On the Possibility of a Post-colonial Revolutionary: Reconsidering Žižek’s Universalist Reading of Frantz Fanon in the Interregnum

Keyword(s):  
Afro-Ásia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Baldraia

<p>Inspirado no pensamento de Frantz Fanon, este texto é um diagnóstico do tempo presente encenado como uma “reação psicótica”, cujo esperado efeito colateral é fazer avançar a noção de convivialidade como um espaço de experimentação analítica, onde desigualdade e diferença compartilham a condição de isonomia conceitual. O experimento específico aqui realizado tenta atingir esse objetivo fundindo diferentes registros escriturais e explorando o repertório vernacular da junção brasileira de um Atlântico afro-indígena. Sua aposta analítica, a ideia de zumbificação, é o esboço de uma posição epistemológica cujo trabalho consiste em uma cinética de (pelo menos) três movimentos: 1) a posicionalidade necessária para fazer exigências políticas; 2) o decentramento necessário para atenuar os efeitos prejudiciais tanto do essencialismo (mesmo estratégico) como da inevitável reprodução de padrões hegemônicos excludentes; 3) o voluntarismo necessário para amplificar abordagens epistemológicas subalternizadas de modo que elas possam se tornar mais pervasivas.</p><p> </p><p>Epistemologies for Conviviality or “Zumbification”</p><p>Inspired by Frantz Fanon’s thought, this paper is a diagnostic of the present time, enacted as a “psychotic reaction” that melts together different scriptural registers to advance the notion of conviviality as a space of analytical experimentation, where inequality and difference share the condition of conceptual isonomy. The experiment performed in this article tries to accomplish this goal by exploring the vernacular repertoire of the Brazilian junction of an afro-indigenous Atlantic. Its analytical idea, zumbification, is the sketch of an epistemological subject-position, whose labor consists in a kinesics of (at least) three movements: 1) the situatedness needed for making political demands; 2) the decenteredness necessary for attenuating the harmful effects of (even strategic) essentialism and the unavoidable reproduction of hegemonic exclusionary patterns; 3) the willfulness required for amplifying subalternized epistemological approaches, so that they may become more pervasive.</p><p>Capoeira | Conviviality | Epistemology | Post-colonial theory | Zumbi</p>


PMLA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 132 (1) ◽  
pp. 164-170
Author(s):  
Stefan Helgesson

In the wake of 9/11, from an already distant moment of globalization (before we even knew words like anthropocene or Facebook), Arif Dirlik asked if postcolonial critique hadn't failed to take the rapidly evolving new modalities of capitalism into account. By foregrounding the experience of colonialism so insistently, postcolonialism risked cultivating “an exaggerated view of the hold of the past over contemporary realities, and an obliviousness to the reconfiguration of past legacies by contemporary restructurations of power” (“Rethinking Colonialism” 429). What it had achieved, however, was an interrogation of “fundamental contradictions in an earlier discourse on colonialism,” whereby the meaning of colonialism had shifted from the post-1945 Manichaean narrative to something far more ambiguous (431). As a consequence, even anticolonial nationalism, which had largely been shaped by native functionaries of colonial rule, came to be understood as a product of colonialism. Frantz Fanon was among the first to confront this problem (119–99). But when his alternative vision of an organic nationhood developing out of the rural peasantry failed to emerge, the intellectual legacies of anticolonialism were, unsurprisingly, subjected to sustained interrogation. Indeed, Dirlik attributes such a reorientation in post-colonial criticism precisely to the failures of postcolonial regimes (“Rethinking Colonialism” 434).


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 194
Author(s):  
Gabriel Chagas

Resumo: O presente artigo tem como objetivo criar uma leitura comparativa entre os romances Clara dos Anjos, de Lima Barreto, e A hora da estrela, de Clarice Lispector. Para tanto, a tentativa de elaborar uma linguagem própria será o tema convergente entre as narrativas, a partir das experiências ficcionais de suas protagonistas. Como aparato teórico, a investigação parte de uma pesquisa bibliográfica que percorre a tradição pós-colonial, aqui indicada pelos escritos do filósofo Achille Mbembe, da teórica Gayatri Spivak e do psiquiatra Frantz Fanon. A abordagem requisita também a noção de enquadramento proposta pela filósofa norte-americana Judith Butler, cujas premissas permitem uma melhor discussão em torno do aspecto não-hegemônico dos corpos, chave de leitura fundamental para as personagens estudadas neste trabalho. Sendo assim, tendo como base o método comparativo de análise, o artigo demonstra em que medida a precariedade da linguagem pode ser utilizada como ferramenta na leitura desses dois romances. Com isso, propõe um caminho interpretativo para as duas obras sob uma perspectiva contemporânea, arraigada nos marcadores sociais da diferença e na formação de sociedades coloniais. Palavras-chave: Lima Barreto; Clarice Lispector; literatura brasileira, literatura comparada, teoria pós-colonial.Abstract: This article aims to create a comparative reading between the novels Clara dos Anjos, by Lima Barreto, and A hora da estrela, by Clarice Lispector. Therefore, the attempt to develop an own language will be the converging theme between the narratives, based on the fictional experiences of the protagonists. As a theoretical approach, the investigation starts from a bibliographic research that runs through the post-colonial tradition, here indicated by the writings of the philosopher Achille Mbembe, the theorist Gayatri Spivak and the psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. This approach also requires the notion of framing proposed by the American philosopher Judith Butler, whose ideas allow a better discussion around the non-hegemonic aspect of bodies, an essential reading key for the characters studied in this work.Thus, based on the comparative method of analysis, the article demonstrates the extent to which the precariousness of language can be used as a tool in reading these two novels. It proposes an interpretative possibility for the two works from a contemporary perspective, based on the social markers of difference and the formation of colonial societies.Keywords: Lima Barreto; Clarice Lispector; Brazilian literature; comparative literature, postcolonial theory.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-31
Author(s):  
Craig Alan Hassel

As every human society has developed its own ways of knowing nature in order to survive, dietitians can benefit from an emerging scholarship of “cross-cultural engagement” (CCE).  CCE asks dietitians to move beyond the orthodoxy of their academic training by temporarily experiencing culturally diverse knowledge systems, inhabiting different background assumptions and presuppositions of how the world works.  Although this practice may seem de- stabilizing, it allows for significant outcomes not afforded by conventional dietetics scholarship.  First, culturally different knowledge systems including those of Africa, Ayurveda, classical Chinese medicine and indigenous societies become more empathetically understood, minimizing the distortions created when forcing conformity with biomedical paradigms.  This lessens potential for erroneous interpretations.  Second, implicit background assumptions of the dietetics profession become more apparent, enabling a more critical appraisal of its underlying epistemology.  Third, new forms of post-colonial intercultural inquiry can begin to develop over time as dietetics professionals develop capacities to reframe food and health issues from different cultural perspectives.  CCE scholarship offers dietetics professionals a means to more fully appreciate knowledge assets that lie beyond professionally maintained parameters of truth, and a practice for challenging and moving boundaries of credibility.


This research article highlights the temperament, inference, scope, and motives of code-mixing in Pakistani English works. One novel from Pakistani English novels namely, An American Brat by Bapsi Sidhwa, and one short story namely, The Escape by Qaisra Shehraz are being selected as an illustration of this reading. In this novel and short story, the writers have already dealt with the characteristics of postcolonialism. English language and literature pierced into the privileged civilizations of the sub-continent, after the end of British Imperialism. Pakistani writers in English are the best interpreter of the post-colonial communal language. In this study, I have hit upon code-mixing in English works written by Pakistani authors to a bigger echelon. These works are paragons of arts and the unbelievable mixture of rhetorical and fictitious study. In these works, the writers have not abased the confined diversities. They have tinted the value of Pakistani English in order to achieve the chatty desires of native people. These borrowings from the native languages are used to fill the lexical fissures of ideological thoughts. The reason of these borrowings is not to represent the English as a substandard assortment. Through the utilization of native words, we conclude that the significance of native languages has been tinted to question mark the dialect as well. The words of daily use also have an area of research for English people without having any substitute in English. That’s why in English literature innovative practices and ideas of code-mixing have been employed.


This research article highlights the temperament, inference, scope, and motives of code-mixing in Pakistani English works. One novel from Pakistani English novels namely, An American Brat by Bapsi Sidhwa, and one short story namely, The Escape by Qaisra Shehraz are being selected as an illustration of this reading. In this novel and short story, the writers have already dealt with the characteristics of postcolonialism. English language and literature pierced into the privileged civilizations of the sub-continent, after the end of British Imperialism. Pakistani writers in English are the best interpreter of the post-colonial communal language. In this study, I have hit upon code-mixing in English works written by Pakistani authors to a bigger echelon. These works are paragons of arts and the unbelievable mixture of rhetorical and fictitious study. In these works, the writers have not abased the confined diversities. They have tinted the value of Pakistani English in order to achieve the chatty desires of native people. These borrowings from the native languages are used to fill the lexical fissures of ideological thoughts. The reason for these borrowings is not to represent the English as a substandard assortment. Through the utilization of native words, we conclude that the significance of native languages has been tinted to question mark the dialect as well. The words of daily use also have an area of research for English people without having any substitute in English. That’s why in English literature innovative practices and ideas of code-mixing have been employed.


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