{"title":"Decolonising Museum Practice in a Postcolonial Nation: Museum’s Visual Order as the Work of Representation in Constructing Colonial Memory","authors":"D. Prianti, I. W. Suyadnya","doi":"10.1515/culture-2022-0157","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0157","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The study of colonialism and its legacies have mostly left the category of memory studies. However, for the colonised subject, what they experienced in the past inevitably forms their present and future discourse. This study focuses on how the museum’s visual order articulates colonial memory. By looking at the work of representation, in this context museum’s visual order, this study investigates how memory lives on through the circulation of colonial memory that the museum simulates. Museum’s visual order translates how colonial memory should be remembered and celebrated as public knowledge. Although research on how museums affect society knowledge have been part of both memory and museum studies, those two studies barely touch upon museums’ role in translating colonial memory in the postcolonial nation. Memory lives on through its circulation in media forms. However, premeditation and mediation are made possible through articulating social and cultural sites, in this case, museums practice. In order to achieve its purposes, this research investigates public museums in different parts of Java, Indonesia which have colonial memory objects. The combination of field observation, document review, and visual method followed by focus group discussion between stakeholders and researchers are conducted to propose the research conclusion. This research argues that the museum’s visual order translates interrelated colonial memories to be accepted as a part of the history that forms the “existence” of the nation and to be appreciated as public knowledge that is shared and forms the national identity. In doing so, museum practice roams into the area of political visibility which decides the legibility of the narrative related to colonial memory. In addition, as museum practice is basically a colonial legacy, this research concludes that it is essential to deconstruct the practice from the perspective of the colonised.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49523986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cultural Reflections of Time and Space that Contradict a Legacy in Anne Brontë’s Poetry","authors":"Krisztina Kodó","doi":"10.1515/culture-2020-0142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2020-0142","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article looks at Anne Brontë’s poetic development within a span of 11 years from 1838 to 1849. The selected six poems – The North Wind (1838), Bluebell (1840), To… (1842), Night (1845), The Narrow Way (1848), and Last Lines (1849) – highlight different stages of artistic development and personal reflection which Anne called the “pillars of witness.” The aim of this article is to present arguments that perplex the myth that was created around her persona after her early death. The article will focus on a close analysis of the above-selected poems aimed at exploring the ways in which the legacy created around Anne Brontë distorts the author’s insightful cultural reflections about her era.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41598874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Translation Procedures of Cultural-Bound Expressions in the Egyptian Vernacular Dubbed Versions of Three Disney Animated Movies","authors":"Noor F. Al-Yasin","doi":"10.1515/culture-2022-0162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0162","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Egyptian Vernacular Arabic is often used when Disney animated movies are dubbed in Arabic. Since vernacular varieties reflect culture, the present article aims to study the translation procedures used in dubbing culture-bound expressions in Disney animated movies. Three Disney animated movies were selected for this purpose, The Lion King, Toy Story 2, and Finding Nemo. To analyse the dubbed culture-bound expressions, I adopted Tomaszkiewicz’s procedures of dubbing and subtitling. The study revealed that the most frequently used dubbing procedures were adaptation taken from the target language and providing cultural equivalents. These two procedures are recommended by previous scholars who suggested that culture cannot be translated literally and translators should always find an equivalent that the viewer understands in the target language. The procedure literal translation was seldom used, whereas omission, generalisation, and replacement were not used at all. It has also been concluded that manipulation of the original text was done by using dubbing procedures that mainly aim to make the text closer to the viewer in terms of adjusting to their native language and culture. The article concludes with recommendations for further research.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47660636","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Girls Are Alright: Examining Protective Factors of US Black Culture and Its Impact on the Resilience of Black Girls and Women","authors":"Bennefield Zinobia, Jackson Taylor","doi":"10.1515/culture-2022-0148","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0148","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract An overarching narrative exists that the self-concept of Black girls is adversely impacted by the negative portrayals of Black Americans in the mainstream media. We assert that this mainstream narrative presents a deficit model account in which Black girls are perpetual victims of white racism. A more complete narrative, one that we offer in this essay, is that while the white patriarchal society has tried, through various means, to undermine the self-esteem of Black Americans, Black girls are healthy, confident, and full of belief in themselves, their beauty, and their power. We argue that much of the power exhibited by Black girls can be attributed to three crucial supports. First, the Black childhood facilitated by the Black family, Black spirituality or “Black girl magic” as it has come to be known in the mainstream, and sisterhood with peers and elders. We offer this counter narrative in order to challenge the predominate account but also to enable critical thought about the resilience Black girls possess, a magic wherein they engage in self-definition and see their worth despite society’s attempts to crush their souls.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48818253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
V. N. Oliphant, Deja Broyles, Déjà N. Clement, LaRicka R Wingate
{"title":"Mental Health Strategies Informed by Black Feminist Thought","authors":"V. N. Oliphant, Deja Broyles, Déjà N. Clement, LaRicka R Wingate","doi":"10.1515/culture-2022-0151","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0151","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract There is currently a gap in the literature that explicitly connects Black feminist thought with psychological theory, research, or intervention. This article review aims to assist in filling the gap and inspire scholars to actively utilize the knowledge of Black feminism and apply it to culturally specific mental health resources for Black women. There is a need for a new generation of Black feminists to intentionally center Black women’s mental health in psychological research and therapeutic practices. Black women’s mental health is an important part of Black feminism, and accordingly psychological theory, research, and intervention should actively incorporate Black feminist thought. This article seeks to call attention to specific ways Black women can preserve and strengthen their mental health and maintain resiliency. Specifically, this review highlights three Black feminist-informed strategies that can aid in supporting Black women’s mental health: practicing essential/critical affirmations, raising Black consciousness, and intentional self-definition.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48793438","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Topoanalysis and the City Space in the Literary Writings of Amitava Kumar","authors":"A. Anand, P. Tripathi","doi":"10.1515/culture-2022-0143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0143","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the postmodernist transnational moment, the “city” is a “distinctive location of diasporic dwelling, belonging and attachment” and that the city as home is rooted in “city-specific memories” (Blunt and Bonnerjee 237). Emotions and feelings are not static in nature; the very place where one is born becomes a memory house once the individual moves out. Thus, with dispersion, the spaces of “home” transcend to other physical aspects related to it, i.e., the “locality, town or city spaces” (Roy 141) where one has spent a considerable amount of time. Gaston Bachelard in his formulation of “topoanalysis” analyzes the subjective phenomenological expression vis-à-vis “home” and contends that memories of it are not something remembered, but rather, are entwined with the present. From the literary writings of Amitava Kumar, whose major setting is his hometown “Patna,” the article considers the “city” as a sentimental space of “home” that often forms the core of his varied literary works and manifested through the diasporic consciousness of the author. His literary writings, such as Passport Photos, Bombay-London-New York and A Matter of Rats, showcase the author’s constant negotiation of Patna. The literary texts under consideration explore how Kumar extrapolates through his “sense of place” (Agnew in Creswell 7), where “home” becomes an instrument of “topoanalysis” (Bachelard 8). Using Kumar’s literary texts as a literary example, this article offers new ways into thinking of the associated concerns of diaspora, home, city spaces and topoanalysis.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41591477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Plural/Singular in Pierre Huyghe’s Interventions in the 1990s","authors":"Kamil Lipiński","doi":"10.1515/culture-2022-0161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0161","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The essay aims to reexamine the underlying contexts and the nature of site-specific projection in Light Conical Intersect by Pierre Huyghe by addressing the critical intervention of Gordon Matta-Clark in public space. The essay offers a broad overview of the contexts and the nature of light metaphors. The aim of this research is to delve into how these sorts of light interventions stimulate the debate concerning the public sphere via live events. The essay moves from the approach of using a cone light across the gallery space to one that reflects the cone whole cut in a construction building. It finally illustrates a site-specific projection of the documentary footage from the intervention 20 years later. The crucial point is that layered superposition in projection is a special attribute of the interventions in the nineties of the twentieth century. The essay concludes that the theoretical framework of “plural/singular” arts articulated by Jean-Luc Nancy enables us to retrace the artistic contexts of cone-shaped installations that operate with a circumscribed reservoir of iconographic and thematic components.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47444336","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Potentials and Occlusions of Zhonghua Minguo/Taiwan: In Search of a Left Nationalism in the Tsai Ing-wen Era","authors":"Mark McConaghy","doi":"10.1515/culture-2020-0131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2020-0131","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Tsai Ing-wen has consistently referred to the nation that she governs as 中華民國台灣 (The Republic of China Taiwan), the term representing a major rhetorical feature of her administration. Breaking from the exclusively Taiwan-centered discourse which traditionally defined DPP politics, Tsai has seemingly created an entirely new name for the state she governs. This article examines both the discursive potentials, but also the occlusions, of this newly coined neologism. It argues that the term is defined by a lack of materialist critique, in which essential questions regarding labor exploitation and private property regimes remain unaddressed. While Tsai has successfully combined the ROC’s old Cold War raison d'etre (Chinese humanism as anti-Communism) with the Taiwanese independence movement’s desire for global recognition through the nation-state form, what has been lost is any real commitment to a politics of working-class empowerment, which is reflected in the Tsai administration’s abandonment of progressive labor law reform in 2018, as well as increasing trade liberalization policies with the US introduced in 2020. Returning to the roots of Taiwanese socialist discourse, this article will examine the possibility that “ROC-Taiwan” as a political project could still have a socialist future, despite its markedly capitalist past and present.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47516053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Black Feminist Organizing and Caribbean Cyberfeminisms in Puerto Rico","authors":"M. Stephens","doi":"10.1515/culture-2022-0149","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0149","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article centers Black feminist organizing in Puerto Rico, highlighting social media as a tool for racial and gender justice. Collaboration between Puerto Rican feminist organizations on social media platforms amplifies their on-the-ground work and demands. Mapping Caribbean Cyberfeminisms (2016) theorizes Caribbean cyberfeminisms as “knowledge-producing spaces of political thought and action” online by Caribbean feminists. I argue that through content creation and curation, reposting and sharing, commenting and captioning, broadcasting live, Black feminist collectives, organizations and projects in Puerto Rico use digital and virtual technologies to extend their Black feminist organizing and collaboration, building a Caribbean cyberfeminist network in the process.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42127134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Bassam Al Saideen, Ahmad S. Haider, Linda S. Al-Abbas
{"title":"Erotizing Nabokov’s Lolita in Arabic: How Translation Strategies Shift Themes and Characterization of Literary Works","authors":"Bassam Al Saideen, Ahmad S. Haider, Linda S. Al-Abbas","doi":"10.1515/culture-2022-0163","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2022-0163","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Given the conservative nature of Arab societies, Vladimir Nabokov’s English novel Lolita (1955) poses considerable challenges to Arab translators because of its pornographic nature and controversial themes: pedophilia, incest, and young teenage sex. This study mainly examines the translation of Lolita by Mola with occasional references to Jubaili’s translation of the novel. It also investigates the translation strategies employed by the two translators. The findings showed that Jubaili followed the literal approach of translation with no significant deviation from the novel’s themes and characterization. On the other hand, Mola dysphemized the expressions and eroticized the events, which were more euphemistic in the original. Mola’s utilization of some translation strategies such as omission, addition, and substitution affected the representation of the main characters, namely, Humbert (stepfather) and Lolita (stepdaughter), by shifting their roles as victim and victimizer, making Humbert’s actions less culpable, and removing any traces of Lolita’s innocence. In so doing, Mola reinforces sexual norms for young American women and diminishes the pedophile/incest angle. This study is significant, particularly within the context of translators’ training and for those interested in literary translation.","PeriodicalId":41385,"journal":{"name":"Open Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47189490","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}