National Allegory

Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner has been praised for its historical and ethnographic value, yet it has also been commended for the way in which the ‘exotic’ locale of the novel provides the site for a universal, and ultimately, comfortingly familiar narrative. The novel, then, functions to “humanize” the Afghan Other for the non-Afghan reader. In this article, I engage with the novel’s mantra, “there is a way to be good again,” in relation to contemporary conceptions of humanitarianism. Utilizing Mamdani’s analysis of the distinction between the “good Muslim” and the “bad Muslim,” and by reading the novel in dialogue with Appiah’s notion of cosmopolitanism and Butler’s theory of human interdependence, I argue that The Kite Runner reflects a shift from the supremacy of race and nation as the markers of political community and identity to the idea of the “modern” as the framework for determining the “human”. I read the novel as an allegory of global ethics.

Iranian filmmakers have long been recognised for creating a vibrant, aesthetically rich cinema whilst working under strict state censorship regulations. As Michelle Langford reveals, many have found indirect, allegorical ways of expressing forbidden topics and issues in their films. But for many, allegory is much more than a foil against haphazardly applied censorship rules. Drawing on a long history of allegorical expression in Persian poetry and the arts, allegory has become an integral part of the poetics of Iranian cinema. Allegory in Iranian Cinema explores the allegorical aesthetics of Iranian cinema, explaining how it has emerged from deep cultural traditions and how it functions as a strategy for both supporting and resisting dominant ideology.
As well as tracing the roots of allegory in Iranian cinema before and after the 1979 revolution, Langford also theorizes this cinematic mode. She draws on a range of cinematic, philosophical and cultural concepts - developed by thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Christian Metz and Vivian Sobchack - to provide a theoretical framework for detailed analyses of films by renowned directors of the pre-and post-revolutionary eras including Masoud Kimiai, Dariush Mehrjui, Ebrahim Golestan, Kamran Shirdel, Majid Majidi, Jafar Panahi, Marziyeh Meshkini, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad and Asghar Farhadi.
Allegory in Iranian Cinema explains how a centuries-old means of expression, interpretation, encoding and decoding becomes, in the hands of Iran's most skilled cineastes, a powerful tool with which to critique and challenge social and cultural norms.
Available 25 July 2019

Chap. 6. The dawn of the Golden Age of the autonomous portrait historié started in the last quarter of the sixteenth century in Antwerp with the painting Moses and the Israelites of 1574 by Maerten de Vos, commissioned by Peeter Panhuys and Gillis Hooftman. The Panhuys panel serves as a case study for determining how the choice of a subject relates to the faith of the persons portrayed in a biblical portrait historié. Presented is a partly new identification of the sitters and a new assessment of their religious persuasions. Although the individuals portrayed have been connected to the ‘spiritualistic’ movement of the Family of Love in earlier studies, no attempt was made to interpret the painting in the light of this connection. The Family attracted both Protestants and Catholics. The iconography of this portrait historié, also points in the direction of Lutheran interpretation and seems to confirm the (otherwise established) Lutheran sympathies of Gillis Hooftman and Peeter Panhuys. Moreover, the specific formulation of the Ten Commandments indicates the consultation of a Lutheran Bible translation. This observation seems remarkable since the painting was considered distinctly Calvinist by others.

Biblical portraits historiés, such as the Panhuys panel, may be understood as visualisation of the communio sanctorum or saintly community. One could argue that portraits historiés, in which one projects oneself in the position of protagonists or acting characters of a biblical story, are meant to depict an act of godliness. In a biblical portrait historié the person portrayed is depicted as if he were experiencing an institutional moment of faith at first hand, which seems to be closely connected with the desire to be part of christian tradition. Unlike in the Catholic Church, in Calvinism religious tradition has less to do with the continuation of the ecclesiastical office than with the passing on of the divine gift and the internalised continuation of belief through the calling to the ministry, as inspired by the Holy Spirit. An example of this is Martin Faber’s Institution of the diaconate (1617) with calvinist reformers from Emden.

Jacob Willemsz. I Delff portrayed his family in The Reconciliation of Jacob and Esau (1584) with two of his sons as the main figures. The reason for the choice of subject should not be sought in a personal predilections or narrative analogy, such of the settlement of a family quarrel. The choice of subject finds its explanation in the ongoing theological debate about the doctrine of predestination in relation to original sin and election, for which the story served as an example. The Delft minister Arent Croese was closely involved in this debate, that was also often waged in public places, for example in a Delft inn. The fact that Jacob and Esau each went their own way was predetermined before their birth, which John Calvin, in his Institution of 1539, regarded as illustrative of the nullity of their merits in God’s eyes. The story tells not so much about how people should relate to each other but how to situate their own behaviour within a divine context. The Old Testament story of election (as well as its Pauline reading), seems to focus primarily on the individual in spite of its theological interconnection to the corrupt masses and types of people (chosen and rejected). The story can be seen as a legitimation to be represented as a rigtheous believer who does not believe in sanctification through good works but renders himself to God’s judgment.

Karel van Mander’s Crossing of the Jordan (1605) shows the portraits of Duyffgen Roch and Isaack van Gherwen among the Israëlites. Both were Remonstrants, but Van Gherwen was originally a Mennonite, just like the painter. Van Gherwen’s family left their birthplace Den Bosch for religious persecution, which could explain the subject: like the Israelites who had to leave Egypt, many refugees reached “their” Promised Land; the Republic. The painting dates two years after the third unsuccessful siege of ’s-Hertogenbosch and the draining of the river seems to anticipate a tactic that conquered the city in 1629. One should also not play down the role of the painter in the choice of subject of the painting that was probably meant as wedding gift. The crossing of the Jordan had a specific mennonite meaning, since it was traditionally seen as a foreshadowing of Christian baptism. Van Mander wrote a poem on the painting, originally inscribed on the frame, in which he compared the passage through the Jordan with the path of life: the way of all flesh, a common topos in Mennonite literature. Several lines of poetry from Van Mander’s Gulde Harpe (1605) seem to be especially tailored to the history piece. In it he alludes to the “Levitical priesthood”, a reference to a passage by Philips Schabaelje, which in its turn should be connected to Van Mander’s self-portrait as one of the Levites carrying the Ark across the river.

6. Bijbelse familieportretten uit de dageraad van de Gouden Eeuw 269
6.1. Mozes en de Israëlieten door Maerten de Vos (1574) 272
“REFORMATIONSBILD” 274
PANHUYS EN HOOFTMAN: CALVINISTISCHE SPIONNEN? 275
EEN ANALYSE VAN DE TAFELEN DER WET 278
DE OVERIGE GEPORTRETTEERDEN 280
PAULUS IN EFEZE 284
DE OPDRACHTGEVERS EN HET HUYS DER LIEFDE 287
6.2. Het bijbelse portrait historié als beeld van de communio sanctorum 289
6.3. Een Emdens voorbeeld: Martin Fabers Instelling van het diaconaat (1617) 294
6.4. De Verzoening van Jakob en Ezau door Jacob Willemsz. I Delff (1584) 299
IDENTIFICATIE VAN DE GEPORTRETTEERDEN 300
DUIDING VAN DE VERZOENING VAN JAKOB EN EZAU 305
GERECHTVAARDIGDEN EN GEHEILIGDEN: ARENT CROESE OVER JAKOB EN EZAU EN DE PREDESTINATIELEER 309
VERHEFFING VAN HET INDIVIDU OF EIGENGERECHTIGHEID? 313
6.5. De doortocht door de Jordaan van Karel van Mander (1605) 315
DE GEPORTRETTEERDEN: ISAACK VAN GHERWEN EN DUYFFGEN ROCH 316
DE FAMILIE VAN GHERWEN 320
HET SCHILDERIJENBEZIT VAN ISAACK VAN GHERWEN EN DUYFFGEN ROCH 323
DE DOORTOCHT ALS LEVENSWEG 326
DOOP, BESNIJDENIS EN HUWELIJK 330

The purpose-The main motive of the study is to understand the narrative of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's Anandamath as an expansion and critique of its thematic core 'Vande Mataram'. Design/Methodology/Approach-The Divine personification of a Nation as a Matrabhumi (the one which nurtures), Punyabhumi (the Holy Land) and Dharmabhumi (the one with righteous conduct) inspires fear in us, a fear which will not dissociate us, but an awestruck attraction which is beyond our mortal being. The mother as a divine Shakti, Goddess Durga is Vrihad, grand but we as Santan are the part of the Bharat-Mata, who in the past was Jagaddhatri, Protectress of the world, wonderful, perfect, and rich. In contemporary nuances of present-day politics, we as readers can see the mother has become an idol of Goddess Kali, in the haunt of a wild beast, enveloped in darkness, full of blackness and gloom, one who is stripped of all and therefore naked. Wearing our sins and vices in the garland of a skull as an ornament, where the whole country is a burial ground and she tramples her god under her feet. The divine personified mother now will turn into goddess Durga, ten armed radiants in the light of the early sun, laughing and extending her ten arms towards the ten regions. The song Vande Mataram features as the manifesto of the Sanyasi group where words of its verses are rich in adjectives that praise every aspect of the country and emphasizes idolizing her as Goddess reincarnate. Findings-Anandamath is a text that is enthralled with the resonance of Vande Mataram in every character. As a post text, it is largely discussed in the context of history and politics but its narrative unfolds itself in three further aspects, namely Semiotics, Discursive, and Aesthetic. Research Implications-The paper offers an insight into a semantic reverberation of Indian unconscious and traditional conventional context which gives an organic and a particular cultural perspective to the song Vande Mataram. Anandamath traverses the shift from the wilderness of nature to the refinement of culture. Wish for History is foregrounded in the novel to give us the idea of the nation that may not have been established. Bankim Chandra alludes to the imagined persona to give us a wish for a possible history, giving us a license with the factual history. The paper aims to analyze the historicality of the novel that juggles through the 'imagined' and 'lived' of the author. There is an overlapping of ideas and contradictions in the ideology of the novel because it is writing from contested political terrain. This paper attempts to study the problematics of depraved masses and natives who are fighting for the contested 'nation' space' in times of famines and crises. The idea of Punyaland is vitiated (and thus the 'unmaking' of a nation) and this is carried in the novel through language, metaphors, and discourse. The disintegration of family metaphorically hints at the fragmentation of the bigger structure, since family is the basic unit of a larger system, the nation too is in chaos. The Study reflects the effacement of the self, the annihilation of oneself in a given national space. Thus the writer foregrounds a formation of a spiritual nation from the threshold of Damphati Dharma (Language of household) through linguistic and cultural otherness.

Sylvie Peattie is studying for a double major in Film and Media Studies and Modern Literature and Film at the University of Otago. She is a creative writer who is very interested in understanding and expressing different ways of looking at the world. This essay was written on the Jewish-German author, Franz Kafka, for a second-year Comparative Literature paper, and published in The European Connection No.6 2000.

Violated sex : rape, nation and representation of female characters in Yugoslav new film and black wave cinema Reference: Vukovic Vesi.-Violated sex : rape, nation and representation of female characters in Yugoslav new film and black w ave cinema Studies in Eastern European cinema-ISSN 2040-350X-(2018) Full text (Publisher's DOI): https://doi.

In a world that has become too familiar with atrocities, it may be interesting to take a closer look to who really suffers from national and international violence. In this thesis, it is analysed in what way the family is an interesting national allegory in Algerian francophone literature to familiarize the reader with the Algerian tragedy.

This chapter argues that recent Mexican novels revisit ‘national allegory’ as a simultaneously political and aesthetic typology (Jameson 1986) to construct ‘plots of globalization’ (Beecroft 2015) that promote intercultural dialogue and engagement. Through personification and romance, El fin de la locura (de)constructs postmodern ideology in the emblematic figure of a Latin-American cosmopolitan letrado in the dawn of revolutionary utopias of the XXth century. The dysfunctional characters and dystopian landscapes in Arrecife embody symptoms of ecological devastation and systemic corruption resulting from neoliberalism. Implementing double-coding to configure what I call a transnational affective field that articulates issues of local and global significance, these novels subvert the prospective and retrospective functions of allegory to denounce pervasive mechanisms of biopolitical subjection.

Los festejos de la nación constituyen un rito indispensable para su
consolidación. Las celebraciones, los aniversarios, las conmemoraciones
y las fechas patrióticas otorgan coherencia al presente de cada nación, que es
capaz de ubicarse en un flujo de continuidad histórica que justifica su
contemporaneidad y le ofrece sentido. Es por ello que, cuando se instaura la
República de Cuba el 20 de mayo de 1902 se teje alrededor de la fecha todo
un complejo representacional que ratifique la solidez del país y su condición de
independiente, para el presente y el futuro. A su celebración se asoció, pues,
uno de los fenómenos iconográficos más interesantes de la época, la alegoría
republicana, puesto que esta imagen vertebraba la noción de república y libertad
que con tanto empeño los cubanos deseaban consolidar en la construcción
del país.

In 1981, Salman Rushdie wrote Midnight's Children that allegorized the legacy of Partition and attempted to comment on its reality. The novel's protagonist, Saleem Sinai, is born on the midnight of 15th August, 1947, the time when India gained independence from British Rule. With the one thousand and one children born at the stroke of the midnight hour, all of whom are endowed with special powers, Saleem is telepathically connected. In this way, Saleem comes to signify India itself, the personal coalescing with the political. In his search for a "meaning," he constructs a past where he assumes himself responsible for the key events in the nation's history, the course of his life linked to that of India. This coincidence becomes both a blessing as well as a curse to him. But at the same time, the novel is Rushdie's critique of the idea of individual identity as entwined with nation, and diverse populations coming together under the unified banner of nationalism. Even though nationalism was important to fight against the British rule, the gradual foregrounding of the nationalist movement through religion became a weapon for the British. This led to new interpretations of historical events and ancient texts. The non-linear representation of time in the novel represents the artificiality of history. Moreover, Saleem's presentation as an unreliable narrator points to the same goal of showing nation as a construct. But Rushdie also hopes that the generation to follow will create a counter-myth of their country. This paper studies how Rushdie's novel shows his scepticism towards nationalism that he sees nothing more than a myth, and the construction of nation as an ideological tool.

The science-fiction fantasy of George Lucas’s now infamous Star Wars prequel trilogy has been largely overlooked as cinema that might merit critical scrutiny. The surprisingly scant scholarship that is concerned with the prequel trilogy has not adequately addressed it as much more than an example of digital hyperrealism or as a critical fiasco. This paper seeks to offer a preliminary corrective to this critical oversight by examining the prequel trilogy for its allegorical content and its uncanny reflection of American social, economic, and governmental politics in a process of fantasy that attempts to alleviate anxieties regarding America’s self-recognition as a militaristic empire. The micro-allegories of racism and class stratification introduced in Episode I that code the social politics at play in the Star Wars prequel trilogy as an American cultural landscape are, in turn, mapped onto the larger allegory that references the Iraq War in Episode II and particularly in Episode II.

Chap. 7. In a secular and domestic environment, the most common theme used for portraits historiés was Christ suffering the children to come unto him. The oldest, known combination of a family portrait with this blessing scene is an epitaph from 1557 that Lucas II Cranach painted in memory of Dr. Caspar Cruciger. The earliest known portrait historié with this subject from the Netherlands was painted by Hieronymus Francken 1602 and probably depicts the De Witte family. Werner van de Valckert’s Christ blessing the children (1620) depicts Michiel Poppen, his wife and their children. Although the family Poppen descend from a Protestant lineage, there are indications that other relatives, who switched to the Catholic faith, were also intended to be depicted, such as Dirck Wuytiers, whose portrait apparently remained unfinished. The depiction of the first newly built Protestant church in Amsterdam, the Zuiderkerk, in the background, however, strongly points towards a Protestant interpretation, since it characterizes Amsterdam as a new Jerusalem.

Two depictions of Christ suffering the children to come unto him by Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem show integrated portraits; one is dated 1633 and portrays the governors or regents of the Holy Ghost Infirmary, who are identified individually for the first time; the other of 1614 depicts a matron. In 1646, Cornelis Danckerts painted the children of the Bosch family from The Hague as being blessed by Christ. This painting makes clear that in Dutch art the focus has clearly shifted from the mothers around Christ to the family as a household. Despite the many figures, Danckert’s monumental painting has a striking intimacy. The religious content is well compatible with its figuration as a family portrait, reducing the distance between the lofty historia and the domestic pétite histoire. The catholic Braems family from Haarlem was also depicted in a monumental portrait historié of the same subject by Jan de Bray (1663). Four portraits of elderly men were added later: either ancestors of the Braems family or governors of the St. Jacobs Godhuis, where the work hung. The inscription on the frame “MEMORES ESTOTE PARENTUM VESTRORUM” (Honour the memory of your parents) could refer to the Vulgate text and/or Calvin’s commentary of Hebrews 13: 7-9 (“Remember your leaders”). It is possible that the Calvinist ‘supervisors’ of this former Catholic Godshuis have appropriated the theme of the family portrait and have used the inscription for their own message.

The frequent appearance of the theme since the 1540s has been associated with the theological dispute over infant baptism between Lutherans and Anabaptists. The dispute about the age of baptism had its repercussions on the representation of this subject (particularly the age of persons being blessed). The regenerative value of baptism was recognized by both Luther and Calvin. Paintings in which Protestant families portray their children under Christ’s blessing are to be understood as a visualisation of this symbolic renewal of baptism, in order to be resurrected in faith. Similarly, regeneration is the leitmotiv of a 1647 portrait of the family of Ole Worm, a Lutheran Dane of Dutch descent. In portraits of Catholic families, the motive of Christ laying on his hand on the children purposely evoke associations with the Catholic sacrament of the confirmation: which corresponds with the age of the children shown (7-12 years). The pathos generated by the theme of the Christ’s Blessing can also be associated with the theological concept of vivificatio. Spiritual renewal is also central to the Calvinist “theology of sanctification”, and as a form of reflection it could also serve as a substitute for doing “good works”. And by being blessed by Christ the portrayed people become participants of the community of Christ. The greater attention paid to the child in early modern times may also explain the increase of portraits with the subject in general and the popularity among different denominations.

7. Portraits historiés met de Kinderzegening 335
7.1. Laat de kindertjes tot mij komen met de familie Poppen door Werner van den Valckert (1620) 337
7.2. De Kinderzegeningen door Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem (1614, 1633) 343
7.3. Laat de kindertjes tot mij komen met de familie Bosch van Johan Dankerts (1646) 345
7.4. Laat de kindertjes tot mij komen met de familie Braems van Jan de Bray (1663) 350
7.5. Themakeuze in theologisch verband met doop, opwekking en wedergeboorte 352
DE KINDERZEGENING MET DE FAMILIE WORM: NATUURLIJKE EN INTELLECTUELE REGENERATIE 356
7.6. Omarming, aanraking of handoplegging 358
7.7. Kindergeloof en de doop 363
7.8. Het portrait historié als vivificatio: heiligmaking door het geloof 365
7.9. De Kinderzegening: een oecumenisch thema? 369
EXCURS: EEN KINDERZEGENING MET DYNASTIEKE PRETENTIES 373

This article examines the changing dynamics of censorship and social criticism in revolutionary Cuban cinema in order to make a case for studying allegory not as a mode whose meanings analysts should (or should not) reveal but, rather, as a contested social process. From the 1960s on, Cuban filmmakers turned to allegory as a means of resisting the reduction of art to propaganda and articulating more ambivalent takes on the Cuban Revolution. Yet spectators steeped in the political binaries of the Cold War often reduced films to arguments for or against socialism. Such paranoid readings have only grown more complex in the post-Soviet era, as changing strategies of state power, a growing orientation toward the global market, and the increasing availability of digital technologies enable more open criticism of the state in art and render criticism itself suspect. Drawing on this case study, this article argues that both depth models of interpretation and debates about “paranoid” or “symptomatic readings” fail to account for the social and political dynamics of texts. To understand how allegory and paranoid readings shape public debate and representation, we must examine how artists and audiences themselves mobilize the mode. This is especially true for Global South, state socialist, and authoritarian contexts, where traditions of political engagement through art, practices of skirting censorship through aesthetic indirection, and demands for depictions of the nation imposed by international art worlds foster practices of reading between the lines for hidden meanings in ways that sometimes cooperate with and sometimes work against artists’ aesthetic and political goals.

Στις κρίσιμες πρώτες δεκαετίες της ζωής του νεοσύστατου ελληνικού κράτους η γυναικεία μορφή έδωσε σάρκα και οστά στην αλληγορική Ελλάδα των πολιτικών γελοιογραφιών. Η αφάνεια των γυναικών από το δημόσιο χώρο και η πολιτική τους ουδετερότητα κατέστησε τη μορφή τους κατάλληλη για να ενσαρκώσει το Έθνος, αλλά και για να απεικονίσει τις προσδοκίες και τα όνειρα των ίδιων των πολιτών του. Η Αλληγορική Ελλάδα απεικονίστηκε ως βασανισμένη, ταπεινωμένη, θλιμμένη, εσταυρωμένη, ασθενής ή ακόμα και νεκρή. Παρουσιάστηκε ως μητρική φιγούρα ή ως αισθησιακή καλλονή και φυσικά ως γενναία πολεμίστρια. Στις απεικονίσεις των πολιτικών γελοιογραφιών η γυναικεία αυτή απεικονίστηκε βασανισμένη και ταπεινωμένη, με στόχο να πλήξει το αίσθημα της εθνικής υπερηφάνειας των αναγνωστών τους και να αναδείξει τη βαρύτητα των λαθών που διαπράχθηκαν από τους πολιτικούς ηγέτες. Μόνο μια γυναίκα, εξιδανικευμένη και περιορισμένη κοινωνικά στην πραγματική ζωή, θα μπορούσε να μορφοποιήσει το Ελληνικό Έθνος. Διότι δεν εκπροσωπούσε απλώς τον «Πόθο των Ελλήνων» για την πατρίδα τους, αλλά αποτελούσε η ίδια μέρος του ιδανικού κόσμου τους.

The significance of gender to depictions of the nation is a significant discussion within African fiction. Guinea-Bissau, however, has been somewhat neglected. This thesis will re-dress this imbalance by juxtaposing Abdulai Sila’s Mistida trilogy with fiction by Filomena Embaló, Domingas Samy and Odete Semedo. It considers the symbolic representations of women in Sila’s work, where he writes the colonised nation upon the female body, and attempts to create women’s agency by inscribing them with future power. However he simultaneously eradicates their historical importance. I explore the narratives of female-authored fiction and argue that whilst there is a tendency to write about inequality in the domestic space, women are equally concerned with discussing national identity and experience through the prism of the intimate. I revisit Sila to examine the significance of masculinities to his narration of the nation. He repeatedly complicates the image of a national hero in texts that connect Guinea-Bissau to global black masculinities and inscribe the crises of the post-independence nation upon the male body. Insofar as the literary imaginary contributes to the construction of nationhood in Guinea-Bissau, this thesis demonstrates that the negotiation of gender symbolism and power relations are intrinsic to this process in fiction.

Introduction to Fidel between the Lines: Paranoia and Ambivalence in Late Socialist Cuban Cinema, out now through Duke UP. https://www.dukeupress.edu/fidel-between-the-lines. Book description below:

Through a study of Cuban cinema (1985-2017), Fidel between the Lines demonstrates how allegory can both enable and constrain public debate. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cuban state strategically relaxed censorship, attempting to contain dissent by giving it an outlet in the arts. Along with this shift, foreign funding and digital technologies gave filmmakers more freedom to criticize the state than ever before, yet these openings also exacerbated the political paranoia that has long shaped the Cuban public sphere. Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic fieldwork, textual analysis, and archival research, Humphreys shows how Cuban filmmakers have historically turned to allegory to communicate an ambivalent relationship to the Revolution, and how such efforts came up against new forms of suspicion in the 1990s and the twenty-first century. In making these arguments, Fidel between the Lines advances a new approach to the study of allegory. Scholars have argued against depth models of interpretation--known as paranoid or symptomatic readings--contending that such allegorical interpretations simply discover meanings predetermined by analysts. Fidel between the Lines instead demonstrates how, in a context shaped by censorship, artists and audiences themselves "read between the lines" in paranoid fashion, with polarizing consequences for public debate and imaginable political futures. Fidel between the Lines was selected as a 2020 Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title.

En 1898, Estados Unidos le declara la guerra a España y "acude al auxilio" de los cubanos en la gesta de liberación que habían iniciado en 1895 contra España. Estos sucesos despertaron un amplio despliegue mediático. Si bien las diferencias son evidentes entre la prensa española y estadounidense, en ambos países se persigue un mismo fin: ofrecer su visión del conflicto y ratificar el rol hegemónico que en él deben jugar. Aquí nos interesa la imagen de Cuba en las sátiras periodísticas y, en particular, la alegoría de Cuba en la prensa española y estadounidense. La intención es descubrir lo común de las formas, pero también las discrepancias simbólicas, para que emerjan también los esquemas de representación que trascienden la inmediatez del hecho político. El objetivo es, pues, deconstruir el proceso visual de construcción simbólica de Cuba, y de la guerra que en ella se desarrollaba, en la prensa en 1898.

The article explores the manifestly allegorical nature of Kurosawa's controversial 1950 film Rashomon, and how it was directly responding to the dishonesty of individuals called before recent war crimes trials (1946-48). After noting the overt symbolism of the film's opening setting, which manifestly alludes to the plight of Japan, the trials which dominated the nation's media in the late 1940s are also discussed (it notes 29 employees of the film company had been purged). As is stated at the film's onset, the community was distressed because it was evident that lies were being told and the truth concealed: similarly, in post-war Japan no one knew who to believe about war atrocities. Testimony is compromised, Rashomon shows, because the guilty seek to hide their misdeeds. A direct comparison is made with Clouzot's film from the Nazi-Occupation Period, Le Corbeau of 1943, which told a story of village life to likewise highlight dishonesty and betrayal in time of war. As with Rashomon, there was a local backlash against the film due to the plain, if uncomfortable contemporary message it delivered. Kurosawa's use of a medieval setting/story to moralise, again, about post-war Japan in his later samurai films, 'Seven Samurai' and 'Yojimbo', is considered; although, as is pointed out, his allegorical purpose was completely lacking in the popular Western versions of these films, 'The Magnificent Seven' and 'A Fistful of Dollars'. (Another cowboy film, 'High Noon', is praised in passing and likened to Kurosawa's approach.) Rashomon's seeming influence on Ingmar Bergman's 'The Seventh Seal', another allegorical tale of ethics and personal conduct against a medieval war setting, is also highlighted. 5pp

Chap. 12. In most portraits historié the biblical story serves as an illustration of an exemplary line of conduct, and formulates a guideline with the aim of ensuring good behaviour. In fact, specific virtues are represented in a narrative manner by figures involved in a historical act. Hence a portrait historié is not a strict allegory, no personification in which an individual person is portrayed as an abstract concept (such as Caritas). The historical scene functions as a kind of parable, a story by which a religious or philosophical idea is illustrated. Often the painting contains a moralistic message, by which the portrayed tried to propagate a favourable opinion about themselves. Their devotional identification is symptomatic of their religious convinctions. The biblical self-image functions as a mimetic paradigm which is told in a diegetic way: in the form of a story. The narrative fiction of the portrait historié consists of several layers or intradiegetic “worlds”. The actual narrative (of the portrayed) is embedded in another narrative (bible), in (through) which the diegetic narrator tells his own story: this is called metadiegesis. In many mimetic and diegetic parts of Bible stories, one can distinguish two distinct layers of meaning: first, God teaches us that He miraculously realises His mysterious plan; secondly, destructive consequences of reckless actions are overcome by God. Many portraits historie’s portray dimensions of predestination and election, such as Delff’s Reconciliation of Jacob and Esau, or aspects of grace, such The gathering the manna by Metius.

It is striking that the cardinal virtues often seem to be the basis of portraits historiés. A portrait historié is, however, not always based on a personal analogy of virtue. Remarkably, in family portraits depicting The Continence of Scipio the main hero is usually not a portrait. Here the positive outcome as a result of human action (Scipio’s magnanimity) alludes to divine intervention. Subject and analogy, on the other hand, can only be explained by the generic identification of the Dutch with the Roman Republic. In Dutch 17th-century imagery one could easily switch from one national image to another: comparing the Dutch with the Roman, Batavian or Hebrew peoples. Because of his (presumed) historicity of descent, the concept of the Batavian Holland differs from the Dutch Israel, which was based on a spiritual comparability. A comparison between a biblical event and a private incident is more difficult to fathom than a national analogy, because it requires both knowledge of the biblical narrative and of a pétite histoire. Reportedly, the Dordrecht artist Jan Woutersz. van Cuyck painted a Judgment of Salomon in which he portrayed the pro-Spanish bailiff Johan van Drencwaert in the guise of Salomon. Reportedly, Van Cuyck, a Mennonite, was detained in jail on charges of heresy, when he made the paining. This partly explains the justiciary allusion, since the bailiff was also presided over court hearings. It remains the question whether this biblical analogy is a fabrication of later historians or based on the truth. In Van Braght’s martyrology of Van Cuyck a similar biblical imagery is used, when the latter is compared with Christ, for example when Van Braght wrote that the painter was sitting on the rack “like an Ecce Homo”. Van Cuyck himself also displayed an analogical way of thinking in his prison letters when he compared Dordrecht magistrates with Pilate and Caiaphas. Finally, it is significant that the theme of the Salomon’s judgment was also used as an indictment against the Inquisition in prints.

In the absence of evidence, an analogy of event seldomly seems the most obvious explanation for identification with biblical figures. The only paintings in which we may certainly assume a narrative parallel as motive for identification are wedding portraits, such The Wedding of Esther and Ahasveros by Jacob van Hasselt. Identifications that are testimony of a reciprocal experience are extremely rare: the equation of portrayed people with biblical figures rarely resides in a similar course of action in comparable situations. More often, a narrative analogy refers to a general circumstance or specific ritual or practice of a denomination than to a specific incident that an individual had actually experienced. The theme of the Preaching of John the Baptist in portraits also expresses a religious sense of community. The sermon in the open air reminded of the secret meetings held by Protestants outside the city when professing their religion was forbidden. In a general sense, one can explain why a personal analogies did not play a major role in the choice of subject. Peoply did not identify themselves in all respects with biblical figures, especially as their behaviour was not praiseworthy. Perhaps Dutch citizens found events from their own lives too commonplace to compare them with such illustrious stories from Scripture.

Several portraits historiés of Jan Govertsz. van der Aer are known, including a painting by Henrick Goltzius in which he appears in the guise of Vulcan, which probably had a counterpart portrait of his wife as Venus. The reason for the equation with the adulterers Vulcan and Venus is difficult to comprehend. Perhaps the woman was not Venus, but Charis, another woman of Vulcan and one of the Graces. In another painting by Goltzius, Van der Aer is shown as one of the lustful elders who watch the bathing Susanna. Because of the church with the courtyard in the background, the figure of Susanna has been interpreted as the persecuted church and the elders with the Jewish headgear and Turkish turban as her unchristian assailants. Similar actualisations of the Susanna theme as symbolic for the violation of the Christian congregation can be found in contemporary lampoons. Such interpretations, however, do not explain the remarkable portrait identification in malo. Goltzius might played a joke on his friend. The byword “Susanna scoundrel” (Susannaboef) was used for (lecherous) old men. The depiction of Van der Aer can only be a witty quip. Susanna was often the subject of (both pedestrian and edifying) songs that relate to debauchery. Humorous aspects of the biblical story are inherent to its representation, while its deeper meaning was often only a pretext for displaying female nudity. Contemporary beholders will have been aware of this double standard. Perhaps the inclusion of Van der Aer’s portrait in the biblical nude scene served as a countercultural argument against the accusation of hypocrisy.

The intercontextual transposition of meaning in the portrait historié is related to what the sociologist Erving Goffman called ‘keying’. The biblical portrait historié is as form of a role enactment, in which social structures, such as family ties and Christian communities are reproduced in a biblical context within the painting. Three kinds “fantastic socialisation” can be discerned in biblical portaiture. The third group of “secret identifications” includes works that express an intimate self-image that do not seem to comply with the rules of decorum (Lowyssen as lovemaking patriarch; Van der Aer as peeping Tom). Notions similar to the modern “social face” are expressed in Christian morality of the time through “mirror imagery” about the self-image and self-knowledge, often combined with painter’s jargon. This touches upon the ambiguous nature of biblical portraiture: it is a sign of inner faith, and at the same time an ornamental and vain “self-image”. So-called ‘role distance’ becomes evident from personal characteristics, contemporary attributes and iconographical deviation that ensure that the portrayed people break character, and are recognized as themselves.

12. Het portrait historié als narratieve betekenisdrager van moraliteit 527
12.1. Diëgesis en mimesis in het portrait historié 529
12.2. Verpersoonlijkte deugden in burgerlijke context 533
12.3. Verbeelde deugdzaamheid als gecomprimeerd verhaal 536
12.4. Gebeurtenisanalogie? – Johan van Drencwaert als koning Salomon door Wouter van Cuyck 540
12.5. Persoonsanalogie? – De portretten van Jan Govertsz. van der Aer 544
IDENTIFICATIO IN MALO? JAN GOVERTSZ. VAN DER AER ALS VULCANUS 545
SUSANNA EN DE OUDERLINGEN DOOR GOLTZIUS (1607): VAN DER AER ALS GLURENDE OUDERLING 548
12.6. De gebeurtenisanalogie ontleed 555
DE PREDIKING VAN JOHANNES ALS GEBEURTENISANALOGIE 559
WAAROM DE PERSOONLIJKE OF PRIVATE GEBEURTENISANALOGIE WEINIG GELIEFD WAS. 564
GEBEURTENISANALOGIEËN OP ALTAARSTUKKEN EN SACRALE SCHILDERIJEN 569
12.7. Het sociale gezicht: rol en socialisatie in het portrait historié 571
HET SOCIALE GEZICHT: UITERLIJK VERTOON EN ZELFVERSIERING 573
ROLDISTANTIE EN ROLACCEPTATIE DOOR OPHEFFING VAN ONVERGELIJKBAARHEID 575

La figure allégorique de Dame Helvetia fait partie des symboles identitaires largement exploités, en particulier pendant la période de construction de la Suisse moderne qui a accompagné la Constitution fédérale de 1848. A cette époque, de telles représentations nationales sont légion: Marianne en France, Germania en Allemagne, Italia turrita en Italie, Hispania en Espagne, Britannia en Grande-Bretagne, Columbia aux Etats-Unis, Mère Svea en Suède, Mère Russie, Mère Danemark ou Mère Norvège. D’origine plus ou moins ancienne, elles sont portées sur le devant de la scène par les révolutions et les mouvements d’unification nationale qui agitent plusieurs pays européens. Hormis quelques rares exceptions comme l’Anglais John Bull ou l’Oncle Sam américain, ces allégories sont féminines. Contrairement aux autres incarnations de l’identité nationale que sont les figures héroïques, cette fois principalement masculines, elles ne sont accompagnées d’aucun récit: elles se suffisent à elles-mêmes. Alors que tout Suisse et toute Suissesse peuvent évoquer dans les grandes lignes l’histoire de Guillaume Tell, qu’en est-il d’Helvetia ?

This study juxtaposes Ian McEwan's Solar and Helon Habila's Oil on Water to illustrate their areas of convergence and divergence concerning their portrayal of ecological discourse. Attention is paid, to how McEwan and Habila deploy characterisation (particularly of the main characters and female characters) to bring to the fore the overwhelming influence of socio-political and economic issues on ecological or environmental crises in the societies portrayed in the two narratives. The aesthetic and socio-political dimensions of ecocriticism are deployed in this study. In the same vein, the interplay of the socio-political and ethical dimensions has been investigated as well. Habila depicts women as victims of circumstances and females as representatives of problems in the postcolonial context while McEwan portrays them as a bad influence who inadvertently prevent men from saving the planet. Ironically, the same women are projected as objects to be used and discarded (in the same manner the natural world is exploited). In addition, Solar illustrates climate change issues and their effects on the planet though with an undertone of sociocentrism while Oil concentrates on the environmental vis-à-vis economic and social crises in the Niger Delta. It is also ascertained that what makes both texts invaluable for this study is the political and economic ties between the two major countries they are set in, as one is the former coloniser of the other. Significantly, both narratives are not apocalyptic.

Chap. 9. Many preachers compared the Reformed Dutch with the biblical Jews and regarded the Republic as the Second Israel. In pamphlets written at the time of the Revolt we find the first equations between the Reformed Church and Jerusalem. For rhetoricians the Dutch Israel also became a commonplace. In the Protestant Republic there was a certain reluctance to use biblical matter for the glorification of still living rulers. Only one proper biblical portrait historié of a stadholder is known: Frederik Hendrik als David by Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp of 1630. The painting was painted to commemorate the conquest of Den Bosch. Frederik is shown with the head of the slain Goliath. Praise is sung by the personifications of the seven provinces, while the victor is crowned with a laurel wreath by a putto holding a banderole with the text “Gloria in excelsis” that refers to Psalm 98. In light of the third verse of Psalm 98 and John 4:22, Calvin argued that the glory of the Gentiles consists of the incorporation into the sacred lineage of Abraham. The united provinces symbolise the union of all peoples with Israel. By the victory of the “Davidic” Frederik Hendrik on the “Philistine” Spaniards the people of Den Bosch were brought to the true faith whereby they were absorbed in Israel.

The metaphor of the Second Israel served as a safe alternative to the complex concept of election, a cause of constant controversy, and it was also in line with Calvinist views on godliness and the so-called “example tradition” (religious exemplification). In the Republic, Calvin’s doctrine of the convenant was seen as an addition to his doctrine of election and considered essential for the notion of a protestant nation. But the alter-Israel rhetoric was also reversed and used against the authoritarian, theocratic tendencies of orthodox Reformed. The Reformed themselves were also wary that the Dutch people would push their identification with Israel to the edge. It was also not forgotten that Dutch anabaptists in 1534 had proclaimed the kingdom of Zion in Westphalian Münster. Calvin’s clearly draw a dividing line between the covenant and salvation: election in the context of the covenant does not necessarily mean election to salvation.

It has been claimed that the Schrijver family is portrayed in Rembrandt’s Jacob blesses the sons of Joseph (1656). Gary Schwartz assumed that Willem Schrijver was portrayed in the guise of Joseph, and his son Willem the Younger as Ephraim, while Wendela de Graeff was added as Joseph’s wife Asenath. He saw a parallel between the story of Jacob’s youngest grandson, who obtained the rightful inheritance – despite the legitimate claim of his older brother – and the circumstance that Schrijver had come into possession of a considerable capital after the death of his wife. In the Republic, the story of Ephraim and Manasseh often served as a motive for depicting a conflict between figures and nations. The suggestion that the theme in the painting applies to a family feud over the inheritance appears to be strengthened by similar imagery in writings, but more likely the subject matter relates to the national analogy of the Dutch Israel. Three years earlier, a political pamphlet Manasse teegen Ephraim was published which relates to the First Anglo-Dutch War. Apart from this, Dutch Calvinists did not understand the invocation of the patriarchs in Jacob’s prayer for Manasseh and Ephraim as heavenly intercession but as an indirect proof of their own incorporation into Israel. The exchange of birthright was understood as spiritual adoption by which Ephraim and Manasseh were equated with Jacob and both included in the covenant of grace. In the year that the work was painted, in 1656, Willem Schrijver gained an important position in the city council, after he renounced his membership of the Remonstrant Fraternity. If the identification of the portrayed is correct, the painting might serve as symbol of adherence to the reformed church and its doctrine of election. According to Calvin, Jesus, as the Christ, connects the church with Israel. One should not confuse the Calvinistic notions of the Second Israel with philosemitism, as has happened in many art-historical publications in recent years. Calvin writes that the Gentiles have taken the place of Israel. Most preachers understood Zion, God’s vineyard, only as the metaphysical Church of the chosen. This church was not visible to its members, and godliness could only be pursued by means of sanctification. Different motives of the second Israel can be distinguished in biblical portraiture. 1.) God saved the Dutch as well as the Israelites from slavery; 2.) God has chosen this land, as well as Canaan, as the place for his church; 3.) God has given rich blessings to the Dutch; 4.) God has often miraculously delivered the Dutch; 5.) God shows them His mercy for their sins.

9. Bijbelse beeldspraak: het Nederlands Israël en de Nadere Reformatie 439
9.1. Calvinistisch natiebesef: het Neêrlands Israël, een Geuzen-Israël 439
9.2. Verheerlijkte heerser of voorbeeldige vorst: stadhouders als bijbelfiguren 443
FREDERIK HENDRIK ALS DAVID VOOR DEN BOSCH DOOR JACOB GERRITSZ. CUYP (1630) 445
9.3. Het portrait historié als verbeelding van de verbondsgedachte 448
9.4. Rembrandts Jakob zegent Jozefs zonen (1656) 452
9.5. Het Neêrlands Israel als metafysische kerk, geestelijk Israël en wijngaard 456
MOTIVATIES VAN HET TWEEDE ISRAËL IN DE BIJBELSE PORTRETKUNST 458

This article reads Jugofilm as an intelligent and engaging approach to presenting fictionalized human stories in the aftermath of the break-up of Yugoslavia. The title term is one of Rebić's starting-points for presenting the ways in which political differences between Croats, Serbs and Bosnians play out in a Yugo-Viennese community. A central, traumatic memory determines the protagonist's inability to cope in the present and to come to terms with what he has experienced in his warring Heimat. Sascha's struggles with memory and his ultimate death is read allegorically as the demise of Yugoslavia, and Rebić's film is analysed for its contribution towards the cultural memorialization of Yugoslavia and towards explaining some of the facets determining this particular group of migrant identities in contemporary Austria.

This paper analyzes chao gubei 抄古碑 (transcribing ancient steles) as a significant obsession of Lu Xun’s prior to his becoming a famous writer in the May Fourth period. Striking moments in his literary works stemmed from this personal obsession. Even though Lu Xun’s transcription can be considered a means to anesthetize himself, this paper argues that this act of transcription also serves to circumvent thinking and speech against the grain of the period, when revolutionaries sought to facilitate the flow of thinking and speech in Chinese society by replacing the Chinese script with phonetic ones. After looking at Lu Xun’s transcription, this paper examines how the purposelessness and materiality of this practice appears in Lu Xun’s fictional works, such as “A Madman’s Diary,” “Epitaph,” and “Kong Yiji.”

The existence of a close relationship between the establishment of the novel as a canonical genre in Egyptian (and Arabic) literature, and the spread of Egyptian territorial nationalism is now regarded as an unquestioned evidence by scholars of Arabic literature. The present article makes use of Bakhtin’s notion of chronotope to examine the spatial embodiments of the temporality of the nation in the Egyptian novels written during the first half of the twentieth century. After examining the chronotope of the countryside in the first Egyptian canonical novels, the article centres on the dialectics between the two chronotopes of the «alley» and the «new Cairo» in a renowned novel by Nagib Mahfuz: Zuqaq al-Midaqq (Midaqq Alley, 1947).

International conference exploring and promoting the notion of allegory studies as an emergent nexus of interdisciplinary scholarship, held at the University of Warwick on 7 November 2013, with delegates from a number of universities in the UK, as well as Israel, Switzerland, the US. Further information at the conference website: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/emforum/events/allegory.

The Imagined and Real Jerusalem in Art and Architecture specialists in various fields of art history, from Early Christian times to the present, articulate a variety of cultural, religious and political implications of the visualization of Jerusalem. This collection of essays calls attention to two axes emerging from the study of Jerusalem in art: on the one hand, the volatile contemporary situation, and on the other hand, the abiding chain of meanings that history imparts to the city. From a contemporary perspective and within a broad historical context, the book discusses in depth a series of Western artworks, artefacts, and buildings providing new insights into memory processes and mechanisms of representation of Jerusalem.

This is Part 2 of a two-part study which aims at preliminary conclusions regarding the iconography of the international labour movement. Earlier research in the fields of social history, art history and visual rhetorics has been consulted for this purpose. After 1848, emerging socialist parties and labour unions depended on republican iconography for their manifestation of collective identity. The republican virtues of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity remained important, but Fraternity was gradually replaced or merged with Unity and Solidarity. In a process akin to the identification of the goddess of Liberty with a more common "Marianne", the representation of Unity and manual work in socialist iconography became focused on images of individual male or female workers. In earlier prints and illustrations, these representations have strong affinities with how the concept of labour was personified in official monuments of the same period. Later, the doctrine of socialist solidarity between agricultural and industrial workers transformed the bipartite iconographic scheme of earlier personifi-cations of Unity into a representation of agriculture and industry, or country and city. After 1917, the dilemma of how to represent dual aspects of society and its functions also included questions about the representations of the socialist leader. The Hjalmar Branting monument in Stockholm serves as an example of how the iconography of re-formist social democracy is not always comparable to Soviet socialist realism.

香港電台電視劇《獅子山下》及其主題曲，再現了戰後香港人的日常生活，成為香港流行文化的重要文本，於香港人身份認同建構中佔據重要地位。「獅子山」作為符號，於流行文化中不斷再生產，建構香港人的文化認同。它本來只屬文化符號，卻在各種意識形態爭逐下，慢慢從舊有的、符合政治權威需要的神話解構，轉化為凝聚民間社會力量反抗政治權威的政治符號。本文通過對流行文化文本及其視覺性的分析，指出「獅子山」作為政治符號，是國族論述及本土論述於當下香港政治社會互相拉扯、爭奪領導權的縮影，同時亦是香港人的國族寓言。

Die französische Republik, das sind Marianne auf der einen Seite, die Gemeinschaft der gleichen Brüder auf der anderen – und die unsagbare Vorstellung eines entmannten Staats dazwischen. Der neue politische Körper ist alles andere als eindeutig und so sind es auch die Texte der Dritten Republik nicht, die an seiner Repräsentation arbeiten. Ausgehend von der Erzählung einer Identität in der Krise bieten Huysmans, Zola, Lorrain oder Barrès verschiedene Lösungen des Konflikts zwischen einer Ideologie des virilen Bruderbunds und einem Imaginären der verlorenen Männlichkeit an. Jarry, Romains und Proust reagieren auf diese Lösungen, dekonstruieren sie oder stellen ihre Widersprüche aus. In zahlreichen Einzelanalysen wird so ein Panorama unterschiedlicher Formen der Arbeit am und mit dem Allegorischen präsentiert.

The French Republic, this is Marianne on the one hand, the community of equal brothers on the other – and the unspeakable idea of an emasculated state in between. The new body politic is rather ambiguous, and so are the texts working on its representation during the Third Republic. Starting from the narration of an identity in crisis, Huysmans, Zola, Lorrain or Barrès offer different resolutions to the conflict between the ideology of a virile band of brothers and an imaginary of lost masculinity. Jarry, Romains, and Proust respond to these resolutions in order to deconstruct them or to demonstrate their contradictions. Analyses of numerous texts present a panorama of different forms of allegorical expression.

"Le couronnement de l’allégorie : histoire 
et réalité(s) dans l’album du Sacre de Louis XV 
par Pierre Dulin"

C’est à l’occasion du sacre de Louis XV en 1722 qu’il fut décidé de produire pour la première fois un album représentant l’événement. Le peintre Pierre Dulin fut donc en charge d’un album montrant le sacre sous deux modalités : une représentation descriptive de la cérémonie et du déambulement du roi dans la nef de la
cathédrale de Reims ainsi qu’un ensemble d’allégories répondant à chaque moment du sacre. Cet article s’intéresse précisément à l’importance de ces allégories et à la représentation de la personnification de la France en lieu et place de celle du roi. Ainsi cet album s’inscrit dans les querelles de son temps en ce qui concerne l’utilisation du procédé allégorique dans l’écriture de l’histoire contemporaine.

Something you may or may not deny: Henry Holiday (as much as Lewis Cerroll) was a master of The Art of Deniability, when he illustrated Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark". Ambiguity helped him to stay out of trouble.

2015-03-16: Link to http://50watts.com/Illustrating-An-Agony-in-Eight-Fits added

2014-04-11: I added an paragraph about intentionality and interpretation.

Περίληψη της διπλωματικής: Προς μία διαλεκτική κριτική του φασματικού είδους της ελληνικής Επιστημονικής Φαντασίας: Ουτοπία και Αλληγορία στον Νίκο Α. Μάντη και στην Ιωάννα Μπουραζοπούλου, επιβλ.: Πέγκυ Καρπούζου, Αθήνα, ΕΚΠΑ, 2021.

https://pergamos.lib.uoa.gr/uoa/dl/frontend/el/browse/2963298

In socialism, Yugoslav women became empowered by employment and income, but gender equality stayed rather nominal in the family domain. Such gender inequity is addressed in the works of the Yugoslav novi film/New Film (1961-72) auteurs. They occasionally turned to allegories in order to communicate political criticism. One of them was Želimir Žilnik. His most internationally lauded film, winner of the Golden Bear in 1969, is Rani radovi/Early Works (1969). It features a heroine Jugoslava (Milja Vujanović), whose name is eponymous of Yugoslav nation. Bearing in mind that in the majority of Yugoslav New Films a leading character is a man, Early Works is exceptional for having a woman as the main heroine. I will approach Jugoslava's character: as an allegory of Yugoslavia and its revolutionary spirit, as well as a prototype of an emancipated woman, punished by rape and killing. My research studies the link in the film between Žilnik's political critique via strong heroine as a proxy, and her objectification. By reading the film from a feminist perspective and building my arguments on close analysis, I contend that Jugoslava is concurrently empowered and disempowered, an active subject and sexually objectified object, a raped nation and a raped feminist.