Time: 12 pm
Place: East-West Center, Burns 2118
Wed.
Sept. 4th
Gaye Chan
Art
UH Manoa
“Historic Waikiki”: A Concrete Metaphor for the
Effects of ColonialistCapitalism
Abstract
‘Historic Waikiki,’ a series of four souvenirs
available in local bookstores, packages pieces of
Waikiki's cement jungle with little-known history about
the transformation of Waikiki from sacred Hawaiian sites
to today's international tourist destination Each edition
begs a different question of Hawai‘i visitors and
settlers with the intent to get their attention and
ultimately perpetuate respect for and appreciation of
Waikiki.
'Historic Waikiki' was created by DownWind Productions--Gaye Chan teaches in the UHM Department of Art. Chan is an artist who has had solo exhibitions in Honolulu, New York, Osaka, Sydney, and Montreal. She was recently awarded a “Top 5 Winner” prize from the Honolulu Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Design.
Wed.
Sept. 18th
Decha Tangseefa
Political Science
UH Manoa
Flight to/through 'the door': Karen Naked Lives & the
In-between Spaces of Thailand and Burma
Abstract
Experiences inside Burma/Myanmar have been harrowing.
Like many lives under fire elsewhere, the hardships of
the Burmese dictatorship have not been widely seen and
thus, imperceptible and unaccounted for by the world
community. Conservative figures show that 600,000 to
1,000,000 people have been forcibly displaced. Many of
these peoples have taken flight across and through
doorways along state boundaries. One such peoples is the
indigenous nation of Karens who have lived in and along
the Thai-Burmese border zone long before the birth of
these two nation-states.
This presentation will evince how the displaced Karens
have been transforming tragic memories and experiences
into strategies for survival. Moreover, the case of the
Karens highlights the connection between “border
culture” and the culture of state terror. This talk
is inspired by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s
treatment of the nexus between sovereign power and human
life as exemplified in Franz Kafka’s legendary
parable: “Before the Law,” or “The
Doorkeeper.” For Agamben, under sovereign power,
humans are naked. Yet, some naked lives are perceptible
while others are not. This talk will deploy and extend
the parable so as to articulate the displaced
Karens’ flight to/through “the door.” It
will use audiovisual media to narrate the quotidian facts
of the Karens imperceptible and “naked” daily
life and juxtapose Karens lives in war zones and camps
with other lives living in and along the border.
*
Fri. Sept. 27th
Ien Ang
Cultural Studies
University of Western Sydney
Beyond Identity: Cross-cultural
Communication in a Fundamentalist World
Wed.
Oct. 16th
Vrinda Dalmiya
Philosophy
UH Manoa
Knowing Godesses, Mothering Nature
Abstract
Goddess iconography has often been interpreted as
symbolic appropriations of birth which are then mobilized
to solidify both patriarchal gender roles and communal
identities. In this presentation I explore how spiritual
narratives associated with a goddess, even though never
innocent of all other structures of social power, can
suggest interesting possibilities for a deployment that
might be more positive for ordinary women and men. By
analyzing a particular goddess (Kali) as the intentional
object of worship for a particular devotee (Ramprasad
Sen, 18th century Bengali poet), I argue that a female
divinity need not always herald an essentialised,
biological mother-power nor gesture towards a
romanticized oneness with nature. Rather, the devotional
nexus can be (re)read as indicating an engaged
self-in-relation as well as a localised and embedded
epistemic subject. The ‘play’ of this goddess
and her devotee could well be a rethinking of cognition
along the lines suggested by some contemporary feminist
epistemologists. I attempt to open up possibilities for a
politics of spirituality which positions the latter as
disrupting both spirit/matter and
spirituality/rationality dualisms. Framed in that way, a
goddess could come to signify a fracturing of frozen
identities by gesturing towards a more mobile notion of a
knower.
Wed.
Oct. 30th
Markus Wessondorf
Theater
UH Manoa
Some Observations on the Impact of
Globalization on the Performing Arts
Abstract
Starting with a critical reading of Michael Kustow’s
recent essay on “Cross-border Theatre in a
Globalized World” (AMERICAN THEATRE May/June 2002),
my presentation will mainly focus upon the different,
often multidirectional and contradictory effects of
globalization on the Performing Arts. I will examine how
aspects of globalization such as delocalization,
mediation and commodification have affected the
traditional understanding of theatre performance not only
as the most evanescent art form but also the one most
closely tied to a specific location. I will look at
different theatrical strategies of appropriating
progressive features of globalization (connectivity)
while subverting negative ones (the multi-national
market’s tendency towards uniformity).
Wed.
Nov. 13th
S. Shankar
English
UH Manoa
Representations of the Poor in Contemporary
Literature and Film in India
Abstract
In DEEWAR, the 1975 Bollywood Hindi film, Amitabh
Bachchan plays the eldest son of an impoverished single
mother who is driven to become an underworld don. In
Komal Swaminathan's 1980 Tamil play THANEER, THANEER
(WATER!), the peasants of the drought stricken village of
Athipatti take matters into their own hands as the
postcolonial bureaucracy begins to fail them. In Rohinton
Mistry's 1996 novel A FINE BALANCE, three men and one
woman (two Parsi and middle class and two Dalit and poor)
share an apartment in an unnamed city very like Bombay
during the mid Seventies (during the period of the
Emergency).
This presentation will focus on the representation of the
poor and poverty in these three works from and on the
Seventies, a key decade in India when arguably a
postcolonial political and social dispensation was coming
to crisis. The crisis of the Seventies had many facets
but one was within a postcolonial developmentalist
discourse of poverty alleviation. Pointing out the
variety in the representations of the poor in the three
works, the presentation will focus on the question of
agency in this context-how does each work evaluate the
poor as agents? The question is posed out of the
conviction that representations of the poor are crucially
invested in the exploration of their agency. It is
through this exploration that such representations
articulate the place of the poor within their social
imaginary.
Wed.
Nov. 27th
Fred Lau
Music
UH Manoa
Nationalizing Sound on the Verge of Chinese Modernity
Abstract
Modern China is constructed on two major historic events:
the end of the dynastic system in 1911 and the New
Culture Movement in the 1920s. Both have been defining
moments in the birth of the modern Chinese nation-state.
The New Culture Movement, also known as the May-Fourth
Movement, ushered in an era in which many Chinese
intellectuals condemned traditional Chinese culture as
backward and stagnant, and valorized Western ideas and
values as the main force behind the creation of an
enlightened new nation. The production of new cultural
movements and literary forms is generally viewed as an
unqualified acceptance of Western ideals. This
Western-based vision of modernity polarized the perceived
difference between tradition and what it means to be new
and modern, yet it also created an opportunity for many
to actualize alternative visions of modernity and
nationhood.
This paper explores how modernity was envisioned and
produced against the privileging of Western knowledge as
the sole source of Chinese modernity after the May-Fourth
Movement. In particular, I investigate how this historic
ideological shift played out in the field of music. I
examine the notion of guoyue (national music) as seen
from the viewpoints of musicians of the time and the ways
this genre was being created and presented. By focusing
on the writings and musical innovations of Shanghai-based
musician Zheng Zhiwen, I argue that alternative ways of
establishing a modernized music were realized by
restructuring traditional repertory and performing
practices. By juxtaposing Zheng's vision with a handful
of regional music publications labelled as national
music, I demonstrate the ambiguity of the term guoyue and
its entanglement with the idea of nationalism and
modernity. These musical productions contradict the
notion of modernity as a radical break with tradition and
suggest both continuity and fusion.
Wed.
Dec. 11th
Paul Schroeder
LLEA
UH Manoa
Migrants and Lovers: Transculturation
in "Flowers from Another World"
Abstract
The theoretical model of transculturation, while not new,
has never been elaborated or used the way I do in this
presentation. Moreover, because this approach focuses on
human cultural dynamics, its potential to reinvigorate
cultural studies is enormous: like feminism in the 1970s
and post-colonialism in the 1980s and 1990s,
transculturation is only now beginning its travels beyond
the realm of specialists (in this case, Latin
Americanists), and out into the wider world of
interdisciplinary debates. My hope is that this
presentation will help popularize the theory of
transculturation, by explaining to an audience of Latin
Americanists and non-Latin Americanists alike the
origins, outlines and (through an analysis of ‘FLOWERS
FROM ANOTHER WORLD’) the potential uses of this
paradigm-altering model of culture.
* Special evening presentation: T.B.A.