Making a Difference
Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media,
Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS)
Book of Abstracts
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Sadia AGSOUS
INALCO
Defining the ‘Other’ (Palestinians) in Novels Written in Hebrew by Israeli Palestinians
Israeli Palestinians belong to the Palestinian community which remained in Israel after 1948.
Most of its literature is published in Arabic; however a small portion of its literary production exists in
Hebrew.
Novels written by Palestinians who are Israeli citizens and published in Hebrew offers an interesting and
important field for the study of the representation and the construction of Otherness. ‘The Other’ can
be considered as alien (Israeli Jews) or familiar (Palestinians from the Territories and the Diaspora).
Some authors use two major identity poles - Israeli and Palestinian - from which they can decide what
to include and what to exclude to construct the identity of their Palestinian Israeli characters. However,
it appears that the familiar ‘Other’ (Palestinian) presents more problems and questioning.
The study of In a New Light by Attalah Mansour (b. 1934), Arabesques by Anton Shammas (b. 1950) and
Dancing Arabs by Sayed Kashua (b. 1975) reveals that the main characters of these novels construct an
identity as Israeli Palestinians by first defining the identity of other Palestinians and then defining their
own in relation to that identity.
The concept of Minor literature, proposed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, is used to study this
aspect of Israeli Palestinian literature in Hebrew. It highlights the use of the language of the majority
(Hebrew) in the literature of a minority (Israeli Palestinians). This concept facilitates the definition of
the bilingual character of the Israeli Palestinians, poses in an explicit way the function of the language
and can help highlight the linguistic aspect of defining ‘the Other’.
Page 2 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Lydia AIT SAADI
INALCO
Representations of the French Colonialism within Post-Independence Algerian History Textbooks
I will highlight throughout the presentation of texts and photographs in Algerian history textbooks, the
representation made of both the deemed exogenous to the Algerian nation's characters, such as French
and Europeans settlers in Algeria, on one part, but also the French military contingent on the other.
I will compare these representations of that “other” westerner, with those images assumed for
themselves, by Algerians, of their known endogenous characters which constitute the image they have
of their identity in this becoming nation. The illustrations will be taken namely from the Algerian
resistance fighters and we will discuss other images that we consider necessary for the demonstration,
in the sense that they deal with those mixed national ethnic elements constituted, in the one hand, by
the Algerian's indigenous Jews, and in the other hand, those elements constituted by the Harkis, who
are indigenous ethnical Algerians.
These familiar elements which are presented in the Algerian textbooks as the "Others" are
instrumented to set a vision of a “permanent enemy to fight” aiming by that at building-up and
strengthening the Algerian nation, by contrast, in the sense that their exists an exterior enemy, to fight,
in order both to identify oneself with the Algerian nation, and exclude the “Other” from it, as the
Algerian nation is defined by the permanent struggle against those external and endogenous forces that
try to prevent the advent of the Algerian nation which has suffered colonialism throughout its millenary
history.
Page 3 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Toru AOYAMA
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Localization of the Other in the Indonesian Film "Opera Jawa": A Case of Telling a Ramayana Story in a
Muslim Community
Otherness in an Asian culture does not always deal with the West as the Other; the Other also can be
another Asian culture and can remain significant over a span of millennium.
This paper analyzes the Garin Nugroho's Indonesian film "Opera Jawa" in the light of the localization of
the Ramayana as the Other in the contemporary cultural context of the predominantly Muslim
Javanese audience. The Ramayana, an epic story of Indian Hinduism, has fundamentally influenced
Javanese culture. The film not only re-tells the story of the Ramayana set in the contemporary
Indonesia but also manages to re-create it in a simultaneously modern and traditional form with a fresh
interpretation.
Three layers of the Ramayana are identified in the narrative of the film: the Ramayana story shared by
the Javanese audience; the reference to the theatrical production of the Ramayana played by the
characters; and the story narrated in the film where the courses of action of the characters correspond
to those of the Ramayana.
Because of the complexity of the narrative structure and the deviation of the story from the traditional
Ramayana, to fully appreciate the film, the Javanese audience is on the one hand required to be familiar
with every nuance of the Ramayana epic, but on the other hand encouraged to allow full rein to their
imagination. In other words, the film challenges the audience to re-examine the Other in their own
culture from both Muslim and non-Muslim perspectives.
It has been argued in the studies of the pre-modern history of Southeast Asia that the localization of
Indian cultural tradition, in particular that of Hinduism and Buddhism, played a critical role in the
formation of the culture of Southeast. The paper suggests that the process of localization still remains
to be relevant and does produce an artistically creative representation.
Page 4 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Ursula BAUMGARDT
INALCO
How does African Oral Literature treat Otherness?
A four years research program of UMR “Langage, Langues et Cultures d’Afrique Noire” (LLACAN),
associated with INALCO at Paris, has analyzed this question. More than twenty scolars have contributed
to the book that will be published in 2011/2012. It is an illustration of representations of otherness in a
South-South perspective, as African oral literature does not focus on Europe.
Page 5 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Eddie BERTOZZI
SOAS
Strangers at Home. An Account on Minority Film in the People’s Republic of China (1950s-2000s)
Culturally far away from the Han ethnic minority yet enclosed within the Chinese geographical borders,
the ethnic minorities in the People’s Republic of China represent an interesting case of “domestic
other”.
Since their institution as a genre in the late 1950s, minority films have constituted a privileged space for
the negotiation of issues such as ethnicity and nationhood. However one could hardly consider these
works as an attempt to truthfully depict the minority per se, despite diverging cinematic waves have
differently dealt with this topic. During the Maoist era, stereotypical portrayals limited the
representation to a series of folk dances, songs and eroticized images, displaying an insisted Hancentred viewpoint to celebrate the majority’s cultural hegemony and the construction of the Chinese
nation-state. Later on, the new Chinese cinema of the 1980s has been alternatively considered as a
continuation of or a challenge to the previous sinocentrist attitude, nevertheless its exotic fashion still
appears to be more an allegorical means to deal with issues exclusively pertaining to the Han majority
than a truthful representation of the minorities’ otherness. Furthermore, recent examples in the genre
has focused on the culture clash between the Han majority and the ethnic minorities, foregrounding
the issue of the preservation of one’s cultural identity in times characterized by accelerated
globalization, while possibly positioning the minority as the real subject of the narration for the first
time.
Taking into account a group of significant minority films from different cinematic epochs – Five Golden
Flowers (1959), Third Sister Liu (1960), Serfs (1963), Sacrificed Youth (1985), The Horse Thief (1985),
Courthouse on the Horseback (2006), and Ghost Town (2009) – the present analysis aims at considering
the main developments of the genre in the context of Chinese cinema, highlighting in particular the
specific cinematic gazes that has been adopted to represent the minorities and their otherness.
Page 6 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Sandra BORNAND
INALCO
How Can We Represent the other in the Songhay-Zarma Society? The Example of the Story ‘Tula’
This paper will examine the representations of otherness and identity in a special society: the SonghayZarma of Niger. I will analyze how a jasare (griot, who knows and tells the genealogies and the stories of
'noble' families) narrates the story of Tula which describes the transformation of a young girl in a spirit.
This narrative approaches the transfiguration of the closest (the beloved child of a prestigious songhay
family) in a evil spirit ( the image of the most radical otherness), as if they were in the other an
irreducible element of proximity. We will see how this transformation process appears here as a
metaphor for change of status when a girl gets married.
By the time dimension involved in the narrative, this narrative allows us to deconstruct the process that
lies at the heart of representations of self and others in a specific society and "dissects " the linguistic
mechanisms behind these representations, but also mechanisms of appropriation and exclusion. For
the question of otherness inevitably refers to a query on how the speaker – in a specific situation of
communication – perceives himself, we will see that the other can be built only in opposition to oneself
and to the familiar.
Page 7 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Olivier BOUGNOT
INALCO
The recognition of the Cultural Otherness in post-Partition’s East Pakistani Fictions (1947-1971)
This paper aims at questioning the way the complex inter-play of “exogenous” and “indigenous”
components and cleavages in the construction of the nation in South Asia passes through fictional
discourses and can haunt imaginary fields. Using the example of Bangladesh, a former province of
colonial India then former East Pakistan, and with a close analysis of the linguistic and socio-cultural
material and the narrative processes in Abul Mansur Ahmed’s Jiban Kṣudhā (“Lust for Life”, 1955) and
Shawkat Osman’s Janani (“The Mother”, 1958), this paper shows how fictional writings accommodate
and unveil the ambiguities that lie behind the construction of the Bengali Muslim identity. It considers
how these novels deal with such concept as “ijjat” (honour, dignity) to challenge a hieratic identity and
to re-domesticate “otherness” in the bipolar Post-partition context. It will also explore Akhtaruzzaman’s
novel Khoyāb nāmā (“The Book of Dreams”, 1996) thus questioning, in the framework of secular Postindependence (1971), the “otherness” as a crucial factor of imagined – legendary – class identities.
Page 8 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Michel BOZDÉMIR
INALCO
The Other of the Other. Stereotypes of Arabs in Turkey
Do the Turcs need the Arabes to define themselves ? Does language give us some keys to the different
representations of the Other ? How then can we cope with the definitional contradictions ?
It will be of course random to fixe the features of the Other from some popular expressions, which may
leave quite xenophobic expressions and confirm also that sharing the same faith does not necessarily
exclude the negative perceptions of the Other.
Without going to a sociology of perception of the Otherness, we can reasonably attempt to identify
watersheds and their fluctuations through time and historical circumstances. This will enable us to
highlight in this paper, the versatility of clichés and their distribution in the social and cultural strata.
So we will try to follow the fluctuation of the image of the Arab as the Other of the Turcs from their
early encounter at the begining of the islamisation up to their recent reprochment after their divorce,
during the first world war. The paper will take the « Otherization » not a immobile and frozen reality,
but as a complex process shaped by socio-political-international developments.
Page 9 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Remco E. BREUKER
Leiden University
Too Close for Comfort. South Korean Perceptions of Vietnam during the Vietnam War
The South-Korean involvement in the Vietnam War is still hardly known, despite its size (350,000 South
Korean soldiers served in Vietnam) and its significance in East Asia (the South Korean economic miracle
was only possible because of it). Vietnam was a strange place to be for South-Korean soldiers, because
they were confronted with what was in effect the immediate past of the Korean peninsula: a country
engaged in a bloody civil war between the international forces of capitalism and communism. Fighting
alongside the US, South-Korean GI’s found themselves playing the role of the foreign invader and
occupier; the very role US GI’s had played in Korea less than two decades earlier. This ironic twist of
history gave rise to some very intricate patterns of identifications and perceptions of the familiar other:
patterns which are still alive and significant today. The profits accrued during the Vietnam War were
essential for South Korea’s rapid economic developments during the seventies, but the suffering South
Korea had caused Vietnam, a fellow Asian country, has rarely been confronted outright in South Korea,
whether in the media, arts or in historiography. The discourse that came into being instead stressed
South-Korean suffering as being as great as that of the Vietnamese and harnessed the mirror-like image
of Vietnamese history within the narrative of South Korean economic development for the sake of
South Korean discourses of identity and history. This paper will look into the formation and
maintenance of these South Korean perceptions of Vietnam against the background of the Korean
involvement in the Vietnam War in media, literature and cinema. It will emphasize the ambiguous and
often contradictory nature of these perceptions of an Other that only too recently had been the self
and was still culturally and historically too close for comfort.
Page 10 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Mathieu CAPEL
INALCO
Tearing down the Veil of normality. Subject and Self-Negation in the Wake of the Sixties
“I is another”: Rimbaud’s statement has been filmmaker Yoshida Kijû’s motto since the beginning of his
career in 1960, as one can read in his numerous writings. But Yoshida shall not be isolated from the
likes of Oshima Nagisa, his “Shochiku New Wave” mate, nor from Matsumoto Toshio, whose Eizô no
hakken, published in 1963, stands as a landmark in Japanese cinema history, for it provided the main
theoretical basis for the renewal of Japanese film industry throughout the Sixities, defining new goals
and ethics.
Shutai/shutaisei (subject and subjectivity) had been the keywords in numerous fields of study
(literature, philosophy, economics and so on) since the defeat, as J. Victor Koschmann retraces in his
Revolution and subjectitivity in Postwar Japan. For obscure reasons, cinema had to wait the end of the
Fifities to integrate those notions. But to each field its own shutai: in cinema the debate on shutai
appears with the waning of former generation(s), when Yoshida, Oshima or Matsumoto began to
diagnose in Japan’s “Great masters” the same failure they found in Italian neorealism leaders when
confronted with a new situation, dramatically different from postwar.
As Matsumoto states, Neorealism confronted the “Other” in its most brutal and irrational guise among
the ruins of the defeat, as was the case for Kurosawa, Imai or Mizoguchi in Japan. But, what if this
blatant alterity disappears from sight, covered, in a newly rebuilt Japan, by what Matsumoto called “the
veil of normality”? Grounded on Sartrian existentialism and the writings of Nakai Masakazu, shutai
theories try then to locate the new place of otherness from the constant crash of one’s inner self into
outside reality.
Page 11 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Anne CASTAING
INALCO
“The Other Voice”. Questioning Women’s Agency in Partition Narratives
Many recent studies (Urvashi Butalia, Kamla Bhasin & Ritu Menon, Partha Chatterjee) claim they wish
to restore women’s agency at the centre of the History of the Indian nation, thus responding to several
decades during which the crucial role they played was implicitly denied. The question of abducted
women during Partition, which was dealt with legally just after Independence but was for a long period
of time deprived of its reality by a vast nationalist metaphorization evoking the truncation of the
nourishing mother, has recently given way to an ideological reversal which aims at promoting “raw” life
narratives through women’s points of view, evacuating all “allegories” of the violence and recalling the
victims’ individuality. This question thus takes over a novel like Amrita Pritam’s Pinjar, which enables
the expression of the woman’s voice, raised against a deprivation of its own agency and history.
However, beyond all debates concerning the narratives “gender”, the exception that Pinjar represents
questions the relationship between literature and historical mythicization or repression. Concerning
woman’s agency during Partition, literature seems indeed quite reluctant to extricate itself from the
fetters of the grand narratives of womanliness. One wonders, as a consequence, if a second voice of
Partition is possible. Is woman’s discourse possible beyond discourses on woman? Examining Hindi
(Krishna Sobti, Krishna Baldev Vaid, Agyeya) and Urdu (Rajinder Singh Bedi, Saadat Hasan Manto)
partition narratives, this paper aims at questioning the ability of literature, as well as the strategies
implemented, to allow the expression of woman’s voice, confined in a social, domestic and symbolic
position of essentialized womanliness pre-established by a patriarchal imagination.
Page 12 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Yongkyu CHANG
HUFS-IAS
Language practice in Kenya: Creating a new language through excluding others
In Kenya, Swahili and English have served as dominant and hegemonic languages since independence in
1963. These two ‘structured’ languages have wielded strong influence over the public and official
domains of Kenya. Swahili is the medium of instruction for primary education whilst English is a lingua
franca for office and business, and the medium of instruction for high-level education. The younger
generation identifies the two languages as ‘authoritative’ mediums of the older generation and tries to
distance oneself from the older one by constructing their own language, Sheng.
Sheng is a Swahili-based patois or slang-based language, which has developed in the Eastland of
Nairobi, where most of the residents are migrant workers from rural areas having different ethnic
backgrounds. Although the grammar, syntax, and much of the vocabulary are drawn from Swahili,
Sheng borrows vocabularies from English and from vernaculars, such as, Gĩkũyũ, Luo and Kamba, ect. It
is widely known as ‘lugha ya mtaa’ (street language) by the older generation which is vulgar, flimsy,
alien and unstructured in character.
Challenging the leadership of the older generation, the Kenyan youth accepts Sheng as an unofficial
‘lingua franca’ for communication and identification. It is not easy for the older generation to catch up
with the younger generation in acquiring the language of Sheng, for the young intentionally twists
sentences and the meanings of vocabularies. The youth wants to distance oneself from the older
generation who are largely considered one of the main contributors to the underdevelopment and
poverty of the country. Sheng, as an unofficial lingua franca for the Kenyan youth, is a strong means to
an end of not only distinguishing oneself from the older generation, but also creating its own domain of
identification.
Page 13 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Pauline CHERRIER
INALCO
Representations of Japanese-Brazilians in Japanese Media. Between Us and Them
The case of Japanese-Brazilians’ representation in Japanese media offers an example of how the image
of the Other can be both relatively constructed and/or deconstructed.
Japanese-Brazilians or “nikkei-Brazilians,” are Brazilians of Japanese descent who began emigrating
legally to Japan in the early 1990s. Their Japanese ancestors left Japan at the beginning of the 20 th
century when emigration was an official means to help Japan solve its endemic poverty and
overpopulation issues. In the city and state of Sao Paulo, where most immigrants settled, they became
a successful minority that, while culturally accepted, remained to be ethinically designated as
“Japanese”. Their “hyphenated identity” (Lesser, 1999) allows them, especially for mixed JapaneseBrazilians (as opposed to Japanese-Brazilians of “pure” Japanese descent), to define themselves as
alternatively Brazilians or Japanese according to the situation.
The modification of Japanese immigration law in 1990 enabled second and third generation Japanese
descendants to come and fill unqualified job positions in Japan. Since then, they have been migrating to
Japan where they now form the third largest foreign community : 230 552 of the 1.5 million JapaneseBrazilians lived in Japan as of 2010. As factory workers, foreign immigrants and reminders of Japan’s
past poverty, they are usually negatively represented in Japanese media. Yet their ethnic proximity with
the Japanese officially justified their migration. As foreigners of Japanese origin, concurrently, they
were expected to culturally behave as such. This was presumed for Japan as way to avoid multicultural
issues that other host countries face.
We will analyze here the variations in public discourse about Japanese-Brazilians in order to understand
in which circumstances they are represented as nikkei, the “close” others, or as complete foreigners.
We will pay particular attention to their media exposure during the economic crisis of 2009 (post
Lehman shock), when for the first time they appeared on the frontpage of major japanese periodicals.
We will also explore the reasons behind the emergence of Japanese-Brazilian models in Japanese
media.
Page 14 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Tan-Ying CHOU
INALCO
Representing Foreign Workers in Taiwanese films. A multicultural lesson for a Taiwanese audience ?
The presence of foreign workers in Taiwan dates from 1989. The term “外勞” itself (literally “foreign
labors”) does not carry a pejorative connotation. Yet it is often referred to a stereotyped image of
“workers coming from countries with inferior economic and cultural development” among Taiwanese
people. For inhabitants living on this island which had been closed upon itself for a long time, these
new faces represented perfectly “the excluded Other” of the society.
As the number of foreign workers has increased over the past two decades, Taiwanese people realized
that their daily lives depend more and more on the physical labor or/and nursing work provided by
these “outsiders” from Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, etc. Their being aware of the
phenomenon, along with political discourses in Taiwan which have focused lately on multiculturalism,
leads to some new fictional creations dealing with foreign workers’ life in Taiwan. For example, 娘惹滋
味（Nyonya’s Taste of Life）, a television film broadcasted on Taiwan Public Television channel in 2007,
and two feature films 歧路天堂（Detours to Paradise）and 台北星期天（Pinoy Sunday）, released
respectively in 2009 and 2010. By choosing foreign workers as film protagonists, they fulfilled certain
social and political expectations; nevertheless, they had to find a balance between art and box office.
Through the comparison of these three examples, I would like first to show how a new generation of
Taiwanese filmmakers represents these foreign workers’ image in our day. It will be interesting then to
think about if these movies, supposed to fight against the prejudice and hidden racial discrimination,
really help us to understand better “the Other”, or just take a long way back to the reflection of “Self”.
Page 15 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Alain DÉSOULIÈRES
INALCO
Urdu Literature and the Character of the Arab Hero in Indian Cinema and TV Series
The character of the Arab hero in Indian cinema and TV series, in the case of adaptation of the “Arabian
Nights” in Urdu is a case of using the idea of Otherness in the context of modern Indian cultural
representations. Since the beginning of modern Urdu fiction and drama, Persian heroes and even Arab
ones - coming along with the Persian background, were often inspiring Urdu fiction and of course Indian
drama from the very beginning ; even late Mughal miniature art with the representation of the
adventures or Amir Hamza testify that point. At the beginning of 20th Century, some authors did not
hesitate in representing Arab and Muslim Spain (an idealized Al Andalus). Earlier, the translation, and
adaptation of the “Arabian Nights” into Urdu popular fiction that took place at the very end of 19th
century is indeed a very interesting case study of revival of a foreign mythical context and heroes into
the North Indian and Indo-Persian cultural, and political context. Indeed the very popular heroes such
as Sheherazad, Alauddin or Ali Baba and the “Thief of Baghdad”became almost immediately heroic
figures of the silver screen in spite of their obvious non Indian origins. The role of the Parsi drama and
theatre in the invention of Indian cinema is well known. Although Indian and hindu mythology were a
powerful source of inspiration for them. But Indo-Persian culture as an Indian heritage was also very
dear to them and it was sensed as a consensual and popular theme. From the very beginning the
Bombay studios understood that the so called Arabian Nights would be a success story in India, as it
was in the West, but with a cutting edge : Baghdad and the Arab hero had always been present in their
Indo Iranian culture.
Page 16 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Noémi GODEFROY
INALCO
A Brief Summary of Japanese-Ainu Relations from Edo to Meiji
From the beginning of the 17th century to the Meiji period, Japan chose to consolidate the newly unified
state and protect itself from foreign pressure by the selective exclusion of contacts with most Asian and
European people. During these two and a half centuries of partial seclusion, Japan sill maintained
contact with a selected few; among them, the Ainu people.
During the Sakoku period, relations between Japan and the Ainu were based on economical domination
and dependency. In this regard, their foreignness and “barbaric appearance” - their qualities as inferior
‘Others’ - were emphasized by the regular staging of such diplomatic practices as “barbarian
audiences”, thus highlighting the Japanese cultural and territorial superiority.
As foreign territorial pressure rendered the area more and more unstable by the end of the 18 th
century, many amongst the intellectual elite surrounding the shogun started to promote a firmer
control of the area, military modernization, and even proper colonization. Moreover, at the beginning
of the 19th century, thinkers such as Aizawa Seishisai and his concept of ‘national polity’ (国体 kokutai)
sowed the seeds of a new Japanese sovereignty and identity. From 1868, the construction of the Meiji
nation-state required the assimilation and acculturation of the Ainu people. As Japan underwent what
Fukuzawa Yukichi would refer to as the “opening to civilization” (文明開化 bunmei kaika) by learning
from the West, it also plays the role of the civilizer towards the Ainu.
The relationship between Japan and the Ainu during the Edo period and at the turn of Meiji can be
theorized by the concept of “supplanting societies”, or that of “internal colonialism”. Its historical case
study highlights the evolution of Japan’s self-image and identity, from a newly unified state - whose
ultramarine relations are inspired by a Chinese-inspired ethnocentrism and rejection of outside
influence (華夷秩序, ka.i chitsujo) - to an aspiring nation-state, seeking to assert itself while avoiding
colonization.
Page 17 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Hilaria GÖSSMANN
University of Trier
A Bridge over a “Wide and Deep Ocean”? Representing the Korean Minority in Japanese TV Dramas
Japanese TV dramas can be regarded as a discussion forum for social aspects,
especially concerning
the subject of gender constructions. Since 2001, intercultural encounters have also become a common
topic.
In 2003, the Korean drama “Fuyu no sonata” (Winter Sonata) was aired in Japan, giving rise to a
“Korean boom”. In the following year, a member of the Korean minority in Japan became the heroine of
a Japanese TV drama series for the first time. The female protagonist in “Tokyo wankei – Destiny of
Love” (Fuji TV) falls in love with a Japanese man, the son of her mother’s ex-lover. Whereas her
mother’s relationship, which took place about a quarter of a century ago, has failed, in the case of the
heroine in Tokyo wankei, who lives in contemporary Japan, there is a happy ending to her love story.
The paper will analyse the representations of the Korean minority as well as the love story of the
heroine, a career woman from a wealthy family in a relationship with a Japanese blue-collar worker.
Accordingly, the barriers between them are not only because of ethnicity, but also class. The bridge
over Tokyo bay, which unites the places where both of them work, symbolises that today, it seems to
be possible for lovers to bridge such kinds of gaps.
Using this series as a case study, the paper will discuss the possibilities and limitations of the TV drama
genre in dealing with social problems.
Page 18 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Robbie B. H. GOH
National University of Singapore
Marking Difference. The Overseas Indian and the Politics of the Body in Amitav Ghosh and Aravind
Adiga
In the recognisably Fordian phase of capitalist production, native bodies in the Third World become
transformed into abstract units of labour for the markets in the First World, in the process losing the
authenticity of native cultural traditions. In a post-Fordian globalized order, however, the figure of the
native is multifarious, ranging from the possible roles of cosmopolitan professional to the virtual
cosmopolitan in call-centres and internet chat-rooms, the the abject cosmopolitan migrant labourer,
the exoticised villager. The range of possibilities opened up by the global order seems to require a new
form of differentiation, in which cosmopolitan elites demonstrate their qualifications and status by
their ability to shed markings of otherness in the body, demonstrating their ability to fit into the global
order of intellectual consciousness. This in turn necessitates a politics of the body which emphasises
the bodily markings – smells, skin colour, corporeality, strength, sickness, deformities – of the abject
cosmopolitan and the rural native, in order to differentiate the latter from the intellectualised order of
global cosmopolitans. Indian Anglophone writing plays on this distinction, creating the figure of the
overseas Indian who initially fits awkwardly into the Indian society to which he or she returns, only to
finally participate in the transformation of elements of that society into a new, intellectualised order
that accords with transnational flows of money and values. In the process, nativised figures marked by
the politics of the body are abjected and broken, their fates a sign of their inability to navigate the
global order. Novels such as Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide and The Circle of Reason, and Aravind
Adiga’s The White Tiger, among others, thus insist on the differentiation of the marked native as a
means of creating the abstract space of the cosmopolitan overseas Indian within globalisation.
Page 19 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Eva-Lotta HEDMAN
Asia Research Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science
‘Illegal Migrants’ National Citizens and Malaysia’s New Plural Society
Abstract
A global landmark of James Bond fame, the Petronas Towers also serves as an icon of Malaysia’s
economic growth and prosperity. Much of this growth and prosperity has been propelled by the hard
and cheap labour of migrant workers, which, at any given time in recent years, make up an estimated
third of the total workforce in Malaysia. While labour migration is hardly unique to Malaysia, the
structural dependence of entire economic sectors, including construction, upon migrant workers is
remarkably pronounced in the country. It is also the case that, viewed comparatively, migrant workers
in Malaysia include an unusually high number of persons whose presence is deemed illegal under the
country’s Immigration Act.
This paper explores media (re)presentations of migrant workers in contemporary Malaysia. It notes the
overall invisibility of migrant workers as workers, whether as domestic workers in the privacy of their
employers’ homes or as manual labourers on construction sites, agricultural plantations, or factory
floors. It further contrasts this invisibility with a media and political discourse within which migrant
workers remain inextricably marked by illegality, violence, illness and/or perversion, whether as
perpetrators or victims. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and subsequent content analysis of Malaysian
newspapers and magazines, the paper underscores the significance of such media (re)presentations of
‘illegal migrants’ for the social (re)production of ‘official nationalism’ in Malaysia’s new plural society.
Page 20 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Ina HEIN
University of Vienna
Constructions of Okinawa as a ‘different Japan’ in Media and Literature. A Postcolonial Struggle about
Representation
Ever since the so called “Okinawa-boom” has taken hold of Japanese popular culture in the mid-1990s,
Okinawa, Japan’s southernmost prefecture, has been reduced to always the same recurring stereotypes
by the Japanese mass media. It has been commodified as an exotic, peaceful island paradise bringing a
iyashi, or healing, experience to its Japanese visitors, whereas the prefecture's problems and conflictual
relation to the Japanese main islands keep being (deliberately) ignored. Representations of Okinawa by
Okinawan intellectuals, writers and filmmakers, on the other hand, tend to take a critical stance against
these popular images of Okinawa. In my paper I would like to place the emphasis on the latter: the
counter-discourse to Japanese hegemonic representations of Okinawa as an exotic, ‘different Japan’. I
suggest to
1)
discuss and analyze some concrete examples of Okinawa representations in media and
literature, focusing on the question how these are constructed in terms of themes and
narrative modes,
2)
ask how they can be explained within the theoretical frame of postcolonialism and
3)
thus show how they are part of an ongoing struggle about representation in which
unequal power relations between the (ex?)colonizer and the (ex?)colonized are reflected.
The central questions will thus be: What kind of narrating strategies are employed to express resistance
against Japanese mainstream media images of Okinawa – and, is it possible to tell ‘different stories’ in
‘different ways’ at all?
Page 21 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Akiko HIRATA
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Representing Lao as the Others in Thailand. Modern Thai Cinema and Entertainment of Luk Thung
Morlam Music―
People from northeastern Thailand call themselves “Lao” yet on the other hand they call themselves
“Isan people”. Moreover, their nationality is defined as “Thai”, a part of the modern nation state of
Thailand. However, at the same time many of their traditions and customs are rooted in the Lao PDR on
the left side of the Mekong River. As the previous studies of Keyes (1967) and Hayashi (2000) have
indicated, the name “Isan” was given to the region by the Thai government.
Since the overthrow of the absolute monarchy in 1932, the Thai government took advantage of the
crisis to exert a greater influence on officials in the region to integrate the residents of the regions into
mainstream Thai society. The teaching of standard Thai language in temples was encouraged. A main
railway line was built connecting the region to Bangkok. These economic and social developments led
“Isan” people to develop an alternative identity as Isan at the expense of their former Lao identity.
Nowadays, the young and middle aged generations accept this “Isan” identity. At the same time, they
now identify themselves as part of the Thai nation rather than as Laotians who live on the right side of
the Mekong River. This attitude is pervasive in particular in the cinema and the media.
This presentation will argue how in the cinema and other forms of entertainment Isan people have
presented and have constructed “Lao-ness’ as the other, something which is not themselves any more.
During a century of Thai cinema, Lao has been represented negatively, sometimes as a target of
indignity or spite in social contexts. This produced an inferiority complex among Isan people in
Thailand and has resulted in a dilemma for the nation state of Thailand. However, a few Thai writers
from the northeastern region published the collection of essays and travel journal on Vientiane. These
writers’ literature movements of “Lao” have come to be reflected
in Thai cinema and local
entertainment. Examples of this trend are seen in the remarkable film “Sabaaidee Luang
Prabang”(2008), the entertainment of a pop star Tai Orathai of the Luk Thung Morlam music and other
songs broadcast on the radio.
Page 22 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Takahiko ISHIZAKI
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
A Representation of India in the early Edo Period of Japan
This presentation argues about a representation of India of Japanese people by comparing the Terajima
Ryoan（寺島良安）’s work Wakansansaizue（和漢三才図会）and Nishikawa Joken（西川如見）’s
work Zouho-Kaitsushoukou（増補華夷通商考）. Traditionally, the Japanese divided the whole world
into three parts, namely, Honcho 本朝 (Japan), Kara or Tou 唐 (China), and Tenjiku 天竺 (India). This
recognition of the world was connected to the Japanese Buddhism. In the Edo period, as new
knowledge about world geography was introduced to Japan, this understanding, known as SangokuSekaikan 三国世界観, gradually declined and a new understanding was developed. This new
understanding was called Godaishu 五大州; according to it, the world consists of five parts: Asia,
Europe, Libya (Africa), America, and Megaranica 墨瓦蠟泥加 (terra incognita in the South). Joken and
Ryoan were the forefront who acknowledged this new understanding. However, when we consider
those two people, it becomes clear that they continued to follow the traditional understanding of the
world. Although Joken and Ryoan seemed to believe in the new image of India which is understood by
the new geographical knowledge of the world, they could not stop relying on the word Tenjiku to
describe the world. In the early Edo period of Japan, when traditional Sangoku-Sekaikan had been
already started declining, the concept Tenjiku was still indispensable to explain the whole world. In this
presentation, I will argue about the vastness of Tenjiku in the Japanese notion of the world in the Edo
period. India was very large and important THE OTHER for the Japanese people.
Page 23 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Noriko IWASAKI, Griseldis KIRSCH, Lucien BROWN
SOAS and University of Oregon
When the Japanese ambassador meets the South Korean President... Analysing a Japanese-Korean
encounter in the Korean Film 'Good Morning, President'
In a “humorous, unthreatening” film (Hancinema, online Korean drama and movie database), a young
South Korean president summons the Japanese ambassador to discuss a tension between the two
countries. This scene with Japanese subtitle was analyzed. In this encounter, language plays a major
role in representing the other. The Japanese ambassador’s Korean was marked by a heavy Japanese
accent, which in return was also represented in the Japanese subtitle with the unconventional use of
Japanese scripts (katakana). The presence of the other and the president's display of power over the
other elevate the authority and supremacy of the young president (and his country). The display of the
power was effectively accomplished via mulitimodal means (positioning of the characters, their
postures, gestures, and language). In this paper, we particularly focus on the role of language, such as
foreign accents, choice of speech levels (formal, informal, honorific or non-honorific), choice of
language (who decides which language to use), and mediation (interpreters’ roles and their language o
and the language used in subtitles on the other). Furthermore, it shall also be worked out to what
extent cinematic techniques such as camerawork or lighting support the representation.
Page 24 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Leigh JENCO
National University of Singapore
Representing Western Others as Chinese Precedents. The China-Origins Thesis and the Ethnocentrism of
Knowledge
Toward the middle of the 19th century, a group of influential Chinese reformers sought to include
mathematics, natural sciences, and engineering in the traditional Confucian curriculum by claiming
Chinese origins for these “Western” forms of knowledge. I do not defend the factuality of this “Chinaorigins” thesis, but I do explain why Chinese thinkers might invoke it for reasons that are irreducible to
nativist pride.
Contrary to historical interpretation of the this debate, the thesis is not as an
epistemological claim about the actual origin of particular technologies, but a political claim intended to
endow foreign knowledge with recognized “membership” in existing intellectual discourse. Their task,
as I see it, was to represent otherness in ways that could discipline existing practices rather than be
assimilated by those practices. Assimilation represents difference through a process of equivalence
with existing terms; but discipline inscribes the differences presented by otherness as spurs to
innovation and refinement within some existing activity (Confucian learning, in the case of Yangwu
reformers). Their resort to a spurious historical lineage for Western knowledge reveals the difficulty of
representing otherness in ways that challenge rather than reinforce existing forms of knowledgeproduction. But they also offer implicit arguments for why such a difficult task is necessary for anyone
concerned about the ethnocentrism of knowledge. If we seek merely to represent otherness in a way
that acknowledges difference without effacing it, or to learn from it in a piecemeal way without
attending to the historically-situated discourse that originally produced it, we will fail to recognize the
capacity of foreign bodies of thought to structure our own future inquiry.
Page 25 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Michael LUCKEN
INALCO
Layers of Imitation. The Depiction of Chinese as Apes in Japanese Colonial Literature
The necessity of defining an Other is deeply connected with the depreciative value attributed to
imitation and sameness by romantic thinkers and modern thought in general. Japan, as many nonWestern countries, has been depicted for decades, all through 19th and 20th centuries, as a nonimaginative, uninventive nation, only able to ape and reproduce what was created in the West. In this
paper, we would like to show, first, how the Japanese reacted to such an image of themselves and how
they absorbed it. Secondly, we’ll focus on Kuwahara Jitsuzô (1870-1931), a renowned “orientalist” who,
in the 1920’s, used to characterize the Chinese people as a people unable to create by himself,
reproducing the rhetoric that the West were using against Japan. This example should help us to
understand that the process leading to the creation of an Otherness may paradoxically imply the
adoption of shared values.
Page 26 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Jean-Luc MARTINEAU
INALCO
Osogbo and Lagos. How to Oppose the Other with Our Regional Yoruba Festivals?
Constructing the Other from a self-construction of oneself is a very common practice in the Nigerian
cultural life and medias mostly with a single political agenda. Indeed in such a federal state, federated
states seek to strengthen their own identities in order to exist versus the centre. Because of the
difficulty to define/identify “Nigeria”, the easiest way for regional politicians to invent this Other is to
emphasize their own cultural specificities through cultural practices in order to reject the federal state
in its non-yoruba dimension despite the fact this Other cannot be considered as totally 'alien' since
nobody would dare seriously challenge the vital importance of Nigerian unity.
Lagos since 2009 and Osogbo for more than 15 years, in the yoruba south-west of Nigeria, give an
illustration of this ambition to build identities through the organisation of ceremonies/festivals in order
to strenghen a “parochial” citizenship based on regional-based structured images of themselves. In this
process, because of new internal administrative boundaries, leaders have to choose the new scale of
the identity building processes and therefore to decide who to include – sometimes in contradiction
with so-called heritages but it is also part of the re-creation of a meaningful unity for the in-comers in
the said community versus the Nigerian level.
In an attempt to gather Lagos state citizens behind him in the fight opposing Lagos to Abuja, the Lagos
state governor, A. Fashola, has re-shaped the Eyo Festival as the new symbol of a Lagos State identity.
This yoruba festival was, up to then, a confidential and island event for the only Lagosians living on
Lagos Island to celebrate an illustrious citizen of the Island few month after his death. In the same time,
the Eyo refers to the fondation of the city. Therefore it was the best ceremony to federate the divided
citizens from various part of Lagos state and from various political affiliations and to integrate some
(local) Otherness to better reject the (federal) Otherness.
This issue is at stake everywhere in Nigeria. In Osogbo, the scale of the process and its target are
different. Local leaders were rather concerned by their immediat neighbourghood. Indeed after the
creation of Osun State, it was obvious the state suffered from a lack of historical grandeur. The yearly
organisation of the Osun Festival every August has therefore the same ambition : building a local OsunOsogho identity versus the rest of the yoruba states and even the historically rooted towns like Ile-Ife.
Page 27 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Its king and the gouvernor, have decides to emphazise the role of the Osun Festival celebrating the
foundation of the town and to couple it with a secular « Osogbo Day », both celebrations gathering
christians and muslims citizens at home to celbrate an Osogbo pride. After 15 years of work, despite it
is not yet an international event as proclaim, it succeded in strenghening the Osun-Osogbo identity
versus the rest of the yoruba western states and made Osun a strongest partner for Abuja.
Page 28 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Max D. MOERMAN
Columbia University
Islands of Women and the Cartography of Identity
Islands of women, sites of both demonology and eroticism, have long occupied the borders of Japanese
cultural identity. For over five hundred years, imaginary islands of women lay at the margins of
Japanese maps defining a permeable boundary between self and other. In this paper I examine two
such sites in the history of Japanese literary and visual media: Rasetsukoku (The Land of Demonesses) a
dreaded island of female cannibals, and Nyôgogashima (the Island of Women) a fabled isle of erotic
fantasy. I trace the persistence and transformation of these sites in Buddhist tale literature across Asia,
in 12th century Japanese scriptural illustrations, in 15th century Korean maps, in 17th century Chinese
encyclopedias, and in the flourishing print culture of 18th century Japanese erotica. This paper focuses
in particular, however, on the shifting identity and location of these islands within the history of
Japanese cartography. Recognizing maps as constructions and representations of the cultural
imagination, I argue for the centrality of cartography in the spatial articulation identity and otherness.
By offering a visual history of these islands of fantasy in Japanese maps from the 14th through the 19th
century, this paper reveals the fundamental role of cartography in representing and constructing
otherness in Japanese visual culture.
Page 29 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Aiko NISHIKIDA
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Portrayed Others in Israeli and Palestinian Cinemas. Metaphorical Power Politics of Exclusion and
Identification
The Otherness is the mirror of the self, which helps to consolidate identity by distinction and exclusion.
The dichotomy applies not only to the relation between the East and the West in Orientalism, but also
to the entities among Asia and Africa. The case of Palestine and Israel may be one of the most typical
areas which reflect the dichotomy; each side has insisted one’s original identity in the area by denying
opponent Others.
The insistence can be observed obviously in Israeli and Palestinian cinemas. In most of the cinemas, the
opponent Others are portrayed as vicious invaders or even excluded from the story. “Waltz with Bashir
(2008)” by Ari Folman is an example which was screened at the Cannes Film Festival. It is an Israeli film
composed on the basis of the memory of the director in the war in Lebanon. Core issue depicted in the
film is the massacre in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp. However, there are almost no Palestinians
appearing as a subject, and the storyline follows just as a melancholic journey of the hero. The same
thing applies to “Kippur (2000)” by Amos Gitai. This complete ignorance derives from the point of view
which describes the fact, whereas it may reflect metaphorical power politics which tries to exclude the
existence of the Others as a subject on the scene. Palestinian cinemas have the same tendency which
deserves to be examined.
In other words, cinemas work as a portrait of the Others which helps to strengthen the self image.
Description or even void of description set distance with the Others and scope of identification. It is
worth studying as it has implicit power in determining framework of the conflict. The well-attended
Israeli and Palestinian cinemas especially since 2000s provide rich materials for the analysis.
Page 30 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Akane OIKAWA
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Exophonic Movies? Japanese Language in Films of 2000-2010
In these several decades, non-native authors of Japanese language, such as Ian Hideo Levy, David
Zoppetti, Arthur Binard, Yang Yi, Shirin Nezammafi have produced a prodigious amount of quality work
in Japanese literature. Meanwhile, more and more Japanese-native authors have started to produce
their works in two languages. The most outstanding of these attempts is An I Novel from Left to Right by
Mizumura Minae, printed horizontally in Japanese and English bilingual text. And also there are authors
who write in two languages, both native and non-native, such as Tawada Yoko. She describes her
attempts as “Exophony”. She defines “exophonic literature” as “the challenging idea that comes from
the intriguing creative question “How to step out of the surrounding native language world? And then
what would be the consequences.”
I will analyze the movies from the point of view of “Exophony”, focusing on the aspect of otherness
which comes out from language. To “step out of the surrounding native language world” would also
mean to be exposed to the world of others, because one who does not speak our language is often
represented as “others”.
Exophonic literature does not require multiple languages to be present in one text. Monolingual texts
are also seen as exophonic, as long as they exist outside the world of authors’ mother tongue. It is
easier to produce multilingual films than to write multilingual literature, we can find more examples in
international co-productions. I will discuss these multilingual films, especially those produced during the
years of 2000 to 2010.I would also discuss Japanese language films from the same time period as long
as the language they are exposed to is outside of the native Japanese world.
Page 31 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Delphine PAGÈS-EL KAROUI
INALCO
Migration as a Figure of Otherness in Egyptian Literature, Media and Cinema
The massive nature of Egyptian migrations over the last four decades has made them a central element
in the national imagination, cultivated by writers, filmmakers and the media but as yet largely
unexplored by researchers. Through the survey of Egyptian novels, news papers articles and movies,
this paper aims to explore the nexus between migration and otherness, and its representations.
First, we will explore how crossing national frontiers transform categories of otherness or at the
opposite stiffen them. In his novel Chicago, Alaa El Aswany describes among his characters -young
Egyptians studying in Chicago University- the prevalent feeling of ghurba (in Egyptian, the state of being
a foreigner, a stranger, used as a synonym of emigration and exile1). El Aswany shows also how,
confronted with the reality of the American system, it becomes more complicated for his character
Nagui to hate those Americans against whom he had often rebelled in Egypt. Otherness is not only
located in Western countries, but often reveals itself in the heart of Arab “brother” countries: that is
the theme of the book by Ibrahim Abdel-Méguid, The Other Place, which portrays a young Egyptian
emigrant in Saudi Arabia discovering gradually this familiar otherness.
Second, we will demonstrate that Egyptian society perceive its emigrants as familiar Others. Discourses
and representations about migration are still dominated by a very negative vision. There are a wide
variety of figures of the emigrant: from the greedy and selfish nouveau-riche returning from the Gulf to
the traitor who denies the Egyptian part of his identity by trying to be more American than the
Americans, or the exile who struggles to escape from discrimination—often a Copt—and the heromartyr who risks his life crossing the Mediterranean illegally to feed his family. The disillusions and
dangers of loss of identity caused by migration to the West are also at the heart of a number of works
of literature and cinema. As for women, they are either absent, or presented as the archetype of
dereliction of morality. This alternative between victimization and idealization of migrants, with specific
variations depending on destination, is indicative of the ambiguity of their place in Egyptian society.
Through the opportunities and also the risk of Otherness that they represent, migrants force a constant
redefinition of the national ideal.
1
Interestingly enough the West (gharb) comes from the same stem.
Page 32 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Barbara PIZZICONI, Noriko IWASAKI
SOAS
The Asian other in the Japanese TV series ‘Nihonjin no shiranai nihongo’
A Japanese language school for foreign students in Shibuya (Tokyo) is the site of an exploration of
Japan’s contemporary identity, and its relation with its own traditions as well as other cultures, in the
TV drama Nihonjin no Shiranai Nihongo. The TV series, aired in 2010 on NTV, is based on the essay
manga series by the same title, and portrays the trials and tribulations of an inexperienced but wellmeaning Japanese language teacher and a group of hard-working but rather eccentric learners. Japan’s
other is represented by the students’ countries of origin, which include America, Russia, Europe (one
student each from England, Italy, France and Sweden), and Asia. Our study explores in particular the
portrayal of Asia – interestingly represented only by two mainland Chinese students, and the role that
the Japanese language plays in such representation, through both the native and non-native usages
displayed by the various characters, and the metapragmatic commentary on the language itself woven
into in the narrative.
Page 33 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Rashi ROHATGI, Danielle TRAN
SOAS
The Other in the Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean has recently been put forward as region of study for modern literary, cultural, and
media studies. Like the Atlantic World or the Pacific Rim, it is a region tied together by historical events,
but also by the modern manifestations of the ethnolinguistic and cultural tensions created by the
historical events. Projects and events in Boston, Montreal, Southampton, Leeds, and London give shape
in academic discourse to the Indian Ocean as a discrete entity, but no such events have taken place on
the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius. In my paper I will assert that the Indian Ocean does not
have conceptual value in Mauritian self-understandings because it does not put forth an ‘Other’ as
valuable as the ‘Others’ already created by the conceptions of Mauritius as ‘African,’ ‘South Asian,’ or ‘a
Rainbow Island,’ the last of which glosses over the hidden minor islands which also comprise the
Mauritian nation. With examples from radio, newspaper, and literature, I will explore the roles these
existing ‘Others’ play: ‘African’ and ‘South Asian’ pitted against one another to both anchor Mauritius to
regions with longer and more powerful histories, and imbue those Mauritians which take either side
with that longevity and power in the Mauritian scene. ‘The Rainbow Island’ is contrasted with the
obsolete, colonial ideal of the homogeneous nation-state, but also with the messy reality of ethnic
strife that still affects Mauritian life. The ‘Others’ put forth in American and English academia for the
Indian Ocean- namely, the Atlantic and the Pacific- as well as the unity this implies with other Indian
Ocean nations- paint in brushstrokes too broad for a nation still very much caught up in the details of
who they are, what language they use, and who they want to be.
Page 34 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Muh Arif ROKHMAN
SOAS
Egyptians as Other: A Study of El Shirazy's “Ayat-ayat cinta” (Verses of Love)"
The study focuses on the representatives of Egyptians as Other in the novel Ayat-Ayat Cinta (Verses of
Love) written by Habiburrahman El Shirazy. The novel was selected as the topic of research because it
had been transformed into a film and both the book and the film were phenomena in Indonesia. The
novel was published in 2004 and had been reprinted for 23rd times in 2007 while the film had been
watched by more than 3 million Indonesian people according to MURI, the Indonesian Record Museum,
and was played in Singapura, Malaysia, Hongkong, India and Brunei (Sadzali, 2008). and was read also in
Bruney, Malaysia and Singapore (Supriadi, 2008). The story was about the experiences of a devout
Indonesian Muslim, Fahri who studied in Al Azhar Egypt and was loved by four different women: Aisha,
a Turkish-German Muslim, Maria, a Coptic Christian, Noura, an Egyptian woman, and Nurul, an
Indonesian Muslim. The story ended with Fahri’s marriage to both Aisha and Maria and the death of
Maria. The study will examine the representations of
Page 35 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Shiho SAWAI
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Liberating Fetish of “Babu” (Female Maid) in a Short Story Written by an Indonesian Female Domestic
Worker in Hong Kong Entitled “Not Yem”
In the history of Indonesian literature, “Babu (female maid)” appeared recurrently as a prominent icon
of women’s submission and subordination, representing “the Other” of the authentic Self-image of
Indonesian society expressed in urban elite males within patriarchal power relations. Indeed, this
negative representation of Babu partly permeated that of Nyai (mistress or concubine) and Bini (wife),
comprising a sort of Fetish of Indonesian literature, all of which are constructed upon women’s
subservience and/or promiscuity in exchange for a degree of power in the patriarchal social order.
However, such lowly image of Babu was overturned in a short story written by an author of female
migrant domestic worker in Hong Kong. I argue that this short story does not only subvert the
conventional image of lower-class women’s subjugation, but also effectually de-legitimized it by
inaugurating an alternative subjectivity of Babu as “the Uncanny” in Freudian sense.
This narrative is made in the context of transnational female domestic labor, through the viewpoint of a
“successful” female migrant domestic worker (MDW) toward her Uncanny colleague whom she
happened to travel with on her way back to Indonesia. The narrator exposes the Uncanny MDW’s
apparent deviation from the conventional images of Babu: her poor, old and unattractive figure,
together with her deliberately derogating the worth of migrant domestic work suggest that she is a
failed surrogate mother, sexual partner and “the National Hero”. However, later on, the MDW’s early
Uncanny image transforms, replaced with the narrator’s sympathy for the MDW’s grief and pain
experienced throughout her labor. In that sense, this story’s usage of the Uncanny effectually defamilialized Babu’s ideal-type as a willful and tricky servitude of the patriarchal order, by outlining her
sorrow and anger in it. By so doing, it successfully questioned the monolithic stereotyping of Babu
either as a consistent victim or a seducer, and thus sought to liberate the fetish of the literary
devaluation of female reproductive labor from its prevalent ideological cast.
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Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Joshua Evan SCHLACHET
Columbia University
A Chinese Table in Tokugawa Japan. Material Conventions and Cultural Representations in Nagasaki’s
Shippoku Ryori
The boundaries between styles of cuisine, like the boundaries between Tokugawa Japan and the
outside world, can be understood as more porous, fluid, and contested than conventional assessments
may suggest. The trope of Chineseness as a distinct category of foreign thought and cultural practice
was not only complicated by a long history of international exchange and influences tacitly embedded
in Japanese society, but it also continued to evolve through the tendency to delineate and circulate
both foreign and domestic imagery through the flourishing popular media of the time. This paper
explores the representation of Chineseness in shippoku ryori (‘table’ or ‘tablecloth’ cuisine), a style of
Nagasaki banquet dining popularized during the Tokugawa period. What marked shippoku ryori as
Chinese in the popular imaginary were not particular ingredients or dishes but the conventions of
etiquette and the style of material objects involved in its consumption.
Approaching cuisine as a cultural medium, I argue that such practices as dining at a communal table and
eating “family-style” from shared dishes were abstracted into culturally evocative conventions that
were understood as Chinese but could be comfortably reenacted by Nagasaki banqueters. This
abstraction of Chineseness took place alongside direct contact with the numerous Chinese merchants
stationed in Nagasaki. Japanese residents thus encountered both the tropes of Chinese representation
and the material experience of shippoku cuisine from which they derived. Frequented by both Japanese
and Chinese patrons, the teahouses of the Maruyama pleasure quarter functioned as sites for the
transfer and mediation of this ‘foreign’ knowledge. It is important to note that the appropriation of
Chinese conventions in “table cuisine” was not just a mental exercise of connoisseurship communicated
vicariously through print culture. It relied, in fact, on proximity to the everyday eating habits of the
Nagasaki Chinese community. In my view, Nagasaki functioned as a space of intra-Asian hybridity and
exchange, which challenges both the notion of Edo Japan as a closed country and Nagasaki as a
“window to the West.” I focus on the interplay between familiarity and otherness in defining the
cultural boundaries between cuisines and countries.
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Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Yiwen SHEN
Columbia University
Kibi’s Adventures in China. Chinese as a Familiar Other
The hand scroll of Kibi’s Adventures in China is a twelfth-century Japanese pictorial account of the
anecdotal adventures of Kibi no Makibi (693-775). Kibi, who historically was an envoy to China, is
depicted as imprisoned in a haunted tower by the Chinese who are jealous and embarrassed of finding
his proficiency in various intellectual accomplishments. With the aid of the ghost of Abe no Nakamaro
(698-770), another Japanese envoy starved to death in the tower by the Chinese, and of the Japanese
gods, Kibi passes three rigorous challenges and eventually causes an eclipse of the sun and moon in
China to go back to his homeland Japan. In this paper, I analyze this hand scroll’s relationship with a
preceding Chinese story in Duyang zabian, a Tang dynasty collection of stories compiled in 876, and an
account of Kibi’s adventures in Godansho, a twelfth-century Japanese collection of anecdotes. By
surveying from both the pictorial and textual aspects, my study sets out an effort to 1) explore the
process of the Japanese construction of the image of China as a familiar Other in order to complement
Japan’s own cultural identity; 2) examine how an image of a neighboring country is constructed in
ancient East Asia, concerning both the Chinese side and the Japanese side in the creation, transmission,
and adaptation
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Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Emiko STOCK
Reyum Institute – Phnom Penh
Watching ‘Airwaves’, Visualizing Chams Through a Khmer Lense. Performing The ‘Other’ Muslim In a
Cambodian TV Drama
Since its very first broadcast on CTN - the most popular Cambodian channel - the TV show “Airwaves”
scored pick audience ratings: its heroes are young, dynamic, working in a trendy radio station, they are
challenged by social issues that are a daily reality to most of the audience, and moreover they represent
a wide range of Cambodian society diversity. After a few episodes, the public could see – as the
attachment to the characters was growing – an increase in Chams representations. The Cham Muslim
minority in Cambodia was soon to become central to the drama, which revealed its primary theme:
“good relations between different sections of the community, particularly between Khmers and
Chams”.
This presentation will cross visual and discursive approaches of “Airwaves” to discuss Cham “otherness”
perception in the Khmer society. Language usage will depict assumptions on Cham dialect, but also
repetition of “politically-correct” ethnonyms encouraged by the Cambodian government. The visuals
marking “Chamness” will enable the actors – all Khmers – to embody this otherness to be viewed by all
publics – Chams and Khmers – through landmarks, dresses, body postures and social attitudes. The key
messages – tolerance, society expectations in terms of integration and behavior, diversity within the
Cambodian state - will also be used to relocate the drama in a broader context of this Muslim minority
situation within the Buddhist country.
But as we are looking at this performed “non-western other” watched and staged by another “nonwestern other”, the discussion will lead us on the limits of the western implications to the drama:
behind the Cambodian government Muslims leaders advising the show, the scripts are crafted in
London by BBC writers, and the production is funded by the US State Department. How much of “their
otherness” is therefore played when so much of “our otherness” is directing the backstage?
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Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Piyajit SUNGPANICH
INALCO
Identification/Differentiation. Representation of Oneself and Other – The Case Study of the Thai
Language
One of the particular characteristics of the Thai words is the property of categoriel and functional
versatility. Owing to the fact that the Thai language is a monosyllabic language. Neither morphological
variations nor flexional change, all categories of the language are expressed by the lexicon. To
determine syntactic functions as well as grammatical categories, the word order occupies an important
role in the syntactic system of the Thai language. From this point of view, the same word can achieve at
the same time several functions without morphological change. It is also essential to remember that
the typology of the Thai language is of the SVO type. Nevertheless, as we can learn several languages,
there would be a certain number of common properties that we can acquire the equivalent linguistic
systems. The difficulties that are raised at the interface between Thai and other foreign languages like
French is that the impossibility in word by word translation, Thai into French, is seen relevant to the
conceptual level. We note that the obstacles which prevent the passage of Thai to French comes
obviously from two important principles: on one hand, the Thai language does not belong to the IndoEuropean languages family as French does, and on the other hand, the Thai language has its specific
properties. Consequently, it is important to clarify the concept of the grammatical categories as well as
the grammatical functions. To understand the pure system of the Thai language, we thus try to trace a
pathway of meaning by taking into account its specificities while hoping to be able to find out its
internal rules, including the logic of the thought of the Thai people. This study is inspired by the theory
of the predicative and enunciative operations of Antoine CULIOLI (The TOPE) which asserts that each
marker is regarded as an observable trace of predicative and enunciative operations.
According to the case study of the Thai language published in the mass medias domain, we found that
the different kinds of the injunction encodent the institutional rules and the conventional rules in terms
of the schema action, that include the social relationship and the roles of the participants in the
enunciative process. The regularity of the injunction represents the identity of the injunction, encoded
by norm and intercomprehensive between the users of the same language. This regularity of the
injunction is the script that regulates the different kinds of the injunction. The injunction reserves the
right to incite the listener(s) to react, that provides its illocutionary force. Moreover, the force of the
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Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
injunction depends occasionally on the speaker. So the different forms of the injunction are the trace
that reveals the informational state and the state of mind of the speaker.
DISCUSSION
The finding can be applied in the class of language, cf. teaching French as a foreign language, teaching
English as a foreign language or teaching Thai as a foreign language. The teachers as native speaker of
Thai should have a strong knowledge of the Thai grammar as well as an essential grammar of a foreign
language such as English or French. Moreover, the students should also be interested in their own
language and cultures, cf. local knowledge, environment, history, art and craft, way of life, etc. Thus,
teaching a foreign language in the Thai context while utilizing the local language and cultures is a
beneficial situation. On one hand, Thai content both the Thai grammar and cultural knowledge is
relevant to students’ lives. It provides the students tools for learning and for developing communicative
skills and critical thinking. It means that Thai content will help the students build a strong foundation in
speaking, listening, reading and writing in their mother-tongue and then help them bridge into the new
language. So they will be able to go back and forth between the two (or more) languages. On the other
hand, integrating knowledge-base and integrated skills in a foreign language by giving respect to their
own culture can empower the students to think from both a multi-cultural and Thai perspective.
Consequently, they will be able to develop self-esteem and cultural identity with generic skills that can
be used throughout their academic life and beyond. Furthermore, the teachers should provide the
students’ experiences with the contextualization related to the environmental words and a realistic
context or situation such as games, dialogues, role play activity, etc. Finally, the use of contrastive
approach will help the teachers to identify the sources of errors and to deal with the specific problems
that need special emphasis. Knowing the sources of errors helps the teachers to select techniques or
activities for coping with the problems and the remedial work can be minimized.
REFERENCES
APAVATCHARUT S., 1982, L’expression des temps et des aspects verbaux en français et en thaï : étude
contrastive, Thèse de 3ème cycle, Paris III.
CERVONI J., 1991, La préposition : étude sémantique et pragmatique, Paris : Duculot.
CHANTARAWARANYOU M., 1987, Etude de la modalité : en français (Modes verbaux) et en thaï
(Auxiliaires préverbaux de mode), Thèse de 3e cycle, Paris III.
CHARAUDEAU P., 1992, Grammaire du sens et de l’expression, Paris : Hachette.
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Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
CULIOLI A. et DESCLES J.-P., 1981, Systèmes de représentations linguistiques et métalinguistiques. Les
catégories grammaticales et le problème de la description de langues peu étudiées, Université de Paris
VII, Laboratoire de linguistique Formelle et D.R.L.
CULIOLI A., 1990, Pour une linguistique de l’énonciation. Opérations et représentations, tome 1, Paris :
OPHRYS.
DELOUCHE G., 1994, Langues de l’Asie : Méthode de thaï, Vol.1., Paris : L’Asiathèque.
DELOUCHE G., 1991, Langues de l’Asie : Méthode de thaï, Vol.II., Paris : L’Asiathèque.
DESCLES J.-P., « Systèmes d’exploration contextuelle », in QUIMIER C. (éd.), Co-texte et Calcul du sens,
Caen : Presses Universitaires de Caen.
DESCLES Jean-Pierre, Transitivité sémantique, transitivité syntaxique, in ROUSSEAU André, La
Transitivité, Paris : Septentrion, 1999-2000, p.161-180.
FRANCKEL J.-J. et LEBAUD D., 1990, Le figures du sujet : A propos des verbes de perception, sentiment,
connaissance, Paris : Ophrys.
GOSSELIN L., 1996, Sémantique de la temporalité en français : Un modèle calculatoire et cognitif du
temps et de l’aspect. Belgique : Duculot.
GSELL R., 1978, « Actants, Prédicats et Structure du thaï », Colloque Actants et
Prédicats, Paris :
Catherine PARIS éditeur, CNRS.
GSELL R., 1997, « On Verb Serialization in Standard Thai », Paper presented at the IVth International
Conference on Languages of Far East, Southeast Asia and West Africa : Grammar and Lexicon, Moscow,
September.
GSELL R., 1999, « Sur le système aspecto-temporel du thaï standard », Séminaire intitulé : Etude
contrastive thaï/français, l’année universitaire 1999-2000, à l’Institut de Phonétique, Université de la
Sorbonne-Nouvelle (Paris III), non publié.
KLEIBER G., (1990) 1991, La sémantique du prototype : Catégories et sens lexical, Paris : PUF.
LARQUE V., 1975, Notes de Grammaire thaïe, Bangkok : Assomption, p.309-329.
NOSS R.B., 1964, Thai reference grammar, Washington, D.C. : Foreign service institute, Department of
state.
PANUPONG V., 1970, Inter-Sentence Relations in Modern Conversational Thai, Bangkok : The Siam
Society.
SILPARCHA W., 1985, Etude sémantique et syntaxique des énoncés complexes (subordination) en thaï et
en français, Thèse de 3e cycle, Paris IV.
SUNGPANICH P., 1998, Etude syntaxique et sémantique du groupe prépositionnel du thaï, Mémoire de
DEA en Sciences du langage, Université de Franche-Comté.
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Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
TANTIVEJKUL Ch., 1971, Etude comparative des classes de mots : thaï et français, Thèse de 3e cycle,
Université de Dijon.
TOURATIER Ch., 2000, La sémantique, Paris : Armand Colin.
WAROTAMASIKKHADIT U., 1972, Thai Syntax, an outline, The Hague - Paris: Mouton.
MOESCHLER J. et REBOUL A., 1994, Dictionnaire Encyclopédique de Pragmatique, Paris : Seuil.
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Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Amy TAN Xiang Ru, Johan SUEN
National University of Singapore
Disciplining “Other” Singles: De-constructing the State’s Portrayal of an “Ideal” Single in Singapore
In an attempt to address falling fertility rates and the trend of delayed marriage particularly among its
higher educated citizenry, the Singapore government established the Social Development Unit in 1984
(presently renamed Social Development Network, or SDN) to “promote marriages and nurture a culture
where singles view marriage as one of their top life goals” in Singapore (SDN official website, 2011).
With public education constituting one of their main strategic thrusts, the SDN actively publishes a
variety of resources that aim to equip singles with necessary information on dating, grooming, love and
relationships. However, despite broadly targeting single residents aged 20 and above, this paper
demonstrates that the images and ideas of singles and singlehood constructed through SDN’s
publications is in actuality, rather narrowly defined in terms of their physical appearances, behaviours,
values and even gender roles. Moreover, the implicitly moralistic presentation of such images
frequently employs expert opinion, scientific knowledge, as well as positively- and negatively-framed
narratives in order to justify “desirable” traits that singles should possess if they would like to be
successful in meeting a potential spouse. We illustrate that this normative construction of an ideal
single not only generates and ideologically subordinates those singles who fail to conform; it
discursively and rhetorically precludes more structural accounts of delayed marriages by latently
attributing the cause of the social problem to the personal failure of individual singles themselves.
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Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Emilie TESTARD-BLANC
INALCO
Foreign Languages in Siamese Classical Literature.
Exotism is a traditional literary theme in Siamese classical theater. Poets and musicians invented foreign
themes in order to please their royal audience. The plays were performed with instrumental and sung
accompaniment that expressed the emotions or the actions in the story. Some of these musical tunes
had foreign names and are called melodies in langages (เพลงออกภาษา - Phléng Ok Phasa). Melodies in
languages are musical tunes whose name stipulates another nation. Thai musicians used foreign
instruments (usually drums) and tried to imitate the accent of that language while they still used Thai
words. Some compositions had 12 different languages (เพลงออก
องภาษา – Phleng Ok Sipsong Phasa )
and imitated languages such as Chinese, Môn, Khmer, Burmese, Lao for instance.
At the end of the 19th century, Khun Suwan, a poetess at the court of Rama III and Rama IV composed a
play entitled “Bot Lakhon Rueng Phra Malethathai” in which she deconstructs poetical and logical
language in order to attain another language. The language she invents may sound like a pseudojavanese but is a pure ear-sham. Few words are here for us to grab and the rest seems to be delirious
sound magma. Though it is not pure nonsense as it still vehicles some kind of sense. In this paper we
shall see how the 'Otherness' is represented in classical Siamese literature and how this trend has
conducted Khun Suwan to the extreme result of pure musicality.
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Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Laura TREGLIA
SOAS
Layers of Otherness in Japanese Genre Cinema. Outcasts, Monsters, Women
When referring to the Other in Japanese visual culture, especially in films, the first images that come to
mind are depictions of the Western, white (usually American) Other. However, Japanese cinema most
frequently portrays different congeries of Otherness, perhaps less recognizable because of their racial
sameness in respect to a foreign gaze.
These cinematic visions of the (more familiar) Other take the semblance of the peasant, the sick and
wrecked, the foe, fool or wicked, the erotic and grotesque, ghostly and usually feminised Other. All such
aspects may sometimes conflate in the same instance, where Otherness is indexed by a mix of
representational techniques, visual and not (costumes, language, mise-en-scene, make-up, music score,
lighting, etc..).
This paper aims at analysing different layers of Otherness, mainly in terms of gender, class - and
sometimes ethnicity -, in a specific cycle of Japanese popular cinema featuring female outlaws. Such
layers concur in constructing women as loci for the negotiation of new national, gendered subjectivities
and Western cultural encroachments, as objects of desire and menacing signifiers of sexual difference.
Taken as a group, these films are themselves Other-ed by programming choices and mechanisms of
genre and ‘taste’ distinction. Most of them were indeed conceived and produced by the big Japanese
studios in a period of financial dire straits as minor, B-rate films aimed at 'low-brow' titillation, thrilling
entertainment, as complementary Others to the top half features in double bills programs. From the
point of view of the content, they were usually concerned with the flipside of the legitimate society,
dealing with its antisocial Others in the underworld, their illicit activities and corrupt urban
environments.
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Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Hiroko UMEGAKI-CONSTANTINI
Wolfson College, Oxford
The Japanese Media Representation of Chinese Residents in Japan: Asahi Shinbun in 1988, 1993, 1998,
2003 and 2008
Meanings of race are varied across time and space as ideas of race are socially constructed rather than
biologically given. This paper examines how the Japanese media represents Chinese residents in Japan.
In particular, the paper focuses on how one of the major newspapers in Japan, Asahi Shinbun, has
represented Chinese immigrants for the last twenty years since the 1980’s when the number of the
Chinese new comers to Japan started to increase. Historical, social, political, economic and cultural
contexts rather than race per se create/recreate meanings of race; therefore, meanings of race change
depending on those contexts. Also, language, not just media, constructs meanings of race in society
through use of language.
Hence, to analyse the media coverage three approaches are used:
comparisons of media coverage over time; analysis of use of language, such as choices of words in
headlines and texts of articles together with social elements, in overall media coverage of Chinese
crimes; and comparison of coverage of Chinese with that for three other ethnicities, Koreans, Brazilians,
Filipinos, whose populations are large and/or have increased since the late 1980s. Interviews with chief
reporter and editor journalists are used to complement the data analysis. The paper argues that the
media differentiates across ethnicities and in particular highlights Chinese ethnicity. The coverage of
Chinese residents changes over time, with an ‘unconscious’ creation of negative perspectives later in
the time period covered. The meanings of Chinese residents in Japan are ‘tacitly’ constructed and
reconstructed through repeating the incidents involving Chinese, rather than through describing with
explicit strong words.
Page 47 of 50
Book of Abstracts
Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Michaela UNTERBARNSCHEIDT
SOAS
Hierarchies of Otherness. Racial stereotyping in intercolonial labour migration and military expeditions
The traditional understanding of 'the Other' implies an East-West dichotomy that is largely played out
in the relationship between coloniser and colonised. When this binary correlation is broken up by the
introduction of a third party player - the ambiguous Other of both Others - there emerge hierarchical
structures of interracial Othering between (former) colonial subjects. How, then, do inter-colonial
encounters shape racial stereotyping to construct hybrid hierarchies of Otherness between coloniser
and contrasting subjects? Does the impact of one (post-)colonial subject being treated as "white but
not quite" engender a crisis of relational identity in the other subject?
Recruiting African labour for assignment in Southeast Asia originated in the 18th century to fill
manpower needs of plantations and armies, and continued right until WWII, when the King's African's
Rifles took part in the Burma Campaign. Biyi Bandele's novel Burma Boy chronicles the experiences of a
Nigerian soldier despatched to Burma and shall serve as nexus to examine the pluralistic interrelations
between a hegemonic 'white' power and its two very distinct - yet not so very different - Others.
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Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Benjamin VOLFF
INALCO
Muslims across Christian Chronicles of Imperial Ethiopia, from Fourteenth to Twentieth Century”
Is there a more common issue than the relationships between Christians and Muslims in scholar
research? The field is however never closed, especially if one studies the point of view of those the
Western world considers as the “Others”. In Africa, Ethiopia singled itself out by a dominant political
system sustained with Christian “orthodox” ideology, promoting spatial expansion and evangelization
of the masses. This territorial and political edification of the empire reinforced itself from 1270 onwards
and coped with wide areas of Muslim societies. In order to make the Muslim sultanates tributaries of
the negus, the Christian power has oscillated between forced conversions, military subjugation and
associating with the Muslim elites.
In this paper we suggest to analyze the perception of Muslims through Ethiopian chronicles emanating
from the traditional historiography until 20th century, by surveying the main topics built by ecclesiastic
scholars praising the power. The context shows particular features: if the Christian society imposes its
rule, Muslims account at least for one third of the Ethiopian population, control the trade because of
their connections with surrounding countries. Moreover, since the 18th century, Christianized Muslim
elites reach the spheres of power and even control it. What do Geez and Amharic texts tell about such
intertwined and complex relationships? How, beyond the official discourse about the glory of the
bound action of the emperor and the Church, do the chronicles depict Muslim peoples? The latter are
simultaneously, “Others” because of their faith, enemies and rebels, but also neighbors and Ethiopian
subjects. From the story of the reign of Amdä-Ṣyon (14th c.) to the biography of ras Makonnen (1947),
which evolution is perceptible within the representation and construction of these, however close,
Others?
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Making a Difference – Representing/Constructing the Other in Asian/African Media, Cinema and Languages
Annual Conference for the Consortium for African and Asian Studies (CAAS),
SOAS, University of London
16-18 February 2012
Maja VODOPIVEC
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Rereading Kato Shuichi. Japan’s Modernity from ‘Honyaku-’ to ‘Zasshu-bunka’
One of the features of Japanese modernization was ‘honyaku-bunka’ (translation culture) or ‘honyakushugi’ (translationism). Tremendous amount of books ranging from history to law, medicine, chemistry
etc were translated to Japanese at the end of Tokugawa period. The paper will try to analyze the
process itself and in what way it determined modern Japanese subject. It will try to closely relate and
examine travel as crucial setting for an unfinished modernity. Travel will be understood as movement
against sedentary, as a way of escape from time and space and a way of searching for “self”. It will also
be a symbolic break with the previous system or period in history. The paper will suggest possible
overlapping experience of travel and borderland, immigration, diaspora, tourism and exile.
Katō Shuichi’s s travel and view from outside or from distance was necessary element in creating theory
of hybridity for Japanese culture. Travel provided him with a new perspective on Japanese art, culture
and society.
Travelogue itself is a hybrid literature genre which is at the same time reportage and philosophical
testimony. In its texts, what is always reflect are cultural differences and real or imaginary divisions of
the world. One of the most common division of the world is the one dividing the world into the West East or Occident – Orient. Travelogue is a talk about the Other from personal experience. But above all,
it is talk about one’s own culture. The paper will concentrate on process of modernization of Japan
starting with the concept of honyaku-bunka towards the travelogues of Kato Shuichi and his hybrid
culture theory.
The paper will try to analyze transformation of translation and travel cultures of Japan, and its meaning
in present conditions.
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