FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & the Arts

https://forumjournal.org/ FORUM is a peer-reviewed journal for postgraduate students working in culture and the arts. Our objective is to create and foster a network for the exchange and circulation of ideas; we hope that you will find plenty of interest and inspiration among the articles we have published to date. School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, University of Edinburgh en-US FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & the Arts 1749-9771 <img src="//i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png" alt="Creative Commons License"> This is an Open Access journal. All material is licensed under a <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)</a> licence, unless otherwise stated. Please read our <a href="/about/policies#openAccessPolicy">Open Access, Copyright and Permissions policies</a> for more information. Art as Resistance in Shaheen Bagh https://forumjournal.org/article/view/4485 Shaheen Bagh - how an indefinite sit-in became an organic protest site and used art as resistance. Adrija Ghosh ##submission.copyrightStatement## 2020-07-22 2020-07-22 30 10.2218/forum.30.4485 No Face, No Case: Russian Hip Hop and Politics under Putinism https://forumjournal.org/article/view/4473 This article explores the phenomenon of Russian hip hop as part of a creative resistance movement in contemporary Russia. It argues that hip hop, which originally came to Russia during the country’s 1990s infatuation with the West, links back to a long-standing tradition of music as counterculture in a Russian context. By placing Russian hip hop within a general shift of popular culture towards intellectual notions of political responsibility, this article discusses the emergence of a socially conscious form of high hip hop in Russia, contextualising it within the specific anti-Western and anti-intellectual cultural atmosphere created under the Putin regime. By investigating Russian hip hop’s ties with the country’s intelligentsia heritage and its relation to counterculture during the Soviet era, this article addresses two underlying concerns: what ‘case’ can be made against contemporary Russian hip hoppers, and what this conflict tell us about the contested frontline between popular culture and politics under Putinism. While the work of several Russian hip hoppers will be discussed as part of this analysis, particular attention will be paid to recent tracks released by the rappers Husky and Face. Anne Liebig ##submission.copyrightStatement## 2020-07-21 2020-07-21 30 10.2218/forum.30.4473 Translingualism as Creative Revolt: Rewriting Dominant Narratives of Translingual Literature https://forumjournal.org/article/view/4474 This essay traces the global development of translingual literature in order to confront the pervasive myth of the monolingual paradigm which insists that meaningful interaction can only occur in one language at a time in a given context. This paper shows that this Eurocentric mindset persists in translingual literature, negatively affecting critical accounts of translingual authors whose work falls outside of monolingual parameters. It offers a more appropriate account of a few of these authors, who use their writing to actively work against the monolingual paradigm and promote linguistic diversity. These authors employ translingualism as a necessary tool of identity expression, refusing to reshape themselves to the standards of a monolingual cultural purity. By prioritizing their own hybrid voices, translingual authors put the onus of comprehension on their readers, inverting the paradigm of monolingualism by denying easy access to the monolingual reader. It will focus especially on Mexican-American author Sandra Cisneros, whose hybrid identity is a driving force in her work, and who uses translingualism especially in her poetry, to fully express her dual identity. Hannah Tate Williams ##submission.copyrightStatement## 2020-07-21 2020-07-21 30 10.2218/forum.30.4474 Against the Misuse of the ICCPR Act: Protest and Activism by Sri Lankan Political Cartoonists https://forumjournal.org/article/view/4475 This paper investigates the work of three cartoonists – Awantha Artigala, Gihan de Chickera, and Shanika Somathilake – in response to the misuse of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) Act by the Sri Lankan police in a series of arrests between April and May 2019. Vihanga Perera ##submission.copyrightStatement## 2020-07-21 2020-07-21 30 10.2218/forum.30.4475 “Of Belonging or Not”: Counter-Canons of Britishness in the Novels of Hanif Kureishi and Andrea Levy https://forumjournal.org/article/view/4476 This article analyses two novels, Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) and Andrea Levy’s Small Island (2004), to elaborate on how they form postcolonial literary visions of metropolitan Britain, in resistance to colonialist depictions of the setting which have been disseminated across the world. The two works share related themes and motifs in their representations of the experiences of first- and second-generation migrants from Britain’s (former) colonies. Kureishi’s novel, set in the 1970s, relates the teenage life of Karim, the son of an Indian migrant, Haroon, as he navigates his sense of being a “funny kind of Englishman” (3). Levy’s novel, on the other hand, relates the experiences of a Jamaican couple, Hortense and Gilbert, as they arrive in Britain in 1948 within a fictionalised representation of the Empire Windrush. Comparable images within their works, including allusions to George Lamming’s writing from the 1950s and Stuart Hall’s depiction of the West End as it has existed in colonial imaginings, demonstrate how the two novelists participate in – and, therefore, help construct – a counter-canon of writing about post-war and postcolonial Britishness. Daniele Nunziata ##submission.copyrightStatement## 2020-07-21 2020-07-21 30 10.2218/forum.30.4476 Creative Agency in The Scarlet Letter https://forumjournal.org/article/view/4477 This article provides a critical analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s employment of artistic defiance in The Scarlet Letter. In reading Hester Prynne’s artistic ability and theological dissent as tools of creative resistance, the article claims that Hawthorne uses self-expression to critique Puritan values. When Hester redesigns the symbol of the scarlet letter A that she is forced to wear as a punishment for the sin of committing adultery, the act of sewing becomes a transgressive form of resistance. By examining the way in which she transforms her symbol of shame into an expression of autonomy, I trace the spiritual significance of Hester’s resistance and Hawthorne’s statement of individualism as reflecting the Transcendentalist rhetoric of early nineteenth-century New England. Hester’s ability to transcend institutional authority to create an independent identity, in turn, cultivates an independent relationship with God. Finally, I read Hawthorne’s own parallel creative struggle as author as a metaphor for national independent identity that can be contextualised within the American Renaissance. Tia Byer ##submission.copyrightStatement## 2020-07-21 2020-07-21 30 10.2218/forum.30.4477 Can the Young Adults Speak? Poetry from the Sunflower and Umbrella Movements https://forumjournal.org/article/view/4478 This article explores political aspirations of young adults of Taipei and Hong Kong by analysing the poems written during the Sunflower Movement and the Umbrella Movement. Poetry is a vehicle to convey ideas to the audience. Reading these poems from Taipei and Hong Kong, one can notice several distinctive characteristics. First, the poets have established a broad dichotomy: the upper and the lower, violence and resistance, eloquence and silence, lies and truth, and hypocrisy and morality. Second, poetry is a field for multiplicity. Focusing more on everyday practices, sometimes vulgar, filthy, and obscene, these poems correspond to Bakhtin’s theory of carnival in which wordplay, mimicry, and irony open a space for renewal and rebirth. Additionally, Derrida’s concept of dissemination can help to examine the linguistic slippage that indirectly subverts authority. After investigating protest poetry, the author asks if the young adults can speak. The youth’s voices can definitely be heard when it comes to the concept of “the democracy to come”. The “democracy to come,” conceptualised by Derrida to replace the notion of the future, cannot be reduced to a simple idea, but remains unpredictable, so as to allow itself always to be full of possibilities. Wen-chi Li ##submission.copyrightStatement## 2020-07-21 2020-07-21 30 10.2218/forum.30.4478 Resisting Monosexism: Representations of Bisexuality in Literature https://forumjournal.org/article/view/4479 In a New York Times review of James Baldwin’s 1968 novel Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone, Mario Puzo writes that “A propaganda novel may be socially valuable… but it is not art.” Puzo’s claim is a function of what creative writing pedagogy scholar Janelle Adsit calls “the particular privilege that comes with a denial of marginalization.” Assumptions of rigid binaries that categorise people as either hetero- or homosexual, a phenomenon that scholar Kenji Yoshino calls “the epistemic contract of bisexual erasure,” create and reinforce harmful ideas about bisexuality. Bisexual representation in literature can operate as a creative resistance to the status quo, undermining the alleged necessity for a rigid binary system of sexuality. From James Baldwin’s 1968 Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone to Jen Wilde’s 2017 Queens of Geek, this article traces representations of bisexuality in literature, with special attention to the ways in which bisexuality is demonstrated, described, and labelled in literature. However, while acknowledging the problematic representations of bisexuality in older fiction, such as Radclyffe Hall’s 1928 The Well of Loneliness, this paper resists a narrative of pure progress of bisexual representation, examining both problematic and nuanced representations in contemporary literature. Audrey T Heffers ##submission.copyrightStatement## 2020-07-21 2020-07-21 30 10.2218/forum.30.4479 Robert Frost’s North of Boston: A Poetry of Resistance https://forumjournal.org/article/view/4480 This article explores the idea that Robert Frost’s North of Boston can be interpreted as a poetry of resistance in terms of methodology and subject matter. The methodological thread pertains to Frost’s poetics whilst the subject matter pertains to the historical and socio-political beings which Frost dramatises and records. Dominic Richard ##submission.copyrightStatement## 2020-07-21 2020-07-21 30 10.2218/forum.30.4480 On Representing ‘Doubly Othered’ Gay, Black Subjects https://forumjournal.org/article/view/4481 In this essay, I explore what happens to our conventional understanding of ‘othering’ when subjects are not just othered on one count, but on two: in this case, on account of both their blackness and their homosexuality. Focusing specifically on the case of artist subjects, I demonstrate that this process of double othering has significant bearing on the interpretation of these subjects’ artworks. Thereby to provide a more adequate model for approaching these subjects and their work, I propose expanding Homi Bhabha’s conception of cultural hybrids to account for these subjects’ sexuality too. In order to lend support to this expanded concept of hybridity – and to provide an example of its application to the context of artistic production – I consider the work of the Nigerian-born photographer Rotimi Fani-Kayode. I draw attention to the complexity of the theoretical framework required to sufficiently capture all the processes at work in determining how both he and his artwork are perceived in a post-colonial context. In doing so, I aim to lend support to the contention that the cultural production of those in similarly ‘doubly othered’ social situations as Fani-Kayode is best understood within the context of this expanded concept of hybridity. Aaron Muldoon ##submission.copyrightStatement## 2020-07-21 2020-07-21 30 10.2218/forum.30.4481 Self and Other in post-2002 China-Hong Kong co-productions – Johnnie To’s Drug War https://forumjournal.org/article/view/4482 The cinematic landscapes of both China and Hong Kong were significantly changed after CEPA, the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnerships Arrangement, was formed in 2002, which saw Chinese and Hong Kong co-production films become domestic rather than foreign films. This change calls for a new theoretical framework in reading ‘nationhood’ in co-productions. ‘Nationhood,’ or identity, is usually articulated in masculine terms which are constructed as an ideal Self through an evil Other in both China and Hong Kong. Using Hong Kong director Johnnie To’s co-production Drug War (2012) as an example, this article argues that through his auteurship, To deconstructs this cinematic representation of masculinity in both China and Hong Kong. By doing so, To points out the problems inherent in the nationhood/identity of both China and Hong Kong and further offers a subtle critique of the state narratives of China. Bingying Deng ##submission.copyrightStatement## 2020-07-21 2020-07-21 30 10.2218/forum.30.4482 On Disruption https://forumjournal.org/article/view/4483 On Disruption Dorothy Lawrenson ##submission.copyrightStatement## 2020-07-21 2020-07-21 30 10.2218/forum.30.4483