FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & the Arts
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Resisting Monosexism: Representations of Bisexuality in Literature
Full text linkIn a New York Times review of James Baldwin’s 1968 novel Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone, Mario Puzo writes that “A propaganda novel may be socially valuable… but it is not art.” Puzo’s claim is a function of what creative writing pedagogy scholar Janelle Adsit calls “the particular privilege that comes with a denial of marginalization.” Assumptions of rigid binaries that categorise people as either hetero- or homosexual, a phenomenon that scholar Kenji Yoshino calls “the epistemic contract of bisexual erasure,” create and reinforce harmful ideas about bisexuality. Bisexual representation in literature can operate as a creative resistance to the status quo, undermining the alleged necessity for a rigid binary system of sexuality. From James Baldwin’s 1968 Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone to Jen Wilde’s 2017 Queens of Geek, this article traces representations of bisexuality in literature, with special attention to the ways in which bisexuality is demonstrated, described, and labelled in literature. However, while acknowledging the problematic representations of bisexuality in older fiction, such as Radclyffe Hall’s 1928 The Well of Loneliness, this paper resists a narrative of pure progress of bisexual representation, examining both problematic and nuanced representations in contemporary literature
No Face, No Case: Russian Hip Hop and Politics under Putinism
Full text linkThis article explores the phenomenon of Russian hip hop as part of a creative resistance movement in contemporary Russia. It argues that hip hop, which originally came to Russia during the country’s 1990s infatuation with the West, links back to a long-standing tradition of music as counterculture in a Russian context. By placing Russian hip hop within a general shift of popular culture towards intellectual notions of political responsibility, this article discusses the emergence of a socially conscious form of high hip hop in Russia, contextualising it within the specific anti-Western and anti-intellectual cultural atmosphere created under the Putin regime. By investigating Russian hip hop’s ties with the country’s intelligentsia heritage and its relation to counterculture during the Soviet era, this article addresses two underlying concerns: what ‘case’ can be made against contemporary Russian hip hoppers, and what this conflict tell us about the contested frontline between popular culture and politics under Putinism. While the work of several Russian hip hoppers will be discussed as part of this analysis, particular attention will be paid to recent tracks released by the rappers Husky and Face
Art as Resistance in Shaheen Bagh
Full text linkShaheen Bagh - how an indefinite sit-in became an organic protest site and used art as resistance
“Of Belonging or Not”: Counter-Canons of Britishness in the Novels of Hanif Kureishi and Andrea Levy
Full text linkThis article analyses two novels, Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) and Andrea Levy’s Small Island (2004), to elaborate on how they form postcolonial literary visions of metropolitan Britain, in resistance to colonialist depictions of the setting which have been disseminated across the world. The two works share related themes and motifs in their representations of the experiences of first- and second-generation migrants from Britain’s (former) colonies. Kureishi’s novel, set in the 1970s, relates the teenage life of Karim, the son of an Indian migrant, Haroon, as he navigates his sense of being a “funny kind of Englishman” (3). Levy’s novel, on the other hand, relates the experiences of a Jamaican couple, Hortense and Gilbert, as they arrive in Britain in 1948 within a fictionalised representation of the Empire Windrush. Comparable images within their works, including allusions to George Lamming’s writing from the 1950s and Stuart Hall’s depiction of the West End as it has existed in colonial imaginings, demonstrate how the two novelists participate in – and, therefore, help construct – a counter-canon of writing about post-war and postcolonial Britishness
Creative Agency in The Scarlet Letter
Full text linkThis article provides a critical analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s employment of artistic defiance in The Scarlet Letter. In reading Hester Prynne’s artistic ability and theological dissent as tools of creative resistance, the article claims that Hawthorne uses self-expression to critique Puritan values. When Hester redesigns the symbol of the scarlet letter A that she is forced to wear as a punishment for the sin of committing adultery, the act of sewing becomes a transgressive form of resistance. By examining the way in which she transforms her symbol of shame into an expression of autonomy, I trace the spiritual significance of Hester’s resistance and Hawthorne’s statement of individualism as reflecting the Transcendentalist rhetoric of early nineteenth-century New England. Hester’s ability to transcend institutional authority to create an independent identity, in turn, cultivates an independent relationship with God. Finally, I read Hawthorne’s own parallel creative struggle as author as a metaphor for national independent identity that can be contextualised within the American Renaissance
Can the Young Adults Speak? Poetry from the Sunflower and Umbrella Movements
Full text linkThis article explores political aspirations of young adults of Taipei and Hong Kong by analysing the poems written during the Sunflower Movement and the Umbrella Movement. Poetry is a vehicle to convey ideas to the audience. Reading these poems from Taipei and Hong Kong, one can notice several distinctive characteristics. First, the poets have established a broad dichotomy: the upper and the lower, violence and resistance, eloquence and silence, lies and truth, and hypocrisy and morality. Second, poetry is a field for multiplicity. Focusing more on everyday practices, sometimes vulgar, filthy, and obscene, these poems correspond to Bakhtin’s theory of carnival in which wordplay, mimicry, and irony open a space for renewal and rebirth. Additionally, Derrida’s concept of dissemination can help to examine the linguistic slippage that indirectly subverts authority. After investigating protest poetry, the author asks if the young adults can speak. The youth’s voices can definitely be heard when it comes to the concept of “the democracy to come”. The “democracy to come,” conceptualised by Derrida to replace the notion of the future, cannot be reduced to a simple idea, but remains unpredictable, so as to allow itself always to be full of possibilities
Self and Other in post-2002 China-Hong Kong co-productions – Johnnie To’s Drug War
Full text linkThe cinematic landscapes of both China and Hong Kong were significantly changed after CEPA, the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnerships Arrangement, was formed in 2002, which saw Chinese and Hong Kong co-production films become domestic rather than foreign films. This change calls for a new theoretical framework in reading ‘nationhood’ in co-productions. ‘Nationhood,’ or identity, is usually articulated in masculine terms which are constructed as an ideal Self through an evil Other in both China and Hong Kong. Using Hong Kong director Johnnie To’s co-production Drug War (2012) as an example, this article argues that through his auteurship, To deconstructs this cinematic representation of masculinity in both China and Hong Kong. By doing so, To points out the problems inherent in the nationhood/identity of both China and Hong Kong and further offers a subtle critique of the state narratives of China
Breaking Down Walls: Truth, Fiction, and GDR Memory in This Ain’t California
Full text linkThis article examines the issues of authenticity that accompany Marten Persiel’s award winning ‘hybrid’ documentary This Ain’t California (2012). Taking on the appearance of a traditional documentary, Persiel’s film tells the little-known story of a skating subculture in 1980s East Germany. Occupying a contentious space between documentary and fiction, This Ain’t California’s form and content raise questions of authenticity. When it comes to cultural memory and storytelling, this paper posits that plural, material, and emotional authenticities can be usefully revealed by breaking down the perceived wall the separates the broad ontologies of ‘truth’ and ‘fiction’. Nuance in this regard is as vital as ever: memories of the German Democratic Republic remain contested, despite three decades having passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
An analysis of technologies and techniques of filmmaking is tied together with central focus on the embodied spectator’s perception within the film-experience; this study touches on the “memory work” (Kuhn) of This Ain’t California through an investigative framework that considers the relations between two bodies – those belonging to both viewer and film. Of particular interest is how the filmmakers (re)create the everyday by shooting ‘amateur’ skate clips with Super 8 cameras. Presenting these ‘falsified’ sequences as archival footage, in accordance with generic documentary conventions, the film arouses salient points for examining how the spectator is affected by mediated cultural memories
Barriers to the Self: Productivity and the depressed woman in The Bell Jar and Prozac Nation
Full text linkThis article explores Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar (1967) and Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation (1994) through the effects that depression has on the creation and perception of self in young women. Depression is explored in terms of the barriers it erects around young women’s attempts to conceptualise selfhood as it forms in adolescence. This article particularly focuses on the problem of productivity in both texts as protagonists Esther Greenwood and Elizabeth Wurtzel appear to view productivity, particularly academic and literary, as the means through which they will create and establish a coherent self. This fetishised productivity is halted by their depressions, illustrating a further tension between the wider capitalist society which demands productivity and the destabilising nature of depression. Whilst Esther and Elizabeth have different experiences, due to the periods of composition, both characters and texts have striking similarities which suggest that there is a common thread which unites the experiences of female depression in the late twentieth century