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Le Cercle des Tropiques et Le Mandat reflètent la colère d'hommes soumis à une culture occidentale qu'ils rejettent et dont les conséquences apparaissent partout sur le continent. Le choix du sujet de cet article a été dicté par le fait que ces deux romans de la contestation se situent dans la même période historique. Ils traitent des sujets d'actualité qui constituent des obstacles au développement des pays africains. Pour cette étude, nous utilisons les méthodes de la littérature comparée afin d’arriver à une conclusion de parallélismes en examinant la corruption bureaucratique et économique soulevés par les deux ouvrages.

Se gli studi postcoloniali conoscono la loro fortuna in Italia in un passato recente, le pubblicazioni dimostrano un fertile ampliamento degli interessi e dei campi d’indagine, accompagnati da una costruttiva discussione di carattere teorico. A partire dall’idea che le grandi opere letterarie non sono mai espressione della sola cultura del dominio – conservatrici ed eversive allo stesso tempo – l’articolo offre un contributo all’interno della critica postcoloniale prendendo in esame Guerra in camicia nera di Giuseppe Berto. Scritto da chi, almeno in una prima fase, si è schierato apertamente con il fascismo, questo diario romanzato si discosta dai testi finzionali di propaganda per mostrare, nelle scelte formali, l’ambiguità di senso rispetto ai discorsi univocamente ideologici.

Copyright of Enthymema is the property of Enthymema, International Journal of Literary Criticism, Literary Theory & Philosophy of Literature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article considers the life and work of Afrodescendant Italian artists Iris Peynado, Nadia Kibout and Nadia Ali. Through my interviews with them and a critical analysis of their films, I underline the cultural value of their achievements and emphasize the discriminations that black women face in contemporary society and in the cinema industry. Racial, class and gender biases often are subjects of their filmmaking, and offer a critical site to reflect on the need for further social and political change. Their collective experience is seen in light of a transnational spatial and temporal continuity between black Italians and the diasporic communities around the world. A variety of nuanced cultural expressions makes it inaccurate to consider Italian Afrodescendant artists as a monolithic group of women having a single identity. In spite of societal biases, they are powerfully emerging as filmmakers, actresses, and activists. They contribute to our understanding that a true postcolonial approach requires a more fluid and flexible consideration of Italian identity as a transnational and multi-faceted expression of a fertile intersection of people of diverse genders, races, and religions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic filmmaking has become a rich area of practice and inquiry, driving debates about academic rigour, affect, social impact, and knowledge production. While scholars have increasingly sought to expand their practice beyond strict, 'academic' modes of filmmaking, little attention has been paid to the ways diverse approaches to film production may also offer opportunities for creative practice that extends beyond the academy. This article explores the production model underpinning Maka, a documentary biopic of Geneviéve Makaping and product of intensive collaboration between academic and industry-based filmmakers. Drawing on interviews with the film's producers, Graziano Chiscuzzu and Ermanno Guida, I explore Maka's status as a hybrid film, a dialogic project in which multiple positions and voices intersect. I trace the filmmakers' negotiation of funding and prestige – from university grants to legitimation at film festivals – as well as their use of techniques such as retroscripting to cultivate a dialogic filmmaking process. I also discuss the ethos of social commitment that appears to unite both academic and documentary filmmaking, and explore avenues for expanding and measuring social impact through film distribution. I conclude that Maka offers an important case study of academic-industry hybridization, permitting further interrogation of the boundaries between the two spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cet article propose d’étudier les différentes formes de manifestation et de réappropriation littéraire du motif environnemental dans les œuvres de deux auteurs francophones vietnamiens mettant en scène le retour au pays natal d’un personnage principal vietnamien. L’objectif est de montrer les enjeux idéologiques et historiques derrière la représentation littéraire du monde naturel et animal en contexte colonial ou post-colonial. L’analyse révèle en effet des stratégies ambivalentes de remise en valeur du milieu naturel et à travers celui-ci des traditions ancestrales de l’ancienne Indochine française. Ce traitement littéraire spécifique de la nature permet aux auteurs, d’une part de mettre en exergue la tension entre terre d’origine et terre d’accueil, et d’autre part, de remettre en question – de façon consciente ou inconsciente – la dichotomie entre nature et culture, qui se trouve au fondement de la pensée occidentale moderne. La convergence des approches écocritiques et postcoloniales, ainsi que la mise à contribution de la notion d’hybridité, se montrent ici particulièrement pertinentes pour dépasser cette opposition entre nature et culture, qui a permis pendant la colonisation de situer les différents peuples sur l’échelle de la civilisation.

In un momento in cui il discorso politico, sociale e mediatico rappresenta il tema della migrazione e della fuga come socialmente esplosivo, questo articolo analizza come nei racconti di Fra-intendimenti (2010) di Kaha Mohamed Aden la percezione di sé del soggetto migrante venga formata dagli stereotipi che la società di arrivo proietta su loro e come, allo stesso tempo, si rappresenti la vera complessità della realtà vissuta dal soggetto migrante attraverso una doppia referenzialità. Da una parte si ricorrerà alle riflessioni di Edward Said sulla costruzione europea ed egemonica dell’alterità e all’approccio di bell hooks, che si focalizza sulle intersezioni tra race e gender, per evidenziare le percezioni stereotipe della società di arrivo; dall’altra, il concetto di «Terzo Spazio» sviluppato da Homi K. Bhabha per segnalare le dinamiche di comunicazione in contesti migratori contribuirà a mostrare la complessità della realtà sperimentata dal soggetto migrante. Così, il lettore o la lettrice ha la possibilità di cambiare la propria percezione della realtà.

Copyright of Enthymema is the property of Enthymema, International Journal of Literary Criticism, Literary Theory & Philosophy of Literature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The term metropolis has a double meaning: it indicates the motherland in the colonialist historical movement and, at the same time, the urban conglomerate that characterizes our postmodernity. The theoretical link between the two meanings can generate a postcolonial critique and an intercultural analysis of our multicultural metropolis, exposed to differences and multiple identifications. At the same time, the metropolitan condition shows us how the contact between the differences is now intra-cultural and no longer inter-cultural, proposing a political rewrite of Intercultural Pedagogy as a plural and materialistic Differences Pedagogy, able to recognize the characteristics of struggle for survival and of cultural creativity that today seem unite indigenous and migrants taking the floor in our cities.

In this article, I critically engage with and develop an alternative approach to ontological security informed by Jacques Lacan’s theory of the subject. I argue that ontological security relates to a lack; that is, the always frustrated desire to provide meaningful discursive interpretations to one’s self. This lack is generative of anxiety which functions as the subject’s affective and necessary drive to a continuous, albeit elusive, pursuit of self-coherence. I theorise subjectivity in Lacanian terms as fantasised discursive articulations of the Self in relation to an idealised mirror-image other. The focus on postcolonial states’ subjectivity allows for the examination of the anxiety-driven lack generated by the ever-present desire to emulate but also resist the Western other. I propose, therefore, to explore the theoretical assertion that postcolonial ontological security refers to the institutionalisation and discursive articulation of enduring and anxiety-driven affective traces related to these states’ colonial pasts that are still active and influence current foreign policy practices. I illustrate the force of this interpretation of ontological security by focusing on Brazil as an example of a postcolonial state coping with the lack caused by its ambivalent/hybrid self-identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A partire dagli Cinquanta del Novecento per arrivare alle soglie del nuovo millennio, Londra è stata prima approdo di innumerevoli ondate migratorie – originate dalle diaspore successive al progressivo disfacimento dell'Impero coloniale – e poi teatro di un inarrestabile processo di ridefinizione identitaria dello spazio metropolitano e dell'individuo destinati a scardinare le concezioni più tradizionali ed unilaterali del centro e della periferia e a definirsi nella e attraverso la differenze. Partendo da queste considerazioni, il presente studio intende investigare il complesso e articolato processo di formazione e tras-formazione identitaria sopra accennato, attraverso l'analisi di un corpus narrativo della letteratura Black British piuttosto eterogeneo – e non sempre facilmente contenibile all'interno di una definizione come quella di Black British Literature, già di per sé complessa e articolata – ma riconducibile al genere del romanzo di trasformazione, così come definito da Mark Stein. Londra interagisce con i protagonisti, divenendo essa stessa oggetto di trasformazione e protagonista di una articolata e coinvolgente messinscena della formazione identitaria. Fluidità e transitorietà dell'esistenza metropolitana sono lo sfondo dei romanzi di Samuel Selvon, Zadie Smith, Hanif Kureishi, V.S. Naipaul al centro del presente contributo.

This paper is aimed at reconsidering the concept of Orientalism in a new and multiple perspective, and at proposing a different interpretation of the relationship between culture and power, starting from Edward Said’s theoretical frame of reference. If Said’s representational model is repositioned out of structuralist and foucaultian frameworks and separated from the gramscian idea of hegemony-subordination, indeed, it may be possible to re-discuss the traditional profile identifying the Other in the European cultures. My basic assumption here is that Orientalism should not be understood as a consensus mechanism, which is able to produce diversified images of the Orient and the Oriental on demand. Although, of course, in most cases Orientalism is connected to the issue of power, its meanings could also be explained —as it will be soon shown— otherwise. Let’s take The Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino as an example. Here the narratives are not just multiple repetitions of Venice —in Said’s case, the same would hold for Europeanism—, but they could be strategically re-appropriated by those “others” and “alterities” whose bodies and identities are imposed by the Eurocentric discourse. In this sense, a double link may be identified with queer theories and postcolonial studies, and the notion of subordination will be rethought. Finally, from the above mentioned borders, a new idea of image emerges, which appears as linear, uniform and flattened only to the European gaze, whereas in actual fact it is made of imaginaries and forms of knowledge, which combine representation with the conceptualization of power relationships.

Copyright of Etudes Romanes de Brno is the property of Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Ricerche di Pedagogia e Didattica is the property of Universita di Bologna, Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Educazione and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Indian culture is playing an increasingly imposing role in shaping new scenarios of globalization. This article attempts to highlight the contribution offered to the international literary scene by the multifarious variegated corpus of fiction represented by the Anglophone Indian novel, both in its domestic and diasporic dimensions. In recent years, writers from the Indian subcontinent have achieved a global readership and a prominent translational status. This is manifest for instance in their repeated appearances on shortlists for international book prizes. This study aims to trace, in the peculiar hybrid quality of the Indian novel in English, some recurrent trends which are, nonetheless, discernible. Its emergence from the colonial encounter and the subsequent birth of nationalist feelings and awareness have marked for example its dominant preoccupation with both history and nation and these come together to shape its ineluctably post-colonial character. The concern with place/displacement, with identity and belonging, and above all with the question of language, cannot but be topical to the literature of a country which has seen the rise of the genre in coincidence with the fundamental experiences of foreign domination, the conquest of independence, and mass migration.

The paper is focused on a sophisticated radio play by Tom Stoppard, In the Native State (1991), in which the dramatist approaches the problems linked to the ethics of the British Empire in dealing with Indian culture in both the colonial and post-colonial periods. To do this, the play confronts and complexly interlaces two different sets, India in the Thirties and London in 1990, as if they were two worlds reflecting themselves in a time mirror. The issues dealt with, such as the centuries-old westernization of the Indian minds and culture on one side, and the Indianization of British language and customs on the other, are subtlety treated in art terms, as the reciprocal relationship between the two worlds conflates in the hybrid style of the portraits executed by the hand of an Indian painter who, notwithstanding, or thanks to, his mimic identity (in Homi Bhabha’s terms), becomes the mouthpiece of a fundamental ‘change of perspective’, from the Eurocentric representation of the Orient (in Edward Said’s terms) to the re-appropriation of a different point of view translating the achievement of the Nationalist movement that led India to independence in the Forties.