Politics of the Identity and Representation

How can designers depict a national identity when the national identity itself is in question? It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the Arab world seems to be dealing with an ‘optional’ identity; one that churns and morphs to the whim of the moment. But what is Arab identity? Shaped by Orientalism, moulded by colonialism and impacted by globalism, a unified Arab identity does not exist. As this paper traces the evolution of Self-Orientalism across a variety of communication channels, a prism of individual distorted representations emerge, squeezed by ‘othering’ into a collective dynamic, which Arab designers themselves, seemingly unaware, are nurturing.

The research focuses on the designer’s role and responsibility in depicting a cultural identity, in a world where Hyper-Nationalism is finding new roots in politics and media. Visual communicators have played an extensive role in the identity portrayal of the Arab world, that mirrors in many ways what Orientalists previously did in literature, cinema and academia. The paper highlights problematic design approaches visualizing the Arab world as an exotic place of mystery, erotica and stereotypes. Productions as such are leading a self-Orientalist reductionist wave in design and altering contextual realities.

Frida Kahlo’s painted diary is a visual and textual autobiography that is born out of Kahlo’s need to search for (re)construction and unity, and to express Kahlo’s fragmentation and destruction. Employing the visual and the verbal, Kahlo addresses herself directly, intimately, and viscerally. The essay examines the diary in relation to disability studies and autobiographical studies. It traces the contours of Kahlo’s pain and fragmentation in the diary that is portrayed through a stylistic fragmented quality, which conveys her metaphorically wounded body and heartache. I assert that Kahlo’s fragmented self is her ideal art subject in the production of an innovative vocabulary of the self. The essay then examines the images of wholeness in the diary, which Kahlo creates in the attempt to search for an integrative vision the self. Kahlo constructs herself playfully and imaginatively, providing an aesthetic form to the drama of her biological and psychological experience. Using examples from the diary, I explain how Kahlo employs her extensive visual sources to defines her self through her solitude, illness, love for Diego, and the Mexican Revolution, representing herself in and as pain, whilst conveying herself as a woman of perseverance and endurance. I conclude by stating that Kahlo creates both images of wholeness and fragmentation in the diary and that wholeness cannot exist without fragmentation.

The concept of representation ideally serves as a guarantee that minority social identities be given genuine representation in a mainstream society that subscribes to “hegemonic practices of the ruling classes”. However, recognition remains a critical struggle for minorities who have limited capacity due to ostracism and other forms of marginalization based on positions of power.

This study tackles the phenomenon of the assertion of identity and navigation of representation. It examines the experiences of the Badjao urban dwellers in making themselves known as Badjaos, as who they are, in a complex multicultural locale like Isla Verde, Davao City. They have low social and political status, which highlight the concern for liberation and self-determination from the trends of imposition mainly founded on the negative biases of the mainstream society.

Michel Foucault’s Analytics of Power, postulated in his 1982 work, Subject and Power, is used as the theoretical framework of the study in discussing the relationship between power, domination and resistance in contemporary society. Moreover, interpretive-hermeneutic phenomenology is employed as the methodology in understanding the power navigations of the Badjaos.

The findings of the study suggest the retention of Badjao culture as a manifestation of their identity, but the major driving forces of otherization have affected the way they assert their voice, particularly through discourse and practices, questioning the ingenuinity of political representation in the social space. The Badjaos further suffer from intra- and inter-group conflicts, and only tries to resolve their issues on their own. Due to this premise, the Badjaos have long given up resisting dominance and have accepted representational cognizance.

The narratives of the Badjao respondents provide a comprehensive analysis on the argument of power navigation as it affects how their identity is sustained, especially on how they utilize their voice to lobby their concerns to the government and those who have the capacity to help them alleviate their poor living conditions.

The marginalization of Muslim communities is a by-product of an inability to integrate successfully into the dominant society (Pew Forum, 2009). In order to comprehend these asymmetric Muslim identities in Europe, we need a broader discussion of religion and institutional policies. According to the Common Basic Principles for Immigrant Integration Policy adopted by the European Union (2004), employment and education play a key role in the integration process and participation of immigrants in host societies.  In this cross-national comparative study, I describe, analyze, and explain the similarities and differences in the construction of Muslim identities across London and Berlin. I focus on the availability of opportunities and avenues of integration for Muslims into mainstream European society as framed by the European Union which are safeguarding religious practice and improving access to national citizenship in London and Berlin. I argue that Muslims in Berlin have better opportunities for integration through educational and employment policies than those encountered by Muslims in London. I further propose that when the constructed multiple realities of religion, citizenship, and institutional policies, and coupled with the nature of intersectionality of the ethnicity, education, and social class, work together in explaining the challenges to the Muslim identity.

The project entitled “Landscapes of the Self” emerged from the feeling that research is undertaken in a world
that no longer breaks down according to existing disciplinary boundaries. The approach to the study of autobiographies
covers a range of areas, enables the understanding of contexts of experience of the self, and is grounded in the inherent
paradigms of the disciplines that frame and sustain this research—discourse analysis and cultural studies. An openminded
and sustained form of communication between these different fields of knowledge has underpinned the production
of knowledge on discourse and representation in political autobiography. This article focuses on the two volumes of
Cavaco Silva’s “Political Autobiography,” highlighting the representation of the emotional profile of the former
Portuguese prime minister (1985–1995) in the construction of his political identity. Based on Cavaco Silva’s words and
on the frequency with which he uses them, the article shows how emotions unfold in his discourse and reveal his intimate
and public identity both as a man and as a statesperson.

Book Chapter published in:
Zajda, Tsyrlina-Spady & Lovorn (eds.) (2017): Globalisation and Historiography of National Leaders. NYC, NY: Springer Publishing House
http://www.springer.com/la/book/9789402409741

This chapter examines a difference between visual representations of the first Czechoslovak President, T. G. Masaryk, in seven history textbooks published during communist and post-communist eras in the Czech Republic and it identifies the ideological purposes behind this difference. It interprets why pictures of Masaryk, one of the most prominent figures of the Czech modern history, have been eliminated from the communist textbooks and on contrary, why have they become part of a heroic narrative built around the President in the post-communist ones. 

On a theoretical level, the text discusses the examined history textbooks from a perspective of media of memory, while it emphasizes the specifics of visual media and visual communication. In a methodological part, it uses the mixed method approach when it combines visual content analysis and semiotic and social semiotic analysis and anchors the research in the theory of social constructivism. 

The found difference has been explained by a description of two ideological filters, the communist and the post-communist one, which affect not only the way, how the President has been pictured in history textbooks, but in a whole period plurimedial network. It shows, how these filters communicate a different concept of history to pupils and how they relate to four iconographic tropes based on which Masaryk has been represented in communist and post-communist times.

The research emphasizes the importance of a critical examination of visuals used in educational materials. It gives an example, how the methods of visual analysis can be used. It demonstrates the significance of visual communication and the necessity to understand its principles in order to become critical interprets of the past and the present as well as the fully equipped teachers and researchers.

Keywords: T. G. Masaryk, history education, media of memory, ideology, visual analysis, communism and post-communism, signs, construction of social reality

This paper offers a theoretical analysis of the interplays of secularization in the sphere of law and the sources of legality in liberal democracies. First section focuses on the sphere of law, and argues that not only its form and content, but also its enforcement has become secular. These surely happen simultaneously with secularization in a different yet related aspect of governance – namely, the practices of law-making. The following section argues that secularization in this particular area of who makes the law has taken place in conjunction with the rise of liberal, parliamentary, constitutional democracy that attributes the constituent power of the politico-legal system to the people. A direct effect of this is observable in the ways people identify (identity) with the politico-legal system and how the system represents (representation) the people have changed; this is extensively discussed in the last section.

In this article I would explore the idea of what identifies as a women's body and what does it entail to be a tribal woman. While grounding the body of these women, this article would also discern how these bodies are presented and represented in dominant state narrative. The question emerges, how are these lives seen, and how their existence is conceived? The stories that emerge from the multiple narratives of these women are a testimony to the precarity of their lives. Through this article, an account of what lives find validity and space in the national discourses of the mainstream would be explored. The explication would be arrived through the lens of Ego Historie, Sensory studies, textual and cinematic analysis. Who is a Tribal woman? The question of who is a woman is an important one especially in context to Feminist discourse and therefore necessitates who is a tribal woman. In context to this article, it is a mere reference of all those bodies who identify with the feminine gender in the most colloquial meaning of the term woman. The term tribal, here I borrow is in its closest meaning the Adivasi community of India under the Scheduled Tribe nomenclature as the concept has now been adopted by the tribal themselves to differentiate and perhaps claim their identity visa vis the dominant culture. (Xaxa) Tribal women and their representations: