Proposal-paper

XXXIV Aedean Conference (Almería 2010)

PANEL: POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES (Coordinator: Paloma Fresno)

SESSION 1

‘Caught in-between’: Mudrooroo’s Vexed Deconstruction of Australianness
Cornelis Martin Renes (University of Barcelona)

"Hostipitality" and Postcolonial Australia
Carles Conrad Serra Pagès (University Pompeu Fabra)

SESSION 2

Hysteria, Marasmus, Ophthalmia, Tabes: Illness and Mortality among Women and Children on Convict Transports
Susan Penelope Ballyn Jenney (University of Barcelona)

Loving a Terrorist: Ethical Dilemmas in Recent Indian Cinema
Felicity Hand Cranham (University Autonoma Barcelona)

African Pride vs. English Prejudice: the Yearnings of Metropolitan Women in Maggie Gee’s My Cleaner
Corneeltje Van Bleijswijk (University Illes Balears)

SESSION 3 (ROUND TABLE)

Domesticated Cosmopolitans: the Reception of English Canadian Writers in Spain
María Pilar Somacarrera Iñigo (University Autonoma Madrid)
Participants: María Pilar Somacarrera Iñigo, Chair (University Autonoma Madrid), Nieves Pascual (University of Jaen), Mercedes Díaz de Dueñas (University of Granada)

SESSION 4 (ROUND TABLE)

Nomadic and Diasporic Cartograhies of Desire: Queer Identities in Post-colonial Literatures.
Emilia María Durán Almarza (University of Oviedo)
Participants: Emilia María Durán Almarza, Chair, Alicia Menéndez (University of Oviedo), Marta Sofía López (University of Leon)

POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES
ABSTRACTS

‘Caught in-between’: Mudrooroo’s Vexed Deconstruction of Australianness
Cornelis Martin Renes (University of Barcelona)

The issue of Aboriginal ‘authenticity’ that the well-known Australian author and academic Mudrooroo became entrapped in politicised the Australian identity debate tremendously at the close of the nineteen-nineties. The questioning of some public figures’ Indigenous ancestry was part and parcel of the backlash against the Aboriginal minority under conservative Federal tenure, and Mudrooroo was undoubtedly its most emblematic target. Unable to substantiate his claim to Indigenous descent, he was forced to relinquish his position as an Aboriginal referent in the identity debate, and to move to and beyond the margins of Australia’s cultural and geographical space. Yet, his fin-de-siècle vampire trilogy represents the author’s return to the discursive space of the debate on Australianness from a haunted and haunting identitarian non-location. This paper analyses how the Mudrooroo Affair came about, how it was inscribed in determinist notions of race as well as gender, and how Mudrooroo’s latest fiction formulates his vexed response through the employment of the vampire Gothic as Derridian spectrality.
Keywords: spectrality; deconstruction; postcolonialism; identity formation; identity politics; Gothic fiction

"Hostipitality" and Postcolonial Australia
Carles Conrad Serra Pagès (University Pompeu Fabra)

In the late nineties, Derrida imparted various on-going seminars on the topic of hospitality. Four of these sessions were transcribed and published under the title of “Hostipitality” in a collection of writings by Derrida, entitled Acts Of Religion. In these texts, Derrida addresses the issues of hospitality, forgiveness, the gift, time, death and infinitude in dialogue with Lévinas, Heidegger, and the religions of the Book (the Judeo-Christian and specially the Arabic tradition, in which “hospitality” plays an important role) among others. Our purpose in this paper is to exemplify and to put these concepts to the test in the historical episode of the “stolen generations” and the colonization of Australia. Whereas in everyday life and language it might sound strange to speak of hospitality and forgiveness as impossible, or that one can only “forgive the unforgivable”, as Derrida does, it is in the exceptional cases of colonization and imperialism where the limits and truth of these everyday concepts is revealed in their historical and existential dimension. Some of the issues we address in this paper are Kevin Rudd’s recent apology to the Aboriginal peoples for the stolen generations, and whether the Aboriginal peoples should or can grant forgiveness to Western colonizers. In this paper there is not a throughout philosophical discussion of Derrida’s analyses in “Hostipitality”. Only the most general and relevant ideas of his analyses are defined and used in analysing the postcolonial context of Australia. This will allow us to ascertain to what extend Derrida is justified in deconstructing the concepts of hospitality, forgiveness, gift, and so on. The deconstruction of these concepts can be seen as a critique to Western thought and tradition, but since we ourselves are taken and belong to that tradition, our exposition here is most times close to non-sense and madness.

Hysteria, Marasmus, Ophthalmia, Tabes: Illness and Mortality among Women and Children on Convict Transports
Susan Penelope Ballyn Jenney (University of Barcelona)

A study of over two hundred cases of illness and/or mortality among women and children on convict transports to Australia, throws up some very illuminating data. The study is based on the convict journals of naval surgeons on board the female transports going in to Van Diemen’s Land from 1812 to 1853. There are illnesses/diseases on the sick lists which are recurrent over the years such as hysteria, marasmus, opthalmia, tabes, among others, many of which reveal much about the convict woman’s background and that of her child if she has one. Irish female convicts, for example, seem to have had a much higher degree of malnutrition which can, in part, be attributed to the Great Famine during the later years of transportation. This paper will look into such questions and the difficulties that are coming to the fore in the research, but prior to doing so, it will lay out the methodology as to how the research is being conducted and the need for a cross over between a humanist and scientific approach as a basis from which to work. Power point will be used to illustrate the paper.

Loving a Terrorist: Ethical Dilemmas in Recent Indian Cinema
Felicity Hand Cranham (University Autonoma Barcelona)

In Indian commercial cinema films depicting social change are expected to carry within them the correct solution to the moral quandaries the protagonists are faced with. The two films discussed in this paper pose a very delicate ethical dilemma, namely individual fulfillment and personal desire versus loyalty to the nation. Mani Ratman’s Dil Se [From the Heart] (1998] and Kunal Kohli’s Fanaa [Destroyed in Love ] (2006) tackle the thorny issue of separatism and raise the question whether one can, or even should, love a terrorist. The paper argues that both films illustrate the Hindu concept of karma, which implies atonement for misdeeds so that the cosmic order remains unaltered. At the same time, the Muslim Sufi concept of fanaa (annihilation), implicit in the name of Kohli’s film, links the two ethical worlds, Muslim and Hindu, and portrays an image of India, despite ethnic violence and separatism, that is much more than the sum of its integral parts.
Keywords: Bollywood, karma, separatism, ethics, terrorism

African Pride vs. English Prejudice: the Yearnings of Metropolitan Women in Maggie Gee’s My Cleaner
Corneeltje Van Bleijswijk (University Illes Balears)

This paper examines Maggie Gee’s novel My Cleaner that accounts for the shifting power dynamics between a Ugandan domestic cleaner and her white English employer. In fact, Maggie Gee explores what happens when the white employer seeks desperately the help of the black employee who, on her side, decides that she is tired of pretending to be humble. The paper shows how Maggie Gee not only deconstructs stereotypes and rather patronising forms of racism but explores also the contact zones, diasporic movements and negotiations of metropolitan citizens and contemporary postcolonial subjects in a way which is very close to bell hooks’ notion of “yearning”, understood as a possible “fertile ground for the recognition of common commitments” (hooks 1993). Furthermore, this paper seeks to demonstrate that Maggie Gee’s novel portrays not a mere role reversal of power-relations between a white employer and a black domestic cleaner but can be read also through the concepts of “transposition” and “conviviality”, developed recently by Rosi Braidotti and Paul Gilroy respectively, and which are closely linked to bell hook’s notion of “yearning”. Both scholars examine what happens in those spaces created “in between” cultures and claim the existence of far more fluid boundaries between race, class, gender and sexuality. Hence this paper focuses on the importance of the awareness of these, sometimes rather ambiguous and not always clear, solidarities, alliances and amalgamations in which black and white, immigrants and national people negotiate and renegotiate continuously their positions within society.

The last ten years have seen an upsurge in the presence of Canadian literature written in English in the Spanish cultural system. Several Canadian books (Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro) have received literary honours in Spain, thus providing them with what Pierre Bourdieu calls cultural capital. Given that Canadian literature is translated as a cosmopolitan literature, we will show how that cosmopolitan literature is domesticated in the target culture, that is, the Spanish one, by studying the example of a some internationally famous Canadian writers: Douglas Coupland, Margaret Laurence, Carol Shields, Elizabeth Smart, Anne Michaels, Mavis Gallant and Alice Munro. The study will be addressed through the study of paratexts and responses in blogs and internet networks.
Literary translation constitutes an important marker of status in the economic and cultural global systems as it determines the range of the circulation of texts and, therefore, their span of reception. It also plays a relevant role in nation branding and cultural diplomacy, an aspect which has been studied by Luise Von Flotw. Therefore, the study of translation and its reception provides invaluable clues about how the image of a country is read in a target culture, as translation is the most influential type of rewriting projecting the image of a specific literary system beyond the boundaries of their culture of origin (André Lefevere).
In Spain, the actions of cultural diplomacy implemented by the Canada Council and the Direction of Foreign Affairs and International Trade have yielded over a hundred translations of English-Canadian books into the peninsular languages (Castilian, Catalan, Basque and Galician). The last ten years have seen an upsurge in the presence of Canadian literature written in English –or, rather, a selection of English-Canadian texts and writers- in the Spanish cultural system. Several Canadian books (by Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro, among others) which had been published in the first years of the twenty-first century have been reprinted. Cultural institutions and elite readers have begun to bestow literary honours to these writers, thus providing them with what Pierre Bourdieu calls cultural capital. Alice Munro received the symbolic Kingdom of Redonda Award created by Javier Marías in 2005 and Margaret Atwood was the recipient of the Prince of Asturias Award for Letters in 2008. Given that Canadian literature is translated as a cosmopolitan literature, we will show how that cosmopolitan literature is domesticated in the target culture, that is, the Spanish one, by studying the example of a some internationally famous Canadian writers. As convenor of the round table, I will begin with a brief introduction about the aforementioned issues.
The second speaker will address Douglas Coupland’s success in Spain by measuring different parameters of his reception. The translation of his books and the number of editions and reprints that they have seen is the first of these variables. Another one is the influence he had had on young Spanish writers of the 1990’s, such as José Ángel Mañas, Lucía Etxebarría, Ray Loriga, or Pedro Maestre, in offering a model for their writing by introducing in the home literature features that did not exist before (Itama Even-Zohar); and in providing a label with which they have been identified. Attending also to figures, the number of Spanish web pages devoted to him or that deal with his work is also outstanding. However, the inevitable conclusion is that his most definite contribution to the Spanish cultural scene is not so much a direct and acknowledged influence on Spanish writers based on a profound knowledge of his work and the wish to imitate or emulate it (of which only some examples can be found), but rather a more overarching presence that has personified and given name to a general attitude towards life and literature.
In the light of the current editorial success of Canadian women writers in Spain
( see Carlos Sala,“Las editoriales apuestan por las autoras de la literatura canadiense,” in La Razón http://www.larazon.es/hemeroteca/las-editoriales-apuestan-por-las-autoras-de-la-literatura-canadiense, August 26, 2009), the third speaker will look at the paratexts that surround translation and which aim at disseminating the Canadian literary works of Margaret Laurence, Carol Shields, Elizabeth Smart, Mavis Gallant and Anne Michaels in Spain. The word “paratexs” I mean the instances that public-ate or make public the Canadian cultural product. In examining these paratexts she will draw on Bourdieu’s concepts of symbolic and cultural capital. The French sociologist defines symbolic capital as the degree of prestige, celebrity, consecration or honour a cultural artifact accumulates while he posits that cultural capital is the appreciation for or empathy towards other cultural products and concerns forms of cultural knowledge, competences or dispositions. It is difficult not to read cultural capital in terms of the degree of cosmopolitanism an artifact accumulates. The speaker will argue (a) that symbolic capital of a Canadian literary work in Spain depends on the accumulation of cosmopolitanism; (b) that Canada is translated by and into our Spanish culture as a cosmopolitan culture; and (c) that it is through cosmopolitanism that the work’s specificity is denied and ours is confirmed.
Finally, the last speaker will talk about reader responses to Alice Munro’s work found in blogs. In an article published in the cultural supplement of the Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia, Xavi Ayén writes that “if the Munro genre existed in Spain, it would undoubtedly be going through an undeniable boom.” Considered by many writers and critics the best Canadian writer –even over Margaret Atwood-, Munro’s “boom” in Spain is a relatively recent phenomenon. She has made it to the headlines of many Spanish newspapers in the last year, because of her being awarded the Man Booker biannual Prize for a lifetime literary career in 2009. Munro now occupies a privileged position in the Spanish literary system, being taken as a model for young writers who want to learn the skills of the short story. The Canadian short story writer has cast a spell upon a group of reputed Spanish writers and artists, and created an enthusiastic addiction to her work in anonymous keen readers as expressed on the numerous blogs and references in internet networks s about her.

This round table will discuss literary and performative representations of queer identities and subjectivities, focusing on the particular routes of desire depicted in a selection of contemporary works by lesbian and genderqueer African-American, Caribbean and Canadian authors. Drawing from queer, feminist and post-colonial theory, the round table will discuss issues of gender identity, sexualities, bodies and desire as they emerge in contemporary post-colonial literatures, tracing the intra- and trans-national diasporic cartographies of queer subjects and communities. Questions to be asked include:how does migration affect the creation of a queer subjectivity? How does race and ethnicity interact with gender in the formation of queer subjects? How do issues of sexuality and desire affect migrant trajectories? How is gender performed g/locally in contemporary post-colonial artistic practices? Is there a relationship between genders and genres?
Transnational Diasporas. From the Caribbean to the North: First and Second Waves of Queer migrations to the US and Canada. This first part of the round table will focus on the routes of Caribbean queer migrants to a variety of postcolonial locales. Reflecting on the continued invisibility of black lesbians in Afro-diasporic communities, the first presenter will discuss the works of prominent open lesbian authors such as Audre Lorde, Michelle Cliff, Makeda Silvera, Dionne Brand and Marlene Nourbese Philips, and the importance of their nomadic and/or diasporic trajectories for their embracement of a queer subjectivity, paving the way for queer diasporas to emerge. Focusing on the work of a younger generation, the second speaker will analyse the performance poetry of Jamaican-American author Staceyann Chin. Experiencing dislocation from an early age as a result of her class, sexual, gender and ethnic subjected position, and after enduring a sexual assault by a group of homophobic male students in college in Jamaica, Chin relocates in New York City, where she has become an acclaimed spoken word performance artist and LGTB activist. Chin’s art, through the representation of a diasporic queer female subject in her performance practices, thus engages in the formation of a queer diaspora community outside traditional national and transnational heteronormative boundaries.
Intranational Diasporas. From the small town to the global city: Genderqueer Identities in Ivan E. Coyote’s Short Fiction. As the third speaker contends, the migratory routes of queer subjectivities do not only occur within a transnational framework: intranational migration, specifically from small towns to big cities, is also crucial in the formation of queer diasporic identities. This contribution will focus on the work of acclaimed Canadian author and performer Ivan E. Coyote, whose short fiction traces her movements back and forth between the small town where she grew up and the vibrant, multicultural, gay-friendly city of Vancouver. Through the stark opposition between the town and the city, and the routes she describes between them, Coyote explores the notions of belonging and dislocation, the relation between identity and space, and the importance of travel and movement in the construction of queer diasporic subjectivities. Coyote’s stories deconstruct binary oppositions like urban/rural, male/female, queer/straight and cis-/trans, thus undermining generalised assumptions about gender identity, sexuality, the gendered/sexed body, migration and space.