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Silent, Or Silenced: Repression Of The Middle Eastern Subaltern, Amanda Arodes May 2024

Silent, Or Silenced: Repression Of The Middle Eastern Subaltern, Amanda Arodes

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This paper employs subaltern theory to examine the socio-political landscapes of Palestine and Syria within postcolonial discourse. Drawing from the works of scholars like Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Ranajit Guha, and Juan R. Cole, this study uncovers the silenced narratives and marginalized perspectives of the Palestinian and Syrian people. Through a critical analysis of historical, cultural, and political dimensions, the basis of this research explores how subaltern groups in Palestine and Syria navigate structures of power, resistance, and identity formation. The experiences of various subaltern groups, including refugees, women, and ethnic minorities whose voices often remain obscured within dominant discourses are …


Zamrock: Negotiating Masculine Urban Identity In Zambia And Music Success In A Postcolonial World, Emeline Avignon Apr 2024

Zamrock: Negotiating Masculine Urban Identity In Zambia And Music Success In A Postcolonial World, Emeline Avignon

Senior Theses and Projects

This thesis analyzes, through predominately an ethnomusicologist approach and methodology, the lyricism, instrumentation, performance, and album art of the movement of Zamrock in Zambia from 1970 to the mid-1980s. I explore the agency and construction of urban youth masculinity by Zamrock artists in the context of Zambia’s colonial history of the Copperbelt, into its decades after independence. First, I look at the socio-political and economic context of colonized and independent Zambia, and how out of these conditions Zambian rock music was fused and forged. I break down the negotiations and desires of Zamrock artists in their identity construction via their …


Citizens Of The English Language: Sociolinguistic Perspectives On Postcolonial India, Prateek Shankar Jun 2023

Citizens Of The English Language: Sociolinguistic Perspectives On Postcolonial India, Prateek Shankar

Masters Theses

This paper introduces the concept of "extralingual citizenship," which I define as an expansion of translingualism to include the ethnoracial logic of the nation-state and demonstrates the entanglement of language, governance, and education in the policing of knowledge infrastructures and discursive practices. I am interested in the codification of postcolonial disparity into the teaching, social performance, and material assessment of English language users, and the infrastructural disqualification of World Englishes (and their amalgams) in favor of a standardized English. I frame extralingualism as a kind of citizenship, shifting the focus of English pedagogy/practice from the syntactical/etymological concerns of language …


Western Corporations And Colombian Labor: Cycles Of Transhistorical Colonial And Economic Oppression In Colombia, Isabella Lazzarino-Buendia Feb 2023

Western Corporations And Colombian Labor: Cycles Of Transhistorical Colonial And Economic Oppression In Colombia, Isabella Lazzarino-Buendia

Senior Theses

The relationship between colonial and colonized nations is entrenched in modern politics and history; remaining a transhistorical site of economic, social, and political imbalance. The United States and Colombia have a trans-colonial relationship that is shadowed by colonial gains at the expense of colonized livelihood. Western corporations mimic the patterns of the governments that preside over them, using the land and labor of the colonized “Other” to maximize profit. I investigate postcolonial Colombia through the lens of the transhistorical United Fruit Company and the mass corporation Coca-Cola. The accountability of these corporations and the systems that have allowed them to …


Living In The Ruins Of Utopia: The Collapse Of The Soviet Union And The Formation Of Russia's Postcolonial Identity, Erik G. Livingston Jan 2022

Living In The Ruins Of Utopia: The Collapse Of The Soviet Union And The Formation Of Russia's Postcolonial Identity, Erik G. Livingston

Senior Independent Study Theses

No abstract provided.


Broken Mirrors: Iterations Of The Other In The Post-Colonial Novel, Kelly Bowers May 2021

Broken Mirrors: Iterations Of The Other In The Post-Colonial Novel, Kelly Bowers

Master of Arts in Humanities | Master's Theses 1936 - 2022

This thesis explores the post-colonial notion of the Other as an iteration of the broader cultural tendency to make meaning via binary opposition. The study of Wide Sargasso Sea, Infidels, and At Swim Two Boys reveals the connective thread of empire and subjugation that transcends time and place. Furthermore, I examine the various attempts of characters to resist this reality by creating an alternate space within the dominant culture. My interest lies in exploring the ways in which various markers of identity form the “self,” and consequently how characters attempt to gain agency and fully realize identity despite marginalization and …


Colonization Of The Philippines: An Analysis Of U.S. Justificatory Rhetoric, Johansen Christopher Pico May 2021

Colonization Of The Philippines: An Analysis Of U.S. Justificatory Rhetoric, Johansen Christopher Pico

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The term “Filipino” offers more than a call to nationality; it also recalls the genesis of colonization in the Philippines. This thesis explores the colonial interventions of the United States in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century, homing in on the Filipino education system as the United States’ primary method of colonizing the Filipino mind. Drawing from texts by Senator Alfred Beveridge, President William McKinley, the Philippine Commission, David Barrows, and Dr. Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, I offer an ideological criticism that demonstrates a cyclical nature between both justificatory rhetoric and ideology. Working with “ideological clusters,” this …


Un-Affirmative Action: The Persistence Of Anti-Black Racism In The Higher Education System Of Postcolonial Brazil, Zakiya T. Daniel Nov 2020

Un-Affirmative Action: The Persistence Of Anti-Black Racism In The Higher Education System Of Postcolonial Brazil, Zakiya T. Daniel

Honors College Theses

Public education systems institutionalize the socialization process which directly disseminates cultural and national values and assimilates the population through mass education. But how does colonial-era anti-Black racism persist in the higher education institutions of contemporary postcolonial societies? Using the Federative Republic of Brazil as a case study, I examine the effects of incomplete decolonization, anti-Blackness, and the role of history, economics, and pedagogy on social outcomes that exclude and marginalize Black and other minority groups. The Brazilian higher education system follows a pattern centered around anti-Black racism which serves to disempower Black, Brown, and Indigenous populations during the colonial and …


"You Your Best Thing”: The Anti-Colonial Power Of The Mind In Black And Chicanx American Literature, Grace Keir May 2020

"You Your Best Thing”: The Anti-Colonial Power Of The Mind In Black And Chicanx American Literature, Grace Keir

English Honors Theses

In the year 1987, two of the most important American writers of the twentieth century, Toni Morrison and Gloria Anzaldúa, published what many consider to be their respective magnum opuses: Morrison’s Beloved and Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. In these groundbreaking texts, Morrison and Anzaldúa boldly confront the complex legacies of American imperialism and slavery, examining the effect colonization has had on their respective communities, ancestors, and selves. In this essay, I argue that literature emerging from marginalized communities within the United States can and should be considered among global postcolonial texts; Morrison and Anzaldúa illustrate the ways …


Re-Vision And Re-Representation : An Exploration Of Awarness And Voice In Marxism, Postcolonialism, Postmodernism And Psychoanalytic Theory, Stacy Sexton Jan 2019

Re-Vision And Re-Representation : An Exploration Of Awarness And Voice In Marxism, Postcolonialism, Postmodernism And Psychoanalytic Theory, Stacy Sexton

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Awareness and voice are explored through case studies of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. Karl Marx’s unaware and voiceless lumpenproletariat, Gayatri Spivak’s possibly aware but voiceless subaltern, and Saul Williams’ losers are compared. Williams’ loser may or may not have access to and engage in re-vision and re-representation, since the loser may exist at any point along the continuum of awareness and voice. Capitalism and the superstructure make everyone a loser. Thus, there is an inherent solidarity among losers, and it is this solidarity that may bring re-vision and re-representation to those who are unaware and voiceless. Unlike the …


Behind The Mask Of Morality: (E)Urochristian Bioethics And The Colonial-Racial Discourse, Jennifer L. Mccurdy Jan 2019

Behind The Mask Of Morality: (E)Urochristian Bioethics And The Colonial-Racial Discourse, Jennifer L. Mccurdy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The discipline of bioethics is insufficient and ineffective in addressing the persistent issues of racism and racial inequalities in healthcare. A minority of bioethicists are indeed attentive to issues such as implicit bias, structural racism, power inequalities, and the social determinants of health. Yet, these efforts do not consider the colonial-racial discourse -- that racism is an instrument of eurochristian colonialism, and bioethics is a product of that same colonial worldview. Exposing mainstream bioethicists to the work of anti-colonial scholars and activists would provide bioethicists a framework through which they would be better equipped to address issues of race through: …


Un/Dead Animal Art: Ethical Encounters Through Rogue Taxidermy Sculpture, Miranda Niittynen Aug 2018

Un/Dead Animal Art: Ethical Encounters Through Rogue Taxidermy Sculpture, Miranda Niittynen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Beginning in 2004, the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists began an art movement of taxidermied animal sculptures that challenged conventional forms of taxidermied objects massively produced and displayed on an international scale. In contrast to taxidermied ‘specimens’ found in museums, taxidermied ‘exotic’ wildlife decapitated and mounted on hunters' walls, or synthetic taxidermied heads bought in department stores, rogue taxidermy artists create unconventional sculptures that are arguably antithetical to the ideologies shaped by previous generations: realism, colonialism, masculinity. As a pop-surrealist art movement chiefly practiced among women artists, rogue taxidermy artists follow an ethical mandate to never kill animals for the …


Theories Of Anzaldua And Fanon: The Battle Of Algiers To Black Lives Matter, Maren Carey May 2018

Theories Of Anzaldua And Fanon: The Battle Of Algiers To Black Lives Matter, Maren Carey

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

Cultural theorists have analyzed and exposed many elements of culture that were otherwise out of plain sight. Two theorists, Gloria E. Anzaldua and Franz Fanon, that have done exceptional work attempting to shatter the norms of how concepts such as decolonization, violence and activism could truly work to create progress. Fanon discusses concepts of black existentialism in the early 20th century. He explores how difficult it is, primarily for people of color, to express and develop an identity within the structures of inequality embedded globally through colonization. Anzaldua, on the other hand, does similar work but through micro-cultural changes that …


"Revealing Reality": Four Asian Filmmakers Visualize The Transnational Imaginary, Stephen Edward Spence Apr 2017

"Revealing Reality": Four Asian Filmmakers Visualize The Transnational Imaginary, Stephen Edward Spence

American Studies ETDs

This dissertation posits that four Asian filmmakers engage in “revealing reality” in unique but interconnected ways that employ innovative narrative and cinematic/visual techniques, including a direct address to the senses and an augmenting of their vision with fantasy or surrealism. My study argues that Hou Hsiao-hsien (Taiwan), Jia Zhangke (China), Tsai Ming-liang (Taiwan), and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand) mobilize this visual and narrative strategy to participate in debates about globalization and to comment on the state of their respective nations, the concept of the nation, and the transnational. The films of each artist are examined in detail; I investigate their stylistic …


Toward A Reoriented Radicalism: Black Marxism And Orientalism, Alexandros Orphanides Feb 2017

Toward A Reoriented Radicalism: Black Marxism And Orientalism, Alexandros Orphanides

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The 21st century has witnessed the unquestioned supremacy of late capitalism. It holds coercive power over nation states; it generates increased inequality within countries and around the globe. It can, today, exploit everywhere at once. The poorest countries in the world reside in the Global South. Of the twenty poorest countries in the world, seventeen are in Africa; the rest are elsewhere in the Global South. Of the hundred poorest countries in world, over 95 percent are in the Global South. In the United States, Blacks, Latinos, and Indigenous people have poverty rates that greatly exceed the national average. Poverty …


Alternative Be/Longing: Modernity And Material Culture In Bengali Cinema, 1947-1975, Suvadip Sinha Apr 2011

Alternative Be/Longing: Modernity And Material Culture In Bengali Cinema, 1947-1975, Suvadip Sinha

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Engaging in a dialogue with the recent body of scholarship on alternative/multiple modernities, postcolonial studies, Marxism and thing theory, this thesis has two main objectives: first, to examine how the transition of post-colonial India from a primarily feudal to a capitalist form of economy facilitated a historical-materialist relationship with things, objects and commodities; and second, to explore how this relationship challenges and ruptures the singularly hegemonic narrative of modern capital. Spanning a historical and political period from late-colonial India to the urban modernity of 1970s’, Satyajit Ray’s Jalsaghar (1958) and Pratidwandi (1971), Riwik Ghatak’s Ajantrik (1958), Tapan Sinha’s Harmonium (1963), …