma of attempting to arbitrate the nuanced interdependence between the two: did thought precede language? Does thought determine language? Or is it the other way around? This chicken-and-the-egg causality dilemma gave rise to various linguistic theories attempting to describe the interaction between language and thought. One such theory is linguistic relativism, which proposes that language influences our thoughts, taking a weaker form of the claims of linguistic determinism, a theory shaped by linguist Benjamin Whorf (1959), which asserts that a speaker’s language fundamentally determines the way in which they come to perceive the world (Fromkin et al., 2017). Linguistic relativists, such as Lera Borodistky (2011, 2017), present their view, often by specifying a linguistic domain, such as the use of metaphor, to show how it influences a particular cognitive area, such as human reasoning (Thibodeau et al., 2011, 2013, 2017). However, critics of relativism argue against it by illustrating the independence of a cognitive domain from language. The question, thus, “does language influence thought?” needs to be refined into two more specific subparts – “what aspects of language influence what aspects of thought?” and “to what extent does each aspect of language influence its corresponding aspect of thought?” – for the research community to more productively investigate and subsequently ascertain the bounds of the validity of the theory of linguistic relativity.

Part of the reason why the methods employed by critics of linguistic relativity lose track of the niceties of the language-thought relation is because the influence of language on thought is asymmetric. Certain aspects of language may heavily shape certain aspects of cognition, while others may have marginal effects on thought. For instance, we can consider the effect of language on time perception. Boroditsky’s (2017) investigation of the Kuuk Thaayorre people, an Aboriginal tribe in western Queensland, Australia, found that their language’s emphasis and dependence on bodily orientation translated to an interference of space in their temporal perception. Because of the absence of a linguistic equivalent to the concept of “right” to “left”, the Kuuk Thaayorre people’s ordering scheme when asked to organize pictures of a person’s life from childhood to adulthood would be based on the landscape from east to west, a clear infusion of the concepts of time and space. Additionally, the relative frequency of distance/quantity metaphors when making temporal comparisons in English, Spanish, Indonesian, and Greek was found to interfere with the speakers’ performance in time estimation experiments (Casasanto et al., 2004). Conversely, little evidence was found to suggest that there is a linguistic interference in motion perception. A study (Feinmann, 2019) compared speakers of two languages, English and Spanish, which differ in their expressions of telic motion, with English expressing the manner of the motion in the main verb and using adverbs to express the path and Spanish expressing the path information in the main verb and using an optional complement at the end of the clause to express the manner information. The subjects were engaged in a series of experiments, both verbal and nonverbal, involving judgment and recollection tasks after being shown pictures and/or clips of targeted motion. The study concluded that crossgroup differences between the two sets of speakers were not linguistically motivated, a result that showed a nullified effect of language on motion perception. Thus, while language may be shown to have a significant effect on one domain of thought, such as time perception, it could be shown to have a marginal, or even a nonexistent effect, on another domain of thought, such as motion processing.

The latter discovery of the asymmetry of the language-thought interplay may cause linguistic relativism to be unjustifiably rejected because of one faulty link between language and cognition, despite being valid in other domains of thought and language. For instance, one may take up evidence against the influence of language on logical reasoning as an arsenal in the generalized dismissal of linguistic relativity. Research in the intersection of neuroscience and linguistics used fMRI imaging to show that areas of language in healthy adult nervous systems are activated when performing language production and comprehension tasks but are dormant when nonlinguistic tasks such as mathematical reasoning or memory retrieving and storing are performed (Fedorenko & Varley, 2016). While this undermines the effect of language on the executive aspects of thought, it would be a gross generalization to reject all aspects of the effect of language on thought based on this discovery. To mention a congruent example in the opposite direction, Boroditsky (2017) illustrates that language elicits a neurobiological effect on cognition in areas of color processing. Russian speakers are not only relatively faster at discriminating between lighter and darker shades of blue, but their brains produce a “surprised reaction” (7:40) as colors shift from one shade to the other. This could be attributed to the lexical variety that exists in the Russian language with regards to color, such as the existence of two different words for light and dark blue, “goluboy” and “siniy,” respectively. Comparatively, speakers of English, who only have one word for blue, do not elicit such a neurochemical reaction when blue shifts between darker and lighter shades. Since the same type of evidence, namely a conclusion drawn from investigations of the neurochemistry of the human brain, could be found to both support and undermine linguistic relativity, it would be more productive to specify which linguistic and cognitive domains we seek to map to be able to reach a conclusion on their relationship.

Similarly, establishing one relationship between a linguistic domain and a cognitive domain may lead to unwarranted generalizations about all relationships existing between language and thought. If one were to generalize the relationship existing between the lexical variety of color words in a language and more efficient color processing, for instance, to all aspects of language effects on thought, then one would be opening

oneself up to critics, who will actively unveil counterexamples, such as the relationship between the structure of motion words in a language and motion perception. In the same vein that we cannot wholly reject linguistic relativity because of the existence of one counterexample, we ought not accept a generalized version of it because of the existence of one supporting evidence. Therefore, in the scope of discourse related to the question “does language influence thought?”, being specific about what aspects of language and thought we are mapping in a relation, and the extent to which that relation exists, will facilitate our understanding of the language-thought interference and interdependence, as opposed to stifling our progress with unjustified generalizations and dismissals.

The question “does language influence thought?” is posed very broadly when considering the subtle complexities of the language-thought relation that, naturally, a lot of debate follows attempting to answer the question. One such attempt is linguistic relativity, which answers in the affirmative to the aforementioned question. Many notable supporters of the theory, such as Lera Boroditsky, use demonstrative examples to provide evidence in support of their view, but these examples inherently limit the scope of the question. However, it becomes easy to question their generalized claims if one finds evidence countering them. Because of the validity of the influence of certain linguistic domains on certain aspects of cognition, stemming from the existence of asymmetry in the language-thought relation, linguistic and scientific discourse on the relationship between language and thought would benefit from the segmentation of the question into two related subparts: “which aspects of language influence which aspects of thought?” and “to what extent does each aspect of language influence its corresponding aspect of thought?” Doing so facilitates not only the present discussion on the topic for those who answer both positively and negatively to the initial question, but also our understanding of the nature of the relationship between language and thought.

REFERENCES

Boroditsky, L. (2017, November). How language shapes the way we think [Video]. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/lera_boroditsky_how_ language_shapes_the_way_we_think/transcript?language=en

Casasanto, D., Boroditsky, L., Greene, J., Goswami, S., Bocanegra-Thiel, S., Santiago-Diaz, I., Fotokopoulu, O., Pita R., & Gil, D. (2004). How deep are effects of language on thought? Time estimation in speakers of English, Indonesian, Greek, and Spanish. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 26(26). https://escholarship. org/content/qt9m92g1s5/qt9m92g1s5.pdf

Fedorenko, E., & Varley, R. (2016). Language and thought are not the same thing: evidence from neuroimaging and neurological patients. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1369(1), 132–153. https://doi. org/10.1111/nyas.13046

Feinmann, D. (2019). Language and Thought in the Motion Domain: Methodological Considerations and New Empirical Evidence. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 49(1), 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10936-019-09668-5

Fromkin, V., Rodman, R, & Hyams, N. (2017). Language and thought. In An introduction to language (11th ed., pp. 22-26). Cengage

Hinton, M. (2020). Language and Thought. In Evaluating the Language of Argument (pp. 3–15). SPRINGER. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-03061694-6_1

Thibodeau, P. H., & Boroditsky, L. (2011). Metaphors We Think With: The Role of Metaphor in Reasoning. PLoS ONE, 6(2). https://doi.org/10.1371/ journal.pone.0016782

Thibodeau, P. H., & Boroditsky, L. (2013). Natural Language Metaphors Covertly Influence Reasoning. PLoS ONE, 8(1). https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0052961

Thibodeau, P. H., Hendricks, R. K., & Boroditsky, L. (2017). How Linguistic

Metaphor Scaffolds Reasoning. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21(11), 852–863. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2017.07.001

Whorf, B. L. (1956). Language, Thought and Reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

A few steps away from the vibrant hustle of the Abu Dhabi fruit market and into one of its adjacent alleyways, this photograph portrays a man riding his bike in the Mina Zayed area at sunset in December. Each revolution of the bicycle’s wheels is accompanied by a gentle dance of light and shadow, as if harmonizing with the soulful rhythm of the city. In this idyllic oasis, the golden sun becomes a benevolent companion, enveloping the cyclist with its radiant embrace. Witness the enchanting interplay between sunlight and wheels, as a solitary journey transforms into a captivating symphony of motion and warmth.

“Sun Gilded Pedals” by Jenna Al Taher

Essay 2

The Indian Political Boutique

AISWARYA SUDHEER

AY 2020-2021

When Jawaharlal Nehru wore a traditional Indian bandi coat over his crisp white kurta and pajamas throughout the Indian freedom struggle and his tenure in the Indian government as its first Prime Minister, he would not have imagined magazines such as Time and Vogue discussing his very humble attire in their flashy pages. The ‘Nehru Jacket’ was popularized by the Beatles, The Monkees, and Sammy Davis Jr who claimed to own more than 200 of the jackets. The Nehru Jacket rose to prominence in the west in the 60s and 70s. It was not just a fashion statement; by the world calling it the ‘Nehru Jacket’, it alluded to Nehru’s power and charisma.

While the popularity of the Nehru Jacket was also a rare instance of a leader of a colonized country having influence over his colonizers through a medium such as fashion, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru did not choose this presentation of himself for the western gaze. Instead, the jacket was chosen as an integral part of his identity as an Indian freedom fighter. Traditional elements of fashion (like the bandi coat) are a great tool to further one’s nationalist identity, thereby leading to a higher voter appeal in a country like India where the freedom struggle is still a memorable phenomenon. Having a masculine style of fashion is also highly sought after in the current political scenario due to the supposed authority of the masculine. The need to dress more traditionally, or masculinely, has placed a lot of pressure on the female politicians of India, where the traditional nature of being a woman leans more towards being a passive member of society than an active member of politics. This essay is an analysis of how masculine and feminine fashion combined with the traditional ideologies threaten the authority of women in the political institutions of India.

Society has mostly perceived women as an “other” in politics due to their differences in comparison to the dominant masculine authority figure. Stereotypes and assumptions of their mode of working are passed on through

media images, clouding their actual performance. According to Stuart Hall, ‘visual representation then takes center stage’ to indicate if these stereotypes are negative or positive (226). Though the media does not explicitly put the feminine as negative, it often undermines the accomplishments of women by focusing on more materialistic aspects of their personality. They are often in the headlines for the outfits they wear to parliament rather than the work they do there. Though these headlines help increase the popularity of the female figures, the nature of this popularity reduces women to the strata of objects of entertainment rather than effective participants in the political institution. Hall also talks about binary oppositions such as the masculine and feminine, and given the patriarchal nature of Indian society, these oppositions are at a high contrast in Indian politics. The need to dim the contrast of these oppositions forces most women politicians to look and act more masculine. They are expected to resemble the docile Indian traditional woman while simultaneously being expected to be powerful and authoritative. This dichotomy of societal expectations is one reason why women leaders have a tough time navigating their popularity or power over the public.

The difficulty that women face in expressing their power or popularity is not exclusive to politics, it exists in fields like the film industry as well. Film and Indian politics have a lot in common: they’re both dramatic and are mostly monopolies of men. Given these facts, feminist film theory is an interesting lens to analyze Indian politics through. According to Laura Mulvey, the male spectator and filmmaker deal with the castration complex, or the anxiety regarding an absence of the phallus in a woman, in two ways (13). The first way is to acknowledge her as weak or incomplete (14). The second is to fetishize another aspect of her body or personality (14). According to Mulvey, women are perceived as passive objects whereas men are considered to be active subjects. Since the need for an active personality and public image is imperative in politics, the woman leader must portray herself as the hero/ masculine to be taken seriously. There are multiple ways in which female politicians employ masculinity as a physical trait. Short hairstyles and pantsuits are an example of this adoption. In the context of both Indian and international politics, women political leaders often have short bob haircuts that give them a less feminine look. Even in the case of long hair, it is styled

in such a way that their hair is put together in a slick tight bun rather than letting it frame their face in a supposed feminine way. The adoption of masculine traits by powerful women indirectly conveys the underlying concept of male dominance and the supposed ‘weaknesses’ of the feminine as discussed by both Hall and Mulvey.

Even when they have been objectified in the media, many politicians in India are actress-turned-politicians. Hema Malini, a sex-icon of the 90s is currently an MP in the Indian parliament, and the familiarity of the voter with her past has played a huge role in her success as a politician. When people voted Malini into the parliament, her identity as a sex-icon dwarfed her inexperience as a politician. Ex-television actress and current Union Minister Smriti Irani is another example of how the characters portrayed on screen have come to help the identities and personalities of politicians in real life. In such cases, the castration complex has already been implemented: not on their present political personalities but their past actress selves. The outfits they wore in their movies also came to prominence in their political career. Hema Malini struggles to look authentic in a plain cotton saree due to her extravagant style during her acting career. She is tied to her past and her choices must resemble it for the sake of authenticity. The struggle female politicians go through brings up the dilemma of looking like a true politician or relating to the masses. Though objectification of these women in the media helped them gain popularity and votes during the election, the same objectification makes it difficult for them to transition into their new roles as politicians.

Voting for a political candidate is a form of intimacy; especially when it comes to women, and even more when it comes to actress-turned-politicians. By voting for an ex-heroine, there is the manifestation of the voter (spectator) to be closer to the woman in question. His ‘hero complex’ of being with her or of doing something for her is partially satisfied (Mulvey, 13). But supporting a woman in her pursuits is not the only form of intimacy. According to Sara Ahmed, author of The Cultural Politics of Emotion, hate is an intimate emotion; an investment by the subject into the object of hate (50). In her words, “the subject becomes attached to the other through hatred” (50). So, by hating on a woman leader, the male spectator is partially attached to the woman while

still maintaining his authority as the dominant. The idea of a woman rising to power in a male dominated institution such as politics also threatens the authority of the male who has been enjoying his male privilege in a highly patriarchal society like India. In this context, the hate emanates not only from the need of intimacy, but also from the need for control over the feminine. As Ahmed puts it, “The signs of hate surface by evoking a sense of threat and risk, but one that cannot be simply located or found” (48), wherein the risk refers to the woman rising to power. The melting-pot societal structure of India has also led to many using fashion as a political tool to propagate hatred over the ethnicities and communities that female politicians represent. Since explicitly hating a religion or community is risky, politicians tend to point out the dressing styles of women to attack a particular social circle. Nusrat Jahan, an MP from West Bengal has been condemned by politicians for not being ‘Muslim enough’. Jahan is married to a Hindu, and she often gets death threats because she looks ‘too Hindu’. For women like Jahan, their clothes are not only a way to express themselves but a tool for others to instigate communal violence and hate.

Though Indian politics is a tough terrain for women to express their individuality through fashion, there have been instances where this phenomenon was challenged. A prime example is Indira Gandhi, India’s first woman Prime Minister. Despite having feminine style, she was regarded as one of India’s most controversial and bold Prime Ministers. Her sarees represented her nationalist identity, and she often wore handloom sarees that communicated to the Indian public the legacy of the Indian freedom struggle that her family had fought in for decades. Although she was educated in London and used to dressing in an English manner, her choice of a traditional Indian saree communicated to the international audience her pride in being Indian, and the power she wielded as a representative of India. Gandhi’s fashion not only carved a niche for herself but also for Indians on the global stage. Her saree legacy is so influential that her family members still wear sarees during their own election campaigns despite the fact that it has been three decades since her death. However, Gandhi gained success in politics not due to her feminine style but due to her masculine personality. One of Gandhi’s lovers, M.O Mathai, notes in his memoir that Gandhi was a ‘manly

woman’. He also comments about her being ‘cold and attributing’ as a measure of hiding her inner femininity (153). Her power is also attributed to her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India. Both these instances attribute Gandhi’s success to the masculinity of her political figure, thereby making Gandhi a perfect example of our analysis on the loss of the feminine authority and showcasing that the only way to be a true ‘feminine’ authority is to be masculine.

Fashion can be a powerful expression of nationalism, and through nationalism, fashion can provide an expression of one’s desire to serve the people. Though the representation of Indian culture is an easy process for men, it is a strenuous process for women owing to the nature of the representation of the feminine in Indian culture. Women have always been expected to exude gentleness and warmth, and this stands in stark contrast to the type of representation women need in modern day India. The presence of Indian actresses in the parliament led many to think of the power of the feminine over the masculine. This is not entirely true since the success of these women is mainly attributed to the objectification of their bodies and is an example of how the male spectator gets to wield his power in politics as well. In a society built largely on patriarchal values, men also take women’s fashion as an opportunity to hate their identities and the communities they represent. One of the options for women to break free from this cycle is to look less feminine and this further cements the binary opposition of the dominance of the male and the supposed ‘weakness’ of the female. This dichotomy, passed on from generation to generation, exacerbates the loss of the feminine identity and individuality, eventually leading to the loss of the gender’s authority.

WORKS CITED

Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh University Press. 2014.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. Screen, vol. 16, no. 3. 1975.(pg 6-18).

Hall, Stuart. “The Spectacle of the ‘Other.’” Representation: Cultural

Representations and Signifying Practices. Edited by Stuart Hall, SAGE. 1997. (pp. 223-379).

Mathai.M.O. Reminiscences of the Nehru Age. Vikas Publishing House.1978.

THE INDIAN POLITICAL BOUTIQUE

The Perils of Pretext: Las Casas and Legitimizing Violence

BIANCA S. MANDAPAT

AY 2021-2022

Western powers frequently come under fire for invoking humanitarian causes to justify their use of violence against weaker states.1 Prominent scholars like Jean Bricmont and Nicholas Wheeler have scrutinized the use of human rights and democratic claims to “sell” the idea of war and engender public support.2 Bricmont exposes a discrepancy between a state’s proclaimed pretext and its less noble private intentions. In Saving Strangers, Wheeler similarly highlights a dichotomy between a state’s public legitimating reason3 and what they are driven by. He labels this as a “gap between motivation and justification.”4 According to Wheeler, when the justification for humanitarian war does not offer a “sufficient explanation for an action,”5 it becomes necessary to assess other motivations. This disingenuous legitimizing rationale has been labeled as a relatively new norm,6 but skepticism over wars justified for supposedly humanitarian reasons carries a long history. In the landmark Valladolid debate (1550-1551), Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda and Bartolomé de Las Casas argued about the morality of the Spanish conquest of the Americas.7 The great controversy centered on the means of Christianizing the New World, whether by force or through peaceful evangelism.8 Las Casas, an early “humanitarian

1 Noam Chomsky, ‘Humanitarian Imperialism: The New Doctrine of Imperial Right’, Monthly Review (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008), p. 22.

2 Jean Bricmont, Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War, translated by Diana Johnstone, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2006), pp. 20, 29.

3 Nicholas Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: OUP, 2002), p. 55.

4 Wheeler, p. 62.

5 Wheeler, p. 11.

6 Chomsky, pp. 22, 37.

7 Camilla Boisen, The Emerging Idea of Humanitarian Intervention 1500-1800 (Ann Arbor: ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2009), p. 61.

8 Boisen, pp. 61-62.

intervention” skeptic, was critical of Sepúlveda’s methods of subjugation in the name of fulfilling The Great Commission of Jesus’ command to bring more people to the Christian faith.9 This raises the question of whether or not motives actually matter? Furthermore, why should the pretext of wars and interventions be a cause of concern?

In this essay, I problematize this gap between motivation and justification that Nicholas Wheeler brings forth in determining the credentials of humanitarian intervention;10 and more grievously, in legitimizing violence against the vulnerable. This gap, as Las Casas warned, creates space for impunity and justifying “many deplorable evils.”11 Las Casas’ arguments shed a new light on humanitarian intervention as an ancient issue with a modern name. Historical debates and recent trends inform the persistence of this humanitarian intervention controversy and the criteria of its legitimacy. Indeed, there is a need to return to the shaky historical foundations12 that recent wars stand upon in order to bring a definitive end to what began in Valladolid. The permissibility of future atrocities and interventions rest on the discussions we have today.

The Valladolid debate was the culmination of growing tensions surrounding Spain’s purpose and conduct in the Americas.13 Las Casas, a Dominican friar who benefitted from the exploitation of the natives and their land, witnessed the inhumane practices in the colonies.14 Convicted by what he saw, Las Casas advocated for the equal treatment of the Indians and the abolishment of the problematic encomienda system. In In Defense of the Indians, he exposes the flawed nature of the justifications invoked by the Spanish conquistadores and their defender, Sepúlveda. Deeming their actions as “bloodshed without any

9 Bartolomé de Las Casas, In Defense of the Indians, translated by Stafford Poole, (Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1992), pp. 27, 43, 173.

10 Wheeler, p. 62.

11 Las Casas, p. 26.

12 Camilla Boisen, pp. 278-279; As Boisen argues, the idea of humanitarian intervention is grounded on an “unsettled and uneven surface” that was shaped by historical contexts, shifting norms, and dominant cultures or world views.

13 Boisen, p. 61.

14 Las Casas, p. 26.

just cause,”15 Las Casas problematizes their means of legitimizing the atrocities they committed. Though he agreed with the mission of Christian conversion, he remained unconvinced of Sepúlveda’s contention on the justness of waging war in the name of the Gospel or the promulgation of Christ’s message of salvation.16 The proclaimed just cause was to “save innocent people”17 from falling victim to human sacrifice, cannibalism, and other barbaric deeds that violate the natural law. To Sepúlveda, the Spanish colonizers were waging war out of their altruistic desire and benevolent duty to protect the native American Indians from themselves.18

Las Casas proceeds to highlight the gap (between motivation and justification) in his argument. Quoting from the book of Romans, he asserts that “evils must not be committed as a means to good.”19 At that time, he argues, violence and war were legitimized using the higher moral purpose of achieving peace and stability.20 These contradictions exposed the hypocrisy and duplicitous nature of Sepúlveda’s criteria of justness. The violent means of the intervention led Las Casas to question its motives. Michael Walzer in Just and Unjust Wars lays out the factors that determine the humanitarian credentials of an intervention, one of which was motivation.21 Although Walzer argues that mixed motives do not automatically discredit the humanitarian credentials of an intervention, they are a “reason to be skeptical and to look at other parts.”22

The predicament of Sepúlveda’s humanitarian mantra of “saving innocents” is that it fails to answer for the atrocities committed against the innocents they were supposedly saving. The issue with such seemingly virtuous declarations is that they enable both humanitarian and inhumane actions, based on a

15 Las Casas, p. 27.

16 Las Casas, p. 176.

17 Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, Apology for the Book on the Just Causes of War: Dedicated to the Most Learned and Distinguished President, Antonio Ramirez, Bishop of Segovia, translated by Lewis D. Epstein, (Unpublished: Bowdoin College, 1973), p. 17.

18 Sepúlveda, p. 18.

19 Las Casas, pp. 180-181.

20 Sepúlveda, p. xiii.

21 Michael Walzer, ‘Interventions’, in Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 2015).

22 Walzer, p. 102.

state’s claim to noble pursuits.23 In Wheeler’s words, “a state can agree to humanitarian norms in principle but violate them in practice.”24 Thus, both Wheeler and Walzer emphasize the need to be critical of interventions when such disparities exist, as Las Casas was.

By describing the Spanish conquistadores’ inhumane actions of massacre and pillaging then setting it against Christian values of love and selflessness,25 Las Casas exposes a gap between motivation and justification. He accuses Sepúlveda of proof-texting verses in the Bible to fit the self-serving goals of the Spanish empire.26 Even in acquiring the land and possessions of the American Indians, Spanish colonists claimed to be driven by the goal of Christianization.27 Claims to right intent justified the war and masked human rights abuses as humanitarian aims.28 As Las Casas puts it, “To advance the gospel by the power of arms is not Christian example but a pretext for stealing the property of others and subjugating their provinces.”29 Though the battle cry of the conquistador was Catholicism and the mission to civilize, they were primarily driven by gold, glory, and control.30 Not only were the conquistadors failing to accomplish their declared justification, but they were hindering the fulfillment of it as well.31 Their persecution detracted from their purpose and that was what Las Casas vehemently opposed.32 While the spread of the Christian faith may have been a key driver of Spain’s expeditions, their misuse of it enabled the exploitation of the natives. States may very well factor in the wellbeing of others in the decision-making process, but when there is a gap between what is said and what is intended, it opens the floodgates of

23 Wheeler, p. 9.

24 Wheeler, pp. 8-9.

25 Las Casas, pp. 27, 39.

26 Las Casas, p. 25.

27 Boisen, p. 73.

28 Boisen, p. 5.

29 Las Casas, p. 179.

30 Sepúlveda, p. xix.

31 Las Casas, p. 169.

32 Las Casas, p. 27.

legitimized violence and unconstrained political action.33 Thus, the perils of pretext are ultimately the atrocities they permit.

Today, we are at risk of the same dangers. Thus, we must heed the warnings of Las Casas and apply the same scrutiny to Western powers who are quick to knight themselves as protectors of virtue, yet resort to violence in practice.34 Though the ideology has shifted through the decades, Bricmont draws out a trope used in the Spanish conquests in the white man’s burden, and more recently, in the interventions of the West.35 The common narrative involves one country exercising its power over another with the justification that it is for the betterment of the population that is being subjugated.36 For the Spanish, it was ending the barbaric practices in the New World through the Catholic faith. For the modern West, it is the pursuit of justice and humanity. This pattern of weaponizing noble causes was increasingly observed in the 1990s.37 However, records of the Valladolid debate lead us to conclude that this is not just a recent concern, but a persisting and long-standing one. In Bricmont’s words, “Power habitually presents itself as altruistic.”38 The invoking of a higher moral purpose in legitimizing violence is not a modern phenomenon. It is a persisting tactic of the powerful. If this mechanism of power remains unchecked, violence will persist and progress.

The necessity of considering the gap between motivation and justification is not stressed enough. More than just the outcome and methods of intervention, public debates must include the ideologies that its humanitarian credentials are founded upon.39 The same discussions have pervaded our courts and classrooms for decades, yet justified slaughters still exist. We must reframe our conversations around the “whys” of humanitarian interventions before we turn to the how’s and what’s. When we stop questioning a state’s motivation

33 Wheeler, p. 9.

34 Bricmont, p. 55.

35 Bricmont, pp. 20, 29.

36 Bricmont, p. 29.

37 Wheeler, p. 14.

38 Bricmont, p. 29.

39 Bricmont, p. 31.

and justification, we are gambling lives on the lofty words of leaders whose actions have failed us many times before. When we begin asking the right questions, we take the first step towards a resolution to what began in Valladolid.40

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boisen, Camilla, The Emerging Idea of Humanitarian Intervention 1500-1800 (Ann Arbor: ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2009)

Bricmont, Jean, Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War, translated by Diana Johnstone (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2006)

Chomsky, Noam, ‘Humanitarian Imperialism: The New Doctrine of Imperial Right’, Monthly Review (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008), pp. 22-50

Las Casas, Bartolomé de, In Defense of the Indians, translated by Stafford Poole (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1992)

Sepúlveda, Juan Ginés de, Apology for the Book on the Just Causes of War: Dedicated to the Most Learned and Distinguished President, Antonio Ramirez, Bishop of Segovia, translated by Lewis D. Epstein, (Unpublished: Bowdoin College, 1973)

Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 2015)

Wheeler, Nicholas, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: OUP, 2002)

40 Bricmont, pp. 32-33.

“Harmless” Movies and Why They Matter: Race, Class, and a Bunch of Crazy Rich Asians

EMILY YOO

AY 2021-2022

Sweeping its viewers away to the glitzy, glamorous lifestyle the super-rich of Singapore enjoy, Crazy Rich Asians, directed by Jon M. Chu, is a film considered groundbreaking for its all-Asian cast. The film tells the tale of Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), an economics professor from New York, who is suddenly introduced to the fact that her boyfriend, Nick Young (Henry Golding), is the heir to one of the richest families in Singapore. It explores her struggle to fit in with the members of the elite, both due to their enormous wealth and the cultural disconnect between our American-raised heroine and her surroundings. In particular, the film focuses on the conflict between Rachel and Nick’s mother, Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh), as Rachel fights to gain her approval. Based upon a book of the same name by Kevin Kwan, its production was surrounded by its focus on race and keeping the story accurate to Kwan’s vision. Most notably, when one producer suggested that they cast a white actress to play Rachel, Kwan turned down the offer and optioned his book for only one dollar in exchange for creative control (Devon). Even after its release, much of the focus was placed on praising the film for its representation of Asian people rather than examining other aspects of the film. As such, Crazy Rich Asians was heralded as a watershed moment for representation of Asians in Hollywood, often being cited as the first film produced in Hollywood since The Joy Luck Club in 1993 to feature a full Asian cast (Ho). While it was undeniably a historic moment for Asian representation in film, the uncritical praise it received from most audiences and critics seems hyperbolic. Of course, acknowledging this long-overdue milestone of representation is important, but this should not cause us to overlook a deeper examination of the film’s themes. The film drew some criticism for being a reductive and orientalist portrayal of Singaporean culture, as well as for its glorification of hyper-

capitalism. The book Orientalism by Edward Said and the essay “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” provide a useful lens through which to recognize that media such as this can act to normalize orientalism and hyper-capitalism, and analysis of Crazy Rich Asians through these works reveals that the film regresses not into a celebration of Asian culture, but instead into a celebration of being wealthy and Western.

One positive review of this film, written by Gretchen Smail for The Guardian, emphasizes the importance of the film’s cast and praises the film for its careful writing and portrayal of Asian culture. Specifically, she argues that it would be unfair to expect this film to tackle any deep questions that might be raised by it, such as criticisms against its depiction of wealth or Singaporean culture. She reasons that other similarly lighthearted films, such as The Princess Diaries or Ocean’s 8 are not asked to question some of their moral ambiguities, so it would be unjustifiable to ask this of Crazy Rich Asians: There could be conversations about whether this story glorifies capitalism, or extravagance, or peddles only one specific image of what “Asian” means. At the same time, it’s unfair that the systemic injustices in Hollywood have saddled a romcom, of all things, with the burden of needing to be everything for everyone. (Smail)

Her argument holds some merit: films like Crazy Rich Asians do not actively seek to start conversations about more serious topics, and therefore it might be unreasonable to judge them based solely on discussions of how they portray such themes. Additionally, placing heightened expectations on films that promote inclusivity and representation could easily lead to audiences being overly critical of films such as this. This could ultimately lead to less representation in media and greater pressure on minority groups to be “perfect” representatives of their group, which is a completely unconstructive perspective to take. But there is a danger to avoiding critical examinations of films like this altogether. Although it may seem unreasonable to judge Crazy Rich Asians on its handling of serious issues due to its decidedly un-serious genre, it would be irresponsible to ignore the effect it has on audiences and their way of thinking. By refusing to acknowledge some of the more pernicious aspects of the film, reviewers like Smail perpetuate a harmful, orientalist portrayal of Asian culture.

The orientalism seen in Crazy Rich Asians is consistent with what is described by Said in his book Orientalism, especially with regards to how the orient is “othered” in literature and media. Granted, Said’s book focuses on European orientalism as it pertains to the Middle East and the Islamic Orient rather than American orientalism concerning the Far East, but his ideas are nonetheless still applicable to this film and how it builds a conception of the “other.” Orientalism, according to Said, is a way of thought about the East that was invented by the West for the benefit of Western empire. It built conceptions about the East so strongly that it allowed Westerners to perceive “the Orient” as a nation of inferior “others” that required saving by the West, thus providing a justification for their imperialism (33-34). Of course, this is not exactly how orientalism functions in modern society, but it still exists to brand the East as completely distinct from (and lesser than) the West. A major contributing factor to the continued existence of orientalism is its dissemination through media. Said wrote that, “too often literature and culture are presumed to be politically, even historically innocent; it has regularly seemed otherwise to me…society and literary culture can only be understood and studied together” (27). A film like Crazy Rich Asians might be easily written off as inconsequential from a societal standpoint; that is what critics like Smail seem to imply. But, as Said states, even seemingly “innocent” texts have a significant cultural impact.

Perhaps the most blatant display of orientalist ideas in Crazy Rich Asians is through the film’s antagonist, Eleanor. Eleanor is constantly shown to be disapproving of Rachel despite Nick’s love for her and her efforts to meet the standards of the Young family. It is eventually revealed that Eleanor’s dislike of Rachel does not stem from Rachel’s lack of wealth or connections, but instead from her Western beliefs and values. This is an important distinction, as many other characters in the movie disapprove of Rachel and Nick’s relationship, but that disapproval is typically based on the gap in their social statuses. For example, there is a scene in which Rachel finds a gutted fish on her bed with the words “catch this you gold-digging bitch” written over it. Rachel remains unbothered by these women, burying the fish rather than making a scene and telling Nick that she was more upset with him for leaving her in the dark rather than with the actions of her jealous detractors (Crazy Rich Asians,

1:02:27-1:06:17). However, her struggle to be accepted by Eleanor remains a major conflict throughout the movie, painting Eleanor as the clear antagonist, with her, and by extension her values, being viewed by the audience as obstacles to be overcome. At the climax of her confrontation with Rachel, Eleanor accuses Rachel of being too “American,” stating that “all Americans think about is their own happiness.” Rachel, however, quickly disproves her, explaining that she turned down Nick’s proposal of marriage for the sake of his relationship with his family (Crazy Rich Asians, 1:43:35-1: 46:44). This scene acts as vindication for its intended audience, Americans, as they are first affronted by the generalization of their culture by Eleanor, and then reassured when Rachel decisively refutes her. Rachel’s triumph over Eleanor when Nick chooses her over his mother shows the triumph of Western values over Eastern ones. As Said wrote, the East is portrayed as backwards and inherently inferior to the West (35). The message is clear: the “good” Asians in this movie are the Westernized, modern ones, and the “bad” Asians are those that cling to outdated, Eastern values.

The film so clearly wants to be about race and its interactions with power, but it ultimately falls into hand-waving away racism and the struggles of minorities through the use of money. Nowhere is this more evident than in the very first scene of the film. It opens on a rainy night in 1995, where a younger version of the Young family attempts to check-in to a ritzy hotel, only to be turned away by a racist manager who turns his nose up at the mess the wet children are making and suggests that they instead go to “Chinatown.” In an act of revenge, the Youngs purchase the hotel and tell the manager smugly to “get a mop” (Crazy Rich Asians, 00:50-03:33). This moment desperately wants to be about race and be seen as an act of triumph of these Asians over a racist white man, displaying power being taken away from an oppressor. However, it ultimately is not only about the power that the Youngs hold because of their dignity in the face of racism, but is instead about the power of their monumental wealth. In this way, capitalism is seen as the solution to racism, acting as a bandage over a gaping wound that the film only pretends to acknowledge. Of course, this idea that money can be used to right any wrong caused by racism ignores the fact that most do not have and will never have the resources of the Youngs. The film is titled Crazy Rich Asians for a reason,

that being that these Asians are crazy rich. But the film moves swiftly past this scene and never again attempts to discuss issues of racism, taking the audience to a magical utopia where money has equalized everyone, and racism is not a concern. The audience is then able to settle comfortably into the narrative of the film, not being asked to question their own biases (which, ironically, are plastered across the screen through the film’s orientalist themes) and enjoy the next two hours of a glittery, beautiful hyper-capitalist display.

Crazy Rich Asians not only minimizes issues of race, but also of class and capitalism. Its dangerous celebration of capitalism can be investigated using the text “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” by Adorno and Horkheimer. In their essay, they argue that the “culture industry” serves to produce artless content, movies in particular, that act to help audiences sublimate audience’s true emotions and desires rather than offering them cathartic release. Adorno and Horkheimer state that this sublimation functions through repression; the culture industry produces films that seem to fulfill the wants of the audience by showing objects of desire, for example, through pornographic depictions of the hero or displays of extravagant, capitalistic wealth. But these depictions, while providing stimulating wishfulfillment for the audience, hold the implicit understanding that the audience can never experience in real life what they see on the screen. In this way, audiences will never be truly satisfied, but will return again and again to the culture industry to attempt to fulfill their desires; in other words, their desires are sublimated and the viewer remains chained to the systems that the culture industry perpetuates in a vain attempt to fulfill their desires the way films tell them they can. These films thus serve as momentary distractions to keep audiences from questioning the hyper-capitalist society they live in (31-38). This text may not seem to be appropriate for use in analyzing this film, given that it was written over half a century ago and does not refer directly to any of the content of Crazy Rich Asians, but there are connections between these two texts that prove useful in understanding how Crazy Rich Asians builds a narrative around the utopian power of capitalism. Additionally, Adorno and Horkheimer’s ideas have not lost their relevance in the time since their essay was released; in fact, they have only grown more pertinent, which can be seen clearly in films such as this. Particularly, their ideas on how film can act as

sublimation for audiences are exemplified in Crazy Rich Asians, demonstrating the true significance of seemingly innocuous films.

As one would assume from the title, Crazy Rich Asians indulges its audience in a stream of wealth porn that acts as wish-fulfillment for the audience. The film taking place from the perspective of Rachel, someone whose standard of living would be far more relatable to a middle-class audience, allows viewers to imagine themselves as the protagonist of the film being swept away to a life of unimaginable wealth. The first demonstration of the Young family’s incredible wealth is seen when Rachel and Nick are flying to Singapore and are whisked away to first class at the airport. In this scene, Rachel is clearly meant to act as a stand-in for the audience; she has an aggressively relatable “game plan” for getting through the airport and at first waves away the flight attendant who takes their bags, insisting that they are “economy people.” The scene then cuts away from the chaos of the airport’s entrance to the calm, soothing firstclass lounge, juxtaposing what the audience likely expects when they enter an airport with the experiences of the rich (Crazy Rich Asians, 11:33-12:27). The displays of opulence increase throughout the film, as it shows the main characters attend countless parties and revel in incredible luxury, culminating in the wedding scene. The attendees are dressed in designer gowns and suits that glitter in the sunlight that streams through the stained-glass windows of the enormous church venue. The scene makes use of low angles and close ups, many of which are taken from the perspective of someone sitting among the guests, allowing the audience to feel as though they are a part of the wedding; these scenes sublimate the audience’s desires for a life of opulence and beauty by allowing them to participate in an impossible fantasy that could happen to them if they happened to catch the attention of a rich Singaporean heir. (Crazy Rich Asians, 1:26:43-1:28:58). Such a scenario is, of course, essentially impossible, yet it is still only possible under the hyper-capitalistic system that creates families like the Youngs. So, the audience is able to live through Rachel for a brief time, and when they return to reality they remain in support of this hyper-capitalistic system they live under with the hope that they may be able to benefit from it and fulfill their desires the way Rachel has. Films like this may seem innocent, or even be considered a positive experience: people are able to escape from their mundane reality and live out their desires, allowing

them to cope with their true existence. However, Adorno and Horkheimer would argue that this is not true catharsis, but instead a weak substitution that only serves to keep audiences placated and even invested in the capitalist system they live in. Crazy Rich Asians, even if unintentionally, reinforces the idea that capitalism should remain unquestioned by showing what good can be achieved if you are one of the very, very few that are able to benefit from it while completely ignoring the negative aspects of the system.

Although Adorno, Horkhemier, and Said discussed very separate concepts in their writing, one thing remains consistent between the two: the idea that media holds great influence over the masses. Films like this are seen as nothing more than harmless fun, a lighthearted comedy that people can enjoy for two hours and then forget about immediately afterwards. But clearly this is not entirely true. Films like Crazy Rich Asians are dismissed by the public and by critics as largely unimportant, with no need to examine their themes critically. Yet these films have an effect on audiences and the wider culture, as they continue to perpetuate an image of capitalism as an unquestionable good to be strived towards and orientalism as an accurate portrayal of Asian cultures. If we continue to allow films like this to be consumed uncritically, then we will never be able to move past the status quo we exist in. A common theme throughout criticism of the film by Asians is that while it is not good, it is good enough. It might not be an accurate representation, but after what little we have been given for years and years, it is better than nothing. Therefore, this film deserves praise. While I understand the sentiment behind this, I completely disagree. It is not our job as members of a minority culture to shake the hands and pat the backs of our oppressors when they provide the bare minimum reparations. We need to demand more from Hollywood, not sit back and force ourselves to feel satisfied at the meager crumbs they throw down at us as if it was a favor. Crazy Rich Asians is the epitome of the issues that Hollywood still faces concerning both its depictions of race and class. If this is considered groundbreaking for its themes, then it can only be imagined how much further we have to dig to find anything truly great.

Adorno, Theodor W., and Max Horkheimer. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” Routledge, 1993.

Crazy Rich Asians. Directed by Jon M. Chu, performances by Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Warner Brothers, 2018.

Devon, Elizabeth. “‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Author Kevin Kwan Optioned His Book for $1 to Ensure Hollywood Wouldn’t Whitewash the Adaptation.” Teen Vogue, Teen Vogue, 1 Aug. 2018, https://www.teenvogue.com/story/crazyrich-asians-author-kevin-kwan-optioned-book-one-dollar.

Ho, Karen K. “How Crazy Rich Asians Is Going to Change Hollywood.” Time, Time, 15 Aug. 2018, https://time.com/longform/crazy-rich-asians/.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. 25th Anniversary Edition. New York: Vintage Books, 2004.

Smail, Gretchen. “Crazy Rich Asians Review – Glossy Romcom Is a Vital CrowdPleaser.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 13 Aug. 2018, https:// www.theguardian.com/film/2018/aug/13/crazy-rich-asians-review-kevinkwan.

“HARMLESS” MOVIES AND WHY THEY MATTER

A Body for a Body: Disparities in Attaining Morally Sound Status Through Sati

GAYA MENON

AY 2021-2022

The cremation grounds have long been a stage for Hindu audiences, a macabre yet unmissable setting for potent performances of purity. The creation of several crematory practices has fueled the importance of this sacred space, as said practices do not only serve the purpose of mourning. These grounds act as a microcosm of Hindu beliefs, and the accompanying practices perform the power structures and dynamics of the religion. Sati , the practice by which a widow in pre-colonial and colonial India threw herself or was thrown onto her husband’s funeral pyre, was one such performance that reinforced the “dominant husband-subordinate wife” dynamic that existed outside the funeral grounds. The practice derives its name from the goddess Sati, who is said to have protected her husband’s honor through self-immolation. Due to the public nature of cremation grounds, the act of Sati was a call to everyone to look at a widow’s selfsacrifice as an act of fulfilling marital responsibility. Though Sati has long been outlawed in India, the relationship dynamic that Sati performs still shapes marriages today: the husband’s honor and marital bliss rest upon the wife’s physical form and labor. The act of Sati entailed the extermination of the wife’s physical form. By contrast, the current socio-cultural husbandwife relationships demand the complete commitment of the female body to perform labor for the husband and his family. Still, the contemporary moral requirements that a couple needs to fulfill to be deemed a morally sound Hindu couple demand more of the wife than they do of the husband, just as Sati did generations ago.

The reliance on women to fulfill the religio-cultural requirements to secure marital bliss was the cornerstone of Sati’s performative aspect. While Sati

demanded that the woman burn herself to death in a highly symbolic ritual, nothing was required of the husband, as his death itself was the stimulus for Sati. However, the religio-cultural status gained from this act put the husband and wife on the same moral ground. Therefore, in such spectacles, the destruction of the subordinate body was necessary to achieve the same moral status as the unharmed privileged body; the requirements for men and women to achieve the same moral status were inherently unequal. I use the representation of women as compared to men in a Hindu marital relationship as a lens to understand why some Hindu societies place harsher moral requirements on women. By using auditory and visual aspects of female representation in comparison to male ones, I explore how female representation is always dependent on how the male is represented and therefore how women’s socio-moral status cannot be detached from the men’s status. I show how the impossibility of this detachment stems from the Hindu anxiety surrounding the independent female form, anxiety which ultimately seeks to eradicate the widow’s body and immortalize her representation and moral status as bound to her husband.

Women’s perspectives were and are rendered inaudible in Hindu societies. As Indian literary critic Gayatri Spivak dissects the intersectionality of oppression in “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” she explores how Indian women were oppressed both as colonial subjects and as women under a patriarchal system. She also explores how people in power spoke over those doubly oppressed women, rendering the women inaudible. There have not been spaces where women could speak or express themselves, even when they were about to commit Sati; it has always been in the recounting or retelling process that other people state that the widow performed Sati of her own free will. Reflecting on this, Spivak states that “one never encounters the testimony of the women’s voice-consciousness” (93). When the Hindu elites spoke for her, they reinforced what duties a chaste wife must perform, pushing her to commit Sati or portraying her as a bad wife for choosing not to. Furthermore, Spivak explores the idea of epistemic violence, which in this case, is the hindering or elimination of a group’s ability to be heard (76).

Hindu women could not (and cannot) vocally represent themselves because of the lack of avenues to voice themselves. This can be characterized as a

form of violence, as the patriarchal narrative dominates past perceptions of widowhood due to the lack of female voices and the sensationalization of Sati compared to the bleak alternative of a solitary life.1 Contemporary Hindu societies still lack spaces of audibility because closely acquainted men speak for Hindu women. Thus, contemporary Hindu women continue to be oppressed because of their gender; however, the post-colonial class hierarchy has replaced colonial oppression. Therefore, even as Sati is a less common practice, Hindu communities continue an analogously violent double oppression of widows.

The visual representation of the woman merely as the widow of the dead man without any acknowledgment of her independent existence limits her agency and therefore binds her to the man’s achievement of a religioculturally acceptable state of marital relations. Building on the arguments laid out by film theorist Laura Mulvey in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” the widow’s representation can be seen as bound to her husband because she is a “bearer of meaning, not a maker of meaning” (7). Her status as his wife provides her meaning in the ritual, as she possesses no social meaning beyond her relationship with her husband. As Spivak notes, though Hinduism frowns upon suicide, the widow’s suicide is not named as such but is presented as “sanctioned self-immolation on a dead spouse’s pyre” (95). In other words, her suicide is presented as an act of marital devotion to her husband. This interpretation of Sati is reminiscent of American film director Budd Boetticher’s observation: “What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. . . . In herself the woman has not the slightest importance” (qtd. in Mulvey 11). In Sati, the widow, like Boetticher’s film heroine, was only important for the visual role she played in the ritual. Since her visual representation was bound to her husband, she existed as the “signifier for the male Other” (Mulvey 7). This idea of women as the Other, as Mulvey and Spivak have explored, constructs women as different and therefore not belonging to the male Hindu order. However, this would seem to create an independent social existence for females,

1 As women who did not commit Sati and continued living past their husband’s death were considered inauspicious, they were frequently cast out by their families. Even today, Hindu widows have few options to remarry or be integrated into families.

which threatens the phallocentric tradition of Hindu Indian society. The threat of the independent female existence is quelled by the inclusion of women into the patriarchy as subordinate to men; women are only visibile and audible through their male partners. Thus, the inextricable connection of the husband and wife’s moral status constructs the Other as part of the patriarchal structure without agency within it.

Due to the unequal distribution of power in Hindu society, for generations of Hindu women, the choices available to a widow created a binary of representation centered on her moral status as a wife, further deepening the consequences of not committing Sati; an almost identical binary representation exists for contemporary Hindu women. Previously, the choices available to a widow were either to commit Sati and have contributed to her and her husband’s marital bliss or to live as a celibate outcast. This created a binary representation where the widow was either a good or a bad wife based on whether she was chaste or impure. The living widow is a rare instance of a woman existing in Hindu society without direct male control over her because she does not have to answer to her father (since she has been married) nor does she have a husband whom she needs to serve. Because of the negative perception of women who have been with more than a single partner in India, remarriage to reintroduce male control was not (and still often is not) an option. Hence, widows over whom direct male control is not exercised are different from other Hindu women who serve the purposes of being daughters or wives. The widows, who are already disadvantaged by their differences from men, are further signified as different from other Hindu women. Cultural theorist Stuart Hall finds that “marking ‘difference’ leads us, symbolically, to close ranks, shore up culture and to stigmatize and expel anything which is defined as impure, abnormal” (237). Marking difference is the method by which widows are represented in binaries of pure and impure. Widows who comply with the Hindu tendency to stamp out independent female social existence are seen as pure because they do not insist on staying different from other Hindu women, whereas widows who continue to live after their husbands’ deaths distinguish themselves from other Hindu women. This difference is utilized to stereotype widows as good and bad wives, which occurs due to the gross

inequality of power that exists between men and women in Hinduism. Indeed, Hall finds that inequality can cause stereotyping as the dominant group (here, Hindu upper-caste men) establishes what is acceptable and what is not (258–59). The binaries that existed for widows if they chose not to perform Sati did not exist for men—a husband’s morally bad actions, such as spousal abuse, were considered justified by Hindu societies if the wife was perceived to have any shortcomings, so there really were and are no binaries for men. One could be a bad or good wife, but one merely needed to be a husband; there is a moral judgment placed on women performing the role of a wife, whilst men merely have the title of husband. Even though the dramatic performance of Sati is less frequently practiced today, Hindu women, especially widows, are still marked as different from Hindu men. Female bodies subordinate to men were and are segregated socially along the binary in accordance with a loathing for the independent female form.

From the reduced visibility, audibility, and ultimately social representation of women, I infer that a strong dislike exists in Hindu societies for the female form without male control. The fact that the husband’s marital bliss rested upon the wife’s demise through self-immolation is proof enough that the act of Sati required the eradication of the widow’s body. The hate here was not for the woman herself but for her ability to exist without male control, in line with British writer Sara Ahmed’s finding that hate is distributed through narratives that “embody the danger of impurity” (346). The idea of impurity here relates to the widow existing as herself amongst men, with the possibility of her exercising her female sexuality freely. Furthermore, when the body of the widow was eradicated by Sati, there was no way to have “the body of the victim [be] read as a testimony” for the act she had to commit (Ahmed 361). This lack of testimony further silenced widows by glorifying the act of Sati and eliminating the possibility of an independent female form. The Hindu patriarchy’s anxiety surrounding the independent female form resulted in a demand for her eradication, but due to the taboo nature of suicide or sanctioned violence in Hinduism, the equation of the wife’s moral status with her husband’s was used as a tool to bring about her destruction. This dislike still persists in several sects of Hindu societies but not to the extent of Sati. Though several smaller Hindu cults worship the naked female

form, dislike for the female form is still evident in many Hindu customs and practices today in which women are often socially shamed for not adhering to the patriarchal society’s ideas of modesty.

Sati was a manifestation of the Hindu trepidation concerning an independent female form, which caused demands for widows’ material extermination by placing harsh moral requirements on them. These harsh demands, once fulfilled, cause the husband and wife to be on the same moral high ground due to her representation and therefore social existence being synonymous with her husband. However, the widow’s status was clearly subordinate to that of her husband, and thus Sati ultimately reinforced the unequal basis of the marital transaction. This unequal status of women as compared to men in marriages still exists in contemporary India, where women are expected to perform the social, emotional and domestic labor of presenting the couple as morally upstanding. Though Sati rarely happens in modern India, the visual and audible representations (or lack thereof) that Sati generated with respect to women in marriages have created impossible standards for modern women. The expectations of marital devotion, though no longer fatal, still demand emotional, moral, and domestic labor from wives that are unequal to the labors required of their husbands in Hindu society.

WORKS CITED

Ahmed, Sara. “The Organization of Hate.” Law and Critique, vol. 12, October 2001, pp. 345–65, https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013728103073.

Hall, Stuart. “The Spectacle of the Other.” Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices, edited by Stuart Hall, Sage, 1997, pp. 223–79.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen, vol. 16, no. 3, Autumn 1975, pp. 6–18, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, edited by Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, Routledge, 1994, pp. 66–111, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315656496.

My Trauma, Your Trauma, Our Trauma

JESS MA

AY 2021-2022

Blunt force trauma, physical trauma, psychological trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder: trauma runs beyond skin-deep and permeates into society. When trauma survivors seek recovery, therapists often attempt to find the event that the trauma has stemmed from. However, trauma is not the result of a single violent event, but rather the work of various forms of structural violence that enable the deconstruction of an individual after a traumatic event. Consequently, survivors find that the complexities of trauma are both difficult to represent and painful to fully overcome, perpetuating a cycle of structural violence manifested in more visible forms of violence. In this essay, I critique Judith Herman’s framework of psychoanalysis and trauma recovery by tracing trauma back to Johan Galtung’s structural violence. Specifically, I put gendered violence, racial violence, and class-based violence into conversation and make such forms of violence tangible through firsthand accounts of the Asian-Pacific Islander (API) experience in New Zealand. Trauma recovery resources generally disregard these individual experiences that differentiate recovery processes and aim to resolve the isolated traumatic event. Moreover, current discourse surrounding intersectional trauma, notably Kimberle Crenshaw’s framework of intersectionality, tends to be American-centric, but the API experience in New Zealand is unique in that it incorporates indigeneity, a frequently overlooked element of identity. A redistribution of resources that account for the individual experience is necessary to target the structural barriers imposed upon the individual that ultimately prevent trauma recovery.

Traditional psychoanalytical theory makes the assertion that trauma has a single best form of recovery; however, the all-encompassing nature of structural violence hinders the individual’s recovery from a traumatic event, as the event itself is embedded within social constructs. American psychiatrist Judith Herman asserts that “because the traumatic syndromes have basic

features in common, the recovery process also follows a common pathway” (3). This generalized view of trauma recovery is problematic in practice due to the structural violence that manifests itself in highly individualized forms. Structural violence, as coined by Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung, is “the violence built into the structure [of society] and shows up as unequal power and consequently as unequal life chances” (171). He clarifies that “personal violence represents change and dynamism – only ripples on waves, but waves on otherwise tranquil waters. Structural violence … is the tranquil waters” (173). Personal violence exists in the form of traumatic events. Structural violence reveals itself in the form of traumatic events. Even when the individual calms the dynamic ripples of waves, the individual is still submerged in the tranquil waters. No matter how extreme an act of violence is and how deep the trauma it causes goes, it always settles into the tranquil waters of structural violence.

Classism is one manifestation of structural violence that enables the creation of trauma and particularly targets Māori and Pacific Islander people in New Zealand. The native population of New Zealand, Māori people struggle with post-colonial land disputes and face indigenous oppression, forms of structural violence that are often overlooked. According to German philosopher ByungChul Han, “violence is increasingly internalized, psychologized, and thus rendered invisible” (ix). He also observes a “universal disappearance of [a] sense of belonging” (119). The increasing internalization of violence for API may be attributed to a loss of belonging that has emerged after the colonial period. Furthermore, colonialism can be linked to industrialization, which not only enabled the development of colonies but created labor divisions that resulted in an upper class, middle class, and lower class. Individuals who are threatened by a lack of structure “will try to preserve the status quo so well geared to protect their interests” (Galtung 179). The desire for structure by those with resources causes people of a lower class to be forced into areas where society cannot see them and manipulated into thinking that they have access to the higher classes when they do not. This phenomenon is evident in the way governments deal with homelessness and prison in New Zealand. Commonly associated with the lower class, a disproportionate number of Māori-Pacific Islander people are placed in prison or live in areas notorious for

homelessness and poverty, notably Central and South Auckland. Not only are such peoples disregarded by society, but they are also victims of post-colonial exploitation, where prison is a modern form of slavery and land ownership.

Disparities in access to trauma recovery services are built into a structure of privilege, where governments use paradoxical solutions to paint a seemingly perfect society. Such inconsistencies are noted in American scholar Kimberle Crenshaw’s “Mapping the Margins,” where shelters in the United States are attempts by the government to empower trauma survivors, yet the clientele the shelters receive do not match the clientele the shelters cater their resources toward (1263). Resources for trauma recovery cater to those of a higher class who can afford psychoanalytic therapy, disregarding individuals of a lower class with less money. Women’s shelters in New Zealand lack funding and resources, creating a structural barrier for women of color, specifically Māori and Pacific Islander women, to seek refuge from domestic violence. With nowhere else to go, these women survive on donations and receive minimal job support as they typically have no higher education, leaving them trapped in the lower class and fully reliant on the government. The invisible barrier between the lower class and upper classes enables the elite to perpetuate social injustices that continually victimize women of color.

Transgenerational trauma is a direct consequence of structural violence that cannot be traced back to an isolated moment of an individual’s life. In many cultures, the suppression of trauma is common, yet trauma tends to manifest itself in different ways, notably through the treatment of descendants. Herman sets out three stages of trauma recovery: “establishing safety, reconstructing the trauma story, and restoring the connection between survivors and their community” (3). These stages generalize trauma recovery and neglect the complexities of individual recovery processes. The first two stages are complicated by forms of structural violence outlined earlier, where classism blockades the path to safety and patriarchal censorship diminishes the voice of the survivor. The third stage is obstructed by transgenerational trauma, a form of trauma that extends across generations and affects each generation differently depending on societal contexts. Transgenerational trauma exemplifies Han’s observations of “destructive tensions borne internally rather than discharged externally” (6), where the connection between trauma

survivors and their community is the trauma itself. The next generation becomes an unaware trauma survivor, and when the trauma is ingrained within the individual, it becomes insurmountable to recover from.

The model minority myth cast onto the Asian community is one example of structural violence that has culminated in the form of transgenerational trauma. Imposed by predominantly white societies, the model minority myth views Asian people as capable of creating success for themselves in a system that oppresses them. Accordingly, other communities of color should learn from the Asian community and exemplify their behavior in Western society. Not only does the myth create false expectations for Asian people imposed on them by both society and their families but gives society an excuse to overlook the issues faced by other communities of color. Trauma survivors of color are therefore expected to be able to change their circumstances and abide by the model minority myth to build a better life for themselves. This myth is the “violence of positivity,” where an excess of production is generated as a result of internalized violence (Han 90). The intersections of various identities within the Asian community also impacts the response to the model minority myth. Crenshaw asserts that “the failure of feminism to interrogate race means that the resistance strategies of feminism will often replicate and reinforce the subordination of people of color, and the failure of antiracism to interrogate patriarchy means that antiracism will frequently reproduce the subordination of women” (1252). Feminist theory tends to focus on the experiences of white women while critical race theory focuses on the experiences of antiracist activism, neglecting cultural pressures that Asian women may face. In this sense, Asian women are expected to uphold the model minority myth even more than Asian men, as they have to rise to the standards of both feminist and antiracist sentiment. This trauma extends further than between generations; it permeates into various cultural groups that reinforce the trauma within themselves.

Through her generalizations of trauma recovery, Herman may also be generalizing the notion of trauma itself. She asserts that “traumatic events are extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but rather because they overwhelm the ordinary human adaptations to life” (33).

MY TRAUMA, YOUR TRAUMA, OUR TRAUMA

This claim does not hold in practical terms. Structural violence impacts the intersections of an individual’s identity which in turn impacts their ordinary human adaptations to life. In this sense, the traumatic event can also be attributed to structural violence. Censorship and subordination within gender constructs are examples of such structural pillars. Herman outlines the first symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder as hyperarousal, where “the traumatized person startles easily, reacts irritably to small provocations, and sleeps poorly” (35). Parallels can be drawn between hyperarousal and how young women are taught to stay vigilant on the streets. When hyperarousal morphs from being a symptom of PTSD to an essential prevention tool against sexual assault, trauma shifts from a reaction against one event to a societal expectation. This shift creates trauma that is so deeply ingrained within the human condition to the point where it becomes subconscious. When trauma doesn’t make its presence known, the likelihood of recovery substantially decreases. Patriarchal stereotypes also affirm that men are the perpetrators and women are the victims. The media feeds into such stereotypes, where East Asian men are portrayed as being the least violent and Black men as the most. Furthermore, East Asian men are viewed as the most feminine type of man, which enforces the idea that femininity constitutes non-violence and masculinity constitutes violence. Similar to how rape prevention is ingrained into young women, when stereotypical notions of masculinity and femininity are repeatedly brought up and shown in the media, they become etched within the subconscious and render individuals unaware of their trauma. Thus, when a traumatic event such as a sexual assault occurs, the survivor has not only the event to unpack, but also the structural issues their identity may face that have resulted in the event occurring. This intersection is highlighted by Crenshaw, who observes how rape crisis services for women of color use a significant amount of their resources to handle issues beyond the rape itself (1250). The inexpressible pain of a traumatic event coupled with the patriarchal silencing of women creates further censorship and subordination and inevitably halts trauma recovery.

Trauma is caused by the structural violence embedded within society, and traumatic events are the most painful instances of this violence. Trauma recovery resources frequently focus on the event rather than looking at the bigger picture of trauma, and as such perpetuate the structural issues present,

including racism, sexism, and classism. Moreover, attempts to individualize trauma recovery have ironically elicited the collectivization of violence through societal structures. Collective trauma should not be viewed as trauma that is universal amongst individuals. Instead, it should identify different elements of structural violence the individual has suffered, and work to mitigate these forms of violence through the individual’s lived experiences. Ultimately, a reframing of trauma recovery is essential, where recovery focuses on the individual person rather than the collective people, and the collective violence rather than the individual violence.

WORKS CITED

Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review, vol. 43, no. 6, 1991, pp. 1241-99.

Han, Byung-Chul. Topology of Violence. Translated by Amanda DeMarco, MIT Press, 2018.

Herman, Judith L. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. Revised edition, Basic Books, 2015.

Galtung, Johan. “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research.” Journal of Peace Research, vol. 6, no. 3, 1969, pp. 167-91.

MY TRAUMA, YOUR TRAUMA, OUR TRAUMA

Debunking Luso-Tropicalism Through the African Lisbon Tour

JULIA VIEIRA BRANCO AY 2020-2021

Introduction to Luso-Tropicalism and the African Lisbon Tour

In June 2020, while demonstrations against structural racism gathered tens of thousands of people across the globe,1 Rui Rio, the leader of PSD (Partido Social Democrata), one of the two major Portuguese political parties, declared publicly that “Portugal isn’t racist”. Rio added that although he doesn’t deny the persistence of racist practices in other countries, such as the United States, he believes that Portugal is an inclusive country and that “demonstrations against racism will only make us more racist”.2

Rio’s view illustrates a national identity trait of the white Portuguese population, cultivated during the dictatorship (1926 – 1974) – LusoTropicalism.3 Luso-Tropicalism defends Portuguese people’s natural propensity to accept differences, hence justifying the alleged humanism in Portuguese colonial endeavors and the current healthy bonds between immigrants of African descent and the Portuguese.4 This persistent ideology, rooted in false grounds, allowed for a narcissistic contemplation of the “Portuguese-self” to gain social space. Simultaneously, this pushed the idea of the “AfricanOther” to the realm of the exotic and marginalized, denying them historic relevance5 and increasing anti-black prejudice. This belief system, as explained

1 VOA News, “Anti-Racism Protests Held Around the Globe,” June 7, 2020, https://www.voanews.com/ usa/nation-turmoil-george-floyd-protests/anti-racism-protests-held-around-globe.

2 Pedro Marques Lopes, “Rui Rio e o Racismo,” DN (Diário de Notícias, June 13, 2020), https://www. dn.pt /edicao-do-dia/13-jun-2020/rui-rio-e-o-racismo-12303848.html.

3 Jorge Vala, Diniz Lopes, and Marcus Lima, “Black Immigrants in Portugal: Luso–Tropicalism and Prejudice,” Journal of Social Issues 64, no. 2 (2008): pp. 287-288, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.15404560.2008.00562.x.

4 Ibid., pp. 289

5 Isabel Ferin Cunha, “Lusotropicalismo, Racismo e Identidade,” Revista Brasileira De Ciência Da Comunicação XXI, no. 1 (January 1998): pp. 66-67.

by the Ambivalent Prejudice Perspective,6 by appearing superficially alluring and reflective of benevolent traits, only serves to perpetuate prejudice and subsequent inequality.7

Nevertheless, research has shown that prejudice such as Luso-Tropicalism, based on allegedly benevolent intentions, can be counteracted. As this is essentially a form of covert prejudice, a constructive action pathway consists in creating spaces where the “invisible is exposed.”8 In this case, LusoTropicalism is a space in which there is factual exposition of the multitude of ways, and respective consequences, of the marginalization of black people, and its deep embedment in recurring actions of the white Portuguese majority. Naky Gaglo, with his African Lisbon Tour (ALT), aims to create exactly such a space. With a carefully designed layout, the ALT positively contributes to the debunking of Luso-Tropicalism, by exposing the invisibility of black bodies in the Portuguese social and historic fabric.

The ALT is a 4-hour interactive walking tour, created by Gaglo, during which participants explore Lisbon’s historic development through the eyes of black people’s lived experiences. Gaglo points out alternative narratives to the city’s history, and to the portrayal of its inhabitants’ current lives. All aspects of the tour are backed with detailed research. Additionally, Gaglo resorts to participants’ visual observations, guiding their gaze towards certain aspects that would, otherwise, be overshadowed. The ALT also exposes participants to different African countries’ cuisines, adding a relevant layer of sensorial stimulation. Combined, these factors instill in the tour not only a sense of historical reliability, but also that of a holistically engaging intellectual challenge. Additionally, Gaglo’s own experience as a black man, himself a victim of Lisbon’s loudly silent racism,9 maintains participants’ emotional engagement.10

6 Lynne M. Jackson, “9. Creating Change,” in The Psychology of Prejudice: from Attitudes to Social Action (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2020), pp. 177-179.

7 Ibid., 177.

8 Ibid., 177.

9 In an informal interview conducted by this essay’s author, Gaglo reported to have been a victim of hateful threats and insults for the creation of the ALT. These insults targeted him, not as a historian, or a citizen of Portugal, but as a black man attempting to stain the good reputation of white Portuguese.

10 Naky Gaglo, live conversation with the author, October 31, 2020.

The relevance of the effect ALT has in deconstructing Luso-Tropicalism, a form of implicit racial bias, goes, however, beyond the scope of Lisbon’s reality.

Alexander Coutts published in June 2020 a study on Racial Implicit Bias, with data from 3.75 million people, across 146 countries. Assuming the sample to represent the global population, this study showed that approximately 60% of the world suffers from implicit pro-white biases.11 Consequently, examining the effect that projects like the ALT can have in counteracting implicit racial bias can have worldwide relevance. Firstly, it allows for a possible adaptation of such a model to other cities. Secondly, this analysis adds a layer to a larger relevant academic discussion – the relevance of redesigning our urban spaces in an inclusive, diverse and anti-racist manner.

This essay will begin by examining how the ALT exposes the homogenization of African cultures by white-Portuguese. Thereafter, it will analyze ALT’s exposure of the dichotomy between the value of white and black death and its consequences. Finally, it will consider how this tour uncovers the voluntary link historically drawn between blackness and subservience.12

The latent uniformization of African descendants, in Largo de São Domingos

One of the first stops of the tour is in Largo de São Domingos, a central square in downtown Lisbon. This square, commonly known as Embaixada da Guiné (Guinea’s Embassy) represents a harmful reduction of the multiple African identities to a simplistic, uniform view. As participants arrive at the square, there’s an immediate acknowledgment of the variety of African descendants selling artisanal products, traditional food or merely conversing with each other. Gaglo highlights the origins of each of the groups – from Cape Verde, to Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, among others. This multitude of proveniences contrasts with the square’s widely adopted name – Guinea’s Embassy. This name was adopted at the end of the 15th century, when Africans brought to

11 Alexander Coutts, “Racial Bias around the World,” OSF, June 24, 2020, p. 7, https://doi.org/osf. io/39svq.

12 Let it be noted that this analysis assumes a significant uniformity across different sessions of the tour. Although there might be slight variations derived from contextual circumstances, such as participants’ personal engagement, the three main points this essay considers relate to the “hardware” of the experience – fact-based observations made at the scripted stops, which are objectively visible, hence insignificantly influenced by varying conditions.

Lisbon began using this space as a means to facilitate their integration within Lisbon society.13 There, they would exchange information on job opportunities, celebrate different religions and sell traditional products. It was also in a church in this square that the first black religious congregation was formed in Portugal. The name Embaixada da Guiné arose as Guinea was one of Portugal’s African colonies at the time, hence it became an over-simplistic manner of describing the large groups of black people gathered in the square, persisting until today. This reduction of black people to one specific country, exemplified in the ALT, represents a factually inaccurate homogenization of a variety of cultures, with severe consequences, as highlighted by Said in Orientalism.

Said defended a continuity between latent (unconscious, untouchable) forms of uniformization of the East and the manifest consequences in people’s lived experiences, such as official policies against individuals from Eastern provenience.14 There’s a clear parallelism between the continuity of oppression Said defended in relation to the Orient, and the continuous relation of latent and manifest uniformization of Africans in the specific case of Largo de São Domingos and in Luso-Tropicalism in general. The branding of this square as Embaixada da Guiné exemplifies an oversimplification of a diverse group to one single label, which manifests itself in the form of a barrier erected between white inhabitants of Portugal and African descendants. This barrier impedes a cultural understanding of the different cultures, contributing to the formation of stereotypes that perpetuate the status of Africans as “Others.” This process of “Othering” through uniformization is one of the traits of Luso-Tropicalism that Gaglo is able to expose through his ALT.

Uncovering the contrast between black and white death, and its implication in the conceptualization of Portuguese nationality in Rua dos Poços Negros

The ALT’s exposure of the chasm between black versus white death’s value highlights how blackness overrules religion in the conceptualization of Portuguese nationality. Towards the end of the tour, at Rua dos Poços Negros

13 Isabel De Castro Henriques and Pedro Pereira Leite, “Lisboa Cidade Africana,” Marca D’ Água 1 (June 2013): pp. 17.

14 Edward W. Said, “Orientalism Now,” in Orientalism (New York, NY: Random House, 1979), pp. 206209.

(Street of the Black Pits) Gaglo challenges participants to identify particular traits of the street. There is, however, nothing to highlight, as this is apparently an ordinary street. This apparent ordinality is extremely relevant as, in truth, underneath this street lie thousands of African bodies.15 In 1515, King Manuel I declared this street to be used as a mass grave for dead slaves.16 Although mass graves were a common practice at the time,17 the areas used to bury white Portuguese bodies during the era of Manuel I were, in the 1800s, transformed into cemeteries, such as today’s Cemitério dos Prazeres (Pleasures Cemetery)18 . Conversely, Rua dos Poços Negros was transformed into a regular residential neighborhood, without any acknowledgment for the lives of the people buried there. Both Cemitério dos Prazeres and Rua dos Poços Negros began as mass graves, but while the former was transformed into an institutionalized site of national worship of the dead, the latter was condemned to a socially-orchestrated communal ‘forgetting’. This divergent evolution of originally similar sites is intrinsically connected with the collective perception of who deserves to be treated as a Portuguese national.

Grosby, in Nationalism, discusses the contributing factors that limit the length to which nationality can be extended. Grosby places heavy emphasis on the need to acknowledge the complexity of establishing who is and isn’t worthy of national treatment.19 However, he doesn’t abstain from highlighting factors such as religion, as one of particular relevance for this matter. At Rua dos Poços Negros, the ALT adds an extra layer to Grosby’s analysis of this complex interplay of factors, highlighting how “race”20 has historically

15 Isabel De Castro Henriques and Pedro Pereira Leite, “Lisboa Cidade Africana,” Marca D’ Água 1 (June 2013): pp. 26.

16 Ibid.

17 Cemeteries, as we know them today, only came to be during the Enlightenment Age.

18 F.N., “Dos Monturos Aos Cemitérios Públicos,” PÚBLICO (Público, February 9, 2004), https://www. publico.pt /2004/02/09/jornal/dos-monturos-aos-cemitérios-públicos-184012.

19 Steven Grosby, “Chapter 7: Human Divisiveness,” in Nationalism: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2005), p. 115, https://doi.org/http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action ?docID=422591.

20 “Race”, in this essay, is used to refer to an artificially created category, as defined by Encyclopædia Britannica: “Race is the idea that the human species is divided into distinct groups on the basis of inherited physical and behavioral differences.” This concept has been disregarded by scholars as having any biological meaning, it is, instead, recognized as “cultural interventions reflecting specific attitudes and beliefs that were imposed on different populations in the wake of western European conquests beginning in the 15th century” (Encyclopædia Britannica).

overpowered all other parameters in the definition of nationality. It could be argued that religion was the factor leading to the divergent evolution of the aforementioned sites. However, all slaves were baptized and participative Christians, as religiously active as other white members of Portuguese society.21 At the time, slaves were also familiarized with Portuguese customs and were proficient in the language.22 Consequently, this stop of the ALT adds a pivotal factor to Grosby’s theory on nationalism – “race.” The variant “skin color” defined whose death was worth being celebrated and treated with honor. This consideration directly exposes the incoherence of LusoTropicalism’s belief in Portuguese people’s natural acceptance of differences and their subsequent treatment of African descendants.

Exposing the historically conscious disconnection between blackness and agency, in Statue of General de Sá da Bandeira

At the Statue of General de Sá da Bandeira, Gaglo exposes the conscious dissociation of Blackness with Freedom widely marked in the History of Portugal. This statue is the only monument in Lisbon that allegedly celebrates slavery’s abolition. General Bandeira was the prime-minister responsible for abolishing slavery in 1839 in mainland Portugal and across its then-colonies.23 The statue has 4 main components. Elevated in the center, is the General’s figure; in front of him is a woman representing Africa and its now Freedom; behind that, another woman representing History and taking notes of the General’s deeds; and, on the sides, there are two sleeping lions. Gaglo asks the participants to thoroughly describe the woman representing Africa. Participants tend to highlight her white facial features, revealing a dichotomy between the theoretical representation of Africa and the artistic choice of giving the figure the features of a white woman.

21 A. Saunders, in A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal: 1441-1555 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 54.

22 Ibid.

23 Luís António de Oliveira Ramos, “Pombal e o Esclavagismo,” Revista da Faculdade de Letras, série de História, II, Porto (1971): 170.

This dichotomy highlighted by Gaglo is justified by the conscious dissociation of blackness with agency and freedom, as exposed by Henrique Gomes in 1884. Gomes was the deputy of the National Parliament in charge of erecting this statue.24 Gomes, citing a letter written by Miguel Sá Bandeira, the General’s cousin, explained the artistic choices undertaken. He mentioned that the adoption of the facial features of a white woman was a conscious one. That “the representation of a true African would have hindered the humanitarian emotions felt by Marquez de Sá.”25 Consequently, the commission decided to represent Freed Slavery (Escravidão Libertada), as a white woman the embodiment of this concept, rather than a black one. The fact that representing a black woman, in a monument celebrating the abolition of slavery, seemed so innately inadequate is striking. This statue, pinpointed by Gaglo, illustrates the narrative adopted in Portuguese History, in which, underneath a superficial layer of philanthropism and equality, lays a necessary association of Black bodies with an inferior social status, in this case, slavery.

General considerations and limitations

Overall, the ALT, through a carefully designed outline, exposes white prejudice against black people. In this essay, three of the most relevant stops were highlighted. These stops, when compared to other relevant works, such as Said’s theory on Orientalism, or Grosby’s considerations on Nationalism, clearly represent examples of the fallacious grounds beneath the LusoTropicalist belief. Additionally, the contrast between first-hand testimonies of relevant stakeholders, such as Henrique Gomes, and Gaglo’s own current experiences, exposes how the consequences of this belief system is not isolated in the past, but persistent in today’s experience of Lisbon. Drawing from socialpsychology research, this essay exposes how initiatives like the ALT powerfully fight implicit prejudice which is widely ignored, both socially and historically. There would be other possible approaches regarding the relevance of the ALT in debunking Luso-Tropicalism. For instance, the question raised by Gaglo on “where do African descendants live?” would, in itself, be worthy of a whole

24 Henrique de Barros Gomes, O Monumento do General Marquez de Sá da Bandeira na Praça de D. Luiz I em Lisboa (Lisboa: Typographia Castro Irmão, 1884), 118-119

25 Ibid., 11

dissertation. The issue of the housing distribution of ethnic groups in Lisbon, studied by Elena Taviani,26 adds another layer to the discussion of unveiling the negative impact of Luso-Tropicalism in today’s Lisbon. However, the impossibility of this essay to cover this topic’s multitude of approaches leaves space for this conversation to be continued and, hopefully, acted upon.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Coutts, Alexander. “Racial Bias around the World.” OSF, June 24, 2020, 7. https://doi.org/osf.io/39svq.

Cunha, Isabel Ferin. “Lusotropicalismo, Racismo e Identidade.” Revista Brasileira de Ciência da Comunicação XXI, no. 1 (January 1998): 66–67.

F.N. “Dos Monturos Aos Cemitérios Públicos.” PÚBLICO. Público, February 9, 2004. https://www.publico.pt/2004/02/09/jornal/dos-monturos-aoscemiterios-publicos-184012.

Gomes, Henrique de Barros. “O Monumento do General Marquez de Sá da Bandeira na Praça de D. Luiz I em Lisboa.” Typographia Castro Irmão, Lisboa (1884), 118-119.

Grosby, Steven. “Chapter 7: Human Divisiveness.” In Nationalism: A Very Short Introduction, 115. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2005. https://doi. org/http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail. action?docID=422591.

Henriques, Isabel De Castro, and Pedro Pereira Leite. “Lisboa Cidade Africana.” Marca D’ Água 1 (June 2013): 17–26.

Jackson, Lynne M. “9. Creating Change.” Essay. In The Psychology of Prejudice: from Attitudes to Social Action, 177–79. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2020.

26 Elena Taviani, “Das Políticas De Habitação Ao Espaço Urbano,” Cidades 38 (2019), https://doi.org/ http://journals.openedition.org/cidades/1133.

Lopes, Pedro Marques. “Rui Rio e o Racismo.” DN. Diário de Notícias, June 13, 2020. https://www.dn.pt/edicao-do-dia/13-jun-2020/rui-rio-e-oracismo-12303848.html.

Pollard, Samuel D., and Douglas A. Blackmon. Slavery by Another Name, 2012. https://youtu.be/UcCxsLDma2o.

Ramos, Luís António de Oliveira. “Pombal e o Esclavagismo.” Revista da Faculdade de Letras, série de História, II, Porto (1971): 170.

Said, Edward W. “Orientalism Now.” Essay. In Orientalism, 206–9. New York, NY: Random House, 1979.

Saunders, A. In A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal: 1441-1555, 54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Taviani, Elena. “Das Políticas De Habitação Ao Espaço Urbano.” Cidades 38 (2019). https://doi.org/http://journals.openedition.org/cidades/1133.

Vala, Jorge, Diniz Lopes, and Marcus Lima. “Black Immigrants in Portugal: Luso–Tropicalism and Prejudice.” Journal of Social Issues 64, no. 2 (2008): 287–88. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.2008.00562.x.

VOA News. “Anti-Racism Protests Held Around the Globe,” June 7, 2020. https://www.voanews.com/usa/nation-turmoil-george-floyd-protests/ anti-racism-protests-held-around-globe.

Wade, Peter, and Audrey Smedley. “Race.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., July 2020. https://www.britannica.com/ topic/race-human.

Critical Analysis of the Connection between French Universalism and the Representations of Race, Gender, and Religion in Dilili in Paris

KRISTINA SISIAKOVA

AY 2021-2022

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, massive protests erupted in France.1 The events in Minnesota added fuel to the longstanding movement calling for an end to police brutality against minorities in France based on historic and contemporary allegations of unequal treatment. Didier Lallement, the chief of police in Paris, vehemently denied accusations of a racist police force, writing that “[the Paris police force] acts within the framework of the right to liberty for all.”2 The fact that it is illegal in France to collect data on the race or ethnicity of residents made it very difficult to substantiate the testimonies and complaints about racially-driven mistreatment.3 This law is the result of France’s strong adherence to the concept of universalism. Rooted in the French Revolution and with the famous “liberté, égalité, fraternité” at its foundation, universalism means that no group of people is given preference over another.4 Ideally, everyone has equal access to fundamental rights, regardless of their race, religion, culture, or gender.

1 Chima El Bialy, “In France, George Floyd’s Death Fueled a Protest Movement against Police Treatment,” NBC News, September 11, 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/france-georgefloyd-s-death-fueled-protest-movement-against-police-n1239458.

2 Quoted in “Paris Police Chief Defends Forces against ‘Racism’ Claims,” France 24, June 2, 2020, https://www.france24.com/en/20200602-paris-police-chief-defends-forces-against-racism-claims.

3 Delphine Roucaute, “Quatre questions sur les statistiques ethniques,” Le Monde, updated June 22, 2015, https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2015/05/06/quatre-questions-sur-lesstatistiques-ethniques_4628874_4355770.html.

4 Carrie Ann Benjamin, “‘Exotic Commerce,’ French Universalism, and the Disruption of White Space in Paris’s ‘Little Africa,’” Tijdschrift Voor Genderstudies 21, no. 3 (January 2018): 234, https://doi. org/10.5117/tvgn2018.3.003.benj.

Universalism is an appealing ideal, but it runs up against the complexities of lived reality. In theory, there is no such thing as race in France. In truth, despite its problematic status, race—among other identities such as gender and religion—does exist in French society, forging group identities and boundaries. And racism, sexism, and xenophobia also exist. But as a result of France’s colorblind vision of society and its principle of universalism, a large portion of the population is unaware of the injustices some communities are enduring. Not only are the diverse identities of French citizens overlooked, but the problems of racism are made invisible.

Dilili in Paris, a French animated movie directed by Michel Ocelot, attempts to raise awareness about these serious social issues. It addresses them in a didactic but playful manner appropriate for its intended audience of young children. Dilili, the movie’s main character, is a mixed-raced girl from the French colony of New Caledonia, who finds herself in Paris during the Belle Époque. The plot revolves mainly around Dilili fighting a cult of nose-ringwearing men who are trying to institutionalize misogyny. Dilili in Paris won a great deal of critical acclaim for increasing children’s identification with feminism and deflating ethnic stereotypes. However, critical analysis of the movie reveals that it is inconsistent in its messages and historically inaccurate. In fact, I argue that the film promotes the failing concept of universalism in French society. First, by depicting a historically inaccurate main character, the movie paints a misleading picture of French society as accepting of outsiders. Next, by implicitly linking Islam and female subjugation, the movie promotes Islamophobia. Finally, despite hinting at the double standard for different ethnicities in French society, the movie never calls racism by its name and thus fails to address the double standard properly. All in all, the movie endorses French universalism, the concept that simplifies the complexities of race and religion into oblivion and encourages the negation of real differences that exist in France’s diverse society.

The opening scene of the movie shows Dilili in what at first seems to be her home village in New Caledonia. However, the striking image of the Eiffel Tower in the background soon makes the audience realize that the village is

in fact a human zoo set in the middle of Paris.5 These infamous ethnographic exhibitions of “exotic human beings” from colonized lands were a popular form of entertainment throughout Europe, especially at the end of the nineteenth century.6 The next scene shows Dilili leaving the exhibition through a back door after the end of her shift. She changes into a nice dress and goes out to discover Paris and solve mysteries.7

Director Michel Ocelot took artistic liberties incongruous with historical facts by presenting a relatively high-status performer of color at the end of the nineteenth century to emphasize France’s ostensibly welcoming attitude towards all citizens. The movie leads viewers to assume that, in addition to being free to leave the human zoo as she pleases, Dilili is living a comfortable life, much like a celebrity. Ocelot answered the question about Dilili’s strange employment in an interview by stating that his research into the topic of these exotic amusements led him to believe that while there certainly was abuse and exploitation, most performers in Parisian human zoos were working on voluntarily signed contracts.8 However, Yves Le Fur’s research which investigates the exhibition of Kanak people in Paris’s notorious Jardin d’Assimilation, presents a contrasting viewpoint. The Kanaks’ ordeal vividly exemplifies the prevailing exploitative practices during that period, indicating that even if they did sign contracts, their managers frequently violated the agreed-upon terms.9 In the case Le Fur examines, instead of the promised enjoyable stay and cultural exchange in France, the Kanak people were moved to a human zoo in Germany.10 Their living conditions were deplorable, with

5 Michel Ocelot, dir., Dilili à Paris (2018; Paris: Mars Films, 2018), Blu-ray Disc, 1080p HD, 00:01:25.

6 Luis A. Sánchez-Gómez, “Human Zoos or Ethnic Shows? Essence and Contingency in Living Ethnological Exhibitions,” Culture & History Digital Journal 2, no. 2 (2013), https://doi.org/10.3989/ chdj.2013.022.

7 Ocelot, Dilili à Paris, 00:02:11.

8 Stéphane Dreyfus, “Michel Ocelot : ‘Je n’attaque pas l’islam en particulier: des hommes qui piétinent les femmes, il y en a partout,’” La Croix, June 12, 2018, https://www.la-croix.com/ Culture/Cinema/Michel-Ocelot-Je-nattaque-pas-lislam-particulier-hommes-pietinent-femmespartout-2018-06-12-1200946596.

9 Yves Le Fur, “How Can One Be Oceanian? The Display of Polynesian ‘Cannibals’ in France,” in Body Trade: Captivity, Cannibalism and Colonialism in the Pacific, ed. Barbara Creed and Jeanette Hoorn (New York: Routledge, 2002), 45.

10 Le Fur, 45.

no provision of basic amenities like mats, and they were even denied the right “to wear trousers or shoes.”11 Considering the research on the mistreatment of indigenous peoples exhibited during that era, Ocelot’s narrative, which assumes voluntary agreements, constitutes a whitewashing of French history.

On the one hand, Ocelot’s Dilili in Paris challenges Roxane Gay’s argument about the controversial “struggle narrative” often observed in Hollywood movies. Gay notes that films that choose slavery and racism as the main subjects of entertainment usually feature the same problematic patterns: to expose the human depravity, the visual construction of oppression usually gives prominence to violence and abuse rather than recounting other types of experiences.12 She argues that there is a need for more experimental movies that would show different perspectives of underrepresented groups.13 Michel Ocelot did exactly what Gay called for when he distanced his film from the struggle narrative and gave Dilili a privileged life. The result, however, is an erroneous image of the French past: the film dismisses the fact that Europeans, despite their universalist principles, exploited foreigners like the fictional Dilili for entertainment. Even as Ocelot’s film experiments with an alternative to the struggle narrative, its emphasis on France’s diverse society offering an equal opportunity for all paints an unrealistic picture of French society in both the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries.

Furthermore, the way that Dilili in Paris portrays Islam denigrates Muslims. The main plot of the movie revolves around Dilili solving the mystery of young girls who are being kidnapped by a group of evil men called the Male Masters. These men fear the female emancipation that was increasing during the Belle Époque. Their goal is to put a stop to the rise of womanly expertise by institutionalizing misogyny and raising a new generation of brainwashed women. They dehumanize the girls by turning them into living chairs, only allowing them to walk on all fours. What is more, the girls are covered by a long black cloth. The resemblance of this attire to niqab, a garment worn by some Muslim women as an interpretation of hijab, is striking. Therefore,

11 Le Fur, 45.

12 Roxane Gay,“Beyond the Struggle Narrative,” in Bad Feminist: Essays (New York: Harper Perennial, 2014), 231.

13 Gay, 232.

Ocelot’s metaphor for female oppression can be viewed as an indirect criticism of Islam, especially when paired with French politicians’ statements that have dubbed the burqa “a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement.”14

Some of Edward Said’s work focuses on the representation of Islam in Western media. He argues that the media trades in generalizations that uniformly villify Islam, usually by associating Muslims and terrorism.15 In the case of Dilili in Paris, film audiences will likely associate the Male Masters with Islam; their group is similar to a terrorist cell that forces women into submission. Michel Ocelot has denied criticizing the treatment of women by any particular religion or culture.16 Filmmaking is a collaborative endeavor, involving various individuals who may have contributed to shaping the negative portrayal of Islam within the film. However, given that Ocelot wrote the screenplay himself, his choices play a significant role in shaping the narrative and its implications. It is reasonable to question why he did not portray Dilili fighting for substantial feminist advancements, such as the right to vote, in order to symbolize the struggle against sexism. By endorsing feminist ideals and women’s rights in his discourse, Ocelot inadvertently reinforces Islamophobic ideas that contribute to heightened discrimination based on religious affiliation in a country that prides itself on universalism.

In fact, one famous aspect of French universalism is the concept of laïcité. Laïcité is a form of secularism that enshrines in the law the right to believe or not to believe, while keeping religious involvement out of governmental affairs.17 It does not outlaw religion but argues that religion belongs to an individual’s private life, not the public sphere. The laws that have been ratified in compliance with laïcité, however, often seem to single out Islam. For instance, in 2004, a law was enacted that prohibited the conspicuous display

14 See, for example, Nicolas Sarkozy, quoted in “Burka Sign of Subservience, Not Religion, Says French President,” CBC News, June 22, 2009, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/burka-sign-of-subserviencenot-religion-says-french-president-1.810308.

15 Sut Jhally, dir., Edward Said: On Orientalism (Northampton, MA: Media Education Foundation, 1998), Kanopy, 14:22–28:05.

16 Dreyfus, “Michel Ocelot.”

17 Jonathan Hauser, “Education, Secularism, and Illiberalism: Marginalisation of Muslims by the French State,” French Cultural Studies 32, no. 2 (May 2021): 150, https://doi. org/10.1177/09571558211007444.

of religious symbols in public schools. This regulation had a disproportionate impact on Muslim girls, as the act of concealing a hijab, which covers the hair, proved more challenging than hiding a cross necklace, which can be discreetly hidden under one’s clothing.18 This double standard stems from the hostile Western view of Islam as an inferior religion, as pointed out by Edward Said. He notes that authors from Western Europe and the United States have used a particular language in their writings on the history and culture of the Islamic Orient that places the religion in a lesser position.19 While Said analyzes scholarship from the late nineteenth century, Dilili in Paris demonstrates that such hierarchies survive in the twenty-first century and are being disseminated to a new generation through this children’s film.

In fact, the way that Dilili is treated by other characters reveals the inconsistency in universalist ideas and highlights the double standard employed for dealing with people from colonies and those from the metropole. Dilili’s ethnicity is an important aspect of the movie. The problematic status of race and national belonging is thus highlighted when the boundaries between racial groups come into question. We learn of her mixed heritage in the opening minutes of the movie, when she introduces herself as being both French and Kanak, having one white parent and the other Black.20 She expresses her concern about her skin being too light for Kanak people and at the same time too dark for the French. During her adventures in Paris, Dilili faces significant racism. At one point, she is called “a well-dressed monkey” by a white Frenchman, but she immediately returns the blow by saying that he reminds her of a pig.21 Later, undergoing an abrupt change of heart, the Frenchman admits that he was an “idiot.”22 The choice of the word “idiot” rather than “racist” suggests an ideological blindness and diverts the attention

18 Loi no 2004–228 du 15 mars 2004 encadrant, en application du principe de laïcité, le port de signes ou de tenues manifestant une appartenance religieuse dans les écoles, collèges et lycées publics [French Law #2004–228 of March 15, 2004, concerning, as an application of the principle of the separation of church and state, the wearing of symbols or garb which show religious affiliation in public primary and secondary schools], published in Journal Officiel de la République Française 65 (March 17, 2004), 5190, https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/eli/loi/2004/3/15/2004-228/jo/texte.

19 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 209.

20 Ocelot, Dilili à Paris, 00:04:20.

21 Ocelot, 00:22:12.

22 Ocelot, 01:02:05.

from advocating for justice and opposing prejudice. As this example shows, Dilili in Paris fails to call racism by its name and therefore to take a meaningful stand against racial discrimination.

Even though the French have long considered themselves defenders of equality among races, the ideas of racial inferiority were developed by French colonists and explorers as early as the mid-seventeenth century. France did not steer away from the racial hierarchization of the world, and by the eighteenth century, the words “Black” and “slave” were synonymous. Xenophobia and racism intensified during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when an influx of immigrants notably from the North African colonies arrived in France. French-born people believed that these immigrants were incapable of assimilating and therefore posed a threat to the French national identity.23 For this reason, despite her perfect French and an allegedly welcoming universalist society, Dilili is not accepted as French. Ocelot’s representation of the diversity of French society through the presentation of a mixed-raced main character highlights the limited applications of universalism in practice. Promising equal rights for all citizens, French universalism nevertheless has a very specific definition of “citizen” and marginalizes those who do not fit the specific racial and religious criteria for French identity.

The universalist principles and their shortcomings were reflected in the way France responded to the upheavals in 2020 caused by the world-wide anti-racist movement. Apparently in denial, French leaders largely avoided the topic of the extensive systemic injustices in twenty-first-century French society. Michel Ocelot daringly took up the challenge of addressing related topics in a movie intended for children. Presenting a Black heroine in a white world, he seemed poised to raise awareness about the struggles some minorities are still enduring in France. However, instead of producing an eye-opening piece, he remained bound by the strictures of universalism. He did not criticize the concept, despite its practices being in many ways contradictory to the causes Dilili was fighting for. The movie reflects France’s

23 Dominique Schnapper, La relation au l’autre. Au cœur de la pensée sociologique (Paris: Gallimard, 1998), 37.

fear of introspection, and there is little hope for solutions unless racism, sexism, and bias towards certain ethnicities and religions are properly addressed, which Dilili in Paris definitely does not do. The revolutionary spirit flows in the French veins, as has been demonstrated by history. Change lies within the country’s values and now might be the time for it. Dilili in Paris notwithstanding, I hope that a new generation will see the problems inherent in French universalism and ask to what extent universalism requires exclusion to function. If French people do not realize that their national pride rests in France’s multiculturalism and inclusiveness, rather than homogeneity and a single ethno-religious origin, the future of universalism as more than just an illusion remains in doubt.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Benjamin, Carrie Ann. “‘Exotic Commerce,’ French Universalism, and the Disruption of White Space in Paris’s ‘Little Africa.’” Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies 21, no. 3 (September 2018): 233–48. https://doi.org/10.5117/ tvgn2018.3.003.benj.

“Burka Sign of Subservience, Not Religion, Says French President.” CBC News. June 22, 2009. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/burka-sign-ofsubservience-not-religion-says-french-president-1.810308.

Dreyfus, Stéphane. “Michel Ocelot : ‘Je n’attaque pas l’islam en particulier: des hommes qui piétinent les femmes, il y en a partout.’” La Croix. June 12, 2018. https://www.la-croix.com/Culture/Cinema/MichelOcelot-Je-nattaque-pas-lislam-particulier-hommes-pietinent-femmespartout-2018-06-12-1200946596.

El Bialy, Chima. “In France, George Floyd’s Death Fueled a Protest Movement against Police Treatment.” NBC News. September 11, 2020. https://www. nbcnews.com/news/world/france-george-floyd-s-death-fueled-protestmovement-against-police-n1239458.

Gay, Roxane.“Beyond the Struggle Narrative.” In Bad Feminist: Essays, 227–32. New York: Harper Perennial, 2014.

Hauser, Jonathan. “Education, Secularism, and Illiberalism: Marginalisation of Muslims by the French State.” French Cultural Studies 32, no. 2 (May 2021): 149–62. https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558211007444.

Jhally, Sut, dir. Edward Said: On Orientalism. Northampton, MA: Media Education Foundation, 1998. Kanopy.

Le Fur, Yves. “How Can One Be Oceanian? The Display of Polynesian ‘Cannibals’ in France.” In Body Trade: Captivity, Cannibalism and Colonialism in the Pacific, edited by Barbara Creed and Jeanette Hoorn, 36–46. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Loi no 2004–228 du 15 mars 2004 encadrant, en application du principe de laïcité, le port de signes ou de tenues manifestant une appartenance religieuse dans les écoles, collèges et lycées publics. Journal Officiel de la République Française 65 (March 17, 2004): 5190. https://www.legifrance. gouv.fr/eli/loi/2004/3/15/2004-228/jo/texte.

Ocelot, Michel, dir. Dilili à Paris. 2018; Paris: Mars Films, 2018, 01:33:00. Blu-ray Disc, 1080p HD.

“Paris Police Chief Defends Forces against ‘Racism’ Claims.” France 24. June 2, 2020. https://www.france24.com/en/20200602-paris-police-chief-defendsforces-against-racism-claims.

Roucaute, Delphine. “Quatre questions sur les statistiques ethniques.”

Le Monde. Updated June 22, 2015. https://www.lemonde.fr/lesdecodeurs/article/2015/05/06/quatre-questions-sur-les-statistiquesethniques_4628874_4355770.html.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.

Sánchez-Gómez, Luis A. “Human Zoos or Ethnic Shows? Essence and Contingency in Living Ethnological Exhibitions.” Culture & History Digital Journal 2, no. 2 (2013). https://doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2013.022.

Schnapper, Dominique. La relation au l’autre. Au cœur de la pensée sociologique. Paris: Gallimard, 1998.

Rethinking Languages

LISA BRIGHENTI

AY 2021-2022

“What languages do you speak?” and “How many languages do you speak?” are very common questions that we have had to ask and answer countless times. Yet, we do so without ever stopping to really consider the weight of the word “speak,” not only in the questions and answers, but also in the shaping of our concept of language. One definition of language is that it is a system, a convention used by a group of humans to convey messages. However, there are several ways in which people understand the concept of language, with some believing that it has to be found on Google Translate, and others thinking a movie or book has to be released in that language. We as a society have unconsciously internalized a similar way of thinking, such that when thinking about languages, we automatically think about those having a written and spoken system. Nonetheless, this would rule out other ways of communication such as body language, signed language and whistled languages like the one encountered in Turkey (Nijhuis, 2015), to cite a few. All these expressions contain the word “language” and refer to human ways of communication, without a defined spoken or written system like what would typically be expected from a language. This puts forth the idea that not all languages have to be written or spoken despite the choice of terminology ‘speaking a language’ suggesting otherwise. Therefore, this essay discusses the extent to which our understanding of the concept of language and our general expectations from a language are accurate. The first step is to break down the definition of language and its forms and provide reasons for why we associate languages to written and spoken systems. Then, the paper dissociates the concept of language from the idea of written and spoken systems. Finally it highlights the existing link between the concepts of displacement and discreteness as discussed in the article “What is not (human) language” from An introduction to language by Fromkin et al. (2017), and examples of unconventional languages such as the whistled language of Northern Turkey as described by Nijhuis (2015). The goal is to better understand and further

challenge the common generalization of the belief that languages are only the most commonly spoken and written ones.

Language: definition and forms

Before digging deeper into how accurately we understand the concept of language, it is important to retrace the primary definition of the word. Language is “a system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written symbols” (Crystal & Robins, 2021) allowing a group of people to express themselves and communicate. This is a relatively broad yet accurate and inclusive definition of language that highlights the main purpose of it, which is to serve as a way for humans to transmit information to one another.

Nonetheless, further exploration of the complexities of this concept draws attention to the existence of several forms in which language can present itself. The most frequently encountered are the spoken and often written forms. These typically serve as native languages for groups of people. However, some forms of written languages are artificial and restricted to a specific domain, such as mathematics and computer programming. Then, there are those based on a gesture system like signed languages and body language. These also allow human communication, despite being based on systems very different from the most common languages, and not being spoken or written for the most part.

Understanding the preconceived expectations from a language

First and foremost, the driving reason why we expect a language to be written or spoken is because questions and statements about one’s mastery of a language are articulated using the verb “to speak.” This phenomenon appears in all of the languages serving as mother tongues and having a written and spoken system. However, it is interesting to see how languages like the whistled language of Northern Turkey and signed languages structure these questions and statements in the same way. In fact, the whistled language is based on spoken Turkish, which then turns into whistles made with the tongue, teeth, and fingers (Nijhuis, 2015), similarly to the hundreds of signed languages existing in the world, such as Brazilian, French and American signed languages, all based on the spoken version of the language (Brooks, 2018). It is

therefore unsurprising that signed and whistled languages both still use the terminology “to speak a language” despite not being spoken languages per se.

Different forms of languages exist that nonetheless all serve the same purpose, which is allowing human communication, despite many not being as broad and inclusive of these different forms. For instance, Nordquist (2019) in his article “Observations on What Is Language” claims that language, more specifically human language, is “the grammar and other rules and norms that allow humans to make utterances and sounds in a way that others can understand,” or in a more philosophical way “what makes us human” (Nordquist, 2019).

Along those same lines, Henry Sweet defines language as “the expression of ideas by means of speech-sounds combined into words” (as cited in Crystal and Robins, 2021). The use of the word “grammar” seems to imply that sounds, words and/or sentences are used in the language, which in turn implies the idea of a spoken and written system. Similarly, the concept of “speech-sound combined into words” does not apply to the forms of language that are based on gestures rather than speech. Hence, the wording of some definitions can easily lead to the belief that all languages have to be based on grammatical rules, and present a spoken and written system despite it not always being the case.

Not all languages are written or spoken

Wording statements and questions about languages using the verb “to speak,” as well as exclusionary definitions of language have reinforced the misconception that languages have to be written or spoken, and made it more widespread. Nevertheless, there are languages that are used daily by some groups of individuals to communicate among themselves and convey information effectively without the use of speech. Instances include the whistled language found in Northern Turkey (Nijhuis, 2015), but also in places like La Gomera in the Canary Islands (Plitt, 2013), and on the Greek island of Evia (Stein, 2017). Similarly to the whistled language of Northern Turkey is a whistled version of Turkish, the “Silbo Gomero,” which is a whistled version of the Spanish language (Plitt, 2013). However, while the whistled language of Evia is a whistled version of Greek, the whistled language of Sfyria has a completely unique vocabulary and grammar rules and it is not

another whistled variant of Greek (Stein, 2017), further proving that a spoken or written system is not necessary to make a language. Other non-spoken languages include tapping like the one used by American prisoners of war (POWs) during the Vietnam War (Criss, 2019), and clicking languages found in several places across the African continent such as the Kalahari Desert and Tanzania (Tcherneshoff, 2020). These non-conventional languages based on whistling, tapping and clicking are sequences of sounds associated with words or letters that allow communication. Whether they are traditional languages conserved, or ways of communication used in times where speaking was not permissible, like for the POWs case, these examples all support the claim that not all languages are spoken or written.

Displacement and Discreteness as they appear in unconventional languages

Languages are not necessarily spoken or written, and not always derived from preexisting written or spoken languages. The misconception that the parameters of what defines a language are shaped by the most common written and spoken ones to the exclusion of others is further discredited by the fact that unspoken languages also present traits such as discreteness and displacement, which are crucial features of human language allowing it to be told apart from other species’ ways of communicating (Fromkin et al., 2017). Fromkin et al. (2017) defines displacement as “The capacity to talk (or sign) messages that are unrelated to the here and now.” It successfully distinguishes human language from non-human language, as other species’ ability to convey information is very restricted in time and space. Animal communication seems to exclusively allow to convey messages related to the here and now, and cannot effectively be used to relate events from times and places beyond what is current. Discreteness is the feature that allows some extent of creativity in formulating a thought or idea differently than the standard way of expressing it. This property that can be used to tell human language apart from non-human languages, because there is more than one way to convey one’s message. Displacement and discreteness both are characteristics of human languages that also manifest in unspoken languages, which further supports the claim that unspoken languages stand alone as valid ways of communicating.

Displacement

Spoken and written language allows the discussion of topics from a range of different times and spaces: from things happening here and now, to things happening in a different time and place, from real things to completely abstract concepts. Similarly, whistled languages, for instance, can also reference events and facts drawn from a time and space other than when and where the message is being conveyed. The whistled language of Northern Turkey allows people to gossip, argue, and even court via whistle (Nijhuis, 2015). While people use the whistled language of Sfyria to introduce themselves and talk about past, present and future (Stein, 2017). Carlyle “Smitty” Harris, a retired Air Force colonel, mentions how the tapping evolved and was no longer an exchange of letters and words among the POWs. With time, it became entire conversations about elation, sadness, humor, sarcasm, excitement, depression. They would tap “poems, Scripture, jokes, educational things” which was comforting, making him and the other prisoners feel less lonely (as cited in Criss, 2019).

Discreteness

In spoken and written language, words and structures can be manipulated while still preserving the sense of the message. Similarly, unspoken languages such as whistled languages, signed languages and tapping also allow some extent of creativity in the way messages are structured. The whistled language of northern Turkey for instance serves different purposes including couring and gossiping (Nijhuis, 2015). Successful courting requires beautiful speech, attention to the choice of words, and eloquence. Therefore, if courting is possible using unspoken languages, then these allow one to be creative with the way the messages are conveyed, and original with the choice of words and expressions used. Likewise, when gossiping one might also need to use hints, figurative language and implicit messages to ensure safety and privacy in the sharing of information, which further suggests that unspoken languages allow some creativity and freedom in the structure of the information one is sharing. Hence, the way messages are structured and organized can be arranged and rearranged in different ways, without interfering excessively with one’s ability to convey the desired message, in both spoken and unspoken languages, which

stands in favor of unspoken languages meeting the criteria to be considered valid ways of communication.

Conclusion

The word language appears as simple and easy to understand because it is so present in our day-to-day life, as a big part of our routines is shaped by the languages we speak, or rather master. Despite languages simply being conventions of symbols, spoken or written words, sounds or gestures that allow the transmission of information, a common misconception exists according to which all languages have a spoken and written system. This is partly due to some definitions of language being exclusive of unspoken languages, and to the choice of terminology when discussing one’s mastery of a language. Nonetheless, not all languages are spoken or written and, although some whistled, signed or tapped languages are based on existing spoken languages, others like the whistled language of Sfyria have their own unique structure and vocabulary. Finally, the fact that we can draw a line between the concepts of discreteness and displacement and unconventional unspoken languages further demonstrates that we, for the most part, have a truly narrow and non-inclusive understanding of the concept of language. The automatic association between the idea of language and a written and spoken system is understandable but is also a clear indicator of the need to raise awareness and educate people about the many unconventional, uncommon, innovative and fascinating languages that humankind has created over time.

REFERENCES

Brooks, R. (2018, May 10). A guide to the different types of sign language around the world.

K International (n.d.). https://www.k-international.com/blog/different-typesof-sign-language-around-the-world/

Criss, L. (2019, November 1). He was a POW in Hanoi hilton: How mississippi man’s “tap code” helped them survive. Clarion Ledger. https://www. clarionledger.com/story/news/local/2019/11/01/tap-code-mississippiman-smitty-harris-pow-vietnam/4097934002/

RETHINKING LANGUAGES

Crystal, D., & Robins, R. H. (2021, December 17). Language. In Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/language

Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2017). What is not (human) language. In An Introduction to Language (11th ed., pp. 16-22). Cengage.

Nijhuis, M. (2015, August 17). The whistled language of northern Turkey. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/thewhistled-language-of-northern-turkey

Nordquist, R. (2019, May 24). Observations on the nature of language. ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-language-1691218

Plitt, L. (2013, January 11). Silbo Gomero: A whistling language revived. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20953138

Stein, E. (2022, February 28). Greece’s disappearing whistled language. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20170731-greeces-disappearingwhistled-language

Tcherneshoff, K. (2020, May 8). Let’s talk about clicks. Medium. https:// medium.com/wikitongues/lets-talk-about-clicks-458e37c6e74

The Kafala System in Lebanon: Modern-Day Slavery

NOUR MRAD

AY 2020-2021

Despite legislative amendments that made slavery illegal in most parts of the world during the 19th and 20th centuries, modern-day cases of unnamed and unchecked slavery persist in different corners of the world. In the Gulf and MENA regions, the Kafala sponsorship system, informally known as contractual slavery, puts foreign domestic workers in marginal positions by outlining unfair employer-domestic worker relationships that create a power imbalance resembling that of slavery. While the workers, often female, come to these regions with the promise of economic opportunity and a better future for themselves and their families back home, this system creates space for exploitation and abuse that rids the workers of their rights and freedoms. This abuse is further exacerbated, and the workers’ voices are further crushed, by the racist and sexist ideals that are pertinent in the region, an argument explored by Chandra Mohanty in the chapter “Women Workers and Capitalist Scripts” of her book Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Additionally, the representation of migrant workers and their respective races in the media in Gulf and MENA regions, as bell hooks argues in her book Black Looks, plays an important role in creating and sustaining these ideals that lead to exploitation. In this essay, I will explore the Kafala system’s implementation in Lebanon, the ways in which it is sustained by capitalism, sexism, racism, and the media and the ongoing resistance that followed.

Introducing the Kafala system

Laws concerning the Kafala sponsorship system warrant the maltreatment of foreign migrant workers. Kafala arose in the 1950s to encourage labor sharing in the Gulf (Philipp and Thelwell). However, its implementation continued without reform and regulation to fulfill the need for cheap labor in the host countries, and a need for economic opportunities for the migrant workers

and their communities. The Kafala system states that regulations concerning employment are controlled and overseen by the interior ministries of the host country, rather than labor ministries, meaning that the domestic workers are not protected by the host country’s labor laws (Robinson). As explained in “What Is the Kafala System?,” an article by Kali Robinson, the sovereignty that the Kafala system grants the employer, also known as sponsor or kafeel, creates a power imbalance that allows for ample abuse and exploitation of domestic workers. Examples of abusive policies warranted by this system include confiscating the workers’ passports, locking them up in confined bedrooms, and denying them rest days and contact with their families. The situation is further aggravated by the sponsors’ control over the renewal and termination of the worker’s employment, which is directly tied to the validity of the worker’s residency visa. Therefore, the legal status of these workers lies in the hands of their employers, not the state. The legality of this power imbalance becomes a threat to the worker’s economic benefits, self-determination, and safety, resulting at times in imprisonment, deportation, and self-harm.

Upholders of the system

The capitalist, sexist, and racist ideals that are pertinent in Lebanese culture play a significant role in upholding the mistreatment of migrant workers— and thus the Kafala system.

This issue can be viewed through Mohanty’s argument concerning women workers in the current capitalist economy presented in “Women Workers and Capitalist Scripts.” Mohanty argues that the goals of the capitalist world— profit, accumulation, and exploitation among others— determine the abuse of Third-World, often migrant women, working in such economies (Mohanty, 7). This is the case of the 250,000 migrant workers employed in Lebanon; the majority of whom are women from Africa and Southeast Asia (“Lebanon: Abandoned”). Capitalism enforces the existence of a category of what Mohanty refers to as “women’s work” (6). Women’s work is largely undermined and unpaid as it is seen solely as “work that is a ‘natural extension’ of [women’s] familial duties” (Mohanty 20). This is supported by Leuze and Strauß’s study (2016), which has shown that when women dominate fields that were previously male dominated, the average wages in these career fields drop

(807). Furthermore, with the enforcement of capitalist ideals, Lebanese women who occupy jobs outside the household regard their non-domestic work as real jobs and employ foreign domestic workers for housework. They think of housework as a duty that can be done by foreign domestic workers for much less money, much less working rights, and overall unequal treatment. The idea of housework being women’s natural work also contributes to the privatization of the job, further isolating it from labor laws and labor ministries, the phenomenon that created the problem in the first place.

This system sustained by capitalism cannot, however, succeed without the racial and gender biases that place foreign domestic workers in a position of exploitation. Mohanty contends that the naturalization of gender and race hierarchies sets up the working conditions of Third-World women working in foreign capitalist economies (6). Misogynistic views of women are common in Lebanon, which undermines the migrant workers’ labor, warranting the ill-treatment of the mostly-female domestic workers. Moreover, Lebanon has been classified as one of the least racially tolerant countries (Miller), with most of its population having racist ideals. As most foreign domestic workers come from African and Southeast Asian countries, racism clearly manifests itself in the Lebanese’s treatment of foreign workers. Moreso, another level of racism can be identified in Lebanese employers’ preferences of some nationalities over others: domestic workers from the Philippines are promised a higher salary than those from Togo, where the main discourse is about how the former are better workers and can handle more work. Noting the racist and sexist ideals that are common in Lebanon, foreign domestic workers are deemed inferior by virtue of their nationality and gender.

Media’s role

The aforementioned ideals of racism and sexism are partially sourced and reinforced by the media. In Black Looks, bell hooks contends that the media’s representation of race, including specific images, roles, and portrayals of black people, is directly related to the sustenance of white supremacist and patriarchal views (hooks 2). In the context of the Kafala system, representation of migrant domestic workers sustains the racial and gender hierarchies that work against them. Third-World women, especially Asians —as Mohanty

argues— have been stereotypically represented as having tolerance for heavy work, “a characteristic of non-western, primarily agricultural, premodern (Asian) cultures” (Mohanty 16). This has led employers of workers in Lebanon to justify over-work and tedious tasks that household members would not be expected to carry out individually. The effects of such overwork can be seen when migrant workers go to their home country unrecognizable: skinnier, weaker, and having pains due to the extensive work required. Furthermore, the media exacerbates this exploitation through the heterosexualization of women workers. As Mohanty discusses, when women are housewives, their existence becomes highlighted only in relation to men and marriage (Mohanty 12). This forms a potential reason for the high rates of sexual and physical abuse foreign domestic workers in Lebanon undergo — as Hall notes in “The secret networks saving Lebanon’s migrant maids from abuse.” Perceived lower status due to race, gender, and lack of escape options makes workers easy targets for such abuse, often perpetrated by men. This perception is worsened by the media’s portrayal of women of those nationalities: the hyper-sexualization and objectification of Asian women, for example, has come to light in the past month as Asian hate crimes have surfaced. The same applies to women from African countries who are also often hyper-sexualized and objectified in movies and the media. Hooks’ argument of representation creating unconscious and harmful biases provides an explanation to the abuse foreign domestic workers are subjected to in Lebanon.

Resistance and Mobilization

Withstanding decades of abuse, foreign domestic workers have resorted to resistance that has been met by an onslaught of obstacles. In “Women Workers and Capitalist Scripts,” Mohanty calls for the mobilization of Third-World women by finding commonalities between themselves (Mohanty 11). However, unlike the cases Mohanty provides where women work together in places such as factories and can formally or informally unionize, foreign domestic workers often do not work in places where they can get together. Instead, many of these workers never get to leave the house or talk to another worker. Despite these limitations, foreign workers in Lebanon have found ways to

achieve what Mohanty referred to as “the reconceptualization of Third-World women as agents rather than victims” (Mohanty 7). Through working with local NGOs and organizing their own protests, migrant domestic workers in Lebanon have come together and organized protests demanding for their rights and the abolishment of the Kafala system. Yet the most some could do was participate from their host family’s balconies. In 2015, migrant domestic workers in Lebanon created the Domestic Workers Union, which would work with local NGOs to demand workers’ rights (Hochreuther 7). However, having been formed by non-citizens, the union still does not have full operating capacity and independence, and the uncertainty around its legality as well as limitations imposed by employers stopped many workers from joining the union (Hochreuther 12).

Nonetheless, the plights of these workers were heard, and TV campaigns by local NGOs highlighted the issues in an attempt to alter the workers’ media representation. The culmination of efforts led to the development of a new unified contract that would give the workers more rights and protections—the first step in abolishing the Kafala system. Unfortunately, Lebanon’s administrative court suspended the implementation of this contract to protect the agencies that deal and profit from the employment of foreign domestic workers (“Lebanon: Blow to Migrant Domestic Worker Rights”). Once again, the profits of corporations have proven to be more important than domestic workers’ rights, leading to the current situation, with worsening conditions. With the economic and political crises and the Covid-19 pandemic in Lebanon, employers have abandoned workers on the streets or in front of respective embassies, often without paying their salaries, with no way to return home (Randhawa).

Conclusion

The Kafala sponsorship system is built and upheld by capitalism and discriminatory hierarchies of gender and race. It has thus created a form of modern-day slavery for migrant women who leave their homes in search of economic opportunity but are met with exploitative and abusive labor. Existing discourse surrounding women from African or South Asian countries, which affects and is affected by the media, perpetuates this system that

threatens domestic workers’ rights and safety. The abolishment of the Kafala system, especially with the current conditions, is long overdue. Mobilization in Lebanon, the Gulf and MENA region, and the world is needed to protect these workers and to start deconstructing the system of oppression built by decades of capitalism and discrimination.

WORKS CITED

Hall, Richard. “The Secret Networks Saving Lebanon’s Migrant Maids from Abuse.” The Guardian, 1 August 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/ global-development/2018/aug/01/secret-networks-rescuing-lebanonmigrant-maids-from-abuse

Hochreuther, Eva-Maria. Resistance Under Repression: The Political Mobilisation of Female Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-22868

hooks, bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation. 2nd ed. Routledge, 2014. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315743226

“Lebanon: Abandoned Migrant Domestic Worker Must Be Protected.” Amensty International, 3 June 2020, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ news/2020/06/lebanon-abandoned-migrant-domestic-workers-mustbe-protected/#:~:text=Lebanon%20is%20home%20to%20more,and%20 work%20in%20private%20households.

“Lebanon: Blow to Migrant Domestic Worker Rights.” Human Rights Watch, 30 October 2020, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/10/30/lebanon-blowmigrant-domestic-worker-rights

Leuze, Kathrin, and Susanne Strauß. “Why Do Occupations Dominated by Women Pay Less? How ‘Female-Typical’ Work Tasks and Working-Time Arrangements Affect the Gender Wage Gap among Higher Education Graduates.” Work, Employment and Society, vol. 30, no. 5, 2016, pp. 802–20. Crossref, doi:10.1177/0950017015624402.

Miller, Anna Lekas. “World’s Most and Least Racially Tolerant Countries.” Media Diversity Institute, 29 May 2013, www.media-diversity.org/worldsmost-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries.

Mohanty, Chandra. Women Workers and Capitalist Scripts: Ideologies of Domination, Common Interests, and the Politics of Solidarity. Routledge, 1996. https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/ modules/fulllist/special/transnational/mohanty_22women_workers22_2. pdf

Philipp, Jennifer, and Kim Thelwell. “Kafala System.” The Borgen Project, https://Borgenproject.org/Wp-Content/Uploads/The_Borgen_Project_ Logo_small.Jpg, 5 Aug. 2021, borgenproject.org/tag/kafala-system/

Randhawa, Michelle. “Hardships for Lebanon’s Migrant Domestic Workers Rise.” Human Rights Watch, 14 September 2020, https://www.hrw.org/ news/2020/09/14/hardships-lebanons-migrant-domestic-workers-rise

Robinson, Kali. “What is the Kafala System?” Council on Foreign Relations, 23 March 2021, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-kafala-system .

Malleability of Ethnic Identity and the Rwandan Genocide

RASHIK CHAND

AY 2020-2021

“We will not deny that, in their greatest hour of need, the world failed the people of Rwanda.”1 This statement made four years after the Rwandan genocide by the then Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, serves as a stark reminder of the global inaction during the atrocities carried out by Hutu extremists leading to the death of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The Rwandan genocide exemplifies a grave situation under which ethnicity was politicized and mobilized by the architects of the genocide to execute the mass atrocities. Initially, the genocide was misleadingly portrayed as mere ‘tribal warfare.’ As Iqbal Riza, who was then Assistant SecretaryGeneral of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), bluntly put it, “It was nothing new. This had continued from the 60s through the 70s into the 80s and here it was in the 90s.”2 Such a narrative of ‘ethnic warfare’ stemming from ‘ancient tribal hatred’ framed the events of the Rwandan genocide as just another inevitable occurrence of violence between the Hutus and the Tutsis. The characterization of the genocide using such an ‘ethnic frame’ could be attributed to its logic drawn from “apparent” ethnic ideals and exploiting existing tensions.

As Judith Butler notes in Frames of War – When Is Life Grievable, frames seek to contain, convey, and determine what is perceived.3 Such frames are an important part of the discourse when it comes to the Rwandan genocide because the normative standards of recognizability (or unrecognizability), driven by societal and political forces, restrict our perception of lives that are

1 Secretary-General Statements and Messages, In ‘Mission of Healing’ To Rwanda, Pledges Support of United Nations for Country’s Search For Peace And Progress, 6 May 1998.

2 Iqbal Riza, Frontline interview.

3 Judith Butler, Frames of War – When is Life Grievable, (NY: Verso, 2009), p. 10.

truly living, or are considered as injurable or losable.4 The recognition of life as grievable, meaning that a life will be mourned if it is lost, is a necessary precedent for the preservation of life; consequently, its absence leads to the naturalization of violence. The unarmed, civilian victims of the genocide were framed as casualties of an ongoing tribal blood-shedding between the Hutus and the Tutsis. As such, they were framed as losable or ungrievable lives, thereby, forfeiting any responsibility to protect their lives. I argue that in addition to the ‘ethnicity’ being repurposed by the Hutu extremists to execute the genocide, the West implicitly succumbed to the inevitability of ‘ethnic warfare’ and politicized the nature of the conflict, which was used to justify non-intervention in Rwanda. This paper attempts to bring into question the malleability of ‘ethnic frames’ and prevent the Rwandan genocide from serving as a precedent for justifying future non-intervention, safeguarding the prospect of ‘never again.’

We begin by examining the roots of the ‘ethnic’ frames and how the colonial rule in Rwanda, first by the Germans, but more significantly by the Belgians, made such frames prominent. The events leading up to the Rwandan genocide are exemplars of Butler’s notion that frames are not static but subject to constant shifting and reconsiderations. In pre-colonial Rwanda, most of the population were farmers, and Hutus and Tutsis served mainly as a socioeconomic differentiator. Both spoke (and still speak) the same language, Kinyarwanda, and intermarriage was not uncommon. A Hutu man could ‘become’ a Tutsi if they were wealthy enough (including livestock) and married a Tutsi woman, or were appointed to an administrative post. Similarly, a Tutsi could become a Hutu if they lost enough wealth and social stature.5 Simply put, the differences between the Hutus and the Tutsis were not rigid. However, the Belgians, to advance their political agenda, deemed Tutsis as more ‘civilized’ because of arbitrary differences, such as their relatively European physical traits. The Belgians even introduced identity cards based on ethnic identity and cemented the divide between the Hutus and the Tutsis. In doing so, as Wheeler points out, they imposed ‘ethnic’ frames on the struggles that

4 Butler, p. 1.

5 David Newbury, ‘Understanding Genocide’, African Studies Review, 41 (1998), pp. 84.

followed and racialized the identities of the Rwandan population.6 The shifting power dynamics and oppression by the state resulted in heightened ethnic consciousness and the Hutus began to increasingly identify themselves under a common identity ethnic consciousness, which gradually increased ethnic opposition. Subsequently, the same narrative that Tutsis only aimed at their racial supremacy was perpetuated by the Hutu extremists to set the stage for such mass violence.

The Rwandan genocide was not at all a spontaneous act of tribal violence, but a systemic killing of the Tutsi minority with a deliberate political agenda instigated as a final solution to wipe out the Tutsis. The Hutu extremists systematically categorized the Tutsis as non-humans, essentially dehumanizing and demonizing them based on their ethnicity, through ideological and political propaganda proclaiming Tutsis as “cockroaches” and “snakes.”7 By systematically categorizing Tutsis as non-humans, the Hutu extremists framed Tutsi lives as forfeited or lost, and even regarded the loss of Tutsi lives as inevitable to safeguard the living. The severity and extent of the dehumanization propaganda are particularly appalling; as Mironko notes in his account, several survivors said they did not resist their attacker because they felt they were already dead, and their fate was inescapable because their ethnicity was inescapable.8 Mironko also writes about how a cultural rite ingrained in Rwandan culture, regarding hunting sanctioned by the Rwandan monarch to regulate the environment, was redeployed in a particularly horrible way to justify the killing of Tutsis as cleansing the environment.9 The major takeaway from these instances is that ethnicity, often considered invariant, is prone to manipulation and can be molded to suit a particular purpose. The specific context created by the interaction between a multitude of factors, including ethnicity, was brought about by intentional political design that led to the horrors in Rwanda. In essence, ethnicity was exploited

6 Nicholas J Wheeler, “Global Bystanders to Genocide: International Society and the Rwandan Genocide”, in Saving Strangers – Humanitarian Intervention in International Society, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 210.

7 Charles Mironko, ‘Igitero: Means and Motive in the Rwandan Genocide’, Journal of Genocide Research, 6:1, p. 48.

8 Mironko, p 59.

9 Mironko, p 52.

by those in power and served a political purpose for the Hutus to advance their selfish interests. Most ordinary Rwandans did not kill Tutsis because of their ethnicity, but rather as a means of self-preservation and because they were influenced by the government propaganda.10 It was the bare survivability on the line: either kill or be killed. The atrocities were not carried out primarily due to ideological or historical reasons, but by small, opportunistic, groups of militias and thugs, collectively called the Interhamwe, in the name of the greater good. It is noteworthy that policing such unorganized groups and preventing the mass atrocities would have been relatively straightforward for any organized and sizable army.11 In hindsight, the Rwandan genocide is often considered as the ‘preventable genocide,’ but sadly no tangible actions were taken to stop it.

The global inaction during the Rwandan genocide is reminiscent of the problematic notion of the inevitability of ‘tribal warfare’ and the narrative of self-extinction. By slating the incidents of the Rwandan genocide as an ‘interethnic combat,’ the international community developed “a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the conflict... [which] contributed to false political assumptions and military assessments.”12 Such narratives have historically been employed by the West, as Patrick Brantlinger writes in Dark Vanishings, “to rationalize the genocidal aspects of European conquest and colonization.”13 The striking resemblance between colonial projects and the Rwandan genocide is not surprising, as part of the problem was the ‘socially constructed’ ethnic boundaries by the Belgian colonizers. In the initial days of the genocide, much emphasis was placed by the Security Council on “looting, banditry, and the breakdown of law and order,”14 indirectly stereotyping something much worse as a conflict between uncivilized tribes, savages, and brutes in the eyes of the spectators. Such perspectives reinforced the notion that savagery was disappearing on its own accord, and not only “mitigated

10 Mironko, p 59.

11 Mueller, John, “The Banality of ‘Ethnic War’,” International Security 25:1 (2000), p. 43.

12 Lessons Learned Unit, UN DPKO, Comprehensive Report on Lessons Learned from UNAMIR, October 1993-April 1996 (December 1996), p. 3.

13 Patrick Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800-1930 (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2003), p. 1.

14 UNSC Resolution 912, 3368th Meeting (21 April 1994), p. 2.

guilt [but also] excused or even encouraged violence towards those deemed savage.”15 Relegating the harsh realities of the Rwandan genocide as an uncivilized, mindless slaughter resulting from ‘ancient tribal hatreds,’ allowed the West to wrongly assert that the violence as an ‘African phenomenon’ and ‘historical baggage’ over which they had minimal jurisdiction.16 This is indicative of the stereotypical assumption that somehow the issues of African states are isolated from the world. Was conflict in Africa not as big of a threat to international peace and security compared to other parts of the world?

Even as mass killings became increasingly apparent, the Secretary General’s report for alternatives for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) stated that “it is only the parties who signed the Arusha Agreement, […] who must bear the responsibility for deciding whether their country and people find peace or continue to suffer violence.”17 In short, the responsibility for preventing the conflict was put in the hands of those that provoked it, which evidently did not work. Such inaction also perpetuated into the narrative of self-extinction, such that, ‘tribal warfare’ was nothing more than an inescapable prophecy driving savages towards self-destruction, meaning that “no amount of humanitarian sentiment […] could come to the rescue.”18 Therefore, there is no point in putting any effort or resources in even trying. The incidents of the genocide were overlooked and oversimplified by the international community. The distinction between the victims and the perpetrators of the genocide were blurred because both the Hutus and the Tutsi were portrayed as equal agents of the massacres and non-intervention was presented as respecting the Rwandan population’s right of selfdetermination, that is, “to become free by their own efforts” and determine their affairs. As such, humanitarian intervention was never a viable option, and the West could mitigate its guilt for and even legitimize its inaction.

The horrors of the Rwandan genocide make it tempting to ignore it as a dark chapter in the history of the world and label it as a product of tribalism, where

15 Brantlinger, p. 2.

16 Lessons Learned Unit, UN DPKO, p. 3.

17 Special Report of The Secretary-General on The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, UN Doc S/1994/470 (20 April 1994), p. 5.

18 Brantlinger, p. 3.

the members of the tribes are pitted against each other in eternal conflict. Certainly, it is much easier to blame deep-rooted ethnic hatred that cannot be reconciled and to claim the resulting conflict is bound to be self-extinguished. Sadly, the Rwandan genocide epitomizes how such narratives perpetuated and justified global inaction, which was further compounded by the socially and politically constructed nature of the genocide. To consider ethnicity as a static entity would be a colossal mistake; rather it is essential to recognize the evolving nature of ethnicity and its interdependence on other aspects of social interactions. What happened in Rwanda can hardly be considered an isolated event, and the grim possibility that such conditions could be recreated elsewhere in the world cannot be ignored if we are ever to envision a world where such atrocities can never occur again.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Charles Mironko, “Igitero: means and motive in the Rwandan Genocide”, Journal of Genocide Research, 6:1, pp. 47 – 60.

David Newbury, “Understanding Genocide”, African Studies Review, 41 (1998), pp. 73-97.

Iqbal Riza, Frontline interview.

John Mueller, “The Banality of ‘Ethnic War’,” International Security 25:1 (2000), pp. 42-70.

Judith Butler, Frames of War – When Is Life Grievable, (NY: Verso, 2009).

Lessons Learned Unit, UN DPKO, Comprehensive Report on Lessons Learned from UNAMIR, October 1993-April 1996 (December 1996).

Nicholas J Wheeler, “Global Bystanders to Genocide: International Society and the Rwandan Genocide,” in Saving Strangers – Humanitarian Intervention in International Society, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 208-241.

Patrick Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800-1930 (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2003).

Secretary-General Statements and Messages, In ‘Mission of Healing’ To Rwanda, Pledges Support of United Nations for Country’s Search for Peace and Progress (6 May 1998).

Special Report of The Secretary-General on The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda S/1994/470 (20 April 1994).

UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, Lessons Learned Unit, Comprehensive Report on Lessons Learned from UNAMIR [UN Assistance Mission to Rwanda], October 1993-April 1996 (December 1996).

UN Security Council, Resolution 912, 3368th Meeting (21 April 1994).

Literature as Witness to Human Suffering

SHU MIN TAN AY 2020-2021

‘The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I.’

The above quotation is from Romeo Dallaire’s Waiting for First Light, a memoir that acts as a reflection and documentation of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. This genocide has become a renowned case study in the grand scheme of contemporary global relations. In marking this international failure, the act of memorialization is crucial in preserving the memories of people and events, creating a space that acknowledges these human rights violations. These spaces further provide recognition to victimized individuals, offering them access to justice and restitution in the aftermath of such violations. Memorialization functions as a reminder: on one hand, documenting and adding to the shared narrative; and on another, accounting for such an event to never occur again. As such, this essay draws on Romeo Dallaire’s Waiting for First Light as a piece that memorializes the Rwandan genocide, specifically the tension and turmoil between members of the Hutu ethnic majority group and the Tutsi minority group. The framing of Dallaire’s accounts of sentimentality thereby becomes a space that has the potential for the inclusion of stateless persons, those unrecognized by members of their community and by the state, subsequently generating a global sense of responsibility for these victims. This paper argues that the substantial downfall in the collective is represented not only as a failure to acknowledge the pain of others, but also the failure to act cohesively to halt the genocide. As Dallaire highlights in his verse: men lie dead at the hands of other men, yet it seems that only he bears this guilt and responsibility. The poem communicates a sense of interconnectivity and solidarity, but also of dark violence and suffering.

Nonetheless, what is at stake around memorialization is the way in which the Rwandan genocide is presented and framed. As much as Dallaire’s Waiting for First Light is a carefully crafted memoir that sheds light on the suffering of others, there is an inherent gap between Dallaire’s past experiences and the portrayal of his memories. Especially when he struggles with posttraumatic stress disorder, it becomes hard to assess how partial or impartial his accounts are. I further problematize Dallaire’s attempt at portraying suffering, questioning whether the notion can be shared and collectively felt. While the task to recount horrifying narratives is an arduous one, I believe it should be done despite prevailing circumstances as it becomes a root for accountability – for both perpetrators and victims. With the budding genre of post-war narratives, this paper’s motive is to draw emphasis to the utmost care and forethought that must be exercised in the crafting of these literary compositions to memorialize.

Romeo Dallaire’s Waiting for First Light is a public testimony that offers a perspective of the historical event of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, key players, and the international failure to prevent the atrocity. As head of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda, Dallaire had ‘tried to do all he could to protect the Rwandan Tutsi from the persecution they were facing’ (McMillan, 2017: 436). Despite his persistent appeals for intervention from institutions and countries across the world, he was only met with international disregard. Dallaire’s ongoing hatred and disgust towards countries is evinced, “I’m bending over backward…hoping that they can get us the help we need by shaming the international community into supporting a reinforced mission, and by extension us in the field” (Dallaire, 2016: 7). He condemns and wants to ‘shame’ international institutions – particularly Western countries – for their poor responses and inactions. “Failure of humanity” applies on both community and individual levels, as he notes that this failure extends to “us in the field.” Dallaire recognizes his failure as a microcosmic western player involved in the genocide, but also identifies his failure as a UN soldier to protect the Rwandan Tutsis under threat. Dallaire’s work is thus a confrontation of past human rights crimes and confession of his individualized guilt, subsequently rendered in a form of truth-telling in his quest for reconciliation.

As Mark R. Amstutz describes in “Is Reconciliation Possible After Genocide?,” ‘truth-telling is regarded as conducive to the restoration of relationships’ but more importantly, when these offenses are disclosed and publicly acknowledged (Amstutz, 2006: 541). In this case, Waiting for First Light achieved public status as soon as it was published in 2016, becoming widely discussed within the larger community. It entails truth-telling grounded in Dallaire’s individual experiences as a form of authentic narrative to represent. Dallaire confesses, “I simply cannot keep everyone safe... I have to make decisions that mean some will live and others will not. Sometimes I’m not able to get forces there in time, or the risk is simply too high” (Dallaire, 2016: 37). This account deals with objective, empirical realities that are based on his observations and experiences. His dilemma is troubling: heading the UN, Dallaire is only supposed to protect UN personnel and assets, yet doing so means he would stand by and watch hundreds slaughtered, injured, and displaced. Dallaire goes to the extent of admitting that he is unable to save the thousands of innocent civilians, where he is “forced to play God with people’s lives” because each time he “gave a command that will save a life” he would also be ‘condemning someone else to mutilation and death’ (Dallaire, 2016: 38). Dallaire addresses the power that he possesses, but more importantly, the guilt of having to exploit this authority at the expense of another person’s life. Here, the truth is prioritized for Dallaire as he confronts his past in such a blatant manner, which in turn, “allows the burden of [his] guilt to be partially lifted” becoming a vital element in the healing process (Amstutz, 2006: 548).

While Dallaire’s portrayal can be argued as a personalized and subjective ‘truth’ of the traumatic event, his work develops into an account of the mass atrocity in ways other mediums are unable to do. For example, when Dallaire’s team came across a butchered village, he describes how “the heavy scent of burning mud huts and coagulating blood hung in the air, but it was the smothering silence of death that was so definitive” (Dallaire, 2016: 2).

The scene is horrifying, ornamented with the writer’s articulation of the pervading smell and sound of silence. This precision to detail allows Dallaire to contribute something new to the existing narrative of the Rwandan genocide. He continues, “we would gently pick through the bodies, searching in vain for survivors, pausing sometimes to lower a raised and bloodied skirt, or turn a

tiny broken body toward its still mother” (Dallaire, 2016: 2). The jarring image is filled with trauma and the horror manifests in the witness’ inability to coherently form the word ‘child.’ Here, the concept of witness is twofold: on one hand, Dallaire’s shaken response to the sight; on another, readers bearing witness to the genocide. The suffering evoked by Dallaire’s memorialization transcends the page as readers react in shock too, beginning to feel guilty for their witness and inaction.

The portrayal of suffering in Waiting for First Light offers new versions of reality for individuals initially rendered stateless to now be recognized. Judith Butlers delineates the idea of a “precarious life,” explaining that “one’s life is always in some sense in the hands of the other” (Butler, 2009: 14). One way to read this response is a suggestion that we are inevitably dependent on others. She contends that “lives are by definition precarious” (Butler, 2009: 25) and because of this shared condition of existence – precariousness and vulnerability – that each life should be worthy of protection against the force of violence. It is precisely this quality of precariousness and frailty that Dallaire brings the human into view in his frames. For example, he describes:

Killing children in front of parents, killing parents in front of children, forcing children to kill parents in order to save siblings, inflicting vicious injury to force the living to witness the pain and suffering of the dying.... (Dallaire, 2016: 89)

This account vivifies a reality to those who have no experience of violence, drawing attention to the body’s vulnerability against external forces. The repeated use of ‘killing’ in this passage emphasizes the massive slaughter that physically occurs everywhere: in front of children, in front of parents - there is no escape as it even appears in front of the reader’s eyes, materialized in our minds as a condition of responsiveness. As Butler underscores, Dallaire’s description comprises a “transitive function,” making us “susceptible to ethical responsiveness” (Butler, 2009: 77). This depiction of suffering is brutal and we consume this violence, reacting in outrage when lives are subjected to dehumanization and degradation. Through Dallaire’s presentation of precarious status, these bodies not only become exposed and recognized, but also become subjugated to the readers’ imagination of violence and pain.

These bodies are otherwise “being bound up with others” – and by extension to our imaginations – which reinforces Butler’s suggestion that we have “interconnected lives that carry on each others’ words, [and] suffer each others’ tears” (Butler, 2009: 62). Therefore, to say we collectively live in a state of precariousness and interdependence, we also have to acknowledge the understanding regarding the suffering of others.

Now it pains me to say, the weight and seriousness of Waiting for First Light is contained: “up to some point, the book will be closed; the strong emotion will become a transient one” (Sontag, 2004: 80). Our failure does not lie in our inability to acknowledge the suffering of others – we can read and think privately, even ponder the writer’s descriptions. But rather, that failure lies when our condemnations about human cruelty begin to fade and the crime is archived. An eventuality that occurs when Dallaire’s story reduces to merely words. “Words were not enough,” Dallaire had written, he “needed people to realize what had actually happened to real human beings” so he proceeded by pulling out his machete, savagely hacking a watermelon to convey this violence to his audience (Dallaire, 2016: 48). Similarly through Dallaire’s memoir, we bear witness to the genocide, yet ‘we’ do not and cannot experience anything at par to the suffering, pain and violence of these individuals. As Sontag describes, “we truly can’t imagine what it was like. We can’t imagine how dreadful, how terrifying war is” (Sontag, 2004: 83). For this reason, the process of memorialization becomes a difficult task to execute: readers can read these texts but the horrors cannot fully resonate – we can only imagine and fantasize about the suffering of others.

So, if our failure lies in our inability to hold this reality of suffering in mind, then by “making suffering loom larger, by globalizing it, [perhaps it] may spur people to feel they ought to ‘care’ more” (Sontag, 2004: 51). The publication of Waiting for First Light is a case in point: as Dallaire’s portrayal of his Rwandan memories becomes public, so do the frames of violence against Rwandan Tutsis. Dallaire describes how “the smells and screams invade our premise, even the pores of our skin… Tutsis have been segregated under the guise of protection and then systematically slaughtered” (Dallaire, 2016: 36). Dallaire’s frames attend to Tutsi suffering, allocating recognizability to these victims

which render them with grievable lives. This description provokes feelings: exploiting our sentiment for these victims. By doing so, however, Dallaire frames the Hutu population as “extremists [that] have a total disregard for any international law” (Dallaire, 2016: 36). The framing of the Hutus is negatively denoted with ‘extremist,’ which denies them any pity or compassion, subsequently leading to the exclusion of any Hutu minorities that may have similar experiences of genocide from the two-way ethnic violence. Therefore, if Dallaire’s portrayal of his Rwandan memories is arguably a partial view of the genocide, perhaps we should be more concerned with the cruelties and deaths that are not being depicted in the course of Dallaire’s memorialization. So, does the act of memorialization teach us anything or do they rather just confirm what we already know? To some extent, perhaps it does both. However, it seems that the process of memorialization – truth-telling, craft and publication – is far more important in attaining a sense of justice and reconciliation, thereby generating greater awareness and accountability. As Dallaire stipulates, “by picking up and reading this book you have proved yourself” – we may not share the same suffering and pain, but we are a collective morally responsible to continue the discourse around past human cruelties, making sure they never occur again.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ari Kohen et al, “Personal and Political Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda,” Social Justice Research 24 (2001).

Judith Butler, Frames of War – When is Life Grievable? (NY: Verso, 2009)

Mark R. Amstutz, “Is Reconciliation Possible After Genocide?: The Case of Rwanda,” Journal of Church and State (2006), pp. 541-565.

Nesam McMillan, “Racialising global relations: the Rwandan genocide and the ethics of representation,” Postcolonial Studies, 2017, Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 431–455

Romeo Dallaire, Waiting for First Light: My Ongoing Battle with PTSD (Random House, 2016)

Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, (Penguin, 2004)

The Hundred-Foot Journey: Serving A Platter of Orientalist Discourse

SOPHIE HELENA BIERVERT

AY 2021-2022

The Hundred-Foot Journey is a film directed by Lasse Hallström and produced by Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Juliet Blake in 2014. The film centers around the talented protagonist Hassan Kadam (Manish Dayal), whose passion revolves around cooking for two primary reasons: cooking grounds him to family and his Indian roots, whilst also acting as the portal in which the abundance and diversity of life can be savored and enjoyed. Hassan’s personal and professional journey as a self-taught culinary novice begins to unravel as his family takes refuge in France due to political instability in his home India. In order to make a living, they establish an Indian restaurant across the street from a highly-established French haute cuisine restaurant, owned by the chauvinist Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren). Her restaurant lies 100-feet across the Kadams’, to which she and her French chefs heavily object, as they view it as a nuisance – impossible to co-exist next to a traditional, prestigious, Michelinstar French kitchen. War and conflict erupts between both establishments, until Mallory recognizes Hassan’s incredible talent in cooking. She takes him under her wing, until he masters French cookery, which lands him in Paris as he not only becomes a Michelin cook, but a superstar in molecular cuisine – earning himself, and Madame Mallory’s restaurant, great fame.

By looking at critiques such as by Joe Morgenstern from The Wall Street Journal, we can see how the film is commonly regarded as a “foodie movie”: its purpose is to supposedly celebrate the diversity of French and Indian culture, by binding each other’s taste and experiences. However, what most people don’t notice is that there is a clear controversy lurking in the fact that there is no shared taste and experience – instead, the film demonstrates a strict hierarchy of power, where the West is ultimately triumphant. In order for Hassan to flourish as a respectable chef, he must submit himself to French standards and teachings, abandoning his Indian roots. This is important because it proves

just how indoctrinated we are as an audience: we are blind to how Eastern culture and cuisine is depicted to ultimately shape and surrender itself to Western standards in the film, if it is to have any hopes of success and survival. Therefore, there’s a clear underlying message of the domineering power of the West, which the film subtly reinforces, through its orientalist gaze. As Edward Said famously argued, Orientalism, a term he used to characterize Western doctrines and their beliefs about the East, reinforces the West’s paternalistic perspective of the East, achieved by diminishing its cultures, traditions, and societal norms. By over-glorifying French Cuisine, and by uplifting the exquisite, high-end, and extremely professional etiquette of the West, what the film ultimately achieves is for its audience to develop a sort of tunnelvision - one which only admires the efforts, traditions, and professionalism of the West, whilst disregarding those of the East.

In order to further understand why we see a continuous influx of films glorying the West, which, intentionally or not, diminishes the East, we must turn to Edward Said. Said was a cultural critic best known for his book Orientalism (1978), which awakened readers to how Western journalists, media, and fiction writers often present Eastern cultures as inferior, stagnant, and degenerate. Like a pair of glasses that distort your vision, Orientalism works with exaggerated cultural differences, primarily through stereotypes. Said states that there is “a collective idea of European identity as a superior one, in comparison with all the non-European peoples and cultures” (7), marking how in the “electronic, postmodern world, there is a reinforcement of the stereotypes by which the Orient is viewed” (26). Such conventions lurk in Hallström’s movie, starting with the very presentation of the Kadams in the beginning of the film. Right at the start, we are introduced to a depiction of Hassan and his family as refugees; powerless people who are looking to flee their politically unstable country, in order to gain aid from the Western world. Hassan recounts his story at an immigration office, to which Hallström employs the use of cross-cutting and flashback, to depict Hassan’s life in Mumbai. We are presented with scenes of protest and violence; people with flaming torches, barbarically climbing over fences, whilst citizens wail and scream at the site of destruction. Hallström accompanies this scene with the fast and persistent sound effects of drums, which have a physiological effect on

the audience, accelerating the heartbeat as flames and fire consume the movie screen. Immediately, the audience is placed in a state of horror and fear, which naturally inclines the viewers to think of the East as uncivilized, violent, and barbaric. This is further emphasized, as such scenes are contrasted by Hassan standing in a white, finely decorated immigration office, in front of a European officer dressed in an orderly uniform, who looks at Hassan with disinterest. As we can see, the discourse of cultural power begins to speak early on in the film; the director takes us from the rags and uncivilized land of India, to the orderly, pure, and civilized lands of Europe, which clearly embodies a colonialist attitude. Hassan tells the officer “we lost everything” (The Hundred-Foot Journey, 02:00-05:42), which immediately enforces the stereotype of the helpless, desperate Eastern refugee, who must travel to powerful Europe for any hope of a good and stable life.

The stereotypes of the East, unfortunately, only strengthen throughout the film. This is made clear when Hassan’s family arrive at their final destination in France. It is here where the power struggle between both cultures, and discrimination, occurs. The director makes use of lighting and shadows to depict the difference in status between the French, and Hassan’s Indian family. This is primarily seen in the moment where Hassan’s father, at the break of night, goes to buy the rundown property which eventually becomes his restaurant. Everything happens behind the shadows, as if hinting at the family’s neglect in France as the ‘other’ and strange invaders, whilst Madame Mallory’s restaurant glimmers and shines in scenes which are covered in bright, natural daylight, and by an abundance of people. Whilst Madame Mallory’s restaurant stands tall and proud across the street, as if her restaurant speaks for what seems to always be the unquestionable powerful stance of the West, a contrast is witnessed within Kadam’s property: the director includes many scenes which depict close ups of the family slaving away, building everything from scratch. This reinforces Said’s view of the East continuously being shown to struggle against Western power, as Easterners seek to judge themselves using Western criteria, as a form of achieving Western goals. This is ultimately what the Kadams are doing by trying to construct a restaurant which may compete with their Michelin-star neighbor, instead of organically growing by their own system and beliefs.

Joe Morgenstern, the critic from The Wall Street Journal, notices how the

film also explores “the harsh reality of French Xenophobia”(3); indeed this is true, for the dialogue which Hallström assigns to the French characters, continuously diminishes the Kadams. Their food is compared to “cat food” (The Hundred-foot Journey, 29:09-29:16), where the use of animal imagery dehumanizes the Kadams, presenting them as uncivilized and unfit to live and prosper in French society, aligning with the Western perception of India as a third world nation. Madame Mallory for the majority of the film refuses to acknowledge Kadams’ place as a restaurant, and instead, calls it a “fast-food something” (The Hundred-Foot Journey, 24:00-24:05). The word “something” symbolizes what is undefinable, strange, something so absurd which just can not be put into words, or rather, which she chooses to exclude from words, because her status and overbearing culture has the power to do so. Clearly, the film implicitly reinforces French Xenophobia, predominantly shown through an attitude of ignorance and disgust by the French characters in the movie. Such an attitude can be linked to Said’s argument of the West continuously viewing the East as the ultimate “other.” This mindset is exactly what leads to the belief that the East is somehow inferior, because when we look at the film, or in a greater sense the world, with such a westernized view, it is only natural to reject anything that feels not Western.

The unwarranted mistreatment of Hassan and his family by the French, raises an important question: what leads to such unjustified behavior? Education, or the lack of it, might just help explain such an issue. This is especially true as the West has the power to penetrate and define the Asiatic experience –without the Orient’s input. This is something that must change if we seek to both hear and understand the authentic Orient voice. This is precisely the concern within the film, because instead of the viewer being educated on something new, a refreshing perspective which could have based itself upon the core of Eastern cuisine and traditions, we experience the same story which Hollywood has told many times before: The glory of the French and Western cuisine! The “oooh-la-la” of films like Ratatouille, or Chocolat, in which the Western kitchen is worshiped. All of the above share a similar convention: they are united by a sub-genre that fixes French Cuisine as the ultimate pinnacle. Edward Said criticizes it by drawing upon Michael Foucault’s theorization of discourse, a system of thought that controls the

knowledge received by a person so that the knowledge consumed is actually made up of preconceived notions and ideas. The presentation of the French Cuisine as being elite in power and status creates a popular discourse that encourages an audience to truly disregard anything that does not comply with the expected and accepted notion, that French and Western cuisine is at the heart of power and professionalism. American cinema clearly dominates and uplifts the Western narrative, and what is worse, it chooses to speak for, and be the voice of, other cultures; which explains why this movie, which supposedly ‘celebrates’ Eastern culture, is entirely written by white, European men. This raises a very important point: whose voice are we really listening to in such a film – is it truly the local Eastern voice, or what the West believes the Eastern voice to be? Afterall, we must remember that the film is written from a western perspective; this proves how such a critically acclaimed film creates an image of India which only serves to conform to Orientalist ideologies of a primitive, inferior, “other.”

Another important question to raise is why so many spectators fail to view the film through such an orientalist, political lens? The reason for this can be attributed to the power of cinematography, which distracts the audience, making them fixated on the mouth-watering close ups of vibrant dishes and panoramic takes of the picturesque French countryside, so that it halts any form of further thinking or inquiry. Many critics praise the film for its digital effects. Richard Corliss from the Time praises the movie for “visuals that sing ecstasy in any language,” whilst another critic Sheri Linden from the Hollywood Post is able to detect how the film has an “essential blandness, which resolves conflict quickly.” Both of these elements make the perfect recipe for a movie that lulls our brains to sleep so that we take what we see without questioning and leave the movie theater with no sort of advancement in our thinking and perceptions. This drowsy mindset makes it incredibly hard to decipher how or why films, such as The Hundred-Foot Journey, present an unequal and unjust representation of Eastern cultures. We must remember that in visual text, nothing is accidental; images are the result of how a director wants them to be perceived. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, in their essay “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” published in the 1940’s, explored how the culture industry distracts the masses from the wrongs of the

ruling order (in this case, the domineering culture of the West). Applying their theory, we can observe how in Hallström’s film, a sort of casual, yet prominent orientalism, appeals to a mass audience – for they accept it; with no awareness and no objection. Their essay still remains relevant today as they point out the way in which movies continue to control their audiences: “those who are so absorbed by the world of the movie, by its images, gestures and words, are unable to supply what makes it a world” (Horkheimer and Adorno 34). When we watch this movie, do we not find ourselves so absorbed into the realm of the film, so consumed by the aesthetic montages that flash in front of us, that the only logical thing to do is to let ourselves be taken away by the film? Thus, we naturally give in to the narrative that the movie wants us to believe in: we are confident that what makes this film a rightful world, is the fact that the West keeps winning, keeps saving other cultures presented as inferior, and rightfully maintains its status as a glorious leader. We do not question the narrative, because we are so used to the Western world being presented as the triumphant culture which one should aspire to follow. This explains Said’s reasoning for how the West can successfully maintain power; this can be taken a step further, by appreciating this through the medium of film where Horkheimer and Adorno emphasize that through intense immersion, we subconsciously submit to the social hierarchy. In the context of the film, we submit to the West’s superiority, and the East’s submissiveness to whatever standards the West demands. This is because Western standards, as depicted by the obsession in the French Michelin-star system, are regarded as elite, and as an audience we are all for it. Why? Because we do not know any other perspective: as long as the film industry continues to elevate the West, we will not know what it means, nor appreciate the value of celebrating the East for its own unique systems and traditions – which although might be different to the West, are just as valid and exceptional.

Adopting Horkheimer and Adorno theory, we learn how it is the very visuals of a film, which distract us from the ruling order that creeps beneath the aesthetics. This helps us understand how our indoctrination seeps in: it is through pretty images where our critical mind is silenced. There is a particular scene in the film, in which Hassan, with the help of Madame Mallory, prepares the famous omelet which Mallory uses to judge the worthiness of an aspiring

chef to work in her elite kitchen (The Hundred-Foot Journey, 1:05:26-1:08:10).

This scene is incredibly rich in cinematic devices – the ones that precisely have us frozen in time, as we find ourselves completely fixated by beautiful and carefully constructed aesthetics. Robert Scholes in his essay “video texts” would describe this as the very “moments of surrender” which occur through the “complex dynamic of power and pleasure” afforded by video texts (1).

Scholes rightfully identifies how visual fascination is used as an instrument of both power and pleasure, which drives “cultural reinforcement” through the process “in which video texts confirm viewers in their ideological positions”(1). In other words, visual aesthetics are successful in maintaining their viewers complacent to ideologies enforced by both the society and the narratives of the films, which they consume. The focus of complacency and surrender are two main goals that are achieved in this scene by offering a simple solution to a complex cultural problem. It is clear that in this scene, the director simply wants us to believe that all is happy and well, because Mallory has taken Hassan under her wing, and is therefore offering him an opportunity to work in her kitchen – which absolutely takes away from the narrative of how the West sees itself as superior and rational, and everyone else as inferior. The scene progresses with a soft, melodic, touching piece of classical musical, that deceivingly brings the audience into a state of tranquility and resolution, which prevents the audience from asking vital questions such as why is the East, once again, bending under the will of the West, abandoning its own culture to follow the westernized path? It is absolutely symbolic that in this scene, Hassan is unable to use his own hands as they are bandaged by the wounds of the French xenophobic fire-attack that occurred in his home; thus, Madame Mallory becomes Hassan’s hands. She is his only way of control, as he is hopeless to act on his own – not only in her kitchen, but in the Western world to which he has migrated and which will not budge to his traditional Indian ways. The audience is further reeled into the scene, through the several close-up shots that are shown through the cooking process. We see eggs being broken in a slow, almost sensory manner; whisks turn in a hypnotic, soothing way, as spices sprinkle and dazzle over the screen, ever so gently, like fairy dust on food, reinforced through the effects of slow-motion, which capture our attention and fascination for even longer. Such effects,

as discussed in Robert Scholes’ essay, awaken us to how we find it incredibly hard to resist to the immense pleasure of the video text – which results in the acceptance of the ideology that is hidden within the story: the West knows best, and it is by following the merciful hands of Western culture and figures, the East can secure social stature and success – even if it comes at the cost of subsiding one’s own culture. Hassan eventually does this by the end of the film, by abandoning his father’s Indian restaurant, and establishing himself as a successful pioneer within the French and Western kitchen, complying with Western standards, at the price of abandoning his own.

Through the film’s rich cinematography, conventional plot, and surprisingly oppressive discourse of western superiority, it is evident that even in seemingly innocent films which seem to depict wonderful themes of cultural unity, such as in The Hundred-Foot Journey, Western power still prevails. This is especially true as such movies are presented through an orientalist gaze; and by accepting such narratives, we indirectly condone the oppression of Eastern culture by allowing the West to be the voice of Eastern culture and experience. Thus, we are deceived to believe that what we see is the reality of the East – when really, it is what the West chooses to believe and present about the East based on its own beliefs and standards. Several critics dismiss the film as simply a foodie movie; I agree, though it is completely overseen that the platter which we are being served is one flavored entirely with orientalist discourse, which leaves a bitter taste. This proves that the Eastern voice in American cinema is never truly present, nor authentic. Although cultural analysts like Said might provide us with tools to identify traces of Orientalism in a film, he does not provide the tools to combat it. To come to such a realization, we must learn to look past the veils of aesthetics and pleasing cinematography, and to ask more critical questions. This also requires the use of other theoretical frameworks, such as cultural appropriation, to better counteract Orientalism in modern film. In order to achieve this, we must all be taught, and aspire, to be critical analysts. It is only when we become mindful and aware of the narrative structure of texts, when we immerse ourselves in vast cultural knowledge, that we may awaken to how media, especially American cinema, shapes, conditions, and controls our experiences of life and perceptions of other cultures – which most of the time are far from the truth.

THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY

WORKS CITED

Corliss, Richard. “REVIEW: Does the Hundred-Foot Journey Deserve One Michelin Star or Two?” Time, 7 Aug. 2014, time.com/3087735/hundredfoot-journey-movie-review/.

HarperCollinsPublishersIndia. “The Hundred-Foot Journey.” HarperCollins Publishers India, harpercollins.co.in/product/the-hundred-foot-journey/. Accessed 22 Mar. 2022.

Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception. 2002, monoskop.org/images/9/99/Adorno_Theodor_ Horkheimer_Max_1947_2002_The_Culture_Industry_Enlightenment_as_ Mass_Deception.pdf.

The Hundred-Foot Journey. Directed by Lasse Hallström, music composed by A.R.Rahman, performed by Helen Mirren, Om Puri, Manish Dayal, Charlotte Le Bon. Produced by Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Juliet Blake, 2014.

Lee, Ashley, and Ashley Lee. “‘Hundred-Foot Journey’: What the Critics Are Saying.” The Hollywood Reporter, 8 Aug. 2014, www.hollywoodreporter.com/ news/general-news/hundred-foot-journey-review-what-723901/.

Morgenstern, Joe. “‘The Hundred-Foot Journey’: Street of Foodie Dreams.” Wall Street Journal, 7 Aug. 2014, www.wsj.com/articles/film-review-thehundred-foot-journey-1407436785.

The Movie Times. “Steven Spielberg & Oprah Winfrey: THE HUNDREDFOOT JOURNEY.” Www.youtube.com, 24 July 2014, www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Yk7n0LBNPcc.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. 25th Anniversary Edition. New York: Vintage Books, 2004.

Santhanam, Laura. “Out of 30,000 Hollywood Film Characters, Here’s How Many Weren’t White.” PBS NewsHour, 22 Sept. 2015, www.pbs.org/ newshour/nation/30000-hollywood-film-characters-heres-many-werentwhite.

Scholes, Robert. “On Reading a Video Text | Center for Media Literacy | Empowerment through Education | CML MediaLit Kit TM |.” Www.medialit. org, www.medialit.org/reading-room/reading-video-text.

The Violence of Love: How Religious Communities Harm Their Own

VANESSA MEDINA VÁZQUEZ

AY 2021-2022

The Priest stands right at the entrance of the Chapel as the people pour out. He shakes hands, kisses cheeks, blesses the newborns, ruffles the hair of the little ones, and asks after the sick mother, the son in college, the distant cousin. Mass has ended, but the people stay: they get together in small circles and plan for the future, catch up, boast about their kids while the kids run around in the nearby grass. Tomorrow, the kids will go to school, and the class will pray at lunch time. Many will see each other in Sunday school as well. In Catholic-majority countries like Mexico, you will often find these kinds of communities, where Catholicism and the community itself cannot be separated. Many researchers have studied the prejudice communities like these hold toward outsiders. All over the world, religious groups target different ethnic, religious, or racial groups and their intersections—the “other.” Yet this foreign and dangerous “other” does not always reside outside of the group. Some of the same kids who get their hair ruffled by the Priest have just heard him condemn homosexuality and transgenderism, have seen their beloved community vigorously agree, and have received the message that something foreign and dangerous lives within them—that they are the other. In this essay, I apply Johan Galtung’s structural violence to the queerphobia that accompanies Catholicism as practiced in Mexico; I borrow from Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality to unravel the conflict of identities queer members face in these religious communities; and I engage with Judith Herman’s psychology of trauma to reveal the insidious nature of this dynamic and the effect it has on queer children. Through this, I arrive to what I call “in-group religious violence” to refer to the harm religious communities perpetuate against their own members, which is often presented as love. My focus, informed by personal experience and the testimonies of several anonymous informants, is centered around queer people growing up in

Catholic Latin American communities. However, in-group religious violence is likely to resonate far beyond this scope.

In religious communities like those in Mexico, queer members are targeted both by identifiable perpetrators and by more insidious kinds of harm. Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung distinguishes between personal and structural violence (170–71). Individuals in these communities often perpetuate personal violence when they perceive certain members as visibly queer. Personal violence can consist of bullying, alienation, verbal abuse and, in its most extreme instances, brutal physical violence such as corrective rape. In all of these cases, one can easily identify the perpetrator who intentionally targets the victim. Queer children in these communities are often aware of these consequences and thus hide, repress, or deny their queerness. “If I outright came out and asked people to refer to me as male,” a teenager from one of these communities tells me, “I could unleash their long-concealed hatred and possibly be hate-crimed or expelled from school.” Yet hiding their identity does not spare queer members from violence. Galtung refers to structural violence as that in which the search for specific perpetrators is fruitless, for “violence is built into the structure” (171). In these Catholic communities, homophobia and transphobia are perpetuated even when there is no direct actor personally and purposefully targeting the queer members. From expectations of heterosexual marriage and pregnancy to sermons generally preaching damnation upon queerness “as the Bible tells us,” queer children are made to participate in Catholic rites where a forceful cis-heteronormative rhetoric of gender, identity, and love is stressed as a divine mandate in order to even partake in the community. Mexican Catholic communities hold the belief that homosexuality and transgenderism are sins that will be punished by God in the afterlife. This doctrine spills into everyday practice, so that even when the community is trying to “protect” their children from their queerness, they perpetuate harm. Per Galtung, “structural violence is silent, it does not show” (173). It has no malicious agent, meaning that both those who act in its interest and those harmed by it may fail to identify it as violence. The community cannot separate queerphobia from Catholicism and cannot separate Catholicism from itself. And thus, queer members grow up in a perpetual state of fear and repression, in a system that

deprives them of the same freedom, safety, and belonging that their peers experience. In-group religious violence, then, although manifesting itself as personal at times, is a structural problem.

In Mexican Catholic communities, this structural problem is complicated further by the overlapping identities of queer members. Civil rights advocate and scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw introduces the concept of intersectionality to discuss the specific combined struggles of Black women as female members of their Black communities and Black members of feminist movements.

Crenshaw details how Black communities in the United States silence the experiences of Black women in relation to the patriarchy within the group to smother internal conflict (1254). In a similar manner, Catholic Latin American communities are quick to shut down any issue that may cause division.

Therefore, Crenshaw’s lens of intersectionality is also useful to talk about queer Latin Americans and, particularly, queer Latines. Latin American culture, like many non-Western cultures, celebrates collectivism, values unity, and prioritizes family. As such, queer children growing up in countries like Mexico highly value their community and their relationship to it. I vividly remember one conversation in the car with my mother when I was a teenager. She told me that she would have no problem with me being gay, but that I should “prioritize [my] relationship with [my] dad and the family” as they “only wanted what was best” for me. Since queerness is perceived as “other,” and members of the community cannot possibly be “other,” they are explicitly or implicitly made to suppress this part of their identity. “I felt like, if I accepted my queerness, I couldn’t be part of my religious community anymore,” an ex-member of one such community tells me. Coming out is seen as a betrayal of the harmony, trust, and strong bonds that exist within the community, both by the group itself and often by the queer members within it. And so the intersecting identities of queer and Latin American conflict.

This conflict is further aggravated when the intersectionality is politicized to the extent we see in religious communities in diasporas, such as Catholic Latines in the United States. When the community itself not only holds great power over the lives of its members but is also oppressed by a larger, ethnically different society, such as majority-white, largely Protestant America, the

sense of identity as a member of the diasporic community grows. The religious community is no longer socio-politically dominant, and so the unity of its members is all the more important in the fight against racism and xenophobia. Crenshaw argues that “people of color often must weigh their interests in avoiding issues that might reinforce distorted public perceptions against the need to acknowledge and address intracommunity problems” (1256). In this exact manner, Latine communities already fighting white perceptions of themselves as “inferior,” “violent,” and “backward” cannot afford to have the experiences of queer members in the spotlight. Crenshaw uses what she calls “political intersectionality” to highlight the ways anti-racist movements leave out feminist issues and feminist movements avoid issues of racism, in both cases isolating Black women (1251). We can also apply the concept of political intersectionality to the way that Latine movements against racism center cisgender heterosexual Latine narratives, while movements for queer rights in the United States center white queer narratives, leaving queer Latines and their struggles out of both discussions. In-group religious violence is complicated even further when we consider that Western white-majority countries have in recent history been the most open to discussions and study of queer identities. Because of this, queer members of non-Western religious communities often have to rely on vocabulary and insights from Western countries to refer to their own relationship to queerness. In both diasporic and non-diasporic communities, the use of this Western vocabulary is seen as “siding with the oppressor” and a “colonization of language.” Religious communities thus see queer narratives as a threat to their unity and ethnoreligious identity. They position the victim as perpetrator, even as they fight for the group and to keep queer members within the fold.

What I call “the narrative of love” helps us distinguish the violence I discuss here from overall queerphobia. In Trauma and Recovery, American psychologist Judith Herman asserts that only “when the truth [of trauma] is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery” (1). This recovery, by itself, tends to be incredibly difficult. In-group religious violence presents an added layer of difficulty in that the violence which causes the trauma is explicitly presented as an act of love. Contrary to other forms of religious violence under the guise of “salvation,” such as missionary work or slavery, in-group religious

violence is committed toward people known personally to members of the religious community, people whom the community members consider as their own and, to varying degrees, genuinely love and care about. Consequently, queer children growing up in these environments can find it extremely hard to identify the communities that cause their trauma as uncaring—because they are not. Their communities do love them, and because they love them, and because of the ideology they hold which is embedded in the very structure of the group, the communities harm the queer children. A teenager relates to me the pain of the narrative of love in his religious community, specifically the pain he felt when his mother immersed herself in transphobic pseudoscientific literature after he confided in her about his gender identity. He recalls, “It’s disheartening to see the person you trust the most try to convince you that feelings you felt for so long are invalid and something you will eventually regret.” Identity is rejected; trauma is denied. Recovery is brought to a halt. The narrative of love that is found in in-group religious violence complicates Herman’s process of recovery and distinguishes this violence when directed toward queer members within the religious community from the violence of queerphobia at large.

Yet as difficult as the narrative of love makes it, recovery is possible. Herman affirms that “the fundamental stages of recovery are establishing safety, reconstructing the trauma story, and restoring the connection between survivors and their community” (3). In-group religious violence presents a challenge to this process: restoring the connection with the community cannot help victims heal when that very community is the perpetrator of harm. Instead, to establish safety is to leave the community. My discussion has mostly centered queer minors, the reason being not only that violence causes its greatest impact in childhood but that, once they have the means to, queer members of these communities increasingly tend to leave. Of the teenagers I talked to, none consider themselves religious anymore, and all of them have either left their community or have plans to do so in the near future. “I am in the end of my freshman year at an art college,” one declares, “and I have hardly [ever] been happier.” When made to choose, many teenagers choose their queerness over the religious community that harms them, the first step toward recovery as outlined by Herman, even as their circumstances may

make the third step of Herman’s recovery process impossible. However, not everyone can afford to depart. For some, their religious-cultural identity takes priority over the queer one, or they simply do not have the means to move. From my hometown, I know of a member who has been hiding his relationship with another man for more than a decade because he is afraid of losing his community. In those cases, in-group religious violence is perpetuated. Through the lenses of Galtung, Crenshaw, and Herman, we come to see in-group religious violence as a distinct phenomenon, a nuanced, structural violence within religious communities that is dissimilar to that perpetuated toward outsiders. While I have focused on queer members of Catholic Latin American, and specifically Mexican, communities, ingroup religious violence applies to a number of groups: queer members of communities that practice many religions all around the world, as well as other members from religious communities with an intersecting identity that is seen as “deviant,” such as mentally ill or neurodivergent individuals. In-group religious violence is, put simply, violence perpetrated by religious groups upon their own members, a violence that is born out of love yet is incredibly harmful toward “outsider” members of the communities. With the identification of this problem, a challenge arises. “Outsider” members can get better—but can their religious communities do better?

WORKS CITED

Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review, vol. 43, no. 6, July 1991, pp. 1241–99.

Galtung, Johan. “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research.” Journal of Peace Research, vol. 6, no. 3, 1969, pp. 167–91.

Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery. Basic Books, 1992.

This photograph captures a poignant moment in my hometown, Mhow, in central India—a cantonment town. While strolling in a vegetable market, amid chaos, I noticed an old man in a corner with a ‘bidi’ in hand: a cigarette with cut tobacco, rolled with a leaf. Seeking consent, I asked to click a picture; he eagerly agreed. Following a conversation, our connection transcended age and circumstance. This image reminds me of human connection and the importance of acknowledging stories behind faces. It testifies to extending kindness to those navigating twilight years alone.

“Smoke and Solitude” by Aadil Zakarya

Essay 3

The 858 Archive: Remembering, Forgetting and the Quest for Social Justice

AMAL SURMAWALA

AY 2020-2021

Videos of protests, police brutality, and testimonials of torture are three examples of what can be found in the citizen-collated “858: An Archive of Resistance.” The digital archive, created by the Egyptian activist collective Mosireen (meaning “we insist’’ or “we are determined” in Arabic), documents the events of the 2011 Egyptian revolution through a series of unedited videos. Each piece is categorized by date, location, and topic. In recent years, the Egyptian state has undertaken a systematic ‘forgetting’ of the 2011 Revolution, in which thousands of Egyptians took to the streets to protest against and successfully unseat then-dictator Hosni Mubarak. The forgetting continued into 2013 when the army staged a military takeover of the country after protests erupted against the new president and Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi (Gunning and Baron 2; Barsalou 139). Amongst these attempts at forgetting is the state narrative that the Egyptian military acted as ‘saviors’ of the people by removing the ‘terrorists’ in the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, a narrative that has led to increased political polarization amongst the public (Halawa). The 858 Archive is a response to this attempt at forgetting, one that actively resists the regime’s attempt to take control of the historical narrative.

Beyond being a site for political resistance, however, “858: An Archive of Resistance’’ demonstrates a tension between memory and history, remembering and forgetting, that demands the Egyptian regime adhere to cries for social justice and promote national solidarity. This essay aims to expand on the work done by scholars on the 858 Archive’s role as a site of resistance by exploring how the archive acts as an effective lieu de memoire that prevents state forgetting of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. It also attempts to illustrate some of the motives behind the creation of the archive and state forgetting. Finally, it will highlight how the Mosireen Collective takes an inclusive approach to the

archiving of citizen memory, suggesting that the key to social justice lies in the promotion of solidarity between those involved in the 2011 Revolution.

PART I: 858 AS A ‘MEMORY SITE’ AND RESISTING STATE FORGETTING

According to French historian Pierre Nora, a lieu de memoire is “material, symbolic, and functional” and demonstrates a “will to remember” (6). “858: An Archive of Resistance” fulfills the conditions for being both material and symbolic. It is material in that it occupies digital space. Its symbolic value arises from, as the archive’s name suggests, its resistance against the Egyptian state’s attempt to control the historical narrative and erase or rewrite memories of the 2011 Revolution. In his article “The Revolution Will be Uploaded: Vernacular Video and the Arab Spring,” British filmmaker and writer Peter Snowden highlights the importance of “the unauthorized and transgressive presence of the body of films in a public place, recording and participating in a collective event, against the will of the state” (411). He argues that the practice of selfdocumentation and video recording that arose during the Arab Spring is an act of continued resistance against the state. The archive contains 858-plus hours of raw footage of events taken by Mosireen citizen activists from the ground level. The existence of the archive is thus an act of political resistance. If curating the archive is seen as an ongoing act of political resistance, it can be argued that the 2011 Revolution is ongoing, in the sense that citizens continue to act against the will of the state online. As a lieu de memoire, therefore, the 858 Archive symbolizes the ongoing struggle of Egyptian citizens against the Egyptian state .

The functional and symbolic aspects of “858: An Archive of Resistance’’ are closely intertwined. While the archive symbolizes an ongoing struggle between Egyptian citizens and the regime, its purpose is to prevent state forgetting of the 2011 Revolution. During Mubarak’s reign, police powers were extended, the number of prisoners rose, and detention and torture became a mainstay (Gunning and Baron 121). One of the goals of the revolution was to put an end to human rights abuses committed by the police and state institutions and to establish “a democratic and institutional political system” (El-Agati 11). The Egyptian state, meanwhile, has attempted to revise national history by removing “fulsome accounts of the Mubarak regime” from textbooks (Barsalou 139).

Several of the archive’s topic names and keywords point to the extent of police

abuses and military violence before, during, and after the 2011 Revolution. These include the ‘Police Attack’ and ‘Police Murder’ categories, with videos featuring both police attacks on protestors, as well as marches and funerals held for martyrs killed as a result of police brutality. The archive’s documentation of police brutality prevents those perusing the archive from forgetting the human rights abuses committed by the Mubarak regime. It is also a reminder that ending these violations became a central goal of the 2011 Revolution. In doing so, it not only symbolizes the ongoing struggle between the Egyptian state and its citizens but also prevents state forgetting by keeping these memories alive in a digital space.

PART II: MOTIVES FOR REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING

In his work on social memory, British historian Peter Burke notes that “it may be worth investigating the social organization of forgetting, the rules of exclusion, suppression, repression, and the question of who wants whom to forget what, and why” (qtd in Olick 191). The aim of teaching national history, Burke states, is “essentially to justify or ‘legitimate’ the existence of the nation-state” (qtd in Olick 191). Burke’s theory gives us key insight into the motives behind state forgetting. The Mubarak regime’s modification of official history textbooks is motivated by a desire to justify the existence of Egypt as a nation-state under the rule of the current government and President Al-Sisi (the former director of military intelligence who led the military takeover in 2013). There is a longstanding tradition of Egyptian presidents with backgrounds in the armed forces, including Mubarak himself (Gunning and Baron 107). Removing complete accounts of the Mubarak regime from textbooks legitimizes Al-Sisi’s rule by downplaying the strength of military power in Egypt despite protests against such power in the 2011 Revolution. This revision of history allows the current Egyptian regime to maintain political control.

The creation of the 858 Archive is a way for the Mosireen Collective to resist this rewriting of history, while also asserting its own influence on the collective memory. Research specialist Joan M. Schwartz and Canadian archivist Terry Cook argue in their article “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory” that archives “wield power over the shape and direction of historical scholarship, collective memory and national identity” (2). At

some point, archives serve as our entire way of understanding history. The construction of an archive to challenge the official state narrative interrupts this wielding of power. Thus, rather than simply being a collection of videos taken of the events of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, the 858 Archive acts as a tool through which Egyptian citizens can record their opposition to the official state narrative. One video in the archive, for example, shows a gathering of protestors outside a mosque in 2012, shouting “down with military rule” “Revolution First Anniversary”. This was after the Muslim Brotherhood’s ascendance, demonstrating that the deconstruction of military power remained a primary goal of those continuing to protest following the 2011 Revolution. Notably, after the MBs took control of the government, a binary narrative of pro- and anti-Islamists began to spread, with the army stepping in to side against the MB government as “protectors of the constitution and the country” (Halawa). The video demonstrates that there was still a desire to end military control of the state, which is in stark opposition to the military’s presentation of themselves as Egypt’s protectors and saviors. The archive’s content provides an alternative route to historical scholarship – one that reveals that the 2013 military takeover was not desired by the entirety of the Egyptian public.

Beyond using the archive to assert power over the collective memory and historical scholarship, “858: An Archive of Resistance ‘’ also uses the memories stored in the archive to demand social justice. Many videos document citizens demanding that the killers of martyrs in the Egyptian Revolution be held accountable. One such video involves protestors taking to the streets with pictures of martyrs like Mohamed Mohsen, shouting “down with the military” and calling for the execution of Egyptian Field Marshal Tawtany in 2012 (Revolution First Anniversary). Mohamed Mohsen was a young activist who was killed by the armed forces while participating in a 2011 march that called for trials of the murderers of revolutionists to be held, as well as for power to be handed from the reigning Military Council to civilians (“Mohamed Mohsen”).

The Egyptian government has refused to recognize Mohsen on the list of martyrs of the 2011 Revolution (“Mohamed Mohsen”). In collecting and storing videos of protests that call for the remembrance of martyrs, the 858 Archive curates memories that could lead to the criticism of the Egyptian regime. These memories of people calling for justice for Egypt’s martyrs prevent state attempts

to “forget” some of the victims of army attacks on the 2011 Revolution, including Mohsen.

PART III: INCLUSIVE REMEMBERING, NATIONAL SOLIDARITY, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

In her article “Contested Meanings in the Egyptian Revolution,” academic Sarah Anne Rennick argues that while the Egyptian revolution was “carried out under a banner notable for its distinct lack of divisive sectarian or political ideology,” the goals of the revolution differed between social groups (81). The archive takes an inclusive approach to remembering the Egyptian Revolution in 2011 by incorporating a multitude of perspectives. For example, one video shows people taking to the streets to protest sexual violence against women by the army (“Cabinet Clashes, Women’s March”). The march, as the annotation alongside the video tells us, was an organized response to the incident with the “blue bra girl,” a female protestor whose clothes were stripped off by the army during a protest (“Cabinet Clashes, Women’s March”). Interestingly, in the notes on the side of the video, the anonymous contributor admits that “in 2011 when editing a video about this march i [sic] worked to actually edit out the chants that I didn’t agree with politically. . . However this important political moment also marks the biggest women march organized around the Egyptian revolution” (“Cabinet Clashes, Women’s March”). More specifically, the contributor argues that the rhetoric of Egyptian men “protecting” women from being dishonored by the Egyptian military reinforces a patriarchal narrative (“Cabinet Clashes, Women’s March”). The video and its accompanying annotation reflect a difference in perspective (and political agenda) about the particulars of women’s rights and the rhetoric used to fight against sexual violence, but are nevertheless united in their aim to condemn the use of sexual violence against female protestors. This example highlights the Mosireen Collective’s commitment to curating videos of slogans and marches which they may not have agreed with personally, to create a digital space that includes a range of political views and outlooks in the collective memory of the 2011 Revolution and its aftermath.

The inclusive approach to remembering taken by the Mosireen Collective can be seen from a technical perspective as well. In her article “The Art of Archiving an Uprising,” visual culture scholar Maj B. Orskov notes the variety

of perspectives and angles from which the footage in the archive are shot, some from a “street level, depicting civilians talking, praying, discussing, running from or resisting the police” and many showing “protest actions from above the ground . . . offering a wider but also more distant perspective on the action taking place” (12). The technical aspects of the videos, some being shot from elevated locations and others on a ground level, give the viewer the experience of both protesting and spectating, immersing them in the variety of action that was taken during the revolution and creating a kind of solidarity between the viewer and the protestors. In addition, the anonymity of the contributors to the archive (which is done partly to protect contributors from persecution by the Egyptian government) “strengthen[s] the impression that the archive is telling a collective story . . . [it] belong[s] to everyone and no one” (Orskov 12). Admittedly, the hours of uncut footage in the archive can be used in different ways to support various narratives, but this vulnerability to distortion is something that the archive seems to embrace (Orskov 13). This distortion demonstrates both the wide array of memories included in the archive and a commitment to preserving a multitude of perspectives regardless of how the images are used. In preserving this plethora of memories, the archive insists that its viewers acknowledge the entire collective of protestors that were involved in the 2011 Revolution.

The 858 Archive, through the collective experience it creates by taking an inclusive approach to remembering the 2011 Revolution, calls for a kind of national unity and solidarity that has been undermined and even hijacked by the Egyptian state narrative. Al-Sisi himself has announced that he has a “relentless will” to counter terrorism in Egypt, with a heavy emphasis on the “terrorist activities” of the Muslim Brotherhood (Kandil). Such proclamations coming from the president himself reinforce the idea of the military being a pillar of law and order, as well as political polarization between pro- and antiIslamist supporters in Egypt. The 858 Archive, on the other hand, takes pains to include videos of events about which interpretations and feelings differ, creating an image of solidarity amongst protestors despite conflicting beliefs. The use of camera footage from a variety of angles, as well as the anonymity of the contributors to the archive, similarly immerse the viewer in a kind of collective experience. French historian Ernst Renan argues that there are two

key components of a nation that hold it together: “a rich legacy of memories . . . present consent, the desire to live together” (10). Footage of violence and death, such as a thirty-second clip of a man lying lifeless outside a police station (“18 Days, Man Killed Outside Imbaba Police Station”), reinforce the idea that protestors in the 2011 Revolution have experienced collective suffering at the hands of the Egyptian regime. The archive creates “a great solidarity constituted by the feeling of sacrifices and made and those that one is still disposed to make” that Renan argues makes a nation (10). By providing viewers with an experience that reinforces solidarity between protestors with different political views, the archive furthers the notion of present consent. It does so by demonstrating the sacrifices made by the Egyptian people during the 2011 Revolution (in the form of martyrs like Mohamed Mohsen, and citizens like the man killed outside the police station) to achieve their goals, as well as the continued collective need for social justice. Where the Egyptian regime continues along a path of division, “858: An Archive of Resistance” promotes the idea of national solidarity and cooperation between protestors on the path to social justice.

The 2011 Revolution in Egypt rocked the nation to its core by bringing together groups from all walks of life to protest the rule of Hosni Mubarak. In the years since, the Egyptian state’s attempt at ‘forgetting’ the Revolution and adjusting history to suit its own aims has sparked resistance from groups like the Mosireen Collective, who actively attempt to preserve the memories of citizens online. The archive demonstrates the ongoing tension between memory and official history, remembering and forgetting, that has serious consequences for the nation. By choosing to forget the goals of the 2011 Revolution in its entirety, the Egyptian state isolates large sections of the Egyptian population, and shapes the collective memory in a way that largely ignores the needs and wants expressed in the 2011 Revolution. In choosing to remember, and remember inclusively, the 858 Archive resists this, insisting instead on the need for a collective memory of the 2011 Revolution. The archive lays the groundwork for heightened national solidarity, in hopes of holding those responsible for human rights abuses accountable and achieving social justice.

Barsalou, Judy. “Post-Mubarak Egypt: History, Collective Memory and Memorialization.” Middle East Policy, vol. 19, no. 2, 2012, pp. 134-147. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4967.2012.00540.x.

“Cabinet Clashes, Women’s March, Blue Bra Girl (2011-12-20) at Downtown, Cairo.” 858: An Archive of Resistance. Mosireen Collective. https://858.ma/BSW/player/00:10:19.802. Accessed 2 December 2020.

“18 Days, Man Killed Outside Imbaba Police Station (2011-01-31) at Imbaba, Cairo.” 858: An Archive of Resistance. Mosireen Collective. https://858.ma/AZF/player/00:00:25.817. Accessed 16 December 2020.

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Halawa, Hafsa. “Egypt After the 2011 Revolution: Divisions in Postprotest Pathways.” Carnegie Europe, 2019, carnegieeurope.eu/2019/10/24/egyptafter-2011-revolution-divisions-in-postprotest-pathways-pub-80141.

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Representations, no. 26, 1989, pp. 7–24. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/ stable/2928520. Accessed 2 Dec. 2020.

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“Revolution First Anniversary” (2012-01-27). 858: An Archive of Resistance. Mosireen Collective. https://858.ma/GC/player. Accessed 16 December 2020.

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Honor Crimes in Pakistan: The Role of Forgiveness in Exonerating Offenders

AZKA NOOR

AY 2021-2022

The murder of Qandeel Baloch in 2016 is still remembered by almost every Pakistani citizen. It sent shock waves throughout the entire country; impactful enough to get international attention; impactful enough to warrant an amendment in the law for honor killings, such that the perpetrators could no longer be exonerated as easily as they once were. And yet, her murderer was recently released in February 2022, after serving only three years of his life sentence. This is often the outcome of most cases of honor killings in Pakistan; a crime so prevalent and normalized in the country it is not even considered a crime by some. Throughout Pakistan’s history, many honor crimes have gone unpunished. Initially, this apparent injustice could be explained in part by the lack of proper laws in place. But when the issue still persists to this day, despite so many efforts to better the honor crime laws, simply creating laws to hold the murderers accountable is clearly not enough. Other reasons that run much deeper help explain why honor crimes are so persistent. In this essay, I explore underlying reasons that give impunity to those who commit honor crimes. By first analyzing what exactly the word honor means in the context of Pakistani society, I use that understanding to explain the rationale of defending their family’s honor that is so often used by the perpetrators of honor crimes. Having established how the society perceives these crimes, I argue that the religious and cultural traditions of a community end up impacting the implementation of laws. Furthermore, there are loopholes within the legal system that still allow for honor killers to be forgiven by the victims’ families. All these legal and societal factors come together to form conceptions of honor and forgiveness that underlie the actions of everyone involved in honor crime cases. Thus by analyzing the societal traditions along with the legal response and loopholes, the interaction between the two will show how the societal structure of Pakistan allows for honor crimes to still run rampant.

HONOR CRIMES IN PAKISTAN

Qandeel Baloch was a social media star who was criticized and even slutshamed since her rise to fame. For a society like Pakistan’s, where a majority of the population still upholds strict and conservative values, most of the population considered her posts to be too risqué, even when the extent of her “indecency” was pictures wearing bold makeup or laying on the bed in what was considered a suggestive manner (Contrera). Her brother Waseem Azeem, taking it upon himself to defend the honor of Qandeel and her family, consequently drugged and strangled her to death in July 2016. In his statement, as reported by the Washington Post reporter Jessica Contrera, Waseem stated that he “was determined to either kill [himself] or kill her”. Before 2016, anyone accused of murder could be pardoned if the family of the victim forgave them. However, after the murder of Qandeel Baloch, the 2016 Criminal Law Amendment Act was passed by the Parliament of Pakistan which no longer allowed for acquittal of the accused in cases of honor crimes. It mandated life imprisonment for honor killers, and a minimum sentence of 12 years, even if they were pardoned by the victim’s families. As a result, Waseem was finally sentenced for life in 2019. However, a shocking development in February 2022 changed the fate of this case when Waseem was released after only serving three years of his sentence. The reasons given were the lack of strong evidence, since Waseem later claimed he was coerced into making his initial statement, and the fact that their parents had forgiven him (Bhanbhro). The court ruled that the evidence was insufficient to establish that the murder was done in the name of honor. As a result, the case became one of general homicide where the killer could still be acquitted if pardoned by the victim’s family, who happened to be his own parents. This concerning outcome brings to question the reliability and credibility of the justice system when loopholes like this still exist despite the case being clear cut in the eyes of the public. Furthermore, it brings to light the conflict of interest in cases of honor crimes, since most are committed by members within the family. This makes it more likely for them to be forgiven by the victim’s family, who are their own family after all. When this loophole in the clause of forgiveness is paired with the lax response of the court in deciding whether a crime is one of honor or not, the result is honor killers going free. And that is the fate of Pakistan today, where the concept of honor is perceived in a way that leads to many such atrocities going unpunished.

Honor as a word may have a textbook definition that relates to respect, prestige, and integrity, but the concept of honor is much more complicated than that. In the context of honor killings, honor is greatly linked to the chastity of women. This concept of honor in itself may or may not be problematic, but it becomes exceedingly dangerous when the woman’s honor is also linked with the honor of the entire family unit. Purna Sen’s “Schema of Honor and Dishonor Dynamics” explores this idea of the honor of a family unit becoming synonymous with the honor of the women within that unit. She describes how women’s behaviors that uphold honor range from chastity and no extramarital relationships to them meeting their obligations to husbands, fathers, parents, parents-in-law, and so on. And if they do not meet these expectations, certain actions by other members of the collective are supposed to reclaim the honor that is lost, such as modifying the transgressor’s behavior or killing the carrier of the dishonor (Sen 47). As such, if a woman engages in an activity that threatens her perceived purity and virtue, the society considers it an attack on the entire family’s reputation and honor. This idea of the woman being responsible for a family’s honor is what gives the men of the family license to commit these honor crimes in defense of their family’s honor. The patriarchal ideology of men being the protectors and preservers of their families inevitably leads to them being the defenders of the family’s honor as well. “Honor is thus intrinsically linked to norms of behavior for both sexes and is predicated upon patriarchal notions of ownership and control of women’s bodies” (Sen 48). Thus, the justification given for honor crimes by the perpetrators often has to do with them attempting to gain back the honor they believe has been taken from them. Sen thus defines honor crimes as “actions that remove from a collectivity the stain of dishonor, both gendered and locally defined, through the use of emotional, social, or physical coercion over a person whose actual or imputed actions have brought that dishonor” (50). Using this definition, I aim to explain and analyze the “locally defined” actions in the specific context of Pakistan.

The way honor is defined and understood within the society leads to the formation of biases that dictate how the society as a whole will perceive cases of honor, and these biases influence actors of law as well. The underlying

cultural and religious contexts of a society are the most significant drivers of the type of biases that form. In Pakistan, religion and its interpretations play a significant role in creating the culture that is prevalent within the society. Most interpretations of what honor is within Pakistan come from the concept of purity within Islam. As a result, perpetrators of honor crimes often turn to religion to defend their actions. In an interview with Nighat Hafeez, a lawyer who worked with Shirkat Gah, a local NGO for women’s rights, she points out how, in most of the domestic violence cases she dealt with, the abuser justified his actions under the guise of adherence to religion. One specific case she shared was of a woman whose husband would abuse her both physically and verbally. When she tried to seek help from the NGO, the abuse worsened and he accused her of going against her religion by disobeying him. He gave the same reasoning for his exceedingly violent abuse when she sought to divorce him, which she successfully obtained in the end with the NGO’s help. In a similar vein, victims of honor killings often meet their horrific fate solely for going against the wishes of their parents or husbands, wanting a divorce or refusing a match arranged per their families’ expectations and instead pursuing a marriage of their own choice. Religion is then used as an excuse for the violent reactions of the family members, with the rationale being that violating the honor of Islam is a far greater transgression than any other crime. Furthermore, this use of religion does not only manifest within the private family unit but also in the judicial system. In the wider context of the Muslim world, deviations from the religion began to appear soon after the Prophet’s death. For instance, the practice of confining women within harems to protect them and their honor found its way into Islam at least three or four generations after the Prophet’s death (Pope 122). This supports Dr. Tahira Khan’s claim of how the degeneration of the status of women within the Muslim society did not happen overnight but “was the result of gradual historical processes and initiatives consciously taken by the male elite” (27). This patriarchal interpretation of religion results from the fact that the Muslim world developed a culture where all major religious sources were almost exclusively interpreted by men (Pope 128).

The ramifications of misinterpreting Islam were clearly felt throughout the Muslim world, Pakistan included. The most obvious impact in Pakistan

was the Hudood Ordinance introduced by dictator Zia-ul-Haq in 1979. It consisted of a set of laws reportedly developed according to the Shariah i.e., Islamic law. However, the reality of these laws was far from any Shariah practices. For instance, “the protections that the Koran offers to women falsely accused of adultery or improper behavior were not just removed in Pakistan, but [were] distorted and turned against them” (Pope 127).

According to Islam, when accusing a woman of adultery, it is important to provide at least four witnesses to prove it, a burden of evidence that should be considerably hard to meet. As such, the burden was not placed on the woman but those accusing her of being dishonorable. Under the Hudood Ordinance this was not only erased but twisted in a way so that women who were raped had to provide four witnesses instead (Pope 127).

Introducing laws like this under the guise of religion eventually influenced the population and furthered the sexist and patriarchal notions already prevalent in the society, allowing misogynistic views to be upheld. Another example of the different interpretations of religion is how honor crimes have often been justified by the court under the guise of “self-defense”. In Islamic Law, a violent reaction can be justified as self-defense if the sanctity of the religion is attacked. Thus, by linking women’s chastity and honorable behavior to religion, any behavior going against those expectations of honor is automatically considered unreligious and, therefore, interpreted as an attack against religion that justifies retaliation. Pakistani journalist and human rights activist Sohail Warraich notes how “the court’s interpretation of self-defense ‘with an Islamic touch’ gave men of the family authority over women, enabling perpetrators of honor killings to receive only nominal sentences” (88). Understanding how religion is used within the legal system uncovers some of the reasons why its response is often so questionable when prosecuting perpetrators of honor crimes to justice.

The legal and societal system of Pakistan allows men to have authority over women, and this consequently gives men the leeway to make decisions for the women and these decisions are then considered to be irrefutable. As such, when a woman’s honor is questioned by a man within her family, society stands with the man whose authority is rarely questioned and places the burden entirely on her to prove her innocence. Alessandra Gribaldo explores

this concept of the burden of evidence in the context of domestic violence. She argues how in cases with a lack of other evidence such as physical markers of abuse, the only evidence is the victim’s testimony. It thus becomes the only way to establish proof, “so much so that it may represent the only basis on which the sentence is pronounced, provided the testimony has achieved a suitable degree of validity” (285). As such, it becomes the victim’s responsibility to establish the credibility of their experience. In the case of honor killings, the victim is unable to speak for themself, and thus the burden then shifts onto their family to provide the proof. Placing this responsibility on the family becomes problematic given that most honor killings are committed by members of the family. And so, more often than not, the leading evidence in honor crimes is often the perpetrator’s testimony, and establishing proof from testimony becomes near impossible. This allows for the court to rule in favor of the perpetrators due to insufficient evidence, as seen in the Qandeel Baloch case.

The lack of irrefutable evidence, paired with the personal biases of the judges and jury, which are often dictated by the cultural and religious traditions of the society, thus allow for honor crimes to go unpunished. For cases without concrete evidence, the main task becomes “persuading the judge that the fact in question is true” (Gribaldo 284). In instances where the judge and the jury themselves hold biased and conservative views that influence their decisions, the chance of any actual justice being carried out is highly improbable. Warraich details instances where “judges have made entirely speculative assumptions about the conduct of the murdered woman and the possible circumstances of the incident, granting reduced sentences and failing to provide justice for the victims of violence” (95). He recounts a specific case where a man and woman were killed for committing adultery. Seminal fluid found in a vaginal swab of the woman was part of the evidence submitted in the trial. This evidence was taken at face value by the court, as the mere presence of semen was enough for them to believe the accused without actually analyzing the sample to establish a match with the victims (95). While Warraich’s essay was published before the Amendment Act of 2016, the responses of the court in the cases he details help put into perspective the historically lax response of both the justice system and the state in the

case of honor crime; “It is illustrative of Pakistan’s social, legal, and political context that these progressive provisions of the new law have routinely been overlooked or ignored by the state” (Warraich 87). Furthermore, it helps understand how, despite the existence of several provisions other than the 2016 Amendment Act, the bias of the judges impacts the final sentence, which in turn explains why murderers like Waseem Azeem are granted freedom to this day.

When the law is able to twist cases of honor crimes to label them as something entirely different, they allow for the murderer to be forgiven as seen in the Qandeel Baloch case. However, the court is only able to lay the groundwork for this acquittal. The end result depends on the victim’s family and whether they choose to forgive the accused or not. In the case of honor crimes, where most often the victim’s family is the perpetrator’s family, it is often inevitable that the honor killer will end up walking free. However, the law does not allow the accused to be acquitted unless the decision to forgive is unanimous among the victim’s family members. This brings to question the role of each member of the family and whether they all are actually willing to forgive or whether they are coerced into it, either by other members of the family or even the wider community. This influential role of the community in allowing for perpetrators to walk free can be understood through Nomi Dave’s analysis of the response to a Guinean rapper being accused of sexual assault. While there was public outcry against his actions, there was an equally significant pushback against the accusations. Several of his fans spoke in support of the rapper, asking for him to be forgiven. This expectation of forgiveness placed the victim under pressure from the public to yield, which is often seen in cases of honor crimes. In Pakistan, this pressure to forgive is put on family by the family, in case any member within the family unit stands with the victim. Therefore, considering the already complicated issue of having the victim’s family also be the perpetrator’s family, the family members are much more likely to yield to the pressures of family and wider society to rule in favor of the perpetrator. This complication brings to question the role of the mothers and sisters of the victims and whether they are even allowed to voice their opinion at all. With the men taking it upon themselves to define the honor of the women of the family,

it is very likely that they also dictate the response to the crime, perhaps by even deeming it dishonorable to stand against it. This strong male influence within society perpetuates the defense and forgiveness of male perpetrators, especially when the victims are female, and implicitly further imposes roles of patriarchal authority.

When analyzing the flawed response of the justice system to honor crimes, it is pertinent to understand the societal expectation of forgiveness that is already granted to the perpetrator, irrespective of evidence. The cultural and religious traditions within Pakistan clearly play a substantial role in allowing honor crimes to persist, but they play an equally, if not more, impactful role in allowing them to go unpunished. When the victim’s family is charged with the task of forgiving the perpetrator, often also a member within their family, these traditions exert a powerful influence on the matter. The patriarchal system of Pakistani society does not allow for the other women in the family to voice their opinions, and the corrupted understanding of religion lead the men in the family to decide in favor of the perpetrator. Simply having laws in place is therefore not enough for there to be serious accountability for the perpetrators of honor crimes. It is imperative to eradicate the deep-rooted misogynistic structures within the society that allow for honor killers to be forgiven. The implementation of amnesty laws is highly influenced by the underlying interpretations of honor and honor crimes in cultural context. As this carries on unchallenged, we will continue to see perpetrators of honor killings not being truly held accountable despite the existence of laws to punish such crimes.

WORKS CITED

Bhanbhro, Sadiq. “Pakistan again faces questions over ‘honour’ killings as brother acquitted of social media star’s murder.” The Conversation, 3 Mar. 2022. https://theconversation.com/pakistan-again-faces-questions-overhonour-killings-as-brother-acquitted-of-social-media-stars-murder-177174

Contrera, Jessica. “Before she was murdered by her brother in an apparent ‘honor killing,’ who was Qandeel Baloch?” The Washington Post, 18 Jul.

2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/ wp/2016/07/18/before-she-was-murdered-by-her-brother-in-anapparent-honor-killing-who-was-qandeel-baloch/

Dave, Nomi. “Sexual Violence and the Politics of Forgiveness in Guinea: Musical Interventions.” The Art of Emergency: Aesthetics and Aid in African Crises. Edited by Chérie Rivers Ndaliko and Samuel Mark Anderson. Oxford University Press, 2020, pp. 145-172.

Gribaldo, Alessandra. “The Burden of Intimate Partner Violence: Evidence, Experience, and Persuasion.” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, vol. 42, no. 2, 2019, pp. 283–297, https://doi.org10.1111/plar.12309.

Khan, Tahira S. Beyond Honour: A Historical Materialist Explanation of Honour Related Violence. Oxford University Press, 2006.

Pope, Nicole. “Religion, Tradition, and Patriarchy.” Honor Killings in the TwentyFirst Century. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. 119-131.

Sen, Purna. “‘Crimes of Honour’, value and meaning.” “Honour”: Crimes, Paradigms, and Violence Against Women. Edited by Lyn Welchman and Sara Hossain. Zed Books, 2013, pp. 42-63.

Warraich, Sohail. “‘Honour Killings’ and the Law in Pakistan.” “Honour”: Crimes, Paradigms, and Violence Against Women. Edited by Lyn Welchman and Sara Hossain. Zed Books, 2013, pp. 78-110.

Ideologically Far-Right, Spectacles Online

BAOYUAN ZHANG

AY 2020-2021

Since the early 2010s, deafening roars of “TRAU DICH DEUTSCHLAND” (“Believe in Yourself Germany”), “AU NOM DU PEUPLE” (“In the Name of the People”) or “HACER ESPAÑA GRANDE OTRA VEZ” (“Make Spain Great Again”) have become prominent and prevalent in Germany, France and Spain. Far-right advocacies in the form of such slogans have expanded to an unprecedented scale in recent years, and the political arena in Western Europe, traditionally dominated by centre-left and centreright establishment parties, has been witnessing a surge in popularity of far-right political ideologies. Many citizens in Western European states resorted to supporting conservative, nationalist and Eurosceptical political parties and their leaders in retaliation for the EU’s response to the sovereign debt crisis and refugee crisis (Cincu 21). These parties and politicians heavily relied on the Internet as their campaign platform. Through social media posts and online advertising videos, far-right parties disseminate their ideologies and agendas to conservative-leaning citizens. In this process, these parties create minor far-right political spectacles, which eventually converge to become a grand spectacle of populism, debasing mainstream politics and undermining the dominance of liberal discourse. This essay will analyse the formation of these minor spectacles and discuss the effects of their convergence, including inciting various sentiments among the people and stimulating the growth of right-wing populism. Such analysis and discussion will reveal that the grand populist spectacle helped right-wing discourse occupy a critical seat in mainstream politics in Western Europe.

Rationale

Affect theory, public sphere theory and spectacle theory can model the

dominant mechanism for far-right political ideologies to create minor spectacles. Ahmed argues in her work that the notion of “imagined others” induces fear and hate as affects circulating among certain subjects and accumulating “affective value” (43, 45, 52, 57). With “a sense of totality,” these citizens become a public as defined by Warner (49). Unconsciously and anonymously, members of this public lend power to ideas they are supporting (Warner 56–58). According to Guy Debord’s arguments, all these affective ideas thus multiply and evolve in this public, transforming “into a representation” that is dominant, superficial and detached (pars. 1, 26, 60).

Far-right social media posts and advertising videos echo with the pride of people in their national identity and history. They also advocate for fear and hate against Muslim immigrants and the EU. These sentiments eventually become affects to help these viewers to identify “imagined others”. These affects circulate among viewers affirmative to far-right ideologies to form a support base for far-right parties which transforms into a public and selfauthorising source of power for far-right politicians. Far-right ideologies thus become spectacles appealing to nationalist and conservative supporters in this process. A possible definition of “spectacles” can thus be extracted from Debord’s argument; they are a superficial rendering of political ideas – images simplified yet overarching.

As the geographical scope of the analysis of this essay is in Western Europe, I have selected three prominent far-right populist political parties from three major countries of this region and studied the social media posts and advertising videos of their respective leaders. These leaders include Alice Weidel and Alexander Gauland who were federal candidates in 2017 of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD in short, “Alternative for Germany” in German), Marine Le Pen who was a French presidential candidate in 2017 and is the current president of Rassemblement National (RN in short, “National Rally” in French, previously Front National, “National Front”), and Santiago Abascal, president of VOX España (“Voice” in Latin and “Spain” in Spanish). Although all these politicians use social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube as the principle means to reach the public and inspire conservative sentiments, the first three platforms mainly contain static textual and visual posts, while YouTube extensively

stores and publicises videos which are artistic and semiotic compilations of dynamic audio, textual and visual messages. These videos are continuous flows of visual, audio and textual messages, richer in content and expressive techniques than static and discrete segments of political speech or ideologies posted to the other platforms. Due to these differences, the following sections will analyse static posts and dynamic videos separately. After identifying spectacles in these posts and videos and applying the spectacle creation model to them, I will conclude this essay with their convergence as populism and the various effects of such prevalence of far-right populism in Western Europe.

Social Media Posts

Online social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, were central to the campaign strategy of AfD during Germany’s federal election in 2017. This strategy directed AfD-affiliated social media accounts to distinguish themselves from “conventional communication channels”, which they claimed to be “fraudulent” and “not trustworthy”. This also allowed them to engage with their followers actively through sharing and replying, and to propagate and advocate information disseminated by AfD through manipulating “social media bots” (Serrano et al. 215–16). Antiimmigration, anti-Islam, Euroscepticism and traditional conservatism are the core ideologies reflected in AfD’s social media advocacies. This core is evident in some of Weidel’s twitter posts in 2017 and 2018, as she lambasted the veil as “an absolutely sexist symbol”, quoted publicist Henryk M. Broder’s work to warn against “islamisierung” (“Islamisation”), and advocated for preservation of “diversity” of European nation-states. As the co-leader of the most active political party on social media in Germany (Serrano et al. 218–20), Weidel took this opportunity to spread fear and hatred among conservatively affirmative German citizens and appeal to them for their support. Such fear and hatred, which are affects generated when these readers interact with the posts, circulate to attack Muslim immigrants and the EU establishment and become spectacles with the support from far-right affirmative German voters.

A similar spectacle creation process appears in the social media posts of Le Pen. As a far-right presidential candidate, Le Pen challenged the immigration

policy of the EU and displayed an explicit prejudice against Muslim immigrants. According to Bosnian-Herzegovinian political scientists Maksić and Ahmić, Le Pen’s Twitter posts established an “Islamophobic discourse” that France was threatened by Islamic presence when she was running for president (134, 138). She openly declared the danger of “Islamic terrorism,” “imams,” “fundamentalists,” “radical Islam” and “mosques,” generalizing Muslims as a threat to the notion of “France”; she also advocated to protect “secularism,” “public order,” “Eastern Christians,” “our children” and the “city of France,” further delimiting the boundaries between “French People” and others (Maxsić and Ahmić 138–39). These posts thus gave birth to religiously conservative spectacles similar to what Weidel has created, because through Le Pen’s discourse, a similarly far-right public distinguishes itself from Muslims and propels the circulation of hate among its members. The conservative steadfastness of Le Pen, even though such a steadfast image is a superficial political showcase, serves as the backbone of spectacular speech and hate. Religiously conservative followers of her Twitter account can thus recognise her political standing and align with the ideologies of RN, leading to the formation of a conservative public and the occurrence of conservative spectacles in France.

Let us now shift our focus to Abascal’s social media posts, which construct spectacles to bridge the gap between a politician’s image and a normal person’s life from a private perspective. As Instagram specialises in sharing photographs, Abascal exploited this platform as both a podium to give political proclamations and a gallery to showcase leisure, family and sports elements in his “private” time. His Instagram posts not only explicitly engage with contemporary political discourse by promoting the far-right ideas of VOX, but the portrayal of his personal life also builds an image of an upright citizen, implicitly gaining trust in the personal qualities of Abascal, which voters can extend to trust in his politics. Both visual and textual communications from Abascal to his Instagram followers promote the image of himself and his party, signifying his active participation and engagement in political and social life. At the same time, some of his Instagram posts convey his family values and his love for sports, trying his best to portray himself as physically fit, strong and a family man. Abascal can thus become a role model

of manhood from traditional conservative perspectives. As an extension of the party’s image, he crafts “strategic authenticity” as a far-right politician and a popular leader to be followed by the masses (Sampietro and SanchézCastillo 179–180). Besides uniting far-right affirmative citizens through direct ideological advocacy, Abascal goes beyond merely posting slogans and content of ideological propaganda and expands the use of social media to create spectacles of personality which in the end serve political agendas by increasing his authenticity, reliability, fame and support base.

Advertising Videos

Because of its large user base, YouTube has become a major political advertising platform where various parties and politicians promote their ideologies and campaigns by uploading politically oriented videos to reach a wide range of audiences. In the USA, political videos have played critical roles in generating support, raising funds and attacking political opponents since 2008, and many of these videos receive millions of views (Ricke 50–51).

Across the Atlantic, AfD, RN and VOX in Western Europe were no exception to the reliance on YouTube. They all publish videos centring on their respective leaders and their conservative and nationalist political views.

The official campaign advertisement of Weidel and Gauland for the 2017 German federal election openly calls on their supporters to vote for AfD. This video starts with a three-word slogan popping up word by word in centre frame – “Wir rocken Deutschland” (“We rock Germany”), implying the intention of AfD to overthrow the existing political establishment in Germany. After the slogan appears, Weidel and Gauland start their conversation by criticising the incapability of this establishment from a far-right perspective. As Weidel describes her decision to join AfD as a “brave” action to represent “worried citizens, patriots and engaged youth,” Gauland also reveals his intention to leave centre-right Christlich Demokratische Union (Christian Democratic Union) due to his dissatisfaction towards its immigration policy. According to Gauland’s discourse, this policy unlawfully permits the entry of immigrants, forbids criticism from German people, and would result in a situation where “Germany will disappear from the map.” A photograph showing three women wearing hijabs then appears. The colour scheme of it is black and

white, rendering a dismal and pessimistic atmosphere and calling for fear and hate against the growing presence of Islam. Under such discourse he sells a nationalist anxiety and appeals to conservative “patriots” who want to protect Germany from Islamic influence. Weidel and Gauland then proceed to attack the existence of European currency and the indiscreet financial policy of the CDU and Chancellor Merkel. They claim that Merkel’s “hidden” “European agenda” will cause the divergence of German tax revenue to foreign beneficiaries and endanger the German economy. As such, Weidel and Gauland portray themselves and AfD as defenders of the “interests of Germany,” and votes from supporters will “take back control” of the country. With the campaign motto – “TRAU DICH DEUTSCHLAND” in voice-over and printed on the background, this video strongly conveys conservative and nationalist sentiments. In another video published one day before the actual election, propulsive and rhythmic musical beats accompany a few lines appearing in the scenes, such as “do you feel it?”, “now everyone is feeling it” and “deep longing for your own country”, to display a series of monuments, buildings, and historical moments of Germany. These features and scenes in this video portray a rock-and-roll aesthetic and appeal to patriots and nationalists which the support base of AfD favours. Therefore, in advertising videos of AfD, Eurosceptic and Islamophobic ideologies interweave with nationalist appeals to unite far-right German voters and create patriotic spectacles.

The artistic, rhythmic and powerful effect of repetition is evident in one of the advertising videos for Le Pen’s campaign in the 2017 France presidential elections. This video, titled “J’ai besoin de Marine” (“I need Marine”), showcases the pursuits and needs of many French citizens of different ages and professions. A fisherman wants removal of EU quotas and standards, a retired lady wants a currency with no decreasing purchasing power, a young commuter wants safety in “certain streets, certain neighbourhoods and/or in public transport”, a rugby player wants an “advanc[ing] and united France”, and many other French people want to change existing political realities. In this video, they discover that Le Pen is their most desirable politician as her Eurosceptic, Francocentric, conservative and nationalist political views cater to their needs. As a result, each of the twelve of them proclaims “J’ai

besoin de Marine” at the end of their speech, repetitively conveying their wholehearted support for Le Pen. Twelve stories, twelve needs and twelve sentiments have a scope across the society and appeal to a large public of potential RN supporters, consolidating into twelve spectacles which support Le Pen’s conservative ideologies. These twelve spectacles thus enable Le Pen to request for empowerment by the people at the end of this video: “to put France back in order, I need you.”

To further validate herself as the true representative of French people, the official presidential campaign video of Le Pen showcases her multiple identities which allow her to understand their needs. As a French citizen, she always feels a strong sense of “attachment” to the country and “its history.” As a woman, she can feel the loss of liberty due to “Islamic fundamentalism.” As a mother, she “worr[ies] each day” about the world left for future generations. And, as a lawyer, she respects “civil liberties” which are legal rights granted by the French constitution and laws. By reducing or eliminating the possibility of “impunity of criminals,” she also seeks to defend the rights of victims hurt by these criminals and fix what she thinks are injustices. As she shares her multiple identities through voice-over, the video shows her album of photos corresponding to these identities, further authorising her position as the representative of the French people.

She takes attacks to France and the sufferings of French people as her own sufferings, criticises vehemently the centre and the left who “misled the country and lost the people,” and eventually announces that she wants to bring “order” back to France “en votre nom, AU NOM DU PEUPLE ” (“in your name, In the Name of the People”). As a result, this video creates fear and hate towards the current French political establishment, and pride and a sense of responsibility for the French nation. Such sentiments circulate among the viewers and resonate with the conservative and nationalist viewers as their intended audience. They construct far-right spectacles from Le Pen, of Le Pen, and beyond Le Pen.

Abascal exercises the technique of repetition to its maximum in his political videos. In one video titled “¡FACHAS!” which films a speech he gave to “more than 11,000 listeners” during a VOX reunion, he mentions the word “fachas”, a Spanish colloquial term for “fascists”, eleven times. In Abascal’s speech,

major left-wing Spanish politicians, such as “Pablo Iglesias,” “Pedro Sánchez” and “Quitora,” use “fachas” as a derogatory term to attack VOX’s supporters’ for defending their “motherland,” “properties,” “historical memories” and “freedom of expression, conscience and cathedral.” However, Abascal justifies these attacks as “medals put on our chest,” glorifying his far-right discourse and inducing a feeling of pride among his listeners. Repetition of “fachas” enrages them, but also encourages them to continue following VOX’s ideals and unite as its solid support base. Spectacular features of Abascal are further displayed in “Spot VOX | Un nuevo comienzo” (“A New Start”), where he starts all his sentences with “if,” continuously bringing up questions of how to overcome challenges and difficulties in politics to his viewers. As he walks, runs, hikes and observes various natural sceneries in Spain in this video, he incessantly uses these conditional clauses to build up viewers’ expectations. In the last scene, as he stands on a tall cliff near the shore, he declares that his viewers can “Make Spain Great Again” by overcoming these challenges. Far-right conforming viewers can easily identify its resemblance with conservative spectacle created by Trump in America, thus becoming more attracted to and engaged in Abascal’s appealing discourse.

Convergence of Spectacles and Effects of Populism

Far-right spectacles shown in social media posts and advertising videos are not necessarily appealing to the centrist majority because of their political extremism. However, as they are similar in the conservative and nationalist notions created and can interact internationally, they miraculously fuse together as a grand spectacle in the name of “populism.” Though this term has various definitions, it generally describes a commotion of political ideas, activities, advocacies, standings, tactics, representations and discourses (Mazzarella 47) that often sets up the conflicts between “the people” and the politically established “elite” (Moffitt 3). It originates from the attempt of “the people,” which is its etymological origin, to recapture “democracy” from “the elite.” The convergence of spectacles created by far-right politicians, who are borrowing power from the populist wave, further feeds the growth of populism, creating a grand spectacle.

One major effect of this populist spectacle is that it aggressively challenges

mainstream politics. The rapid growth of votes for far-right parties in various elections is one of the manifestations of such aggressiveness. In France, RN demonstrated its strong support base during the 2017 French presidential election and the 2019 EU parliamentary election. In Germany, AfD emerged as a record-breaking far-right party ever since the end of Nazi rule, sweeping substantial votes in the eastern part of Germany, in various federal and regional elections in 2017 and 2019. In Spain, VOX had a similar achievement as AfD in April 2019 as it became the first far-right party gaining enough support to enter Spanish parliament; in the re-election seven months later, it further expanded its advantages and seized the position as the third largest party in the parliament. Therefore, far-right populism exists as the congregation of conservative ideologies in social media posts and transcends beyond national boundaries with its massive and continuously increasing support base.

However, a contradicting effect of the spectacle of far-right populism is that it causes the political alienation of its affirmative supporters. As a “reflection of” and “protest against” “real suffering,” devotees of this spectacle indulge in dissatisfaction and populist revolt and recognise populism as the “divine” in a similar manner as recognising a religion (Borja 46). As both participants and spectators of online protests against mainstream politics, the political and social lives of these supporters are now in conflict, causing their own alienation from political discourse by spectating the unleashing power of this grand spectacle (Borja 47, 49). Thus, far-right populism now manifests its power as a grand spectacle in Western Europe, prophesying a fantasised and conservative lifestyle, dominating people as their “ideology par excellence” (Debord, pars. 6, 215), and alienating them politically. Further engagement in illusionary nationalist and conservative ideologies may only result in a loss of the grasp on everyday life, marginalising and radicalising far-right politicians and their supporters.

Conclusion

Far-right political parties and politicians in major Western European countries use social media platforms to convey conservative and nationalist ideologies. Depictions of these ideologies shown in posts and videos transform

into various far-right spectacles, which later converge as a grand spectacle of populism. Besides challenging mainstream politics and alienating its supporters politically, it is also important to ask a few more questions and look further into right-wing populism, because this phenomenon is drastically changing the political landscape in Western Europe and can potentially affect the lives of millions of people. Emerging right-wing ideologies and movements pose a great challenge for far-left and centrist parties, thus it is important to predict how they will respond to their political enemies. Such responses may create more mutual attacks between the right and the left, causing a greater split and extremism in the political arena. Other than these left-right considerations, geopolitical and cultural specificities may affect political propaganda on social media platforms and guide them to various political orientations. Some further extensions of current discoveries can begin with a consideration of these problems.

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nicht zwischen Islam und Islamismus, sondern tun das, „wozu sie sich im Dienst der‚ einzig wahren Religion‘ verpflichtet fühlen“.« #AfD Lesenswert: http://idea.de/gesellschaft/detail/gehoert-der-islam-zu-deutschlandgehoert-auch-die-islamisierung-dazu-103743.html.” Twitter, 7 Jan. 2018, 5:09 a.m., twitter.com/Alice_Weidel/status/949749905765126145.

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A Comparison Study Between Colonial Education and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India

BRUNA ARAUJO PEREIRA

AY 2021-2022

We must at present do our best to form (...) a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.

Thomas B. Macaulay, Minute to Lord William Bentinck

Education has an undeniable power of passing knowledge from one generation to another, carrying with it the values, skills, narratives, and opinions that society deems important. This is especially relevant in the context of colonization. Colonized people are often trapped in a relationship of dependency: the colonizer dictates what knowledge is worth learning, and the colonized adopt it at the expense of their own original education. 1 It is clear through Thomas Macaulay’s quote from 1835 that the British were fully aware of such impact when they began to formulate an educational project in India. Macaulay was a British politician responsible for the creation of Westernized schools across the South Asian colony. 2 The curriculum included English as one of the languages of instruction, as well as lessons on Christianity and English literature. 3 This was usually different from the educational model that the colonized adopted before. 4 At the core of this pedagogy was the use of textbooks as the source of all information, in such a way that the teacher was limited to making students memorize information, not necessarily reflecting upon it, according to the requirement of official exams – a completely different

1 Navneet Sharma, and Showkat A. Mir, “Decolonizing Education: Re-schooling in India,” Sinéctica, no. 52 (2019), https://doi.org/10.31391/s2007-7033(2019)0052-007.

2 David M. Knowles, “Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron Macaulay,” Encyclopedia Britannica. https:// www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Babington-Macaulay-Baron-Macaulay.

3 Krishna Kumar, Politics of Education in Colonial India (New Delhi: Routledge, 2014), 55.

4 Kumar, Politics of Education in Colonial India, 47.

model in comparison to the local education system. 5 The goal was not only to teach the science practiced in England and Europe at that time, but also to ultimately erase the supposedly “primitive” and “superstitious” local knowledge. 6

If successful, colonial education could change the way the natives saw themselves and their position, therefore legitimizing imperialist domination and undermining any potential resistance. 7 Despite the interest that the British Empire had in fostering this education, Indians did not interact with this process simply as passive victims of imposition. Both students and teachers found ways to resist the imposition of British knowledge, especially because of the disconnection between what was taught and what Indians practiced. 8

Besides resisting, Indians also adopted oppressive ideologies employed by the British in their own fashion. Although I do not attempt to make a simplistic claim that contemporary issues were a direct consequence of colonial rule, it is clear that there is some similarity between the colonial mentality and current-day power struggles in India. Nowadays Hindu nationalism is an example of this parallel, as it employs coloniallike strategies to persecute minority groups. For the scope of this essay, nationalism means the formation of a great sense of identification within a group for the sake of protection against a perceived national threat. Hindu nationalism specifically considers religion as an essential part of being Indian, therefore excluding other groups from the nationality umbrella, and views Christians, Westerns and especially Muslims, as the “enemies” from which their nation requires protection. 9 India’s current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is part of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the main political representative of Hindu nationalism today, alongside the

5 Kumar, Politics of Education in Colonial India, 57-58.

6 Sanjay Seth, Julia Adams, and George Steinmetz, Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 1.

7 J. A Mangan, Benefits Bestowed? : Education and British Imperialism (Hoboken: Taylor & Francis, 2012), 4.

8 Kumar, Politics of Education in Colonial India, 40; 53.

9 Sylvie Guichard, The Construction of History and Nationalism in India: Textbooks, Controversies and Politics (London: Routledge, 2010), 14; 18.

A COMPARISON STUDY BETWEEN COLONIAL EDUCATION AND HINDU

far-right paramilitary organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). 10

The objective of this paper is to explore the tension between Hindu nationalism’s claims of being “anti-West,” and their simultaneous use of strategies employed by the British to dominate Indians through education. At the same time, the paper will analyze the uniqueness of Hindu nationalism, showing how a colonized society reshapes – and not merely absorbs – the oppressive mechanisms of the colonizer according to its own interests. This essay aims to demonstrate how, even though Hindu nationalists claim to distance themselves from Western imperialism, their values and tactics resemble the same ideas that supported colonial education in the past. The arguments will cover the universal appeal of both colonial schools and Hindu nationalism, as well as the marginalization of different groups – during colonialism and nowadays – based on a fabricated intellectual hierarchy. The essay will focus on Muslims because they represent the largest religious minority in India, although other groups are also antagonized by Hindu nationalism. 11

A primary similarity between colonial education and the ideal of Hindu nationalism is their universal appeal, which consequently excluded and marginalized certain groups. Until this day, “sites for the production of knowledge” use Western modes of thinking to study all parts of the world. In this interpretation, non-Western knowledge becomes an object of study, and European models are seen by scholars as the ultimate source of information. 12 This ideal could be observed in the colonial schools already. The point of providing textbooks with the intention of memorization was to show students the scientific “facts” that were, according to the British, superior to the knowledge they brought from their own local society. 13 There is a parallel between this phenomenon and the construction of

10 Samanth Subramanian, “How Hindu Supremacists are Tearing India Apart,” The Guardian, February 20, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/20/hindu-supremacists-nationalismtearing-india-apart-modi-bjp-rss-jnu-attacks.

11 Subramanian, “How Hindu Supremacists are Tearing India Apart,” https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2020/feb/20/hindu-supremacists-nationalism-tearing-india-apart-modi-bjp-rss-jnu-attacks.

12 Seth, Adams, and Steinmetz, Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India, 3.

13 Kumar, Politics of Education in Colonial India, 57.

Hindu nationalism. The movement, by definition, relies on a unique portrayal of the past and present of the nation, arbitrarily excluding or overlooking the importance of Muslims in the construction of this history, as nationalists do not consider them as a legitimate part of the nation. 14 Therefore, there is an underlying assumption of universality in Hindu nationalism that relates to how the British also considered their knowledge universal.

The attempts of colonialists and nationalists to become the dominant narrators extend to personal life. A legacy from colonial schools that resonates with Hindu nationalism is the attribution of a scientific character to aspects otherwise limited to the private realm. During colonial times, both English and Indian men agreed that girls required “special curricular provisions.” While boys received the standard education related to the sciences, girls also had to learn skills useful for their domestic life, such as “music, cooking, painting, needle work and fi rst aid.” 15 Eventually, upper class Indian men who supported English schools began to advertise educated women as better wives and mothers. This male elite believed that wives who grasped European knowledge were able to better understand and relate to their English-educated husbands. The capabilities to teach diverse subjects to their children, as well as maintain an organized and healthy home (according to European standards taught at school), were also characteristics that turned those women into good mothers. The household, which takes place in the privacy of a family, essentially became a “scientific affair” worthy of a space in the school curriculum. 16 In a similar manner, Hindu nationalism attempts to rationalize personal life, specifically in regard to religion. For many decades the movement has claimed how, since early times, Hinduism has merged mythology and science. For instance, in 2014, Prime Minister Modi claimed that the elephant head of the deity Ganesha proved that Hindus had already invented plastic surgery at the time of the myth. 17 The aim is to create

14 Guichard, The Construction of History and Nationalism in India: Textbooks, Controversies and Politics, 3.

15 Kumar, Politics of Education in Colonial India, 181.

16 Seth, Adams, and Steinmetz, Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India, 141.

17 Banu, Subramaniam, Holy Science: the Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism (Seattle: University of Washinton

an image of a modernized religion. Both the supporters of a gendered education in colonial times and Hindu nationalists merge science to their agenda in order to legitimize it. In the past, that was supposed to maintain the gender roles intact; now, the process fuels the idea that Hinduism is connected to an “objective” and well-established realm, the sciences, that is used to justify the religion’s superiority.

The use of science to differentiate Hinduism from other religions also relates to a broader attempt to create an education hierarchy, one that the British used during colonialism. Attending a Westernized school in colonial India was a way of social ascension for many students, since the ability to speak in English and the cultural assimilation (having values more closely related to the Europeans) were advantages in the job market. 18 People with access to those schools usually had more chances to land jobs in the government, and therefore influence their communities. More importantly for the colonizers, Westernized schools allowed the British to introduce European values into Indian administration and society. As a result of the privilege of attending colonial schools, an intellectual elite emerged, and attempted to distance itself from the masses. A great part of those masses were Muslims, who tended to avoid colonial schools due to the language requirement being English and Urdu. 19 Nowadays, Hindu nationalism merges tradition with modern day science to support the presumed importance of Hinduism in leading a true Indian nation to economic and technological progress. It creates a hierarchy where other religions or identities are inferior, since the presumed scientific utility of Hinduism is painted as an advantage.

This arbitrary disparity between Hindu nationalists and their antagonized group, Muslims, resembles what the British did in relation to the colonized Indians, but with a slight difference in the discourse. One of the widespread excuses for British colonization was that India was too “backward” in terms of economic, social, and moral development. Based Press, 2019), 6.

18 Guichard, The Construction of History and Nationalism in India: Textbooks, Controversies and Politics, 5.

19 Seth, Adams, and Steinmetz, Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India, 8.

on this assumption, the colony had no ability to govern itself, and needed more foreign intervention to progressively become suitable for the reality of an independent country. 20 Part of such intervention was clearly the use of education which, as discussed before, served the purpose of installing European values among the Indian population. 21 Similar to how the English argued that Indians would bring the worst for the country if independent, Hindu nationalism relies on blaming Muslims for “India’s misfortunes.” 22 This Islamophobic argument existed even during colonial times. For instance, in the discussions around female education, many Indian men claimed that “before Muslim invasions” women had enjoyed a better social position and were educated because of Hinduism. 23 There is, however, a distinction in the use of “blame” by British colonizers and Hindu nationalists, specifically on how the idea is presented. The settlers adopted the quality of a savior in their discourse: they were the ones responsible for solving underdevelopment in the colony. Nationalist rhetoric considers the Muslim population as the enemy that must be dominated, not because it must be saved, but because it represents a threat.

An additional correlation between the colonizers’ educational approach and the nationalists’ claims are the fears they both have around the potential of women to disturb the traditional gender inequality. The British were in favor of an education that allowed women to transfer European values to their husbands, therefore avoiding a “moral crisis” that would arise from a disparity between an English-educated man and an uneducated wife. 24 However, this desire was coupled with a fear that women would become too “mannish” or, in other words, they would claim equality in the public realm and job market, distancing themselves from the patriarchal domestic life. 25 This anxiety was experienced by Indian men

20 Seth, Adams, and Steinmetz, Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India, 131.

21 Thomas B. Macaulay to Lord William Bentinck. February 2, 1835. http://www.columbia.edu/itc/ mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt_minute_education_1835.html.

22 Guichard, The Construction of History and Nationalism in India: Textbooks, Controversies and Politics, 2.

23 Subramaniam, Holy Science: the Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism, 56.

24 Seth, Adams, and Steinmetz, Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India, 137.

25 Kumar, Politics of Education in Colonial India, 118.

A COMPARISON STUDY BETWEEN COLONIAL EDUCATION AND HINDU NATIONALISM IN MODERN INDIA

alike, but for other reasons. The subjugation of women to the family was an essential part of the construction of nationalism at that time: the woman, and more specifically her femininity, was seen as the “repository” of a pure Indian identity. 26 Similarly, Hindu nationalists today “insist that women’s strength is best served through their role in the family and the nation.” This time, the concern takes a new shape through the control of female bodies and reproduction. A clear example was the surrogacy bill passed in 2018, supported by the BJP. The new law only allows surrogacy f or Indian heterosexual couples that fulfill multiple requisites. The government excluded other demographic groups who they did not consider as representatives of “a true Hindu ethos.” 27 The overregulation of women’s socioeconomic freedom during colonial times, and of their reproduction rights nowadays, demonstrates how male dominance is at the core of both British colonization and Hindu nationalism.

A closer look at the characteristics and legacy of British colonial education in India allows for an analysis of complex relationships between colonizers and the formerly colonized. Far from simply emphasizing the impositions of English settlers, this comparison showcases how the instruments to oppress certain groups are similar between the colonizers and Hindu nationalists. This essay has focused on how the British subjugated Indians through education, and on how nationalists today claim power over Muslims and women. The examples indicate that the nationalism movement is not dissimilar from the West in terms of ideology: they both aim to be universal, use other groups as scapegoats for the sake of domination, and foster patriarchal ideals. Furthermore, the many differences between the two processes – colonization and Hindu nationalism –, as outlined in this essay, demonstrate that they are also mutually influenced.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

26 Seth, Adams, and Steinmetz, Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India, 136; 141.

27 Subramaniam, Holy Science: the Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism, 193.

Guichard, Sylvie. The Construction of History and Nationalism in India: Textbooks, Controversies, and Politics. London: Routledge, 2010.

Knowles, M. David. “Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron Macaulay.” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/ThomasBabington-Macaulay-Baron-Macaulay.

Kumar, Krishna. Politics of Education in Colonial India. New Delhi: Routledge, 2014.

Mangan, J. A. Benefits Bestowed? : Education and British Imperialism. Hoboken: Taylor & Francis, 2012.

Seth, Sanjay, Julia Adams, and George Steinmetz. Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.

Sharma, Navneet, and Showkat A. Mir. “Decolonizing Education: Re-schooling in India.” Sinéctica, no. 52 (2019). https://doi.org/10.31391/S20077033(2019)0052-007.

Subramaniam, Banu. Holy Science: the Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism. Seattle: University of Washinton Press, 2019.

Subramanian, Samanth. “How Hindu Supremacists are Tearing India Apart.” The Guardian, February 20, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2020/feb/20/hindu-supremacists-nationalism-tearing-india-apartmodi-bjp-rss-jnu-attacks.

Thomas B. Macaulay to Lord William Bentinck. February 2, 1835. http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/ macaulay/txt_minute_education_1835.html.

A COMPARISON STUDY BETWEEN COLONIAL EDUCATION AND HINDU NATIONALISM IN

The Participatory Culture of the Qarahunj People During the Velvet Revolution of Armenia

ELINA AGHABEKYAN

AY 2020-2021

Individuals in nations with poor institutions or governments have two main ways to fight against them. The first is through voting or protest, what economist Albert O. Hirschman calls “voice”. The second is to emigrate, the option that Hirschman names “exit” (4). Hence, people possess very limited resources to practice power even during the existence of a democratic regime. This paper will discuss Hirshmanian “voice” as a way of exercising power and as such, social movements are considered one of the most influential tools to do so. According to social scientist Sidney Tarrow, the basis of social movements is contentious collective action since it is the only resource that the nation can use against the better-equipped opponents (3). Throughout history, the eruption onto the streets of ordinary people demanding reform has become an inseparable part of political discourse and the nation-building process across many civilized societies. Movements, even if failed, tend to have a profound impact and trigger international changes, yet their organization and key spurs have been and still are debatable topics for social scientists and politicians. In order to succeed, political movements have to overcome a series of obstacles to collective action in terms of coordination, communication, organization, unanimous participation and resistance as important features of a successful uprising. Tarrow states that these struggles are hard to overcome; however, tight social networks, the ability to take advantage of political opportunities, common knowledge, and other incentives can constitute a formula pushing toward the triumphant outcome of a movement (Tarrow 1). Indeed, special conditions are needed for power in movement first to arise, and then, most importantly, not to evaporate soon after it reaches a peak. While these aspects as discussed by

Tarrow are usually crucial to the victorious outcome of a movement, there are other influential factors leading to victory that are not mentioned in his research. This paper explores other motives a successful uprising can have and challenges some of Tarrow’s assertions regarding movement organization, coordination, and participation using the case study of the 2018 Armenian Velvet Revolution.

In the past decade, one of the most remarkable non-violent uprisings in Eastern Europe that received much attention from international observers was the 2018 Velvet Revolution of Armenia. The civil disobedience showcased by Armenians eventually overcame unpromising circumstances to dislodge the corrupt regime. After completing two terms of presidency, Serzh Sargsyan converted the government from a semi-presidential system to a parliamentary republic and appointed himself as the new prime minister. The Velvet Revolution eventually led to Sargsyan’s resignation as prime minister and his successful replacement by the leader of the revolution Nikol Pashinyan after forty days of persistent protests (Broers 1). The geopolitical turbulence in the region, initiated by oil-rich Azerbaijan and powerful Turkey, and the dependence on Russian patronage ever since the destruction of the Soviet Union, as well as the corrupt government present for over thirty years, provoked the people of Armenia to demand political and socio economic reform in order to secure a better future for younger generations. Similar to the Egyptian Arab Spring, the sizable marches were centered around the main square of the capital city. However, at the same time, each marz (the administrative district of Armenia) independently undertook its own initiative in small towns to overthrow the government by creating a nationwide network with unified momentum. A tiny community that particularly attracted attention was situated in the south of Armenia called Qarahunj. The town, which before stood out only for producing the best homemade mulberry vodka by almost every household, gained praise for its unprecedented rate of participation during the revolution.

Identifying myself as Qarahunjetsi (a person who was born in Qarahunj) and taking into account the absence of discussion on an international

level about the importance of the Qarahunj people to the success of the revolution, I decided to explore the nature of their dedication to the movement. Tackling the question of what factors might have been responsible for the Qarahunj to overcome the struggles of collective action, the research argues that: 1) Even though the number or the heterogeneity of participants and past experiences of riots are considered important aspects influencing an individual’s decision to cooperate, they did not have a significant impact on the majority of Qarahunj people who showed exceptional activism and a unified purpose. 2) The existence of a reliable and courageous leader, the ruling government’s relatively minimal efforts to interfere and impede the further developments of protests, the ease of coordination due to the flow of information through social media, and freedom of expression all came to be decisive facets laying the basis of the individuals’ participatory resistance. 3) The traumatic collective memory obtained through tragic episodes of the nation’s perennial history and deep-rooted religious beliefs were partly responsible for their persistent will and unity during the Velvet Revolution.

The primary method used for the data collection was conducting an anonymous survey among the participants of the movement. Both for this process and during the Revolution, the crucial role of social media was and is undeniable. Social media was not only a space for online protests and debates on a number of platforms but also was an instrument that made sustained coordination and organizational practices possible. The Qarahunj community, like the other Armenian towns, had online networks through WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram, which served as a primary means for communication and coordination during the Velvet Revolution. With direct access to the majority of revolution partakers through these group chats, the accumulation of enough material through the survey did not require much time and effort. According to the local government website database, the total population of Qarahunj constitutes 1,354 people composed of 661 females and 693 males. Presumably, the elderly and children would not comprise a sizable portion of the participants because of age and limited abilities. Thus, most of the active participants would be in the age range of 16 to 50 which counts for about 754 people. Overall, I could reach out to 611

people who actively contributed to the victory of the movement and that sincerely responded to the inquiry.

A central resource for this research is Sidney Tarrow’s Power in Movement which takes a methodological approach to analyze intergroup relations, political opportunity structures, resource mobilization, movement emergence, and outcome. Tarrow carefully elaborates his theory based on scores of movements and several cycles of protest from 1789 to 1989 (Benford 228). Power in Movement encapsulates the views of the earliest theorists of social movements like Marx, Engles, Olson, and Lenin who took various approaches to tackle the question of what makes individuals engage in collective action. Tarrow’s theory attributes the problem of collective action to the structural development of the society rather than one of individual choice. Tarrow states that individuals get involved in movements because they consider themselves in terms of groups and see each other in solidarity which encourages dynamic engagement (Tarrow 12). This framework, at some level, explains the extensive momentum of the Velvet Revolution since, as mentioned above, every town and city acted as a group and each of them took their own responsibility to make a breakthrough in motion. During the uprising, the appearance of separate regions as groups, at some point, even generated competition between them to display extensive contribution which really became a key factor for the victory. Tarrow considers the problem of collective action to be organizational where interaction between the groups and strong leadership constitutes a big portion of victory (Tarrow 14). The Armenian Velvet Revolution does show how organized structure through modern techniques such as social media can lay the basis of stable resistance yet it cannot be enough to ensure triumph. He later argues that exploiting political opportunities created by the state, that is when the government displays or is no more able to hide its weaknesses, is one of the guarantees to overcome the obstacles of the uprising (Tarrow 1). Drawing parallels between Tarrow’s argument and the political situation in Armenia at the time, most historians will agree that the 2018 April was indeed a period to take advantage of. Armenia was lacking institutional durability and was vulnerable to internal collapse. The post-Soviet roots of institutions, the

external factors such as heavy dependence on authoritarian Russia, and at the same time tendency towards Western liberal standards contributed to the government’s fragile and unstable condition. Moreover, the 2016 April Four-Day War launched by Azerbaijan with the purpose of occupying Nagorno-Karabakh, was another influential incident showing the failure of the Armenian government to effectively handle the emergency situation (Broers 28). All of these frameworks suggested by Tarrow can explain some of the aspects that caused the happy ending of the Velvet Revolution of Armenia with various approaches; however, all of them underestimate the significance of individual choice in the collective action which we will stress below. Even though the impact of political opportunities, external factors, efficient organization, or acting as a group can substantially flex the direction of a movement, there can be other factors influencing an individual’s decision of whether or not to participate. Each individual is given a choice between being a part of the battle to achieve the collective good or to free-ride on the contribution of others. Consequently, there can be various motives or hindrances affecting the individual’s choice. Political economist Elior Ostrom sheds light on important facets that are frequently claimed to affect the likelihood of the citizen’s input to the protests (Ostrom 157). Ostrom’s research particularly stood out to me because Ostrom used the key aspects of a movement as statistical variables in order to draw precise conclusions. The first decisive facet discussed in the research is the number of participants. In The Logic of Collective Action (1965) social scientist Mancur Olson argues that as the size of the group increases, the likelihood that the individual will join increases as well because the more people are engaged, the less noticeable the individual’s input, thus, the individual feels safer to take part in the protest. In order to get an understanding of how that concept might have affected the dedication of the Qarahunj community towards the revolution, the participants were asked in the survey if the day by day growing number of participants encouraged them to join as well. Surprisingly, the majority responded that their decision was not dependent on the size of the crowd.

During the Velvet Revolution, did the day by day growing number of participants encourage you to have your own input as well?

Yes, as the number of participants increased, the likelihood of my contribution increased as well. No, my participation was not dependent on the number of protestors in any way.

The second variable, which is the heterogeneity of participants, has been a debatable factor: Olson (1965) and his fellow social theorists claimed that it can increase the probability of a group achieving public good while others, including Ostrom, viewed it negatively as being a serious deterrent to cooperation and a source of exacerbated conflict between group members (Ostrom 158). The heterogeneity of participants, in the Qarahunj case, can be described by the participation level of members from different social classes, genders, and age groups. Heterogeneity does not have a wide range of definitions for the Qarahunj because they lack diversity in terms of nationalities, race, or religion. Keeping that in mind, in their response the majority of the Qarahunj people indicated that they did not recognize heterogeneity as a significantly influential factor for their cooperation. As a result, neither the number nor the heterogeneity of participants played a decisive role for a considerable part of the Qarahunj people.

Another facet that can directly affect the individuals’ actions during an uprising is the manifestation of the government that, in most cases, tries to oppose the movement. In the modern world, especially after the creation of the internet and social media, there has been abundant evidence across

Did the heterogeneity of participants (the involvement of different genders, age groups or social classes) help or stimulate your participation?

Yes, the diversity of people around me was motivating. No, my participation did not have much to do with the public’s heterogeneity.

countries showing the ways governments try to interfere and block social movements. The most recent example can be the Azerbaijani government shutting down social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram right before attacking Armenia on September 27, 2020. This kind of government strategy of ceasing online communication and coordination was organized to prevent civil disobedience by the people and is a common tool for many governments to terminate protests. Social media, violations, and bloodshed have been successful means for the authorities to prevent movements from their victorious outcome. This, however, was not the case during the Velvet Revolution. The authorities, for the most part, did not use any special strategies to hinder the process. At least, no social media shutdowns were recorded. Local government officials who possessed power in the town and were supporting the Republican Party of Armenia tried, in some ways, to discourage participation but that attempt only influenced those whose position was highly dependent on the local government.

A vivid example of the above-mentioned government practice is my own experience with local authorities. On the day of the most extensive protest, I undertook the leadership at Qarahunj Secondary School to form

a group of young people from age 16 to strike and join the movement in the nearby city of Goris. The school principal Svetlana Sevyan, who was a loyal follower of Serzh Sargsyan, blatantly threatened me and my fellow classmates to stop, otherwise our actions would affect our graduation. Although this was a direct human rights violation, being sure that these types of illegal threats and announcements would be eliminated soon after our success in the revolution, the threat did not generate significant fears for the students to stop. To find out if such experiences applied to others as well and to what extent they were impactful, I asked the participants whether or not they received potential threats or any type of repression from followers of Serzh or from people in power. As depicted in the chart below, the majority indicated the absence of such illegal experiences.

Did the local government officials, the school director, or other employees try to prevent your participation by threats or any type of discouragement?

Yes, they tried to stop my participation by different means. No, I have not had such experiences.

In essence, the government’s intervention to hinder protests was minimal for the most part and applied only to 35% percent of the people, including me. The government had enormous potential to prevent the movement from succeeding in a number of ways; nevertheless, it did not display salient opposition and demonstrated moderation throughout the entire process, which can be a notable impetus for people to achieve an overall

THE PARTICIPATORY CULTURE OF THE QARAHUNJ PEOPLE

conquest (Broers 87). The fact that most people felt safe to invest in the movement can be one of the explanations for the unprecedented resistance of the community during the Velvet Revolution.

Besides the unique opportunity to easily communicate through social media, there is one more facet that is important for a solid organization: an effective leader. Masses need direction and the leaders can be viewed as the source of the “consciousness” to provide it (Tarrow 13). The head of the revolution, Nikol Pashinyan, successfully represented the collective image of the Armenian nation at that crucial moment of history. By pursuing strategic innovation that involved the skillful deployment of unifying messages, strategic organizational planning, and non-violent-discipline, Pashinyan managed to gain complete trust and belief in the nation for the most part (Broers 120). To form an understanding of whether Nikol’s image had something to do with the Qarahunj people’s participation, I asked in the survey if he served as any source of motivation and courage for them. Roughly 60% indicated that the image of Nikol really inspired and pushed their participation; almost 25% said that they had great trust and belief in him which is consistent up to this day. Approximately 12% claimed that Nikol’s presence did not have any effect on their active involvement and 5% rejected any positive effect of his leadership. Overall, more than 85% of Qarahunj protesters were motivated by Nikol’s appearance and symbolic leadership, which gave the individual a feeling of safety and belonging.

Along with the specific questions, I also invited people to write down additional information about what made them resist. With almost 70 responses, the most common answers amongst them were: “The challenging history of our nation shaped my resistance,” “The Armenian spirit inside me helped me overcome the obstacles during the protests,” “Our past built the courage we have today not to surrender,” and so on. The unresolved trauma of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, a past filled with the lament of several country losses, the countless bloody battles the nation experienced with unfriendly neighbors, can all create collective memory which is able to later bring the nation together for stronger political mobilization. Political scientist Rachel Anderson Paul uses the case of Azerbaijani president Gaidar Aliev’s visit to the White House,

Did Nikol Pashinyan’s political/moral image shape your courage and dedication to the Velvet Revolution?

Yes, he was a source of encouragement for me.

Yes, he was a trustworthy and motivating leader. No, his presence did not affect my actions in any way. I did not think of him as an effective leader of revolution.

which was accompanied by extensive protests by Armenians, to test how genocidal memory might have played an important role in mobilizing Armenian-Americans. As a result, the findings of the research suggests that ethnic mobilization and persistence of ethnic identity could be tied to the trauma of the past, or as the author puts it to ‘Armenianness’ (Paul 43). On top of that, the traumatic collective memory of the nation can plant seeds in the children of Genocide survivors to transform their tragic historical legacy (Adelman 2017). Even though the Revolution was a present event for them in April 2018 for the sake of the prosperous future, the past had a lot to do with their resistance: the present was fighting for the future with the assistance of the past.

Ostrom also argued that the past experiences of protests could shape essential skills and knowledge for future uprisings (158). In the case of the Qarahunj, almost 80% of the participants indicated that the Velvet Revolution was their very first understanding of a protest and the first experience of political mobilization. Consequently, knowledge from

past events, which Ostrom considered a key for success, did not play a significant role in the Qarahunj case.

To wrap up the survey, I asked which aspects had the most impact on their decision to cooperate. Almost 300 people gave priority to a reliable leader, over 200 to the government’s minimal efforts to terminate the protests, 269 people to the freedom of expression in Armenia, and 219 to the presence of social media. Results indicate that the past experiences of movements, heterogeneity or the number of participants did not play an important role for the majority.

Which of the following aspects had the most effect on your participation?

The number of participants

The heterogeneity of participants

The reliable leader

The ease of communication through social media

My past experiences of protests

On top of that, I asked the participants to rate their freedom of speech during the Velvet Revolution from 1 to 5, where 5 meant absolute freedom and 1 the complete absence of it. Results indicated that people did not feel much pressure regarding the freedom of expression during the Velvet Revolution in Armenia, since almost 47% rated their freedom 5, 34% rated 4, 13% gave it a 3, and only a small minority declared an absence of freedom.

The little intervention of the government against the process

The freedom of speech in Armenia

Rate your freedom of speech in Armenia during the Velvet Revolution from 1 to 5, where 1 means the absence of freedom and 5 represents absolute freedom.

There can be multiple factors affecting an individual’s contribution to political movements and those discussed above may constitute only a small part of them. Overall, this paper suggests that the mediation of social media, true freedom of expression as exercised by people, the effective leadership of Nikol Pashinyan, Serzh Sargsyan’s modest opposition, and finally, the collective traumatic memory of the nation as a whole constituted some of the essential reasons for the Qarahunj people to stick to their political goals and resist until the last breath. From these findings, we learn that the guarantee for a successful revolution can depend on not only the vulnerable political structure of a state but also external, cultural, religious, historical, and other social factors. The above discussed incentives that resulted in a successful collective outcome for the Qarahunj in 2018 might not function well separately. Indeed, the combination of several favorable conditions is needed for collective action to thrive and not to fail in the middle of the battle against the authorities.

WORKS CITED

Adelman, Anne. “Traumatic Memory and the Intergenerational Transmission of Holocaust Narratives.” The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, vol. 50, no. 1, 1995, pp. 343–367.

Benford, Robert D., and Search for more articles by this author. “Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics. Sidney Tarrow.” American Journal of Sociology, 1 July 1995, www.journals.uchicago. edu/doi/10.1086/230707.

Broers, Laurence, and Anna Ohanyan. Armenia’s Velvet Revolution: The Decline and Defeat of Authoritarianism. I.B. Tauris, 2020.

Hirschman, Albert O. Exit, Voice, Loyalty; Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Harvard University Press, 1970.

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, goriscity.am/Pages/Home/Default.aspx.

Olson, Mancur Jr. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Harvard University Press, 1965.

Ostrom, Elinor. “Analyzing Collective Action.” Agricultural Economics, vol. 41, 2010, pp. 155–166.

Paul, Rachel Anderson. “Grassroots Mobilization and Diaspora Politics: Armenian Interest Groups and the Role of Collective Memory.” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, vol. 6, no. 1, 2000, pp. 24–47.

Tarrow, Sidney. Power in Movement. Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Conversation about Bacha Bazi: Afghanistan’s “Open Secret”

FIZA GULZAR

AY 2021-2022

Bacha Bazi is a Dari/Farsi slang phrase that directly translates to “dancing boys” or “boy play” in English. It is a centuries-old custom in various regions of Afghanistan and Northwestern Pakistan. Bacha Bazi embodies a distressing form of child exploitation as young boys, often underage and vulnerable, are coerced into this practice, manipulated by influential older men, and subjected to severe physical, emotional, sexual and mental abuse. Due to the dichotomy between the glamorized façade of prestigious cultural ideality that its perpetrators project to the world and the unpleasant reality of the forced pedophilic captivity, many individuals have referred to the practice of Bacha Bazi as Afghanistan’s “open secret.” It has become an exhibition of one’s social standing and power due to its normalized, structured practice in which the perpetrators flaunt the harem of boys they have accumulated. Due to the rigorous statewide institution of Sharia Law which sentences perpetrators and sometimes victims to death for sodomy, music and dancing, Bacha Bazi became a taboo topic of controversy during the Taliban Era (1996-2001). However, since the deposing of the Taliban, a more aggressive and public culture of pedophilia has emerged due to the nation’s anarchy. In 2011, an action plan was signed by the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict and Afghan officials which promised to put an end to this practice, along with enforcing other crucial protections for children. 1 Nonetheless, in 2014, the Child Rights Commissioner at the AIHRC stated that the number of areas that practiced Bacha Bazi has been on the rise, despite the strengthening of anti-trafficking laws over the years. 2

1 The United Nations, “Afghanistan Signs Pact With UN to Prevent Recruitment of Child Soldiers.” UN News. January 30, 2011.

2 Sabet, Zarifa. “Shame and Silence: Bacha Bazi in Afghanistan.” Geopolitical Monitor, May 26, 2020.

This paper will explore the reasons behind the lack of effective local and international response to tackling the issue of Bacha Bazi in Afghanistan and show how gravely cultural perceptions and traditions have affected the outcomes of these efforts. The cultural climate of Afghanistan has enabled the practice of Bacha Bazi to continue due to individual fears of the repercussions that would follow if one was to speak out on their experiences. Meanwhile, the international community’s lack of understanding of Afghanistan’s true culture has resulted in the passivity of their responses. The amalgamation of both instances enables the practice to proceed as the perpetrators receive limited opposition.

On an individualized level, the fundamental reason for the persistence of the practice of Bacha Bazi in Afghanistan is the lack of reporting on the subject matter in both physical and electronic media. The involvement of homosexual practices is a significant factor in the persistence of Bacha Bazi, where young boys are subjected to non-consensual sexual activities with older men. The prevailing denial of homosexuality within Afghan society conjures barriers to raising awareness about this issue, impeding open dialogue and hampering efforts to effectively address the problem. Emadi, states that the available data on the extent of homosexual conduct in Afghanistan is inadequate because “it is not considered to be in the proper realm of public discussion.” 3 The practice is known to be underreported owing to prevailing social norms, such as the fact that sodomy is perceived as anathema to Islamic philosophy and is therefore associated with reputational shame, as well as due to a fear of retaliation and impunity as Afghan civilians have little faith in the protections provided by their legal system. This sort of cultural fear reinforces Azevedo’s argument that while cultural synergies and unity can manifest positive implications for economic, political and social development within a nation, it too can “act as a barrier when values and beliefs become obstacles to development of a society.” 4 Essentially, this

3 Emadi, Hafizullah. “The Politics of Homosexuality: Perseverance of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Community in a Repressive Social Milieu in Afghanistan.” International Journal on Minority & Group Rights (2019), p. 247

4 Azevedo, Margarida. “The Evaluation of the Social Impacts of Culture: Culture, Arts and Development.” Economics and Finance. Universite Pantheon-Sorbonne. Paris I. p. 12

lack of documentation has cultivated a lack of public knowledge about the practice, which enables the custom to proceed either because victims are unaware that their rights are being exploited or they are unaware of how or where to address it. As such, it makes sense as to why Nisya, stresses on the importance of educating the public as it would be a “solution to a socio-cultural problem that will provide the people with proper filters” towards Bacha Bazi. 5 As such, the silence surrounding Bacha Bazi is rooted in a dual factor of fear-induced reticence and the absence of an established reporting channel due to its unrecognized status under the local legal framework.

The traditional perception of childhood in Afghanistan, which holds children accountable for their actions, poses another barrier to combating the persistence of Bacha Bazi. This expectation for children to be selfreliant from an early age inadvertently increases their vulnerability, as it ingrains a sense of failure if they cannot meet these societal expectations. Hence, this pressure to appear strong and independent discourages reporting instances of Bacha Bazi or seeking assistance, further compounding the issue. Childhood, according to Stearns’ book, is not only a natural biological process of maturity, but also a social construct shaped by variables specific to a civilization such as cultural exposure and familial upbringing. 6 He highlights the discrepancies between the rudimentary definitions of childhood in the East and the West: in modern Western settings, childhood is associated with innocence and incapability, thus they are often entirely supervised and taken care of by their parents; however, childhood in most Eastern cultures is viewed as a preparation stage for adulthood, thus they are granted more autonomy and are expected to mature more rapidly. It is crucial to note this distinction because it is anticipated that if information was to surface about the sexual assault of these young males, society will repulsively blame them for their “involvement,” rather than see them as victims to sympathize with. This is because Afghan society considers boys beyond the age of 12 to be young

5 Nisya, C. “In Education We Trust: Combating Human Insecurity of Bacha Bazi in Afghanistan.” IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science. IOP Publishing, March 1, 2019.

6 Stearns, Peter. Childhood in World History. Taylor & Francis Group. 2017.

men capable of standing up for themselves, which feeds into the archetypal patriarchal concept of the “strong man.” This argument is visibly represented in a case study reported by The Guardian in 2019, in which five families in the Logar Province of Afghanistan murdered their sons after footage of their unconsented sexual harassment circulated on social media. 7 As a result, the wrongful murder of these young boys emphasizes the significance of raising public awareness about the reality of Bacha Bazi by educating people about how the young boys are victims of undesired abuse rather than participants in the crime.

Moreover, the international community’s response to incidents of Bacha Bazi has been slow due to the difficulty in categorizing it as a criminal act. Unlike cases of human trafficking that draw substantial global attention, Bacha Bazi is not directly linked to trafficking and it is frequently misunderstood as a cultural practice, creating hesitations regarding international intervention. The universal application of human trafficking explains the lack of international support for cases of Bacha Bazi as its narrow definition is likely to have caused confusion and uncertainty within policymakers regarding anti-trafficking laws and regulations, complicating efforts against such practices. According to the “Palermo Protocol,” trafficking in persons describes ‘the recruitment, transportation, harboring or receipt of persons (…) for the purpose of exploitation.’ 8 As such, Kara brings up the ambiguities relating to the precise details of the crime of human trafficking and raises the concern that there is a general claim that human trafficking must involve the illicit “traffic of people across national borders.” 9 This connotation is limiting as it suggests the absence of the possibility for an individual to be trafficked within their own home country. This issue can, indeed, be noticed in the decades-old cultural practice of Bacha Bazi in Afghanistan, in which the sexual abuse of young boys are committed by adult men who often reside in the same village or town as the victims. As such, these boys are exploited within their own

7 Glinski, Stefani. “Afghanistan Pedophile Ring May Be Responsible for Abuse of Over 500 Boys.” November 13, 2019. The Guardian: Guardian News and Media.

8 Kara, Siddharth, “Modern Slavery: An Overview,” in Modern Slavery: A Global Perspective (2017), p. 11

9 Kara, “Modern Slavery”, p. 13

country rather than overseas, which could cause policymakers to disregard their cases as so-called “human trafficking” cases, thereby resulting in a lack of anti-trafficking legislative reinforcement or support.

It clearly appears, from this analysis, that international governments struggle to intervene and investigate cases of Bacha Bazi in a more concentrated manner due to their inability, or perhaps lack of interest, to establish whether it falls under the category of human trafficking. According to Bruton, young victims of Bacha Bazi are certainly eligible under the International Law of War to legally receive US intervened support. However, policymakers and legislators in the United States have justified their lack of participation in Bacha Bazi instances by claiming that they respect a “State’s connections with its own nationals” and that they view the sexual abuse of these young boys as more of a “cultural issue.” 10 Juan D. Delius defines culture as “the ensemble of traditional behaviors that is characteristic of a population.” 11 As such, this conclusion of Bacha Bazi being a cultural issue is not necessarily reasonable as there is a massive discrepancy in the perception of the practice between the majority of Afghan civilians and the minority of perpetrators.

Moreover, the inappropriate categorization of Bacha Bazi as a cultural practice by the United States not only marginalizes Afghan culture, but it also resonates with one-dimensional orientalist beliefs. This portrayal undermines the severity and human rights implications of Bacha Bazi while devaluing the humanity of Afghan civilians, depicting them as barbaric brutes. Thus, it inadvertently reinforces Edward Said’s argument that the “very possibility of development, transformation, and human movement is denied in the Orient.” 12 This narrative implies the notion that individuals originating from the Orient lack agency and the capacity to contribute to societal progress. By labeling Bacha Bazi as a cultural practice, they imply that this exploitative phenomenon is an intrinsic part of Afghan

10 Bruton, Annie B. “Bacha Bazi and Human Rights Violations in Afghanistan: Should the US Military Have Done More to Protect Underage Boys?” Kentucky Law Journal (2019): Vol. 108 : Iss. 1, Article 6.

11 Delius, Juan D. The Nature of Culture. In The Tinbergen Legacy. Dawkins M., Halliday T. (eds), 1991. Springer, Dordrecht. p. 76

12 Said, Edward W. “Orientalism Now.” In Orientalism. New York, NY: Random House, 1979. p. 208

society, reflecting its values and norms. However, this representation disregards the reality that most Afghans, in accordance with their belief in Islam, condemn the culture of Bacha Bazi and attempt to keep distance from individuals engaged in its sexual and physical abuses. It is crucial to acknowledge that the moral acceptance of Bacha Bazi is restricted to individuals in positions of power who are inclined to engage in such affairs. The practice is not embraced or supported by the broader Afghan population, and its condemnation is rooted in moral principles and a commitment to safeguarding the well-being of children. Therefore, framing Bacha Bazi as a cultural practice overlooks the widespread rejection of this phenomenon and undermines the efforts of those within Afghan society who actively oppose and seek to eliminate it.

Bacha Bazi must be considered less of a cultural issue and more of a systematic facilitation by both the United States and Afghan governments. The perpetrators of Bacha Bazi tend to have high profiles in society –such as Mullah (religious leaders), community elders, Afghan army and ally militia, etc – and their strategic value in the war on terror poses a major obstacle to accountability and justice. US forces are bolstering the offenders of Bacha Bazi by recruiting them as allied partners in the war against the Taliban and thus have overlooked their several human rights violations. As Afghanistan is an unjust society, where the law acts in a prejudiced manner to protect and perpetuate the interests of its elites, these individuals remain above the law because no one believes they are capable of committing such heinous crimes. Under such a suppressive and tyrannical social and cultural milieu, minorities are involuntarily compelled to adapt to existing customs and practices. Furthermore, the United States approached tackling Bacha Bazi by engaging in dialogue with so-called “tribe elders,” when it would have been more appropriate to communicate with the victims themselves. The ubiquity of Bacha Bazi causes major psychological traumas, ranging from a loss of selfesteem and self-respect to an inability to integrate into society, as well as physical health difficulties. Thus, by considering tribal elders to be the genuine leaders of Afghanistan, American and international governments fail to recognize that there is a complex civil society in Afghanistan

that cares about improving national and individual rights. As such, this reinforcement of the traditional power structure of Afghanistan, yet again, enables the persistence of the practice.

In conclusion, Bacha Bazi is a convoluted practice that has wrongfully been deemed an Afghan cultural tradition due to its perseverance in society over the decades. This entanglement has proven to be the main reason for the lack of local and international policy against the act as well as support for the victims. In all of the reports surrounding methods and procedures to resolve the issue of Bacha Bazi, solutions have been offered that appear to be simplistic and accomplishable through an objective lens such as educating the public on the matter. However, the implementation and preservation of these solutions in a society like Afghanistan has proven to be relatively problematic. This reality underscores the troubling reality that Bacha Bazi remains inadequately acknowledged, not only within Afghanistan but also on a broader global scale. It serves as a poignant reminder of an alarming trend, wherein the exploitation of males is frequently overshadowed and undervalued in comparison to the attention devoted to the exploitation of females.

Although we are unsure what it will take to completely eradicate Bacha Bazi and who should be held responsible, the Afghanistan Government or international community, it is high time we come up with a strong and lasting solution to this problem as it is psychologically and physically impairing the young boys of Afghanistan. There is hope for the future as the conversation surrounding this topic has surfaced in recent years as individuals have spoken up about their experiences once they fled Afghanistan.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Azevedo, Margarida. “The Evaluation of the Social Impacts of Culture: Culture, Arts and Development.” Economics and Finance. Universite PantheonSorbonne. Paris I. https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01804118v2/ document

Bruton, Annie B. “Bacha Bazi and Human Rights Violations in Afghanistan: Should the US Military Have Done More to Protect Underage Boys?,” Kentucky Law Journal (2019): Vol. 108 : Iss. 1, Article 6. https://eds-p-ebscohost-com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/eds/detail/ detail?vid=1&sid=b4f2d526-7579-40a9-8fce-b62361b9bdd5%40 redis&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#AN=edshol.hein. journals.kentlj108.9&db=edshol

Delius, Juan D. The Nature of Culture. In The Tinbergen Legacy. Dawkins M., Halliday T. (eds), 1991. Springer, Dordrecht.

Emadi, Hafizullah. “The Politics of Homosexuality: Perseverance of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Community in a Repressive Social Milieu in Afghanistan.” International Journal on Minority & Group Rights (2019), p. 242-260. https://eds-p-ebscohost-com.proxy.library. nyu.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=5&sid=e850109b-1168-47cf90cc-9dda6ab06123%40redis

Glinski, Stefani. “Afghanistan Pedophile Ring May Be Responsible for Abuse of Over 500 Boys.” November 13, 2019. The Guardian: Guardian News and Media. https://www.theguardian.com/globaldevelopment/2019/nov/13/afghanistan-paedophile-ring-thatabused-over-500-boys

Kara, Siddharth, “Modern Slavery: An Overview,” in Modern Slavery: A Global Perspective (2017), p. 1-47.

Nisya, C. “In Education We Trust: Combating Human Insecurity of Bacha Bazi in Afghanistan.” IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science. IOP Publishing, March 1, 2019. https://iopscience.iop.org/ article/10.1088/1755-1315/243/1/012159

Sabet, Zarifa. “Shame and Silence: Bacha Bazi in Afghanistan.” Geopolitical Monitor, May 26, 2020. https://www.geopoliticalmonitor. com/shame-and-silence-bacha-bazi-in-afghanistan/

Said, Edward W. “Orientalism Now.” In Orientalism, 206-209. New York, NY: Random House, 1979.

Samad, Harris, and Fatima Salman. “Strategies for Reforming Afghanistan’s Illicit Networks.” Atlantic Council, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/resrep26039

Stearns, Peter N. Childhood in World History. Taylor & Francis Group. 2017.

Thakur, Pallavi. “Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner: Unveiling the Trauma of Adolescent Boys Trapped in Afghanistan’s Culturally Legitimized Paedophilia – ‘Bacha Bazi.’” Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities (2020), p. 1-10.

The United Nations, “Afghanistan Signs Pact With UN to Prevent Recruitment of Child Soldiers.” UN News. January 30, 2011. https://news.un.org/ en/story/2011/01/365572-afghanistan-signs-pact-un-preventrecruitment-child-soldiers

Language Policy and the Development of the Filipino Language

JASON CRUZ

AY 2020-2021

The Philippines is considered one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world, especially with regards to its relatively small land area (UNESCO, 2009, p. 305). The Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF) [Commission on the Filipino Language], which has the task of documenting and preserving indigenous languages across the archipelago, classifies 132 distinct local languages throughout the country (Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino). The KWF also has the task of developing and standardizing “Filipino” as a national language, derived from the Tagalog language. While the 1987 Constitution lists “Filipino” and English as official languages (PH. 1987 Const. § 6, art. XIV), it officially recognizes 19 regional and auxiliary languages with significant use. Out of these, 14 are spoken by at least 1 million people, and 4 of these have over 10 million speakers, namely Tagalog, Bisaya, Ilocano, and Hiligaynon (Ebhard et. al, 2021), all of which have some level of mutual intelligibility (see Table 1). The KWF’s published book, Pagpaplanong Wika at Filipino [Language Planning and Filipino], details the history of the search for and development of a Filipino national language and defends the use of Tagalog as the basis for the language. This raises the question, how does the Pagpaplanong Wika at Filipino reveal the decisions made towards the language policy implemented by the Philippine Government? Further, how has this implementation affected the use of other native languages around the country in the present? A survey conducted amongst Filipino staff at NYU Abu Dhabi revealed that these multiple conflicting languages in the Philippines struggle to compete for significance. While the Philippine Government was unsuccessful in creating a new lingua franca, the resulting creation of Filipino, an evolving Philippine language based on Tagalog, is able to successfully bridge the gap between the plentitude of languages spoken around the country. The government’s approach to language policy evolved from language fusion to

language enhancement at the cost of Tagalog’s dominance in the cultural battle to preserve the other native languages of the country resulting in a multilingual Filipino society.

Figure 1: Map showing the distribution of dominant Native Languages in the Philippines

Adapted from the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino’s Map of Philippine Languages

The linguistic diversity of the archipelago and interactions encountered with foreign languages are crucial in understanding the Philippines’s language policy story (see Figure 1). Diversity in languages on the islands had existed long before Spanish Colonization. The Austronesian language, which had originated in Taiwan (north of the Philippines), spread south to the archipelago around 2200 BCE (Benton M. et. al, 2012), and has since diversified into multiple languages in the region over thousands of years. These languages were primarily developed by small chieftainled kingdoms that scattered the islands (Blust, 2018). When the islands were colonized by Spain, Spanish was used as the official language of government and the de facto language for business and education. As a result, fluency in Spanish was associated with status, wealth, and intelligence (Schumacher & Francisco, 2005). In con trast to Spanish colonies in Latin America, Spanish as a language was never integrated into indigenous societies as religious teachings were translated

into local languages in an attempt to convince more people to convert to Catholicism (Schumacher & Francisco, 2005). Therefore, Spanish never became widespread in Filipino society and remained reserved mainly for elites. This left indigenous languages to flourish and stay relatively intact amongst their communities. However, the impacts of the clash of linguistic diversity can still be seen today.

When resistance was built against Spain during the country’s independence movement, the use of the Spanish language was associated with oppression and sympathy for the colonizers of the country. There was a great need to rally under a national identity and with that came the idea of unity through a language that would serve the entire country and act as a national symbol (Eastman, 2001). Tagalog rose to this occasion and became the primary language of the resistance movement for two main reasons. Firstly, Tagalog had been distinguished from other local languages because of the influence of the Kingdom of Tondo when the Spanish first colonized the islands (Wolf, 2005). It was the language used by the kingdom, which was seen as the wealthiest and most powerful at the time of colonization due to its trade links with China. Thus the language and the Tagalog region maintained its influence and significance. Secondly, the major resistance movements that had sprung against the Spanish all came from the Tagalog speaking regions surrounding Manila (NCCA, 2018). The eight provinces that had revolted against Spain were all located on Luzon Island, and with the exception of the province of Pampanga, all primarily spoke Tagalog. As a result, when independence was first declared, the first drafted constitution of the country, along with other revolutionary literature, was written in Tagalog (Aguinaldo, 1899). Shortly after declaring independence in 1898, the Philippines was annexed by the United States, which subsequently introduced the use of English for language instruction. The beginnings of Philippine language policy had therefore arisen from the need for unity and national identity. The problem stemmed from the plethora of local languages competing for usage, while at the same time being subsequently threatened by the forced instruction of English as a homogenous language.

This problem brought with it the importance of the concept of the “Filipino” language, a unifying lingua franca that was native to the islands.

The language policy began with the insular government of the country under the United States headed by Manuel Quezon. Quezon realized the importance of national identity when talks of independence of the country from the US began. In 1937 the government created what is today the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino [Commission on the Filipino Language], which was tasked with designating a national language for the country other than English. The KWF panel consisted of 7 members representing the following local languages (see Figure 1 for distribution): Tagalog, Ilocano, Bisaya, Bicolano, Hiligaynon, Waray, and Maguindanaon (Quezon, 1937). The panel’s consensus was to select one local language to be used as the foundation of the new language. In a public address on December 30, 1937, Quezon announced that the committee had “[selected] the Tagalog language to be used as the basis for the evolution and adoption of the national language of the Philippines” (Quezon, 1937). As this recommendation became policy, it was argued that Tagalog was chosen because it had the most comprehensive documentation and development, in part because of the long history of record and observation by the Spanish around Manila, but also because of the previously mentioned role it played in the Philippine Revolution. Another reason given was that Tagalog was the native language of Jose Rizal, the nationa l hero of the country who had played a key role in the Philippine revolution three decades prior. Therefore the selection of Tagalog would help invigorate and unify the nation through its association with nationalism and the country. The important thing to note is that the new national language was to be derived from Tagalog and not be Tagalog itself. What makes the task of bridging the translation gap between different Filipino languages possible is the similarities with what Virgilio Armalio of the KWF categorizes as Christianized local languages (Almario, 2015, p. 25). These Austronesian languages had similar influences from Spanish translation and usage in the religious context. These influences mainly consisted of the conversion and adoption of native scripts with similar letters into the Latin alphabet and sentence structure.

Leading up to the independence of the Philippines from the United States, the process of standardizing the national language began taking shape,

based on these similarities. The KWF began putting together the balarila, or grammatical structure of the new language, dubbed Pilipino (Almario, 2015, p. 11). Through the committee of translators, the language underwent the process of language fusion, which started with analyzing multiple regional languages.

Table 1: Table showing the translations of a Filipino proverb written in the 7 languages represented in the committee (Rubino et. al), with English translation: One who does not look back at their past will not reach their destination.

Language

Tagalog

Hiligaynon

Bisaya

Bicolano

Waray

Maguindanaon

Ilocano

Translation

Ang hindi marunong l um ingon sa pinang galingan ay hindi maka rarating sa paroroonan

Ang indi kabalo mag balikid sang iya nga ginhalinan, indi maka abot sa iya nga pakadtuan

Ang dî kahibáw molíngis’ íyang gigikánan, dî gyod maka abots’ íyang padulngan

An dai tataong ma gsalingoy sa saiyang ginikanan, dai maka kaabot sa padudumanan

An diri maaram l um ingi ha tinikangan, diri maulpot ha kakadtoa

So tao a di ma tao domingil ko poonan iyan na di niyan kakowa so singanin iyan

Ti tao nga saan na ammo tumaliaw iti naggapuanna ket saan nga maka danon iti papananna

While there are notable variations, what I want to emphasize is the mutual intelligibility with Tagalog and the other languages, which shows why Tagalog made a good base for the new language. Articles are shared, such as variations of ang [one] with all languages except Maguindanaon and

Ilocano, sa [at], and iyan [that], while words such as hindi (di, dai, indi, ti, iti, diri) [no] and lumingon from Bisaya (molingis), Bicolano (magsalingoy), and Waray (lumingi) [from the root lingon, turn around] share notable similarities with Tagalog. Other mutually intelligible words between these languages and Tagalog are shown, such as tao [person] for Maguindanaon and Ilocano, maaram [from alam, to know] in Waray, magbalikid [from balik, to go back] in Bisaya, makaabot [to reach], and saan [where]. Furthermore these languages follow a similar sentence structure in terms of subject-verb-object order (Almario, 2015, p. 23), as well as conjugation (for example, the use of maka to denote future tense in five out of the seven languages). The challenge for the policy, therefore, was to combine these languages and balance functionality with the equal representation of other regional languages because of the inherent Tagalog-centric nature of the policy. The process of language fusion culminated in the publication of the Balarila ng Wikang Pambansa [Grammar of the National Language] in 1940 which served as the foundations of the new standardized language (Santos, 1940).

However, throughout the 1950s and 60s Pilipino began to encounter logistical and societal hurdles that shaped the development of the language. The standardizations introduced in the Balarila ng Wikang Pambansa had become too complex for teaching the synthesized language effectively (Almario, 2015, p. 23). For one, confusion had arisen with the use of diction. Despite the mutual intelligibility of vocabulary, a notable portion of words had different meanings in other languages, some of them vulgar (Almario, 2015, p. 39). This led to confusion on what vocabulary was considered standard by teachers in schools around the country (Smolicz, 1984, p. 275). The implementation of diacritics for pronunciation of stresses on words was too complex to learn and too costly to implement in printing (Almario, 2015, p. 49), which led to its decline in use altogether. This made the distinction between similar sounding words difficult. One notable example is sukà [vinegar], with stress at the end, and súka [vomit], with stress at the beginning (the distinctions of suka were an issue for me as I was learning Tagalog as well, where I would often say “I want vomit” at a restaurant before I learned proper stresses on the words). Without diacritics the only way of distinguishing is either when it is spoken, or with context. While attempts were made to correct the

issue, such as dictionaries to standardize vocabulary, society and especially non-Tagalogs began to see so many similarities between Tagalog and Pilipino that it was merely viewed as standardized Tagalog (Almario, 2015, p. 33).

Tagalog’s extensive documentation influenced standardizations to merely rely on Tagalog itself. As a result, other regions viewed the implementation of the national language as directly clashing with the desire to preserve regional identity. From the very creation of the balarila, the decision to use Tagalog as the basis for the national language was met with harsh opposition from delegates of other Philippine languages, namely Bisaya and Ilocano (Almario, 2015, p. 13). These delegates viewed the decision as undermining the rich histories and cultures of their respective regions and ultimately decided that the threat to their language outweighed the desire to communicate with other regions in the Philippines. Furthermore, the policy implemented by the Department of Education in the 1950s perpetuated this divide (Dalby, 2004). Schools adopted an odd multilingual curriculum which started with learning the local language in primary school, then switching to a bilingual curriculum, in Pilipino and English (Benton, 1991, p. 83) in secondary schooling. However, areas where Tagalog was the dominant language had no alternative for their second language because Pilipino was treated as the same language (Almario, 2015, p. 33). The only argument that gave Pilipino the edge over English was that it was still seen as a “Philippine” language, a lesser of two evils that not only undermined the local language, but gave Tagalogs, and particularly the region around Manila, more political and social influence over the country. The result of this policy, therefore, is a struggle of languages competing for significance. It is a policy that perpetuated regionalism and went against the idea of a unified national language originally intended by the commission, creating a multilingual Filipino society.

The failure of Pilipino as a national language prompted the government and the commission to change their language policy from language fusion into language supplementation. Although the present public consensus is that the national language is derived from Tagalog, this policy ultimately transformed the meaning of Pilipino into an evolving indigenous language with only temporary Tagalog dominance. The controversy surrounding

Pilipino reached a boiling point in the 1980s, as efforts towards a proposed fusion of Filipino languages died along with its major proponent, Geruncio Lancuesta, who had fought over the development and implementation of a new lingua franca (Almario, 2015, p. 76). After the country emerged from the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, the drafting of the 1987 constitution brought this contention to light and subsequently redefined Pilipino as Filipino:

The national language of the Philippines is Filipino. As it evolves, it shall be further developed and enriched on the basis of existing Philippine and other languages (PH. 1987 Const. § 6, art. XIV).

While the description of Filipino is arguably vague and bears almost no difference to Pilipino, the redefinition highlights the shift in language policy to reflect the rebranding of the language to be more inclusive to other Philippine languages. Although in the present, Filipino is derived mostly from Tagalog, the increased desire to supplement and build on top of the existing language shows a recognition of the unstatic nature of the desired national language– in this case, the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino paradoxically works not to standardize or maintain today’s Filipino, but to actively allow it to evolve and integrate with other native languages. This is made clear in the commission’s official definition of Filipino:

Filipino is the native language being used all over the Philippines as the language of communication, orally as well as written, by native groups from all over the islands. Because it is a living language, it is rapidly being enriched through daily use and through other manners of usage in different places and situations and developed in different levels of research and academic discourse but in an integrative process that gives importance to entries bearing the creative qualities and necessary knowledge from the country’s native languages (Almario, 2015, p. 9).

In essence, it does not necessarily mean that Filipino is strictly defined as being the standardized version of Tagalog. Rather, Filipino, as a concept, is the native lingua franca that just so happens to be built off of Tagalog. The LANGUAGE

recognition of the dynamic nature of the language reveals the continued implementation of the policy of language supplementation. This aspect is seen with the continued influence of vocabulary and grammar from other Philippine languages, as well as the birth of Taglish, the conversational combination of both Tagalog and English in casual contexts (Bau tista & Bolton, 2008, p. 4). However, the desire to reify the concept of a Filipino national language is what leads into the trap of being seen and associated with Tagalog in itself (Almario, 2015, p. 13). The concept of the Filipino language is still assumed to be standardized Tagalog because of the flexible nature of these definitions (Smolicz, 1984, p. 275), and the lack of reform that is made aware to the public through the education system and by the KWF’s failure to communicate this new definition properly.

Consequently, the language policy of Filipino has created a multilingual Filipino society that still recognizes the importance of its native language. However, this notion is continually under threat. In order to analyze the impacts of the Philippine government’s language policy in a context outside of a particular region of the country, a survey was conducted amongst Filipino staff at New York University Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. With a sample size of 10, each respondent had originated from different parts of the country and had diverse experiences with languages. The majority of respondents learned the dominant language of their respective region as their first language, including the Tagalog region, which at the present is still directly attached to Filipino (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Map showing the geographic locations of respondents and their first language

The respondents from the Ilocano, Bisaya, and Waray regions had learned their respective language first, showing the emphasis kept on the native language for these areas and the continuation of the language curriculum mentioned earlier. However, those from the Pangasinan and Maranao regions learned Tagalog first. These outliers can primarily be explained by the influence of the Tagalog region. People are persuaded by the economic prosperity and political influence exerted by Manila to learn Tagalog first, as seen by Respondent #9 (see Appendix), whose family had moved to Manila in their early years for work. Although they learned Tagalog first because of the education system, they still continually use their native language to communicate with their parents. Whereas for Respondent #7 (see Appendix), the nearby influence of the Tagalog region made it an advantage to adapt the language early. When looking at the linguistic diversity of the results, a multilingual picture emerges (Table 2).

Table 2: Table showing the number of speakers of each language from the conducted survey, where * denotes a non-native Philippine language Language

All respondents knew how to speak the two official languages of the country: English and Filipino. However, everyone preferred to use Tagalog when communicating with other Filipinos. When speaking to most staff members surveyed, they noted how their English was very limited when they lived in the Philippines. Rather, they began to speak it more frequently upon arrival to the UAE. When looking at the other languages, it can be seen that Ilocano, Waray, Bisaya, and Hiligaynon had multiple speakers despite respondents not being from the language dominant regions. This trend can be examined further when the region of each of the speakers is plotted over the distribution of languages.

Figure 3: Map showing the distribution of respondents and number of languages spoken

The map shows that all respondents who lived in a non-Tagalog region spoke at least 3 or more languages. The survey results revealed that those who lived near other regional languages had also adopted them in order to communicate. Respondent #7 from Pangasinan also spoke Ilocano, Respondent #9 from Lanao del Norte (Maguindanao region) spoke Bisaya, and Respondent #10 from Masbate (in the Visayas island group) spoke Bicolano and Waray. Despite the solution of using Filipino to communicate, the desire to preserve native languages has pushed for people to be their own translators. However, this is not the case for the Tagalog region, where the majority of respondents only knew Filipino and English (note, however, Respondent #6 from the Chavacano area of Cavite, southwest of Manila). The incentive to learn other languages is lost because of the guarantee that people from other regions would be

able to communicate with them via Filipino. Upon analyzing the usage and preference of language, Filipino wins the language rivalry. When asked which language they preferred or were most comfortable speaking, 8 out of 10 stated Filipino. Filipino is simply the most practical language to use when in the Philippines, as it continues to dominate in education, entertainment, and official use. Nevertheless, when critically looking at the d ata collected, the responses show bias against other native languages because those living in the UAE have less opportunity to use them. In essence, Filipino is also the most practical to use outside of the Philippines because it guarantees communication with other Filipinos. Respondents noted how the use of their native language is exercised mostly within families and home regions. For example, Respondent #6 preferred to use Chavacano at home in order to preserve the language. However, the preservation of regional languages is still continually under the threat of being replaced because of the influence and ease of use of Tagalog for communication.

The analysis of the language policy of the Philippines shows a desire to foster communication and national identity through a single native language. The attempts to create language fusion from the dominant languages of the country ultimately failed because of the over-emphasis of the use of Tagalog when constructing the new language. This in turn allowed for continued development and standardization of Tagalog in order to become the national language of the country. At present, Filipino is primarily based on Tagalog and is the most practical native language to use when communicating with other Filipinos. In this regard, Filipino as a language is successful in being an indigenous lingua franca that bridges the communication gap between Filipinos both in the country and abroad. There remains a cultural battle to preserve the other native languages of the country which are used only on a regional basis. However, the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino has since shifted their policy to that of language supplementation. They continue to emphasize the unstatic nature of the concept of the Filipino language and promote continued development and evolution of the language in order to include other Philippine languages. Despite this, the Filipino people still generally link Tagalog and Filipino, and until active efforts are made to distinguish the two, this association LANGUAGE

will remain. There is a long way to go before the rich supplementation of the national language of the country in a way that would provide more equal representation of other languages, yet the steps taken at the present are crucial towards allowing that evolution to take place.

REFERENCES

Aguinaldo, E. (1899, September 23), The Treaty of Biak-na-bató, True Version of the Philippine Revolution.

Almario, V. S. (2015). Pagpaplanong Wika at Filipino. [Language Planning and Filipino]. Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino [Commission on the Filipino Language]. (Translated by Marne L. Kilates) https://kwf.gov.ph/wpcontent/uploads/2015/12/Pagpaplanong-Wika-at-Filipino.pdf

Bautista, M. L. S., & Bolton, K. (2008). Philippine English Linguistic and Literary Perspectives. Hong Kong University Press.

Benton, M., Macartney-Coxson, D., Eccles, D., Griffiths, L., Chambers, G., & Lea, R. (2012). Complete Mitochondrial Genome Sequencing Reveals Novel Haplotypes in a Polynesian Population. PLoS ONE, 7(4). https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0035026

Benton, R. (1991). Bilingual Education Policy, Past and Future. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 88(1), 83–83. https://doi.org/10.1515/ ijsl.1991.88.83

Blust, A. (2018, July 30). Austronesian Languages. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Austronesian-languages

Dalby, A. (2004). Tagalog. Dictionary of Languages (3rd ed.). A & C Black.

Eastman, C. M. (2001). National Language/Official language. In R. Mesthrie, & R. E. Asher (Eds.), Concise Encyclopedia of Sociolinguistics. Elsevier Science & Technology.

Eberhard, D. M., Simons, G. F., & Fennig, C. D. (2021). Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Twenty-fourth edition. SIL International.

Mga Wika ng Filipinas. Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino. (n.d.) https://kwf.gov.ph/ mga-wika-ng-filipinas/.

NCCA. (2018, October 8). Symbolisms/Meanings in the Philippine Flag. National Commission for Culture and the Arts. https://ncca.gov.ph/about-cultureand-arts/culture-profile/philippine-fast-facts/symbolisms-meanings-inthe-philippine-flag/.

Quezon, M. (1937, December 30). Proclaiming the National Language of the Philippines based on the “Tagalog” Language. http://www.quezon.ph/wpcontent/uploads/2007/05/mlq-speech-national-language-1.pdf.

Rubino, C. (n.d.). National Philippine Proverb in Various Philippine Languages. https://iloko.tripod.com/philproverb.html.

Santos, L. K. (1940). Balarilà ng Wikang Pambansa. [Grammar of the National Language] Bureau of Printing. https://kwf.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/ Balarila-ng-Wikang-Pambansa-1.pdf

Schumacher, J. & Francisco, J.M. (2005). The Philippines. In P. C. Phan (Ed.), Blackwell Guides to Global Christianity: Christianities in Asia. Wiley.

Smolicz, J. (1984). Is the Monolingual Nation-State Out-of-Date? A Comparative Study of Language Policies in Australia and the Philippines. Comparative Education, 20(2), 265-285.

UNESCO. (2009). Investing in Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Dialogue.

Wolf, E. (2005). Doctrina Christiana: The First Book Printed in the Philippines, Manila, 1593. A Facsimile of the Copy in the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress, Washington. Library of Congress.

APPENDIX

Results of Survey conducted with Filipino staff at NYUAD

No.

Questions Where are you from?

What languages can you speak?

What was your first language?

What language do you prefer using when talking to other Filipinos?

What language are you most comfortable using alone? Why?

1 Manila Tagalog, English Tagalog Tagalog Tagalog First language learned

2 Cavite Tagalog, English, Spanish Tagalog Tagalog Tagalog First language learned

3 Bulacan Tagalog, English Tagalog Tagalog Tagalog First language learned

4 Baguio Tagalog, English, Ilocano Ilocano Tagalog Ilocano First language learned

5 Samar Tagalog, English, Waray, Spanish Waray Tagalog Tagalog Used to it, grew up in Manila

6 Cavite City, Cavite Tagalog, English, Chavacano Tagalog Tagalog Chavacano Used at home to preserve the language

7 Pangasinan Tagalog, English, Ilocano, Hiligaynon Tagalog Tagalog Tagalog Used frequently, first language learned

8 Northern Samar Tagalog, English, Waray Waray Tagalog Tagalog Used at home, lives with people from Manila

9 Lanao del Norte Tagalog, English, Bisaya, Maranao Tagalog Tagalog Tagalog First language learned

10 Masbate Tagalog, English, Bisaya, Ilocano, Bicolano, Waray, Hiligaynon, Arabic Bisaya Tagalog Tagalog Better for communicating with Filipinos

Plaza Yesterday, Plaza Today, Plaza Tomorrow

JUAN PIÑEROS

AY 2020-2021

Every city has a space that represents it. A space that clicks in the imagination when the name of the city is heard, a space that tells stories, a space that unites the current inhabitants of the city with their ancestors, their national heroes, with the things they heard in school, in the bus, in the morning news. These spaces have the strange quality of connecting the everyday with the transcendental, and the ability to transform a regular citizen into a milestone of the city’s history. What has made these spaces special, and not any other space in the city? In most Latin American cities, this space is the central plaza. But the plaza was not intended to be special in this way. Plazas were originally intended to be the foundational space of Spanish colonial towns: a place from where the symbols and ideals of religion and government set the pace for the new city’s development. However, the plaza has become more than a solemn space of power: it has developed into a space that promotes encounters between different groups, and builds and reflects the history of the nation. Bogotá’s main square, Plaza de Bolívar, and the series of photographs describing its historical development, are representative of how plazas have become a constantly reinventing space, as it has maintained symbolic relevance despite the passing of time by being the place where “the right to the city” is granted, taken away, and utilised. The historical development of Bogotá’s plaza is a valuable perspective on how the meaning of space escapes prescription, and how some public spaces manage to transcend time and physical change, and shape a city’s culture.

In “The Right to the City”, French philosopher Henri Lefebvre notices that the expansion of cities owed itself to a pursuit of “nature” and a need for wealthy individuals to escape deteriorated and unrenovated cities. Lefebvre argues that “the [wealthy’s] claim to nature [...] displaces

the right to the city” (158), meaning that as more of the countryside is urbanized, urban society and its objective as a place of encounter spreads thin, leaving city cores populated by working classes who have no practical control over them. In this context, Lefebvre proposes that given the importance of the city in society, everyone should have “a right to the city”, which entails considering the city’s space of encounter “a supreme resource among all resources” (158) and giving everyone the opportunity to participate in and transform said space. To urban planner Kristine Stiphany, this idea, coined in 1967, represented a turning point in Latin American urbanism, in the sense that it spurred a period of urban policy and planning that concentrated in extending citizenship to all. However, even if “the right to the city” started being used as a concept in the 20th century, it can be used as a framework for analyzing how the plaza gives agency over the city to different groups regardless of the point in history. In this sense, the plaza has changed itself over time to serve as the scene where different agents claim and showcase their right to the city.

According to historian Richard Kagan, the intended purpose of the plaza in Spanish colonial urbanism was to promote an idea of “policing”: of spreading the ideals of a colonial utopia based on “regularity, [...] justice and civic order” (114) that dictated the dynamics of the rest of the city. However, this photograph from the El Tiempo newspaper archives

Plaza de Bolívar from its south side, ca 1940 (Mendoza)

depicts the Plaza de Bolívar as a completely different space: instead of being a representation of the symbols of the space, it is a mixed-use space that instead showcases multiple elements of society. Instead of large government buildings dominating the space, the plaza’s sides are occupied by commercial uses, and instead of lending itself for rallies or large gatherings, the ground level is occupied by a contemplative space and spaces for traffic. This change from the original intention of the plaza, to Kagan, is caused by the fact that in early Latin American urbanism “in comparison with other parts of the city [...] the plaza was the object of a minute attention” (116), meaning that the plaza was, for a long time, the only properly public built space in the city, transforming it into a space used by all its groups, and one in which all kinds of economic and social activities converged. The result of this is what geographer Daniel Gade calls a “neutral and central territory” (17): the multiplicity of uses and peoples found in the plaza made its meaning develop from being purely state-related to being a place where every sector of the population is visible. The plaza, meant to be the place from which an orderly city life is administered, refuses to stay under the control of a single actor. As a result, the picture above depicts a plaza that doesn’t just showcase the values of a state, showing instead multiple aspects of the commercial and social life of the city and its multiple groups.

According to Kagan, the colonial city that created the plaza was meant to be divided into the “educated city” of the colonists and their descendants, and the “uneducated city” of the rest of the groups of the city (116). However, given that the plaza was a space central to the city, and fulfilled essential functions for both the “uneducated” and “educated” cities, it became impossible for the city to develop a spatial segregation between the two. In this sense, the plaza shown in the picture is the result of a historical process by which it, as a place where all social groups were visible to each other, prioritized and preserved the “supreme resource” of urban encounter. Lefebvre defines this resource as essential to “the right to the city” over the representation of the power of any of the city’s groups. Therefore, the plaza makes it possible for a space originally intended to concentrate symbols of power and status, or as Kagan would describe it,

a space designed to be “the theatre of [the state’s] magnificence” (118), to become, instead, a space for subversion (Saldarriaga). The picture, above all, shows a deeply neutral space, the result of the plaza’s incipient function of preserving the “right to the city”. The plaza’s form in the picture shows us how Bogotá’s main square, since its foundation, hasn’t necessarily represented the “right to the city” of any group in specific, but has instead provided a stage for the inhabitants of the city to exert or reclaim their own right to the city. The plaza, rather than promoting either dissent or the “theatre of the state”, ended up being a space where any position in the dialogue of the city can be publicly seen and scrutinized.

Plaza de Bolívar from its south side, November 7, 1985. (Collazos)

The quality of the plaza as the ultimate public stage, where the “right to the city” is granted, exerted, and taken away can be seen in the photograph above. The shot depicts a column of Colombian Army tanks aiming at the main entrance of the Palace of Justice, the seat of the country ’s judicial power, after the building had been taken over by guerrilla fighters who were holding most of the Supreme Court hostage. The built environment has visibly changed from the previous picture: the fountains, traffic, and

commerce have been erased to give way to a solemn governmental space dominated by the besieged Palace of Justice. This decline of th e social and commercial uses of the Plaza is a consequence of a period of uncontrolled urban growth in Latin America, which to Saldarriaga “changed the significance and meaning of everyday life in the city” (136) as the expansion of the urban fabric and its suburbanisation replaced the plaza’s diverse functions with new local and private spaces that emerged with the city’s expansion. These new spaces also caused the plaza to no longer be a mandatory place for most uses, causing a decline in encounters between people from different groups. An example of how the plaza became less of an everyday space is described by Gade, as he attributes a decline in promenading as a social activity in the plaza to the city’s expansion and “the depersonalisation of social ties in large cities” (20). This shows that, as cities become larger, the plaza loses centrality as a social space as its everyday use is diluted amongst many new spaces, weakening activities such as promenading and shopping that made the distinct groups of the city visible to each other.

Nonetheless, even if Bogotá’s square has lost its social dimension in the picture above, its symbolic dimension seems intact. Saldarriaga mentions that “it is possible that a small portion of the seven million inhabitants of Bogotá has never visited the plaza, yet people have it as a point of reference in its imagination” (141). The photograph shows us the extent of this imagination: the fact that, despite the expansion of the city, the plaza remains the main objective of insurgent groups shows us the plaza maintains its status as the most important public stage of the nation. The symbolism and public visibility of the plaza allow it to continue being the place where “the right to the city” is claimed: even if the picture above shows no public witnessing the event in person, people from every part of the city were still watching. The symbolic value of the plaza, therefore, proves to be rooted in more than it being an everyday space. The cause of this symbolic importance is, according to Gade, that the growth of the Latin American city is a “centripetal tendency” (15) that keeps the plaza as a common landmark, and allows “a functional evolution [...] from economic motivations to those of aesthetics and pageantry” (22). This means that

the Latin American city grows by distributing the plaza’s former everyday functions amongst the now expanded urban fabric, while keeping the plaza as the psychological centre of the community. What, exactly, keeps the plaza as the main community landmark of the city? In the case of Bogotá, it can be claimed that what keeps the main square central are events and photographs like the one seen above, that continue to imprint the plaza as a part of the lore and legend of the city. The most extraordinary events of Bogotá’s history have happened around the main square since colonial times, building an image of the square that in turn attracts more public happenings to the symbolic space and perpetuating the plaza’s relevance: although most of the city doesn’t visit the plaza often, it is a space that is constantly present. The media, culture, and education all keep the central square engraved in the collective consciousness. Llano, as quoted by Saldarriaga, claims that “today, one of [the plaza’s] main functions is the representation of history” (137). However, this description misses a unique function that has made Bogotá’s plaza irreplaceable: the creation of history. The plaza, then, having been the place where the claims to “the right to the city” are transformed into events of historical importance, sets itself in the city’s consciousness as the place where “the right to the city” is meant to be utilized, making its symbolic importance endure despite the city’s expansion.

Plaza de Bolívar from its south side, June 11, 2019. (Botero and Guzmán)

Given the status of the plaza as a creator of history, its use has evolved into a performative one. According to Saldarriaga, “the combination of the political and the artistic draws attention to the new role of the Plaza de Bolívar in the life of Bogotá” (139) meaning that the plaza has combined the qualities of a stage of public visibility with its proximity to governmental institutions to make it a space ideal for political art and demonstration. The picture above exemplifies this: it depicts an installation by artist Doris Salcedo protesting the deaths of community leaders by writing their names in the plaza using shattered glass, a show of how the plaza, regardless of the changes of the built environment surrounding it, continues to represent “the right to the city”. Even if the plaza is lined by the imposing new Palace of Justice (seen in the background), and other powerful symbols of heritage and state such as government facilities and the Cathedral, the visual focus of a passerby in the plaza is instead the political action of the citizens below. The plaza provides a superposition of the political, visual, and artistic, making it a space that citizens can transform to deliver a message, and from which they can transform the city at large, demonstrating their “right to the city”.

However, this role of the plaza is challenged by different forces in today’s Latin American cities. According to Stiphany, the expansion of neoliberal policy has made “private interests threaten the production of equitable urban environments” (1079) reducing the effectiveness of public space to grant “a right to the city” to all. Saldarriaga points out that, in the case of Bogotá, private interests have weakened the sense of the public and profited from “the deliberate provocation of the fear of the public ” (141), which takes advantage of the current structural inequalities and spatial segregation of the city. Public spaces such as the plaza are perceived as unpredictable and risky, offering in private spaces an alternative that entails protection and security. In today’s Bogotá, from Saldarriaga’s perspective, “commercial centers represent progress as opposed to traditional streets, which are seen as backward” (141), which could entail that the plaza, and the participation associated with it, might lose its high status in the city’s imagination. Nevertheless, is having the plaza

as the only place where a “right to the city” is reclaimed and exercised good for the city? Is putting the plaza on a pedestal discrediting attempts at citizenship stemming from other places of the city? Stiphany points out Bogotá has, in recent years, undertaken a process of “distributed city making”, a process that consists of building civic spaces in areas historically excluded from the city core in order to advance a sense of citizenship and enable more people to participate in city-making processes. This implies there is a concern about access to “the right to the city”, given that centralizing the political activity and visibility of the city in the plaza might discredit attempts at citizenship stemming from other parts of the city. For example, while Saldarriaga sees malls as a space that provokes a fear of the plaza, Stiphany identifies that malls can also become spaces of political action, and present “these inclusionary and exclusionary dualities” (1077) where private spaces, while being a built symbol of social segregation, can also become spaces where encounters between different sectors of society and performative political dialogues can take place. The plaza’s high status in the city’s imagination may impede some sectors of the expanded metropolis from exercising their right to the city, creating a tension between the irreplaceable political-performative qualities of the plaza and the need the growth of the city implies for new private and public spaces where the “right to the city” can be exercised. Currently, these new spaces might be viewed as enemies of public space and the plaza, but, as Stiphany claims, they have the potential to guarantee the right to the city in all areas of the overgrown metropolis.

Bogotá’s main square has been, since its foundation, the center of public dialogue in the city. Instead of just representing power, it has become the space where the “right to the city” is claimed, struggled for, and utilized. The physical changes represented in photographs of the different stages of its historical development give a valuable insight into the process by which the space built itself in the imagination of the nation to become its ultimate public stage. Plaza de Bolívar is an example of how public spaces, throughout their historical development, acquire socially constructed meanings that are often different from those prescribed by the changes in their built environment. In this case, the plaza maintained through time

the urban place of encounter as its supreme resource, building symbolic relevance by being the stage of “the right to the city”, thus shaping Bogotá’s notion of citizenship around it. However, it remains uncertain whether the plaza can bring the right to the city to every corner of the metropolis. The plaza’s symbolic and political use is now at stake given the growing privatization of space, and the emergence of political spaces in unexpected places of the city. However, the plaza is in the present a place that heightens the sense of citizenship in the city, and that makes the citizens who walk on it feel the results of the city’s history, and the ability to participate in its making. The plaza remembers the past, is the stage of the present, and builds the future.

WORKS CITED

Botero, María C., and Laura Guzmán. “Con vidrio quebrado se honró a líderes sociales asesinados del país”. El Tiempo Archivo. 11 Jun 2019. https://www. eltiempo.com/cultura/arte-y-teatro/accion-artistica-que-realizo-dorissalcedo-en-la-plaza-de-bolivar-de-bogota-373800

Collazos, M. “Fiscalía entregará restos de escolta víctima del holocausto del Palacio de Justicia”. RCN Radio. 04 Sep 2018. https://www.rcnradio.com/ judicial/fiscalia-entregara-restos-de-escolta-victima-del-holocausto-delpalacio-de-justicia

Gade, Daniel W. “The Latin American Central Plaza As A Functional Space.” Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers, vol. 5, 1976, pp. 16–23.

Kagan, Richard L. “Policía y La Plaza: Utopía y Distopía En La Ciudad Colonial.” Tempus, no. 4, Oct. 2016, pp. 111–136.

Lefebvre, Henri. “The Right to the City” Writings on Cities. Translated by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, Blackwell Publishers, 1996, pp. 147159.

Mendoza, Plinio A. “Un viaje al pasado a la ciudad que se perdió con el Bogotazo”. El Tiempo Archivo. 12 Jul 2016. https://www.eltiempo.com/ archivo/documento/CMS-16643482

Roa Saldarriaga, Alberto. “The Plaza de Bolívar of Bogotá: Uniqueness of Place, Multiplicity of Events”, Ordinary Places, Extraordinary Events: Citizenship, Democracy and Public Space in Latin America, edited by Clara Irazábal, 24 January 2008, pp. 126-143

Stiphany, Kristen. “Latin American Urbanism after a Right to the City.” Latin American Research Review, vol. 54, no. 4, Dec. 2019, pp. 1072-1081.

Theology of Genocide: How the Catholic Church Sanctioned Mass Slaughter in Rwanda

KOTRYNA KARPAUSKAITE

AY 2021-2022

News of the Catholic Church’s involvement in the Rwandan genocide was met with astonishment and disbelief. “Christians killing other Christians? How could Rwandan Christians who manifested commitment to their faith have acted with such intense cruelty?” 1 Jean-Pierre Karegeye, a Jesuit priest, expressed the disturbance many felt when faced w ith the reality that the Catholic laity in Rwanda was complicit in genocidal acts against the Tutsis in 1994. Indeed, many priests, nuns and other members of the Rwandan Catholic Church were complicit in the genocide. 2 Not only that, researchers suggest that the Church was complicit in creating the conditions for genocide to erupt by actively participating in ethnic politics. 3 Nonetheless, in the aftermath of the genocide, the Roman Catholic Church refused to take accountability for the Rwandan clergy’s implication in the genocide. In particular, the Vatican displayed a hostile and defensive reaction to the allegations, accusing Rwandan leadership of conducting a “defamatory campaign […] against the Catholic Church to make it appear responsible for the genocide of ethnic Tutsis” 4 and defending clergy accused of genocide. 5 Such incredulous reactions to the Rwandan Church’s involvement in the genocide point to the subsequent

1 Ndahiro, Tom, ‘Genocide and the Role of the Church in Rwanda’ (Pambazuka News, April 14, 2005)

2 Notable cases of Catholic laity indicted for committing genocide include: Father Athanase Seromba, Father Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, Benedictine nuns Sister Maria Kisito and Sister Gertrude Mukangango

3 Longman, Timothy, ‘Church Politics and the Genocide in Rwanda’, Journal of Religion in Africa Vol. 31 (2001), 163-186 (167-170)

4 Kanz Matt,‘Vatican Accuses Rwandans of Defaming the Church’ (National Catholic Reporter, June 4, 1999)

5 Kantz Matt, ‘Vatican Defends Priest Accused of Genocide’ (National Catholic Reporter, December 10, 1999)

issue that the relationship between genocide and religion remains a largely underresearched, taboo topic. Consequently, religion “is all too often overlooked as an important factor in contributing to either the implementation and perpetuation of genocide, or as a foundational underpinning and rationalization for such collective acts.” 6

In this essay, I aim to shed light on the relationship between genocide and religion, and more specifically, the mobilization of religion to morally sanction genocide. Through investigating this religion-genocide nexus in Rwanda, I will establish that the Church in Rwanda sanctioned mass slaughter of the Tutsi in three ways. First, it was instrumental in the creation of rigid ethnic identities of Rwandans, which were subsequently used by Hutu génocidaires to justify the ‘othering’ and extermi nation of Tutsis. Secondly, the Catholic Church in Rwanda failed to denounce Hutu propaganda, which employed religious narratives to portray the genocide as morally justifiable and divinely sanctioned. Lastly, the active participation of Catholic laity in the massacres and its failure to firmly condemn the genocide translated into tacit approval of the slaughter. Correspondingly, I will argue that the moral sanctioning of genocide through religion and the church served as a powerful tool to make the Rwandan genocide more widespread and successful. Furthermore, uncovering how religion and church facilitated the slaughter of Tutsis serves to better our understanding of the genocide concept itself.

The Catholic Church in Rwanda helped reinforce the ethnic division of Rwandans and thus was complicit in sanctioning the genocide. Scholars suggest that prior to Rwanda’s colonization, the identities of Hutu and Tutsi were based on socio-economic differences rather than ethnicity: at first, the term Tutsi described the status of a rich person who owned cattle and Hutu as the subordinate of a more powerful individual. 7 However, it was the European colonizers and missionaries that established the rigid ethnic division of Rwandans. According to author Philip Gourevitch, Belgian colonizers ruled Rwanda “as a joint venture with the Roman

6 Jacobs, Steven Leonard, Introduction of Confronting Genocide: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, ed. by Steven Leonard Jacobs (Lexington Books, 2009), p. ix

7 Des Forges, Alison, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (Human Rights Watch, 1999), p. 33

Catholic Church” 8 and “set about radically re-engineering Rwandan society along so-called ethnic lines”. 9 They achieved this by employing the Hamitic hypothesis (which was rooted in an Old Testament myth) and thus describing Tutsis as the descendants of Ham, son of Noah. Accordingly, the Tutsis were considered as part of the Caucasian race, which immigrated to Rwanda and helped the racially inferior natives (Hutus) progress by governing them. Using the Hamitic hypothesis, missionaries regarded the Hutu as simple and less intelligent people, and favored the Tutsi because they were “Hamitic, more closely related to Europeans and naturally more intelligent.” 10 Consequently, the discriminating ethnic identities stimulated rising tensions between the two groups and allowed the génocida ires to exploit ‘othering’, a form of genocide justification. Researcher Kate E. Temoney describes the term ‘othering’ (which is originally rooted in Hegel’s philosophy) as “styling the target group as an essentialist enemy and radically different from the perpetrator group”. 11 In Rwanda, it is evident that the genocide propagandists perpetuated the discriminatory ethnic identities to garner support for their campaign. For instance, Hutu propagandists “equated the Hutu-Tutsi difference with the fundamental difference between male and female”, 12 as well as stressed that Tutsis were foreign to the region and had stolen Rwanda from its rightful occupants. 13 Thus, the rigid ethnic identities of Rwandans which the Church enforced subsequently aided Hutu extremists in justifying the genocide against the Tutsis.

Along with essentializing Rwandan ethnicities, the Catholic Church aided in morally sanctioning the genocide through its failure to denounce Hutu propaganda. This was especially problematic, as Hutu extremists invoked

8 Gourevitch, Philip, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families (Picador, 1998), p. 56

9 Ibid.

10 Longman, Timothy, ‘Church Politics and The Genocide in Rwanda’, Journal of Religion in Africa, Vol. 31 (2001), 163-186 (168)

11 Temoney, Kate E., ‘Religion and Genocide Nexuses: Bosnia as Case Study’, Religions, Vol. 8, (2017), 112(4)

12 Des Forges, Alison, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (Human Rights Watch, 1999), p. 86

13 Ibid.

religious language in justifying the anti-Tutsi campaign. The use of religious narratives by the propagandists in Rwanda is not a new occurrence - they have been historically employed by genocide architects to portray acts of mass slaughter as morally permissible and sanctioned by God. Allusion to religious texts used by propagandists serves as a powerful tool to promote fear and hatred towards the enemy group, thus presenting its extermination as morally permissible. For instance, Hitler “referred continually to a providential, active deity”14 and portrayed racial purity as the ultimate will of God, urging fellow Germans “to put an end to the constant and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created.”15 Similarly, in Rwanda, religious alibi was used to incite genocide, as scholars maintain that the Hutu “propagandists used religion and the church to validate their teachings.”16 The genocide organizers situated “the extermination of Tutsi within recognizable religious narratives and rhetoric […] that conscripts divine approval and portrays the genocide as being of ontological proportions”.17 Indeed, there is abundant evidence of Hutu propagandists communicating their ideas in religious language, referring to Bible verses and even declaring that the genocidal campaign was met with God’s support. For instance, Théodore Sindikubwabo, interim President of Rwanda during the genocide, not only insulted those who were not “working” (euphemism for killing Tutsis),18 but “finished a speech by assuring his listeners that God would help them in confronting the ‘enemy’”.19 Another mouthpiece of the Hutu extremists, Kantano Habimana, presenter on RTLM (Rwandan radio station which endorsed the genocide), declared that the Tutsis were rejected by God: “Even God himself has dropped them.”20 In addition, biblical proverbs were used to encourage

14 Steigmann-Gall, Richard, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 26

15 Ibid.

16 Des Forges, Alison, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (Human Rights Watch, 1999), p. 85

17 Temoney, Kate E. ‘The 1994 Rwandan Genocide: The Religion/Genocide Nexus, Sexual Violence, and the Future of Genocide Studies’, Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, Vol. 10, 3-24 (11)

18 Des Forges, Alison, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (Human Rights Watch, 1999), p. 692

19 Ibid., p. 357

20 Ibid.

violence against Tutsis: génocidaire Léon Mugesera was prone to citing the Bible and even announced that the MRND21 had a new version of the Biblical adage to turn the other cheek: “If you are struck once on one cheek, you should strike back twice...”22 Evidently, the religious rhetoric and biblical appeals were effective in making the genocide seem justifiable to the general public, as Des Forges points out: “In a country where 90 percent of the people called themselves Christian and 62 percent were Catholic, these references to religion helped make the teachings of fear and hate more acceptable.”23

The Church of Rwanda, however, failed to expose the Hutu propaganda and issue a firm condemnation of the genocidal campaign, leaving the way “for officials, politicians, and propagandists to assert that the slaughter actually met with God’s favor”.24

While some suggest that the Church in Rwanda had merely a passive role in the genocide, stating that church buildings were used as killing sites (“more Rwandese citizens died in churches and parishes than anywhere else”),25 in reality, the members of the Catholic Church were actively involved in the genocide. Political scientist and researcher Timothy Longman notably argues that the Christian churches were far from passive bystanders and provided “essential support for the slaughter.”26 According to Longman, not only was the Church actively involved in ethnic politics of Rwanda, but the prominent members of the Catholic laity also participated in planning and carrying out the massacres. As he puts it, “the organizers of death squads in local communities included not only prominent church lay leaders but sometimes priests, pastors, Catholic brothers, catechists, and other church employees.”27 Admittedly, there were several instances of priests aiding the Hutu extremists or becoming génocidaires themselves. Examples of this

21 National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development - the ruling party of Rwanda under President Habyarimana

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid., p. 85

24 Des Forges, Alison, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (Human Rights Watch, 1999), p. 357

25 African Rights, Rwanda: Death, Despair, and Defiance (1995), p. 865

26 Longman, Timothy, ‘Church Politics and The Genocide in Rwanda’, Journal of Religion in Africa, Vol. 31 (2001), 163-186 (167)

27 Ibid.

include the criminal cases of Hutu priests Athanase Seromba and Wenceslas Munyeshyaka. Father Seromba was convicted for ordering his church to be demolished while 2000 Tutsis sought refuge there,28 whereas Father Munyeshyaka was charged with the crimes of rape, assisting the killings of Tutsis at his church and delivering Tutsis to the genocidal militias.29 The involvement of Church members in the massacres was effective in normalizing the violence. As leading social figures in Rwandan society, the Catholic lay leaders provided credibility for the attacks against Tutsis by participating in them. Mob attacks themselves were a significant tool to rationalize the genocide and ensure popular participation in it, as researcher Charles Mironko suggests. He argues that social mechanisms played a significant role in justifying the extermination of the Tutsis by invoking the term igitero (mob attack), which “points to a form of social and political organization that […] facilitated the attacks on Tutsi.”30 Taking into account that most génocidaires killed through participation in the group attacks (igitero), as argued by Mironko, the participation of the Catholic laity in such mobs gave them credibility and thus made such attacks more acceptable in turn.

Even more impactful in sanctioning the genocide was the Rwandan Church’s lacking public response towards the mass murder of the Tutsis. In the beginning stages of the genocide, four days after the plane crash of President Habyarimana, the Catholic bishops released an announcement promising their “support to the new government.”31 They requested all Rwandans to “respond favorably to calls” from the new authorities and to help them realize their goals, which included the empty promise of return to peace and security.32 While the bishops criticized violent ‘troublemakers’ in their announcement, the request to conform to the new regime was troubling.

28 Lacey, Mark, ‘Rwandan Priest Sentenced to 15 Years for Allowing Deaths of Tutsi in Church’ (The New York Times, 2006)

29 Hammer, Joshua, ‘Blood on the Altar’ (Newsweek, 1995)

30 Mironko, Charles, ’Igitero: Means and Motive in the Rwandan Genocide’, Journal of Genocide Research, Vol.6 (2004), 47-60 (53)

31 Des Forges, Alison, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (Human Rights Watch, 1999), pp. 355-356

32 Ibid.

Coupled with the long-standing church practice of preaching obedience to authorities, it normalized carrying out the orders to kill and torture Tutsis. Furthermore, the close relationship the Church had with the state hindered it from taking a firm stand against the genocide: “churches failed to oppose ethnic discrimination and violence or even to condemn periodic massacres of Tutsis because of the close relationship between religious authority and political power.”33 Consequently, there was a lack of a unified response from the Church. Some clerical leaders spoke out in support for the genocidal campaign. For instance, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Ruhengeri, Phocas Nikwigize, justified the genocide on the grounds that there was a civil war, saying: “The Tutsi were collaborators, friends of the enemy, they were in contact with the [RPF] rebels. They should be destroyed.”34 However, most priests and bishops did not take a firm stand on the genocide, choosing to be silent instead, while only few spoke out against it. Des Forges provides an accurate summary for the situation, remarking: “With the hierarchy slow to take a clear stand against the genocide, many local clergy, both Catholic and Protestant, gave tacit approval to the slaughter.”35 Considering that 90% of the Rwandan population was Christian at the time of the 1994 genocide, during that period, the Catholic Church held high social influence over the Rwandan population. Accordingly, the involvement of Church members in the massacres, as well as the silence of Catholic authorities about the ongoing slaughter effectively rationalized the violence against the Tutsis. The extent to which the genocidal violence was normalized is seen in the following findings of Longman:

“the fact that death squads attended mass before going out to kill or that killers paused during the massacres to pray at the altar suggests that people felt their work was consistent with church teachings.” 36

33 Amstutz, Mark, ‘Is Reconciliation Possible After Genocide?: The Case of Rwanda’, Journal of Church and State, Vol. 48 (2006), 541-565 (561)

34 Mironko, Charles, ’Igitero: Means and Motive in the Rwandan Genocide’, Journal of Genocide Research, Vol.6 (2004), 47-60 (51)

35 Des Forges, Alison, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (Human Rights Watch, 1999), p. 375

36 Longman, Timothy, ‘Church Politics and The Genocide in Rwanda’, Journal of Religion in Africa, Vol. 31 (2001), 163-186 (167)

Thus, through this normalization of violence against the Tutsis, a wider participation in the massacres was ensured. The common view that slaughtering the Tutsis was in accord with the Church teachings facilitated the participation of Rwandans in the genocide, providing justification to those who were previously opposed the genocide due to religious beliefs.

In conclusion, although the role of the Catholic Church in Rwandan genocide is often overlooked, it is evident that the Church was instrumental in providing moral sanctioning for the mass slaughter. Correspondingly, such authorization ensured a more popular participation in the massacres against the Tutsis. More importantly, the investigation of the religion-genocide nexus in Rwanda offers insight into the concept of genocide. It reveals one of its universal characteristics – the forging of identities. As seen in the Rwandan case study, church and religion were complicit in shaping the false and discriminatory identities of Hutus and Tutsis, which became part of the genocide’s underpinnings. Furthermore, with the Catholic Church participating in the reconciliation process in today’s Rwanda, 37 further research on the Church’s involvement in the 1994 genocide is vital. Not only will it allow the Catholic Church to admit its past wrongdoings and regain the Rwandans’ trust, but it is necessary to avert further misuse of religion in justifying genocide.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

African Rights. Rwanda: Death, Despair, and Defiance (1995)

Amstutz, Mark. ‘Is Reconciliation Possible After Genocide?: The Case of Rwanda’, Journal of Church and State, Vol. 48 (2006), 541-565

Carney, JJ. ‘A Generation After Genocide: Catholic Reconciliation in Rwanda’, Theological Studies, Vol. 76-4 (2015), 785–812

Des Forges, Alison. Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (Human Rights Watch, 1999)

37 J.J. Carney provides valuable insight into Catholic reconciliation initiatives in modern Rwanda in his article ‘A Generation After Genocide: Catholic Reconciliation in Rwanda’, Theological Studies, Vol. 76-4 (2015), 785–812

Gourevitch, Philip. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families (Publisher, 1998)

Hammer, Joshua. ‘Blood on the Altar’ (Newsweek, 1995)

Jacobs, Steven Leonard. Confronting Genocide: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, ed. by Steven Leonard Jacobs (Lexington Books, 2009)

Kanz Matt. ‘Vatican Accuses Rwandans of Defaming the Church’ (National Catholic Reporter, June 4, 1999)

Kantz Matt. ‘Vatican Defends Priest Accused of Genocide’ (National Catholic Reporter, December 10, 1999)

Lacey, Mark. ‘Rwandan Priest Sentenced to 15 Years for Allowing Deaths of Tutsi in Church’ (The New York Times, 2006)

Longman, Timothy. ‘Church Politics and The Genocide in Rwanda’, Journal of Religion in Africa, Vol. 31 (2001)

Mironko, Charles. ’Igitero: Means and Motive in the Rwandan Genocide’, Journal of Genocide Research, Vol.6 (2004), 47-60

Ndahiro, Tom. ‘Genocide and the Role of the Church in Rwanda’ (Pambazuka News, April 14, 2005)

Temoney, Kate E. ‘Religion and Genocide Nexuses: Bosnia as Case Study’, Religions, Vol. 8, (2017), 112(4)

Temoney, Kate E. ‘The 1994 Rwandan Genocide: The Religion/Genocide Nexus, Sexual Violence, and the Future of Genocide Studies’, Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, Vol. 10, 3-24 (11)

Steigmann-Gall, Richard. The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2003)

Masculinity in Advertising: Gillette’s Use of the #MeToo Movement to Transform an Aging Brand Identity

KUNAL GAUTAM SATPUTE

AY 2020-2021

Advertisers use our aspirations, fears and tendencies to create an absolute need for a brand. Gillette, the market leader in shaving supplies, released an advertisement in 2019 titled “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be” that takes a radical approach to advertising that advances this mechanism. In approximately two minutes Gillette tells men, 60 to 70 per cent of its users (Dreyfuss), that “something has changed, and there will be no going back” (We Believe: The Best Men Can Be, 00:38-00:45). The ad asks men to question their masculinity through its portrayal of men intervening and disrupting acts of toxic masculinity. Upon its release in Janua ry of 2019, Gillette’s message went viral. The two-minute clip polarized audiences, recording 1.1 million dislikes to 620 thousand likes in its first week (King). Proponents supported Gillette’s calls for men to hold other men accountable. Despite the ad’s depiction of men disrupting acts of bullying and harassment, critics felt that Gillette typecast all men as perpetrators of these reprehensible acts by hijacking a societal movement for corporate benefit (Dreyfuss).

In order to truly understand the messaging of Gillette’s 2019 advertisement, we must develop an understanding of Gillette’s history. The “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be” advertisement was developed in contrast to Gillette’s highly successful 1989 campaign titled “The Best a Man Can Get”. The 1989 advertisement built an aura of pride around men expressing hegemonic masculinity. The ad’s visuals feature successful executives, athletes, celebrations of brotherhood, heterosexual relationships and father-son bonding. The soundtrack reaffirms the feelgood nature of performing hegemonic masculinity. The men featured

in the advertisement are told they look good and they have come very far, but it is Gillette who knows how to truly make the most of who they are. This messaging tells the men in the advertisement, and by effect the viewers, that they are superior when expressing these traits and that they are only worthy of Gillette when they do the same. In its 1989 ad, Gillette associates itself with men performing stereotypically male gender roles. It is this very brand identity that Gillette seeks to redefine through its 2019 advertisement.

The “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be” advertisement of 2019 begins with shots of different men staring at themselves in bathroom mirrors with expressions of contemplation and uncertainty. Non-diegetic snippets of news presenters saying, “bullying, the #MeToo movement, sexual harassment and toxic masculinity” (We Believe: The Best Men Can Be, 00:04-00:06) gives reason to these expressions. Here the narrator asks, “Is this the best a man can get?” (We Believe: The Best Men Can Be, 00:07). The visuals feature a classic Gillette ad of a clean-shaved man being kissed on the cheek by a woman next to Gillette branding. This image is projected onto a screen where it is abruptly torn by a group of bullies chasing a lone boy, symbolically ripping up the Gillette of the past. The ad’s climax occurs when a fight among two boys is shrugged off by on-looking fathers who repeat “boys will be boys” in unison. The shot then pans to a neverending line of fathers chanting “boys will be boys” in a repeated, tired tone. This chorus is interrupted by the background music getting louder among the voices of media reporters speaking about developments in the #MeToo movement, while the same narrator reiterates that times have changed and the music climaxes. This begins the solution part of this advertisement. We see situations of men holding other men accountable for acts as Gillette endorses intervention as a solution. This is reinforced by the narrator, who calls on the men of today to set better examples for the men of tomorrow while detailing Gillette’s corporate efforts to do the same through community outreach. The “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be” ad’s narrative is indicative of Gillette’s solidarity against toxic masculinity and allegiance with the #MeToo movement.

Having established Gillette’ position as a market leader, we naturally wonder why Gillette leverages a brand identity that has been carefully cultivated for thirty years. Well, despite holding hegemony over the market, their market share has been consistently declining since 2010 and they have lost 16% of the market share between 2010 and 2018 (Lucas). This trend has come with the rise of conscious consumerism, the practice of shaping consuming practices to have a positive economic, environmental or social impact. In 2018, Edelman, a notable consultancy firm, confirmed this rise of conscious consumerism by reporting that 59% of American consumers will purchase or boycott a brand because of its position on a social issue (10). Though he was writing in the 20th century, Raymond Williams’ classic argument sheds light on the modern emergence of conscious consumerism. In “Advertising: The Magic System”, Williams observes that the consumption of a product alone is never enough; the product one consumes must be validated by a magical system of inducements and satisfactions (335). Williams argues that “If we were sensibly materialist, in the part of our living in which we use things, we should find most advertising of an insane irrelevance” (335). Our capitalism is distorted because we associate utility with the societal validation that arises from the ability to consume. Through Edelman’s report of the American population, we see increasing evidence that contemporary social validation now comes from the ethics associated with the producer and the product. Gillette’s razors are not validated solely by their quality or cost but also the ideologies that Gillette embodies (9). Through the “We Believe: The Best A Man Can Be,” we see Gillette taking an active social stance against toxic masculinity. Given our understanding of the brand’s historic representation of masculinity, how is Gillette is able to use the #MeToo movement to recreate its brand identity as a leader against the very toxic masculinity it historically disseminated? As this essay will show, Gillette uses its commentary on contemporary fatherhood as a vehicle to recreate its brand identity as a leader against this very toxic masculinity it historically disseminated and by effect associate the brand with #MeToo.

The “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be” advertisement brought awareness to the concept of toxic masculinity through its depiction of bullying,

harassment and assault. The concept of toxic masculinity is best understood within Raewyn Connell’s social theory of gender and her definition of hegemonic masculinity. Connell explains that hegemonic masculinity is the dominant notion of masculinity in a particular historical context. Its traits are defined contextually, concerning contextually subordinated masculinities and female identities (830). Psychiatrist Terry Kupers extends this idea by specifying that, “the term toxic masculinity is useful in discussions about gender and forms of masculinity because it delineates those aspects of hegemonic masculinity that are socially Destructive… and those that are culturally accepted and valued” (716). Kupers’ research explicates that traits of toxic masculinity (like ruthless competition, a lack of expressing emotion, devaluation of women, and homophobia) are a subset of the traits that form the identity of hegemonic masculinity (716). All traits of toxic masculinity are traits of hegemonic masculinity, but not vice versa. By combining Connell and Kupers’ work, we see that these two terms are related but not interchangeable. As Gillette does, it is important to observe this distinction when commentating on these topics.

Gillette’s 2019 advertisement critiques the socially destructive traits of hegemonic masculinity using the medium of fatherhood. It uses fathers and men of fathering ages to illustrate toxic behaviours such as harassment, assault, and normalising inter-male violence through parroting the excuse “boys will be boys”. As audience members of both ads, we see sweeping change in the depictions of fathers between the 1989 and 2019 ads. These portrayals are representative of Gillette’s perspective on masculinity. In the 1989 advertisement, fathers are shown to be actively involved in their sons’ lives. For example, fathers are shown teaching sons to shave, buying them their first car, or participating in their weddings. The 1989 advertisement portrays an emotional connection between a father and his son that the 2019 ad’s narrative excludes. In doing so, Gillette illustrates its awareness that the state of men is a reflection of the state of contemporary fatherhood. This idea is a central theme of Dr. Carol Harrington’s paper titled “Men and Masculinities - What is ‘toxic masculinity’ and why does it matter?” published in 2020. Harrington argues that “Men who lack

adequate fathering pursue unrealistic cultural images of masculinity and feel a constant need to prove their manhood” (3). Harrington argues that men who lack engagement with fathers are likely to pursue unrealistic portrayals of masculinity that are depicted in mass media. Within the context of Gillette’s narrative, Harrington reaffirms that the state of fatherhood shapes how men express masculinity in society (3). Hence, Gillette’s critique of toxic masculinity is also extended to a critique of fatherhood. It is this critical stance that allows Gillette to distance itself from toxic masculinity.

To present its critical outlook towards toxic masculinity, Gillette uses guilt advertising by juxtaposing imagery of good and bad fatherhood. According to Jack Solomon, guilt advertising is a strategy where a produc t exploits desires to maximise sales. In “Masters of Desires” (1988), Solomon explains that “guilt ads characteristically work by creative narrative situations in which someone is ‘accused’ of some social ‘transgressions’, pronounced guilty and then offered the sponsor’s product as a means of returning innocence” (168). An ad using this strategy manufactures notions of guilt and then presents its product as a route to innocence. In Gillette’s case, the transgression is performing toxic masculinity, as in line with #MeToo. However, Gillette furthers this simple mechanism of accusing a target audience of a transgression. Instead, Gillette juxtaposes imagery of bad fatherhood with images of good fatherhood, which Gillette represents. This model of guilt advertising transforms the mechanism Solomon defines. The imagery of bad fatherhood, such as the chorus of ‘boys will be boys’, and toxic behaviours, such as trivialising sexual assault, accuses the male audience of perpetuating toxic masculinity. Here, Gillette’s insertion of imagery of “good” fatherhood, such as the father who breaks up the chorus of “the boys will be boys” excuse, creates guilt as men are shown what they should be. Gillette puts men on notice by doing this. Men could be acting in the manner of the “good father”, but they are not; instead they are furthering societally destructive traits. The advertisement also reforms the “return to innocence” element of Solomon’s model. Gillette calls on men to be better versions of themselves and asks them to set good examples as fathers because the children of today are the men of tomorrow. This

sentiment is a reflection of Dr Harrington’s research, where she explains that the state of fatherhood shapes how men express masculinity in society (3). Gillette uses this sentiment to associate itself with the solution by promoting it, enabling its brand to be seen as a channel to demonstrate one’s virtue. The brand does not allude to the idea that the use of Gillette returns the consumer to innocence or virtuousness. The company acknowledges that toxic masculinity is a deeply entrenched societal issue, but signals that it is taking a stance. This new stance allows Gillette to appeal to a new era of conscious consumers at the cost of its historic brand identity.

Gillette’s critique of the toxic aspects of hegemonic masculinity risks distancing male consumers who may feel abandoned by this new brand identity. To negate the manifestation of this sentiment, Gillette presents the new brand as one that men seek to emulate and not oppose by adapting their classic “The Best A Man Can Get” slogan of 1989. Within its 2019 advertisement, Gillette adapts its classic slogan to create the “We Believe: The Best A Man Can Be” slogan. This move establishes a stream of continuity amidst a large change in brand identity, by a seemingly innocent replacement of “can get” to “can be” and the addition of “we believe”. However small the change seems, it has huge semantic implications. In “The Best A Man Can Get” slogan, we see a duality of meaning. Gillette tells men they are the best a man could be, while simultaneously alluding to the idea that their razors are the best a man could possess. This slogan does not put an onus on the user to be better, it affirms that the audience is already the best, thus they deserve the best of Gillette’s razors. In contrast, the 2019 slogan tells men they are sub-optimal right now, but they can be better. Within the “We Believe: The Best A Man Can Be” slogan, we see Gillette telling men they can be better, a departure from 1989 where men are celebrated for already being the best. The addition of “We Believe” not only tells men they can be better, but it also implies that Gillette is superior to them because it identifies the scope for their improvement. From reinforcing the association that the best of men deserve the best of razors, Gillette now insinuates that men must make themselves worthy of using its razor. By doing so, they propel themselves into a position of

moral superiority within the product-consumer dynamic, and in turn, something men can aspire to emulate. However, this only draws the ire of male consumers. We see this attested by the response the ad recorded 1.1 million dislikes to 620 thousand likes within a week of airing. Although we cannot confirm how many of these expressions were male, given Gillette’s 60-70% male user base, we can extrapolate that a large amount of these respondents may be male given their relationship with the brand. From a historic perspective, we see that these consumers have been reprimanded by Gillette for performing traits Gillette conditioned them to perform. The hypocritical nature of Gillette’s position festers feelings of being cheated among male consumers, a co-conspirator becomes one that condescends. Consequently, we see that Gillette’s attempt to make the brand aspirational to men is largely unsuccessful, as they evoke their ire for disassociating with the image they cultivated over thirty years.

Gillette’s “We Believe: The Best A Man Can Be” advertisement has been, since its release, the center of dialogue within advertising circles. Through the representation of a socially progressive stance, the advertisement seeks to manipulate Gillette’s brand identity of the past into one that is accepted by the culture of conscious consumerism. The ad is a testament to this culture, and it reaffirms that our capitalism is distorted because we seek utility in the social validation the consumption of a product accords. Gillette is a victim of this culture, a falling market share within a public company demands a reworked outlook to brand representation. Gillette uses its commentary on contemporary fatherhood as a vehicle to repurpose its phased-out brand identity into one that supports #MeToo. The use of fatherhood is seen in a developed version of Jack Solomon’s mec hanism of guilt advertising. This enables Gillette to ally itself with good fatherhood and disassociate itself with toxic masculinity. In its condemnation of toxic masculinity Gillette distances its male consumers despite its efforts to establish continuity through adapting its iconic slogan of 1989. This attempt fails to define the brand as one men seek to emulate, instead a wave of anger is directed to the advertisement through online channels. However, the advertisement is in the present a testament to Gillette’s commitment to eradicating toxic masculinity. The ‘We Believe: The Best

A Man Can Be’ advertisement remembers the brand’s past, displays its present and alludes to its future.

WORKS CITED

Connell, R. W., and James W. Messerschmidt. “Hegemonic Masculinity.” Gender & Society, vol. 19, no. 6, 2005, pp. 829–859., doi:10.1177/0891243205278639.

Dreyfuss, Emily. “Gillette’s Ad Proves the Definition of a Good Man Has Changed2.” Wired, Conde Nast, 2019, www.wired.com/story/gillette-webelieve-ad-men-backlash/.

Harrington, Carol. “What Is ‘Toxic Masculinity’ and Why Does It Matter?” Men and Masculinities, July 2020, doi:10.1177/1097184X20943254.

King, Michelle. “Gillette Responds To Controversial Advert Challenging Toxic Masculinity.” Forbes, 29 Jan. 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/ michelleking/2019/01/20/gillette-responds-to-controversial-advertchallenging-toxic-masculinity/?sh=7c2f96235bb7.

Knudsen, Gry Høngsmark, and Lars Pynt Andersen. “Changing Masculinity, One Ad at a Time.” Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, vol. 15, no. 2, 2020, pp. 63–78., doi:10.16997/wpcc.382.

Kupers, Terry A. “Toxic Masculinity as a Barrier to Mental Health Treatment in Prison.” Journal of Clinical Psychology, vol. 61, no. 6, 2005, pp. 713–724., doi:10.1002/jclp.20105.

Lucas, Amelia. “Procter & Gamble Writes down Gillette Business but Remains Confident in Its Future.” CNBC, 30 July 2019, www.cnbc.com/2019/07/30/ procter-gamble-writes-down-gillette-business-but-remains-confident-inits-future.html.

Solomon, Jack. Signs Of Our Time: Semiotics, The Hidden Messages Of Environments, Objects, And Cultural Images. Tarcher, 1988, pp. 160-171.

Tropiano, J, editor. 2018, Edelman Earned Brand Global Report,

www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2018-10/2018_Edelman_ Earned_Brand_Global_Report.pdf.

Williams, Raymond. “Advertising: the Magic System.” Advertising & Society Review, vol. 1 no. 1, 2000. doi:10.1353/asr.2000.0016.

“We Believe: The Best Men Can Be by Gillette”, YouTube, 14 Jan. 2019, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=koPmuEyP3a0&ab_channel=Gillette

Contextualism through the Eyes of Jean Nouvel: the Louvre Abu Dhabi

MARTA PIENKOSZ AY 2020-2021

‘Rain of light’ - the mesmerizing impression of the Louvre Abu Dhabi - is how Luc Boegly and Sergio Garcia describe their capture of the museum in the Archdaily weblog. A massive steel dome with thousands of stars seems to protect a snow-white collection of small buildings, each of which hides precious works of art. One could find harmony and impeccability in this photograph if it were not for the irregular marks of light. Two Emirati women, pictured in the foreground, admire the phenomenon while a press conference takes place in the distance. Only when one frees himself from

the delight of the ‘rain of light’, the unimaginable scale of the project can be noticed. The depicted museum was founded on an unprecedented partnership between France and the UAE to nurture a bold vision of Abu Dhabi’s cultural progress in 2007. It was accompanied by the prospect of creating a universal museum for future generations on the border of

three continents. Modeled after the Bilbao effect, the founders wanted to create a 21st century work of architecture that would transform the underdeveloped Saadiyat Island into a bustling cultural center. This topic, however, raises some controversy regarding the perceived continuation of the Orientalist tradition, revealed by the choice of a French architect, Jean Nouvel, to implement a modernist project, named after the most prestigious museum in Europe. Therefore, it is important to understand how contemporary collaboration and careful consideration of the cultural context can fight prejudices regarding the interpretation of the Eastern world. This essay examines Nouvel’s aspiration to create a work of art in the spirit of contextual architecture, one that by definition “descriptively captures the concern for the uniqueness of place” (Hurrt, 67). Jean Nouvel’s unconventional architectural practice which combines the principles of modernity and tradition shows that the Louvre Abu Dhabi is more than an oriental imposition.

A thorough exploration of Louvre Abu Dhabi’s dome shows how contextual landmarks inspired his practice and the foundations of his vision combining modernist elements with Arab culture. The centerpiece of Nouvel’s design, the massive steel dome, appears absurdly suspended in the air and delicately covers the ‘city-museum’ consisting of 23 galleries. The dome resembles the starry night sky and provides a magical backdrop to the white galleries emerging from different planes. The dome does not mirror the white or glass ceilings of typical galleries, but it delights the viewers with its originality. In the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s promotional documentary, created in collaboration with CNN, Nicolai Ouroussoff, professor at Columbia University, suggests that “ [the] remarkable dome [...] has echoes of the domes of the mosque or Mashrabiya screens and other Arab precedence”. In other words, the starry dome should be read as a modern interpretation of the Middle East’s most iconic landmark - the mosques. The traditional, subtly set dome, together with the characteristic spire, however, differs from the version presented by Nouvel. The project is monumental in scale, but in comparison to mosques it is minimalistic in its finish. Lavishness, gold and arabesques were replaced with prefabricated steel and concrete, typical of rough and primitive modern

architecture. The Nouvel project therefore combines local elements with modern materials, thus making an attempt to define a vision of a modern Arab building.

It is questionable, however, whether this inspiration of the mosques comes robustly from regional culture or rather embodies orientalism.

Seth Graebner, a doctor of French Literature, in his essay “The Louvre Abu Dhabi: French Universalism, Exported” suggests that while searching for Arab inspiration, Nouvel did not fully delve into the subject. While appreciating the architect’s genius, he states that “Employing a French architect to build a major monument in some sort of Arab style would seem to follow a long Orientalist tradition of French architects designing buildings [...] in what they saw as Arab styles” (191). Simply put, Graebner points out that the buildings erected in former French colonies drew a superficial inspiration from the Western perception of the East, which was often distorted from ignorance. Although the UAE was never colonized by France, Graebner criticizes commissioning Nouvel to build a museum that was to promote cultural development and become an icon of Abu Dhabi. Graebner further illustrates the merely superficial symbolism of the dome by adding that “at this historical distance from [...] the dynasties that built some of the most famous domes in the Muslim world, Europeans are not the only ones to stereotype ‘Arab’ Architecture” (191). To put it another way, Graebner identifies orientalism as still present and unconsciously influencing artistic intentions. It can be inferred that the contextual inspiration of the mosque dome is questionable due to its superficiality, which may have its roots in orientalist prejudices.

Analyzing Nouvel’s design using one of the defining factors of contextualism, “a concern for the uniqueness of a place”, however, showcases its special characteristics and conscious inspiration by the region (Hurrt, 67). In the interview for Inside the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Hala Warde, an architect at Ateliers Jean Nouvel, identifies two thi ngs that are “completely the essence of the Arab architecture which is the geometry and the light.” Nouvel’s interest in both is obvious even at first glance. Eight layers of various geometric figures, superimposed systematically,

refract the light thus introducing a certain degree of randomness. The tangle on the top of the dome seems to be contrasting with the regularity of the polished rectangles specked with radiating shapes. Exceptionally intense light and consistent weather all year round grant the building its regional character. This delightful effect of scattering and penetrating light into the interior would not be possible in any of the western capitals, hence the design addresses the aforementioned ‘concern for the uniqueness of the place.’ Graebner points out that the “web-patterned dome allows the sun to filter through, reminiscent of rays passing through date palm fronds in an oasis […] in the best tradition of great Arabian architecture” (191). He suggests that while observing ‘The Rain of Light’ one can sense a familiar shadow, soothing on hot days. The diffused light on the floor thus evokes pleasant associations. The parallels between the two effects, however, are not apparent for first-time travelers. Thus, the idea that only some can notice and experience this sensation suggests a thorough contextual inspiration, but a deviation from the orientalist stream. The Islamic influence deeply present in this project sets the Louvre apart from other glazed skyscrapers in Abu Dhabi. Contextualism, therefore, grants this building a truly Arabic character, which, combined with modern materials, becomes the foundation of the newly emerging architectural style - modern Arab architecture.

The coexistence of the Louvre with the emerging urban fabric of Saadiyat Island indicates a further deviation from the universal modernist trend towards a more regionally embedded one. The location of Saadiyat Island next to the waters of the Persian Gulf was fully taken advantage of to make the Louvre look as if it was drifting on the surface of the water. On the right side of Luc Boegly’s and Sergio Grazia’s photograph one can notice the light refracting from the water surface (Figure 1, p.1). After all, what could be more representative of this region than the waters of the Persian Gulf meandering in the narrow channels between galleries? It can be said that Nouvel had the opportunity to define the style of the urban fabric, as the Saadiyat Island was underdeveloped and the architectural context itself was merely nascent at the time of his project’s construction. Although Nouvel did not have to adapt to the distinctive style of any buildings,

his design should stimulate developments in proximity. However, seeing how few, if any, investments have been made in the immediate vicinity of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the contextualism of the Nouvel’s project can be questioned. In the essay “The Open City’’, Richard Sennett criticizes the state of modern urban design and introduces the concept of ‘the Open City’ as a solution to the current decline in vitality of urban imagination. One of the characteristics of such a city is the incompleteness of form which “extends to the very context of buildings themselves” (Sennett, 3). That is to say, juxtaposed buildings acquire a different meaning, thus increasing a collective urban value. Sennett further stresses the importance of a coexistence in the neighborhood by adding that “all great works of architecture […] stimulate building around themselves” (3). The incompleteness of the form eases an urban expansion thereby boosting the growth of the community. This is one of the central ideas of modern architecture that requires a simplicity of form and eventually leads to the further development of cities. One can imagine the challenge posed by this breathtaking dome for priceless works of art. It is almost as if the museum was the exhibit itself. In the search for Islamic inspiration, Nouvel overlooked the basic principles of modern design. Here the form is definitely not incomplete, but deeply geographically entrenched. Nouvel therefore chooses unique cultural characteristics at the expense of modernist ideals, thus further opposing orientalism in his design.

The analysis of curatorial practice and the embodiment of the universal vision of the museum further enriches the context of the Louvre in Abu Dhabi. It was designed in such a way as to combine collections of artworks from different geographical regions and cultural origins into one unified space. The exhibitions do not solely present Middle Eastern or European culture, but rather juxtapose them in a striking way with artworks from other continents. The steel dome, pictured by Luc Boegly and Sergio Grazia, sits on top of low-lying buildings reminiscent of Arab settlements (Figure 1, p.1). Their photograph, however, depicts a vastness of empty space, uncommon for the characteristic labyrinth of narrow alleys. Esra Akcan in his scholarly article, “Is a Global History of Architecture Displayable? A Historiographical Perspective on the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale

and Louvre Abu Dhabi” written for the MIT Press Journal ArtMargin, draws parallels between the symbolic meaning of the dome and universalistic vision. He states that “The dome, a familiar metaphor of universality, sits abruptly atop the pavilions, creating random meeting points, random shadows, and random spaces underneath” (91). In other words, the dome unites all these fragmented galleries arranged chronologically into one story about the modern world. More metaphorically, just as the dome connects galleries, a museum could stimulate random encounters of cultures, races, and beliefs of people united by a common experience. This informal mixing of people creates new connections between individuals from different backgrounds, thus realizing a universal vision. It can even be said that instead of fitting in with Sennett’s vision of an ‘open city’, Nouvel created one within the inclusive and stimulating environment of his design. Nouvel, drawing additional inspiration from mosques, alleys and the familiar shadow of the oasis, wanted to combine traditional elements with the openness and universalist attitude of the 21st century UAE. In doing so, he created an equilibrium between the two aspects that the Emiratis value the most, respect for culture and tradition and the stimulation of diversity unmatched in any previous architectural projects.

Akcan, however, points to some limitations of this global metaphor, stating that it “is more reminiscent of an 18th-century universalist vision, which covers up existing differences by prioritizing its own preconceptions, than of a 21st-century cosmopolitan vision, constructed inductively from below through a carefully considered study of the differences and points of contact between various parts of the world” (91). Simply put, the dome covering the smaller galleries is a very superficial interpretation of universalism. The fragmentation of the building and its unification by an element with such strong metaphorical connotations alludes to a stereotypical concept of covering the differences and gaps. Akcan suggests that the Nouvel’s design does not represent the dialogue between separated cultures, each represented by a small cubic space, but rather connects them in the name of the abstract idea of universalism. It can be inferred that although the design symbolizes a certain universalism, it does not cultivate the 21st century vision of cooperation between

cultures and nations through careful study of the points of interaction. The orientalist influence of Nouvel’s inspiration with Arab culture, discussed before, seems to also be the subject of the symbolism of the dome. The dome with the merged galleries represents what in the ignorance of the 18th century was considered a manifestation of openness and inclusion. Whether this allusion was a deliberate artistic choice or an interpretation given by the visitors is a completely new debate. There is no doubt, however, that the contextualism of such a controversial building, due to the orientalist tradition and a certain way in which Europe perceived the rest of the world, will inevitably be the subject of discussion and criticism. If Louvre Abu Dhabi was a purely modern building, derived from Chicago skyscrapers, it would not have attracted as much attention. Nouvel’’s striving to understand the contextualism of the region naturally evokes mixed emotions. Certainly, achieving a balance in the name of modern Arab architecture requires a compromise between the principles of both styles. Nevertheless, Nouvel’s project incorporates universal vision and elements of global and Islamic culture in such a spectacular way that it opposes all orientalist impositions and justifies his innovative style.

An in-depth analysis of the contextual nature of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, symbolism, the uniqueness of the place and curatorial practice, shows how important it was for this museum to be more than just a modernist frame for the collections. Louvre Abu Dhabi strongly emphasizes contextual inspirations from local culture and region and represents a universal vision of the 21st century museum. It thus brings together two contrasting thoughts of globalization and individuality and creates a welcoming place for all cultures that is deeply rooted in the traditions of Abu Dhabi. By creating a work of art in the spirit of contextual architecture, Nouvel departed from established unidentified architectural practices and proposed a new style, modern Arab architecture, that combines modern design principles with the inspiration of light, geometry and Islamic Art. The Louvre Abu Dhabi is, therefore, on the boundary of innovation and tradition rather than an oriental trend that contrasts the West with the East. Moreover, Abu Dhabi, by planning to create a cultural district on Saadiyat Island, hopes to further distort the Orientalist tradition in the

name of interregional cooperation. In recent years, it has commissioned other large architectural firms, Foster + Partners, Gehry Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects, to build mesmerizing museums that, together with the Louvre, have the potential to become icons of 21st century modern Arab architecture.

WORKS CITED

Akcan, E. “Is a Global History of Architecture Displayable? A Historiographical Perspective on the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale and Louvre Abu Dhabi.” ARTMargins, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 88–91. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1162/ ARTM_r_00105. Accessed 16 Nov. 2020.

Boegly, Luc, and Sergio Grazia. Louvre Abu Dhabi / Ateliers Jean Nouvel, Archdaily, 0AD, www.archdaily.com/883157/louvre-abu-dhabi-atelierjean-nouvel/5a1d992ab22e3895f9000065-louvre-abu-dhabi-atelier-jeannouvel-photo.

Graebner Seth. “The Louvre Abu Dhabi : French Universalism, Exported.” L’Esprit Créateur, vol. 54, no. 2, 2014, p. 186. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost. com/login.aspx?direct= true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.26378905&site=edslive.

Hurrt, Steven Richard. “Conjectures on Urban Form.” Cornel Journal of Architecture v.2, January 1982, https://issuu.com/cornellaap/docs/cja002opt/71

“Inside the Louvre Abu Dhabi- CNN Documentary.” YouTube, uploaded by Louvre Abu Dhabi, 25 Jan. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=gq4M1c4DlHk

Sennett, Richard. “The Open City.” Urban Age, November 2006. https://urbanage.lsecities.net/essays/the-open-city

In the heart of Dubai’s historic Al Bastakiya, this scene unfolds as the clock strikes 3:22 PM. A man tends to his fabric shop, immersed in his craft.

Illuminated by the sun’s warm embrace, streaming through the perforated buildings, the tapestries come alive with vibrant hues and intricate patterns. Aware of the impending arrival of curious tourists, the shopkeeper carefully affixes a price tag to a mesmerising hanging tapestry. In this corner where time seems to stand still, the intertwining threads of tradition and art create a rich cultural tapestry. This captured moment reverberates with the harmonious interplay of light, textures, and the artisan’s deft touch, evoking the very essence and soul of Al Bastakiya.

“Threads of Time” by Leen

Kharouf

The Thieves that Smile: A Feminist Analysis of Shabake Khanda

NEGAAR ROWAN AY 2020-2021

As Afghan girls, we were taught to walk only in groups, only wearing dresses we could run in. It was common knowledge that “out there” on the streets, layers of scarves and burqas could not shield us from the eyes, tongues, and hands of men. The knowledge that men could and did hurt us even inside our homes, the places we ran to from the world, became common when Sahar Gul’s undead, battered face haunted Afghanistan in 2011. Through our televisions, we watched Sahar as she was discovered under a pile of hay and animal dung, got hospitalised, and was taken in by a women’s refuge centre. We watched the trials of her perpetrators and the trail of protests and debates her case incited (TOLOnews). Eight years ago, by way of a denouement to this spectacle, we heard that Sahar Gul was learning the Persian alphabet and was passionate to champion women’s rights in the future (Bezhan and Wahidi). Since then, Sahar, once a national sensation who had “seared Afghanistan’s conscience” and “prompted a bout of national soul searching” (Graham-Harrison), has sunk into a quagmire of obscurity as she became a normal Afghan girl. Somewhere, on some street, she is walking only in groups, only wearing dresses she can run in. Now that she experiences the same level of insecurity, objectification, condescension, harassment, abuse, and prejudice as other Afghan girls, her plight does not sear anyone’s conscience, nor does it prompt any soul searching.

Afghan TV networks have had a multifaceted role in contouring the treatment of women through condemning, condoning, and naturalising actions and attitudes. On the one hand, they gave a face and a voice to the oppression of women and allowed for the pain of Sahar Gul, and later those of Farkhunda and Khatera, to ripple through the fabric of Afghan society. On the other hand, those same TV networks routinely ridiculed Sahar and

millions of other girls and women as incompetent, shallow, dim-witted, petty, and unruly creatures who deserve, or even require, the thunder of a masculine voice or strike of a sturdy fist. They air shows like Takkan, Khanda Haye Girya Dar, and Shabake Khanda, in which men cross-dress and caricature how they perceive women to be and behave. Every Friday, millions tune in to watch these programs and entertain themselves by jeering at women, some of whom would miss an episode only for the birth of their child (Hassan). Those who had missed the fun visit the YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram pages of these shows, each of which currently has more than a million visits per day (Social Blade). These shows are still on air, sharing the screen with bitter reports about the rise of violence against Afghan women (Cousins). Each episode is a painful reminder that Sahar’s TV-mediated shrieks of agony produced only a ripple; fleeting, faltering, and facile. Thankfully, Sahar is not subjected to spectacularly grotesque acts of violence anymore. But is she safe in a society that derides her femininity and womanhood for cheap laughs?

In this essay, I examine how such comedy shows justify and even encourage violence against Afghan women. As a case study, I analyse the portrayal of women in Shabake Khanda, a comedy show hailed as Afghanistan’s Saturday Night Live (Hassan). I consult the work of Stuart Hall, Walter Lippmann, and Richard Dyer in cultural theory to understand how the show’s adherence to and perpetuation of patriarchal stereotypes trace a border between men and women: the “norm” and the “outlier.” Borrowing the concept of “emotional habitus” from Debora Gould in social anthropology, I demonstrate how the show invites its audience to agree and empathise with an imaginary community of men, both on a conscious level and beneath it. I use primary evidence to illustrate how the show portrays women as a source of threat to men’s dominance. Afterwards, I use Sara Ahmed’s work in affect theory to analyse how vigilance against any threat to a community in whose dominance the audience is invested in, namely men, translates into a hatred for the source of the threat, namely women. I conclude by arguing that shows like Shabake Khanda condone and encourage violence against women by justifying and perpetuating the stereotypes that portray them as dangerously deviant.

In January of 2020, Shabake Khanda began its sixth season with a skit that

is an exemplar of the rigidly dichotomous view of gender that this show propagates. The scene is set on the corner of a street, where a security officer stands next to a curtain tunnel. By way of exposition, he says that the prop is a security body scanner as he shoos away someone off-screen. A self-possessed man enters the frame and greets a passerby with a calm, low-pitched voice. He maintains a good posture and politely holds his hands on his chest as he wishes his acquaintance a good day. The nameless man disappears behind the curtain tunnel and emerges from the other end with a blonde wig. He walks out with his nose and arms farcically midair before stopping and squealing as he realises that having his body scanned has emasculated him. He gets over his descent to femininity once he realises that his life is easier now, as he can ask his daddy for a husband. He flirtatiously remarks this to the security officer with a singsong-y, high-pitched voice, all the while twirling his blonde hair and licking his lips. He struts off, leaving the officer staring at his seductively swaying hips (Season 6 Episode 1, 12:2314:38). The humour of this sketch comes from the contrast between the appearance and behaviour of a typical man and that of his counterpart, the stereotypical woman.

While the show mocks both masculine and feminine traits, it does not stereotype both men and women. In “The Role of Stereotypes,” cultural theorist Richard Dyer draws a distinction between types and stereotypes. He argues that a person or a group adheres to a “type” when they are characterised by a few immediately recognisable traits (Dyer 208). Classifying people into types, like arranging objects into shelves, is how we make sense of the world (209). In this case, men and women are both given glaringly different traits that identify them. This show classifies both men and women into types. A type becomes a stereotype when the defining characteristic of a person or group is simplified, exaggerated, and fixed, and the persons or groups are reduced to them (209). In this case, while the show simplifies and exaggerates both feminine and masculine traits, only feminine traits are fixed onto women’s identities, such that women are not only defined by them, but are also reduced to them. For instance, men in Shabake Khanda have a wide range of occupations; from presidency to beggary and from artistry to accounting, in which the characters have different levels

THE THIEVES THAT SMILE: A FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF SHABAKE KHANDA

of passions and proficiency. Their plotlines are not dependent on their exertion of conventionally masculine traits. Whereas, despite the growing presence of women in various areas of Afghan society, women in Shabake Khanda are either current or aspiring housewives. Their storylines revolve around marriage and children, so much so that on multiple sketches, a palmister to whom women go to find husbands for themselves or their daughters is a recurring character (Season 6 Episodes 37, 39, 42, 43). The few working women who are depicted at all, are portrayed as disorganised and incompetent (Season 6 Episodes 8, 12). Their womanhood is crucial to their identities, limiting the scope of their narratives and characters. Shabake Khanda puts both men and women in boxes, but men’s boxes are football stadiums in comparison to women’s shoe cases.

By propagating these patriarchal stereotypes, Shabake Khanda goes beyond creating a binary between men and women in which the genders are “different but equal.” Walter Lippmann, the writer who coined the word “stereotype,” observed that patterns of stereotypes are not neutral shortcuts to an ordered reality. He insisted that stereotypes would always be “highly charged with feelings,” as they are the “fortress” of their creators’ tradition and “sense of value” (Lippmann 96). Dyer expands on Lippmann’s statement by arguing that every stereotype benefits a group by promoting the “absoluteness and certainty of [a] particular order” without acknowledging “its limitations and partiality, its relativity and changeability” (Dyer 207). He argues that stereotypes result from a group’s consensus about what members of another group are like, allowing the former to establish themselves as “the normal” and “the central,” excluding the latter as the “other, peripheral, or [the] outcast” (209). Dyer refers to the group that defines the “normal” as “the ruling group,” and argues that they strive to “fashion the whole of society according to their own world view, value system, sensibility and ideology” (211). Stereotypes, then, help those who propose and enforce them tip the power disposition in society to their favour (209). By perpetuating and reinforcing stereotypes about women, Shabake Khanda, is both a key factor in and a manifestation of the growing power imbalance between Afghan men and women. For instance, a woman tells her husband that she would prefer for him to kill himself with a brick than to

interrupt her night-time makeup routine, as she is terrified of dying while looking like “a beggar’s wife.” The husband threatens to kill her instead, and a laugh track plays (Season 6 Episode 29). The audience clearly laughs with the husband at the wife. The trend of extracting an element of femininity, simplifying it, exaggerating it, and reducing women to it to portray them as the abnormal who should be demeaned and punished, is the privilege of the all-male producing team of this show. In the show’s eyes, men and women are not equal: one belongs inside the fortress, one is exiled from it perpetually.

By propagating stereotypes that assume femininity to be a deviation from the masculine normality, Shabake Khanda invites its audience to agree and empathise with the latter. The show engages in satire, a discipline that, according to Rachel Caufield, allows and requires the performer to “attack a society for its evils” (6). The art form grants satirists a position of superiority from which they pass “intentional and focused judgement” upon members and institutions of a society. It licences the performers to “diminish and discredit” their convicts in an attempt to fix “society’s broken pieces” (8). In a setting where men define the borders of “normality” and identify those that do and should stay on the other side, men are the judge, jury, and executioner in all matters. In Shabake Khanda, women are convicted of womanhood, which, by men’s definition, is synonymous with deviancy. Portraying women as the outliers that must be judged and discredited is made easier by the show’s adherence to gender-based stereotypes. In The Spectacle of the Other, cultural theorist Stuart Hall argues that the border between the normal and the stereotyped is not one straight line, as the stereotyped is assumed to be deviant in more than one direction. He asserts that the stereotyped, e.g., women, are usually represented “through sharply opposed, polarized, binary extremes” (Hall 229). Shabake Khanda conforms to this norm by framing women as being either extremely deficient or extremely excessive in their possession and practice of key habits and characteristics. Women are, according to the show, both obtuse and dangerously conniving, both disloyal and too clingy and codependent, both too rude and too polite, both too generous and too stingy, too promiscuous and too chaste, too pompous and too shy; the list goes on. By portraying

THE THIEVES THAT SMILE: A FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF SHABAKE KHANDA

women through opposing binaries, the show ensures that a woman never escapes the trap of stereotypes. The stereotyped can try to negate their position on one extreme, only by implicitly confirming their seat on the other far end of the spectrum (Hall 231). To scorn or punish these fanatic surrogates of women, the show inserts a composed man into such scenarios almost as an embodiment of Aristotle’s ideal human; a virtuous man who treks the golden line between excess and deficiency. For instance, a woman is either portrayed as too “modest” to say “ ,” the Dari word for “pregnant,” or too “immodest” to settle for a suitor. In both cases, a man, a client and a father respectively, scorn the women (Season 6 Episodes 8, 19). By the end of an episode, the audience are implicitly invited to side with the rational man against the nonsensical woman, to join the hammer in diminishing and discrediting the broken pieces of society.

The audience can also be invested in the ascendancy of male characters in Shabake Khanda even without conscious awareness. These shows can alter the emotional temperament of their audience through the formation of what anthropologist Debora Gould calls an “emotional habitus,” a template for how and what members of a group should and do feel (27). Habitus is “a kind of disposition, an orientation, a kind of common sense, an axiomatic way of perceiving and being and acting” (31). By providing a group “with a sense of what and how to feel, with labels for their feelings,” an emotional habitus makes “the social in us” - the feelings, thoughts, and values ingrained in us by society - feel like “second nature” (33). Shabake Khanda creates an emotional habitus by staging and enacting what is already “second nature” to its creators and writers: that women are different from men and therefore, unequal to them. The show reassures its audience that women’s apparent idiocy is “common sense,” and that contempt is an appropriate emotional response to anything feminine. The show gives voice and visibility to the opaque-but-palpable feelings of superiority, and ridicule and disdain regarding women that simmer in the minds of Afghan men on both sides of the screen. As habitus operates “beneath conscious awareness” (26), the show’s audience, and arguably even its creators, are not necessarily alert to the emotions they impart to and absorb from each other. The audience can pick up and support the show’s misogyny without reading an essay about it.

The conscious and nonconscious investment of the audience in the dominance of male characters - and, by proxy, that of men as a grouptranslates to their hate for the female characters - and, by proxy, for women as a group. Shabake Khanda portrays the feminine as not just a deviation from masculinity, but also as a source of potential danger to it. Female characters who squander their money maliciously dance with joy when their husbands go bankrupt (Season 6 Episode 5). Indolent women physically beat their husbands into doing the dishes (Episode 41) and staying at home (Episode 7). Incompetent women take away jobs from competent men and mistreat their male inferiors (Episode 24). Too competent women launch a “war on culture” by speaking English on talk shows (Episode 25). Working women take over men’s restrooms, leaving men running maniacally in the hallways (Episode 40). Even assaulted women attempt to defraud men of their money by dramatising their stories (Episode 7). Framing women as a threat to the reasonable and “normal” men and masculinity justifies and entails the hate of men and the audience toward women. In The Cultural Politics of Emotions, feminist scholar Sara Ahmed argues that a “relationship of resemblance between figures” forms a group by aligning them together in opposition to those aligned by their “alike” “unlikeness” to the former (47). She argues that such groups are formed and defined when one group perceives a potential threat from an abstract source, as such an anticipation amplifies both the group’s hate against the amorphous source of the threat and the group’s love toward its members (43). Through stereotypes, Shabake Khanda forms an alliance among men against women. The show’s depiction of women as dangerous to men’s financial stability, independence, bodily autonomy, bread-winning status, etc. instigates in the audience the emotion and affect of hate toward women as a concomitant flipside of their love for men. By maintaining and defending the fortress of stereotypes, S habake Khanda not only expels women, it also wages a war on them under the pretence of self-defence.

The war of Afghan men against women has no winners, only voluntary widowers. In 2011, thirty-year-old Ghulam Sakhi bought twelve-year-old Sahar Gul for five thousand dollars from her previous owner, her brother. He took her to his house miles away, raped her as she was unconscious and

THE THIEVES THAT SMILE: A FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF SHABAKE KHANDA

forced her into prostitution. With the help of his family, Sakhi tied her in his cellar with ropes on her arms and legs, pulled out her nails, hair, and chunks of flesh with pliers, electrocuted her, inserted hot iron in her ears, and left her to starve (Bowley). Afghanistan was appalled by this “marriage,” and even now, only a mention of Sahar’s name is enough to halt conversations. The country condemned the act and wondered how one could be so vicious and cruel, all the while watching Shabake Khanda and condoning the violence that more than ninety percent of Afghan women experience (World Health Organisation). Sahar Gul, by the virtue of being a girl in Afghanistan, still faces violence. She is still humiliated and dehumanised. She walks in fear, only in groups, only wearing dresses she can run in. She is still not safe, and this time, the media is against her.

WORKS CITED

Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2013.

Bezhan, Frud, and Freba Wahidi. “Tortured Afghan Bride Defies The Odds, Embarks On New Life.” Radio Free Europe, 02 May 2012, https://www.rferl. org/a/afghanistan_child_bride_torture/24567560.html.

Caufield, Rachel. “The Influence of ‘Infoenterpropagainment:’ Exploring the Power of Political Satire as a Distinct Form of Political Humor,” Laughing Matters: Humor and American Politics in the Media Age, New York: Routledge, 2008, 3-20.

Cousins, Sophie. “A Quiet Crisis: As the Economy Fractures, Violence Soars for Afghan Women.” The New Humanitarian, 16 Dec 2020, https://www. thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2020/12/16/Afghanistan-womeneconomy-gender-based-violence.

“Detailed Statistics: Shabake Khanda.” Social Blade, https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/ UCvF0dhWBERzD6YH296cOVFw/monthly.

Dyer, Richard. “The Role of Stereotypes.” Media Studies: A Reader, 2nd Edition, Edinburgh University Press, 1999, 206-212.

Graham-Harrison, Emma. “Afghan Judges Free Three Jailed for Torture of Child Bride Sahar Gul.” The Guardian, 11 July 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/afghan-judges-freesahar-guls-torturers.

Graham-Harrison, Emma. “Sahar Gul Seared Afghanistan’s Conscience but Her Tormentors Are Free.” The Guardian, 11 July 2013,

Gould, Deborah B. Moving Politics: Emotion and Act Up’s Fight against Aids. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Print, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/sahar-gul-afghanistantormentors-free.

Hall, Stuart. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, London: Sage in association with the Open University, 1997.

Hassan, Sharif. “Live from Kabul: Afghanistan’s SNL Offers Comic Relief to WarWeary Viewers.” The Washington Post, 03 May 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/livefrom-kabul-afghanistans-snl-offers-comic-relief-to-war-wearyviewers/2018/05/02/89b6f86a-4951-11e8-8082-105a446d19b8_story.html.

Lippmann, Walter. Public Opinion. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922. “Shabake Khanda.” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvF0dhWBERzD6YH296cOVFw.

Tolo TV. “TOLOnews 28 December 2011 SAHAR GUL.” YouTube, 28 Dec. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ipxJkjHTFk.

World Health Organisation. “Addressing Violence against Women in Afghanistan.” 2015, https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/201704/WHO_ RHR_15.26_eng.pdf.

THE

It’s

not

“just a meme, bro”:

The Influence of Casteist Memes and Their Role in Creating Ideological Echo Chambers

NOBEL PRASAD RIMAL AY 2021-2022

In the summer of 2021, Rupa Sunar, a working-class Nepali journalist, was being interviewed by her potential future landlady. Sunar checked almost all of the boxes of an ideal tenant except for the fact that her last name belonged to a lower caste. Something as insignificant as a person’s last name should not deprive them of housing, but in this case, it did. The caste system is a system of social hierarchies that have fundamentally sustained severe socio-economic divisions existing in South Asian societies, and its signifier is usually someone’s last name. Sunar publicized this blatant caste-based discrimination against her to encourage action to be taken against the landlady. However, she grossly underestimated the deep-rooted casteism in Nepal, and as soon as this case became public, we could see protests calling for her to be arrested, insults on social media, and violence against other people of the same caste – the Sunars (Nepali and Pariyar). Casteist and sexist insults against Sunar were conveyed through memes being made about her and her lower caste identity. In the book The Caste Question, Anupama Rao highlights how the lower caste individual exists as a political identity under constant social scrutiny simply for challenging nationalist and colonial ideas of personhood and human rights (11). The emancipation of the lower caste identity involves various challenges, and my paper addresses one specific challenge: the spread of anti-lower-caste rhetoric through memes on social media. While memes are not the only variable influencing the rapidly increasing casteist violence in South Asia, they must not be ignored if we want to improve our understanding of the growing casteist sentiments in the South Asian subcontinent.

When memes were created about Sunar, its impacts were directly seen not only in the online sphere but also in real life. Several protests were calling for Sunar’s arrest for initiating ethnic disputes, and upper caste people publicly “vowing never to rent rooms to Dalits [lower-caste people]” (Nepali and Pariyar). Through Sunar’s case, we can see that online memes have a clear real-life impact on lower caste communities. I argue that creators of casteist memes encourage consumers of these memes to participate in the casteist meme culture within an ideological echo chamber constructed through exclusivity and ideological homophily. This process of creation and consumption of these memes exists within a system of checks and balances between creators, consumers, and the larger community. To prove this, I first explain the role of memes in the online sphere and describe how an online public differs from a real public. Second, I describe how memes affect a viewer by analyzing an example of a casteist meme and describing the subtle and hidden form of influence generated from it and its impact on caste. Third, I explain the exclusivity of the discourse surrounding caste and casteist memes, and how it constructs an echo chamber around the casteist discourse. Lastly, I explain how memes help expand this echo chamber through their subtle influence leading to the spread of casteist ideology on a larger scale, thus proving that the combination of memes and online echo chambers acts as a significant obstacle for the process of Dalit emancipation.

Online spaces often have different social norms and expectations than real-life spaces, and studying the memes surrounding a specific online space can be used to gauge how it portrays stereotypes. Shifman’s article, “Memes in Digital Culture” is an account of meme culture and its influence on society. She defines memes as bits of cultural information spread from person to person over the internet which gradually scale into a shared social phenomenon (37). In her definition, it is argued that memes have three dimensions: content, form, and stance. The content of a meme is the idea conveyed through the text present in the meme and the form is the way the meme is physically seen on the screen (i.e. image, video, etc). Shifman defines the stance of a meme as “the ways in which addressers position themselves in relation to the text, its linguistic codes, the addressees, and other potential speakers” (40). This phenomenon of addressers positioning

themselves in relation to the meme corresponds with Michael Warner’s properties of a public which states that the addressee of a public address stands in for an impersonal audience, and in this case – the unknown audience who also stumbles upon the meme (58). In the case of the online public, whenever an audience views a meme, they are not only addressed through the content in the meme but also through the engagement that occurs in and around the meme. Duchscherer and Dovidio’s analysis of the impacts of stereotypical memes states that, “some unacceptable behaviors in physical spaces, such as making offensive stereotypical jokes, are more acceptable online” (335). We can see parallels between the different dimensions of memes, properties of publics, and the likeliness of discriminatory memes existing in social media. Thus, we can reasonably conclude that memes related to caste have a significant presence in the online sphere.

Stereotypical memes use the content and form of a meme to subtly hide the often offensive and discriminatory stance. We can see this in the example of a meme posted by “Brahmin Meme Bhog” which translates to “upper caste meme group”. It presents a popular Mickey Mouse meme where the character is saying, “It’s a surprise tool that will help us later” below the caption, “When someone asks me why is there a big bottle of hand sanitizer when I visit the house of someone except Brahmans” (Facebook).

(Meme Bhog 2022)

The content of the meme adheres to a popular meme format “It’s a Surprise

Tool That Will Help Us Later” where the ‘surprise tool’ in the meme is usually something “offensive, violent or outside the realm of the Disney universe” (Knowyourmeme). It takes the form of an image. The stance, however, implies something very different from the innocent Mickey Mouse image. It implies that an upper caste person needs to sanitize themselves to get rid of anything touched by a lower caste person referring to the practice of untouchability which is based on the stereotypical assumption that anything touched by the lower caste is considered ‘polluted’ (Rao 69). This meme reached hundreds of people and received more praise than criticism. An important point to note is the fact that these stereotypical memes receive little to no backlash. Drawing from this, when an addressee sees that a stereotypical meme has a significant number of likes, comments, or positive feedback it hints to the addressee that the content and the stereotypical stance of the meme are accepted by the community that the addressee belongs to (335-6). Since we are more likely to think of an idea as acceptable if we see that our community also views the same idea as acceptable, then the addressee is not only addressed through the meme’s content, form, and stance, but also its likes, dislikes, and comments. Thus, this acceptance of stereotypical memes in online spaces leads to lower caste people being portrayed through negative stereotypes which adds to the burden faced by them in the struggle for personhood.

The subtle unnoticeable influence generated from stereotypical memes makes viewers underestimate the role of internet memes in altering our perceptions of social groups. Even though not all memes are intended to be humorous, memes are generally seen as humorous by a person consuming the meme. InJeong Yoon’s paper on racial memes observes that the influence of memes is hidden behind the perception of memes as something that is “humorous” (97). He argues that a meme is more than a joke in the way it can perpetuate racial and ethnic stereotypes (99). Since jokes exist in the content and form, it is more likely that a viewer will not notice the underlying stance conveyed by the meme. This corresponds to Mary Douglas’s essay on jokes and their anthropological implications where she traces the culture around jokes to observe how jokes are constructed in different parts of the world. She explains that jokes are perceived as a play

upon the form or patterns. Thus, a meme turns into a joke when the initial pattern – for example, Mickey Mouse referring to a surprise tool – is altered and challenged by the appearance of a caption which completely changes the meaning of the “surprise tool” into something casteist. This leads to the viewer seeing the meme as a form of a joke, and unlikely as something perpetuating casteist ideologies, and because of this, the viewer is more likely to give more attention to the patterns of the meme than the meme itself. Thus, the attention that is diverted to the content and form because of the nature of the meme as a joke makes the underlying stance portrayed by the meme highly ambiguous. This ambiguity gives the creator the excuse of spreading casteist rhetoric without repercussions.

Stereotypes and stereotypical memes thrive through this ambiguity because the creators and consumers of these memes are the dominant group in the discourse which can expand its demographic through the hiddenness of the stance of casteist memes. The process of going online, getting on the internet, and engaging in discourse exists as a privilege – especially in South Asian countries. A person from an upper caste background is more likely to have access to the facilities necessary to engage and participate in an online meme community than a person from a lower caste background. This digital divide is confirmed by Vaidehi Rajam, A. Bheemeshwar Reddy, and Sudatta

Banerjee’s quantitative analysis of data about the access to technology by people belonging to a lower caste. They find out that only 14.1% of people from the reserved castes group have access to a computer and internet compared to the 41.1% of people not belonging to the lower caste having access to a computer and the internet (10). This exclusivity propagated by the participants consuming and creating these memes is what turns the online caste-based meme sphere into an exclusive public consisting of mainly upper-caste addressees and addressors. As a result, the participants in the casteist meme culture are likely to be from an upper-caste dominant group.

We can see an example of this exclusive demographic portraying stereotypes through Tarishi Verma’s paper on social media and caste where she talks about a meme comparing different social media apps to caste. Instagram and Twitter were the uppermost castes and TikTok was labeled as a lower-

caste app. Verma mentions that the reasons for Tiktok being labeled as an inferior app was because of the growing number of TikTok videos made by the lower caste population from inner cities whose content involves them engaging in activities like “plowing in their fields, cooking in their one-room homes, or making bricks”. What we find in common from the construction of a public inclined towards stereotypical representations and Verma’s paper is the fact that social hierarchies transfer to the online space with the added characteristic of stereotypical representations being more “acceptable” in these online spaces. Rao, while talking about the religious violence against the lower caste in temples, explains that it was normal for the upper caste group to be disgusted by the presence of a Dalit worshiping with them (74). The upper caste people being repulsed by the lower caste is now seen beyond the temple, in social media apps, and in memes. Lower caste TikTokers are dubbed as “cringe” by primarily upper caste social media influencers through memes and “roast videos’’ — a supposedly humorous form of video insulting a person or a group they belong to (Verma 160). Because the lower caste identity is still discriminated against with the same ideals from historical times of temple outcasting, we can come to the conclusion that the mere presence of lower caste identities in online spaces makes the dominant upper caste group exclude them.

However, just because the exclusive demographic of the casteist online meme culture does not contain as many lower caste identifying people, it does not mean that the memes and videos propagating casteist ideas receive zero criticism. On July 1, 2020, the “Brahmin Meme Bhog” Facebook Page shared a video that shows a violent lynching of a group of lower caste males who converted from Hinduism to Christianity. The video shows several people repeatedly slapping, kicking, and hitting the converts with their belts. What is surprising is that out of 3000 reactions to the video, only 56 reactions are disapproving (i.e. the “sad” reaction and the “angry” reaction), 1100 of the reactions are a “heart” react whereas 903 of the reactions are a “haha” reaction to the violent lynching (Facebook). In addition, the highest voted comments mostly include approval of the lynching and jokes about the violence against the Dalits. “Best video on the Internet till date!” or “nice action, good fight sequence with awesome dailog [dialogue]

delivery” (Facebook) had several approving reactions which further proves my argument that these online spaces contain primarily upper caste communities. However, there also existed some lesser upvoted comments criticising the lynching, but these comments had several replies justifying the violent beatdown of the lower caste people shown in the video. There is a paragraph-long comment by someone disapproving of the lynching stating, “this is not pakistan this is bharat [India] and not north korea” and “if you have so much of problem then first solve the disputes that you all have among ur selves [yourselves] u have been dominating the ur fellow dalits, chambar, kumbhar, to be oitcasted [outcasted] and now u bramins think u have all the power to hit any one”. It has a mere one like reaction supporting it and 37 different replies all harassing the original commenter. This shows that even though some people try to challenge the ideas propagated by the exclusive upper caste demographic of a casteist meme page, their ideas are found to be immediately shut down by the larger dominant group inside the discourse which proves my earlier assertion about why the meme in Figure 1 received a lot more support than criticism. Hence, the combination of the exclusive demographic of the caste-based meme culture and the phenomenon of opposing ideas immediately being torn down create a boundary within and around the online caste meme space thus constructing an ideological echo chamber.

Thus, these constructed echo chambers can expand without repercussions and strengthen the likelihood of consumers associating themselves with people having the same casteist ideologies as propagated by the memes. We can expect the consumers consuming the casteist memes to share them with people outside the echo chamber due to the nature of memes. As Shifman notes that an important part of internet memes is their ability to be “diffused quickly and easily from person to person, but shape and reflect general social mindsets” (4). This implies that the process of sharing memes is an integral part of participating in meme culture. A person sharing a casteist meme might have fewer incentives to share their hateful memes due to the ideology conveyed by it, but because memes are perceived as a form of a joke, there are no social repercussions if a casteist meme is shared to someone disagreeing with the ideology. There is always the safety net

of “It’s just a joke” or “It’s just a meme” to fall back into. Since this safety net exists, a person can share these casteist memes without repercussions which leads to the likelihood of the casteist echo chamber expanding. In addition, consumers will always have the incentive to share these memes to people in their communities because of the phenomenon of political homophily. Andrei Boutyline and Robb Willer, in their paper about the Social Structure of Political Echo Chambers, define political homophily as the tendency of people wanting to surround themselves with others having similar political ideologies (551). Their paper — through quantitative analysis — argues that online political echo chambers give rise to increased political homophily within online communities (554). As a result of the increased political homophily, the members inside the echo chamber will be more likely to spread their ideologies within their communities due to the tendency of wanting to surround themselves with people having the same casteist ideologies. Since political homophily “reinforce[s] behavioral norms [propagated within an echo chamber] and increase[s] social pressure to take part in costly or risky activities” (552), the people inside the echo chamber might be more likely to engage in discriminatory acts propagated through the stance of casteist memes which may result in anything from namecalling to caste-targeted violence.

Thus, the existence of memes as a form of a joke combined with the tendency of online communities to exclude people of certain outgroups gives rise to the effect of caste-based discrimination echoing through online spaces. As a result, casteist rhetoric is much more likely to spread on a larger scale, online and beyond. This rapid spread of casteist rhetoric poses significant problems for the emancipation of the lower caste people and their struggle for personhood. Hence, when we see memes we need to look beyond the surface and notice that in most cases, it is so much more than just a meme.

WORKS CITED

Boutyline, Andrei, and Willer, Robb. “The Social Structure of Political Echo Chambers: Variation in Ideological Homophily in Online Networks.” IT’S NOT “JUST A MEME, BRO”

Political Psychology, vol. 38, no. 3, 2016, pp. 551–69.

Douglas, Mary. “Implicit Meanings: Selected Essays in Anthropology.” Jokes, 2nd ed., Routledge, 1999, pp. 146–65.

Duchscherer, Dovidio, et al. “When Memes Are Mean: Appraisals of and Objections to Stereotypic Memes.” Translational Issues in Psychological Science, vol. 2, no. 3, 2016, pp. 335–45.

Matt. “It’s a Surprise Tool That Will Help Us Later.” Know Your Meme, 1 Sep. 2021, https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/its-a-surprise-tool-that-willhelp-us-later

Meme Bhog, Brahmin. “It’s a surprise tool that will help us later”, 15 Nov. 2019, www.facebook.com/memebhog/ photos/a.112136976873293/127380575348933/. Accessed 13 December, 2022.

Nepali, Binita and Pariyar, Kunjani Pyasi. “Nepal’s Caste Struggle.” Nepali Times, 29 June 2021, www.nepalitimes.com/latest/nepals-caste-struggle. Accessed 10 December, 2022

Rajam, Vaidehi, et al. “Explaining Caste-Based Digital Divide in India.” Telematics and Informatics, vol. 65, 2021, p. 101719. doi:10.1016/j. tele.2021.101719.

Rao, Anupama. The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India. First, University of California Press, 2009, pp. 11-77.

Shifman, Limor. “Memes in Digital Culture.” Defining Internet Memes, The MIT Press, 2013, pp. 37–54.

Verma, Tarishi. “Cultural Cringe: How Caste and Class Affect the Idea of Culture in Social Media.” Feminist Media Studies, vol. 21, no. 1, 2020, pp. 159–61.

Warner, Michael. “Publics and Counterpublics.” Public Culture, vol. 14, no. 1, Winter 2002, pp. 49-90.

Yoon, InJeong. “Why is it Not just a Joke? Analysis of Internet Memes

Associated with Racism and Hidden Ideology of Colorblindness.” Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, vol. 33, 2016, pp. 92-123.

IT’S NOT “JUST A MEME, BRO”

Fostering. Ridiculous. Ideas. Enrooted.

In. Depthless. Sarcasm.:

Audiovisual Translation of Verbal

Humor from English to Hindi in Friends

PRIYAMVADA

DAGA AY 2020-2021

“How you doin’ ?”. Chances are you just said that in the signature Joey Tribbiani tone, along with his classic head tilt. A TV series turned cultural phenomenon, Friends stands as the epitome of surviving the test of time. It is an American sitcom revolving around the lives of six friends – Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Ross, Chandler and Joey – capturing their entwined lives, from life crises to grand declarations of love, all wrapped together in a blanket of whimsical characterization, eye-rolling sarcasm and incessant mockery. Airing in over 100 countries, Friends captured the hearts of Americans and Non-Americans alike (History.com Editors, 2009). In January 2015, Friends became a part of Netflix (Netflix, 2014). In March 2017, Netflix introduced HERMES, a large scale subtitler recruitment program where thousands of candidates gave a test curated by Netflix that assessed their proficiency in translation (Fetner & Sheehan, 2017). Through this troupe of translators, Netflix subtitled a multitude of languages from culturally diverse regions across the globe. One such language, from a region thousands of miles away, was Hindi. With different norms and taboos, the perceptions of humor – whether sarcastic comments or practical jokes – are also different. While some of these quips remain funny, others get lost in translation. Through this paper, I question how effectively audiovisual translation of humor occurs between English and Hindi, analyzing, in particular, the transfer of verbal humor through Hindi subtitles in the English language TV series, Friends.

While defining humor and identifying humorous elements are Herculean tasks due to their extreme subjectivity, Friends makes it easier – filmed with

a live audience, the laughter embedded within the audio is the audience’s true reaction (Nicolaoe, 2019). Thus, for this paper, I construe such instances with the background laughter to be the humorous elements. Since the focus is analyzing the subtitles’ ability to transfer humor, research is limited to verbal humor. However, despite dealing solely with verbal humor, subtitles still work in tandem with visuals. This niche of audiovisual translation has a unique set of spatiotemporal constraints. Spatio- referring to space and -temporal referring to time, subtitles are constricted to a few words for every short timeframe that must cohesively and synchronously represent the audio (Bruti, 2019, p. 194). These constraints have major implications, from an inability to have explanatory content for clarification to a forceful line-by-line translation to match the visuals. With these restrictions in mind, we return to the key question regarding the efficacy of audiovisual translation from English to Hindi in maintaining verbal humor in Friends . In answering this question, I stress that for each kind of humor – whimsical humor, puns, phonetically driven humor, sarcasm, humor relying on cultural background – there exists an optimal point of translatability on a spectrum ranging from source-centric to target-centric translation. I argue that this point is primarily determined by the interplay of two factors: the linguistic parameter triggering the joke and the familiarity between the cultural backgrounds of the source and the target.

A linguistic parameter that is often encountered when dealing with jokes is semantics or meaning. Jokes rooted in semantics generally evoke humor through either a lack of clear meaning or through semantic ambiguity. The former involves humor arising through the use of gibberish and through the use of ill-suited words out of context and can be translated relatively easily through either a simple transliteration or an equally unfitting direct translation. This simplicity in translation occurs since such humor is created during exaggerated, whimsical conversations where specific semantics are less important. For gibberish, a transliteration is sufficient to retain humor assuming that the transliteration holds no meaning in the target language. For instance, Rachel naively reveals to the group that her and Ross’ daughter Emma’s supposed first word was “gleba” (Halvorson, 2003, 16:48). There is absurdity in the idea of ‘gleba’ being a first word at all, since it holds

no meaning for a child. Thus, in the subtitles it is transliterated to “ ग्लिबा” [translit. glibā], which holds no meaning in Hindi either, insinuating Rachel’s naivety and absurdity in an equivalent manner, retaining the humor. Hence, for gibberish, simple transliterations suffice.

Similarly, in the case of the use of ill-suited words, a direct translation is effective since the humor arises from the word’s unfitting nature. So, unless a different meaning of the word in the target language reverses how ridiculous it sounds, the humor is maintained. An instance of such humor is when Phoebe changes her name to “Princess Consuela Banana Hammock” (Halvorson, 2004, 12:53) and as a response to the insanity her husband, Mike, in a sarcastic attempt to make her realize her silliness, says he would change his name to “Crap Bag” (Halvorson, 2004, 13:15). This induces laughter given how preposterous the names sound and given the true meaning of “Crap Bag.” Thus, for retaining humor here, the translated name must also convey similar embarrassment and repulsion. The subtitling is successful, changing “Crap Bag” to “कचरे का झोला” which means a “‘bag of trash”’ (my translation), thereby successfully transferring the farcical humor. Hence, we see that when the humor arises from melodramatic contexts with a low emphasis on meaning, source-centric translations ensure optimal translatability.

While humor with low semantic significance requires a source-centric translation and is rather easily translated, humor arising from semantic ambiguity, namely puns, is more difficult to translate since the pun’s translatability depends on its degree of generality. A generic pun translates fairly easily whereas a specific one is nearly impossible to translate. ‘Generic’ refers to the broad category of concepts that are either universally understood or are shared between source and target cultures while ‘specific’ refers to a wider set of puns which have origins in science or in a particular culture. To explain through examples, when Chandler, hoping to convince Joey to choose just one girl to date, asks him to “pick a lane” (Bright, 1997, 2:53), a confused Joey exclaims “who’s Elaine?” (Bright, 1997, 2:55). The objects here are “a lane” and a proper noun. Both these concepts being widely known to a Hindi-speaking audience, the pun translates quite naturally, where Chandler asks “एक राह चुनो” [translit. ek raah chuno ] meaning

“pick a lane” (my translation) to which Joey responds “ यह राह कौन है?” [translit. yeh raah kaun hai? ] meaning “who’s this Raah?” (my translation). In this case, while the translation could be improved into a more sensible pun by using the name “इकराह” [translit. ikraah ], even without it, the subtitle renders an equally comical pun. This is in direct contrast to puns where the source language’s cultural perspectives build the joke. For instance, when Monica asks Joey, “what would you do if you were omnipotent?” (Burrows, 1994, 0:33), he replies “probably kill myself” explaining that “if little Joey is dead I’ve got no reason to live” (Burrows, 1994, 0:36). Joey’s confusion of omnipotence with impotence creates humor. However, in the translation, while omnipotence is a widely understood phenomenon, talking of impotence outside of a medical context is considered vulgar and thus is not widely used. Ignoring the pun, the subtitler translates each sentence directly, rendering the collection of sentences meaningless to a Hindi-speaking audience and losing the humor. Hence, in the case of puns, the translation largely depends on how general and consequently malleable the subjects of the pun are, which is essentially determined by the cultural background. Thus, we see that when there is an overlap between linguistic and cultural triggers, there is a polarity in the ability to translate and the translation technique, whether source-centric or target-centric.

Shifting from semantics to a different linguistic parameter, translating humor arising from the phonetics of the dialogue is very contextual and thus the translation should be rooted in the skopos theory. The evident gap between the alphabetical sounds of English and Hindi makes directly translated subtitles odd and inorganic which consequently reduces the audience’s engagement. Such a gap can be elucidated through an example: when asked by a reporter to spell her name, Phoebe answers “‘P’ as in ‘Phoebe’, ‘H’ as in ‘Heebee’, ‘O’ as in ‘O-bee’, ‘E’ as in ‘Eebee’, ‘B’ as in ‘Beebee’’ and ‘E’ as in ‘Ello there mate’” (Halvorson, 2002, 12:38). The audience’s amusement is a result of two aspects of her dialogue – (i) her use of gibberish words that rhyme with her name to spell out her name and (ii) her use of “‘Ello there mate’’ to indicate an “E”, imitating a pirate’s accent, mocking the muted “h” sound in their speech. The translator’s subtitles completely lose meaning for part (i) as they read “

’” [translit. fa jaise feebee, ech jaise heebee, o jaise obee aur ee jaise eebee, bee jaise beebee, aur ee se ‘itne pyaare dost!’ ].

The fundamental problem with this translation is that the Hindi word is only 4 letters long but the translator, perhaps in an attempt to maintain symmetry with the English audio, also includes 2 transliterations which are unnecessary and destroy meaning and humor. In Hindi, Phoebe is written as “फ़ीबी” with the four letters being “फ़” [fa], “इ” [ee], “ब” [ba] and “इ” [ee] again. The subtitler adds unnecessary characters – “ एच” [etch] and “ओ” [o] – which not only destroy humor by creating easily avoidable gaps but also render the entire sentence meaningless. Adding this layer of confusion automatically destroys the second part since the audience is left puzzled and deciphering the first part. Nevertheless, the translation of part (ii) is worth discussing since it preserves Phoebe’s ditsy characterization by culturally adapting the dialogue. The translation from “‘Ello there mate!” to “ इतने

”, meaning “such a dear friend” (my translation), induces a chuckle, since the phrase, being unlike Phoebe’s usual tone, indicates perhaps her pretense while speaking with the reporter. With both parts (i) and (ii), we observe that the translator adopts the principles of the skopos theory where an effective and effortless reception, in terms of the induced laughter, from the target audiences takes precedence over maintenance of structure or nuances of the source language. Hence, we can conclude that humor created through phonetic jokes requires a translation that is target language centric, often diverging from the source text.

Intersecting with phonetics is tonal delivery which leads to sarcasm. Counterintuitively, sarcasm is perhaps the easiest to translate requiring only a direct translation simply due the vacuous nature of a sarcastic sentence. Sarcasm has greater dependence on the speaker’s ability to present a matter-of-factly tone while mocking someone. For instance, when the group is watching an old videotape of an overweight Monica, she defends herself saying “the camera adds 10 pounds!” (Burrows, 1996, 17:34) to which Chandler replies “so how many cameras were actually on you?” (Burrows, 1996, 17:37), trying to mock her underestimation of how overweight she was. This translates fairly naturally to Monica defending herself saying “

meaning “in the camera, 10 kilos

get added” (my translation) and Chandler replying “

meaning “so how many cameras were there” (my translation). While this is just one instance out of many, the primary reason why sarcasm translates so well for the audience is the audiovisual component – watching through subtitles means that the audience is aware of the general tone a character uses and recognizes a change in the tone. Thus, in such cases, the audiovisual component aids translation. Sarcasm also tends to be less intentional and arises naturally in situations where a stupid comment is made, making it more conversational and thus universal. The caveat is when the sarcasm alludes to a culturally specific reference. For instance, when speaking of Chandler’s third nipple, Ross mockingly asks whether it does anything special to which Chandler sarcastically replies, “Why yes Ross, pressing my third nipple opens the delivery entrance to the magical land of Narnia” (Muncoso, 1995, 5:01). The Hindi subtitle is a direct translation with Chandler saying, “

”, meaning “press my third nipple and enter the magical world of Narnia”. Narnia, while widely known to an American audience, is unknown to a Hindi-speaking audience. In such a case, sarcasm remains only a tool in delivering what is termed a cultural joke.

For cultural jokes, while transferring a part of the humor is relatively easy with a simple transliteration, transferring the original joke is more complicated and often involves a conflict between maintaining the pivot of the joke and changing the source’s cultural identity. The translatability of cultural jokes is strongly interlinked with the audience’s knowledge of both source and target cultures. In the absence of such a link, a cultural joke often turns into an ethnic joke, where unknown elements within the joke become associated with the source culture in the minds of foreign audiences (Raphaelson-West, 1989, p. 132). Transposing this idea into an audiovisual context, given the spatio-temporal limitations outlined at the start of this paper and consequently having neither space nor time to provide an explanation, cultural jokes often lead to ambiguity. For instance, when Chandler, upon seeing Monica’s hair, mockingly refers to her as “Weird Al” (Bright, 2003, 3:56), alluding to the popular American singer and his frizzy looking curly hair, the transliterated subtitle, “

translating to

‘Weird Al’, has no meaning for a Hindi-speaking audience. Intuitively, this suggests the idea of transforming the joke to appeal to the target culture, or more specifically, to customize the allusions for the target audience to personalities they would recognize. This modification would maintain the joke’s position as a cultural joke, only now adapted to the target culture. However, Antonopoulou (2004), in her article exploring how proper names should be translated, claims that retaining the source’s allusion is better, as it maintains the target audience’s engagement with their creative guesswork leading to a humorous verdict while also maintaining credibility (p. 246).

An instance of this can be seen with the Narnia example, where the Hindi subtitle gets the audience to imagine a magical land and transfers the humor. While humor translates even with a transliteration, albeit changing the humorous element, I argue that the degree to which it is humorous declines substantially, since processing time is extremely limited in an audiovisual context. Despite my inclination towards a target-centric translation, I argue that ultimately the translator’s motive holds precedence – whether maintaining identity or uncompromised humor is more valuable. Thus, we can see that for humor created through cultural jokes, the transfer from English to Hindi results in a tradeoff between changing cultural identities at the expense of evoking equivalent amusement and maintaining cultural identities at the expense of diluting the humor, where the choice ultimately depends on the translator’s motive.

Thus, we observe that while linguistic parameters determine the broad distinction between whether a source- or target-centric translation is more fitting, cultural familiarity determines the complexity of a translation and necessitates a more nuanced blend of both techniques. When the linguistic parameter is solely at play in Friends, as was the case with humor arising from lack of meaning or from phonetic references, the optimal technique is on the spectrum’s extremes: either source-centric or target-centric. On the other hand, when the humor has cultural triggers, the translator’s motive can be viewed as the determining factor for the optimal translation technique, likely requiring a blend of source-centric and target-centric techniques. While this paper was concerned primarily with the translatability of humor, it is important to recognize that humor

often exists for a purpose. From introducing a character’s insecurities to diffusing an awkward situation, humor is often used as a tool to illustrate complex emotional states. As a next step from my spectral instance-based approach, analyzing such motives may draw a more structural map to humor translation, where sustained patterns are recognized and transferred, consequently also maintaining the work’s overall cohesion. On a different level, it is interesting that huge global streaming services like Netflix are recognizing the importance of translators but also raises the questions of how restrictive translation becomes under a huge company, whether there are biases infused into the subtitles that create stereotypes and perspectives on a global scale. Finally, with Friends releasing over two decades ago, I leave you with a question: how do you translate outdated humor? Or more generally, how you doin’ ?

REFERENCES

Antonopoulou, E. (2004). “Humor theory and translation research: Proper names in humorous discourse.” Humor - International Journal of Humor Research, 17(3), 219-255. https://doi.org/10.1515/humr.2004.011

Bright, K. S. (Director). (1997). “The One Where Chandler Crosses the Line” (Season 4, Episode 7) [TV series episode]. In M. Borkow (Executive producer), Friends. Netflix. https://www.netflix.com

Bright, K. S. (Director). (2003). “The One After Joey and Rachel Kiss” (Season 10, Episode 1) [TV series episode]. In S. Goldberg-Meehan, S. Silveri, A. Reich & T. Cohen (Executive producers), Friends. Netflix. https://www.netflix.com

Burrows, J. (Director). (1994). “The One with George Stephanopoulos” (Season 1, Episode 4) [TV series episode]. Friends. Netflix. https://www.netflix.com

Burrows, J. (Director). (1996). “The One with the Prom Video” (Season 2, Episode 14) [TV series episode]. Friends. Netflix. https://www.netflix.com

Fetner, C. & Sheehan, D. (2017, March 30). The Netflix HERMES Test: Quality Subtitling at Scale. Medium. https://netflixtechblog.com/the-netflixFOSTERING. RIDICULOUS. IDEAS. ENROOTED. IN. DEPTHLESS. SARCASM.

hermes-test-quality-subtitling-at-scale-dccea2682aef

Halvorson, G (Director). (2002). “The One with Joey’s Interview” (Season 8, Episode 19) [TV series episode]. In S. Goldberg-Meehan, S. Silveri, A. Reich & T. Cohen (Executive producers), Friends. Netflix. https://www.netflix. com

Halvorson, G (Director). (2003). “The One with the Lottery” (Season 9, Episode 18) [TV series episode]. In S. Goldberg-Meehan, S. Silveri & A. Reich (Executive producers), Friends. Netflix. https://www.netflix.com

Halvorson, G (Director). (2004). “The One with the Princess Consuela” (Season 10, Episode 14) [TV series episode]. In S. Goldberg-Meehan, S. Silveri, A. Reich & T. Cohen (Executive producers), Friends. Netflix. https://www. netflix.com

History.com Editors. (2009, November 13). Final episode of “Friends” airs on NBC. HISTORY. Retrieved April 18, 2021, from https://www.history.com/thisday-in-history/final-episode-of-friends-airs-on-nbc

Mancuso, G. (Director). (1995). “The One with Phoebe’s Husband” (Season 2, Episode 4) [TV series episode]. Friends. Netflix. https://www.netflix.com

Netflix [@netflix]. (2014, October 15). They will all be there for you, Jan.1, 2015 [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/netflix/status/522411651501281280

Nicolaoe, E. (2019, September 23). 25 Things Not Even Diehard Friends Fans Would Know. Refinery29. Retrieved April 22, 2021 from https://www.refinery29. com/en-us/2019/09/8448909/friends-tv-show-surprising-facts#slide-14

Raphaelson-West, D. S. (1989). “On the Feasibility and Strategies of Translating Humour.” Meta, 34(1), 128–141. https://doi.org/10.7202/003913ar

Out of One, Many: How Social Class Influenced Migrant Integration During the Windrush Era

RYAN SMITH AY 2021-2022

The “Windrush Generation” typically refers to the thousands of people who migrated to the United Kingdom (UK) between 1948 and 1970 from the British colonial dominions. After the devastating impacts of World War II, the UK was in desperate need of labor in order to rebuild its economy, and companies soon began efforts to recruit British colonial subjects.1 A large proportion of those who migrated during those decades hailed from the Caribbean, and they contributed immensely to various sectors of the UK’s economy, from nursing to transportation.2 Despite their contributions, the Windrush era was often minimized in British national memory; that is, until the Windrush Scandal broke in 2018. The scandal revealed that at least hundreds of people from the Windrush generation, along with their descendants, had been affected by British immigration policies which virtually revoked their British citizenship before the law.3 A nationwide discourse emerged on the overlooked contributions of the Windrush generation to British society as well as the racism they experienced upon arriving in what they viewed as “the motherland.” Despite increased media attention and scholarship following the scandal, descriptions of the Windrush migrants’ integration have been mostly homogenous. Specifically, the dominant narratives ignore how social conditions, experienced by Windrush migrants prior to migrating, may have informed and complicated their integration in the UK. In doing so, these narratives reinforce Eurocentric conceptualizations of colonized populations as all

1 David Olusoga, “Swamped,” in Black and British (London: Macmillan, 2016), 500.

2 Lina McDowell, “How Caribbean migrants helped to rebuild Britain,” British Library, last modified October 4, 2018. https://www.bl.uk/windrush/articles/how-caribbean-migrants-rebuilt-britain.

3 Wendy Williams, Windrush Lessons Learned Review (United Kingdom: House of Commons, 2020), 25.

OUT OF ONE, MANY

helpless victims by minimizing the Caribbean’s complex social organization. This tacitly puts the imagined dichotomy of colonizer and colonized at the discursive fore, while neglecting to afford the same level of nuance to social structures within these previously colonized groups.

There is thus a need for more complex understandings of individual Windrush experiences, and particularly the ways in which they were impacted by dynamics of power within migrant and colonial populations. As historian Frederick Cooper argues, although colonial power dynamics are a good starting point for understanding phenomena like the Windrush generation, inquiring into the ways power was “engaged, contested, deflected, and appropriated” adds vital multidimensionality to the colonized peoples under study.4 It is with a similar emphasis on nuance that sociologist Min Zhou formulated “segmented assimilation theory” to explain the determinants of upward or downward mobility among second generation immigrants. The theory emphasizes the importance of interactions between individual-level and situational factors in creating varying migrant outcomes.5 Though segmented assimilation theory was developed as a framework to understand adaptation trends across different generations of migrants, its reliance on contextual factors like class and ethnicity make it a useful lens for analyzing adaptation trends across the same generation too, which can be helpful for developing policy implications for research on immigration. With respect to the Windrush Generation, segmented assimilation theory provides an opportunity to nuance the experiences of those who were uniquely vulnerable due to the intersecting effects of their race and class. This paper analyzes structures of inequality along educational, linguistic, social, and economic lines in the Caribbean colonies and in the UK Windrush migrant communities through individual accounts. This comparison between the colonial class system in the British Caribbean and the experiences of the Windrush generation in the UK reveals the perpetuation of social inequality during and after this mass migration.

4 Frederick Cooper, “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History,” The American Historical Review 99, no. 5 (1994): 1517.

5 Min Zhou, “Segmented Assimilation: Issues, Controversies, and Recent Research on the New Second Generation,” The International Migration Review 31, no. 4 (1997): 984.

The use of educational attainment as a metric for migrant potential was pivotal in reproducing colonial inequality for the Windrush generation, since education level was largely dependent on one’s class in the home colony. This is demonstrated by a story recorded in Windrush Conversations, which is a compilation of anonymous oral histories at the Museum of London. The interviewee attributed her placement in an advanced British education curriculum to her attending a “really good school in the Caribbean.”6 She also recalled the ways in which schooling was difficult for her Caribbean classmates, providing an example of educational experiences being dictated by previous colonial social contexts. Similarly, writing about Jamaica, O. Alexander Miller notes that, historically, few lower-class people were able to attain a formal education,7 much less an education desirable enough to guarantee success in the British education system. Therefore, the disparities in academic success between the interviewee and her peers can be said to have been determined by their class positions in their home colonies. Zhou’s theory of segmented assimilation supports this argument by showing a connection between immigrants from low socioeconomic backgrounds and greater alienation from mainstream society.8 She identifies their increased likelihood of living in impoverished or violent neighborhoods and of going to lower quality schools as driving forces behind this phenomenon. For the great number of Windrush migrants who went to the UK as children, their educational placement could have been a decisive part of their life, as one’s quality of education is often viewed as a determinant of upward or downward social mobility.

In a similar way, British perceptions of English language proficiency as a signifier of migrant capabilities severely disadvantaged migrants who were part of lower classes in the Caribbean. Another anonymous interviewee from the Windrush Conversations project, this time a Montserratian, recounted a story in which her mother’s English accent impressed a prospective

6 Jasmine Pierre and Shanice Martin, “Listening to the Windrush generation,” Museum of London, last modified June 22, 2020. https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/museum-london-docklands/ windrush-stories/listening-to-the-windrush-generation

7 O. Alexander Miller, “COLONIAL CAPITAL: ADVANCES IN UNDERSTANDING CARIBBEAN MIGRATION EXPERIENCES,” Social and Economic Studies 57, no. 3/4 (2008): 163.

8 Zhou, 988.

OUT OF ONE, MANY

employer during a job interview so much that he swore.9 The admiration she garnered from the manager by just having a socially desirable accent is likely representative of the broader importance of English as a precursor to career advancement for the Windrush migrants. The opening vignette of Andrea Levy’s famous essay about growing up in the Windrush era, “Back to My Own Country,” demonstrates this point from another perspective. Levy begins by describing a Black man on the public bus who makes futile efforts at conversation with his fellow white passengers. She notes that his accent is what allowed her to detect his Caribbean heritage and that she could sense “misunderstandings” taking place as he tried to speak with the other passengers.10 Her experience not only highlights the social isolation of those who had accents that were not socially respected; it also implies that cultural differences in ways of speaking may have hindered some Windrush migrants’ ability to effectively communicate with British natives which would have negatively impacted educational and work experiences. In light of historical evidence that formal English was mostly spoken among urban middle and upper classes in the Caribbean,11 Windrush migrants from rural, low-class backgrounds were probably the main victims of this language inequality. These outcomes are in line with Zhou’s idea of “original culture” in segmented assimilation theory, which is defined as the way of life immigrants bring with them from their country of origin.12 She writes that if a migrant group showcases aspects of their original culture which are incongruous with the ideals of mainstream society, they are often stigmatized by the host country’s wider society. It is possible that the similarity between certain Caribbean dialects and English even created a hierarchy among migrants ranging from most to least desirable accents.

As the basis of class position in the colonial Caribbean, economic status was a key determinant of migrant integration for the Windrush generation. Tamanisha John’s article asserts that colonial societies in the British

9 Pierre and Martin.

10 Andrea Levy, “Back to My Own Country: An essay by Andrea Levy,” British Library last modified 2014. https://www.bl.uk/windrush/articles/back-to-my-own-country-an-essay-by-andrea-levy

11 Aonghas St-Hilaire, “GLOBALIZATION, URBANIZATION, AND LANGUAGE IN CARIBBEAN DEVELOPMENT: THE ASSIMILATION OF ST. LUCIA,” New West Indian Guide 77, no. 1/2 (2003): 66.

12 Zhou, 993.

Caribbean were extremely stratified, with those in the upper class having greater access to financial capital, while people at the bottom of the hierarchy had little to no access.13 This reality is reflected by David Olusoga’s documentary, The Unwanted, in which he interviews several of the original Windrush migrants, like Jamaican Alford Gardner who had been a passenger on the original HMT Empire Windrush ship in 1948. As part of his interview, Gardner recounts how he, along with his friends, helped four men sneak onto the ship because they could not afford the fee.14 This implies that wealthier people in the Caribbean were able to take advantage of legal avenues for migrating while their low-class counterparts had to resort to illicit ones. Moreover, without legal documents authorizing their arrival and stay in the UK, Windrush migrants illegally residing in the UK likely faced difficulties when seeking housing and, more importantly, employment options. Zhou’s theory predicts that immigrants who do not have occupations have a higher likelihood of being marginalized and alienated in their host societies.15 She cites their inability to live up to society’s expectations of having roles in economically productive activities as a relevant cause of their social exclusion. Since low class Windrush migrants had heightened chances of being unemployed and underemployed, either due to migrating illegally or due to having socially undesirable qualifications as stated above, their financial hardships were coupled with social ones. Paradoxically, some Windrush migrants who had sought better economic positions than they had in their home colonies may have become even more financially insecure in the UK.

Although Caribbeans who were members of the Royal Air Force (RAF) during World War II benefited from interactions with British society prior to their return as part of the Windrush generation, the process of enlisting and sorting soldiers was rooted in class divisions. Robert Murray, a Caribbean and veteran of the war himself, created a compilation of personal recollections

13 Tamanisha J. John, “Racialized Financial Exclusion in the Anglophone Caribbean,” Social and Economic Studies 69, no. 3/4 (2020): 227.

14 The Unwanted: The Secret Windrush Files, directed by David Olusoga (2019; United Kingdom: Uplands Television).

15 Zhou, 986.

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detailing the experiences of West Indian Ex-Servicemen throughout different points in the war. He states that adverse economic conditions and few job prospects resulted in army recruits from a variety of backgrounds, such as farmers, carpenters and financial accountants.16 Yet, it is important to note that the intelligence tests required for acceptance evaluated the mathematical ability and English language ability of applicants.17 Taking into account the previously discussed evidence of unequal distributions of educational attainment and English proficiency along class lines, it follows that illiterate lower class Caribbeans were largely excluded from enlisting. Thus, they could not have been exposed to British life through aspects of military service, such as traveling to the UK and experiencing British social institutions in the metropole. Methods of ranking enlistees was comparably reflective of class relations outside the RAF. According to the testimonies, men either became part of the “aircrew,” which was responsible for flying aircraft, or part of the “groundcrew,” which was responsible for servicing aircraft in nonviolent settings. Testimony shows that the prestigious ranks of aircrew were filled by the highly “educated elite” with advanced degrees whereas the groundcrew was comprised of those with secondary school diplomas at most.18 Not only that, but the small number of Caribbean women who joined the women’s auxiliary forces that supported the RAF came from elite backgrounds.19 These varied outcomes of enlistment and ranking align with segmented assimilation theory, by showing that integration into the RAF, a British social institution, greatly depended on the class standing of Caribbean peoples. This would have allowed upper class veterans to use their prior experiences from the UK to facilitate their integration when they returned in the Windrush generation. On the other hand, low class migrants would have been experiencing the so-called “motherland” for the first time during the Windrush era. They likely had difficulties, then, navigating British public institutions, which would have been an important component of successful social integration.

16 Robert N. Murray, Lest We Forget: The Experiences of World War II Westindian Ex-Service Personnel, ed. Patrick L. Hylton (Nottingham: Nottingham Westindian Combined Ex-services Association, 1996), 23.

17 Murray, 31.

18 Murray, 29.

19 Murray, 39

RAF testimonies, along with other first-hand accounts, highlight the ineffectiveness of British cultural material in preparing Caribbean people who migrated for life in the UK. Colin Grant, who authored a collection of Windrush oral histories and is a second-generation Windrush immigrant himself, explains that his parents learned about British culture through films shown at cinemas in Jamaica. 20 Ulric Cross, a Trinidadian RAF veteran, similarly recalled learning about English history and geography in school as well as “English life” through magazines.21 Interestingly, both Grant’s father and Cross expressed a strong sense of English identity despite being “children of empire,” and this attachment to the motherland naturally influenced expectations of life in the UK. Many prospective RAF recruits had believed that going to the UK would afford them opportunities for upward mobility, as a form of gratitude from the motherland they had come to know and served so well. This complicates historian Robert Young’s explanation of the steady expansion of British identity throughout the British Empire. Young argues that, as British officials were dispatched around the globe to continue imperial expansion, the notion of “Englishness” had to expand beyond those born and living in the metropole.22 However, this increased flexibility may have also allowed Caribbean colonial subjects to construct their identities as intimately connected to the UK in a way that mirrored those of white colonial officials. By being so thoroughly convinced of their commonalities with native Britons, Caribbean people could have unknowingly minimized the spatial and racial separation that defined their status as subjects of the empire. In addition to consuming British media, during the war, civilians in the Caribbean were inundated with counterNazi propaganda that portrayed the UK as antithetical to Nazi imperialism and racism so as to prevent the corruption of their colonies.23 Such rhetoric effectively masked the racism that was systemic in British society at the time, encouraging fallacious expectations of racial equality. This would

20 Colin Grant, “Homecoming- Voices of the Windrush generation | Colin Grant | 5x15,” 5x15 Stories, July 27, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrmkultmdAI&t=313s.

21 Murray, 19

22 Robert J.C. Young, “England Round the World,” in The Idea of English Ethnicity (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 197.

23 Murray, 25. OUT OF ONE, MANY

have likely caused Windrush migrants who had only received knowledge of the UK through media or government propaganda to be unprepared for the racism they would face upon arrival. For those who could not afford to travel to the UK prior to the Windrush era, their ignorance of widespread discrimination would have hindered their ability to bypass such racism in order to successfully integrate.

The spread of migrant best practices for circumventing discrimination through diasporic social networks disproportionately benefited wealthier migrants in the Windrush migration. In his analysis of New York City doormen, sociologist Peter Bearman seeks to uncover why so few doormen are hired in spite of the overwhelming supply of people with the necessary skills. He finds that most doormen are hired through weak ties, as job seekers typically discover openings through friends of friends or friends of relatives. Notably, this has led to ethnic clustering, resulting in buildings staffed entirely by South Asian or Eastern European doormen.24 Beneficial information about how to go about settling in the UK seems to have been similarly disseminated via weak ties. Sam King, former Mayor of Southwark who migrated to the UK in the 1950s, gave an interview in which he describes how he and his brother were able to buy a property unlike other Windrush migrants who he saw sleeping in parks due to homelessness.25 He attributes his fortunate circumstances to his knowledge of “the system” that he learned from his family already residing in the UK. Though not explicitly stated, learning how to circumvent the racism intrinsic to British bureaucracy was probably a key factor in his success. Other useful information, such as the community assistance offered by the Russell family in Nottingham to all incoming Windrush migrants,26 was likely only available through word of mouth. As explained above, mostly upper-class people could have afforded to travel to the UK even before the Windrush era. Bearman’s weak ties model suggests that prospective upper-class migrants would have learned how to both work around racist British institutions and

24 Peter Bearman, Doormen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 57.

25 Sam King, interview by Gloria Hunniford, Open House With Gloria Hunniford, Tyrone Productions, Ireland, September 24, 1999.

26 The Unwanted.

find a supportive community through their upper class relatives or friends already in the UK. On the other hand, lower class Caribbean people would not have had access to such information because they did not have affluent relatives who could have afforded to emigrate prior to the Windrush era. Even when lower class people did emigrate, communication with relatives in the Caribbean was infrequent as demonstrated by Paulette Wilson who had spent fifty years in the UK and had no relationship with her sisters in Jamaica.27 Miller also writes that lower class migrants frequently sent remittances to the Caribbean in the form of gifts for their children, but did not communicate the social and economic struggles they faced in their host country.28 Without having first-hand experience of the reality of British life or connections to those who did, lower class Windrush migrants must have struggled to cope with the racist barriers to their integration. The dearth of narratives highlighting formerly houseless or unemployed Windrush migrants in contemporary British media may be a testament to their inability to ever fully integrate.

Although the above evidence show the profound impacts of social class on Windrush migrant outcomes, the intersection of class and racial identity proved to be especially important in creating social divisions. Sociologist Bianca Freire-Medeiros explains that, historically, noble Europeans saw impoverished areas of major cities like London and Paris as symbols of “civilization’s failure” and breeding grounds of immoral behavior.29 As she also mentions, there were parallels between the classist discussions around poor white Europeans and the racist discussions around colonized subjects in Africa and elsewhere. In addition to facing stereotypes associated with those living in poverty, lower class Windrush migrants likely had to experience discrimination based on their racial identity as Black people as well as their class status. An article from the 1980s by Máirtín Mac an Ghaill argues that much of British public opinion and scholarship in the previous decade had attributed the marginalization of Afro-Caribbean people to flaws

27 After Windrush, directed by Irene Baqué (2019; United Kingdom: The Guardian).

28 Miller, 166.

29 Bianca Freire-Medeiros, “Slumming: the discovery of the other half,” in Touring Poverty (London: Routledge, 2012), 11. OUT OF ONE, MANY

in the “Black community.”30 In his infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech, Enoch Powell recounted a story told by one of his constituents who had refused to open her house to renters for fear that she would only get Black tenants.31 These instances demonstrate the stereotypes associated with Blackness that would have only partially accounted for the mistreatment the Windrush migrants faced. Combined with the preconceived notions of the urban poor, such as lack of civility, the intersecting identities of Black lower class Windrush migrants probably put them at a more disadvantaged position compared to their lower-class white counterparts and upper class Black counterparts. This is an especially salient point as it relates to the Windrush era, considering the significant population of Eastern European refugees who settled in the UK at approximately the same time.32

Multiple first-hand accounts from Windrush generation migrants suggest that those from superior economic positions in their home colonies experienced better integration outcomes than their low-class counterparts. When compared with historical evidence of the vital role played by class in nearly all aspects of Caribbean colonial life, the significance of socialization prior to migration becomes abundantly clear. Min Zhou’s theory of segmented assimilation allows one to effectively account for these divergent migrant experiences by analyzing the interaction between culture, class, and social relations both within migrant communities as well as between those communities and the larger society of the host country. Resisting the convenience of generalizing by leaning into the complex factors affecting the lives of migrants not only nuances the dominant narratives of the Windrush generation, but those of other mass movements of people as well. Acknowledging the existence of diverse migrant experiences while finding new ways of explaining these differences, such as segmented assimilation theory, can have beneficial implications for making immigration research more reliable and immigration policy more effective.

30 Máirtín Mac an Ghaill, “Coming-of-age in 1980s England: reconceptualising black students’ schooling experience,” British Journal of Sociology Education 10, no. 3 (1989): 274.

31 Enoch Powell, “ Speech of 20 April 1968,” April 20, 1968, Midland Hotel, Birmingham, UK. https:// doi.org/10.1177/030639686801000110.

32 Nicholas Boston, “Who were the Windrush Poles?” British Future, last modified March 27, 2015, https://www.britishfuture.org/windrush-poles/.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baqué, Irene, dir. After Windrush. 2019; United Kingdom: The Guardian.

Bearman, Peter. Doormen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Boston, Nicholas. “Who were the Windrush Poles?” British Future, last modified March 27 2015. https://www.britishfuture.org/windrush-poles/.

Freire-Medeiros, Bianca. “Slumming: the discovery of the other half.” In Touring Poverty, 9-22. London: Routledge, 2012.

Grant, Colin. “Homecoming- Voices of the Windrush generation | Colin Grant | 5x15.” 5x15 Stories, July 27, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=JrmkultmdAI.

John, Tamanisha J. “Racialized Financial Exclusion in the Anglophone Caribbean.” Social and Economic Studies, 69, no. 3/4 (2020): 225-251. https:// search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=154770260&sit e=ehost-live.

King, Sam. Interview by Gloria Hunniford. Open House With Gloria Hunniford. Tyrone Productions, Ireland, September 24, 1999.

Levy, Andrea. “Back to My Own Country: An Essay by Andrea Levy.” British Library, n.d. https://www.bl.uk/windrush/articles/back-to-my-owncountry-an-essay-by-andrea-levy.

Mac an Ghaill, Máirtín. “Coming-of-age in 1980s England: reconceptualising black students’ schooling experience.” British Journal of Sociology Education 10, no. 3 (1989): 273-286.

McDowell, Linda. “How Caribbean migrants helped to rebuild Britain.” British Library, last modified October 4, 2018. https://www.bl.uk/windrush/ articles/how-caribbean-migrants-rebuilt-britain

Miller, O. Alexander. “COLONIAL CAPITAL: ADVANCES IN UNDERSTANDING CARIBBEAN MIGRATION EXPERIENCES.” Social and Economic Studies 57, no. 3/4 (2008): 157-180. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27866565?seq=1.

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Murray, Robert N. Lest We Forget: The Experiences of World War II Westindian Ex-Service Personnel. Edited by Patrick L. Hylton. Nottingham: Nottingham Westindian Combined Ex-services Association, 1996.

Olusoga, David. “Swamped.” In Black and British, 489-521. London: Macmillan, 2016.

------, dir. The Unwanted. 2019; United Kingdom: Uplands Television.

Pierre, Jasmine, and Shanice Martin. “Listening to the Windrush generation.” Museum of London, last modified June 22, 2020.

https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/museum-london-docklands/ windrush-stories/listening-to-the-windrush-generation.

Powell, Enoch. “Speech of 20 April 1968.” April 20, 1968. Midland Hotel, Birmingham, UK. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F030639686801000110.

St-Hilaire, Aonghas. “GLOBALIZATION, URBANIZATION, AND LANGUAGE IN CARIBBEAN DEVELOPMENT: THE ASSIMILATION OF ST. LUCIA.” New West Indian Guide 77, no. 1/2 (2003): 65-84. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/41850228

Williams, Wendy. Windrush Lessons Learned Review. United Kingdom: House of Commons, 2020.

Young, Robert J.C. “England Round the World.” In The Idea of English Ethnicity, 196-230. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008.

Zhou, Min. “Segmented Assimilation: Issues, Controversies, and Recent Research on the New Second Generation.” The International Migration Review 31, no. 4 (1997): https://www.jstor.org/stable/2547421?seq=1

Deconstructing Nobuyoshi Araki: The Degrading Portrayal of Women in Photography

SHEHRYAR AHMED SUBHANI

AY 2021-2022

In 2018, the Museum of Sex became the first major retrospective in the United States to showcase the career of Nobuyoshi Araki. Araki is a “notorious and prolific” (Silverton) Japanese photographer predominantly known for his work around kinbaku-bi, or ‘the beauty of tight binding,’ his extension of a “centuries old motif [in]to photographic form” (Cohen). Araki believes that photography should be “immediate, unflinching, and deeply personal,” leading to works that “expose the vulnerability of love and loss” and are “most sexually explicit” (“The Incomplete Araki”). Matthew Kluk, a curatorial assistant at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, refers to Araki as “one of the most prolific figures in the field of Japanese photography,” with his “wry, irreverent work, frequently employing sexual subject matter” earning him “a degree of notoriety” (Kluk). Maggie Mustard, “specialist in Japanese photography” (Farago) and co-curator of Araki’s exhibition at the Museum of Sex, adds that Araki’s work has been “hugely popular for many different reasons, just as it has been equally controversial” (qtd. in Davis). For example, Kaori, a model who posed for Araki, “accused him of exploiting and bullying her for 16 years” (Rich). This was not the first time Araki has faced opposition regarding his style of photography; throughout his career, he has been critiqued for “the sexually explicit nature of his subjects, […] connotations of misogyny, and exploitation” (Vittachi). A prominent critic of Araki is Hagiwara Hiroko, a feminist art critic, who writes that Araki’s photography of bondage is “staged in a highly artificial manner” (243) such that the model’s “supposedly voluntary action to be sexually objectified is accepted as natural” (245). Moreover, the photographs engage in the “construction of women’s desire” by consolidating them into “the object of the gaze” (246). Hagiwara claims that Araki’s illusion of giving

his muses agency over their actions and their objectification in the eyes of the viewer are condescending towards the muses as they “produce and reproduce the viewers’ […] gaze” (246) at their expense, becoming an aide to please the male gaze. Therefore, this essay argues that Araki’s portrayal of women in his photographs is degrading since it fragments them into their body parts, denies them agency, and turns them into masturbatory aids for the viewer.

To better analyze such claims, this essay will examine Araki’s work using two frameworks: feminist journalist Rosalind Coward’s framework of sexual representation in pornography and feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey’s psychoanalytic theory on narrative cinema. Coward argues that sexual representation in pornography can be broken into three key features: “fragmentation”, “submission” (17), and “availability” (18). This framework applies to Araki’s photography as “the meanings [found] problematic in the images [of pornography] are by no means confined to pornography. The codes of fragmentation, submission, and availability are ubiquitous” (Coward 19). That is to say, her framework, while applicable to pornography, is not confined within its realm and thus, by extension, can be applied to Araki’s photography, which some believe borders on pornography (Lederman; Moshakis; Valinsky; Rich). While Coward’s framework enables us to understand how Araki demeans his models through a camera lens it does not shed light on the photographs’ impact on the viewers. Hence, another framework is needed that is provided by Mulvey’s psychoanalytic theory on cinema. Mulvey argues that “man can live out his phantasies and obsessions […] by imposing them on the silent image of woman […] tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning” (23). In other words, a man can project onto a woman, robbing her sense of self and stripping her of her voice and beliefs as she is transformed into an image for male pleasure. This framework’s use is justified in this context since cinema and Araki’s photography are both forms of artistic expression composed of images and conjure similar feelings in the viewers towards the subjects. They are identical in the sense that they create “obsessive voyeurs and Peeping Toms, whose only sexual satisfaction can come from watching, in an active controlling sense, an objectified other” (Mulvey 24-5), defined by Martha

Nussbaum as “making into a thing, treating as a thing, something that is not really a thing” (Nussbaum 257). In Araki’s photographs, it means to dehumanize his models by treating them as objects.

A fundamental issue in Araki’s photography is the display of his muses in a state of bondage. While bondage is often seen as perverted in Western cultures, it is considered by Western critics to be a symbol of empowerment in Japanese society. They argue that the “bondage of women in Araki’s photographs is a metaphor for the rigid” (Ammann 8) and a “reference to strictly disciplined Japanese society” (Bornoff 22-3; Kramer 15) where women adhere to a “strict, highly ritualized set of traditional roles, obligations, rules and hierarchies” in public (Ammann 8). Hence, bondage is a way for them to escape the “strictly disciplined public sphere […] by having themselves photographed by Araki” (8) in an “act of liberation” (7). Thus, unlike pornography, bondage does not “degrade women into passive objects of lust” but instead “restores the right of self-determination to the female body” (Ibid 15). Moreover, it is argued that bondage is not demeaning but artistic as “[the ropes] do not interrupt the flow of the blood [of the models] at any point”. To put it differently, the “sophisticated balancing act” performed by a suspended model lends it the “harmony of a formula” (Hagiwara 242) instead of inflicting the model any pain or discomfort. While it may be true that the ropes are usually not observed to pierce into the models’ skin, the Western critics defend Araki’s work by primarily guessing and glorifying the models’ motives and function within Araki’s photography. In reality, the models merely “pose in front of the camera while […] a mainstream male photographer” takes pictures of them (Hagiwara 243). The pictures are “never exhibited as the models’ work but Araki’s” (243). In other words, the models’ contribution in Araki’s work is (unironically) limited to modeling and, therefore, self-abasing as they have no artistic control over the final product and are at the mercy of the photographer. For instance, in 2017, Araki wrote back to his muse, Kaori, regarding her appeal to no longer publish pictures of her, “I will decide which publication, which exhibition, when to publish and what kind of products I will give permission to use my work. It’s all up to me” (Araki qtd. in Rich). Hence, the models have no agency over how their bodies are used to sell the photographs.

Consider the image of the tied-up woman with spread-out legs in the ‘Tokyo Comedy’ series. The picture’s subject is a woman wearing a kimono falling off her body such that her breasts and genitals are visible. She spreads her legs in the direction of the viewer, her genitals covered with a blooming flower, symbolic of a censored vagina (Frownfelter). In the bottom-right is a toy dinosaur, conceivably indicative of the objectified state of the woman. Her face is void of expression and her body is suspended in the air, placing herself at Araki’s complete disposal. Overall, she is in a state of absolute submission, “the dominant code by which female sexual pleasure is represented” (Coward 18). This is problematic as the presence of “passionate submission” evokes at best “romantic deaths” and at worst “sexual murders”, which serve to “powerfully re-circulate the connection between sexuality and death” (18). In Araki’s context, it means that through “evoking romantic death or sexual murder,” women are shown as submissive (Hagiwara 244), allowing Araki to capture their bodies the way he wants, taking away agency over their bodies and encapsulating them within the realm of his artistic expression.

Concurrently, consent is used as a premise to justify the models’ agency over their bodies. Japanese photography critic Iizawa Kotaro suggests that “the women presented here as sex dolls do not appear exploited, suppressed, or degraded” and “do not seem to be victims deprived of their own will” (92). Once more, the argument is based on the speculated motivations of models, adding that Araki’s photography is a result of the “secret desire to expose themselves as sexual objects in front of someone” (92). This argument holds no merit as it assumes the sexual objectification and consent of the models to be natural. Nonetheless, the “repetition of the confessional story of female models”, “stories about their awakening,” and “their consent to exposure, bondage, and hanging” (Hagiwara 244) validates the objectification of the model in the eyes of the viewer and frees him of the “burden of sexual objectification” (Mulvey 28). To reiterate, the model “holds the look, plays to and signifies male desire” (27), causing the viewer to “see confirmation of his male sexual desire in the models’ consent” (Hagiwara 245). Furthermore, it is interesting to note that while there is a significant stress on the models’ consent to bondage, “the viewer is not encouraged to question what makes

the model consent” (Hagiwara 249), and, more importantly, what she consents to. For example, Araki allegedly sold a model’s nude image without her consent, justifying it by saying that she should be honored to work with him (Rich). This allegation, one of many against Araki, raises the ethical question of the boundaries of consent established between Araki and his models. By not considering the feelings of his models and using them “as a tool of his […] purposes,” Araki degrades them by denying their subjectivity and instrumentalizing them (Nussbaum 257), thereby treating them as objects (258).

Another problem that needs to be addressed in Araki’s representation of women is the sole focus on their body parts, leading to their fragmentation. Coward defines fragmentation as the “tendency to concentrate on areas of a woman’s body in an extremely fetishistic way; bottoms, breasts, genitals, or legs” (17). Consider the image of the woman bowing in front of six men in the ‘Pseudo-Reportage’ series: the woman’s buttocks are at the center of the image, surrounded by six men in suits. The black and white composition, integrated with the expressionless background, exudes a feeling of emptiness beyond the boxing ring where the photograph was taken. The floor is covered with confetti; however, we do not know who the woman is or what, if anything, she has achieved despite existing as the focal matter in the picture. Displaying only certain parts of the woman’s body makes her fungible and the viewer sees her as interchangeable with any other woman (Nussbaum 257), decreasing her value only to her physical appearance (Langton 228) and how she can be used (MacKinnon 138; Bordo 143). Another photograph that showcases Araki’s segmentation of the female body is the picture of the tied-up woman sitting cross-legged in ‘Kinbaku (Bondage)’ from 1979. A bright light shines from the right, creating a chiaroscuro effect on her roped body that forms black, gray, and white areas across her figure. Such “conventional close-ups […] integrate a different mode of eroticism” which hinges the woman into a “cutout or icon rather than verisimilitude to the [image]” (Mulvey 27). To be specific, the separation of a woman’s body parts reduces her to “a perfect product, whose body, stylized and fragmented by close-ups, is the […] direct recipient of the viewer” (30), debasing her to a mere image instead of a person. Araki’s proponents may argue that he

exhibits the fragmented body parts of his muses to protect their privacy, as supported by the statement, “for Araki, faces are the real private parts” (Searle qtd. in Silverton). However, this assertion fails to address that the same muses’ faces appear within different parts of the same photobook too. Thus, by capturing only the bodies of the subjects and not “show[ing] the ‘whole’ personality” (Coward 17), Araki humiliates his muses by reducing them to mere sexualized segments of their body.

Moreover, Araki’s degradation of women is not only limited to himself but also leads to the gaze of the viewer humiliating and shaming towards the women. While Araki’s photographs are often considered personal (Ishihara 146; Ito), his “immense photographic production […] reaches a public of millions” (Hagiwara 239). Hence, it is imperative to discuss reactions harbored by some viewers towards Araki’s photography and how they further contribute to the humiliation of those models. Mulvey argues that, in psychoanalytic terms, a woman “connotes […] her lack of a penis” which implies a “threat of castration […]. Thus the woman as icon, displayed for the gaze and enjoyment of men, […] always threatens to evoke the anxiety it originally signified” (29). In simpler terms, the presence of a woman brings forth sexual difference, evident in her lack of a penis, which is unpleasurable for the male. Hence, she is sexualized and thus no longer a threat to the male viewer. Mulvey adds that “the male unconscious has two avenues to escape from this castration anxiety” (29): indulging in voyeurism and sadism or giving into fetishistic scopophilia leading to disavowing castration altogether by fetishizing the figure of the woman. Araki’s photographs can be observed to tend to both avenues a man’s unconscious could take. Consider the image of the high-school girl tied at her feet hanging upside down in the ‘Tokyo Comedy’ series. She is wearing a typical Japanese sailor uniform, indicating that she is a minor. Her body is exposed from the torso down (or up, depending on the perspective of the viewer.) As her hair and skirt dangle down, she appears to be unconscious or in pain yet “some viewers will find these pictures pleasurable, assuming the models’ masochistic pleasure to be positively synchronized with the photographer’s […] humiliating gaze” (Hagiwara 247). In other words, to escape castration anxiety, the viewer “assert[s] control and subject[s] the guilty person through punishment”

(Mulvey 29) by projecting his satisfaction onto the schoolgirl and reading her supposed reaction as a “sign of pleasure” (Hagiwara 247).

The second avenue of escape from castration anxiety revolves around identifying with the male character in the image and projecting one’s desire onto the female through the male character. A prime example of this is the image of Araki standing next to a suspended model in the ‘Marvelous Tales of Black Ink’ series. Araki is posing on the right-hand side with his sunglasses and camera while a model on the right is tied up with ropes, wearing a school uniform and hanging in the air. In such photographs, “the camera’s look is disavowed in order to create a convincing world in which the spectator’s surrogate can perform with verisimilitude” (Mulvey 33). In other words, the viewer is forced to view the subjects from the perspective of the male present in the picture and “by means of identification with him, through participation in his power, the spectator can indirectly possess her too” (29). Simply put, the viewer vicariously lives Araki’s life and experiences by consuming his pictures. On the other hand, when there is no male present, such as the photograph from the ‘Tokyo Comedy’ series of a tied woman sitting on the concrete floor with scissors and hair around her, the viewer is “obliged to see [the models] from the same view-point as the person who cut her hair and photographed her” (Hagiwara 247). Hence, Araki’s degrading depiction of women in his photographs leads to viewers following suit, causing the models to be demeaned by not just Araki, but millions of people as they use the photographs solely for their sexual gratification. One might argue that the viewers’ response is not one that Araki intends to convey through his photographs. However, as Susan Sontag argues, “the photographer’s intentions do not determine the meaning of the photograph, which will have its own career” (39). Hence, “the photographer’s intentions are irrelevant to the larger process” (122) which in Araki’s context is the degradation of women in his photographs.

It bears repeating that the central issue is the degrading portrayal of women in Araki’s photographs. Without some contextualized background mandated for these muses to be viewed as human, one must consider that women in these pornographic prints are not there by choice but because

of the lack of choices. It can further be contended that what is revealed in Araki’s salacious pictures is scathing and abusive by its very nature. In light of modern-day photographers such as Araki, there is a pressing need to address “the structural problem within the industry and photographermodel relationship” (Hayashi qtd. in Rich) as the world progresses towards more equitable rights for women. In the short term, this means that models speak up about their experiences and “force new conversations about models’ rights” (Mustard qtd. in Davis). By doing so, the level of integrity and social accountability of photographers such as Araki and those who intend to follow in his footsteps will rise (Davies). Once more, it is worth reflecting on the recent accusations by Kaori against Araki, who accused him of unprofessional conduct (among many other things) during the fifty years she modeled for him. After ending her professional relationship with Araki, the ‘#MeToo’ movement inspired her to go public about her experience with Araki. As models gain support and courage from the public, they are likely to speak up, stirring much-needed conversations about the ethics of prominent photographers such as Araki. As Kaori states, existing images in which models were exploited should remind the viewer about the model’s issues (qtd. in Rich) and deter future photographers such as Araki from becoming mainstream.

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Reconstructing ‘Women’ with Genocide

SHU MIN TAN AY 2020-2021

The sheer bloodshed and brutality carried out by female genocidaires paralyzes me. Reports, interviews, and recounts of women engaged in mass killings shocks the conscience again and again. Women as active agents of slaughter during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide is a socially and historically unprecedented phenomenon in terms of direct engagement and scale of violence (Jones 2002: 65). The prominent participation of women – as instigators, perpetrators, murderers, and followers – on every level of authority during the systematic killing is extraordinary, warranting global attention to gender as a feature of genocide. The renowned case of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko – the only woman ever convicted by the international criminal tribunal for rape as a crime against humanity – garnered considerable publicity through extensive media coverage. During and after the trial, the world was quick to sensationalize Nyiramasuhuko as a woman who had ‘betrayed her sex’ (Hogg 2010: 99), reprimanding her with labels such as ‘evil,’ a ‘new kind of criminal,’ a ‘monster,’ and ‘like a man’ (69) –responses that demonstrate how female violence is not easy to confront, but easy to condemn.

Female genocidaires like Nyiramasuhuko interrogate our socially constructed archetype of the ideal woman as the loving, nurturing caretaker, and challenge the standard assumption of women as inherent victims of war violence (Drumbl 2013, 6). Their actions are disturbing, irrational, and socially unacceptable versions of femininity that do not fall squarely into these traditional understandings of females. They are ‘accused of a new kind of evil’ (Noddings 1991: 48-50) – specifically, an evil that is used to describe women who stray from traditional femininity. Their choice to play direct roles in genocide is perceived as less womanly and peaceful, but more erratic, more assertive, and more masculine. As such, I argue how

masculine traits become a recurring motif in portraying female genocidaires as they transcend the established gender boundaries of society’s narratives. In this paper, I do not want to condemn female genocidaires, but intend to closely scrutinize their actions because they significantly influence the way we continue to have conversations about women and violence. Our deeply internalized gender norms are gravely problematic because it blinds us from viewing women as war criminals and perpetrators of genocide.

Women’s complicity in the Rwandan genocide ranged throughout each level of authority and leadership. Some were directly involved in the killings, some instructed violence, exposed victims, or had simply followed orders (Hogg and Drumbl 2015: 189). Women in pre-genocide Rwandan society retained submissive roles in a heavily male-dominated society. Many were restricted to the domestic household spheres (Hogg 2015: 72). Gender roles thus became a socially constructed phenomenon for women to conform to, dictated by hegemonic social conditions and ideologies. As Butler argues, ‘gender reality is performative’ and certain acts are staged for society’s entertainment and satisfaction (Butler 1988: 527). In light of these scripted feminine tasks, some women during the genocide continued to play passive roles, ‘refusing to hide their neighbors,’ exposing the ‘hiding places of Tutsis,’ and assisting ‘killers by preparing meals, fetching drinks and encouraging their men’ (Hogg and Drumbl 2010: 197). Women that retained domestic roles in the genocide were otherwise known as ‘ordinary’ women. While these ‘ordinary’ women did not actively engage in violence, they did not resist it either – inactions that have led to thousands of lives lost. As Hogg expresses, ‘women knew a lot, their eyes were open’ (4). Women firsthand witnessed violence with their eyes. They were exposed to the magnitude of the bloodshed around them and fully aware of the atrocities that occurred, yet many remained docile and passive agents watching the slaughter of millions.

A question nonetheless arises: did these women play a role in either contributing to or committing genocide? At least according to the National Service of Gacaca Courts , their actions were not deemed as punishable offenses relative to men (4). In such cases, many women have gone unpunished

and unrecognized as war criminals because little moral responsibility is attached to women who generally prescribe and perform the traditional roles of womanhood as expected of them in a patriarchal society. This is substantiated with Butler’s notion that ‘recognizability precedes recognition,’ which claims that an individual must conform to the outlines of recognizability – that is, to embody and act ‘the general terms, norms and conventions’ – for the given living being to be shaped and crafted as a subject for recognition (Butler 2009: 5). This is to say that we frame ‘ordinary’ women into these gendered conventions and become conditioned only to recognize these women as peaceful, passive, and restrained. We do not see their passivity as harmful and dangerous. Identifying an ‘ordinary’ woman’s criminal responsibility in genocide would be to implicitly challenge the patriarchal norms and the frames that render a woman recognizable. Accepting feminine roles thus becomes a social burden but also an escape from punishment.

On the contrary, when women step out of their gendered roles and choose to engage in genocidal killings, the world reacts abhorrently and is troubled by female violence. Female killers become sensationalized and are alienated from the rest of society, as a description from Adam Jones describes:

‘Rose Karushara, a councilor in Kigali, who “took an extremely active role in the genocide, wearing military uniform throughout. A tall and physically strong woman, she used to beat up the refugees herself before handing them over to her Interahamwe for the final kill…”’ (Jones 2002: 83).

The above quotation illustrates the violence that females are capable of perpetrating. Immediately, the description of Karushara as a ‘tall and physically strong woman’ contradicts our predetermined notion that females are less than males in terms of physical size (83). Yet here, Karushara gains power through her body: her brute action to ‘beat up’ the refugees herself invokes a sense of irrationality and madness, but is arguably one of the few ways she asserts power – a quality that society prohibits women from having. She is drawn further away from the accepted gender status quo of the gentle and nonviolent female figure. As Butler underscores, ‘those who

fail to do their gender rights are regularly punished’ (Butler 1988: 522). This punishment comes in the form of the world’s condemnations and criticisms (Hogg and Drumbl 2015: 189). Society strips Karashura’s feminine qualities and quickly associates her physicality with masculine traits. The violence she commits is twofold: on one hand, she is literally violent to other human beings, but on the other hand, her actions are a violation of the natural order of gender realities. Access to power and violence – which has been denied to Rwandan women for a majority of their lives – thereby forces women to fall outside the boundaries of our gender narratives.

In the Rwandan context, any discussion pertaining to mass killings immediately evokes the notorious symbol of the machete, a tool that was used to slaughter more than half a million people. Traditionally, the image of machete wielding has been associated with work performed by males, typically farming and cultivating agriculture in the field. For a woman to pick up a machete contradicts popular perception, precisely because we do not associate women with exertion and violence. Thus, the portrayal of a woman picking up a machete can be read as a radical step towards breaking social categories – that is, figuratively speaking, a woman holding a machete becomes a woman holding power.

‘Athanasie Mukabtana, “a teacher at the School of Nursing of Kaduha… She didn’t even wait for the gate to be opened. You [could] see the enthusiasm she had for finishing off these sick Tutsis. She had a machete and went into the hospital with the other assassins. She made all the sick Tutsis go out, often dragging them out. And once outside, she killed them with a strike from the machete”’ (Jones 2002: 83).

The machete as an embodiment of power is apparent in the above extract. Mukabtana holds and strikes with the machete, claiming ‘subject status through a weapon’ subsequently exercising power that she has otherwise been denied (Melzer 2015: 12). The fact that ‘she didn’t even wait’ emphasizes how there was not a split second for hesitation or ambivalence, suggesting that women – when given the opportunity to do so – will wholeheartedly embrace any chance to exercise power and assert authority.

While it is unusual to tie the notion of opportunity to genocide, one may argue that genocide had not only destroyed lives, but similarly destroyed gender norms. This is reinforced by feminist writer Patricia Melzer, who writes that ‘violence actually interferes with and destroys the systems of meaning’ (11). Her suggestion proposes that violence was integral in denaturalizing order and meanings and challenging our deeply internalized expectations and ideals, thereby opening spaces for new order and construction. Genocide, in a perverse and disturbing way, provides favorable conditions for forces and networks of gender to be crippled, providing women with ample opportunities of freedom to deconstruct and reconstruct a role for themselves. Thus, one approach to Mukabtana’s actions may contend she harnessed the opportunity presented, making use of violence as emancipatory means to dismantle gender barriers. In fact, a feminist response would perhaps rejoice and triumph over Mukabtana’s rejection of the ‘victim framework’ that victimizes women in war (Marway and Widdos 2015: 3). Participation of women in armed violence becomes a way of claiming agency and control, or even better, an ‘extension of their liberation as women’ (Melzer 2015: 4).

Nonetheless, a perverse nature lingers behind Mukabtana’s actions. In particular, the way Mukabtana displayed such ‘enthusiasm’ connotes an underlying suppressed desire, a sense of evil – almost as if it was inhibited and contained. The image presents unspeakable darkness: the distinct contrast between her contentment and the sick Tutsis is detestable, and then how she subsequently derives pleasure from inflicting pain and killing them is even more sadistic. A modern-day reader would react in horror and dismay. Mukabtana’s behavior is socially unacceptable as she defies the patriarchal constructions of motherhood and womanhood. Similarly, a violation of the norms of motherhood is also encapsulated in an interview with a UNAMIR officer. In particular, he clearly states how:

‘I had seen war before, but I had never seen a woman carrying a baby on her back kill another woman with a baby on her back. (UNAMIR officer, interviewed in 1996)’ (Jones 2002: 82).

Despite the statement’s refrain from employing the term ‘mother,’ the image

very much insinuates the shocking capacity a mother can have for violence. While the portrayal of a woman killing another woman is terrible, a woman inciting violence on a baby is even more horrifying. Here, the image consists of the slaughter of both mother and baby – a sight which the UNAMIR officer tacitly suggests is worse than war. This is precisely because we associate mothers to be caretakers, to be ‘life givers [who are] inclined to be naturally/ psychologically opposed to violence’ (Melzer 2015: 114). We are inclined to say that women have seemingly closer and intimate relationships to children for biological, cultural reasons (Noddings 1991: 61). Yet, the description undermines our naturalized constructions of mothers as nurturers and it precisely raises the following questions: in reducing mothering to a role, do we risk losing important elements of a woman’s experience? Is a woman rendered less motherly, less feminine because they incite violence? Is a mother any less of a ‘good’ mother for inciting violence?

As Butler contends, violent women ‘fit no dominant frame for the human, and their dehumanization occurs first’ (Butler 2004: 25). Butler’s views suggest that these mothers drift from discrete genders, and consequently, are rendered less feminine, less civilized, and less human. As such, violent women become individuals that do not belong; there is ‘no frame, no story, and no space for such a life’ (25). Their brutality disrupts feminist theories of women that are non-violent by nature, and also challenges the notion that women are not inclined to male idiosyncrasies such as greed and force (Hogg 2010: 99). In fact, their violent actions are so profoundly immoral and evil that they even destabilize the very foundations of feminism and present challenges in feminist discourse. This idea of evil is delineated by Noddings as she describes evil in women as ‘losing their essential femininity in vain attempts to emulate masculine ways of being in the world’ (Noddings 1991: 48). In lieu of this suggestion, the evil in female genocidaires lies in the way they harm others, but more precisely in the way they reclaim human agency and transgress the fundamental premise of femininity. Female figures such as Mukabtana, Karushara, and Nyiramasuhuko encapsulate the fears of our patriarchal society as they threaten existing gender orders (45).

So, what makes female genocidaires ‘accused of a new kind of evil’ (Noddings

1991: 48) if they are emulating masculine traits? Were women indicted with evil to begin with, and how did the genocide change such evil? Simone de Beauvoir offers an interesting answer describing that, ‘man is defined as a human being and woman as a female – whenever she behaves like a human being, she is said to imitate a male’ (de Beauvoir 2019). Her suggestion takes resonance in the way female genocidaires embody masculine traits, cast as evil, cunning, and deviant. All portrayals of women and violence are dominated with masculinity as recurring associations. In de Beauvoir’s view, the state of being a woman and performing the acts associated with womanhood is not necessarily to live as a human being. De Beauvoir’s point reiterates that when female genocidaires engage in genocide, they become more ‘human’ only relative to man or masculine traits, but certainly not regarded as an ‘autonomous being’ (de Beauvoir 2019). Likewise, it is also troubling when the use of ‘female’ in ‘female genocidaires’ becomes heavily dependent on the male for definition. For me, however, what is worthy of challenging is the dominant interpretation of gender that is unfixed and interchangeable. When female genocidaires adopt male attributes, their very existence problematizes the idea that a woman and her body are exclusively tied to femininity. Female genocidaires thus verify Butler’s argument that gender is a ‘free-floating construct,’ meaning that ‘masculinity’ should be feasible to describe a female body and that ‘femininity’ can just as appropriately describe a male body (Butler 1990: 6). Therefore, perhaps what we can learn from female genocidaires is the fundamental reality that a woman’s body should not be restricted to a certain set of imaginary beliefs that dictate how the body of a female ought to be. We thus ought to challenge gender as an imaginary concept – as more than a singular denotation of a body – to not have gender define bodies, but for bodies to define gender as one should rightly do.

In a reality where genocide is present, however, our bodies and gender are inevitably placed in the hands of someone else. This position is similarly expressed by Alan Wolfe, as he describes that ‘when someone is determined to practice genocide against you, you are what they define you to be,’ asserting that ‘genocide takes away not only life but choice’ (Wolfe 2012: 178). His view underlines how genocide removes gender from the

conversation: how women no longer view other women as women, how men no longer view other men as men. More specifically, an individual’s deeply ingrained ethnic hatred or desperateness for survival ultimately leads to the de-gendering of another. This is encapsulated in the following account:

‘Women’s involvement as genocidal killers frequently paralleled those of Hutu men: bonds of ethnic solidarity (‘it was as if all men, women and children had come to kill us,’ recalled one Tutsi survivor from Sovu)’ (Jones 2002: 84).

The survivor’s testament ‘it was as if all men, women and children had come to kill us’ amalgamates the group as a singular threat to his life. And more importantly, regardless of the gender or age – men, women or children – it inevitably puts his life in direct jeopardy. This reiterates how genocide deregulates gender – that even women and children are no longer perceived as the vulnerable but rather as a danger. The magnitude of the genocide encapsulates the power of shared social and ethnic complicity. The full inclusion of an ethnic group irrespective of gender is undeniably what led to millions being killed within the 100 days of slaughter in Rwanda. As such, individuals who kill no longer appear as ‘lives’ but as a threat – ‘not quite human and not quite alive’ (Butler 2009: 42). Here, the denotation that lives are no longer seen as ‘humans’ in genocide is an extended reflection of how the world does not view female genocidaires as human beings either, let alone as ‘women’ or ‘men.’ As reiterated by Hogg, female genocide suspects ‘are treated, not like men, not like women, but something else, like monsters’ (Hogg: 2010, 100). Such dehumanization strongly renders a female offender as a cruel and evil monster; her offenses are even worse than a male criminal.

So how does one define what a ‘real woman’ ought to be like? The answer, unfortunately, is not straightforward. Nearly ten years ago, the Nyiramasuhuko trial had shocked the conscience of the world, warranting discussion on the role of women as war criminals in the Rwandan genocide. Female genocidaires thus present a challenge to society and feminist theories as they undermine the fundamental female stereotypes of the peaceful nurturer and wartime victim. Their actions stray so far beyond society’s

norms that they become de-gendered, ‘treated as ‘non-women,’ since ‘real women’ do not commit violence (Hogg, 2010: 100). Their very existence after committing such crimes thereby calls for the reassessment of what it is to be a ‘real woman.’ In no respect should female genocidaires be criminalized as ‘monstrous’ or ‘manly’ because conceptualizing women in these gendered frames influences the way we continue to manage and respond to a woman’s engagement in violence. Alternatively, perhaps we should seek to ‘make a female experience a product of feminine nature rather than feminine nature a product of female experience’ (Noddings 1991: 70). And more importantly, we must allow the possibility for males and females altogether to reconstruct the best of ‘women’ with genocide. Once the shackles on gender norms are broken, what is left is ultimately a human body untethered, clearly capable of endorsing good as well as committing evil.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Butler, Judith. 1988. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal, 40.4: pp. 519–31.

Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Feminist Review, ed. by Linda J. Nicholson (United States of America: Routledge, Chapman & Hall Inc.).

Butler, Judith. 2004. Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge).

Butler, Judith. 2009. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (London: New York).

de Beauvoir, Simone. 2019. ‘Simone de Beauvoir the Second Sex, Woman as Other 1949,’ <https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/debeauvoir/2nd-sex/introduction.htm>.

Drumbl, Mark. A. 2013. ‘She Makes Me Ashamed to Be a Woman: The Genocide Conviction of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, 2011,’ Michigan Journal of International Law, 34.3.

Herjeet Marway, and Heather Widdows. 2015. Women and Violence: The Agency of Victims and Perpetrators.

Hogg, Nicole. 2010. ‘Women’s Participation in the Rwandan Genocide: Mothers or Monsters?’ International Review of the Red Cross, 92.877: pp. 69–102.

Hogg, Nicole, and Mark Drumbl. 2015. ‘Women as Perpetrators: Agency and Authority in Genocidal Rwanda,’ Genocide and Gender in the Twentieth Century: pp.189–211.

Jones, Adam. 2002. ‘Gender and Genocide in Rwanda,’ Journal of Genocide Research 4:1, pp.65-94.

Melzer, Patricia. 2015. Death in the Shape of a Young Girl: Women’s Political Violence in the Red Army Faction, (NYU Press).

Noddings, Nel. 1991. Women and Evil. (University of California Press).

Wolfe, Alan. 2012. Political Evil: What It Is and How to Combat It (New York: Alfred A. Knopf), pp. 177–211.

One Wor(l)d – What a Dying Language Leaves Behind

SOFIA ENCHEVA

AY 2020-2021

Language. Such a simple word, yet a world without it seems unimaginable. It evokes the warmth of parents’ joy as they hear their child speak for the first time, the pride of belonging to a community and being part of an entity greater than oneself. It has evolved from merely a system of communication to a piece of our identity that represents our home, our culture, and our ultimate role in the never-ending transfer of knowledge that is at the core of society. Still, however strong a language’s foundation may be in the history of its speakers’ group (and thus, however rigid they may consider it to be), language is (ultimately) yet another human tool whose fate depends on how (and if) we use it. With the disappearance of languages having become such a major point of concern in recent years that UNESCO created an atlas of endangered tongues to assist in global efforts to take action (Moseley, 2010), it is crucial to understand that linguistic diversity is every bit as worth protecting as biodiversity – and the implications of failing to do so are not only a tragedy for the speakers who lose their native languages, they are detrimental for all of us.

Losing languages may be interpreted as a natural process, thus interfering with it would be pointless and unnecessary . In their World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report, Loh and Harmon (2014) make the argument that biological and linguistic evolution are similar processes, a notion that originated from Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man (1874):

The formation of different languages and of distinct species, and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously parallel… Languages, like organic beings, can be classed in groups under groups; and they can be classed either naturally according to descent, or artificially by other characters. Dominant

languages and dialects spread widely, and lead to the gradual extinction of other tongues. A language, like a species, when once extinct, never… reappears. (p. 6).

Loh and Harmon (2014) state that the connection between biology and culture (of which languages are a fundamental part) can be explained with the Darwinian Tree of Life, where the development of the first primitive human language was an “extraordinary, unparalleled event [that] occurred at the end of one of its twigs… at some point, for reasons that are still unknown, the species on that twig began to talk” (p. 8). This marked the beginning of what the authors describe as cultural evolution, a process involving, essentially, a transfer of information from one person to another –“an idea, a behaviour, custom or another aspect of a way of life” (p. 8).

Its potential advantages and limitations aside, the linguistic-cultural version of the Tree of Life (Loh & Harmon, 2014) offers a peculiar perspective on language extinction. It may seem to be a far more extreme process than the loss of species (given the topic’s soaring media popularity), but the two are, in fact, similar in scope and co-occurring in the present time: both biological and cultural diversity have shrunk by around 30% since 1970 (Loh & Harmon, 2014). Still, regarding languages, the issue seems to be all the more dramatic: “only about 0.1% of the world population or about 8 million people… are responsible for keeping one half, or about 3,500, of the world’s languages alive” (Loh & Harmon, 2014, p. 22). Unlike species, a language does not usually go extinct due to the death of its entire population of speakers; said speakers tend to shift to another language, which gradually leads to the abandonment of their native tongue. Loh and Harmon (2014) list several factors which have collectively contributed to the current downfall of global linguistic diversity. Firstly, there are “social or economic reasons, such as commerce or migration”, affecting language diversity in northwestern North America and northern Australia (though not exclusively), with a specific example being Eyak in Alaska, whose last speaker died in 2008 (Underwood, 2014). Also, a language may become endangered due to “a deliberate policy of linguistic unification by a dominant group”, e.g. the Breton language in France (Eriksen, 1992), or it may fall victim to the “globalization of trade and

media”, e.g. indigenous languages such as Quecha in Bolivia (Loh & Harmon, 2014, p. 24; Watson, 2007). Furthermore, languages are negatively impacted by “nationalization policies that favour a small number of languages, increasing the pressure on languages with thousands or fewer speakers, and boosting the dominance of those with millions” (Loh & Harmon, 2014, p. 24), e.g. Scottish Gaelic in Britain (Eriksen, 1992).

The authors did not particularly elaborate on the effect of governmental attempts throughout history aiming to eradicate languages that they considered unacceptable. Unfortunately, so many examples of such policies exist that, since 1948, they are now collectively referred to as linguistic genocide, which is “a central aspect of cultural genocide” (SkutnabbKangas, 2005, p. 653). Linguistic diversity has suffered from brutal political campaigns such as Russification (Weeks, 2004) and the United States’ prohibition of the use of Hawaiian in the twentieth century (Townsend, 2014). Still, it should be noted that oppressive acts against minority tongues as well as campaigns aimed to degrade languages and dialects are still very much a part of reality even today, notably Turkey’s linguicide against the Kurds (Voulgarakis & Dawei, 2011) and Singapore’s Speak Good English Movement seeking to limit the use of Singlish (Harbeck, 2016). Regarding the latter, Jaime Lee, a Singaporean journalist, states that [Singlish] “became an identity thing for us, something that we created ourselves and gave us a sense of rootedness” (Harbeck, 2016, para. 17); therefore, not speaking it would mean to essentially lose an important element of one’s identity. It could be concluded that, in certain cases, there is a connection between language loss and human rights violations; endangered languages can thus be a part of a much more deep-rooted issue that needs to be addressed.

Another reason for losing languages is “technological progress in transport and communication” (Loh & Harmon, 2014, p. 24) – for example, the Internet does not favour endangered tongues such as languages spoken in Brazil and Australia (Temperton, 2015). However, despite the fact that all of the aforementioned processes are the result of our own actions, the authors proceed to imply that, since arguments in support of biological preservation have greater weight, we should somehow blindly accept the fact that no

one should be forced to speak a language against their will as strong enough justification to invest less effort in saving languages. Furthermore, Loh & Harmon (2014) clarify that indigenous people want to preserve their native languages, yet “they may not have the opportunities or means or numbers to sustain [them]” (p. 24). No specific suggestions on how exactly the problem should be addressed are provided, neither is a logical (but, rather, unfortunate) conclusion made – it is the most critically endangered languages that are cherished the most by their speakers, and said speakers happen to be culturally (as well as geographically) isolated from the rest of the world so that the global distribution of language diversity continues to be strikingly unequal. Overall, the report suggested that language preservation may be difficult (if not impossible) to achieve and unlikely to yield as successful results as the measures to protect endangered species.

An alternative view to Darwin’s notion that languages do not need saving is provided by Riehl (2019) in an article on indigenous languages. As a linguist, this author makes important arguments about the implications of language loss while exploring specific examples, both historical – the Canadian government’s oppression against indigenous people and their languages in the 19th and 20th centuries – and present-day: Riehl’s encounter with the last speaker of Nāti, (also known as Naati), which is a severely endangered language spoken in the Republic of Vanuatu1 (Moseley, 2007). Both stories serve an important purpose – mentioning the effort of indigenous Canadian communities to “reclaim their languages” (Riehl, 2019, para. 12) after centuries of mistreatment through establishing a language nest as well as “language and culture camps” (Riehl, 2019, para. 12) leads to a statement that easily contradicts Loh and Harmon’s (2014) stance: “The fact that people struggle to reclaim their languages despite the obstacles says something crucial about the value of language and the tragedy of loss” (Riehl, 2019, para. 13).

The presence of real-life examples is in itself a powerful argument (which is especially magnified when the aforementioned quote is considered). What

1 An important fact to note is that in 1998 (when Nāti was last documented according to Moseley), it was spoken by only 25 people from “a single extended family” (Moseley, 2007, p. 538); therefore, it only took around 20 years for the language to become almost completely extinct.

ONE WOR(L)D

a lot of sources ultimately fail to acknowledge when discussing endangered languages is the impact of language loss on the communities and speakers affected. It is, understandably, a very personal aspect of the topic that no one could (or should have the right to) speak on except for the people who have witnessed the death of their native tongue, an event which (statistically speaking) no researcher or linguistic enthusiast (or anyone else who has the freedom to access the Internet, for that matter) is likely to experience in their lifetime. Accepting language loss as what it is – a tragedy – is key to understanding the reality of this process beyond the numbers and the global trends in the loss of language diversity. For instance, bold, general statements such as “one language dies every two weeks” (Riehl, 2019, para. 5), intended to draw attention to the problem, are bound to fail until we understand what it truly means to have one’s language taken away from them (by force or due to globalization) and be expected to accept it as a natural process.

Riehl (2019), unlike Loh and Harmon (2014), offers actual answers to the question posed in the article’s title ( Why Are Languages Worth Preserving? ). She makes a powerful point: “language loss is also a loss of community identity, collective purpose, and self-determination” (Riehl, 2019, para. 17). Therefore, not being able to speak one’s native tongue is a risk factor for developing serious mental health issues. The author mentions two research studies in support of this argument, the first of which concluded that youth suicide rates in indigenous Aboriginal communities are six times higher among Aboriginal youth living in Canada who do not speak their native languages (Hallett et al., 2007). This is especially concerning given the fact that as few as 15% of the country’s Aboriginal children learn their mother tongues. Moreover, young people speaking their native indigenous tongues (an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander language) are less likely to engage in binge drinking (18% and 34%, respectively), abuse illicit substances (16% and 26%, respectively), or be victims of violence (25% and 37%, respectively) (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012). These findings illustrate the disastrous effects of language loss on one’s health and well-being, further reinstating how crucial it is to realise the grave individual outcomes of missing language as a unifying cultural factor in a person’s upbringing.

Riehl (2019) also discusses the effect of losing linguistic diversity on research which aims to uncover the commonalities between all the world’s languages, thus advancing our knowledge regarding human cognition. By elaborating on the idea that understanding “how language works in the mind” (Riehl, 2019, para. 20) is impossible without taking all languages in consideration (or, at least, as many as possible through a representative sample), the efforts to document critically endangered languages that are discussed so often in the media are suddenly brought into perspective. Furthermore, there are invaluable benefits to getting as thorough a picture of the structures of the world’s languages, e.g. their phonology, lexicology and morphosyntax (University of Gothenburg, 2020) as possible: “The more we understand about how language functions, the better equipped we are to improve our therapies for communication disorders and our methods for language teaching” (Riehl, 2019, para. 25). The applications of linguistic research also include seemingly unrelated fields, notably the making of devices incorporating artificial intelligence, therefore helping shape the future of humanity. Thus, the current language crisis becomes even more disheartening given the fact that the languages we know the least about are in the most linguistically diverse areas of the planet (Loh & Harmon, 2014). The author also makes an undisputable point that “a theory of human language must account for the language of all humans” (Riehl, 2019, para. 29). Does that automatically mean that our view of the universal elements of human language may be challenged if each existing language is accounted for (which could only be possible if we make every effort to preserve linguistic diversity)? It might as well be the case, since we seem to be awfully clueless: “Thousands of languages [mostly spoken in the Pacific and Americas (Loh & Harmon, 2014, p. 39)] are undocumented or only very poorly described, and no one – neither linguists nor speakers – understand how they work” (Riehl, 2019, para. 30). Therefore, language loss is a tragedy not just for the communities whose mother tongues are disappearing – it affects the global population.

Even though Riehl (2019) is convincing with regard to the importance of language preservation, she does not provide enough information (and neither do Loh and Harmon (2014)) on a crucial aspect of the topic: the

significant challenges involved in attempting to document a language. The documentary by Miller et al. (2008) “The Linguists” follows two scientists – David Harrison and Gregory Anderson – as they visit Siberia, India, and Bolivia on a quest to get in contact with speakers of endangered languages. They encounter numerous obstacles along the way, making it evident that the documentation process depends predominantly on the cooperation of the communities whose linguistic environment is being studied. For example, despite being fluent in a large number of languages, Harrison and Anderson often had to rely on a third-party for translations, but more importantly, this needed to be someone with the same ethnocultural background as the person they were interested in interviewing so that the interviewee could feel comfortable enough to cooperate. That goes to show that, even though there are certain exceptions such as Daniel Everett’s study of Pirahã (Barkham, 2008), one cannot simply arrive at a place no foreigners have set foot in before and expect to document an entire language without the help of locals, who can act as interpreters or assist with the data collection efforts. Thus, the process involves a lot more than the actual scientific work – the two linguists had to put considerable effort into getting acquainted with the communities in order to overcome the natural reluctance and fearfulness that anyone would have towards a complete stranger wanting to spend a significant amount of time with them. It was noted in the documentary that certain areas, specifically in India, are dangerous for visitors – which raises the additional issue of potential risk that comes with the fieldwork needed to document languages.

Moreover, since recordings were the primary source of documentation for the linguists, Harrison and Anderson’s goal was to conduct interviews with speakers of endangered languages, which involved the need for technology, an additional factor that complicated the matter even further considering the inhospitable regions they visited. Any damage to the microphones or cameras (since room for backup equipment must have been limited) could have destroyed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to speak to a specific individual. Also, linguists essentially have to record someone’s voice and/or film them, which could present additional challenges. For example, according to Brown (2020), a lawyer, when recording someone for

research purposes (specifically in Australia), the best way to avoid possible complications would be to obtain written consent beforehand, which could be difficult if the interviewer and the potential interviewee do not speak a common language. Another perspective of the issue is the fact that, as Harrison mentioned himself: “when we collect data, the rightful owner of this material is not the scientist, it’s the community that produced it” (Miller et al., 2008, 49:57). This could affect researchers’ ability to share the footage with the intention of raising awareness about endangered languages.

An interesting perspective that is mentioned in Miller et al. (2008) connects languages to national identity. A practical example from the emergence of the first European states in the Middle Ages (notably in the 9th and 10th century CE) is the fact that having a language of their own was one of two crucial factors contributing to the unification and strengthening of the bond between a large group of people, the other being religion. The subsequent triumph of colonial languages such as French, English, and Spanish and the modern-day tendency of erasing cultural borders through the influence of mass media have both contributed to the weakening of nationality as an important aspect of one’s identity. That conclusion corresponds to Riehl’s (2019) argument about the negative effect of feeling disconnected from one’s own culture – while it was made specifically with regard to languages, there is a strong connection between nationality and language; therefore, it is likely that speakers of languages that are not yet classified as endangered (but are nevertheless susceptible to the impact of globalization) also experience a shift in their cultural affiliation.

Overall, the idea that languages should be saved is, in itself, immensely popular and generally accepted. However, it is difficult for someone who has been able to freely express themself in their native tongue over the course of their entire life to picture an existence without it – a form of cultural robbery for which nothing else could possibly compensate. In fact, it should be acknowledged that the shrinking of our global linguistic diversity impacts all of us in more ways than we could possibly imagine – our means of expression and communication is undoubtedly a part of who we are. Within every little word that is currently in use, every snippet of information that

we have grown to associate with a particular meaning, there is an account of our collective history, a living memory of the species on the Darwinian twig whose greatest achievements were made possible by the miraculous gift of speech. Thus, within every word there is a world – a universe of knowledge that could potentially change our perception of the past, creating a different future.

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Barkham, P. (2008, November 10). The power of speech. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/10/daniel-everettamazon

Brown, N. (2020, February 10). INSIGHTS: Audio and video records – are they legal?. Meridian Lawyers. https://www.meridianlawyers.com.au/insights/audio-and-video-recordsare-they-legal/

Eriksen, T. (1992). Linguistic hegemony and minority resistance. Journal of Peace Research, 29(3), 313-332.

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Hallett, D., Chandler, M. J., & Lalonde, C. (2007). Aboriginal language knowledge and youth suicide. Cognitive Development, 22(3), 392-399. DOI:10.1016/j. cogdev.2007.02.001

Harbeck, J. (2016, September 19). The language the government tried to suppress. BBC.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20160919-the-language-thegovernment-tried-to-suppress

Loh, J., & Harmon, D. (2014). Biocultural Diversity: threatened species, endangered

languages. WWF Netherlands, Zeist, The Netherlands. https://d2ouvy59p0dg6k.cloudfront.net/downloads/biocultural_report__ june_2014.pdf

Miller, D. A., Newberger, J., Kramer, S. (Director). (2008). The Linguists [Video file]. Ironbound Films. Retrieved April 18, 2021, from Kanopy. https://nyu.kanopy.com/video/linguists-3

Moseley, C. (2007). Encyclopedia of the world’s endangered languages (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203645659

Moseley, C. (2010). Atlas of the world’s languages in danger. (3rd ed) Paris, UNESCO Publishing.

http://www.unesco.org/culture/en/endangeredlanguages/atlas

Riehl, A. (2019, November 8). Why are languages worth preserving?. Sapiens. https://www.sapiens.org/language/endangered-languages/

Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2005). Linguistic genocide. In Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity. Macmillan Reference, USA.

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Temperton, J. (2015, September 26). Languages are dying, but is the internet to blame?. Wired. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/linguistic-diversity-online

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Issues of Racial Representation: The Intersectional Discrimination of AsianAmerican Women

SOPHIA LEOW ALEGRE

AY 2020-2021

“We have lived in the shadows. Invisible, overlooked, stereotyped, and relegated as second class citizens. And now, in the wake of a violent and brutal shooting, White America is still trying to deny our humanity in existence.” With these powerful words, Georgia State Representative Bee Nguyen rallies her wounded community in the protest against Asian American and Pacific Islander hate” (“Viet Thanh Nguyen on Roots of AntiAsian Hate”).

The recent #StopAAPIHate demonstrations were incited after a series of mass shootings in three Atlanta-area spas on March 16th. Of the 8 shot dead, 6 victims were Asian-American women. And yet, law enforcement hesitated to label the attack as “racially motivated” after the gunman, 21 year-old Robert Long, claimed he had a “sexual addiction”, his objective being to eliminate the “temptation” that the spas posed (Helsel and Elbaum). Officials implored the public to have patience, as the investigation was in its early stages, but the implication was clear: it had to either be one motive or the other- not both. For Asian-American women, who repeatedly suffer from an inextricable conjunction of racism and sexism, the situation was met with disbelief. “People on here literally debating if this was a misogynistic attack against women or a racist attack against Asians. What if - wait for itit was both” tweets Jenn Fang, author of the Asian-American feminist blog Reappropriate. As the consequences of Long’s hate crime reverberate around the nation, this intersectionality between race and gender has resurfaced as a hot topic amongst political and public discourse; in particular, feminist scholars have identified multiple social factors involved in the discrimination of Asian-American women, from historical imperialism, to

matters of representations, and modern racial politics. In light of this, the following essay will examine the intersectional discrimination of AsianAmerican women in an attempt to answer the following research question: using the recent Atlanta hate crimes against East Asian women in the United States as a point of contention, how and why have issues of representation and politics contributed to the intersectional discrimination of AsianAmerican women? I postulate that, stemming from the colonial dynamics of White men and Asian women during the postwar period, representations of Asian-American women are sexually charged and rooted in the ‘exotic Orient’, resulting in an intersectional prejudice that mistreats, harasses, and exploits Asian-American women in the flesh.

1. Intersectional Discrimination of Asian-American Women: What Does It Look Like?

In order to unpack this question, it is important to firstly identify what the intersectional discrimination of Asian-American women looks like, and how it differs from the discrimination against other women of colour.

Temptation: the disturbing word that the perpetrator used to describe the Asian-owned spas, and the Asian bodies that inhabited them. For decades, Asian-American women have been viewed as objects of sexual temptation, as the racism they experience manifests itself as unwanted sexual come-ons and sexual harassment (Dewan). A study published in the Asian American Journal of Psychology (2018), conducted by Shruti Mukkamala and Karen L. Suyemoto, investigated the “intersectional experiences of discrimination for Asian American women”, yielding disconcerting yet unsurprising results regarding the sexual nature of Asian-American racism. After examining the responses of 94 women from various Asian American ethnic groups, the study revealed that Asian American women are: consistently exoticised and fetishised, being labelled as “exotic china dolls” with “slanted vaginas” and harassed by men claiming to have “Yellow Fever” (a racial fetish for East Asians); referred to as being “submissive and passive”, which in turn makes them bigger targets for sexual harassment; and labelled as “cute and small”, infantilising Asian women and pressuring them to conform to the ‘thin’ beauty standard in order to be socially accepted (Mukkamala and Suyemoto

42). This differs from the discrimination faced by other minority groups; as the researchers state in their study, this specific discrimination “sets Asian American women apart from Asian American men as well as White women and other women of colour” (41). This bias is indeed unique to Asian female bodies, as women from other minority groups - such as Arab women or Indigenous women - while discriminated against, are not fetishised in the way Asian women are. With this information in mind, the sexually-driven motivations of Long’s attack cannot be examined without bringing race into consideration- his ‘temptation’ towards Asian American bodies was a product of racialised misogyny, with gender bias being complicated by politicised racial discrimination.

2. Imperialism, Colonialism, and Racist Representations

The primary forces that shape such sexualised perceptions of AsianAmerican women lie largely in their media representations. In her book Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992), feminist scholar bell hooks writes on the important influence of racial representation, condemning American media for constructing images of black people that “reinforce and reinscribe white supremacy” (hooks 1). According to hooks, “white supremacists have recognised that control over images is central to the maintenance of racial domination”, upholding their notions of “racial superiority, their political imperialism, their will to dominate and enslave” (2). Hooks makes it clear that images are not constructed without ideology, and in an imperialist culture of white supremacy, it comes as no surprise that the images of minority groups and people of coluor are often tied to racist, ‘othering’ ideologies, giving rise to harmful stereotypes and controlling the public’s perception (and ultimately, treatment) of said groups. Although she speaks about the representation of African-Americans, the same case can be made for Asian-Americans, who - under the lens of white supremacy - are also consistently viewed as ‘others’, and are victims of systemic racism.

Paying particular attention to the representations of East Asian women, some scholars indicate that it was not until America’s postwar military incursions into Asia during the mid-20th century that the hypersexual stereotype of Asian women truly took hold (Lim). With the large US military

presence in Korea, China, Japan, and Vietnam emerged a hierarchical relationship between the White man and Asian woman: it was a colonisation of not only the lands, but of Asian women’s bodies. Asian womenparticularly Asian war brides - were fetishised by the imperialist West since they were regarded as being both sexually servile and domestically docile: the ideal American wife (Ramirez). This dehumanising, colonial perception of Asian women was reinforced time and time again through popular media and racist representations, as these prejudices continued and coincided with the emergence of cinema. Celine Perreñas Shimizu, feminist film scholar and author of the book The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene (2007), analyses such representations, specifically in film and theatre. “There’s this construction of a being for others and a being for the White man, usually, that were in these drawings and films and other cultural materials,” Shimizu explains in an interview with Vox. Indeed, highly-acclaimed productions such as the film Madame Butterfl y (1954) (based on the musical written in 1904), Toll of the Sea (1920) and the broadway show Miss Saigon (1989), all seem to follow the same colonial narrative: as Professor Dorinne Kondo puts it in her LA Times review of Miss Saigon, “White Man saves Asian Woman from the Asian Man and the Asian Woman dies for White Man.” His argument is based on the theory posed by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in her 2009 essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in which Spivak examines the “white saviour complex” and interprets it as “White Man saves Brown Woman from Brown Man”. It seems that the “White Man saves Asian Woman” narrative exists to maintain the power imbalance between the coloniser (in this case, White America) and the colonised (East Asian women), perpetuating White, male superiority and ownership over Asian female bodies- a dominance that would lead to the sexual exploitation and objectification of Asian women from White men, and to the eventual anti-Asian misogyny that instigated the Atlanta spa shootings. As can be predicted by hooks’ theory on the power of racial representation, these distorted portrayals of Asian women promote anti-Asian acts of violence and discrimination in the name of White, American imperialism: a pattern that repeats itself to this day, especially when considering the recent Atlanta hate crimes. Recognising the dangerous effects of harmful representations

of minority groups is thus fundamental in understanding how the historical and racist characterisations of Asian women were ultimately conducive to the culture of racialised misogyny that enabled the Atlanta spa shootings.

Moreover, the way in which the Asian women behave in such productions can only be described as hypersexual: an exaggerated display of extreme perversity against the White female norm (Shimizu 32). This hypersexuality ultimately portrays Asian women as abnormal in contrast to the White norm, which once again acts as a form of othering and discrimination. The sexualised representations of Asian women can be categorised under two prevailing tropes: the Lotus Blossom and the Dragon Lady. The Lotus Blossom is a “submissive, compliant sex object”, and the Dragon Lady is “an evil, threatening sex object”; in both cases, the sex object (Rao). Asian American Studies scholar and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Renee TajimaPeña studies the dichotomy between these two hypersexual archetypes, explaining how they stem from “the colonial relationship, the fallout of war, and the idea of these hypersexualized Asian women who were there to comfort and entertain the troops” during the Vietnam War. These hypersexual representations of Asian women written into colonial narratives are fundamentally constructed for the White man, by the White man, and perpetuate the racist, fetishistic treatment of East Asian women in the White supremacist context of America. Ultimately, we can see the extremely harmful impact of these racist representations in the Atlanta spa shootings, as Long’s fetishism of Asian-American women reflects the same fetishism present in these imperialist interpretations of East Asian women in media.

3. Orientalism in the Modern Age

Furthermore, the legacy of these Oriental postwar stereotypes can still be seen in the media representation of Asian-American women in the 21st century, the colonial relationship between the White man and the Asian woman is very much present in a modern social context even decades after colonisation. As Professor Jeanne van Eeden states in her essay, “The Colonial Gaze: Imperialism, Myths, and South African Popular Culture” (2004), “the colonial legacy continually asserts itself in popular culture and reinscribes a politics of power in the entertainment landscape”. Eeden’s

claim is made evident when examining many of the racial, misogynistic stereotypes present in media that, alongside great success and popularity, have gone largely unchallenged. For example, a fan-favourite episode of NBC’s infamous sitcom The Office (2005-2013), “A Benihana Christmas”, centres around protagonist Michael Scott, who - painfully single after a recent break-up - picks up two Asian-American waitresses from a local Benihana restaurant, or as Michael names it, “Asian Hooters” - an eatery known for its buxom, all-female serving staff. Michael then proceeds to draw on one of the waitress’ arms with marker so he can “tell them apart”, the gag hinting on the stereotype that “all Asians look the same.” In this episode, the Asian women are minimised to merely their sexuality (as Michael’s escorts) and their race (for the sake of a punchline). In addition, these Asian waitresses exist to serve the White male protagonist, harkening back to the colonial narrative formerly outlined by Shimizu of Asian women being “for others and a being for the White man” (Ramirez, Vox interview).

This discriminatory portrayal of Asian-American women can also be identified in modern commercial advertising. In the journal article “Consuming Orientalism: Images of Asian/American Women in Multicultural Advertising” (2005), scholars Minjeong Kim and Angie Y. Chung argue that while global marketing has allowed multinational organisations to widen their range of cultural repertoires, it has also resurrected traditional hierarchies of American Orientalism, with the normalcy and positionality of White men relying on the racialised and gendered portrayals of Asian women as the “other” (Kim and Chung 67). For example, an advertisement from the Find Your Voice campaign by cigarette company Virginia Slims, released in 2000, featured a number of women of different ethnicities in their ads. Focusing on the Asian model below, we can see blatant references to time-old themes of Oriental feminine exoticism; the woman embodies the traits of a traditional Lotus Blossom archetype: she is portrayed as feminine and sexually inviting, looking down and sideways with a cryptic smile and her hands curled in front of her in an “Oriental-like” gesture (Kim and Chung 80).

Kim and Chung demonstrate how corporations market the physical embodiments of sex and pleasure portrayed by the Asian-American women, not only selling their liquor or their cigarettes to American society, but also the bodies of Asian/American women, highlighting the hierarchies of today’s global society vis-à-vis their exotic eroticisation while reaffirming White normalcy and supremacy (88). Overall, this colonial legacy of racist representations in current Western pop culture and media is responsible for maintaining an Imperialist perception of Asian women in the present day, and with hypersexual, dehumanising portrayals of Asian-American women present in everything from TV shows, to films, and even advertising. The link becomes clear between Long’s “temptation” for East Asian women, and issues of media representation.

4. Underrepresentation & The Exploitation of Asian-American Women

The persistence of such a dire racial issue is not only a consequence of harmful representation, but of underrepresentation as well. Asian-American women are rarely given the platform or opportunity to use their voices, and to speak up against this discrimination. A recent evaluation conducted by

Advertisement featuring an East Asian model, taken from the Virginia Slims “Find Your Voice” Campaign (2000)

the Centre For the Study of Women In Television & Film investigated the “Portrayals of Female Characters in the Top Grossing U.S. Films of 2020”, revealing that out of the 38% of major female characters with speaking roles, only 6% of them were Asian women. In addition, UCLA’s 2020 Hollywood Diversity Report disclosed that 91% of executives at major studios are White, meaning that any “diversity” on screen is still largely written by White producers, bringing a level of scepticism to the authenticity of such diversity. Moreover, this underrepresentation extends far beyond the world of entertainment: according to Berkeley Law graduate Peggy Li, Asian-American women in the working world suffer from an intersection of both the “glass ceiling” - a metaphor that refers to the artificial barriers to advancement for women (P. Li, 143) - and the “bamboo ceiling” - a similar barrier which prevents Asian-Americans from moving forward (145). In addition, since Asian-American women are stereotyped as “submissive” and more deferential in comparison to their White counterparts, they are taken less seriously and given less authority. Because of this, Asian-American women are faced with a unique set of obstacles, and as a result, they are rarely seen in positions of leadership (Tinkler et al). The detrimental effects of this underrepresentation can be better understood through the claims posed by feminist writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her famous 2009 TED talk, “The Danger of a Single Story.” Adichie draws our attention to the dangers of underrepresentation; to “show people as one thing, only one thing, over and over” is to “create a single story” of said people, which leads to the creation of stereotypes that flatten the experiences of minority groups. As Adichie further explains, “many stories matter”, and with a severe lack of female Asian-American representation across entertainment, media, and corporate leadership, it becomes extremely difficult to portray these “multiple stories” to the American public, and to counteract the stereotypes born from the “single story” - that they are submissive sex objects. Thus, without abundant and authentic representation, the orientalist perceptions that hypersexualise Asian women remain unchallenged.

Of course, the “danger” of a single story is made evident when looking at the Atlanta Spa Shootings: a disaster resulting from the cumulative discriminatory representations of Asian-American women for generations,

making them targets for unwarranted temptation and abuse. But, while the Atlanta shootings were indeed horrific, the “danger” of the exotic eroticisation of Asian-American women also points towards a more persistent issue: not a mass shooting, but an ongoing exploitation of AsianAmerican women’s bodies, particularly regarding the issue of sex trafficking. In an amalgamation of sexism, racism, and capitalism, thousands of Asian women are trafficked into the United States each year, becoming pawns in a massive underground sex economy of over nine thousand parlours and a revenue of $2.5 billion a year (A. Li, 140), in which they are faced with horrible conditions and frequent physical and psychological abuse. Where there is a demand there must be a supply, and as a result of the constant hypersexualisation of Asian women in the media, many male sex purchasers search specifically for Asian prostitutes. One study conducted by scholar Devyn T. Dougherty examined how men discuss race in their reviews of White versus Asian prostitutes, and whether their discussions differed by racial group. It was indeed revealed that the appeal of Asian prostitutes stems almost entirely from the stereotypes discussed in this paper, particularly that of the Lotus Blossom: their alleged petite stature, exotic allure, and their submissive, demure, and eager-to-please nature. Thus, the choice to seek out Asian women in prostitution is inherently motivated by the racial fetishism inspired by the hypersexual portrayals of Asian women in media, highlighting a direct cause-effect relationship between racial representation and the exploitation of Asian women. It seems that the real “danger” emerges when this “single story” becomes believable, indicating that the hypersexual image of Asian-American women does not just exist as a mental bias, but results in real behaviour and actions, leading to this pattern of trafficking and exploitation, and at a drastic degree, hate crimes and mass shootings.

5. Conclusion

To conclude, socio-political tensions and colonial relationships between the East and West has led to the marginalisation and othering of Asian-American women by an imperialist White America, exoticising and fetishising them in popular media depictions from the mid-20th century to the present day.

This culture of racialised misogyny has hypersexualied Asian-American women, dehumanising them and resulting in tragedies such as the one that took place in Atlanta in March 2021, as well as ongoing patterns of Asian exploitation seen in the sex trafficking industry. Until Asian-American women are given authentic representation, the opportunity to have a voice, and the platform to challenge these harmful, misogynist stereotypes that plague society’s perception of them, this discrimination will unfortunately continue for decades to come.

WORKS CITED

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “The Danger of a Single Story”. TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, July 2009, www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_ story?language=en.

“A Benihana Christmas.” The Office, written by Jennifer Celotta, season 3, episode 11, NBC, 2006.

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Dewan, Shaila. “How Racism and Sexism Intertwine to Torment AsianAmerican Women.” The New York Times, 18 Mar. 2021, www.nytimes. com/2021/03/18/us/racism-sexism-atlanta-spa-shooting.html.

Dougherty, Devyn T. “Exotic Femininity: Prostitution Reviews and the Sexual Stereotyping of Asian Women.” UNT Theses and Dissertations, University of North Texas, December 2014.

Helsel, Phil, and Rachel Elbaum. “8 Dead in Atlanta-Area Spa Shootings, Suspect Arrested.” NBCNews.com, 17 Mar. 2021, www.nbcnews.com/news/ us-news/3-dead-shooting-georgia-massage-parlor-suspect-loose-n1261262.

hooks, bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation, Routledge, 1992.

Kim, Minjeong, and Angie Y. Chung. “Consuming Orientalism: Images of Asian/ American Women in Multicultural Advertising.” Qualitative Sociology, vol. 28, no. 1, 2005, pp. 67–91, doi:10.1007/s11133-005-2631-1.

Lauzen, Martha. “Research.” Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, 17 June 2016, womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/research/.

Lee-An , Jiyoung, and Xiaobei Chen. “The Model Minority Myth Hides the Racist and Sexist Violence Experienced by Asian Women.” The Conversation, 23 Apr. 2021, theconversation.com/the-model-minority-myth-hides-the-racist-andsexist-violence-experienced-by-asian-women-157667.

Li, Angela. “Unseen and Unforgiving: Massage Brothels and the Sex Trafficking of Chinese Women.” Aleph, UCLA Undergraduate Research Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2020.

Lim, Audrea. “The Alt-Right’s Asian Fetish.” The New York Times, 6 Jan. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/01/06/opinion/sunday/alt-right-asian-fetish. html?smid=tw-nytopinion&amp;smtyp=cur.

Li, Peggy. “Hitting the Ceiling: An Examination of the Barriers to Success for Asian American Women.” SSRN Electronic Journal, 21 Apr. 2013, doi:10.2139/ ssrn.2254711.

Mukkamala, Shruti, and Karen L. Suyemoto “Racialized sexism/sexualized racism: A multimethod study of intersectional experiences of discrimination for Asian American women”. Asian American Journal of Psychology, 9 (1), 32–46. https://doi.org/10.1037/aap0000104.

Ramirez, Rachel. “The History of Fetishizing Asian Women.” Vox, 19 Mar. 2021, www.vox.com/22338807/asian-fetish-racism-atlanta-shooting.

Rao, Sonia. “Asian Women Say Hollywood Has Failed Them for Decades. They’re Ready for Meaningful Change.” The Washington Post, 28 Mar. 2021, www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2021/03/26/asian-womenhollywood-portrayals/.

@reappropriate. “People on here literally debating if this was a misogynistic attack against women or a racist attack against Asians. What if - wait for it- it was both.” Twitter, 17 Mar. 2021, 8:50a.m., www.twitter.com/ reappropriate/status/1372047724573466625?lang=en.

Shimizu, Celine. “The Bind of Representation: Performing and Consuming Hypersexuality in Miss Saigon” The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/ American Women on Screen and Scene, Duke University Press, 2007.

Spivak, Gayatri C, and Rosalind Morris. “Can the Subaltern Speak?”. Columbia University Press, 2009.

Tinkler, Justine, et al. “A Double Bind for Asian American Women in Leadership?” Work in Progress, 11 Nov. 2019, www.wipsociology. org/2019/11/11/a-double-bind-for-asian-american-women-in-leadership/.

“Viet Thanh Nguyen on Roots of Anti-Asian Hate from U.S. from U/S/ Colonialism to Anti-China Political Rhetoric.” Vietnguyen, 30 May 2022, www.vietnguyen.info/2021/viet-thanh-nguyen-on-roots-of-anti-asianhate-from-u-s-colonialism-to-anti-china-political-rhetoric.

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Driving and Urban Experience: Can Driving Generate Urban Experience in a City?

SUNGSU KIM

AY 2021-2022

In the modern era, people can easily see automobiles outside and observe the dominance of automobiles in cities. Abu Dhabi is the capital of the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East, which is well known as an oil-rich nation. Due to Abu Dhabi’s extremely hot weather and low oil prices, a lot of middle-income citizens drive on the road rather than walk on the street. In the YouTube video, “Abu Dhabi Lifestyle with an [sic ] Local,” a YouTuber called Sanchezz meets a local Emirati named Khalifa in the car. They proceed to drive to the gym, a restaurant, Khalifa’s house, and back to Sanchezz’s hotel. Sanchezz mentions that “this is, like, the most craziest experience I’ve ever made” (8:47–8:50). He experiences most of the day through driving, and indeed a quarter of the video is taken in the car, which demonstrates how people in Abu Dhabi may gain experience of the city through driving. Many scholars in urban studies claim that citizens can most effectively obtain urban experiences by walking on the street and that driving has little to do with urban experience (in the context of urban studies and this essay, the term “citizens” means city-dwellers). This essay adds complexity to the idea of urban experience by providing an alternate view point. Building upon Mimi Sheller and John Urry’s idea of “automobility” and Nigel Taylor’s concept of “aesthetic experience,” I argue that although driving generates negative experiences for some citizens, driving also provides some positive and definitely some unique urban experiences that cannot be obtained in pedestrian culture; thus, automobility shapes the city’s culture and society. Because of this, urban planners should consider how automobiles and driving shape the city and generate cultural and social experiences for citizens.

Modern cities were designed with the system of automobility, which DRIVING AND URBAN EXPERIENCE

facilitates movement by cars but makes citizens’ mobility dependent on driving. Mimi Sheller and John Urry, sociologists from Lancaster University and leading theoreticians of mobilities, define automobility as “a complex amalgam of interlocking machines, social practices and ways of dwelling, not in a stationary home, but in a mobile, semi-privatized and hugely dangerous capsule” (739). They mean that automobility is a social system that ties people via a “private-in-public space,” high risk cars, which has transformed the public sphere to prioritize automobiles and changed the definition of citizenship (746). Automobility facilitates movement by automobiles, and thus automobility incentivizes urban planners to design cities exclusively for transportation via automobiles. Therefore, car ownership in the city is not optional—in order to be a part of the city, a citizen must have a car. In “Abu Dhabi Lifestyle with an Local,” the YouTuber Sanchezz relies on a car to access places such as a gym and a restaurant, Khalifa’s house, and his hotel. In addition, the camera focuses on the Emirati’s car, and the background shows a parking lot filled with various cars (Sanchezz 3:31–3:50). Sanchezz and Khalifa depend on driving to move around the city. The cars in the parking lot show that automobile dependency is not unique to Sanchezz and Khalifa; many citizens in Abu Dhabi depend on automobiles. The system of automobility induces the movement by cars in Abu Dhabi and makes people dependent on automobiles.

In this context, being carless is equated to being powerless, and the state of being carless generates negative urban experiences. In Sanchezz’s video, he introduces and boasts about Khalifa’s garage and cars (5:30–6:00). Sanchezz excitedly talks about the brands of Khalifa’s cars and how many cars Khalifa owns and shows his respect to Khalifa as a car owner. Such praise is not meant to flatter Khalifa, since Sanchezz boasts about Khalifa’s cars, even though the local is already heading into the house. I read Sanchezz’s behavior as related to the power structure in the city. Abdellatif Qamhaieh, an Associate Professor of Architecture at American University in Dubai, and Surajit Chakravarty of the Public Policy and Management Group of the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta, analyze Abu Dhabi’s “exaggerated automobility,” by which they mean that the city has a “hyperdependent, collectively celebrated, yet exclusionary car culture” (793).

They mean that people in Abu Dhabi are extremely dependent on cars for mobility and fanatic about car ownership, and the car culture and car-centric jobs in Abu Dhabi exclude non-drivers from the city. Automobility makes people dependent on cars and makes people aware of the importance of cars. Citizens think about the power and influence of cars as tools and consider car owners to be superior to non-drivers. Qamhaieh and Chakravarty claim that “the driver flaunts his or her perceived superiority and entitlement at the expense of the others [low-income immigrants] and reinforces existing social injustices” (804). They mean that drivers command and exploit people with “car-centric jobs” such as “car cleaners, entry-level mechanics, gas station attendants, [and] window-tint installers” (797). Thus, they argue that drivers simultaneously enjoy car-related privileges and solidify the power structure between car owners and people without cars (797). With the rapid increase of foreign labor in Abu Dhabi, more middle-class people, Emirati as well as foreign workers, have bought cars; they feel superior to low-income immigrants and enjoy the privileges made possible by automobiles. Not only that, but they do this “at the expense of the others” (Qamhaieh and Chakravarty 804). The power structure resulting from automobility may bring humiliations, affronts, and negative experiences to those without power. Thus, Qamhaieh and Chakravarty describe elements of this phenomenon as “the worst aspects of Abu Dhabi’s automobility” (804). Perhaps the negative experiences of low-income immigrants are about more than cars—the negative experiences originate from the socio-economic power structure. However, automobility in Abu Dhabi consolidates the power structure and virtually ensures that low-income people without cars have negative experiences relative to and even at the hands of car owners. Thus, driving and automobility generate negative experiences in the city for carless and therefore powerless individuals. However, automobility does not always bring negative experiences to vulnerable individuals. Automobility and driving provide some individuals, including tourists and Emirati women, the opportunity to experience freedom. Although he is a foreigner, in “Abu Dhabi Lifestyle with an Local,” Sanchezz can freely access community locations such as a gym, a restaurant, and his friend’s house. Further, Qamhaieh and Chakravarty mention

that “cars have given women much-needed freedom and independence, especially the ability to move and participate in society uninhibited” (805). Automobiles and the system of automobility allow women to move freely around the city’s public spaces by providing a private space to women. Thus, women can move around the city and experience the city by car without the restrictions or surveillance that they might face if they engaged in other modes of transportation. Perhaps the public transportation system can also give women access to multiple sites. However, public transportation can only give access to places that the system reaches, and it cannot provide a private space. Qamhaieh and Chakravarty explain that “privacy here [Abu Dhabi] is sacred, while behavior in public is always scrutinized” (805). Because women in Abu Dhabi are restricted by social norms, women have limited access to public spaces. Therefore, driving and automobility provide opportunities for individuals such as Emirati women and foreign tourists to gain positive experiences in the city.

Whether the experiences are positive or negative, automobility has reshaped urban systems and structures, and driving provides new aesthetic experiences of the city. Nigel Taylor, Senior Lecturer of Planning and Architecture at University of the West of England, claims that “a central feature of most people’s experience of modern cities (including a central source of their tension, frustration and anger when they are moving about cities) is their experience of traffic, whether as drivers or passengers in motor vehicles, or as pedestrians or cyclists seeking to negotiate the urban environment between motor vehicles” (1610). He means that automobility and introduction of traffic in the city force both drivers and pedestrians to adapt to automobiles and experience the traffic in their everyday lives. He explains that people have different sensory experiences because automobility has changed the structure of the city and the sensory environment of the city, such as its appearance, sound, and smell. Taylor argues that “central to our aesthetic experience of the world is our sensory experience of places. . . for we are thinking as well as sensing creatures, and therefore our sensory experience of the world is often infused with thoughts about what we are sensing. . . In this respect, aesthetic experience is cognitive as well as sensory” (1611–12). He means that people experience

the world through senses such as sights, sounds, smells, and tastes, and they simultaneously think and interpret these sensory experiences. Thus, “aesthetic experience” involves both sensory and cognitive labor: that is, people do not simply accept phenomena through their sensory organs, but they think and reflect on the sensory experience to create a “meaningful experience” (Taylor 1612). Therefore, Taylor defines aesthetic experience as a “meaningful experience” that originates from the combination of “sensory experience” and “cognitive experience” (1612).

Automobility alters people’s sensory experiences and simultaneously influences their cognitive experiences, thus inducing new aesthetic experiences. Automobiles provide a habitable space on the road. People dwell in cars and experience the world through a two-dimensional screen. In “Abu Dhabi Lifestyle with an Local,” the video shows tall buildings, streets, traffic signs, and other cars through the windshield from the driver’s point of view (Sanchezz 1:40–1:47). Sanchezz and Khalifa do not simply drive a car, but they observe the urban scenes that are affected by automobility and think about their sensory experiences in Abu Dhabi, which generates meaningful experiences in the city. Thus, the YouTube video offers evidence that automobility provides new aesthetic experiences to citizens in the city.

In fact, this aesthetic experience gives drivers an experience that can only be obtained through driving. In Sanchezz’s video, he mentions that “this is, like, the most craziest experience I’ve ever made, and I am happy to just see the culture in that way” after his urban road trip (Sanchezz 8:47–8:56).

As a travel YouTuber, Sanchezz has gained various experiences in various places. On his journey in Abu Dhabi, however, he experiences ordinary activities such as going to the gym, having dinner at a restaurant, and visiting Khalifa’s house. Perhaps, he describes the day as “the most craziest experience” because he receives a positive impression of his car journey. Importantly, Sanchezz enthuses that he is “happy to just see the culture in that way” (Sanchezz 8:50–8:56). Since the YouTuber does not engage in activities related to traditional Emirati culture such as praying at Islamic prayer times, going to mosques, or drinking Arabic coffee, he seems to suggest that “the culture” refers to the driving culture in Abu Dhabi. He

gains various experiences through driving culture that differ from other ways of experiencing a city—especially pedestrian culture. This suggests that car culture can provide urban experiences that cannot be obtained through pedestrian culture.

Sanchezz’s experience resonates with research by Iain Borden, a Professor of Architecture and Urban Culture at University College London, on the unique nature of drivers’ versus pedestrians’ experiences. Similar to Taylor and others who study aesthetic experiences in cities, Borden claims that “the driver’s body is not just processing information from the road and car in the manner of a machine, but is experiencing the process through body memory” (15). He means that drivers do not simply receive sensory information but process the information and gain a unique experience from their automobile-enabled motion. Unlike pedestrians, drivers see moving objects, and they “all look different from the car than they do from the roadside” (Borden 12). Drivers take in different sensory information than pedestrians. Drivers think about this sensory experience and gain new cognitive experience. As a result, in the process of driving, drivers have new aesthetic experience, which gives them “exhilaration” and excitement that cannot be gained through walking (Borden 15). Therefore, driving generates a new type of positive aesthetic urban experience that cannot be obtained in pedestrian culture.

In a broader context, driving generates unique urban experience in the city not only for drivers but also for pedestrians. Jani Tartia at the School of Architecture of Tampere University of Technology introduces the concept of “polyrhythmia,” which is “the multitude of perceived and engaged simultaneous—but not necessarily directly interlinked—temporal uses and movements in space, especially in the different nodes and intersections on the routes” (817). In this context, polyrhythmia refers to a state where various people simultaneously meet and use one space for different purposes. Tartia argues that in the case of the studied [walking and driving] routes, though, it is not only the movement and other concrete activities and uses that are concentrated to these sites, but experiences and meanings

as well. The nodes, as sites of polyrhythmia, present the multitude of different meanings individual people share with particular sites. These meanings, and even concrete uses of space of different subjective embodied contexts, overlap and fuse together. . . (820)

He means that in everyday life pedestrians and drivers meet in a single space, and these actors not only engage in moving activities within the space but also share experiences and meanings. As space is used and shared by various people, diverse people interact and form new meanings and experiences. Therefore, driving impacts not only drivers but also pedestrians passing through the street. Pedestrians can gain new sensory experiences through new sights, sounds, and smells from the presence of automobiles, which lead them to new meaningful aesthetic experiences.

In these ways, it is clear that driving affects all citizens in the city and hence can influence the culture of the city. According to Qamhaieh and Chakravarty, “From stop-and-honk shopping to prayer times and informal car washes, all are aspects that represent layers of culture and social traditions mixing with car culture and are rather significant” (805). Qamhaieh and Chakravarty mean that the existence of car culture such as stop-and-honk shopping (drivers stop their cars, honk to call clerks, and place orders from the comfort of their automobiles), roadside Islamic prayer facilities, and car-centric jobs in Abu Dhabi demonstrate that driving and automobility have had a great impact on the city’s culture and society. Since the presence of automobiles has changed the urban culture and society, people gain new experiences of the city. Thus, driving offers an alternative viewpoint on urban experience. Automobility and driving can give people both positive and negative experiences. However, due to automobility, people get a new aesthetic experience, which gives them a unique urban experience and influences the culture of the city. Regardless of whether the influence is good or bad, the impact of driving on the city is clear, and driving provides all citizens with a unique urban experience that pedestrian culture alone cannot give.

Automobiles have come to dominate modern cities, and driving has become a part of urban citizens’ everyday lives. Driving and the city have become inseparable, and the concept of “automobility” emerged to describe the

automobile dependency of urban populations. With the framework of automobility, driving provides both positive and negative urban experiences to citizens. In Abu Dhabi, automobile dependency offers privileges to those who have cars and results in negative experiences for those who do not possess cars. Some people can access public spaces through private cars, and many people can gain exhilarating experiences from driving. Although driving generates some negative experiences in the city, it provides both pedestrians and drivers with new aesthetic experiences that cannot be obtained by walking. Hence, driving can form unique urban experiences and influence the culture of the city. Further research is needed so that urban planners will be able to mitigate the negative experiences that result from automobile dependency in the city while maintaining the positive experiences unique to driving and automobility.

WORKS CITED

Borden, Iain. “Driving at Speed: Urban Experience and the Automobile,” 2006, Academia.edu.

https://www.academia.edu/4246932/Driving_at_Speed_Urban_ Experience_and_the_Automobile. Accessed 23 April 2023.

Qamhaieh, Abdellatif, and Surajit Chakravarty. “Drive-through Cities: Cars, Labor, and Exaggerated Automobilities in Abu Dhabi.” Mobilities vol. 15, no. 6, 2020, pp. 792–809.

Sanchezz, Maxi. “Abu Dhabi Lifestyle with an Local.” YouTube, 28 March 2017, https://youtu.be/wRCthu2rfWU.

Sheller, Mimi, and John Urry. “The City and the Car.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research vol. 24, no. 4, December 2000, pp. 737–57.

Tartia, Jani. “Examining the Rhythms of ‘Urban Elements’ on Walking and Driving Routes in the City.” Mobilities vol. 13, no. 6, December 2018, pp. 808–24.

Taylor, Nigel. “The Aesthetic Experience of Traffic in the Modern City.” Urban Studies vol. 40, no. 8, July 2003, pp. 1609–25.

Kinbaku: Artistic Bondage or Societal Hostage?

TERRY CHEN

AY 2020-2021

In 1997, Nobuyoshi Araki, a Japanese photographer whose career extends over half a century, published a photo series—Tokyo Comedy—featuring nude Japanese women in “kinbaku,” bondage in traditional Japanese art, which draws a repetitive motif of “sexual openness” (Lederman; Hiroko 232). “Kinbaku-bi,” or the beauty in bondage, is found in the sophisticated “formations of bindings and knots [...] to create katas or forms to bind the [female body] in unnaturalistic forms” (Healey). Explicitly depicting naked Japanese women being tied up “with ropes and [suspended] in the air, often in asymmetric and uncomfortable positions,” Araki attempts to preserve the “reality, presence, speed, heat, [and] humidity” of the female body and concurrently express “freedom through restraint” or “liberation through bondage” by “[nodding] to the paradoxical practice of sexual rituals that engage in violence” (qtd. in Artspace, Vittachi). This attempt at liberation, though, is paradoxically an objectification of women and a challenge of their autonomy. A framework that could help us contextualize the objectification in Araki’s images can be found in an article written by Martha Nussbaum, an American philosopher, where she delineates objectification into seven varieties and describes their relationship with one another. Drawing on Nussbaum’s analysis of objectification, this essay will argue that while Araki’s work can be seen as a channel of female liberation, his depiction of Japanese women nevertheless affirms the objectification of the female gender through simplifying women into bodily parts, reinforcing patriarchal constraints on women, and commodifying females as objects for sexual desires.

Analyzing kinbaku in Araki’s work is not nearly as simple, with kinbaku’s historical uses being to “restrain prisoners,” it later obtains the symbolism of power imbalance, specifically between men and women, as the deprivation of free will has shifted context from prisoners and authority to females

and males (Bacarr 185). Araki claims that he “ties women’s bodies because [he knows] their souls can’t be tied. Only the physical self can be tied” (qtd. in Rao). Jean-Christophe Ammann, an art historian, ascertains the liberating factor in Araki’s photos by regarding the bondage in the images as a metaphor for the “rigid, constricting code of behavior that governs the [...] Japanese women” to express “an act of liberation [consisting of] the ritualistic reconstruction and duplication of the experience of constraint” (Hiroko 242). Kōji Taki, a Japanese photography critic, expresses his opinion on Araki’s photos as “[documenting] the dying male gaze that has dominated and objectified women [in] his own paradoxical way” (quote by Kōji Taki as cited in Hiroko 246). However, Japanese scholar and feminist Hagiwara Hiroko questions the viability and necessity for images to reference a “touristic facade of traditional art”— kinbaku-bi—that is “supported by the strictly organized patriarchal institutions” to “critically express the rigidity of Japanese society” (243). Art history professor Christian Kravagna also argues that Araki’s photos should not be “exonerated” of their representation “so obviously based on the commodification of the sexualized female body” and its “phallic-patriarchal conventions” just by “evoking a different cultural background” (qtd. in Hiroko 235). The paradoxical portrayal of kinbaku in Araki’s work, while highlighting a patriarchy’s rigid and suppressive constraints of the female gender, may still, to some extent, inspire reflection and channel rebellion. However, having such thematic employment insistently branded as fostering gender equality overlooks its harmful consolidation of patriarchy. The fundamental question that underlies Araki’s photographs is whether his artistic interpretation of Japanese women sexually liberates them or further jails them in the patriarchal order.

Martha Nussbaum identifies seven distinct definitions of objectification in literary and photographic works and the relationship between them in her essay “Objectification.” According to Nussbaum, objectification involves “making into a thing,” which can be characterized by seven features of which inanimate objects are generally treated: “instrumentality,” “denial of autonomy,” “inertness,” “fungibility,” “violability,” “ownership,” and “denial of subjectivity” (Nussbaum 257). Of the seven features of

objectification, Nussbaum denotes instrumentalization, or the “[denial of] what is fundamental to [a human being]” as the most morally problematic (Nussbaum 265). While she acknowledges that instrumentalization is not unconditionally objectionable, Nussbaum argues that instrumentalization is nevertheless the “central form” of the problem in objectification (289). What Nussbaum argues is that once someone is treated “primarily as a tool of our own purposes,” other forms of objectification could follow (261). Expanding upon the basis of objectification, Nussbaum draws attention to two views stressing the non-binary nature of objectification because, in certain contexts, it may not be entirely malignant. Referring to the central claim of Catherine MacKinnon and Ronald Dworkin, which directs the root cause of objectification to the “society that is suffused with hierarchy and domination,” (qtd. in Nussbaum 268) Nussbaum addresses the view that objectification is asymmetrical: one party is the “objectifier” and the other the “object-status” (qtd. in Nussbaum 268). What is effectively being contested is that the power structure prominent in conventional societies is without mutual respect and equality; therefore, unless a moral reform occurs, which is highly difficult in their opinion, objectification will always be harmful through perpetuating a power exchange between dominance and subjugation, despite the intention. Nussbaum then introduces the view of David Lawrence, an American poet, who assumes that “there is a domain of ‘natural’ sexuality behind cultural constructions that can be liberated” and that objectification can be “symmetrical” and “benign” when there is “mutual respect and rough social equality” (qtd. in Nussbaum 275, 278). While the two views differ in their estimation of the “depth of socialization” and “cultural constructions” (Nussbaum 278) in shaping sex and the difficulty in eradicating so, they converge at the fact that objectification, in the context of sex, will never be rid of harm unless the power structure between male and female ingrained in society is removed.

Viewed through the lens of Nussbaum, Araki’s photos serve to dehumanize women into a group of body parts to be entered by anyone. In Araki’s Tokyo Comedy, an image stood out: a Japanese woman is tied midair, with a kimono, a traditional Japanese garment, hanging from her torso, showing her breasts and vagina while a flower barely covers her genitalia. The way the kinbaku

hangs the woman mid-air, almost like meat in a market, and spreads the woman’s legs wide open to expose her vagina in the middle of the frame seems to “surrender [her] individuation” and create some “porousness of boundaries that can border on violability” (Nussbaum 279-280). In other words, Araki’s positioning of his subject amplified the presence of her vagina, an organ to be “entered and used” but minimized her humanness (Nussbaum 270). It should be underscored that, with the focal point, or the point of initial interest of the image, being the genitalia of the woman as it is situated in the direct center, the woman is now dehumanized into a being represented by her vagina: she is no longer a model with a name or a face to be associated to, she is an instrument with no personhood, as Nussbaum suggests, since “individuality [does] not reside in the genital organs, [they] are just fungible nonhuman things” (277). In other words, by focusing on the genitalia of the woman, the focus is now on the appreciation of physical joy and pleasure that one can get out of the organ while humanity, autonomy, feelings, and pain are all disregarded. However, it can be argued that women should not be constrained or limited to present their bodies in any way, as long as they choose to do so voluntarily; therefore, Araki’s images featuring women’s bodies in their rawest forms could be liberating. This view is aligned with Lawrence’s belief that the genitalia is where “a major part of the humanity [lies] in us” and that “the very surrender of autonomy in a certain sort of sex act can free energies that can be used to make the self whole and full” (277). While it is true that this straightforward depiction of women creates a sense of voluntary surrender of autonomy over their genitalia, this view overlooks the impact of culture and patriarchy on the notion of sex. For nudity to be liberating as Lawrence suggests, society needs to operate under a context of “mutual respect and rough social equality” where the existence of objectification is between two parties that are simultaneously objectifiers and objects instead of a power dynamic between an objectifier and a “volunteer for object-status” (Nussbaum 268). In simpler terms, in a male-dominant society where females are seen to play a passive role, the explicit display of the vagina, disregarding the voluntary aspect, only further perpetuates the simplification of women down to a passive sex organ. The freedom for women to display their genitalia is suffocated by the social norm

KINBAKU

that accepts the instrumentalization of women down to a tool to satisfy the sexual desires of the heterosexual male.

Also, kinbaku in Araki’s images reinforces the patriarchal orders of women by physically and symbolically depriving them of autonomy and eventually eroticizing male dominance which leads to “a terrible sage of sadism and abuse” (Nussbaum 269). As mentioned previously, the historical progression of kinbaku connotes it with a symbolic power imbalance. With its first utilization on prisoners, it can be interpreted that the administrator of the bondage, authority, in this case, would be dominant, while the administered, the prisoner, would be submissive. As bondage moved towards a form of traditional art to appreciate the intricacy of the female anatomy, a shift in the power structure started from that between the prisoner and the authority to that between women and men. By bounding the subject with an artistic expression that is “supported by the strictly organized patriarchal institutions that control membership and qualification,” the woman is being deprived of “something that is most oneself” (Hiroko 243; Nussbaum 263). In simpler terms, kinbaku, a reflection of how the patriarchal society decides what women should look like and how women should act, effectively turns a woman into a byproduct of the conventional Japanese patriarchal rigidity by fitting her into a cultural tradition that was meant to convey a sense of perfection of women to satisfy the male gaze and depriving the female of her individuality. Looking strictly at the image, the bondage heavily imposed on the female subject “binds the body in unnaturalistic forms”, distorting the woman’s body and posture by spreading her legs open with the brute force from the ropes (Healey). Tying up her limbs, kinbaku “entails a forfeiture of [the woman’s] humanity” as she has been deprived of her agency over the display of her bodily organs (Nussbaum 268). In other words, the ropes and physical constraints made it practically impossible for the woman to autonomously decide on the privacy of her genitalia as her limbs are all tied, therefore inviting any male to seek pleasure from her. Such denial of autonomy, the “[dictatorship of] how the other person will behave” on both physical and social levels serves to “[eroticize women] being dominated and being turned into objects” (Nussbaum 268). As suggested by Nussbaum that instrumentalization is closely linked with both a “denial of autonomy,” and subsequently the “denial of [her] subjectivity,” the female conformity

in a male-dominant society established by the symbolism of kinbaku and the sexualization that is associated with bondage in Araki’s work prompt the “prevalence of sex abuse and sadistic violence” as an “act of denying autonomy” and asserting masculine dominance (Nussbaum 266). This is to contend that kinbaku in Araki’s work not only removes womens’ selfdetermination and conscious choice-making, but it concurrently disregards the subject’s feelings and stresses her as a device to be acquired for men to assert dominance. One may argue, though, that by featuring the perversion of this Japanese tradition, Araki is empowering women by putting such brutal and suppressing culture under inspection. While the potential goodwill can be acknowledged, the question resides in the presence and effectiveness of metaphors and irony in Araki’s works. Contenders for Araki’s work assume irony and metaphorical inspection of the Japanese societal rigidity in Araki’s incorporation of Kinbaku to challenge societal constraints on women. This premise undermines kinbaku’s potential objectification, exotification, and fetishization of Japanese women. Hiroko questions the effectiveness of this metaphorical liberation, “How can posing in front of the camera while depending on a ‘Master of Bondage’ and a mainstream male photographer be a liberating act?” (243). According to Hiroko, the art of bondage “will never provide a contemporary photographer with a metaphorical frame to critically express the rigidity of Japanese society” due to its “touristic facade” (243). What she is effectively arguing is that patriarchy and objectification are disguised by kinbaku’s “[relations] to traditional arts like bonsai [and] ikebana” (Hiroko 243). The assumed goodwill for female liberation is being deterred by the audiences’ focus on the literal acts of bondage being portrayed as traditional art, minimizing the viewers’ interpretation of irony and metaphorical inspection (Hiroko 243). Thus, the artistic merits and voyeuristic nature in portraying “tradition” in Araki’s work overlooks the potential harm in Araki’s depicting women as byproducts of male dominance, devaluing any potential critique of the deformed social construct.

It should also be highlighted that Araki’s photos work to commodify women into replaceable objects, easily accessible for any man’s gratification. The women in Araki’s photos “rarely smile but often gaze confrontationally KINBAKU

at the camera” with “solemn and seductive” expressions (Cohen). On top of this, the women’s legs would almost always be spread open, like mentioned earlier. It seems that the artistic direction serves to satisfy scopophilic desires, a psychoanalytic phenomenon introduced by feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, welcoming men to “[look] in on a private world” (9). Manipulating the subjects to seem welcoming to the spectator with the open legs and seductive expressions, Araki depicts these women as the “commodification of sex partners” that “sever from any deep connection with self-expression or emotion” (Nussbaum 283). In other words, Araki’s work seems to satisfy heterosexual male spectators’ “masturbatory [fantasies]” in that these female subjects would be easily accessible to pleasure them, making them feel powerful and dominant over these women, disregarding whether these women would realistically be attracted to them (Nussbaum 285). In an interview, though, Araki discredits such perception of his work by claiming that “[his friends] cannot masturbate to [his] photos” because “male viewers tend to seek beauty in photography” while his photos portray the reality, like “love handles” and “wrinkles” (qtd. in Yi). While it may be true that there are fundamental differences between commercial pornography and Araki’s photos, Araki nevertheless was able to satisfy the heterosexual male spectators’ desire, just through the form of voyeurism— satisfaction derived from observing. Araki’s photos may not portray a “sleek woman” like commercial works of erotica, it offers the male viewers the candidness and explicitness of the female subject’s private world that satisfy the same male gaze (Nussbaum 285). The “sordid depiction of sexuality” that Araki features blurs the line between “fine art and pornography” (Frank) by making the women in his photos as encouraging and ready to satisfy the desires of men as women featured in porn. Araki’s images not featuring in a commercial manner like pornography does not deny the possibility of them making women into sexual objects through satisfying male desires in other means—the desire of the perverted, exotic voyeurism.

It bears repeating that the fundamental question in discussion is whether Araki’s work liberates women from a patriarchal construct of sexualizing and objectifying women or furthers the simplification of females as a subordinating product to please men. This is not to argue the potential of

Araki’s work in eradicating the patriarchal social perception of women; neither is it to accuse Araki of intentionally depriving women of their humanness and individuality. Instead, this essay emphasizes Araki’s reduction of women to passive, male-servicing genitalia, his consolidation of patriarchal social constructs that restrict women, and commodification of women into masturbatory aids when the work is examined through Nussbaum’s article highlighting the functioning of objectification. In light of the growing momentum of gender equality movements in contemporary societies to shatter outdated social norms, it is vital to prevent the presentation of women in a backward manner. Acknowledging that “sexual roles and desires are culturally shaped, and therefore infected by the ubiquitous distortions of gender roles” (Nussbaum 278), photographers and content creators should reconsider the use of potentially misguiding symbolism and allusions that may reinforce the subordination of women in patriarchy. Consider, for instance, the cover of the last printed edition of Playboy, which features silhouettes of closeups of the female body, many of which are posed seductively or have sexual connotations like high heels and red lips, objectifying the model into a tool for male’s sexual gratification. Being a publication with a massive male audience, “[driving] over $3 billion in annual consumer spend worldwide,” (Kelly) the international exposure and influence that such photos get can hinder proper dialoque taking place about the abandonment of patriarchal standards and true sexual liberation for females. Until the imbalance in power dynamics in society is righted, the portrayal of women’s nudity, no matter how innocent the intentions, will not be seen as a factor of liberation, but rather indulged by the phallocentric energy in society as a sex doll, a plaything. In the words of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, “it is sexual energy which governs the structure of human thinking and feeling” (Reich 23).

WORKS CITED

Bacarr, Jina. The Japanese Art of Sex: How to Tease, Seduce, and Pleasure the Samurai in Your Bedroom. United States, Stone Bridge Press, 2010.

Cohen, Alina. “Nobuyoshi Araki’s Erotic Photographs Remain Influential—and Also Highly Controversial.” Artsy, 1 Aug. 2018, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-nobuyoshi-arakisphotographs-remain-influential-highly-controversial. Accessed 1 May 2021.

Frank, Priscilla. “Will Nobuyoshi Araki Be Photography’s Last Legendary Dirty Old Man? (NSFW).” HuffPost, 21 Feb. 2018, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nobuyoshi-araki-museum-ofsex_n_5a7c8c38e4b0c6726e10b29d. Accessed 1 May 2021.

Healey, Hannah. “Taboo: The Work and Legacy of Nobuyoshi Araki.” Cherwell, 24 Feb. 2019, www.cherwell.org/2019/02/24/taboo-the-work-and-legacy-of-nobuyoshiaraki/. Accessed 1 May 2021.

Hiroko, Hagiwara. “Representation, Distribution, and Formation of Sexuality in the Photography of Araki Nobuyoshi.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, vol. 18, no. 1, Duke University Press, 2010, pp. 231–52, doi: 10.1215/10679847-2009-029.

Jansen, Charlotte. “The Complicated and ‘Incomplete’ Legacy of Nobuyoshi Araki.” Wallpaper*, 14 Feb. 2018, www.wallpaper.com/art/nobuyoshi-araki-museum-of-sex. Accessed 1 May 2021.

Kelly, Keith J. “Playboy Kills Iconic Magazine, Citing Coronavirus Woes.” New York Post, 18 Mar. 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/03/18/playboy-kills-iconic-magazine-citingcoronavirus-woes/. Accessed 1 May 2021.

Lederman, Russet. “Can a Feminist Embrace Araki?” Aperture, 14 Mar. 2018, www.aperture.org/editorial/feminism-nobuyoshi-araki/. Accessed 1 May 2021.

Mulvey, Laura. 1975. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen, vol. 16, no. 3, 1975, pp. 6-18. Oxford Academic, doi: 10.1093/screen/16.3.6.

Nussbaum, Martha C. “Objectification.” Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 24, no. 4,

1995, pp. 249–291. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2961930. Accessed 1 May 2021.

Rao, Mallika. “Japan’s Most Notorious Photographer Defends His Love For Women.” HuffPost, 6 Dec. 2017, www.huffpost.com/entry/araki-photography-women_n_6161358. Accessed 1 May 2019.

Reich, Wilhelm. The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-Regulating Character Structure. Translated by Theodore P. Wolfe, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

Vittachi, Brianna. “Out of the Classroom: The Paradoxes of Nobuyoshi Araki.”

ARTUNER | Curated Contemporary Art, www.artuner.com/insight/out-of-the-classroom-the-paradoxes-ofnobuyoshi-araki/. Accessed 1 May 2021.

Yi, Hyewon. “Crossing Boundaries: An Interview with Nobuyoshi Araki.” TransAsia Photography Review, vol. 1, no. 2, Spring 2011, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0001.205. Accessed 1 May 2021.

“‘You Need to Feel You’re Actually Being Violated’: The Words of Controversial Photographer Nobuyoshi Araki in the Wake of the #MeToo Movement.” Artspace, 1 Mar. 2018, www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/book_report/ photography-is-a-menage-a-trois-nobuyoshi-araki-55282. Accessed 1 May 2021.

Violence and Identity in the Mexican Anti-Femicide Movement

VANESSA MEDINA VÁZQUEZ

AY 2021-2022

My mom told me to never leave home by myself —that in Mexico, the danger for a young woman alone was too high. So I do not. When I leave home, I do so with her, my sister, and my aunt. We make banners and dress in purple and tie bandanas around our wrists. And we join the violet river that blocks the street. We chant the names of women who are no longer here, who appeared dead and raped and at times mutilated in street corners. Women whose murderers walk free after little to no intervention from the justice system. All around the country, on March 8, 2020, women took to the streets to protest femicides. This fight would only grow in the years to come. While in my hometown Tampico the protests have been peaceful, the same cannot be said of marches such as the one in Mexico City in 2022, where police officers charged at protestors with tear gas (Corona), or in Cancun in 2021, where the armed forces opened fire (Santos). In this paper, I examine the issue of the killing of women in Mexico, the protests demanding state accountability, and the response of the government and escalation of state violence through the lens of identity. I argue that the label of “bad women” assigned to victims and protestors by outside agents allows the Mexican government to both deny the violence of femicides and justify police brutality towards insurgents; however, claiming the “bad women” label to identify with the victims might just be the most powerful tool protestors possess to fight against this violence.

Per Amnesty International, an estimate of ten women are killed every day in Mexico on the basis of their gender. Because each state refuses, in specific cases, to categorize the brutal murders of women as “femicides,” there is every likelihood that the numbers are much higher. Melissa W. Wright, scholar of social movements, traces the documentation of this epidemic of violence back to 1993, with the appearance of dozens of female bodies

across the streets of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. Back then, the Mexican state did little to find and charge the perpetrators. As the years went by and the corpses kept piling up, protestors began demanding state accountability, but their accusations of “femicides” were met with silence (Wright 707). A brutal, physical violence such as that inflicted on the bodies found in Ciudad Juarez should be difficult to deny. Yet Mexican authorities found an excuse for their inaction by assigning the label of “bad women” to the victims. Wright notes that, with Juarez being a city known for its loose laws towards prostitution, the state found it easy to pin the blame on the murdered women for their “double-lives” as sex workers (714). Indeed, Arturo González Rascón, general attorney of the state of Chihuahua in 1999, declared in response to accusations of state inaction that “it would be very hard for someone that goes out to the streets when it’s raining… it would be very hard not to get wet.” (qtd. in Monárrez 90) Rascón and the state of Chihuahua utilized this rhetoric to shift the blame to the “bad women” of Ciudad Juarez: These “bad women” knew the risks they were taking. What happened was inevitable.

As of today, the official views of the federal government have changed, condemning femicides as “the most extreme form of violence towards women” in their website, but the “bad woman” identity label has persisted. Whenever local news stations present a new victim of femicide, discussion centers around whether she deserved it, how she was dressed, where she was, who was with her. From my experiences in the movement, I have found that it can be extremely hard to convince some audiences that femicides even exist because of the insistence of these audiences on assigning victims this identity. The state may no longer officially encourage this attitude, but it certainly benefits from it. Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics provide a useful framework through which to view this strategy. In his 2003 essay, the postcolonial scholar defined the authority of the state as residing in “the power […] to dictate who may live and who must die” (11). Wright herself uses this insight to explore how the Mexican government exercises its right to kill or let die by framing “bad women” as disposable. “The government’s public woman discourse,” she writes, “explains that, while unfortunate, the deaths of public women represent a kind of public cleansing” (Wright 713). This way, the Mexican government utilizes the patriarchal notion that sex

workers have less value than women who reserve their bodies for their male partners to draw a line between who does and does not deserve to die. If the victims were “looking for it,” the government cannot be held accountable. Indeed, the inaction towards the deaths of these women would not indicate a failure of the state but rather a state doing its job of maintaining a morally upstanding society. Over time, this rhetoric is also applied to poor working women, trans women, lesbians, and any kind of victim of femicide who stepped out of the sphere women are supposed to inhabit. Even if there is no evidence of societal deviance, the victim can be assumed to be “living a double-life” and therefore deserving death. Violence becomes a natural consequence of a choice in lifestyle, a personal rather than political matter. When the government assigns the identity of “bad women” who were “asking for it” onto the victims, the state asserts its power in changing the political definition of violence to exclude the rapes and deaths of these women.

Mexican anti-femicide protestors undertake the challenge to make this violence a visible and political matter. With a cause as graphic as that of femicides, one might think that directly showcasing the gruesomeness of the crimes could be an effective way to mobilize the masses. However, the research of anthropologist Sarah Luna on prostitution and rumors of gangbased violence in the Mexican-American border suggests that this method might have an opposite effect in this situation. She concludes that “the circulation of rumors, threats, and the occasional display of dead, mutilated bodies […] generated a public both passive and terrified” (Luna 66). Her field research aligns with my personal experience. In an environment in which rumors and news reports of the more visceral aspects of femicides are rampant, these generate an atmosphere of fear that incite women like myself to stay in our homes, not go out alone, and not deviate from patriarchal ideas of womanhood under the implicit threat of violence. Almost like a grim morality tale, we learn that “bad women” get killed, and the details are visceral and easily spread. The public remains passive. The identity of “bad women” not only serves as an excuse, but as a warning.

Protestors who seek to give visibility to the violence of femicides and prompt

women to action must then rely on a strategy, such as identity construction, to counter the paralyzing situation created by the “bad women” label. Diana Taylor, a professor of Performance Studies, explores this very strategy in her study of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo in Argentina. In 1977, a group of mothers gathered in the city square of Argentina’s capital to protest the disappearance of their children after the nation’s Dirty War and to demand action from the government (Taylor 186). Taylor notes that this group of women utilized their identity as mothers to bring the socially permitted female role from the personal to the political sphere (184). Over the years, the women showing up to Plaza de Mayo began to change the meaning of motherhood with their protests. As Taylor writes, “each came to consider herself the mother of all the disappeared, not just her own offspring” (188). In a similar manner, Wright emphasizes that the anti-femicide protests of 1993 in Ciudad Juarez started with mothers who attempted to change the rhetoric of “bad women” that the government used. Instead, the bodies in the streets were of “good daughters” who acted as breadwinners for their families (Wright 715). However, as the movement has progressed and grown beyond the mourning mothers of Chihuahua, protestors have taken an identity more all-encompassing than that of motherhood.

To protest violence, the insurgents self-identify as the victims themselves.“I’m Claudia, I’m Esther, and I’m Teresa;” “Sorry to bother you, but we’re being killed;” “We are Ingrid;” “They kill us, and not even then do they silence us;” “We are the scream of the ones who are no longer here.” These are some of the phrases I noticed in banners when we took to the streets in March, 2020. By the following year, the frequency of this kind of phrasing had only grown. To anthropologist Sian Lazar, street demonstrations by themselves are already fundamentally collective. They require organization, have power in numbers, usually engage in some variety of a call-and-response chant, and use symbols of affiliation such as flags, banners, and specific colors (Lazar 246). Protest marches, she claims, construct a collective identity through real, physical interaction, and a specific shared experience with insurgents marching elsewhere (249). Yet to truly communicate the violence of femicides and mobilize women towards collective action, Mexican protestors not only construct an identity amongst

themselves, but amongst the women who were killed. The identity label the government and patriarchal society have pushed to justify femicides is that of “bad women.” Instead of “good daughters,” the protestors today choose to counter with that of “all women.” This shifts the discourse from the moral value assigned to women as good or bad and onto the responsibility of the state to protect all its female citizens. If women, dead and alive, are a collective —if everyone is a potential victim of femicide— then the government cannot draw a line between the women who deserve to die and those who do not.

In March 2022, the Mexican government counted 75,000 demonstrators in the march across Mexico City, who ranged from mothers to minors to sex workers to domestic workers to middle class women to women in the LGBTQ+ community and all their intersections. The idea of “bad women” is so broad in a patriarchal society that one finds it almost impossible to avoid it. Even with the mothers in Plaza de Mayo, Taylor observed significant opposition to their cause even on the grounds of motherhood. “Pain was permissible, perhaps, but not anger,” she asserts. “Silence, maybe, but not protest” (Taylor 196). Per Taylor, protests are performative acts, in which the self is displayed and heightened, rather than disguised. The anti-femicide protestors are not read as protestors by the Mexican society, government, and press, but as female protestors. The act of protesting by itself breaks the script of what a “good woman” should be. Insurgents embrace this rupture. To make violence visible, protestors make themselves visible, and communicate the violence through their performance of identity in protest. “It’s worth it to make ourselves be seen,” comments Jimena Betanzos, a demonstrator in the march of 2020 in Mexico City, for the Mexican Newspaper El País . “To meet other women and share the fight amongst all of us: and above all, to make ourselves visible. Let them hear us, let them turn to look at us, let them know this is only the beginning, this is a hard fight and will go on.” The protestors shine a light on the violence not by highlighting the violence itself, but by emphasizing the person at the receiving end of the violence. Crosses with the names of the victims and banners with their faces before their murders are carried across the streets, and laid in front of national buildings. Protestors channel their fear into collectiveness, and

construct one identity with all insurgents, victims of femicide, and potential victims of femicide.

Yet, for many protestors, “making oneself visible” and breaking out of the script of “good women” goes beyond chants and banners. Especially in densely populated areas such as Mexico City, the protests have been characterized by controlled fires, property damage to governmental buildings, and spray paint on national monuments such as the Angel of Independence. In response, the President of Mexico Andrés Manuel López Obrador has stated in press conferences as reported by Mexican Newspaper El Financiero that he “does not agree with the violence and vandalism” of the movement, which to him “is not even feminism” (qtd. in López). Following his statements, the government has begun to barricade the National Palace and protect its monuments from vandalization during the protests with armed forces. To protestors, the message is clear: the government would rather protect its property than the right to life of women. Decades ago, the Mexican state found the identity label of “bad women” enough to quell protests by assigning it to the victims of femicide, in doing so exercising its power to change the political definition of violence. As the movement has grown and become undeniably visible, the state extends this identity label to the protestors, and once again reshapes what it defines as “violence” so that it applies to its monuments to justify their protection. To allow femicides is not violent, to spray-paint “Mexico Femicide” in front of the National Palace is. The state protects its legitimacy by framing insurgents as enemies that it reserves the right to use force against. Yet this does not silence protestors. They have embraced their collective identity as “bad” women that the state will not protect, regardless of what they do. They are one with the victims. With chants such as “let it burn, let it burn, let the patriarchy burn,” they claim their “violence” as a justified, righteous strategy.

The rhetoric of the government does not escape insurgents. For El País, one attendant of the 2020 Mexico City march states that “those cops are harassing women, they should be helping us search for our missing daughters.” Indeed, harassment allegations are not unfounded. The Mexican state, once again, has utilized the identity label of “bad women” and is

reshaping the political definition of violence not only as an excuse, but this time as a threat. Recently, it has followed through with it. As the marches have progressed, footage has surfaced of police officers using gas bombs, pepper spray, and in one instance bullets against protestors. In Cancun in 2021, police officers carried several young protestors by force to the Municipal Palace in the aftermath of the march, who would later show evidence of being beaten up and raped, as reported by El País . The young women would point to the officers and raise accusations of police brutality.

Insurgents have taken to retaliation. On March 8, 2021, the law enforcement in Mexico City reported 62 police officers and 19 protestors injured during the anti-femicide march. In one of the most famous instances of retaliation within the movement, a protestor in that march that came to be known as “La Reinota” (The Big Queen) was filmed throwing a smoke bomb back to the place the armed forces had thrown it from towards the insurgents, hidden behind their shields. This kind of escalation of violence in public protests is by no means new, and most recently has been present in other social movements such as Black Lives Matter in the US. Sociologist Musa Al-Gharbi, in reference to that movement, argues that this escalation is not a separate form of violence, but a ramification of the violence that incited the protest in the first place. “There is a broader incoherence at work in these discussions,” he writes, “namely the notion that the aims and methods of civil disobedience must be amenable to the prevailing order. This is to completely miss the point of the revolt” (Al-Gharbi). For him, collective action, even when nonviolent, is by itself seen as threatening to the establishment — hence the placement of armed forces in previously pacific protests. AlGharbi states that the power of the masses is such that the state will perceive violence even when there is none; the state knows it can be coerced and thus resorts to coercion when the numbers grow beyond what it expected. Anti-femicide protestors pose an implicit threat to the social order not only by the act of protesting, but by their identity, both assigned and created. Women, who are expected to be passive and silent, take to the streets and raise their voices, both as a unified front and in the name of the victims. To be a female protestor is to take on an identity that the government perceives as inherently threatening. And if all women are “bad women”, then the

social order has much to fear indeed.

I have often heard these disruptions being categorized as chaotic. Yet the perceived violence inherent to the movement is not aimless, but strategic and necessary. Political scientist S. Laurel Weldon explores in a comparative study how different countries adopt legislation to protect the rights to life and security of women through political and social processes. She finds that “in all stable democracies over the period 1974 to 1994, there was not one single government initiative [in protection of women’s rights] adopted in the absence of a women’s movement” (Weldon 78). She asserts that the necessity of women’s movements relies on their power to “get violence against women recognized as a public problem rather than a private affair and thus put it on the public agenda” (61). Femicides are a violence the Mexican government has too long denied. In order to make it understood as such, protestors take on the identity of the violated persons and form one united front. This rebellion causes the Mexican government to fear, and prompts further violence. Yet, in responding to them, the state reveals that it recognizes the concerns of the protestors as a political matter: per Weldon, the first step towards effective policy.

In the Mexican Anti-Femicide Movement, identity plays a crucial role in whether the violence of femicides is hidden or visibilized, and how the state interprets the protests and responds to them. Women being the subjects of both the violence and the protests shapes the way the government and society react. The Mexican state takes advantage of patriarchal notions of womanhood to deny femicides and suppress insurgents. Protestors, tired of a label that keeps them passive and fearful, construct an identity that unites them amongst themselves and with the victims of femicide. The power of identity as claimed by oneself is such that it motivates thousands to march, and gives rise to a movement that makes a state tremble. When we took to the streets in 2020, protestors held hands and chanted the names of the victims as one. Their voices carried the confidence of one who knows themselves, who knows their fight to be righteous, and who believes in their own power to bring about change. The banner that a nearby friend held, almost drowned out by thousands of others, made an assertion in bold,

purple letters: “They planted fear in us. Wings grew instead.”

WORKS CITED

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Aída, Maltrana. “8 y 9 de marzo en México: dos jornadas históricas.” El Salto, 12 March 2020, https://www.elsaltodiario.com/mapas/justicia-para-todas.-sobre-lamarcha-del-8m-en-la-ciudad-de-mexico.

Al-Gharbi, Musa. “‘There is no social change without coercion: Race, Baltimore, and how violence makes nonviolence possible.” Salon, 2 May 2015, https://www.salon.com/2015/05/02/there_is_no_social_change_without_ coercion_race_baltimore_and_how_violence_makes_nonviolence_ possible/.

Corona, Sonia. “Las mujeres mexicanas exhiben su fuerza y desbordan las calles de la capital en una marcha histórica.” El País, 8 March 2020, https://elpais.com/sociedad/2020-03-08/las-mujeres-mexicanas-exhibensu-fuerza-y-desbordan-las-calles-de-la-capital-en-una-marcha-historica. html.

“Día de la Mujer: los disturbios en la marcha del 8 de marzo dejan al menos 81 heridas en Ciudad de México.” BBC Mundo, 9 March 2021, https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-56336256.

Díaz, Karla. “‘La Reinota’, la mujer que devolvió una bomba de humo a la policía en marcha del 8M.” El Sol de México, 11 March 2021, https://www.elsoldemexico.com.mx/doble-via/virales/la-reinota-lamujer-que-devolvio-una-bomba-de-humo-a-la-policia-en-marcha-del8m-6465029.html.

Editorial Team. “#8M: Como nunca antes, una potente marcha de mujeres

lanza grito contra el machismo y violencia feminicida.” Animal Politico, 8 March 2020, https://www.animalpolitico.com/2020/03/mujeres-marcha-8m-cdmxprotesta-machistmo/.

“In Mexico, Women Go on Strike Nationwide to Protest Violence.” The New York Times, 14 October 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/09/world/americas/mexico-womenstrike-protest.html.

“International Women´s Day: Clashes mar Mexico City march.” BBC, 9 March 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-51796605.

Juárez Gamero, Alejandro. “México: Deficientes investigaciones de feminicidios en el Estado de México violan los derechos de las mujeres a la vida, integridad personal y al acceso a la justicia.” Amnesty International, 20 September 2021, https://www.amnesty.org/es/latest/news/2021/09/mexico-deficientesinvestigaciones-de-feminicidios-en-el-estado-de-mexico-violan-losderechos-de-las-mujeres-a-la-vida-integridad-personal-y-al-acceso-a-lajusticia/.

Lazar, Sian. “‘This Is Not a Parade, It’s a Protest March’: Intertextuality, Citation, and Political Action on the Streets of Bolivia and Argentina.” American Anthropologist, vol. 117, no. 2, Feb. 2015, pp. 242–256.

López Pérez, Emilia. “No estoy de acuerdo con el vandalismo: AMLO sobre protesta de mujeres que tomaron la CNDH.” El Financiero, 7 Sep. 2020, https://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/nacional/no-estoy-de-acuerdo-con-elvandalismo-amlo-sobre-protesta-de-mujeres-que-tomaron-la-cndh/.

Luna, Sarah. “Affective Atmospheres of Terror on the Mexico-U.S. Border: Rumors of Violence in Reynosa´s Prostitution Zone.” Cultural Anthropology, vol. 33, no. 1, 2018, pp. 58–84.

Mbembe, Achille. “Necropolitics.” Public Culture, Translated by Libby Meintjes, vol. 15, no. 1, 2003, pp. 11–40.

“#8M | Minuto a minuto: reconocen alta participación en marchas en CDMX y estados.” Expansión Política, 8 March 2022, https://politica.expansion.mx/mexico/2022/03/08/marcha-8-de-marzo2022-minuto-a-minuto#uuid0000017f-6c97-d167-a7ff-edd7b13b0000.

Monárrez Fragoso, Julia. “La cultura del feminicidio en Ciudad Juárez, 19931999.” SciELO México, vol. 12, no. 23, 2000, pp. 87–117.

“¿Qué es el feminismo y cómo identificarlo?” Gobierno de México, Federal Government of Mexico, https://www.gob.mx/conavim/articulos/que-es-el-feminicidio-y-comoidentificarlo?idiom=es. Accessed 18 May 2022.

Santos Cid, Alejandro. “El día que la policía disparó, torturó y violó a manifestantes feministas en Cancún.” El País, 9 Nov. 2021, https://elpais.com/mexico/2021-11-10/el-dia-que-la-policia-disparotorturo-y-violo-a-manifestantes-feministas-en-cancun.html.

Taylor, Diana. Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina´s “Dirty War,” Duke University Press, 1997.

Vera de la O., Meli, and Emilia López Pérez. “El recorrido de la lucha feminista en México durante el 2020.” El Financiero, 30 December 2020, https://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/nacional/el-recorrido-de-la-luchafeminista-en-mexico-durante-el-2020-no-publicar/.

Weldon, S. Laurel. Protest, Policy, and the Problem of Violence Against Women: A Cross-National Comparison, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002.

Wright, Melissa W. “Necropolitics, Narcopolitics, and Femicide: Gendered Violence on the Mexico-U.S. Border.” Signs, vol. 36, no. 3, Spring 2011, pp. 707–731.

Structural Rebuild to Semantic Transfer: Translations of Lord Byron’s “The Isles of Greece” in Classical and Vernacular Chinese

YIYANG XU

AY 2021-2022

Lord Byron, the first Western Romantic poet to be translated in China, together with “The Isles of Greece,” his best-known poem, were chosen deliberately. With missionary zeal, the translators—or “intellectuals” ( 知识 分子)—in the late Qing Dynasty recognized themselves as pioneers aiming at “awakening the sleeping countrymen” and preparing for the sociopolitical revolution in the time of foreign intrusions. In fact, they succeeded in 1915 by initiating and propagating the New Culture Movement (NCM) that flipped Chinese society entirely and forever, not only politically by turning the nation into a republic, but also culturally by importing foreign notions and technologies and standardizing and rejuvenating the Chinese language. As a result, the NCM catalyzed the expansion of civil education. In retrospect, translations of “The Isles of Greece” between 1903 and 1915 could be acknowledged as an early attempt by intellectuals to raise public awareness about cultural reform in what they considered to be their backward society.

Analyzing literary production in its historical context, scholars conclude that to construct a fervent voice for mobilization and employ the poem as a weapon for social reform, the earliest translators of “The Isles of Greece” in China, namely Liang Qichao, Ma Junwu, Su Manshu, and Hu Shih, performed “radical reinterpretation” (Xu, 2022, p. 7) or “inspired recreation” (Chu, 1998, p. 91). In other words, classical Chinese translations before 1915 specifically targeted the local audience by omitting Byron’s sarcastic tone, reconstructing the poetic format, and producing a more emotional expression. However, later translations of “The Isles of Greece” into vernacular Chinese diverge entirely from the classical Chinese ones. The

difference between them is worth more scholarly attention for its relevance to not only linguistic restructuring but also historical understanding. In this paper, I take an approach opposite to Xu and Chu’s and argue that apart from the historical needs, in “The Isles of Greece” translations before 1915, the distinctive writing system of classical Chinese required that the linguistic structure of the foreign poem be rebuilt. By comparing Ma Junwu’s (1905) and Hu Shih’s (1914) versions with Wen Yiduo’s (1927), I demonstrate that as part of the NCM, the Literature Reform aimed to replace classical Chinese with vernacular Chinese, which does a better job of promoting civil literacy and facilitating translation from other languages.

Translators into classical Chinese were required to make decisions regarding poetic template or style, and as a result, the translations before 1915 reveal substantial creativity on the part of the translators themselves. Due to the rigid conventions of classical Chinese, one must reconstruct the entire linguistic structure of the poem before rendering the text line by line. Once a poem template is selected for translation into classical Chinese, a translator must make creative alterations in their efforts to make up the grammatical and antithetical disjunction between the original and target structures across languages. Thus, the limitations of the target language provided the translators a high degree of freedom to alter the original piece and adapt it to their own styles. For example, Liang (1903) partially translated Cantos I and III with chenzui dongfeng (沉醉东风) and rumengling (如梦令), two poem templates that originated in the Song Dynasty and stipulated antithetical couplets and pronouncing tones with different characters in a fixed number of sentences (Deng, 2008). Moreover, Hu Shih (1914) adopted saoti (骚体), a style (not a template) created by Qu Yuan and a symbol of patriotism in China because of Qu’s death for his state in the Warring States period. On the one hand, as Zhao (2005) puts it, saoti “encourages target readers to associate the translations with similar historical events in their own culture” (p. 241). On the other hand, Hu likely chose saoti for the convenience of translation since this style itself includes many exclamations and is adapted for emotional expressions. Because of the poetic conventions in classical Chinese, the selection of format determines how a translator produces their output in the first place, and all creative alterations made after that are

more or less the result of the format choice. In other words, the translators’ personal styles are the results not only of their additions of patriotic elements to the poem but, more fundamentally, from their choices of poetic format. However, the translators’ creativity in rendering the English poem into the poetic templates or styles of classical Chinese often came at the expense of faithfulness to Byron’s text.

Among the four classical Chinese translators of “The isles of Greece” before 1915, Su Manshu is widely recognized as the translator most faithful to Byron’s text. Nonetheless, even Su had to fit his translation within his chosen template, necessitating creativity on his part. The wuyan (五言) template stipulates five characters in a clause and two clauses in a sentence; each clause delivers a complete meaning and the two clauses in each sentence must be coherent. There are no such constraints in Byron’s original piece. For example, in Canto XII, a line could be either complete but independent from other lines or connected to other lines but incomplete. The following example illustrates this point. Here are the English source, Su’s version, and my back translation of Canto XII:

The tyrant of the Chersonese

羯岛有暴君，

Was freedom’s best and bravest friend; 其名弥尔底。

That tyrant was Miltiades!

O! that the present hour would lend

Another despot of the kind!

Such chains as his were sure to bind.

(Byron, 1821)

Sher island has a tyrant; He’s named Mildes.

阔达有大度, 勇敢 为世师。

今兹丁末造，

安得君如斯？

束民如连锁, 岂患 民崩离？

(哀希腊, 1907/2022)

Generous and brave; Qualified to be people’s model.

Now in the last hours; Where to find a ruler of this kind?

To bind people in such chains; Do we even fear them falling apart?

(My trans.)

To fit the poem into the wuyan template, Su made several structural and semantic changes, though these changes are minor compared to the changes made in other classical Chinese translations. First and foremost, Su used eight clauses to interpret six lines. Though it seems feasible to achieve the same goal with six clauses, they are connected into only three sentences and therefore are not sufficient. In lines 1–3 of the English source where an image of Miltiades is depicted, omission occurs if one squeezes these three lines into two clauses; thus, Su chose to render them instead into four clauses. Line 6, on the other hand, depicts an image in a single line; here, Su had no choice but to expand it into two clauses in translation. Second, Su added elements to the poem due to the structural expansion. The elements “people’s model” in clause 4 and “fear [people] falling apart” in clause 8 were appended by Su himself (not present in Byron’s text) in the positions where the poem needs to be expanded due to the coherence requirement for sentences in the wuyan template. Last but not least, there are changes in line positions. For example, in order to make the first sentence of Canto XII more coherent, Su translated line 3, which reveals the identity of Miltiades, as clause 2. Such position changes are also observed in other cantos throughout Su’s and other translators’ outputs. In these ways, classical Chinese templates necessitated alterations, even for Su Manshu, a huge fan of Lord Byron whose translation was ranked the most authentic to Byron among the translations into classical Chinese.

In the terms of Lawrence Venuti’s methodology (1995), translation into classical Chinese inevitably involves a lot of “domestication,” the strategy of adjusting texts closely to the target culture, which may involve the loss of information, as opposed to “foreignization,” which may preserve information at the expense of its legibility to readers from the target culture. Yet translators still face a dilemma when encountering a foreign proper noun in the source text. If one does not foreignize the proper noun by transliteration, one might domesticate it by borrowing a similar term in the target culture, or one could omit it entirely. The former seems to be

a solution for translations of non-historical works or with non-historical purpose, and the latter is still a choice in some other cases. Table 1 illustrates how the four translators, three into classical Chinese and one into vernacular Chinese, coped with proper nouns in their “The Isles of Greece” translations.

Table 1

Foreignization vs. Domestication vs. Omission of Foriegn Proper Nouns in “The Isles of Greece” Translations

Proper noun (Canto #)

Hu Shih Su Manshu Ma Junwu

德娄飞布 Dellos, Phoebus (1)

Scian Teian (2)

茶福思灵保

洗佃二族事

诃与谛诃

斯巴族 n/a Spartan (7)

沙明之酒 Samian (9)

Wen Yiduo

菲芭德罗 羲和素娥

茜欧梯欧 荷马兮阿难

斯巴达

斯巴达

沙蜜 n/a n/a

贝凯 n/a n/a Bacchanal (9)

薛雳舞 Pyrrhic (10)

庐方阵法

波利葛 n/a Polyerate (11)

遮松里 Chersonese (12)

羯岛

汤汤波家湾 n/a Parga’s Shore (13)

希罗嘎 n/a Heracleidan (13)

薛雳之舞

贝坎罗

辟鲁

波理克雷 n/a

絮爽 n/a

巴辩的海岸 汤汤兮白阶 之岸

赫拉可里 n/a

Note. From “近代译诗被压抑的‘异质性’：特征及原因 以《哀希腊》四译 本为例” [The suppressed foreignization in modern translated poetry: A case study of ‘The isles of Greece’], by C. Liu, 2019, 中国现代文学研究丛刊 [The Journal Series of Modern Chinese Literature ], 2019(10).

Except for Wen Yiduo’s, all three versions were published in classical Chinese before 1915, among which Ma transliterated five nouns, Su transliterated eight, and Hu transliterated five. Numerically speaking, Su performed the most foreignization, which agrees with the observation that Su’s version is the most faithful classical Chinese translation of Byron’s text. In the absence of the target audience’s knowledge, the transliterated nouns do not play any role in the cultural communication that translation is supposed to facilitate, despite the fact that their foreign property is preserved. Opting instead for domestication, Hu Shih replaced “Dellos” and “Phoebus” with two gods from Chinese culture, Xi and Su E (羲 and 素娥). In contrast with the classical Chinese versions, Wen transliterated all ten of the proper nouns and took advantage of vernacular Chinese’s structural flexibility to provide contextual hints to target readers. With classical Chinese, the translator must choose between either domestication or foreignization: Hu adopted domestication by replacement, while Su adopted foreignization by transliteration. But if a classical Chinese translator chooses foreignization, the translator is not able to leave any contextual information for the readers due to the stipulations of format. However, with vernacular Chinese, readability can be enhanced by contextual clues, even when a translator opts for foreignization, as Wen did.

Wen Yiduo was the first to translate “The Isles of Greece” into vernacular Chinese; he was also a pioneer of vernacular Chinese poetry (or New Poetry, 新诗). His first collection of poetry was published in 1923, in which he already demonstrated excellence in constructing “Western metrical elegancy” in the Chinese language, and he also achieved something similar in his translation of Byron’s poem (Huang & Zhang, 2015, p. 187). Here are Byron’s lines, Wen’s translation, and my back translation of Canto VI:

’Tis something, in the dearth of fame,

Though link’d among a fetter’d race,

To feel at least a patriot’s shame,

Even as I sing, suffuse my face;

For what is left the poet here?

For Greeks a blush—for Greece a tear. (Byron, 1821)

这总算是难能可贵的事，

Such a priceless thing it is—

在如今名节凋丧的残冬！ In the fameless winter today!

像我唱着悲歌，脸上海潮着羞耻， Mourning like me, face fettered by shame,

纵然是株连在奴隶的族中、

Though linked among the race of slaves,

因为到这里，教诗人怎么办？ For what does a poet do here?

悲歌为希腊流泪，为希人红脸。 Mourning—weeping for Greece, blushing for Greeks.

(哀希腊, 1927/2022) (My trans.)

Unlike his predecessors, by translating the poem into vernacular Chinese, Wen focused on recreating the visual and rhythmic elegancy he perceived in Western poems. Abandoning classical Chinese templates, Wen was able to compose incomplete sentences in line 1 as well as clauses with custom lengths in line 3 and line 6. Still, due to the influence of prior translations, Wen’s translation contains some non-Byronic elements such as “slaves,” but the overall structure remains consistent with the English source. Therefore, it can be concluded that the practice and output of translation was redefined between the 1914 (Hu Shih) and 1927 (Wen Yiduo) translations. What might explain this redefinition? The most significant historical event in that period was the NCM, and the NCM’s nationwide Literature Reform began with the publication of a journal article in 1917.

The article, “My two cents on the Literature Reform” ( 文学改良刍议), was

published in New Youth, the journal that marked the 1915 start of the NCM in China. Hu Shih, the author of the article and a lead writer of the journal, was one of the most significant intellectuals in twentieth-century China, thanks to his central role in the NCM. At the time when the article went public, Hu had already published his translation of “The Isles of Greece.” He was abroad, studying pragmatism at Columbia University. Stemming from his study of pragmatism, Hu became an advocate for the evolutionary view of literature, which suggests a gradual evolution of literature along with societal development represented by the propagation of new forms, abandonment of outdated norms, and the influence of other kinds of literature (Wang & Zhang, 2020). Interestingly, one can observe the evolution of Hu’s own personal views about literature. For example, though Hu’s “The Isles of Greece” is in classical Chinese, his translation practice broke some of the classical linguistic traditions (Deng, 2008). The saoti he adopted, as discussed above, was a style instead of a template—the difference being that a style empowers the author or translator with some degree of freedom in the poetic format, especially with regard to the length of certain sentences for stronger emotional expression. Three years after translating “The Isles of Greece,” Hu proposed eight principles of Literature Reform in “My two cents on the Literature Reform,” which were refined one year later into eight “no”s in “Theoretical construction of the Literature Reform” (建设的文学革 命论):

1. No superfluous nonsense.

2. No sentimental vanity.

3. No clichés.

4. No hackneyed and stereotyped imagery or allusion.

5. No obligatory antithesis or parallelism.

6. No incongruous style or grammar.

7. No imitation of the ancients.

8. No avoidance of vernacular and grassroots language.

(Hu, 1918, my trans., with reference to Ron, 2021)

Six of the eight points (##1-5, #7) are about a gigantic concern in all classical

Chinese literature: repetition. In a society where ancestors’ spirits were deemed supernatural forces and all educated people were required to recite the classics, quotation and paraphrase of past imagery and metaphors were extremely common. Moreover, the antithesis and metrics were prescribed in poetry. As a result, for better and worse, ancient literature was repeated many times and in many literary dimensions. Additionally, the eighth point implies that vernacular Chinese did not appear overnight. Instead, it existed in many spoken Chinese dialects, despite the distinct pronunciation systems and region-specific vocabularies in these dialects. Vernacular Chinese as a writing form was not new either, since one of its earliest forms dates back to the 1524 novel Water Margin (水浒传) and other novels of that era that people read for entertainment. Yet classical Chinese as a formal medium of writing remained dominant for more than two thousand years. It was only with the NCM’s Literature Reform in the early twentieth century that the use of vernacular Chinese surpassed classical Chinese in literary theory and practice.

One of the main driving factors of the NCM’s Literature Reform was the increasing demand for fidelity when translating foreign works into Chinese. Baker and Saldanha (2009) explain:

In addition to the standard argument in support of fidelity, namely that the native features of the source text ought to be retained, there now emerged the additional, target-oriented objective of appropriating from European languages through translation wording and grammatical devices that the Chinese language was said to be in need of. (p. 376)

While the appropriation of scientific terms had already taken place in the nineteenth century, the literary debate between fidelity and license did not reach a critical point until the early twentieth-century Literature Reform. In this public dialogue, one side advocated preserving the fidelity to the original, while the other aimed at keeping license. The advocates of fidelity, for example, prioritized the preservation of pronunciation through transliteration. On the other side, the advocates of license preferred to make sense of a translated term by extracting its essence and reinventing it in the

target language. But in the end, it did not matter which side won. After all, in the NCM’s agenda of installing a new culture in China, translation served as a driver of the Literature Reform, and as a result, translation itself was redefined in terms of methodology and output.

The second driving factor of the NCM’s Literature Reform was expanding literacy. Before the Literature Reform, there was a massive difference between spoken language and written language, and only a tiny portion of the population ever learned to read or write. One could not master the complicated classical Chinese writing system without years of training in a private school. In the absence of public education, the private schools were an expensive and impractical option for many households, and literacy rates remained low in Chinese society. However, the inconvenience of the classical writing system and the disconnect between spoken and written Chinese became ever more prominent as China turned from an agricultural civilization to a more industrialized modern society. Because the NCM’s Literature Reform sought to align spoken and written Chinese through the replacement of classical Chinese with vernacular written Chinese, the Literature Reform made possible an expansion of civil literacy in Republican China.

In this paper, I introduce Chinese translations of Lord Byron’s “The Isles of Greece,” which played a role in invoking patriotic emotions and awareness before the NCM began in 1915. In addition to the detailed analysis of Su Manshu’s version, the most faithful case in classical Chinese, I examine translators’ choices of rendering proper nouns and conclude that as a result of the strict sentential and metrical constraints, the classical structural rebuild of poetry requires translators to make creative choices. By contrast, vernacular Chinese enables translators to carry out more direct semantic transfer, thanks to vernacular Chinese’s relative similarity to Western languages. In the historical investigation, I reveal that the Literature Reform which promoted vernacular Chinese not only facilitated translation during the NCM but also expanded civil literacy due to its connection to spoken Chinese dialects.

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Baker, M., & G. Saldanha (Eds.). (2009). Routledge encyclopedia of translation studies (2nd ed). Routledge.

Byron, G. G. (1821). The Isles of Greece. In Don Juan, cantos III, IV, and V. (pp. 46–51). Thomas Davison. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL6664280M/ Don_Juan

Chu, C.-Y. (1998). Lord Byron’s “The Isles of Greece”: First translations. In D. E. Pollard (Ed.), Translation and creation: Readings of western literature in early modern China, 1840–1918 (pp. 79–104). John Benjamins.

Deng, Q. (2008). 拜伦《哀希腊》在近代中国的四种译本及其影响 [Four modern Chinese translations of Byron’s “The isles of Greece” and their impacts]. Journal of Jianghan University (Humanities), 27(5), 23–27.

Hu, S. (1917). 文学改良刍议 [My two cents on the Literature Reform]. 新青年 [New Youth], 2(5).

Hu, S. (1918). 建设的文学革命论 [Theoretical construction of the Literature Reform]. 新青年 [New Youth], 4(4).

Huang, Y., & Y. Zhang (2015). 从《哀希腊》四译本看清末民初文学变 革 [Four versions of translation of “The Isles of Greece” and the modern transformation of the Chinese literature from the late Qing Dynasty to the early Republic of China]. 江苏社会文学 [Jiangsu Social Sciences], 2015(6).

Liu, C. (2019). 近代译诗被压抑的“异质性”：特征及原因 以《哀希腊》四 译本为例 [The suppressed foreignization in modern translated poetry: A case study of “The isles of Greece”]. 中国现代文学研究丛 刊 [The Journal Series of Modern Chinese Literature], 2019(10).

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.14092/j.cnki.cn113956/c.2020.04.014

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Yu, J.-E. (2004). 简论国语运动中白话文的推行 兼与赵慧峰先生商榷 [The promotion of vernacular written Chinese in the Mandarin movement: A brief discussion with Mr. Zhao Huifeng]. 民国档案 [Republican Archives], 61–65.

Zhao, W. (2005). Hu Shi’s rewritings and the construction of a new culture (Order No. 11004864) [Doctoral dissertation, University of Manchester]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.

哀希腊 [The Isles of Greece]. (2022). In 百度百科 [Baidu Encyclopedia].

Dubai’s skyline is an impressive display of architectural advancement. Dominated by the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, the skyline represents the city’s rapid growth overtime. However, in spite of modernization, the Emirate also preserves much of its natural environment. This photograph was taken outside the city and captures both of Dubai’s developed and natural environments.

“Balancing Progress and Nature” by Sultan

Farooq

Notable Submissions AY 2020-2021

Addie Mae Villas

Aditya Balakrishnan

Aman Assali

Aman Assali

Anna Rygielska

Aya Adib

Ayush Pandey

Bishnu Dev

Chi-Ting Tsai

The Silent Aggressor: Bystandership

The Maenads of Kasturba Nagar: Violence as Justice

Alan Kurdi: Solidarity in a Photograph

Religious Extremism and Patriarchy in a Daughter of Isis

From Orientalization to Westernization:

‘Sex and the City Abu Dhabi’ as a case study of the visual representations of Muslim women in American post-feminist cinema

Objectification, Commodification and the Female Nude

Returning Home: The Complications of Escaping Human Trafficking from India

Wycliffe’s Bible: Reason Behind the Controversial Bible Translation

Transitional justice, ethnic reconciliation, and the Taiwanese Identity from the trauma depicted in the 228 Memorial Museum

Claudia Mariana Lugo Celedon

Patriarchy and White Supremacy: Two in one

Colleen Mader

Ehtisham Ul Haq

Ethan Fulton

Gabriel Verley

Gelila Kebede

Han Li Seon

Jennifer Tsai

Joe Mrad

Kimberly Hills

Genocide, Gender Roles and the Patriarchy

Analyzing the Translation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by M. J. Bukhari

Why Normative Doctrines Fall Flat: The Case of Responsibility to Protect in Myanmar

The Intent of the Smoothsayer

A People’s Policy: an Analysis of the Existence of Wikipedia’s Language Policy

Beauty or accuracy: How to best engender change?

The Art of Translating Cosmetic Brand Trademarks

Gender-Inclusivity in Arabic: A Starting Point Towards Gender Equality

More Than a Hot Commodity

Kirubel Solomon Tesfaye The Suppressed Memories and Struggles in a Patriarchal System

Lina Utenova

Memory and Conflict in Ziad Doueiri’s The Insult

Liza Runkova

Lynnette Huang

Manav Mody

Marla Watt

Sex(ism) For Sale: From Women’s Commodification to Male Patriarchy

The Magic System: The Problematic Association of Parental Love with Money in China Merchants Bank’s Advertisement

Preserving Gandhi: One Dabba at a Time

The Importance of Accountability and Transitional Justice in the Acceptance of Sites of Memory

Marwan Ibrahim Handala, Palestine’s Eternal Child

Maya Muwanga

Monika Mitova

Moza Al Otaiba

Creating New Suns: Afro-Futurism in Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed

The Nazi Ideology - World’s Timeless Racism

Qasr Al Hosn’s watchtower: A symbol of Bedouin resilience and modernity

Niraj Pudasaini Understanding Uncosmopolitanism

Noora Jabir

Rashik Chand

The Politics of Preservation: Sacred Femininity across Indian History

Genocide and the Implicit Hierarchy of Atrocity Crimes

Saruul Zorigt

Shayma Alshehhi

Shreya Mary John

Sydney Sund

Valentina Juarez Ortiz

Vanessa Abou Kors

Yeon Jae Lee

Zayed Al Nuaimi

Zhilian (Lynn) Zhou

Ziyad Fawzy

Zuzana Lukacova

Zuzanna Anna Bak

The Statue of Peace: Evolving Perceptions of “Comfort Women”

Challenging Eurocentric Narratives: The Tunisian Abolition

Tourism and Translation: Shrinking of Boundaries of Cultures?

Selfish Action or Sympathetic Silence: NATO’s Intervention in Kosovo Revisite

Hiding Violence in Protection

The Uncanny Valley of Languages

Human Rights in the United States in the Era of Slavery

Nobuyoshi Araki’s Accessory, and Her Misrepresentation

Old Beijing: The Vanished City Walls

Reward and Punishment: The IsraeliPalestinian Conflict

Patriarchy, pandemic, and physicians: the impact of COVID-19 on the lives of female doctors in the US

Are Gay Rights Human Rights?

Notable Submissions AY 2021-2022

Aarushi Prasad

Aarushi Prasad

Aarushi Prasad

Alex Kazuhiro Nagamatsu

Photographic Ethics and the Eroticization of Human Suffering

The Bangladeshi Butchery and the Architecture of Muslim Identity

Venom and Vestige: The Rwandan Assault on Memory, Truth, and Being

How Kehinde Wiley advocates that the celebration of Black culture is necessary to fight with issues pertaining to racism in the 21st century through his painting, “Napoleon Leading the Army Over the Alps”

Alex Ma

Ali Jafri

Amina Rotari

Amna Alrustamani

Awad AlMehairi

Nursultan branding and its effect on city’s urban structure

Language as an Enforcer of Stereotypes

Reshaping Identities: The Yazidi Individual and Community after the 2014 Genocide

Take the Camel and Run with it: Distortion of Emirati Culture Through Tourism

Addressing Societal Issues Through Music: Understanding Melanie Martinez’s K-12

Azka Noor

Azza Alhaj

Chaimae Abouzahir

Emaan Sohail

Event Sharku

Fatima Farooq

Fatima Farooq

Irem Naz Celen

Jess Ma

Mane Harutyunyan

Perception of Violence in Weapons: A Study of Agency

Antara ibn Shaddad’s Greatest Battle: Racism

Maus: Translating Shoah

Liberation or Objectification?

Defining Translation: Play one life, and pause the other

Chuarils’ Defiant Spectacle: Normalizing Empowered Women?

Pakistani Television Series’ Failure to Cultivate Social Change

Gezi Park Protests as a Landmark in the Modern Turkish History: Study of Social Media and Violence in Relation to Creation of Collective Trauma

The Haka: Performative Representation, Violent Reproduction

Representation of Racially Other

Character: The power of Victorian Narrative in Emile Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights”

Matias Rodriguez Uprising While Oppressing: Bob Marley’s Legacy on the Voices of Women in Jamaican Society

Mira Saleh

In Defense of the War in Afghanistan

Monika Pawlowska “Can protection be guaranteed without rights?” EU-Belarusian Refugee Crisis

Omar Rayyan Localization of Video Games: Accessibility or Relatability

Rayan Alnaqbi

The “AUSSIE” Posters: Advocating a Multicultural Australia

Reem Altunaiji Banksy’s West Bank Graffiti and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Sandhya Sharma Frankenstein, his Monster, its Victims: Preventing Genocide and the UNSC Veto

Silvana García Gutiérrez Marvelous, magnetic Mafalda

Sultan Abdulkarim Farooq Suit Supply’s “Shameless” Subordination of Women

Wei Kuo Taiwanese, not Japanese and Chinese: How Japanese Colonization and Postcolonial KMT Government Developed Taiwanese Identity

Yeji Han

The Real Parasites of Korea

Dubai’s skyline is an impressive display of architectural advancement. Dominated by the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, the skyline represents the city’s rapid growth overtime. However, in spite of modernization, the Emirate also preserves much of its natural dunes and environment. This photograph was taken outside the city and captures both of Dubai’s developed and natural environment.

“Balancing Progress and Nature” by

Sultan Farooq