Aesthetics of disaster as decolonial aesthetics: making sense of the effects of Hurricane María through Puerto Rican contemporary art

ABSTRACT

On 20 September 2017, Hurricane María made landfall on Puerto Rico causing unprecedented disaster. From that day onwards, the Puerto Rican multi-layered colonial, social and political context was further complicated by the traumatic acceleration of a human disaster via this natural disaster. This crystalized the urgency of using art as vehicle for (social) catharsis, a practice that continues to be used by individual artists, collectives, community organizations, art projects, and other art institutions on the island and abroad, through mural art, community paintings, art exhibitions, literature, music, and many other aesthetic expressions. This article examines, from a decolonial and critical cultural studies perspective, post-Hurricane María artistic expressions in contemporary art as decolonial aesthetics through the cathartic use of the frame of an aesthetics of disaster. It is argued that, an aesthetics of disaster aims to re-assert an artistic form that is able to accelerate the discursive nullification of a deeply rooted colonial, social and cultural problem by way of art as catharsis inspired by the way that Hurricane María unveiled these problems. The piece briefly contextualizes Puerto Rico, and it examines the idea of Puerto Rican contemporary art as catharsis. Then, it describes how Puerto Rican contemporary art exhibitions and associated aesthetic production are processing urgent post-hurricane issues through three illustrative pieces in exhibitions in PR and abroad in the United States (US). Lastly, decolonial aesthetics is reexamined and re-understood, informed by Édouard Glissant's view expressed in Poetics of Relation which aids to the conclusion that Puerto Rican contemporary art using the frame of an aesthetics of disaster functions as a powerful form of decolonial aesthetics.     

Use of Redundant Industrial Buildings as Injections into the Cultural Sector in Norway

Prime aim is to examine the way the culture sector reuses industrial buildings to instigate cultural activities in the municipalities. The discussion of various actors’ motivation for engagement is based on results from a case study, supplemented with findings from a coarse-meshed telephone survey. At national level overarching political guidelines can be traced back to white papers concerning cultural policy, urban transformation and cultural heritage, and the municipalities’ cultural policies mirror these guidelines. What tends to decide if such initiatives are considered successful are local abilities to cross sectorial divisions and instigate cooperation between municipal planners, private entrepreneurs and NGOs.     

Professionalization through attrition? An event history analysis of mortalities in citizen journalism

ABSTRACT

Despite both scholarly and popular claims that citizen journalism (CJ) represents a growing democratizing force in the journalistic field, recent scholarship in the area has noted the decline of the organizational population of CJ. In this paper, we investigate how individual characteristics of sites and the dynamics of larger organizational population affect a CJ site’s risk of experiencing a mortality. Drawing on the largest sample to date of US-based English-language CJ sites, this study examines the risk of site mortality through an event history framework. Findings indicate that the strongest predictor of a site’s mortality is the age of the site, consistent with organizational population theory’s ‘liability of newness.’ We also find that for-profit and community-based sites have lower rates of site mortality, indicating that adopting legitimate conventions of journalism may serve as a protective buffer to site death. The results offer mixed evidence on whether CJ has become more professionalized via attrition.     

Colonized Silence: Confronting the Colonial Link in Rural Alaska Native Survivors’ Non-Disclosure of Child Sexual Abuse

Though there is evidence linking the history of colonialism and oppression of Indigenous people to the high rates of rape and child sexual abuse experienced by this population today, it is less understood how colonial processes, past and present, condition the decision to disclose or report victimization. Drawing on a survivorship storytelling study of rural Alaska Native survivors of child sexual abuse, this paper underscores the importance of centering colonialism in understanding the culture of silence surrounding sexual victimization among Indigenous people. Results show that reasons for non-disclosure are quite embedded within larger social, historical and political themes of colonialism, oppression, and marginalization. Implications for policy and praxes are discussed, as well as a broader mandate of social change to remove barriers to disclosure.     

Second generation Caribbean black male youths discuss obstacles to educational and employment opportunities: a critical race counter-narrative analysis

This study explores obstacles to navigating the high school-to-labor market transition experienced by Second Generation Caribbean Black Male Youth (CBMY) living in Canada's Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Drawing upon interviews with ten CBMY between the ages of 18–27, the article uses a qualitative phenomenological methodology to understand barriers to education and employment from their perspectives. Studies show that 45% of CBMY drop out of high school while 52% are precariously employed in the GTA [Allahar, A. L. 2010. “The Political Economy of ‘Race’ and Class in Canada’s Caribbean Diaspora.” American Review of Political Economy 8 (2): 54; James, C. E. 2012. Students “at Risk” Stereotypes and the Schooling of Black Boys. Urban Education 47 (2), 464–494.; Lewchuk, W., and M. Lafleche. 2014. Precarious Employment and Social Outcomes. Just Labour: A Canadian Journal of Work and Society, 22, 45–50.; Block and Galabuzi 2011. Canada’s Color Coded Labor market: The Gap for Racialized workers. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives?=?Centre Canadien de Politiques alternatives]. The ten interview subjects provide retrospective and introspective counter-narratives that expose the race, class and gender-based barriers that frustrate their efforts to secure stable employment. The study utilizes Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the concept of White Supremacy to challenge the view that educational and employment success is based on color-blindness, merit and hard work. The CBMY counter-narratives examined in this study offer profound insight into dominant ideologies and practices that perpetuate racial biases, and present many valuable suggestions, explicit and implied, regarding how to improve the opportunities, inclusion and well-being of CBMY.     

On artistic and cultural generations in Northeastern Tibet

Beginning in the 1980s, and continuing for over three decades since, a particular generation of Tibetans from the Northeastern Tibetan region known as Amdo, and particularly from the northern parts of China’s Qinghai province, has proven extremely productive. Why has this generation, born primarily between 1959 and 1967, been so incredibly successful? This article examines the contextual factors that may have contributed to the incredible success of this generation. This ranges from the policies and circumstances that affected their births, and the state of the cultural field at the time they reached adulthood. Personal experience narratives, autobiographies, and scholarly studies then reveal how this generation was able to access the intellectual field. Finally, I briefly discuss how the Amdo Tibetan intellectual field compares with other Tibetan and ethnic experiences in the People’s Republic of China.     

Symposium on political communication and social movements: audience,persuasion, and influence

ABSTRACT

This article argues that an important contribution that political communication can offer social movement studies is a more variegated understanding of social movement audiences and their role in social movement strategy and processes. Specifically, the article introduces a coarse typology of social movement audiences and discusses the importance of understanding differences in the goals of these audiences and what kinds of influence, from messaging or other forms of pressure, may be important to affect different audiences in movements’ favors. The article also examines the ways in which audiences are active, shaping what messages they are exposed to, consume, believe, and act upon. The call of the article is to bring a concern for audiences into social movement studies in the hopes of wedding these more media and communication-focused concerns with the kinds of structural and material influences social movement studies is so accomplished in investigating.     

Decolonial Hip Hop: Indigenous Hip Hop and the disruption of settler colonialism

ABSTRACT

Contemporary Detroit has gone through many changes – or so it appears. From streets lined with vehicles made by Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors and driven by the nearly 2 million people who called the city home in 1950 to certain parts of the city looking like ghost towns; from a population that dwindled to 670,000 to the revival of downtown. Yet, what has been remarkably consistent is the invisibility of the Motor City’s Indigenous population. Indeed, Indigenous erasure, combined with rhetoric and policies that continue to marginalize and subjugate African Americans in Detroit, create a place rooted in multiple colonialisms. This essay examines how Detroit’s Indigenous Hip Hop artists resist settler colonialism through art, creativity, and culture as well as the practices of Detroit 2.0, a rhetoric and policy used by Detroit elites to reimagine it as a place of opportunity. By making visible the connections between blackness and indigeneity, as well as by linking the struggle of colonized peoples in Detroit to those in Palestine, Indigenous artists are not only asserting their humanity and challenging the longstanding idea of their erasure, but also constructing pathways for artists and activists to disrupt the effects of multiple colonialisms that continue to marginalize people of colour in urban areas. Detroit’s Indigenous Hip Hop artists make socially conscious music and also participate as activists in the city of Detroit. They serve as a window onto contemporary Indigenous identity, represent an exemplar of the urban Indigenous experience, and combine activism with art in a variety of ways.     

文化认知中定向思维模式的建构与解构——以中国少数民族文化范式为研究视阈

定向思维模式的建构与解构实际上反映出认知结构的二重性特征，两者在文化认知活动中可互为挹注共存于对立统一关系里。因此，对中国少数民族文化范式的研究，不仅要重视建构之功能催生的符号化文化构成，还应关注解构之功能显现的非常见的文化元素。同时，只有弄清楚定向思维模式的建构与解构在文化认知中的意涵，才能明确定向思维模式的“趋向”和“专注”特点以及“惰化”和“孤立”倾向，从而为牵及民族文化事项的认知固化与迁移提供理论工具并用以指导多元文化实践。     

Filling the ‘empty space’: Site-specific dance in a techno club

While organisational space has received broad scholarly attention, movement in organisational spaces remains under-researched. This paper introduces the notion of site-specific dance from dance theory to consider the dynamic relationship between space and people, emphasising that movements are a response to a space, its materiality and context. Berghain, in Berlin and one of the world’s most famous techno clubs, is discussed as a case. An interdisciplinary analysis shows how a site-specific performance is created through the interplay of the architecture, the sound and the music organised by the DJ, and the dancing crowd. Methodologically, the dance and performance studies approach develops suggestions for how to analyse movement interaction in organisational space. Reference to dance theory broadens our understanding of how organisational spaces and human interaction enable, produce and negotiate experiences that are transitory, embodied and difficult to pin down.