Calls for educating girls in the Third World: futurity,girls and the ‘Third World Woman’

In this article I examine three calls for Western support for girls' education in the ‘developing world’. Using transnational feminist theory and discourse analysis I look at three examples of these calls; Three Cups of Tea, ‘Because I Am a Girl’ and the United National Girls Education Initiative. I suggest that what Mohanty (1988) terms the ‘Third World Woman’ – a homogeneous, static image of women in the third world – is the spectre used to motivate Western support. Through representations of girls, Western viewers/readers are hailed to invest in order to save the girl-child from the haunting ‘Third World Woman’. The girl-child, through her particularity as a girl, her future womanhood as motherhood and her neoliberal potential, becomes presented as emblems of a better future with the investment of Westerners.     

‘Rearranging the ground’:1 public and private space in Belfast,Northern Ireland

This article examines imaginings and uses of place in the city of Belfast which challenge the conventionally gendered and sectarian place discourses dominating politics and society in Northern Ireland. These alternative imaginings are articulated in two artworks, ‘Home’, by Mary McIntyre, and ‘Street Signs’, by Aisling O'Beirn. I present readings of these pieces with reference to concepts of public and private which signify through socio-political, geographical and psychological orderings of space. Focusing on the construction of public and private space allows me to approach the issue of sectarian territorialisation in Belfast obliquely, while recognising its physical and psychological potency and the complexity of its operations; further, it facilitates the exploration of how gender and memory are made to matter spatially, in general and specifically in Belfast. This analytical perspective clarifies certain exclusions and oppressions inherent in the framing of space, but also offers understandings of how these may be destabilised, allowing unorthodox or marginal identities and practices to emerge as co-constituents of space.     

White gloves,feminist fists: race,nation and the feeling of ‘vintage’ in femme movements

This article raises the question of how the cultural politics of race and nation manifest within contemporary queer femme movements, performances and aesthetic practices. Focussing on the feeling of ‘vintage’, I specifically examine symbols, icons and aesthetics used in projects to queer femininity that invoke ‘the 1950s’. Grounded in femme-inist multi-sited ethnographic research in a movement to which I also belong, I draw on interviews and participant observation in queer subcultural spaces and analyse two examples of ‘vintage’ iconography within contemporary femme organizing where ‘vintage’ is a form of archival activism that also relates to a broader cultural imaginary of racialized femininity. Then I turn to an example of queer performance where ‘vintage’ is used as a critique of imperialism and whiteness. In closing, I discuss how the feeling of ‘vintage’ relates to whiteness and to a form of imperialist nostalgia.     

‘But we're only talking,maybe’: language,desire, and the arrival of the present in Synge's Playboy of the Western World

This essay examines the relationship between language, desire, and reality found in J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World. In this play, Synge suggests that language which is too infused with desire has the potential to outrace events, and will always fail to describe a reality that can actually form itself. With this, Synge is asserting that Revivalist myths are hopelessly out of step with Irish life and impede the formation of a sustainable political and cultural unit. Troublingly, however, Synge does not accurately gauge his own complicity in this process.     

‘…to exercise in all loyalty,discretion and conscience’: on insider research and the World Heritage Convention

While research on the World Heritage Convention has expanded tremendously in the last decade, little attention has been directed towards the research published by a handful of what can be characterised as insider researchers. Within this context, ‘insider researchers’ refers to individuals working at or on behalf of the core international institutions implementing the World Heritage Convention, such as the World Heritage Centre, and thus conduct research on a system they are part of. Coding articles published in international peer-reviewed journals, this article explores the themes and topics tackled in these articles and addresses the strengths and weaknesses of insider research within the World Heritage context.     

‘The Epitheatrical Cartoonist’: Matthew Somerville Morgan and the World of Theatre,Art and Journalism in Victorian London

This article examines the vibrant cultural milieu inhabited by one of Victorian Britain's most famous cartoonists, Matthew Somerville Morgan. Morgan is well-known as the cartoonist who attacked Queen Victoria's withdrawal from public life (and her associations with John Brown), and the lifestyle of Albert, Prince of Wales, in the short-lived rival to Punch: the Tomahawk. Likewise, his post-1870 career in New York as cartoonist of the ‘Caricature War’ over the 1872 Presidential elections, and involvement with ‘Buffalo’ Bill Cody have been well-studied. However, his involvement with the world of the 1860s Victorian stage – and the social circles in which he moved – have not been given close attention. This broader social, cultural, and economic context is essential to understanding Morgan's role as a cartoonist-critic of politics, class, gender and art in Victorian Britain. Special attention is given to the ways in which Morgan's work as a theatrical scene-painter informed his other pursuits, including his political cartoons for Fun, the Comic News and the Tomahawk. So central was the theatre to Morgan's life story that he may be appropriately described as an ‘epitheatrical’ figure. Indeed he is one of the most spectacular exemplars of the interconnected worlds of journalism, high art and theatre in Victorian London. The theatre provided him with the artistic and journalistic connections needed to raise himself above his lower-class origins; to move in ‘clubland’ and fashionable bohemian society; and to win an influential place in the key political and cultural debates of his age.     

Scrutiny in the Modern City: The domestic public and the Toronto Local Council of Women at the turn of the twentieth century: La vigilancia en la Ciudad Moderna: Lo domestico público y el Concilio Local de Mujeres de Toronto en los inicios de siglo XX

In this article I argue that late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ‘white’ Protestant bourgeois women acted publicly and engaged in the production of public space, while disregarding the moral geographies now associated with such women's mobility. Highlighting the urban/social reform activities of the Toronto Local Council of Women, this article argues that their unlimited use of public space combines with domestic ideology's dictate to protect the home. Requiring women to scrutinize public space for threats against their families, home-protection compelled domestic public women to discover, assess and correct city-hazards, irrespective of moral geographies.

En este artículo argumento que a finales del siglo XIX y el principio del siglo XX, las mujeres burguesas, protestantes, ‘blancas’ participaron en la construcción del espacio publico cuestionando las geografías morales asociados con este tipo de movilidad de las mujeres. Subrayando las actividades de la reforma urbana/social del Concilio Local de Mujeres de Toronto, este artículo propone que el uso ilimitado del espacio público que hicieron estas mujeres combinando con la ideología del espacio doméstico contribuyeron a la protección del hogar. Dada la motivación de proteger el hogar, estas mujeres con acceso al espacio público, se vieron forzadas y examinado en busca de posibles amenazas a sus familias y como consecuencia, a identificar, evaluar y corregir ciertos peligros urbanos sin tener en cuenta las geografías morales.     

‘ … por decir Dios Trino y Uno,dijo Dios tres y uno son cuatro’: the Christian Trinity and the multiplicity of Andean Deities: indigenous beliefs and the instruction of the Christian doctrine in Quechua

In this paper I examine how Christian priests in the early colonial period in the Andes tried to communicate the Christian concept of the Trinity to the indigenous population, mainly through textual but also through visual means. On the basis of these sources, I will address the following questions: how did the priests present the concept in Quechua, one of the general languages of the Andes, in morphological, lexico-semantic and argumentative terms; how was the Trinity represented in painting and, could the Indians relate these explanations to something they were familiar with in their own religion? Answering these questions will provide us with hypotheses as to how the indigenous population might have understood this Christian concept, which, in turn may enable us to better understand modern Andean belief forms with respect to the Trinitarian concept, which I shall briefly discuss in the final section. On the whole, the evidence suggests that, whilst the Christians may have thought that they could explain their Trinity to the Andean people better by using the Quechua language, the adoption of Andean concepts and language resources resulted in different reception strategies, such as the accommodation of Christian beliefs in the Andean religious system, but also the creation of new hybrid concepts based on Amerindian as well as Christian belief forms.     

‘L’homosexualité? ça n’existe pas en banlieue’: the indigènes de la république and gay marriage,between intersectionality and homophobia

ABSTRACT

Since its founding in 2005, the anti-racist organisation Les Indigènes de la République has acquired a certain notoriety in the French public eye as a fresh voice of the anti-racist Left. The Indigènes combined postcolonial and intersectional analysis with more traditional forms of anti-racist activism. This article examines how the Indigènes engaged with LGBTQ minorities as they tried to articulate ‘intersectional’ views of the Republic. While the intersection of gender and race was central to the emergence of the organisation in 2004, the Indigènes have mostly avoided addressing issues relevant to the LGBTQ communities. The one exception to this rule occurred in the wake of the Marriage pour tous protests against the legalisation of same-sex marriage, where the organisation equated ‘homosexual identity’ with colonial oppression. Using interviews and publication material, this article explores the gestation of the Indigènes’ position on the issue of same-sex marriage, with its contradictions between a left-wing discourse that prioritised an idea of social justice through inclusion of all oppressed minorities and the desire to represent a marginalised constituency that was often unsympathetic to LGBTQ issues. Their choice highlights the difficulties of analysing the volatile political reality in contemporary France through abstract notions of social justice.