Meeting / Derrida

In August 1999, Jacques Derrida gave a number of lectures and seminars in Melbourne and Sydney. The seminar of 13 August, held at Sydney's Seymour Centre Theatre, was open to the public. It consisted of a question-and-answer session with Genevieve Lloyd, David Wills, Paul Patton and Penelope Deutscher. Its title, 'Themes from Recent Work', reflected interests in the work from Specters of Marx (1994) onwards which some, including Paul Patton, have referred to as deconstruction in its affirmative phase. What follows is a by-no-means verbatim record of the event. Rather it is but one member of the audience's account of what transpired in the seminar – an account which is therefore necessarily selective and pressed through the grid of my own quasi-philosophical interests. Following this account of the seminar, I offer some marginal notes on the open discussion following the seminar, then, finally, some reflections on a particular matter discussed at the dinner which followed that – madness.     

Defining ‘real India’: representations of authenticity in independent travel

As an alternative to the stereotypical mass tourism, independent travellers – travellers who travel for extended periods on low budgets while ostensibly avoiding formalized tourist activities and locales – are invested in constructing ‘authentic’ travel experiences. Practices such as ‘off-the-beaten-track’ travel and cultural engagement provide the means by which independent travellers are able to make claims to such authenticity. Authenticity is constructed by travellers through idealizations of intimacy and non-commodification. These idealizations are tangled in narrative representations of ‘real’ India and ‘real’ Indians, their ‘real’-ness typified by an absence of other travellers, tourists and, more generally, Western contamination. In these ways, ‘authentic’ travel is dependent upon actively constructed binaries of Western travelling subjects and exotic Indian objects. Yet travellers' fantasies of the Other are fragile and subject to collapse at moments in which so-called Others articulate their subjectivity in a way that is inconsistent with travellers' expectations. Through a focus on travellers' narratives of their experience, both the requirement for an Orientalist dichotomy as well as the ruptures that continually challenge this dichotomy, will emerge.     

The changing configurations of self-(m)other dialogue in North Cyprus

This paper deals with issues of identity, nationalism, postcolonialism, and self-other relations with a focus on a period of transformative events in North Cyprus. It notes how nationalism has been the dominant means of identification for Cypriots in their modern history, and argues that unless weakened and supplanted by a radically pluralist democracy, nationalism imagines one's identity as an indivisible unity and has no place for different others within the nation. However, a pressing relationship with others and otherness is no stranger to Cypriots either, which makes it clear that the border that defines the ‘we’ of such nationalism is, at the same time, the line that divides the self intrinsically, indicating the otherness of the self or its alterity. Subjectivity involves subjection to the other.     

三江源自然保护区生态旅游开发的SWOT分析

本文就三江源自然保护区开发生态旅游产品的可行性及发展潜力,运用SWOT分析模式进行客观分析,并得出三江源开发生态旅游产品是实现该地区可持续发展的最佳途径。     

Changing patterns of mobility,citizenship and conflict in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Mobility and migration are inherent ingredients of Indonesian cultures. In an archipelago with thousands of islands of various size, character and nature, mobility is an important means to make a living and to survive by migration. The right to free movement in Indonesia is constitutionally granted. It can create mobility and give expression to equal citizenship rights at the same time as it can trigger the enforcement of borders among cultural groups and the ethnification of local and regional politics. Mobility thus always comes along with immobility. Physical mobility of one group of people might cause immobility of another group or it might create cultural and political immobility in the same group. In places such as Eastern Indonesia, people have developed reciprocal means to integrate newcomers. Whereas the immigrants are usually disadvantaged citizens with regards to land and customary rights, those living in the area for generations have nonetheless become integral parts of quite peaceful local settings, one way or the other. The advancement of decentralization, democratization and direct elections of political representatives can lead to political empowerment, the promotion of ethnicity as election capital and changing patterns of belonging. This paper illustrates these ambivalences by looking at mobility in Indonesia more generally and how changing national policies and laws lead to reinterpretations of mobility patterns and trigger changes in relations between local population groups and existing mechanisms of cultural and political inclusion and exclusion. Butonese migrants in Maluku will here serve as a case study.     

‘Both an Arab and a woman’: gendered,racialised experiences of female Palestinian citizens of Israel

Following feminist and postcolonial discourses, this paper uses the concept of ‘everyday experience’ as a tool to trace the social world of educated Palestinian women in Israel. The term refers to the complex array of these women's experiences in racialised and gendered social sites, as well as within the class, religious, and ethnic contexts in the subordinated group and its relations with the dominant Jewish group. Based on 108 in‐depth interviews with Palestinian women citizens of Israel, the paper claims that educated Palestinian women are located in a ‘third place’ between cultural, gender, class, national and racial structures that generates a continual ambivalence. Within this marginal, ‘unhomely’ space women negotiate their own identities and challenge dominant social definitions. Women create various modes of interim spaces and multi‐dimensional, shifting identities for themselves. The ambivalent attitudes generated by the women's experiences expose the possibility of shedding categorising markers. The omnipresent existence of the gendered, racialised regime of knowledge makes every place a potential site of subversion and resistance.     

Identification,the exercise of democracy and the fear of the Other – the June EU referendum in the UK

ABSTRACT

The focus is the oscillation among leave voters in the EU referendum from the exercise of rights - an act of dis-identification – towards the assertion of identity as members of a British community. This was mediated by voters acting in an association of citizens calling on the equalising agency of the British people whilst claiming membership of a locally circumscribed community, perceived as injured, through entanglement with the Other prominent among them Europeans. Hence the recovery of the injured community as the object of the denunciators’ desire for identity coupled with the fear of the Other. Predicated on this was the resumption of class, gender and ethnic roles reflected in division among voters. The denunciation of togetherness with Europeans served leave voters to substitute the exercise of rights with a longing for identity. Instrumental in this was the lack of deliberation in the plebiscite to articulate the will of individual voters through a general will. The ‘direct power’ exercised enabled many to cast away their role as citizen in an attempt to claim their privileges as members of a racially and culturally demarcated British community. Paradoxically, the voters’ unashamed disavowal of their agency as citizens by seeking to restore a divided social world as the source of their identity was represented as an exercise in democracy. To some playing on words was supplemented by the use of force removing the gap between the discursive exclusion of the Other and the continued physical presence of bearers of different races and culture.     

Citizenship, ‘rubbished’ dissidents and local restoration of the dead – the execution of Luri political activists in south-western Iran

The paper's focus is a critical moment in the trajectory of the Islamic state in Iran, the trace of which was still discernible in the presidential election of 2009. It draws on ethnographic research among the Lurs of south-western Iran between 1979–1982 to examine the impact of the abolition of politics as contested representations at the centre on a ‘remote’ periphery. The end of a short-lived political activity, as a distinct form of power, in Iran in 1981 was earmarked by mass executions of which only 1600 had been officially counted for the period of 20 June to September 1981 (Amnesty International). The executed were guilty of expressing dissent against divine rule of which the Islamic state was an embodiment. Although the Lurs paid a less heavy penalty for this ‘crime’ than elsewhere in the country the survivors' response to the loss of a young relative in the hands of Islamic executioners was noticeably muted. The response is looked at as the restoration of the status of the dead to the executed relative whose body had been ‘rubbished’ – wrapped in an American flag and abandoned unburied in a desolate place by the Muslim executioners. The paper argues ‘rubbishing’ signified the annihilation of citizenship under the Islamic rule in which the body of the citizen is seen as harbouring ‘the most corrupt’ subject, the sinner who could not even be ‘rectified’ through a less destructive use of force – flogging and mutilation. It, therefore, had to be disposed of – ‘rubbished’. The survivors, on the other hand, by confining themselves to the symbolic return of the executed relative to the community left unacknowledged his quest for equality and liberty. By their reluctance to remember and recount the executed's words and deeds the survivors refused to grant him the ‘immortality’ of a citizen whose death outlived his destruction. The brutal suppression of political agency at the centre and its muted recognition in the periphery are explained as a negation of political power. The power entails postponing the use of force to the last resort thus allowing plurality as a human condition to be realised. Consequent on this realisation is the publicly contested opinions by many who would inevitably challenge the truths guarded by few both at the centre and periphery. It was this challenge that led the ruling mullahs to invoke the Koranic Truths to annihilate the disseminators of opinions. The unspoken citizenship of the annihilated dissidents in the periphery served in turn to reassert the Lurs' historically cherished otherness geared to the use of force. The citizenship called for a discursive inclusion of Lurs, through the use of ‘the pen’, in a wider world, by postponing the use of force. In contrast, the traditional Luri rebels relied heavily on an immediate use of force, through the celebrated ‘rifle’, to perpetuate their perceived inaccessibility. Resistance leads to emancipation, the paper argues, when the particularised subjectivity of local actors is superseded in the universal – objectified – political space in which the agent, i.e. the citizen, overrides the boundaries within which localness is reproduced.     

犹太人能成为基督徒吗?反思、挑战与困惑

本文从一名犹太基督徒的视角出发,阐述了在作者身上所发生的犹太教与基督教身份之间的张力,并从耶稣、保罗以及早期犹太基督徒身上寻找解决方案,进而消解基督教与犹太教之间历史上的误会与冲突,以及如何从基督教的角度去协同与犹太教的关系。最后,作者陈述了现代以色列国内巴勒斯坦人的现状,并提出作为一个基督徒的正当立场。     

From man to men to missing links

Has racial thinking always existed? Have human populations always organized and delineated difference through racial categories? This paper argues that race and racism are the products of nineteenth century European thought wherein radically new conceptions of time permitted new ways of articulating and classifying difference. It was possible for race to become the organizing principle around which to delineate human variation at that moment when the singularity of human time was shattered into multiple temporalities. It is when man's origin comes to be pluralized (the origins of men) that the modern category of race is born and the modern prejudice of racism finds expression.     

Contained mobility and the racialization of poverty in Europe: the Roma at the development–security nexus

ABSTRACT

This paper starts from the observation that, since the collapse of eastern European state socialism, the Roma have become the subject and target of Europe-wide development programs and discourses, while, at the same time, they have been problematized in terms of social, public and national security. Due to the ways in which development and security have ambiguously come together in Europe’s recent history, I will argue that the living conditions of the poorest among the Roma have not only worsened, but also, and more fundamentally, the divide between Europe’s rich and poor has become seriously racialized and almost unbridgeable. I explain how the bio- and geopolitical conditions under which development and security have merged in Europe’s engagement with the Roma have led to a situation in which the official aim of Roma-related development programs – the improvement of their living conditions and life chances – tends to result in a dreadlock.     

从《爱药》看美国印第安人的真实生存状态

露易丝·厄德里克是美国当代最杰出的作家之一.《爱药》是她的成名之作和代表作.《爱药》叙事形式新颖,作者从印第安人的视角去讲述美国历史上发生的与印第安人相关的事件对他们生活的影响,让世人听到了后殖民时代美国印第安人的感受和心声.《爱药》真实地反映了在文化接触与转型中,美国印第安人从坚守传统、被动迷茫到民族意识觉醒、与时俱...     

身份·参与·书写——家乡人类学研究的三个困惑

以"异文化"研究为圭皋的人类学研究者在从事对家乡的研究时往往遭遇质疑,其核心焦点在于研究者成为"他者"的可能性、参与程度的多少对于研究进程的影响以及民族志文本书写时所代表的"主体性".针对这些质疑和困惑,笔者结合自己的田野经历进行阐述,试图加深对这些问题的思考.     

《木兰诗》应该是蒙古族古代民歌

本文从时代背景、地名、民俗、语言等四个方面考证出《木兰诗》是蒙古族古代民歌。     

文明及其反思:马林诺斯基、《自由与文明》与费孝通先生

本文梳理了马林诺斯基学术思想的演变脉络,继而通过解读其丰硕的学术著作和思想遗产,探究了由其确立并影响至今的文化功能理论和田野调查规范;并通过剖析其亲自编撰的最后一部遗著《自由与文明》,殿现了马氏在人类学视角下对自由的理论探索;同时,通过分析费孝通晚年提出的“文化自觉”的政治与学术反思,展现了马氏学术思想在中国人类学界的传承与升华。本文试图呈现有血有肉的马林诺斯基及其褒贬不一的文化理论和备受争议议的田野调查,在重新解读中对这位充满神话色彩的一代宗师的广博思想进行批判性的继承,在大师与大师的对举中探索人类学本土化的一种可能性。     

Counter-narrative as method: race,policy and research for teacher education

The authors argue for a research and conceptual agenda that complicates and disrupts common narratives in teacher education that have serious implications for race. Building on the pivotal work of legal scholar Derrick Bell and through a critical race theory (CRT) lens, this article challenges researchers to broaden and complexify traditional ideologies related to: (1) characteristics of ideal teachers recruited into the field; (2) the amount of time teachers should be expected to remain in the field through alternative programs such as Teach for America; (3)weight placed on teacher entrance examinations; (4)racial diversity of P-12 teachers; (5)racial and ethnic makeup of teacher educators; and (6)over-reliance on subject matter knowledge in teacher preparation to the exclusion of other aspects of learning to teach. The authors argue given the present racial divide in schools between teachers and students it is imperative for teacher education programs to complicate and intensify the utility of race in their recruitment, retention, and support of teacher education practices and policies. The authors offer a counter narrative framework and agenda to advance policy and research through a CRT lens.     

Youth sport and community segregation: a study of kids’ participation in Australian rules football and soccer clubs in an Australian community

ABSTRACT

This research addresses the appeal for more empirical-based research on exclusionary practices in local community sport that often go unchallenged within dominant discourses. By examining how organised community sport clubs can uphold systemic segregation of various ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious and socioeconomic groups, this study also draws attention to the importance of research on race, ethnicity, and education in primary school age children; a population group often ignored in both racism studies and studies of sport. Using interview and focus group data from school principals and students (aged 9–12), including students from refugee and asylum seeker migrant backgrounds, collected over 3 years from two schools in the same multicultural community in Melbourne, Australia, this paper challenges the depiction of sport as an uncontested inclusive space in national and educational discourse, and instead demonstrates the continued existence of exclusion through systemically mediated segregation in organised community youth sport.     

族群认同与族群性研究——兼论对中国民族问题研究的意义

自20世纪80年代以来,在全球范围内爆发的武装冲突,大多是由族群问题或宗教问题所引发.在全球化趋势的影响下,近年来地方民族主义思潮出现一些新的态势,族群认同和族际关系研究也就必然成为国际学术界关注的焦点问题.本文主要针对我国多民族国家的现实,以族群性研究为切入点,分析西方学术界的族群性研究及其本质,反思对中国民族问题研究的现实意义.     

Reframing craniometry: human exceptionalism and the production of racial knowledge

Focusing on the nineteenth century practice of craniometry, this paper considers how strategies of producing racial ‘knowledge’ played a key role in the development of ideas about the human. Supplementing the familiar claim that nineteenth century racial craniometry was designed to biologise longstanding aesthetic prejudices about variations in human physical appearance, the paper offers a more specific understanding of the role of this practice in biologising race. Taking up the post-Linnaean context in which a biological conception of race was elaborated, it considers how early nineteenth century debates about the unique and exceptional status of the human – classically identified with the soul or mind – centred upon the head. The practice of craniometry, it is suggested, can be understood in this context, as its centrality in the emergence of a biological conception of race is traced to an effort to demonstrate the material existence of the mind. The possibility proposed in this paper, therefore, is that particular physical differences between various peoples came to be regarded as racially significant in the nineteenth century attempt to determine the exceptional status of the human.     

Come get these memories: gender,history and racial uplift in Bill Condon's Dreamgirls

On the release of the screen adaptation of Dreamgirls (2006), ex-Motown songwriter William ‘Smokey’ Robinson fielded speculations about corruption at America's most successful black-owned business. In the broader context of racial inequalities in media ownership and distribution, this article asks how spectacles of hard-won individual success, juxtaposed sharply against sexually and financially corrupt ‘music moguls’, continue to shape popular mythologies of the US music industry. In particular, the article focuses on the ways that sexual combat, corrupt masculinities and the politics of respectability inform Dreamgirls’ dramatization of the shift from pre-integration to post-Civil Rights America. Finally, the notion of post-racial discourse is used to make sense of the competing historical interpretations at work in the film and its critical reception, especially with regard to the use of past entertainment icons to make sense of Beyoncé Knowles’ and Jennifer Hudson's own success stories. Throughout, the article argues that myths of meritocracy cannot be separated from the racialized and gendered cultures of production that continue to shape the contemporary repackaging of popular histories and musical genres.