UP Journals (Univ. of Pretoria)
Not a member yet
4792 research outputs found
Sort by
Advice on the use of gestures in presentation skills manuals: alignment between theory, research and instruction
Get PDFThere appears to be a weak alignment between manuals on using hand gestures in oral presentations, theoretical sources on gesture production, and empirical studies on dimensions of gesture processing and use. Much of the advice in presentation skills manuals centre on prohibitions regarding undesirable postures and gestures. Furthermore, these sources tend to focus on the intentions, feelings and mental states of the speakers as well as the psychological effect of gestures on the audience. Theoretical sources, on the other hand, typically emphasise the relationship between speech and gestures, and the mental processing of the latter, especially representational gestures. Quasi-experimental empirical research studies, in turn, favour the description and analysis of iconic and metaphorical gestures, often with specific reference to gesturing in the retelling of cartoon narratives. The purpose of this article is to identify main areas of misalignment between practical, theoretical and empirical sources, and provide pointers on how the advice literature could align guidelines on gesture use with theory and research. First, I provide an overview of pertinent gesture theories, followed by a discussion of partially canonised typologies that describe gestures in relation to semiotic gesture types, handedness (left, right or both hands), salient hand shapes and palm orientation, movement, and position in gesture space. Subsequently, I share the results of a qualitative analysis of the advice on gesture use in 17 manuals on presentation skills. I then report on an analysis of the co-speech gestures in a corpus of 17 video-recorded audio-visual presentations by students of Theology. The article is concluded by proposing an outline for advice on gestures that is based on a considered integration of traditional advice in guide books and websites, theory, and empirical research
Complications and concessions: ecofeminism in Black Panther: African Perspectives on Marvel’s Black Panther
No full textEcofeminism is an interdisciplinary movement which dissects unhealthy power relations. Assessing the science fiction film Black Panther (Coogler 2018) through an ecofeminist lens offers up fruitful and complicated explorations. Ecofeminism focusses on the impacts of toxic hegemonies, and the paper evaluates representations of power in Black Panther. As the vibranium meteor gives Wakanda an advantage, vibranium functions as a speculative symbol for privilege, and the responsibilities that come with the power of privileged positioning are interrogated. An analysis of the representations of culture and nature in Black Panther potentially indicates that Wakanda is not as severed from nature as our contemporary global neoliberal culture – although, arguably, much of the imagery is idealised, and what is excluded from our view is as important as what is included. An uninvited ecofeminist observation suggests that Wakanda’s isolation goes against the grain of contemporary globalised neoliberalism and posits that self-reliance and self-subsistence can be a powerful alternative force. In our neoliberal system, where deregulated global trade is driving the Anthropocene, there is potentially a lesson in Wakanda’s self-sufficiency. Finally, a discussion of the heart-shaped herb reveals it to be a speculative symbol of ecofeminist connectivity through uniting humanity, nature, technology, and consciousness
Killmonger: scoring modes and representation in Black Panther: African Perspectives on Marvel’s Black Panther
No full textAnticipated by many, and equally a site of contention or reverence, Black Panther and its accompanying original musical score as composed by Ludwig Görranson is rife for analysis and brings to fore the question: in what ways is a Hollywood practice used in a film with seemingly other aesthetic aims? A score which features few disparate and disconnected vague references to an “African sound” for the imagined country of Wakanda is undercut even more so by the insistent use of an otherwise purely western orchestral score. Firstly, through a brief overview of Göransson’s production approaches to the score for Black Panther, and his collaboration with local experts, this article argues for a more nuanced understanding of authorship arising from such collaborations between these expert improvising music and film composers who tend to be the sole credited composers. Furthermore, musical representations are complicated by the recurring theme of the “other” according to Classical Hollywood tropes through the integration of occasional African instruments. In section two, brief transcriptions of the music composed for the character Killmonger are provided, in the search for representation devices – how the music works to or fails to establish the character. Also provided are the authors’ personal insights as to whether or not Göransson’s intentions with the music are in fact evident in the film
Special section editorial: Challenging legacies in Post-Colonial and Post-Socialist notions of place
Get PDFPolitical oppression has been experienced in many parts of the world, notably through colonialism in Africa, India and South America, as well as socialist oppression in Central and Eastern Europe. In the aftermath of regime changes in many of these geographies, there is a shared move towards art practices articulating Post-Colonial or Post-Socialist identities. Such identities are in turn often related to culturally informed notions of place existing in the social imaginary, in representational discourse or in lived interactions with places. Using comparable strategies, and often working with intersecting concerns across geographies, artists who work with notions of place might actively counter or interrogate historic understandings of the contexts they engage with. Such artistic practices could also be seen as an attempt to create an “authentic” expression of national belonging, responding to the problematic residue of cultural objects, images and ideologies perpetuated (or retained) in a Post-Colonial/Post-Socialist milieu
Haptic modes of engagement in Willem Boshoff’s Blind Alphabet: Corporeality / Sensoriality / Materiality: Body-centered interpretations of South African art
No full textCreated for people with visual limitations, Willem Boshoff’s Blind Alphabet (1990 – ongoing) has already received extensive critical attention. Surprisingly, however, this literature has overlooked how those for whom the installation was created, experience and appreciate it. This article reports on a series of interviews with people who are blind or have vision loss, and people who are sighted and were blindfolded. The participants in the study were invited to explore and then describe their experience of selected sculptures in the letter L series, which is the latest addition to Blind Alphabet. The research demonstrated that the different sculptures solicit different tactual exploration by the participants thereby revealing insights about the sculptures that are unavailable to sight. Furthermore, Blind Alphabet solicits haptic, kinaesthetic, and proprioceptive interactivity from its blind and blindfolded audience. This whole-body, multisensorial engagement, in turn, activates memory, affect and the imagination. In this way, Blind Alphabet foregrounds the body as the locus of perception, thought and consciousness and demonstrates the role of the senses other than sight in shaping the experience, understanding, and meaning of artworks
Exploring Nnedi Okorafor’s decolonial turn in the Binti Trilogy: Decolonising Speculative Fiction
No full textNnedi Okorafor is one of the best-known speculative fiction writers who has centred African perspectives and delinked from Western models. In her trilogy, Binti (2015), Binti Home (2017) and Binti the Night Masquerade (2017a), Okorafor disrupts the dominant white-masculine supremacist convention and traditions for a more diverse and inclusive narrative. In this article, I use decolonial thinking and the lens of Sankofa, a decolonial and African knowledge philosophy and wor ldview, to explore how Okorafor uses set tings, characterisation, and ancient African traditional knowledge to achieve a decolonial turn in speculative fiction. By centring Sankofa, Okorafor sets her fantastic stories in Namibia among the indigenous and marginalised Himba people. She creates strong female characters who embody a multiplicity of beings operating intricately in a complex earthly, spatial and spirit world, and she exploits ancient African traditional culture and knowledge systems to create her ‘organic fantasy’ and a world of speculative fiction that transforms Western understandings of the genre
Deliberately derivative: levels of decolonisation in Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch: Decolonising Speculative Fiction
No full textHaving written science fiction works such as Zahrah the Windseeker and Binti, Nnedi Okorafor is at the forefront of Africanfuturism. Akata Witch falls within the realm of Africanfuturism in offering a version of Africa outside of the stereotypical Western imagination. However, being set in present day Nigeria (and the spirit world), it is more fantasy than it is futuristic. While Okorafor takes umbrage at Akata Witch being branded the ‘Nigerian Harry Potter’, the parallels in plot and fantastical setting between the two stories are undeniable and go far deeper than is initially apparent (2020b). The level of correlation might even lead to Akata Witch being perceived as derivative of a Western literary phenomenon; nothing more than Harry Potter in an African setting. This article sets out to prove the opposite by exploring how, and more importantly, why, Okorafor made the familiar strange, and the strange familiar, by using the Harry Potter universe as starting point to tap deeply into Nigerian folklore and African indigenous knowledges. I further posit that Akata Witch can be divided into two distinct parts: the first, a mild but very effective form of decolonisation where Okorafor showcases Nigerian folklore and makes what is Western accessible to an African audience; and the other, a direct challenge in the face of the coloniser, touting not only the uniqueness, but also the superiority of Africa and African myth unchained
Space Hitler and saint: Star Trek’s Emperor Georgiou and the slippage between postfeminism and fourth wave feminism: Original Research
No full textOne of the most recent Star Trek series, Star Trek: Discovery (2017-present) (DSC), seems self-aware regarding the contradictions inherent in what Star Trek claims to be and what it actually is. In an attempt to realise Gene Roddenberry’s vision, DSC includes a far more diverse cast than any Star Trek series before it. As Judith Rauscher (2020:256) suggests, DSC’s ‘highly diverse cast’ combined with its extended Mirror Universe plot ‘complicates the representation of female characters of color’. At the same historical moment, a new wave of feminism—the fourth wave—that claims to be acutely aware of diversity, inclusivity, and intersectionality is entering the mainstream. While both Rosalind Gill (2016, 2017) and Nicola Rivers (2017) make convincing cases that we still live within a postfeminist “sensibility”, one cannot deny that recently, audiences and producers of popular cultural texts seem to have become aware of the overarching white, heterosexual narrative of postfeminism, and radical changes in terms of representation are taking place. In this paper, I explore how the slippage between postfeminism and fourth wave feminism manifests itself in contemporary representations of women in sci-fi—specifically women of colour in Star Trek. One character from DSC—the Terran Emperor, Phillipa Georgiou—exemplifies the tensions between postfeminist and fourth wave empowerment in terms of her representation and character arc over three seasons
Architecture’s ‘other’: An ontological reading of the abject relationship with interior design
Get PDFDialectic relationships exist between architecture and emergent architecturally informed disciplines. Interior design constitutes such a discipline and is considered a critical case study. The main problem is to investigate the ontology of interior design by considering its affiliation with architecture. With the use of Julia Kristeva’s construct, the abject, a synopsis of architectural and interior design theory is read to ascertain the dialectic and overlapping relationship. Through heuristic enquiry an ontological analysis of interior design (with reference to essentialist aspects of architecture) is made. The Manichean dialectic is employed to produce qualitative descriptions that portray the disciplines as discrete ‘others’. Architecture is a normative profession which considers interior design as a part of itself
Sacrificial bodies as corporeal articulations of violence in the work of South African female artists
Get PDFThis article investigates the multiple occurrence of the sacrificial body as a visual device employed by female South African artists against a backdrop of genderbased violence and patriarchal discourse. The theories of René Girard (1972), George Bataille (1962) and Julia Kristeva (1982) are used to scrutinise this phenomenon, specifically with regard to the relationship of sacrifice with suicide, murder and martyrdom. It is shown how the sacrificial device is used by female artists as a feminist intervention through the dismantling of Cartesian dualisms and how visual art actively works as social action in this regard.