ASSEMBLING
IDENTITIES
Abstracts
University of Glasgow
23rd-24th May 2013
Sponsored by the Graduate School, College of Arts
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Panel 1 – Female Experience: Hearth and Home
Grady Hancock, ‘(Dis)assembling maternal identities in Ana Kokkinos’ Blessed’
Keywords: film, social realism, motherhood
A seated woman stares into the middle distance, her face expressionless. The camera moves down
the length of her torso revealing one hand resting on a pregnant belly, a cigarette wedged between
two fingers, the other hand clutching a large box of Horizon Blues. Behind the woman a noticeboard,
plastered with pamphlets and fliers in patchwork pattern; positioned in the eye line of the woman’s
vacant stare a flyer reads in bold green print ‘Managing on a low income’.
Through an analysis of Ana Kokkinos’ 2009 film Blessed, this paper explores the role of social realist
film in the (dis)assembling of maternal identities. Following a day in the life of five women and their
children, Blessed explores those women found on the margins of society and the ways in which this
impacts their identities as mothers. Social realism as a mode of expression has done much for the
reconsideration of marginal identities; in giving voice to mothers whose maternal identities are
severely impacted by social and economic hardship, this paper will investigate the ways in which
social realism can challenge or reconsider normative constructions of the maternal identity.
Guari Bharat, ‘Bound to Hearth and Home’, or ‘What it is Like to be a Santal Woman’
Keywords: women, movement, India
Drawing from ongoing doctoral fieldwork on perceptions and practices of built environments among
Santals in Singhbhum, India, this paper builds a narrative of what it is like to be a Santal woman. By
chronicling daily activities and movements of women in three villages, ‘Bound to Hearth and Home’
suggests that Santal women are largely bound to the house and its immediate surroundings. While
this fact is in itself not new, the ethnography reveals three particularities of limited movement of
Santal women: first, it does not correspond to the multivalent sense of interiority in the dwelling
where private-public or male-female domains are not clearly observed. Second, given the
interactions documented, limited movement does not appear to stem from a desire to protect the
female body from outside gaze. Third, women do need to move about the settlement for basic
necessities such as grazing cattle, bathing at the pond or collecting firewood. Yet, the house-bound
nature of their movements is revealed in their near complete lack of knowledge of events and things
even at the end of the street. This paper develops these ideas through a nuanced ethnography in
order to raise questions about women and their position in Santal settlements and societies.
Nisha Ramayya (practice-as-research paper), video-poem ‘Home’ and presentation
Keywords: women, home, family, British-Indian identity
‘Home’ explores the ways identity can be understood as an assemblage of family background and
social status, geographic and historical location, and cultural context. When identity is separated
according to these various parts, its vulnerability and uncertainty become evident. Through
experimentations with language and video composition, this paper investigates this notion of
identity as assemblage, working with different facets of identity in order to understand how it is
constructed and how easily it may be destabilised.
‘Home’ is filtered through Ramayya’s grandmother’s identity as an Indian woman and her own
identity as a second-generation British-Indian woman – it demonstrates the transitions between her
grandmother’s experiences and her own, the contrasting instances of identification and disconnect.
The variety of source materials used – including photographs, home videos, comic books, television
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programmes, dictionary definitions, oral history transcriptions, recordings of chanting and other
religious practices – is intended to convey identity as intricate and multi-layered assemblage. By
means of creative exercises involving family history, memory, translation and lexicographical
procedures, Hindu mythology, and feminist theory, multiple identities are assembled and
disassembled throughout the video.
With reference to the post-colonial writings of Trinh T. Minh-Ha and the experimental feminist
poetics propounded by Joan Retallack, this paper considers identity politics in relation to
experimental creative practices towards an understanding of contemporary identity formation.
Panel 2 – Multicultural Britain? Migration and Identity Politics
Nikolay Mintchev, ‘The British Immigration Debate and East-European Nationalism: Identity,
Misunderstanding, Desire’
Keywords: emigration/immigration, nationalist rhetoric, UK, Bulgaria, Romania
Recently there have been debates in the UK about a potential wave of migrants coming from
Bulgaria and Romania when the working restrictions for citizens of these countries are lifted in 2014.
The debates raise a number of issues about migrants' exploitation of the British social benefits
system, and also about shortages of housing and unemployment in the UK. This paper examines the
structure of Bulgarian nationalist rhetoric and its relation to the idea of emigration, and considers
some of the effects that the current British debates may have on Bulgarian national identity. Its
claim is that while it is important to have public debate about the problems of migration, the
discussion so far has been dominated by populist rhetoric that ignores the reasons why Bulgarians
may want to migrate, as well as the cultural representations, anxieties, and desires that underpin
the process of migration. The poses not only a danger of creating boundaries of cultural exclusion
between Bulgaria and the rest of Europe, but also of creating a vicious cycle where acute defensive
Bulgarian nationalism and the negative stereotypes of East Europeans circulating in Western
countries feed into each other.
Jed Fazakarley, ‘The War in East Bengal and the Discovery of Bangladeshis in Britain’
Keywords: political protest, immigration, national identity (Pakistani, Bangladeshi, British)
In responding to the migration of Commonwealth subjects to the metropole during the 1950s, 60s
and 70s, British institutions perceived little distinction within this population. The category of
‘immigrant’ was regarded as having social and political significance by many national and local
authorities and community relations organisations, even when generalised distinctions between
‘West Indians’ and ‘Asians’ were perceived.
In 1971, following disputed elections, civil war broke out in Pakistan. Aware of anger in East Bengal
at decades of marginalisation and under-investment, the Pakistani government initiated a
crackdown on Bangladeshi pro-independence activists. A wider conflict followed. East Bengalis in
Britain soon reacted -- by lobbying, fundraising, protesting and publicising. British institutions had
previously subsumed East Bengalis into the blithe category of ‘Pakistani’ but, in the face of visible
and popular political activism and, in some cases, inter-communal violence on British streets, belief
in the significance of this category was difficult to sustain. Britain was presented abruptly with the
emergence of a new, politically active and socially distinct, community of Bangladeshis.
This paper offers a case study in the ‘appearance’ of apparently new identities within specific social
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contexts. It examines the conditions under which these identities appear, interrogating their
potential political and social significance.
Claudio Beghelli, ‘Gastronomy as intercultural performance: the clash of identities’
Keywords: gastronomy, modernism, multiculturalism, postcolonialism, Tikka Masala
Gastronomy is nowadays a cultural practice that also mirrors how social actors are cohabiting within
any given social structure. Current social structures are determined by their own historical
circumstances, but whatever the degree of their structures, modernisation has shaped the social
design on to a more hybrid interpretation of the world by the social actors. The practice of making
food is shaped by this current hyper reality where different gastronomies are meeting in a new
global network, either practically (in multicultural society), or virtually (through the virtual/network
exchange of receipts). The aesthetic of the dish is now influenced by these exchanges. But in this
ever-increasing fast moving world how can now the social actor identify himself/herself? This
research paper aims to identify how post-colonial discourses (particularly through reference to the
case of the chicken Tikka Masala and British imperialism) have helped to illuminate the current
identity struggles in these newly-formed network societies.
Panel 3 – Space, Place and Architecture
Alan MacPherson, ‘“Architecture as Autobiography”: Lived Space in Heinz Emigholz’s Loos
Ornamental (2009)’
Keywords: auto/biography, Heinz Emigholz, cinema, urban space
This paper considers Heinz Emigholz’s attempt to construct a biography of Austrian architect Adolf
Loos through a minimally mediated encounter between architecture and cinema in his film, Loos
Ornamental (2009). The film is part of Emigholz’s on-going series ‘Architecture as Autobiography’.
With no voiceover, Emigholz documents Loos’s buildings in chronological order using a montage of
long-duration shots filmed with static cameras. The film opens with the site of Loos’s birth, now a
hotel bearing a plaque in his honour, and closes with a sequence at his grave-site. Structurally
speaking, in this way, the film embodies the life. However, by paying particular consideration to
Emigholz’s documentation of the Müller Haus, this paper argues that the film’s aesthetic maps
directly onto the two predominant theoretical underpinnings of the architect’s work: a departure
from ‘ornament’; and the principle of ‘lived space’ which informed the design of his interiors.
Drawing on the criticism of Beatriz Colomina and Andrew Benjamin, and invoking Giuliana Bruno’s
writing on haptic cinema, ‘Architecture as Autobiography’ explores how, through attention to
surface and depth, the film reproduces architectural space and thus embodies a Loosian identity.
Ruxandra Berinde, ‘Tarkovsky’s Houses: Identity Beyond the Moving Images of Moving Homes’
Keywords: cinema, autobiography, home
This paper is part of broader research in which autobiographical film is deconstructed as a working
tool to access intersubjective layers of lived space and architectural memories. This work is
performed through an analysis of the films and the "lifeworld" of directors with an autobiographical
touch, one of them being Andrei Tarkovsky (1932 - 1986), known for his particularly spatial
sensibility and profound interest to convey emotions through film, to recreate and constantly
reiterate in evermore minimalistic forms the image of his ‘inner home’, which was becoming lighter
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and clearer in film, as the sense of physical estrangement from a permanent domicile and his native
land was growing.
In this context, following the geographic and artistic trajectory of the Russian artist, from Russia, to
Italy and then Sweden, this paper presents the results of fieldwork at physical locations inhabited by
the artist, and sets to build a dialogic comparison between the images of the houses he inhabited
and the paralleling images of houses in his films at that particular time. Furthermore, the paper will
add the imaginative layer of homes in words and homes in lines, gathered from autobiographical
reminiscing writings and sketches of dream houses, thus illustrating how his artistic identity
transcended the circumstances of dislocation by dwelling within.
Bethan Parkes, ‘Shifting Sounds: atmospheric identities in “Hagar and the Angel” (a
soundscape/visual installation)’
Keywords: space, acoustics, ecology, poetry, desert
The practice element of the proposal consists of a link-up with an installation developed by Bethan
Parkes, Madeleine Campbell, and Birthe Jorgensen, taking place in the Hunterian Gallery as part of
the Hunterian Associates Programme, from 20-27th May. The installation engages with John
Runciman’s painting “Hagar and the Angel” and the room in which it is displayed through the
development of a soundscape and a visual element that draw on translations, by Madeleine
Campbell, from Mohammed Dib’s poetry collection L’Aube Ismaël (Dawn Ismaël, 1996) which
features the biblical scenes depicted in the Hunterian exhibition. In contrast with the mute, static
and figurative quality of the paintings, movement, sound and the spoken word are also introduced.
The movement of suspended plastic dustsheets – suggestive of a desert habitus (while maintaining a
margin of ambiguity) – will reveal, conceal and obscure the “rules of the room”, while fragmented
recordings of Dib’s poems form sonic “grains” which are sculpted into ephemeral structures. The
sense of transient visual and sound shapes will engage with Dib’s nomadic treatment of the themes
of identity, exile and migration in L’Aube Ismaël to offer a fluid, diasporic element in contrast to the
fixity of the space.
The research paper discusses an ecological approach to spatiality in acousmatic composition, with
reference to the methods employed in creating the sonic component of the installation “Hagar and
the Angel” (outlined above). This approach is informed by Gernot Böhme’s ecological aesthetic
theory outlined in several articles which interrogate the concept of atmosphere. Key to Böhme’s
consideration of acoustic atmospheres is the notion of the “I” losing itself in the listening act
(Böhme, 2000), through an expansion of corporeal space into the space of affect. Investigating
Böhme’s theory further, Henri Bergson’s notion of duration leads to an understanding of the
environment articulated by the work as something lived, rather than thought.
This paper discusses the themes raised by Dib’s poetry – including hostile environments,
motion/transience, displacement, and place/language relationships – suggesting, with reference to
Böhme and Bergson, how they may become a part of the lived space of the installation. ‘Shifting
Sounds’ positions the creation of the work as a setting of conditions in which an atmosphere of
“desert-ness” may be experienced, discussing the way in which engaging with Dib’s work has
influenced approaches to this notion of desert-ness, in particular highlighting the human and
cultural aspects of this environmental identity.
Panel 4 – Racial and National Identities
Fernanda Barros, ‘Brazilian race relations from the perspectives of Thales de Azevedo (1904-1995)
and Florestan Fernandes (1920-1995)’
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Keywords: UNESCO, Brazil, race
This research presents the project Unesco (1950) in Brazil, from the perspectives of sociologists
Florestan Fernandes (1920-1995), Roger Bastide (1898-1974) and physician-anthropologist Thales de
Azevedo (1904-1995). The first two authors attend to race relations between blacks and whites in
São Paulo (Southeast), on the other hand, the latter discusses race relations in Bahia (northeastern
Brazil). Both theorists argued dichotomous looks at the subject of "race" in Brazil. It should be noted
that the proposed Unesco came amid the backdrop of the First and Second World Wars, (1914-1918)
- (1939-1945), as well as content gestated in Nazi Germany. Thus, the aim of the institution was to
settle world conflicts created under the imperative of "race", and therefore to conceptualize "race"
for humanity, concomitantly seeking a "peaceful example" of race relations. In this context, Brazilian
reality contemplating the goals of the institution, in view of the impact of the work, lectures and
speeches made by anthropologists Arthur Ramos (1903-1949) and Gilberto Freyre (1900-1987) as
the Brazilian racial miscegenation.
Sergio Luis Rolemberg Farias, ‘Post-Slavery Democracy and the Descendants of the Quilombos in
Contemporary Brazil’
Keywords: Brazil, slavery, ethnic identity, citizenship, politics
This paper examines the broad question of post-slavery democracy in South America, as experienced
by the former slaves. It takes as an example the political mobilization of rural black Brazilian
communities in the last twenty years under the label of ‘descendents of the Quilombos’ (fugitive
slave communities). Using examples taken from fieldwork with black communities in the North
Eastern state of Sergipe, it seeks to understand how the difficulties and opportunities of the last
twenty years of political mobilization have influenced the formation of ethnic identities. During this
period, the labels of ethnic identity became a way of consolidating fragmented rights and social
structures, as well as a way of constructing a fragile sense of citizenship and belonging. This research
allows us to formulate a picture of the achievements and position of ethnic minorities in
contemporary Brazil. The paper will contribute to an understanding of how the Brazilian democracy
has developed over the past two decades, and how the discourse of ethnic identity and community
politics have contributed to the political mobilization of its people.
BJ Harpe, ‘Identity Crisis: Culture and Imperialism in Ancient Syria’
Keywords: Syria, linguistics, Imperialism, classical history
This research paper explores the cultural landscape of ancient Syria, a region that was defined by its
wide variety of cultural systems and successive occupations by culturally foreign imperial powers. It
will examine the nature of the Seleucid, Parthian and Roman periods of Syrian history (roughly 600
years, c. 300 BC until the sack of Dura-Europos in AD 256) focusing on how individuals of various
social strata interacted with the imperial powers and how, if at all, that interaction altered their
individual sense of identity. The paper begins with a brief historical overview of the Seleucid,
Parthian and Roman periods of Syrian history and, drawing upon primarily archaeological, epigraphic
and linguistic evidence, will proceed to a discussion of the following questions: What does language
choice say about self-identification? How does social status affect engagement with imperial
powers? Does engagement with imperial powers necessitate a compromise of identity? Is
acculturation a zero-sum game OR does the adoption of a foreign set of cultural indicators
necessarily come at the expense of indigenous cultural systems? Were the imperial powers in Syria
waging ‘cultural warfare’ in an attempt to supplant indigenous cultural systems with their own?
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Panel 5 – Communicating Religious Identity
Marilena Frisone, ‘Connecting identities and connecting people: strategies of identity formation
among Nepalese members of a Japanese New Religious Movement in Kathmandu’
Keywords: combining religious identities, Hinduism, Buddhism, Japan, Nepal
This paper explores the politics of identity pursued by a group of Nepalese people adhering to a
Japanese New Religious Movement called Tenrikyō (Teachings of the Heavenly Wisdom), currently
active in Kathmandu. Founded in 1838, as a consequence of a divine revelation, its headquarters are
located in Tenri city, Japan. It counts about two million members in Japan and abroad, and since the
last fifty years it has also been actively present in the Nepalese capital, where it counts few hundred
members, especially among the local ‘ethnic’ group called Newars.
Based on data collected during a period of fieldwork of about eleven months conducted in
Kathmandu in 2011-13, this paper discusses how the process of adopting, learning and practicing
this new religious tradition reorganises the everyday religious practices of members alongside more
traditionally Hindu or Buddhist affiliations, leading to pluralized forms of identity. ‘Connecting
identities and connecting people’ interprets the concept of assembling as a twofold movement
enacted by Newar Tenrikyō members involved in a daily enterprise, consisting in (1) ‘drawing
together’ traditional caste and religious duties with the new model of identity proposed by this
Japanese New Religious Movement (connecting identities), and (2) literally ‘making assembly’, i.e.
participating in everyday group-meetings in which their identity as Tenrikyō members is renewed
and actively kept (connecting people).
Aron Engberg, ‘Construction of Apolitical Identities Among Pro-Israeli Evangelicals in
Contemporary Israel’
Keywords: Israel, Judaism, Christianity, religious identity, politics
The context of contemporary Jerusalem is probably one of the most politicized contexts in the
world. In a city with unclear borders, the social space is a zone marked by political contestation, and
negotiation of political identities. Not only national but a wide array of international actors operates
within this environment. The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) was established 1980
as a response to the move of the world’s embassies to Tel Aviv following the passing of the
“Jerusalem Law”. Its founders were a group of evangelical Christians who understood the founding
of the State of Israel, and its victory in the -67 war as clear signs that the 2nd Advent of Christ was
near, and that true Christians should stand by Israel and “bless her”. Today the ICEJ is one of the
most important pro-Israeli organizations, and claims to represent hundreds of millions of “Israelloving” Christians globally. This paper deals with the identity formation of volunteers workers at the
ICEJ, how they understand themselves as Christians, in this highly political context. Preliminary field
work-based results suggest that the participants construct their identities along religious rather than
political lines; their political activity at the embassy is understood as a “personal walk with God”, and
to “stand with Israel” is understood as aligning oneself with God. The choice is not between two
peoples or two political entities but rather between true Christianity – that understands Gods
purposes with Israel – and the world. Such a recasting of the narrative requires us to think about the
role of religious worldviews in interpreting political events, and ultimately about the politics of
identity construction. Is the ICEJ incorrectly branded as “political”, or is it that the construction of
“apolitical identities” in itself can be interpreted as a decisively political move?
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Andrew Grey, ‘Christian and LGBT: Reconciling Identities Through Comparison’
Keywords: LGBT, persecution, early church history, contemporary Christianity
One of the arguments used with increasing regularity against homosexuality amongst more
conservative Christians is that a Christian’s identity should be exactly that, whereas many LGBT
people draw their identity from their sexuality, thus removing it from their religion. Undoubtedly
one of the main questions to ask is whether both can be reconciled. Can a person identify as LGBT
and Christian, without one displacing the other?
The paper addresses these questions by comparing the formation of Christian identity in the early
church with the formation of LGBT identity in the second half of the twentieth century, showing that
they were formed in similar conditions – namely, an awareness of difference, the experience of
being a persecuted minority and a tendency to identify as a collective, showing that Christians
therefore have more in common with LGBT identities than might have at first been thought. It will at
the same time attempt to argue that there are sufficient differences in the nature of these identities
for conflict not to be necessary. Sources include the New Testament and analysis of early Christian
identity formation by Judith Lieu.
Iida Saarinen, ‘Before Priestly Identity? Scottish Catholic Seminarians and Freshly-Ordained Priests
in Late Nineteenth-Century Photographs’
Keywords: Catholicism, C19th seminary training, photography
Training for Roman Catholic priesthood in nineteenth-century Scotland was not often completed
within the country’s borders. The Scots Colleges in Spain, France and Italy provided the Scottish
Mission and, after 1787, the Church with hundreds of graduates, sent abroad for expertise and
resources. The route to priesthood took several years, and the aim was a very unique career. A
priest had a special position in the Catholic hierarchy as well as a certain dignity in his relationship
with the laity as a mediator between God and the people. During and after the arduous training,
these young men managed to be caught on film in group photographs as well as in studio
portraits. Upon their ordination, these young clerics often chose to be photographed to
commemorate the moment of transition and these photographs, often in the carte-de-visite format,
were then distributed as mementos. This paper will consider the extent to which in these
photographs the young seminarians or freshly-ordained priests expressed their professional identity
as Roman Catholic priests.
Panel 6 – Representational Politics: Disability, Class, Race
Aretha Phiri and Maja Milatovic, ‘Dis(re)membering Bodies: Disability and Self-Constitution in Toni
Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Octavia Butler’s Kindred’
Keywords: disability, race, class, gender, American literature
Written against the backdrop of contemporary race, class and gender politics, Toni Morrison and
Octavia Butler’s works frequently focus on black female subjectivity. Within this context, the body
becomes a vehicle for exploring issues of identity, memory and self-constitution in the context of
racism, sexism and other forms of oppression including coming to terms with historical trauma of
slavery. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison suggests that the rape of the child, Pecola Breedlove, by her
father, Cholly, is a corollary of an historically and systemically dis(en)abled blackness, which, in
Pecola’s resultant insanity, ultimately manifests in black female, ‘disability’ – an inability to ‘see’,
metaphysically, the black female self. Continuing Morrison’s ideas of selfhood is Octavia Butler’s
Kindred which imagines a fantastical return to the slave past, leaving the contemporary protagonist
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Dana severely bruised, scarred and physically disabled as she loses her arm on her final trip to
antebellum Maryland.
‘Dis(re)membering Bodies’ explores the complex connections between African American identity,
selfhood and disability by examining the differently configured or disabled body and its interrelation
to the constitution of black subjectivity in The Bluest Eye and Kindred. The disabled body, connected
to memory and selfhood, echoes, while attempting to fill, historical gaps and silences at the same
time that it challenges historically reductive readings. This paper argues, however, that rather than
illustrate incompleteness, this representation of the body restructures the discourse around it to
allow for alternative subjective interpretations and possibilities.
Shannon Reed, ‘“You Can Write Us”’ (practice-led research paper)
Keywords: writing, representation, ethics, race, disability, class, identity formation
Over the course of Shannon Reed’s four years teaching at a Brooklyn high school, questions about
identity often arose. How could Reed, a disabled white woman raised in privilege, help her Africanand Caribbean-American students construct meaningful identities? A chance conversation with a
student, who told her, “You can write us,” gave Reed the answer: she would write them – not about
them, but them – as best as she could. This began her quest to be a participant observer trying to
capture the divergent identities of her students in writing and verbal performance. Focusing on the
events surrounding the death of one of her students in a gang-related shooting, Reed used
qualitative research methods to gather information for this project.
This presentation and performance will include an excerpt from the resultant manuscript. It’s in the
voice of Dante, a young Caribbean-American woman who looks back on the incident through the
lens of her first semester of college, noticing how her identity has changed along with her
circumstances. The presentation will then consider several questions that drive Reed’s writing of the
work: How should one balance the demands on identity given to these characters by the nature and
needs of fiction? How do ethnographic research methods affect artistic choices? What does it mean
to “borrow” the identity of a former student?
Anna-Leena Lähde, ‘A Chinaman’s Chance: A Postcolonial Analysis of the development of Chinese
Characters and Stereotypes in North-American Popular Literature’
Keywords: postcolonialism, China, representation, race, American literature
This paper studies the development and depiction of Chinese fictional characters in United States’
popular literature. The depiction of Chinese characters has evolved from an inscrutable fool into a
monstrous supervillain and, finally, a wily detective during the course of a hundred years. The
hypothesis of the dissertation is that depiction and development of Chinese characters and
stereotypes in United States’ popular literature have been shaped by historical events in the United
States and China, such as the California Gold Rush, the Boxer Rebellion and the II World War. The
characters discussed are John Chinaman, Fu-Manchu and Charlie Chan. The primary sources consist
of poems, songs, novels and short stories, as well as illustrations. The paper constitutes a
multidisciplinary study that utilizes both literary studies and general history to analyze and discuss
the primary literary source material. The methods used in the dissertation are close readings of the
primary sources, textual and literary analysis that considers both the relationship of genre and
audience as well as the historical framework of the era. ‘A Chinaman’s Chance’ draws a line between
history and fiction, while examining how reality and fiction both create and recreate depictions and
identities of Chinese characters.
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Panel 7 – Body Politics
Tiffany Page, ‘The Provocation of the Vulnerable Self’
Keywords: feminism, vulnerability, ethics
This research paper argues that moves to re-assemble identity through a shared vulnerability and
condition of openness must more critically address the ambiguity that presents itself through our
capacity to both suffer and inflict harm. The treatment of vulnerability has become a key concern
within feminist scholarship in recent years. The challenge has been to invoke a notion of
vulnerability that resists being defined solely in the negative through ideas of susceptibility, risk, and
weakness. However, claims that an ontological vulnerability grounded in a shared identity of
universal exposure can form the basis of normative ethics fail to address the inherent ethical
ambiguity that lies within our corporeal vulnerability. This paper argues that the provocation
presented by vulnerability within considerations of identity assemblage is due to its relationship to
violence. As a vulnerable self the desire for invulnerability and a masterful identity is always present.
Vulnerability is therefore problematic within discussions of identity because it forbids reduction and
instead spills out beyond categorization, interpretation, and representation. ‘The Provocation of the
Vulnerable Self’ considers some of the issues that must be addressed in invoking the vulnerable self
as the foundation for ethics.
Maria Portugal, 'What besides my body can resist? - Body Identity of Dissent Actions'
Keywords: bodies, illegitimacy, protest, performance
In western civilizations, body lies at the centre of the political struggles (Turner 1984) over the last
three decades. Illegitimate body´s statements have become gradually more crucial to urban and
social awareness. The analysis of protest, in terms of its embodiment, could simulate or actually shift
the constitutional power to a brand new place of social dominance and to a fresh notion of identity
and visibility.
Opposition performance is gradually becoming a territory with a racial, gender, religious, sexual
and/or political orientation, illustrating both its physical exposure and anger and transforming
identities and emotions (Eyerman 2010). Nowadays, activists, strikers, protesters and marchers turn
out to be among the most promising and radical architects designers and artists, bringing out a
perfect dialectic between power and vulnerability (Sutton 2003), connecting, disconnecting and
mixing new narratives, rituals, discourses and powers.
This research examines the protest through body experience and its effect, evolution and
reinforcement during the last 30 years: how dissent actions have attempted to cross social
regulation and political barriers to get a better understanding of body/bodies identity and how they
generate an open sense of protest culture – concepts, performances and artefacts – that (re)
interpreted forms of fighting back.
Megan Ratliff, ‘Bodily and Celestial Cosmologies: Tattooing and Asterisms Amongst the Japanese
and Maori’
Keywords: tattooing, bodies, asterisms, performance
"Bodily and Celestial Cosmologies: Tattooing and Asterisms Amongst the Japanese and Maori" looks
at how groups and individuals have dealt with placing ideologically imbued patterns onto the body
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and night sky. The body and sky are two universal forms which every society has related with as a
space to entrust worldviews (communal and individual). Both tattooing and star grouping (creating
asterisms) are means of projection and establishing physical and cultural locality. This paper
juxtaposes culturally-constructed means of creating locality by imposing an invented order on these
fields, to make sense of each other and the cosmos. This research shifts between two case studies,
the Maori and Japanese, examining their radically different means of using these blank slates as
expressive modes. The body and the sky are both universally experienced by all people. Regardless
of spatial or temporal locality, everyone has had to confront and mediate with the body and sky;
they are inescapable and true universals.
Scott Dahlie, ‘Moveable Islands and Disappearing People: (Re)Locations and (Mis)Representations
in Pacific Legends
Keywords: literature, music, Rogers and Hammerstein (South Pacific), James Michener (Tales of the
South Pacific), misrepresentation
Araki Island was originally located in Hog Harbour, a northeast anchorage of the much larger island
of Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu, a Western Pacific archipelago formerly known as the colonial New
Hebrides. One night, the men of South Espiritu Santo looped a coconut-fibre rope around Araki
Island and began to pull. In the morning, the Araki women woke up to a collective disorientation
and alarm. They were surrounded by strange, South Santo men, their island had travelled some 120
kilometres in the night and their fathers, husbands and sons had disappeared.
In the late 1940s an even more incredible feat was accomplished. James Michener, an officer in the
American Navy, and Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, two Broadway theatre writers, looped
a collection of stories and a musical around the whole archipelago. Then they began pulling. When
Vanuatu awoke it was surrounded by the American imagination. It had moved from the Western
Pacific into the South Pacific and all of its indigenous people had disappeared.
This presentation examines (through image, sound, and text) how Michener’s collection Tales of the
South Pacific and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical South Pacific misrepresent Vanuatu’s
indigenous Melanesians.
Panel 8 – Music, Performance and the Development of Identity
Brianna Robertson, ‘Opera identity, the singer, the character or the immortal performer’
Keywords: opera, castrato singers, late C18th, performance
Venenzio Rauzzini (1746 – 1800), castrato singer and influential vocal pedagogue, taught most of the
famous prima donnas of the late 18th century/early 19th century. He claimed that the key to the
success of his students was that he encouraged them to develop their own singing style. This was at
a time when composers wrote music specifically for the leading opera singer cast. However, if the
singer did not feel the piece displayed the best of their vocal abilities, they would replace arias with
those better suited. At a time when vocal tuition and opera were highly individualised, the singer
imposed much of their own identity on the characters they performed, moulding each new
character to suit their vocal style. Tracing back the changes to 18th century operatic scores has
immortalised parts of these singers ‘vocal sound’. However, individualised performances are an alien
concept to 21st century performers, so which performance identity do modern-day singers portray?
The character composed or the identity of the singer who originally performed the work? If so,
which singer do they embody? This paper explores these questions by examining 18th century and
21st century vocal tuition and changing operatic traditions.
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James Felix, ‘Paupers, Poets and Prostitutes: The Evolving Identity of the Fadista’
Keywords: Portuguese/Brazilian folk music, class, national identity
In the back streets of Lisbon, a man sings. His song is not one of joy, but of hardship. In his belt he
carries a knife, in his hand a bottle of wine; shunned by society, people cross the street when they
see him. A century later, the music remains but the perception has morphed. Today, fado is still
sung and retains much of the same subject matter. Lisboettas sing of the difficulties of life, losses
suffered, and their enduring love of Portugal, but now people flock to hear these songs; the singers
work during the day as bankers, taxi drivers, fishermen and doctors, and in the evening they sing for
love of fado.
Embraced as the epitome of Portuguese culture by a society that once rejected them, this paper
traces the transformation of the fadista’s identity, one inextricably linked with the musical genre of
fado, from its impoverished origins as the song of the lowest in society, through fascist dictatorship
to the time of international fado stars. Examining the cause of this change and the impact it has had
on the genre and the nation, ‘Paupers, Poets and Prostitutes’ illustrate the way perceptions of
subcultural identity evolve independently of musical affiliation.
David Linton, ‘Identity Construction in London West End Revue Performance of the Early
Twentieth Century’
Keywords: theatre, music, C20th, social reform
London West End revue constituted a particular response to mounting social, political and cultural
insecurities over Britain’s status and position at the beginning of the twentieth century. Insecurities
regarding Britain’s colonial rule, as exemplified in Ireland and elsewhere, were compounded by
growing demands for social reform across the country — the call for women’s emancipation, the
growth of the labour and the trade union movements, all created a climate of mounting disillusion.
Revue correlated the immediacy of this uncertain world, through a fragmented vocabulary of
performance inscribed with a bewildering variety of national, racial and gender identity
constructions on stage. One result was the emergence of a London/national identity that displaced
the romanticism of English musical comedy by combining a satirical listless detachment with a
defiant sophistication that articulated a fading British hegemonic sensibility, a cultural expression of
a fragile and changing social and political order. Experimenting with narrative and expressions of
speech, movement, design and sound, they displayed ambivalent representations that reflected
social and cultural negotiations of previously essentialised identities in the modern world.
Defne Cizakca, ‘The Games We Play in Istanbul: Armenians and Turks on the Ottoman Stage’
Keywords: Armenian and Turkish identity politics, theatre, religious boundaries
This paper investigates the development of Armenian and Turkish identity politics in Istanbul
through a study of the city’s theatres. Prior to 19th century, Ottoman society was structured around
religion. Armenians and Turks identified themselves as Ottomans, but distinguished themselves
through their respective religions as Christians or Muslims. This faith-based discernment was
disassembled in the 19th century with the rise of nationalism. Despite a new emphasis on ethnic
identity, the period saw the introduction of European theatre to Istanbul as a joint project between
Armenians and Turks.
Agop Vartovyan began his career amongst Armenian actors, staging Armenian plays. He later gained
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a monopoly on Turkish plays from the Ottoman government and staged the first Turkish nationalist
play, “Vatan Yahut Silistire”, in 1873. Vartovyan’s Gedikpasa theatre created a composite ArmenianTurkish artistic identity: it was performative, spatial and transitional. Vartovyan’s identity
assemblage deserves scrutiny as it is in-between the empire and modernity, and in-between
religious and nationalist paradigms. Through a study of Vartovyan’s and Gedikpasa Theatre’s history,
this paper delineates the stages necessary in forming the last cultural collaboration between the
Armenians and Turks of Istanbul.
Panel 9 – The City and Rural Nostalgia
Lakshmi Raajendran, ‘Identity Constructions and Negotiations in Multicultural Environments’
Keywords: urban environment, globalism, space
Places today are characterised with unequal geographies that are political, economic, symbolic and
cultural. Encountering these places involves greater challenges of negotiation of one’s identity which
as a result undergoes a continuous process of adaptation and reconstruction. Scholars have
explained this phenomenon emerging as an approach towards rethinking identity in terms of
interconnectedness rather than counter-position, inclusion rather than exclusion (Massey and Jess
2005).Similar views also echoes from the concepts of global sense of place (Massey 1991) and multiterritoriality (Petcou 2002).In this context , the paper discusses the significant role of spatial design
in identity constructions which embrace or contest the various approaches developed towards
understanding identity in the context of impending effects of globalisation. Through case studies,
this paper will explicate spatial manifestations of collective and personal identity negotiations of
people in urban environments. The study will also highlight how spatial design accommodates
constantly shifting meanings of identity of people and facilitate in deeper understanding of the
complexity of identity constructions in an increasingly changing physical and experiential world.
Sara Mahdizadeh, ‘(Re)constructing of Iranian identity by means of the historical gardens’
Keywords: gardens, outside space, Iran, national identity
For more than 2500 years, Persian Gardens had encompassed distinct archetype and intangible
values manifesting the culture and identity of the Iranian society and depicting their traditional way
of seeing the nature. During the course of time, as a result of the intense change in the sociopolitical, and economical systems, many Iranian historical gardens have been neglected and/or
destroyed, while a few still remain though their inherent values and social functions have been
made impotent. This paper will set out to elaborate on the way in which the shifts in the perception
and attitudes towards cultural heritage have transformed the values of Persian Gardens during the
21th century. The paper will discuss the intangible aspects of the relationships between people and
historical gardens, how it affects and impacts the overall Iranian identity in the contemporary
context. The inferences of this paper will substantiate the significance of conservation of both
tangible and intangible values of Persian Gardens in (re)construction of the collective cultural
identity of Iranian society and reinforce the national pride in 21th century Iran.
Anneliese Hatton, ‘Portugalidade como dualidade – The “Janus-faced” nature of Portuguese
National Identity’
Keywords: Portuguese national identity, Empire, rural nostalgia, postcolonialism
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Enigmatic and fateful she stares
Out West, to the future of the past
The staring face is Portugal. (Extract from Fernando Pessoa’s Message)
Portuguese national identity has been in a state of crisis since the Revolution of 1974 and the
subsequent loss of Empire. Since the Age of the Discoveries, the Portuguese have defined
themselves in a dual fashion – either looking outward towards their colonies and a perceived hope
of glory for the future, or looking inward towards an idyllic, rural Portugal of days gone by. However,
the end of Empire completely overturned the colonial balance as “the margins of the nation displace
the centre; the peoples of the periphery return to rewrite the history and fiction of the metropolis”
(Bhabha), and as the modern world encroaches, the idyll of rural Portugal seems ever further away.
This paper seeks to explore how the Portuguese attempt to redefine their national identity in the
wake of the Revolution and how their “bipolar personality” (Barata) has evolved in the post-colonial
world.
Panel 10 – Gender, Sex and Performance
Jennifer Cowe, ‘Love in a Changing Climate: Two Film Adaptations of Henry Miller’s “Quiet Days in
Clichy”’
Keywords: film adaptations, Henry Miller, sexual norms, pornography
This paper examines two film adaptations of Henry Miller’s novel, ‘Quiet Days in Clichy,’ showing
how both use the character of Miller, simultaneously as creator and protagonist, to represent sexual
and individual liberation, whilst in fact misrepresenting Miller, as he becomes a conduit through
which the film reflects the sexual discourse/confusion of the period in which it was made.
The accessibility of Miller’s cultural notoriety has undermined the complexity of his work and literary
legacy, however it has also allowed his ‘identity’ to be appropriated by many different people
claiming to show the ‘authentic’ Miller, or to use Miller’s name or work to give an implied antiestablishment credibility to their own work. “Love in a Changing Climate” compares two adaptations
of Miller’s novel, ‘Quiet Days in Clichy’ on film; firstly the soft-porn Danish version as an example of
the calculated use of Miller’s name to promote sexual liberation, whilst in fact reflecting the
confused nature of gender roles in the 1970. This paper compares it to the Claude Chabrol version
filmed in 1990, which takes the character based on Miller and makes him a handsome 26-year-old
rather than the 40-year-old that Miller was at the time of the incidents portrayed in the novel. This
paper argues that this reflects the growing unease of paedophilia, as the main female character is
only 15 years old when she enters into a sexual relationship with both lead male characters.
Liz Renes, ‘“Surface even as the Reverse of the Soul”: John Singer Sargent and the Aesthetic
Performance of Female Identity’
Keywords: John Singer Sargent, art history, female beauty, aestheticism
When John Singer Sargent exhibited his portrait of Madame X in the 1884 Salon, audiences cried
that she resembled a corpse. Indeed, the potash of chlorate mixture which she applied daily gave
her skin a lavender tinge, which contrasted strikingly with the deep red henna of her hair. And yet
Madame X’s skin, acting as her mask in the late Victorian social theatre, belied a deeper appreciation
for the construction of beauty and identity exalted by the Aesthetic Movement. Baudelaire
remarked upon this in his “In Praise of Cosmetics” from The Painter of Modern Life, stating that
woman was “accomplishing a kind of duty when she devotes herself to appearing magical and
supernatural…” by creating “an abstract unity in the colour and texture of the skin.” This paper will
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delve into the Aesthetic Movement’s ideas of constructed female beauty, as explored in the written
works of Baudelaire, Wilde and Max Beerbohm, and exemplified by the high society portraits of John
Singer Sargent. For Aestheticisim, identity was not always specifically linked to social class, race, or
gender, but rather to the expression and creation of beauty in all its non-traditional forms. This
revolutionary notion of the feminine persona will ultimately be contrasted against the more
acceptable modes of contemporary femininity in order to highlight the Aesthetic process of identity
de/reconstruction.
Ery Shin, ‘Gertrude Stein’s Queer America’
Keywords: queer theory, class, Gertrude Stein, America, literature
This paper examines class biases underlying The Making of Americans’ queer identity politics.
Gertrude Stein’s otherwise progressive narrative consciousness reveals an underhanded bourgeois
elitism that demands queerness be embraced only on the grounds that it’s a certain “strain of
singularity.” Not necessarily one “well within the limits of conventional respectability a singularity
that is, so to speak, well dressed and well set up,” but an as yet “unknown product.” This queerness
is “neither crazy, sporty, faddish, or a fashion, or low class with distinction.” Thus, different varieties
of queerness exist in different intensities for the narrator (not all of them sexual), but “poor
queerness” lacks that unique refinement, that nobleness s/he associates with genuine singularity. A
voice that chants of strange and compelling tomorrows remains just as embroiled in yesterday’s
attitudes as many of the characters it recapitulates. Literature that interrogates the inevitability of
certain orientations takes for granted its own slant against the poor, erecting new barriers as it
breaches others. The Making of Americans eerily anticipates class divisions within contemporary
LGBT circles in that regard, by assuming that the ideal queer America is still a tastefully discerning
(white) middle-class one.
Panel 11 – Creative Practices in Cinema
Linda Hutcheson, ‘Identity Formation and the Distribution of Independent Cinema: The Case of
Morag McKinnon’s Donkeys (2010)’
Keywords: independent cinema, marketing, narrative image
This paper centres on the process of building an identity for a film prior to its theatrical release, what
John Ellis (1982) termed the creation of its “narrative image” (30). When releasing a film, a
distributor faces the daunting task of attempting to make their film stand out amongst the plethora
of others on offer to their target audience. In the independent sector, this challenge is further
heightened by the shoestring budget on which most independent distributors operate. Focusing on
Morag McKinnon’s Donkeys (2010), a film whose theatrical release was handled by its production
company Sigma Films after it failed to secure a distributor, this paper analyses the narrative image
assembled for the film’s release. This is achieved firstly, through consideration of the marketing
campaign devised by Sigma Films, and secondly, through analysis of the film’s reception in UK
newspapers.
Timothy Peacock, ‘Beyond Alps, Elephants and Vinegar: Hannibal Barca and the Evolution of the
History Documentary’
Keywords: historical documentaries, Hannibal Barca
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Hannibal Barca’s name evokes images ranging from ancient warriors and elephants struggling across
frozen Alps to crippling the Roman Republic using brilliant strategies in grand battles. The few
twentieth century filmic and television depictions of Hannibal have typically drawn upon and
reinforced these bold motifs in popular imagination. In the last 16 years, for the first time, there
have been a plethora of major history documentaries about Hannibal, some presenting previously
unknown facets of his character amidst increased popular interest. However, in revisiting
established narratives, these purportedly ‘objective’ documentaries have themselves constructed
multiplicities of new ‘Hannibals’ with their own subliminal and even overtly partisan biases. This
paper demythologises some of the prominent, recurring features of these digital constructions of
Hannibal’s identity, showing how the documentaries themselves assemble new identities through
such areas as narrative emphasis, material selection, imagery, use of actors and CGI technology. By
looking at this case study example of Hannibal, this paper seeks to provide a framework for reexamining the objective conceptualisation of the History Documentary, examining the presentation
of History as a subject to a popular audience through visual media.
Panel 12 – Modern Perspectives
Rinni Amran, ‘Displacing and Re-placing the Human: the Aeroplane in Twentieth-Century Fiction’
Keywords: aeroplane, modernism, human, machine, literature
This paper investigates the ways in which the invention of the aeroplane in the early twentieth
century made an impact on literary fiction, focusing particularly on the works of H.G. Wells, Virginia
Woolf, and William Faulkner. The aerial perspective afforded by the flying machine, its ability to
permeate national boundaries and the boundary between earth and sky, and its liberation from the
confines of gravity provided new ways of perceiving and portraying the relationship between the
human and the material environment in terms of simultaneity, permeability, and fluidity. This paper
argues that the aeroplane not only displaced the human physically through flight, but also
ontologically from their Enlightenment-inherited position of centrality in relation to the world,
dissolving the lines defining the human and the machine. It is within this displacement that the
human becomes re-placed, hovering within boundaries and between states and places, thereby
radicalizing human identity in the modern world. ‘Displacing and Re-placing the Human’ seeks to
delineate the ways in which the writers incorporate the aeroplane into their aesthetics, taking into
account contemporary redefinitions of technology, phenomenological and post-phenomenological
approaches that reconceptualise the relationship between humans and nonhumans.
Amy Bromley, ‘“Make a map, not a tracing”: W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz as Rhizomatic Assemblage’
Keywords: Deleuze and Guattari, W.G. Sebald, literary theory, post/modernism
In A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari write that ‘literature is an assemblage’.
Their concept of rhizomatic writing posits heterogeneity, interconnectedness and multiple
entryways into a text: ‘Any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be.’
The rhizome is a network in constant flux, ‘defined solely by a circulation of states […] all manner of
becomings’. The spatialized concept of the rhizome is a model for thinking about the book as a
never-complete performative act, creating (and created by) lines of intersection: ‘a map, not a
tracing’.
This paper suggests the rhizome as a model for reading W.G. Sebald’s texts as assemblages. It will
undertake a reading of their formal structures, arguing that in their generic instability and through
the inserted photographic images, we encounter multiple entryways into and connections out from
Sebald’s books. The texture created by images and generic multiplicity performs an ‘imperceptible
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rupture, not [a] signifying break’ in interconnected ‘lines of flight’. Using the model of the rhizome,
this paper provides an analysis of the complex generic identity of Sebald’s texts, positing that their
thematic concern with interconnectedness and continual construction/deconstruction of identity is
written into their formal assemblage.
Xiong Bingxue, ‘Merging Identities in the Works of Whistler’
Keywords: Whistler, impressionism, Ando Hiroshige, cultural cross-over, art history
Whistler is one of the three leaders of American impressionism. As the artist himself holds, his own
reputation comes more from what he has changed the British aesthetic values by introducing French
impressionism. For the impressionist predecessors, he defines a new impressionist mode with his
own style, while setting aestheticism as his utmost purpose. Nowadays, much more research focuses
on the question of whether these oriental elements – Japan and China in particular – appearing
frequently in his decorative and oil painting, are all tempered into an integrated creation. Whistler’s
widened view and multiple personality, formed by his life experiences in several countries, are the
source for unique characteristics of his works. Owning to his incisive understanding of the ukiyoe as
well as a fanciful collection of Chinese porcelain, he can navigate both Western and Eastern art.
As a master of merging multiple cultural identities, Whistler is still not profoundly reflected in China.
This paper compares Whistler’ works with those of Ando Hiroshige, the great master of ukiyoe, and
peruses some porcelains depicted, in order to have a closer look at artist’s inner world.
Panel 13 – Devolution and British Political Identity
Daryl Perrins, ‘“Islands in the Stream”: Class, Regionalism and Hiraeth in the Representation of
Contemporary Wales in Comedy’
Keywords: television, comedy, Welsh national identity, devolution, postcolonialism
In June 1997 the year Wales voted narrowly for a devolved government, the Welsh dramatist Ed
Thomas declared in an interview for The Observer the following:
Old Wales is dead. The Wales of stereotype, leeks, daffodils, look-you-now boyo
rugby supporters singing Max Boyce songs in three-part harmony while phoning mam
to tell her they’ll be home for tea and Welsh cakes has gone....So where does it leave
us ? Free to make up, re-invent, redefine our own versions if necessary, because the
Wales I know is bilingual, multicultural, pro-European, messed up screwed up and
ludicrously represented in the British press... So old Wales is dead and new Wales is
already a possibility, an eclectic self-defined Wales with attitude.
This paper will argue however that despite Thomas’ own attempts to move away from ‘the Wales of
stereotype’, through his involvement for example in the S4C series Caerdydd, which the Western
Mail called: ‘a stylish, new drama about modern, urban Welsh-speakers living in a bilingual city’,
there has been, overall since 1997, a renaissance in stubbornly traditional representations of the
nation on screen set largely in post-industrial South Wales. In TV this impulse can be best analysed
via a discussion that pits the more progressive principals of the Welsh Language channel S4C, against
the more traditional sensibilities of English language providers. And via a discussion of the sit-coms;
High Hopes (BBC Wales2002-2008) and Gavin and Stacey (BBC: 2007-2010), and the comedy-drama
Stella (Sky 1: 2012/13), this paper establishes comedy as a signifier of a stubborn regional and
working-class identity.
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Indicatively employing the theoretical frameworks offered by Brett Mills and Stephen Wagg on class
and the British sit-com, as well as a raft of work on postcolonial studies from a Welsh perspective,
this paper will scrutinize the tensions and the disjoint between the ‘high hopes’ for Wales made
during the year of devolution, identified in the Ed Thomas quote, and the sort of popularist
representations that have followed. What has followed, this paper argues, are not orientalised
caricatures that slavishly reflect how the coloniser sees the Welsh, but more tellingly portraits of
those of us that either lack the cultural capital or simply refuse to take part in this new ‘Wales with
attitude’. And in the case of post-industrial South Wales, these are portraits defined by nostalgia
(hiraeth) over progressive ‘go-getting’ and class and a staunch localism over a national culture
imposed from above.
Chris McMillan, ‘Broken Bond: Skyfall and the British Identity Crisis’
Keywords: James Bond, Britishness, Scottish independence, patriotism
This paper argues that Skyfall (2012) and its preoccupation with Britain and Britishness has been
influenced by and is a response to the current debate over the future of the British Union and the
impending referendum on Scottish independence. Since James Bond’s conception, no character has
been so inextricably linked with Britain and British identity. Simon Schama has remarked that, ‘James
Bond was dreamed up as the British Empire was on its last legs’. With the release of Skyfall it is no
longer the Empire but the Union which may be on its last legs. This paper argues that Skyfall’s overt
patriotism has obscured its more contentious representations of Britain and British identity. Bond’s
Scottish origins, both literary and cinematically, have made the spy’s nationality a contested site,
consequently problematizing elements of the Bond films which concern Britain and Britishness. This
conflict is conspicuous in Skyfall.
At this significant period in British history when issues of identity are a topic of political and national
dialogue, the release of the latest film – and perhaps the last film - starring Britain’s favourite spy,
merits critical attention. Bond’s complex national identity is all the more fascinating in the current
political context.
Ana Moraes, ‘Institutional Identity and the Development of Funding Schemes at Scottish Screen’
Keywords: Scottish cinema, devolution, funding, national identity
This paper investigates and evaluates the role of emerging cultural and media policies in postdevolutionary Scotland, followed by significant changes in UK-wide film policies. It looks at how this
changes affected former national film agency, Scottish Screen, as the institutional responsible for
nurturing and developing a national film industry and identity. The paper focuses particularly on the
development of film funding schemes – from training and development to distribution, partnerships
and mentorship – which often reflected a pre-conceived understanding of Scottish identity on
screen. It sets out to investigate the aims and outcomes of such schemes, their planning and
implementation processes in sight of the dominant political and creative industries discourses that
had arisen after the Scottish devolution.
Lastly, the paper analysis the rapid change in film policy in Scotland over the period immediately
before the formation of Scottish Screen until its demise, arguing that to an extent the body reflected
UK wide changes and responded to international trends. On the other hand, it strived to promote a
Scottish specificity and fundamental role in fostering a national cultural identity.
Panel 6 – Identity Construction in the Nineteenth Century
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Laura Eastlake, ‘New Neronians: Ancient Rome and the Forging of Decadent Masculine Identities
in the Late Nineteenth Century’
Keywords: Rome, Nero, Victorian literature and culture, masculinity
This paper analyses the importance of the ancient Roman past for the construction of masculine
identities in late-Victorian literature and culture. It begins by accounting for the divergent reception
histories of ‘Imperial Rome’ and the ‘Decadent Rome’ of Nero, Petronius and the later emperors in
the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This serves as a route into understanding the anxious,
even antagonistic relationship between the acquisitive, frank and physically robust manliness of the
Victorian imperialist, and the performative, languid, sensual and even deliberately deviant style of
the dandy figure in fin-de-siècle culture. ‘New Neronians’ suggests that aesthetic and decadent
manliness, as expressed in the works of Pater, Wilde, Hardy and others, was invested in constructing
a counter narrative to the Gibbonian model of ‘decline and fall’, and especially of decline and fall as
being catalysed by decadent (and therefore failed or diseased) masculine vigour.
With examples drawn from literature, fine art and the periodical press, this paper demonstrates how
decadent Rome is mobilized either as part of a serious and sober defence of aesthetic moral
principles or, alternatively, as a script and set of props with which to create and perform more
alternative and even deliberately deviant styles of masculinity.
Ruth MacPhail, ‘Feminine Identity at the Fin de Siecle: Women Writers and the Short Form’
The close of the nineteenth-century saw women come under scrutiny as something dynamic,
something modern and something which posed a threat to the patriarchal status quo (Ledger, 1997,
02). Writings of the fin de siècle saw feminine identity as increasingly unstable and the term ‘woman’
became an area for investigation (Showalter, 1990, 09). Significantly, many writers turned to the
short-story as a means through which these burgeoning identities could be explored. This paper
argues that a link between gender and genre can be established and that both formal and contextual
attributes of short fiction made it a particularly useful form for women to explore shifting identity
positions. Looking at a selection of writers including Sarah Grand, Kate Chopin and George Egerton,
this paper considers how ambiguity, ellipsis and plotlessness (all features common to the short form)
were used to negotiate understandings of femininity and create a new literary space for female
subjectivity. The material circumstances surrounding the publication of these stories will also be
examined, coming as they did at a time when the proliferation of women’s magazines meant that
women writers, and indeed women readers, were able to engage in the dialogue of feminine
identity on a previously unprecedented scale.
Fiona Duncan, ‘The reconstruction of Tory identity under George III’
Keywords: political history, establishment of the Tory party, C19th
Though there is a broad consensus in eighteenth-century scholarship regarding the demise of a
Whig/Tory dichotomy during the reigns of George I and George II, and an acknowledgement that this
dichotomy had largely re-emerged by the death of George III, in 1820, there has been no
overarching investigation regarding the development of a distinct, coherent Tory identity in this
period. By focusing on ideas circulated in the public domain, this research paper explores the
construction of a Tory identity, increasingly distinguished from opposition Whiggery, and located in a
bifurcation of ideas regarding the nature of the constitution in its civil element. In the process, it asks
to what extent this identity was underpinned by the controversial doctrines of Toryism’s ideological
past, and in what ways traditionally Tory ideological frameworks were renegotiated to suit a new
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political context. This study tests a growing body of research which has emphasised continuity
between historical epochs, particularly in an ideological context. By examining a variety of printed
genres this project seeks to elaborate and, in some respects, challenge current perspectives
regarding the Tory revival so conspicuous in the early decades of the nineteenth century.
Panel 15 – Alternative Identities: Gamers, Clones and Avatars
Garfield Benjamin, ‘Hyper-Bodies of the objet a-vater: the assemblage of the digital self’
Keywords: avatars, internet, Second Life, Deleuze, Žižek
The use of avatars in the mediation of virtual environments raises key questions concerning the
construction of identity in digital media. Furthermore, the analysis of the relation between the
individual subject and its manifestation within the digital realm reveals the underlying structures of
assemblage in both the physical and digital self. With a transfinite array of possible constructions,
the digital subject is constrained in their identity only by their access to technology and their own
subjective presuppositions about the nature of their identity.
Beyond the visual manifestation of the individual there lies a range of semantic and interactive tools
available for the expression of digital identity. Taking Second Life as an example – both the medium
and its art practice – this paper will use the work of Deleuze and Žižek to look beneath the surface
constructions of embodiment towards the hyper-textual assemblage of the digital avatar and its
relation to subjectivity. In reassessing this construction of identity, beyond the image on the
interface screen, the constituent elements of the avatar, and even the bodied form of the avatar
itself, will be revealed to be a lost or partial objectification of subjectivity, suggesting interesting
ramifications for the fundamental assemblage of any identity.
Anthony Reynolds, ‘Game Characters: 'Gamers', Cultural Memory, Identity and Social Practice’
Keywords: gaming, cultural memory, Scotland, qualitative and quantitative methods
This paper emerges out of an ongoing project into the cultural memory of self-identified gamers in
Scotland and the UK. Using original, respondent-based social research, this project offers an analysis
of the historic and contemporary experience of gaming, while also examining the cultural and social
history of gaming – specifically, the gaming lives of those who choose to self-identify and socially
define themselves as ‘gamers’. It conducts an investigation into the lifestyles and personal histories
of participants – game users for whom devoted and long term game use has been a part of their
everyday life up to the present – and in doing so will consider evaluative methods for examining
gaming cultures. A picture has emerged from the research which suggests that self-identified gamers
develop a particularly strong sense of cultural identity based on gaming literacies, tastes and
preferences, and an especially notable alignment of social and cultural practices. ‘Game Characters’
will explore how, for the self-identified ‘gamer’, the cultural practice of gaming can also play a
particularly significant role in personal development and social experience. This frequently
influences relationship formation, career trajectories in digital media (particularly amongst Scottish
respondents), and in many cases contributes considerably to experiences of social rejection and
inclusion.
Liza Futerman, ‘Cloning and the Visual Formation of Identity in Doctor Who and Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein’
Keywords: cloning, popular culture, science fiction, television
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In Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to the Present (2011), W. J. T. Mitchell points to the
prevalence of the theme of cloning in popular culture since the early 1990s. This paper examines
the concept of the clone in Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein (1994) and in two
consecutive episodes of British science fiction television series Doctor Who “The Rebel Flesh” and
“The Almost People” (2011). By comparing the two visual narratives, this paper illuminates the ways
in which the clone materializes the process of identity formation, while at the same time the clone’s
presence in both visual narratives dramatizes the incoherence of a unique and unambiguous
identity. This paradox that surrounds the clone’s identity evokes Linda Hutcheon's definition of
parody as a postmodern form that "paradoxically both incorporates and challenges that which it
parodies” (Hutcheon 1988, 251). In light of Hutcheon’s insight, this paper argues that the clones in
both visual texts do not merely threaten the identity of their human counterparts but rather parody
the notion of a coherent identity, by both incorporating and challenging it.
Panel 16 – Scotland: Burns and Bagpipes?
Jonathan Henderson, ‘“To see ourselves as others see us”: Robert Burns and Persona Construction’
Keywords: Robert Burns, Scots language, linguistic identity
Murray Pittock (2012) argues that “[w]e must stop reading Burns through glossaries and start
reading him through dictionaries, thesauruses and histories in an attempt to ensure that none of
Burns’s “many [18th-century] voices”, both Scots and English, are not lost to modern readers. An
examination of Burns’s correspondence illustrates that the “many voices” change greatly depending
who he is writing to. It appears that Burns constructs personas to suit particular situations and
conversations. The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (2009) enables for the first
time new research methodologies that help us realise the call laid out by Pittock and extrapolate
further by analysing how Burns’s language use enables him to construct his altering personas. By
isolating the language characteristics and comparing them to other areas of discourse, evidence can
be presented that shows how, and to what ends, Burns’s personas are constructed.
The paper examines correspondence with George Thomson on issues of Scottish songs, and Burns’s
‘Address of the Scotch Distillers, To the Right Hon. William Pitt’, among others, in order to establish
the ways in which Burns constructed his own identities through the language that he selected.
Vivien Williams, ‘“All the bagpipes in the world are here, and they fill heaven and earth”: the
bagpipe and the Romantic construction of Scottish identity’
Keywords: bagpipes, Scottish national identity, Romanticism
The bagpipe is, worldwide, a recognisable landmark of Scottishness. During the Jacobite risings,
nevertheless, the instrument acquired very negative connotations. Being one of Scotland’s most
colourful cultural signifiers, it constituted a means for anti-Jacobite propaganda to vilify the Scot and
Highlander. Religious and even political connotations emerged in literature and satire, of which the
bagpipe was a protagonist.
Although these concepts proved hard to root out, gradually by the end of the eighteenth century –
after the 1745 rebellion had put an end to the ‘Jacobite threat’ and the Ossianic fragments had
presented Scotland as a quintessentially Romantic nation – the bagpipe began to be viewed quite
differently. No longer the ‘voice of the enemy’, its sound evoked tradition, long-lost values, contact
with nature. Although its burdensome historicity and Jacobite past never vanished, these notions
were toned down to a memory; a fanciful, kitsch form of artistic and literary imagination. Authors
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such as John Wilson, Sir Walter Scott and William Wordsworth, and artists such as David Wilkie, John
Knox and Edwin Landseer, show the reader and viewer a romanticised version of the instrument: the
result of a Romantic construction of Scottish national identity.
Meghan McAvoy, ‘“The Question of what the Past Amounted to Can Lie About The Grass”: NationBuilding and Demolition in Andrew O’Hagan’s Our Fathers’
Keywords: literature, Scottish nationalism, industrialism
Our Fathers – Andrew O’Hagan’s first novel – deals with forms of nationalism and cultural
nationalism in a post-industrial Scotland. The novel evokes questions as to what form radicalism and
political engagement take in contemporary Scotland, when the ideals of the Red Clydesiders and
Scotland’s post-war generation have either failed or been forgotten. This paper examines O’Hagan’s
critique of nationalist attitudes to political and cultural traditions through his protagonist James
Bawn, whose formative years are influenced by two left-nationalist figures: his grandfather Hugh, a
housing planner whose socialist ideals inform his nation-building practice, and cultural-nationalist
English teacher Mr Buie, whose narrow and chauvinistic form of traditionalism leads James to
question his own relationship to the national past. This paper argues that James Bawn represents an
alternative to the nationalisms posed by Hugh’s idealist utopianism and Buie’s chauvinism. O’Hagan
points towards the formation of an identity that is aware of the nation’s culture, defends attempts
to engage in the public sphere with a progressive agenda, and furthers such a progressive agenda in
its reshaping of the national landscape. Thus Our Fathers posits a mode of nation-building that does
not fetishize the national past, nor resists change.
Panel 17 – Identity Formation After 9/11
Katarzyna Mika, ‘A Shattered State? Patriotism and National Identity in Poetic Responses to 9/11’
Keywords: poetry, 9/11, patriotism, national identity
The paper examines the ways in which poetic responses to September 11 explore and challenge the
concepts of patriotism, national identity and unity. It emphasises poetic diversity, analysing how the
chosen works respond to the government’s interpretation of the event and its impact on the
redefinition of the sense of belonging to the national collective. Focusing on material which has
received very little, or no, critical attention up until now, ‘A Shattered State?’ exposes the ways in
which poems from two anthologies and one collection employ those complex notions in order to
create or challenge a certain vision of the national collective. The paper will analyse works from:
9/11 Remembered, edited by Daveda Gruber; An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind,
edited by Allen Cohen and Clive Matson; and 9/11/2001, by Johana Smith. Gruber’s and Smith’s
works seem to define patriotism as an opposition to heterogeneity and support for strategic
heterogeneity whereas An Eye for An Eye challenges such definitions of national identity. The attacks
do not contribute to the creation of one uniting national narrative but elicit numerous distinct and
discordant responses and memories of them.
Rebecca V. L. Hounsom, ‘Shifting Religious Identity in a post 9/11 World’
Keywords: Islam, Christianity, Judaism, 9/11
A study conducted by Dr. Lori Peek into the religious identities of Muslim American students after
9/11 indicated how a political crises can prompt a shift in identity salience, in how the idea that one
form of identity can become more important than others at a certain time (Jackson 2010, p. 634).
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This paper will discuss how the role of religious identity has shifted in a post 9/11 world. It will trace
how religious identity can develop through a major political event such as the September 11th
terrorist attacks and include in what ways both religious identity and the event itself have been
connected to each other. Some examples explored will be: in what sense was religious identity used
as form of reflection in the immediate aftermath of the event; how the misidentification of religious
identity or religious bias was used to promote intolerance and hatred towards religious groups (such
as hate crimes committed in the days following 9/11 against religious minorities) and any recent
occurrences of how religious identity can or has been denied for fear of hostile or violent behaviour.
Using Peek’s study as the foundation, this paper will address these points with respect to all religions
such as Christianity, Islam and Judaism in relation to religious identity and 9/11.
Daniel O’Gorman, ‘Disassembling “fundamentalism” in three contemporary Pakistani novels’
Keywords: literature, religion, fundamentalism, Pakistani identity, empathy, media
This paper will analyse the way in which three recent Anglophone Pakistani novels (Burnt Shadows
by Kamila Shamsie [2009], The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam [2008] and The Reluctant
Fundamentalist by Mohsim Hamid [2008]) engage with the notion of ‘fundamentalism’ in the
context of the war on terror. All three texts negotiate a careful balance in their approach to the
theme, attempting to combat fundamentalist thought while simultaneously striving to undercut its
perceived connections to Pakistani identity.
The paper will argue that the novels attempt to expand their readers’ understandings of the term,
prompting them to think about situations in which they might themselves be tempted to resort to
‘fundamentalist’ thinking, whether religious or otherwise. The texts do this by generating a kind of
non-moralistic empathy with characters who, in one way or another, are perceived by others to
enact a ‘fundamentalist’ identity. Through these characters, the novels offer a vision for Pakistani
national identity that is detached from religious fundamentalism, while also providing an
understanding of the term that is more sophisticated than that perpetuated through global media
stereotypes.
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