POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES
Panel Coordinator: Paloma Fresno Calleja (Universidad de las Islas Baleares).
Departamento de Filología Española, Moderna y Latina (Àrea de Filología Inglesa).
Edificio Beatriu de Pinos. Cra. de Valldemossa, Km. 7.5. 07122 Palma de Mallorca.
paloma.fresno@uib.es
SESIÓN 1:
“Feminismos en el Atlántico Negro. Diáspora e Identidad en el cine de Sankofa”
Emilia María Durán Almarza, Universidad de Oviedo
Abstract: La presente comunicación trata de ofrecer una re-evaluación crítica del cine dirigido
por mujeres de ascendencia caribeña en el Reino Unido. Si bien la presencia de directoras
afro-caribeñas en la tradición británica es limitada, dada la posición marginal que ocupan como
resultado de la combinación de variables como la raza, etnicidad, género, y/o clase social, no
se puede desestimar el alcance de su aportación a las tradiciones fílmicas femenina, británica y
afro-diaspórica. Aplicando un enfoque comparativo y transcultural a The Passion of
Remembrance codirigida por Maurine Blackwood e Isaac Julien, este estudio pone de
manifiesto la s múltiples formas en que sus obras contribuyeron tanto al desarrollo
epistemológico del movimiento de las artes británicas negras (British Black Arts Movement) en
las décadas de los años 80 y 90, como al establecimiento de lo que se ha venido a llamar el
cine postcolonial británico.
Palabras clave: diáspora caribeña; cine postcolonial; feminismo transnacional; genero;
etnicidad.
"The empowering force of the representation of surviving Creole cultural forms
in fiction: steelpan, calypso and language in Earl Lovelace’s Is Just a Movie”
María Grau Perejoan, Universitat de Barcelona
Abstract: The quest for reflecting the world of the ordinary people of Trinidad and Tobago, and
this way help at making sense of the Trinbagonian society can be said to be one of the main
characteristics of Earl Lovelace’s work. In this paper, I will be using his most recent novel Is Just
a Movie (2011) to focus on how Lovelace’s work is ultimately a force to give validity to a world
and culture despised and this way, empower the ordinary people. I will argue that the inclusion
of Creole cultural forms such as the steelpan, calypso and Trinidadian English Creole will serve
to validate the indigenous culture. As I will demonstrate, Lovelace, as an activist-artist, proposes
and encourages counter discourses to those government-sanctioned disempowering ideologies
that negate all forms of Creole culture. All in all, the novel serves to validate a culture and
acknowledge the people who have struggled for this culture to survive years of oppression and
contempt. It also recognises the need for Caribbean governments to, instead of negating the
culture produced in the region and offering somebody else’s, fully recognise and enthrone
Caribbean fiction for the Caribbean region to fully win political sovereignty.
Keywords: Creole culture, empowering force, Earl Lovelace, fiction, survival
“CanLit in the Global Market: the Capital(ist) Value of Multiculturalism”
Belén Martín Lucas, Universidade de Vigo
Abstract: Translation studies have demonstrated in recent years the increasingly relevant role of
literary translation in the policies of nation branding and cultural diplomacy, directly addressed
to encouraging trade in foreign countries. The capitalistic forces of neoliberal globalization not
only benefit from such governmental encouragement of trade, but determine to a greater degree
the type of texts to undergo the economic and cultural transactions that translation involves. I
propose to examine here how exported Canadian literature contributes to the nation branding of
Canada as a multicultural country, and to evaluate the success or failure of current marketing
strategies towards this goal. I will focus specifically on the case of CanLit in Spain to consider
the reception of multicultural Canadian literature in our country.
KEY WORDS: Public diplomacy, multiculturalism, South Asian Canadian Literature, translation,
marketing and reception
SESIÓN 2:
“Widening Perceptions of Sri Lankan Muslims: Ameena Hussein’s The Moon in
the Water”
María Isabel Alonso Breto, Universidad de Barcelona
Abstract: The paper discusses the first novel by Muslim Sri Lankan author Ameena Hussein.
Trained as a sociologist, Hussein had previously published two acclaimed collections of short
stories, and is one of the founders of Perera & Hussein, an enterprising publishing house based
in Colombo which is gaining merited recognition. Focusing on a young woman with an openminded understanding of religion and of community obligations, in The Moon in the Water
(2009) Hussein explores some cultural entanglements of Sri Lankan Muslims, and the effort
some members of the community need to do so as to try and undermine the strictures imposed
on them by faith and custom. While in Sri Lanka researchers have detected a hardening of
Islamic doctrines among the Muslim communities, the novel posits a humane and
compassionate version of religion, particularly Islam, inspired on Sufism, at a distance from
fundamentalist versions turned into ossified cultural mores which do not respond to the people’s
actual spiritual demands. The novel thus reads as a symptom of the opposing forces that seem
to be at stake in many Muslim cultures of our days, between fundamentalism and increasingly
moderate views.
“Glocal Routes and Roots in the Urban Wilderness: Timothy Taylor’s Stanley
Park”
Alicia Menéndez Tarrazo, Universidad de Oviedo
Abstract: Stanley Park, the first novel by Canadian author Timothy Taylor, was published in
2001 to critical acclaim and nationwide commercial success. Set in late-1990s Vancouver, it
follows young chef Jeremy Papier as he pursues his dream of running a successful restaurant
based on his own concept of contemporary cuisine: innovative but simple, using only local
ingredients in an attempt to remind people of their roots and their connection to the land. The
narrative is articulated around the secrets hidden in Stanley Park and the protagonist’s gradual
process of discovery and self-discovery. Stanley Park addresses contemporary issues like the
impact of economic and cultural globalization on the city and its inhabitants, the central role of
consumption and its subversive possibilities, the interplay between the local and the global, the
construction of rooted versus rootless identities, and our changing relationship with nature. This
paper examines the representation of the park in Taylor’s novel, focusing on the ways in which
this area of the city is used, perceived and imagined by its inhabitants, and paying especial
attention to issues of urban mobility.
“The Female Transports: Pharmaceutical prescriptions and the place of
Surgeons’ journals in the FFRG project”
Susan Penelope Ballyn Jenney, Universitat de Barcelona
Abstract: There is absolutely no doubt that much of the work carried out by surgeon
superintendents on convict transports enabled the emergence of modern medicine both at sea
and on shore. The journals kept by these medical practictioners are a formiddable testimony to
fighting illnesses in the nineteenth century. For twenty years I have worked in all areas of
convict history in England and Australia and have spent hours delving into Surgeons’ journals
as part of a project of biographical convict recovery. Now my task, as part of The Female
Factory Research Group, is the transcription of journals transporting women and children to Van
Diemen’s Land. Apart from actually reading and transcribing the script, my main problem is the
transcription of pharmeceutical prescriptions used on board. The symbols used vary from ship
to ship and even the same surgeon may use a different script on different ships, moving from
Latin to extended Latin, Coptic Latin, Greek. It is this part of the transcription that provokes the
complications; first decipher the script, then the symbols, then what they mean. In this paper I
want to discuss the symbols encountered and how we attempt to solve them. I shall use case
notes and powerpoint illustrations from my current work to elucidate the methodology we apply
when working on these prescriptions and the aims of the research we do.
SESIÓN 3:
“Can Literature Inscribe Alternative Spaces of Emotion?”
Participantes: Elena Igartiburu (U Oviedo), Alejandra Moreno (U Oviedo), Irene
Pérez (U Oviedo)
Abstract: Traditionally, emotions bring somehow attached to their definition very well delimited
and stable spaces in which they can develop; as well as they are also assigned well defined
objects towards which they should be oriented. Nonetheless, a discursive approach to feeling,
undertaken from a literary point of view, opens up the possibility of a destabilization of dominant
definitions which, at the same time, provides a way in which alternative spaces of emotion can
be inscribed. Taking this into consideration, the round table shall analyze the works by Pauline
Melville’s The Ventriloquist’s Tale, Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love, Mallika
Krishnamurthy’s Six Yards of Silk and Sugu Pillay’'s The Chandrasekhar Limit and Other
Stories. In the different postcolonial contexts in which these novels take place, main characters
experience a, sometimes, unbearable social, cultural and/or ideological pressure that
demonizes, stigmatizes or considers out of place the different feelings that swamp their bodies.
As they struggle to find a place for these emotions to survive, they will flee or stay, but always in
the end construct or negotiate an alternative space of their own in a winding strategy that may
lead even to their death.
Key words: emotion, displacement, in-betweeness, longing, loss, love, place, space.