Streets of Crocodiles: An Act Against the Wall (original) (raw)
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Julia Kristeva’s advocation of the stranger/foreigner which ‘… lives within us [as] … the hidden face of our identity …’ and the dichotomy of Self/Other of colonial discourse, are examined in relation to how they play out in my art exhibition Dis-Location/Re-Location. The latter explores the “immigrant” experiences of two personae: myself, and a colonial woman, Bertha Marks (1862-1934), whose experiences of alienation and dislocation as an immigrant to South Africa from Sheffield in 1886, evokes tentative commonalities with my experiences of ‘foreignness’ in postapartheid South Africa, as a postcolonial, white, second-generation female. In the images, the Anglicised protagonist grafts indigenous South African aloes into her skin, in an attempt to conjoin racial and cultural differences. However, as Colin Richards notes, this process is not without tensions, as grafts can be ‘… monstrous misfits attesting to the effects of our most well-intentioned ‘cross cultural’ contacts’. Although the protagonist’s grafts arise from her desire to integrate, they also signify cultural contestation. As foreign to the body, the aloe plant represents an indigenous, alien culture, which takes root and disfigures, turning the protagonist into something akin to a hybrid, ‘monstrous misfit’. Emphasis is on the combination of differences through processes that imply bodily violation, disfiguration and pain. These indicate not only physical, but psychic trauma inherent in acculturation processes. Grafting enables a closeness to the other that is simultaneously threatening and liberating, as it opens up an ambivalent space of abjection, which, as Kristeva notes, threatens ‘… the integrity of the … self’, yet offers a generative ‘… liminal space where self and other may intermingle’. Speculative analogies between abjection, Sigmund Freud’s Unheimlich and Homi K. Bhaba’s ‘Third Space of Enunciation’ are suggested, as it is in these spaces of in-betweenness that new formations of hybrid, postcolonial identities are potentially evoked.
Attitudes towards the ‘stranger’: negotiating encounters with difference in the UK and Poland
Due to recent intensification in international mobility in Europe, its citizens are exposed to a much wider range of lifestyles and competing attitudes towards difference. Individuals are, therefore, increasingly likely to encounter ‘strangers’ and are, therefore, required to negotiate discontinuities and contradictions between the values that are transmitted through different sites. In response, the article explores the concept of the ‘stranger’ through original data collected in the UK and Poland. The article highlights that the construction of who is a stranger depends on national historical contexts, core values and related visions of the society. The UK and Poland have very different histories and experiences with social diversity, impacting on the ways in which individuals negotiate strange encounters. In both countries, the ‘stranger’ is often seen in a negative way and in relation to the minority groups that are perceived to be visibly different, distinct or ‘unknown’ in con...
The goal of this article is to understand the discourse regarding the others in travel reports from Poland to the Balkans. The general question is under what circumstances do we create the images of the other in textual or visual forms? if we treat a diary/memoir as a kind of map of " relocations " within the space of our life's relationships, both those significant and less significant ones, what is then a travel account? in both we find accurate descriptions of situations, encounters, reflections, impressions, and towns on the journey's route. What makes them different from each other is movement (in the case of the first type), which most often takes place through relationships with other people. These relations form the situations, create the exchange and shape the positions or roles fulfilled by the author. in the case of a diary/journey account, in the majority of cases, the richness of the relationship becomes limited to the opposition delineating " us and them " , an observing " non-local " versus an observed " local ". if no bond exists, or if it is superficially formed on the basis of some knowledge of the language, contacts by means of transportation, hotels, entertainment facilities designed for visitors, an enactment of one's role in accordance with the current conventions occurs, without crossing any rules or boundaries.
Exploring Identity Across Language and Culture
Alex Panicacci, 2021
This book explores the ways in which migrants' experience in today's multilingual and multicultural society informs language use and processing, behavioural patterns, and perceptions of self-identity. Drawing on survey data from hundreds of Italian migrants living in English-speaking countries, in conjunction with more focused interviews, this volume unpacks the reciprocal influences between linguistic, cultural, and psychological variables to shed light on how migrants emotionally engage with the local and heritage dimensions across public and private spaces. Visualising the impact of a constant shifting of linguistic and cultural practices can enhance our understanding of foreign language acquisition, language processing and socialisation, inclusion, integration and social dynamics, acculturation tendencies, and cross-cultural communication and patterns. Overall, this book appeals to students and scholars interested in gaining nuanced insights into the linguistic, cultural, and psychological underpinnings of migration experiences in such disciplines as sociolinguistics, cultural studies, and social psychology.
'The Foreigner - Unknown Unlabelled Unexpected' a visual essay
Performing Ethos: International Journal of Ethics in Theatre & Performance (Journal), 2019
The open-ended durational performance The Foreigner is a personal response to the migration question currently involving Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The work explores and questions notions of identity and territoriality, reality and virtuality, through the anonymity and vulnerability of the artist, and the active participation of the audience in the performance process. The artist’s body worked as a mirror that reflected personal ideas, constructs, and emotions of the visitors, who experience and interpret the image of the Foreigner according to their personal histories and past experiences. The result is a multiplicity of perspectives on migration and beyond. KEYWORDS: migration, performance art, identity, vulnerability, participation.
The materialities of be-longing. Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal (Issue 7), 2022
The Foreigner-Unknown Unlabelled Unexpected (2016, 2018) is a durational and participatory live performance that I designed and performed as a personal response to the migration question involving Europe, Africa, and the Middle East in the past decades. The objects analysed in this essay are the images of those dead migrants' bodies covered by white cloths on the Italian and Greek shores. I am Italian and I have been on some of those shores. We mainly experience these bodies as images on screens via the media. These bodies have no identity, they are "the foreigners". We, the viewers, can forget about them by switching our screens off: due to way they are presented by the media, "the foreigners" cease to be subjects and become simple objects, images. What would happen if I removed the cold and reassuring mediation of the screens and recreate that image in flesh, in public spaces crossed by people in their everyday lives? How would people react to that objectified image-now a breathing body, and thus, a subject?