Ewa Stánczyk, Comics and Nation: Power, Pop Culture, and Political Transformation in Poland (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press 2022). 200 pp. ISBN: 978-0-8142-5838-5 ($34.95)
Heike Bauer, Andrea Greenbaum and Sarah Lightman, eds, Jewish Women in Comics: Bodies and Borders (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2023), 296 pp., ISBN: 978-0-8156-3781-3 ($39.95)
This article looks at the intersection of web-based comics and print graphic memoirs authored by transgender Brazilian comics artists. Brazilian comics have in recent years opened up to internet platforms, a change that has proved particularly fruitful for LGBTQ+ artists, traditionally marginalised by the Brazilian comics industry. The article examines two case studies – those of Luiza Lemos and Alice Pereira, both authors of comics originally posted on social media and later published in print. By means of a mixed methodology that brings together semi-structured interviews with the authors and close readings, this contribution investigates the dynamics regulating the creative and publishing processes of these works, as well as the relationship that they entertain with the practice of transsexual self-narration and self-portraiture.
This article examines the narratives and practices of return experienced by long-term Nairobi-based Luo seeking to make a home in rural western Kenya. Building a rural home, and being buried there, remain crucial to many urban Luo understandings of a successful life. This is a project full of contingency: it relies on resources gained in the city, as well as access to land and the cultivation of rural kin relations. Although ‘home’ and ‘return’ were often spoken of in idealised terms, desires to return were as much focused on living towards the future as on a nostalgic sense of a lost past. Practices of building a rural home grapple with expectations of rural and urban kin, the challenges of doing things properly, and responsibilities of caring for home and landscapes in a way that can ensure future generations’ capacity to dwell on the same land. This desire to belong to the future is at the heart of Nairobi Luo dreams of ‘return’.
Cet article étudie les pratiques et les discours des Luo vivant à Nairobi au sujet de leur retour chez eux, dans l'ouest Kenya rural. Construire une maison à la campagne et y être enterré demeure, pour nombre de Luo devenu urbains, une perspective essentielle pour une vie réussie. Mais il s'agit d'un projet soumis à de nombreuses contingences : il dépend des ressources acquises en ville, de même que de l'accès à la terre et de la façon dont les relations avec les parents restés au pays ont été gérées. Bien que l'on parle souvent du « chez-soi » et du « retour » en termes idéalisés, les désirs de retour sont autant une projection de vie vers le futur que l'expression de la nostalgie d'un passé perdu. Les pratiques de construction des maisons de campagne mettent aux prises les attentes des parents vivant en ville et à la campagne, comme elles mettent au défi de faire les choses correctement, d'assumer les responsabilités quant à l'entretien de la maison et de l'environnement afin de permettre aux générations suivantes de s'installer sur la même terre. Ce désir d'appartenir au futur est au cœur du rêve de « retour » des Luo de Nairobi.
The present article addresses the evocative potential of posing nude in Carol Ann Duffy's poem ‘Standing Female Nude’. My assumption is that the posing model/prostitute displays two bodies: the physical body and the signifying body. The interplay between both bodies triggers a process of signification whereby art is not simply a studio production but a meta-frame encapsulating a reflection on society, culture, self-representation and politics of identity. The poem substantiates the poet's experimental method of writing which draws on nude art genre, the dramatic monologue, theatre and metafiction. What the posing female nude recounts is not just experience of posing nude in a studio, but reflections on her body as a posing model and as a writing model or a narrative imbricating in its texture cynical comments and attitudes on artistic and socio-cultural values as the female model pokes fun at the reception of artistic work in the bourgeois society.
Divorce, remarriage and new partnerships create blended families with complex configurations of emotional and financial engagements. The latest reform of the Danish Inheritance Act in 2008 was an attempt to cope with the legal challenges posed by blended families with regard to inheritance. The solution was to grant the surviving spouse greater rights as well as a greater share of the estate, thus favouring the horizontal conjugal bond between current spouses. Since the surviving spouse is often not the parent of all the deceased's children, the vertical transfer of assets and heirlooms between generations is challenged. This has consequences for the way material things can generate continuities and act to reproduce kinship over time, as a way of kinning former and coming generations. This article addresses the role of inheritance and heirlooms in processes of kinning and de-kinning.
Divorce, mariages et nouveaux partenaires créent des familles recomposes avec des configurations émotionnelles et des engagements financiers complexes. La dernière réforme de la loi danoise sur l'héritage (2008) a été une tentative de répondre aux défis légaux posés par ces familles recomposées au regard de l'héritage. La solution a été de garantir à l’époux ou l’épouse du défunt plus de droits ainsi qu'une part plus importante sur les biens immobiliers, tout en favorisant les liens conjugaux horizontaux entre les époux actuels. Comme l’époux ou l’épouse survivant n'est pas toujours le parent de tous les enfants du défunt, le transfert vertical des biens et possessions entre génération n'est pas assuré. Cela a des conséquences sur la manière dont les biens matériels assurent la continuité de la parenté et assure sa reproduction dans le temps. Cet article interroge le rôle de l'héritage et des donations dans les processus de construction de la parenté et les formes de « dé-parenté ».
Focusing on the collective memories and life stories of local people regarding their courtyard house siheyuan in the old town of Beijing, this article examines how the dramatically shifting state discourses influence inheritance practices and perceptions of kinship over time in modern China. Narratives of the siheyuan constructed by the elderly residents feature extended family vis-à-vis a ‘Confucian state’, favouring male heirs during pre-revolutionary times. Siheyuan were nationalised during the following period of high socialism, when men and women were granted equal rights in property. After being returned to their former owners in the post-Mao reform era, the dilapidated siheyuan were confronted by neoliberal privatisation and commercialisation. Despite the physical survival of the siheyuan, it is now common for siheyuan siblings to turn against each other, as people struggle over shares of their suddenly valuable but neglected ancestral home. Departing from Freedman's lineage theories and Lévi-Strauss's house society, this article explores house and relatedness in the sense of ‘de-kinning’ as part of China's modernising process. While drawing attention to the subtle continuities and the emergence of new forms of relatedness, it also suggests that the siheyuan dwellers have demonstrated high degrees of resilience and adaptability when coping with the vicissitudes of life.
En s'intéressant aux mémoires collectives et aux récits de vie des résidents des maisons à cours carrées, ou siheyuan, dans la ville de Pékin, cet article étudie comment les discours radicalement changeant de l'Etat influence les pratiques d'héritage et la perception de la parenté dans la Chine moderne. Les récits sur les siheyhuan construites par d'anciens résidents campent la famille élargie sur toile de fond d'un Etat confucéen prérévolutionnaire favorisant l'héritage des mâles. Les siheyhuan ont été nationalisées durant la période socialiste qui a suivi, quand hommes et femmes se sont vus attribuer les mêmes droits à la propriété. Après avoir été rendues à leurs propriétaires dans la période de réforme post-maoiste, les siheyhuan fortement endommagées se sont vues confrontées à la privatisation néolibérale et à la commercialisation. En dépit de la survie physique des siheyhuan, il est désormais commun de voir des fratries possédant une siheyhuan se déchirer pour des parts de ces maisons ancestrales négligées mais devenues financièrement intéressantes. Etudiant ainsi les maisons et la parenté dans le sens de « dé-parenter » comme dimension du processus de modernisation en Chine, cet article attire l'attention sur les continuités subtiles et l’émergence de nouvelles formes de relationnalité. Il suggère également que les habitants de siheyhuan ont démontré un fort degré de résilience at d'adaptabilité devant les vicissitudes de la vie.
In response to its current crisis, scholars call for the revitalisation of democracy through democratic innovations. While they make ample use of life metaphors describing democracy as a living organism, no comprehensive understanding of ‘life’ has been established within democratic theory. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement articulates the urgency of refocusing on life and its meaning through radical democratic practice. This article employs a grounded theory approach, enriched with participatory methods, to develop a radical democratic concept of life in conversation with BLM. It conceptualises life as the existence of a perspective that constantly transforms through its fundamental interconnectedness. Building on this concept, the article outlines four principles of a living democracy that go beyond the revitalisation discourse. A living democracy (1) safeguards the existence of all humans and nonhumans, (2) nurtures a diversity of perspectives, (3) fosters social and planetary connectivity, and (4) enables self- and collective transformation.
This study aims to examine how healthcare professionals (HCPs) understand the impact prostate cancer treatment can have on patients’ sense of masculinity, sexuality, and intimate life, and how they describe such issues are communicated with patients. Theoretically, HCP narratives are interpreted as part of a reflective process in which notions of hegemonic masculinity are communicated, and sometimes rethought and redefined, within the rehabilitation process. The study showed that HCPs sometimes felt unqualified to deal with issues concerning masculinity and sexuality as such topics were understood to be partially outside the medical domain of their professions. Nonetheless, HCPs engaged in such conversations with patients and described how they tried to support them in reorientating their sense of masculinity. The article concludes that, whereas HCPs tended to describe their patients’ responses to rehabilitation from an embodied and psychological perspective, their own professional and personal views on masculinity usually departed from a sociocultural level (focusing on what it means to be a man in contemporary Swedish society, suggesting that penetrative sex is overrated), where ongoing configurations of hegemonic masculinity were more evident.
Digitality is increasingly central to individuals’ existence, which has political implications. The article maps the political implications of digitalisation, focusing on African political thought. The latter is marked by Afro-communitarianism ideas, which foster solidarity, relationality, and communalism as foundational values of the polity. However, African communitarianism has granted little attention to contemporary phenomena such as digitalisation. Also, political theory discussions on digitality have looked mainly at (neo)liberal contexts. How the digital age is reshaping the tenets of communitarian political theories represents an underdiscussed issue. This article outlines a research agenda on digitality and African political thought. New digitality-enabled relational modes change human and political interactions. The issue at stake is how these new modes challenge or strengthen the Afro-communitarian political outlook. This article recognises digital-humanism, political community, relations of power as central matters of inquiry. The analysis relies on bibliographic sources from African philosophy and comparative political theory.
The significance of the state of the water of the sacred Lake Baikal in Buryat Indigenous society on Olkhon Island is so great that it is accompanied by a series of canons. These are rooted in certain folk narratives that define the lake as the giver of life, saviour, and maker of meanings. However, environmental narratives produced by the Russian media regarding ecological challenges, influenced by the government's shaky environmental policies, have presented Baikal as shifting from being a centre of good to a centre of evil. This image has resulted in a transformation of the normative universe among Olkhon's Buryats, leaving them with a semantic change in their religious life and diminishing the sense of responsibility in Buryat society towards the lake.
