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Paynter, Eleanor, Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present
No full textIn Emergency in Transit, Eleanor Paynter redefines contemporary Mediterranean migration, challenging dominant narratives, especially in Italy, that portray it as a sudden, unmanageable “crisis.” The book identifies the Italian government\u27s response to migration as a problem of short-sightedness, since it approaches migration as an emergency situation. The weight of this critique comes from its focus on witness testimonies, a methodological commitment that is also a call to action. Paynter believes that changing the language around migration will change the dominant narrative that migration is a crisis. The book highlights how people held “in transit” respond to and resist this narrative and its government apparatus by analyzing the testimonies and cultural productions of migrants themselves. Drawing on oral histories, ethnography, and analysis of literature, film, and visual art published and set in Italy, Paynter contributes to critical refugee studies and postcolonial Italian studies, offering a call to reimagine mobility and belonging within the migrant experience. One of Paynter’s most compelling contributions is the use of migrants’ memoirs as witness literature, which challenges the erasures of official narratives and asserts migrants’ right to narrate their own histories
Heidi Maibom: "The Space Between. How Empathy Really Works"
No full textRezension zu: Heidi Maibom: "The Space Between. How Empathy Really Works". (Oxford University Press, 2022
Does emotive and evaluative language in online migrant narratives reinforce positive migrant stereotypes within host societies? An exploratory analysis
No full textMigration is predominantly represented negatively within host societies’ public discourses. However, positive (stereotypical) images of migrants are also produced, resulting in what may be considered powerful, socially sanctioned constructions of ‘good migrants’. Discourse studies have detected positive evaluations in media discourse when positive economic effects brought about by migrant workers are mentioned. More broadly, social science research has identified cultural similarity, hard work, loyalty to the host society, suffering, victimhood, a history of forced migration and, partly, refugee or legal immigrant status as elements associated with more positive attitudes towards migrants. Stories of migrant experiences potentially problematise and offer alternatives to dominant representations; at the same time, however, they may reproduce ‘good migrant’ stereotypes for self-legitimation purposes. This study draws on a small dataset of online English-language first-person migrant narratives (written or in video transcript form) from five different document series, to compare the discursive constructions of migrants they offer through their use of evaluative language – Appraisal, and in particular Attitude – with positive stereotypical constructions held by host societies. The approach adopted (combining qualitative annotation with quantitative analyses) reveals that while features consistent with some stereotypes appear in several narratives and in all document series, they are never used in a discriminatory way, and can be balanced by stereotype-divergent elements
The Evolution of Arabic Self-Expression in the Western Mediterranean: Using an Annotation Schema as a Comparative Framework
No full textThis paper presents a hybrid quantitative-qualitative methodology for the comparative study of texts of an autobiographical nature and their evolution. It is divided into three sections followed by some concluding remarks. The introductory section argues for the need to use digital and empirical methods in the study of self-expression within the pre-modern Arabic and Islamic cultural context, considering the autobiographical genre as a Western and modern conception. The second section presents the process of developing an annotation schema that encodes the authorial voice in a sample corpus and its application as a comparative framework. The sample corpus consists of works belonging to the riḥla (travel narratives) genre produced in the western Mediterranean during the fourteenth century. In the third section, the schema is put into practice in a case study, through the analysis of an early-sixteenth-century North African text with similar characteristics. The paper demonstrates the usefulness of this methodology in the study of the structure, content, and language use in these texts, drawing connections between works and authorial styles, and questioning the relevance of genre as a framework for analysis
The Construal of Directional Landscapes (1)
No full textThis review article takes the recent dissertation by Christoph Winter, Der Kompass der Nordfriesen (2023), inspired by similar work by Hovmark (2007) investigating traditional Danish dialects, as the point of departure in a discussion of a number of theoretical and analytical issues related to the investigation of spatial language. Winter demonstrates an extensive use of the absolute frame of reference in the traditional North Frisian language communities, and he shows how this use is closely connected with historical and socio-cultural factors. Focusing on the argumentation relating to the spatial encoding by the directional adverbs (the subject in Hovmark 2007), the article points to the relevance of a detailed use of concepts like for instance motion event, viewpoint, conceptualization, conventionalization, and speech situation in the analysis. On this basis, various proposals are made with relevance not only for Winter (2023) but for the study of spatial language in motion events in general
De schuldverklaring ‘Erkenning en verantwoordelijkheid’ van 8 november 2020 in theologisch licht
No full textThis article critically evaluates statement in the Protestant Church of the Netherlands’ Declaration of Recognition and Responsibility (November 8, 2020) that the church authorities “often lacked the courage to stand up for the Jewish inhabitants of our country.” The analysis focuses (1) on the belief that the church was guilty with regard to the Jews and (2) on the role played by the understanding of the nature of the church, and concludes that that declaration is untrue as a totalizing statement and implies a gross disregard of the courage that was often shown. Furthermore, the Declaration does not take into account the difference between the past lived experiences and present judgments of that time, especially in terms of the understanding of the nature of the church. The Declaration one-sidedly identifies the concept of church with its leadership of the church and fails to appreciate the church’s local experiences, and how its expresses those by means of its office-bearers
Focus. De Nederlandse gereformeerde Liturgie
No full textN.a.v.: Klaas-Willem de Jong en Wim Moehn (red.), De Nederlandse gereformeerde Liturgie 1566–1639. De teksten en hun dynamiek (Hilversum: Verloren, 2024 [2e druk in voorbereiding]) 665 p., € 45,00 (ISBN 9789464551266)
Fractal Fragments: Reflections on Human and More-than-human Matter(s) in the Kogelberg Biosphere, South Africa
No full textThis critical ecoauto/biographical essay reflects on history, lived experience, personal and public perspectives of socio-environmental issues in the Kogelberg Biosphere, South Africa. The essay combines written and visual texts, varied in form and format, to present a situated reflection on human and more-than-human encounters and biosphere politics. In particular, the essay experiments with travel writing forms, blending academic and creative practice, and evolves into a perambulating journey through a local zone of the biosphere, inviting relational reflection on the planetary crisis