scholarly journals “Of Belonging or Not”: Counter-Canons of Britishness in the Novels of Hanif Kureishi and Andrea Levy

Author(s):  
Daniele Nunziata

This article analyses two novels, Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) and Andrea Levy’s Small Island (2004), to elaborate on how they form postcolonial literary visions of metropolitan Britain, in resistance to colonialist depictions of the setting which have been disseminated across the world. The two works share related themes and motifs in their representations of the experiences of first- and second-generation migrants from Britain’s (former) colonies. Kureishi’s novel, set in the 1970s, relates the teenage life of Karim, the son of an Indian migrant, Haroon, as he navigates his sense of being a “funny kind of Englishman” (3). Levy’s novel, on the other hand, relates the experiences of a Jamaican couple, Hortense and Gilbert, as they arrive in Britain in 1948 within a fictionalised representation of the Empire Windrush. Comparable images within their works, including allusions to George Lamming’s writing from the 1950s and Stuart Hall’s depiction of the West End as it has existed in colonial imaginings, demonstrate how the two novelists participate in – and, therefore, help construct – a counter-canon of writing about post-war and postcolonial Britishness.

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-50
Author(s):  
John Marsland

During the twenty years after the Second World War, housing began to be seen as a basic right among many in the west, and the British welfare state included many policies and provisions to provide decent shelter for its citizens. This article focuses on the period circa 1968–85, because this was a time in England when the lack of affordable, secure-tenured housing reached a crisis level at the same time that central and local governmental housing policies received wider scrutiny for their ineffectiveness. My argument is that despite post-war laws and rhetoric, many Britons lived through a housing disaster and for many the most rational way they could solve their housing needs was to exploit loopholes in the law (as well as to break them out right). While the main focus of the article is on young British squatters, there is scope for transnational comparison. Squatters in other parts of the world looked to their example to address the housing needs in their own countries, especially as privatization of public services spread globally in the 1980s and 1990s. Dutch, Spanish, German and American squatters were involved in a symbiotic exchange of ideas and sometimes people with the British squatters and each other, and practices and rhetoric from one place were quickly adopted or rejected based on the success or failure in each place.


Author(s):  
Valerii P. Trykov ◽  

The article examines the conceptual foundations and scientific, sociocultural and philosophical prerequisites of imagology, the field of interdisciplinary research in humanitaristics, the subject of which is the image of the “Other” (foreign country, people, culture, etc.). It is shown that the imagology appeared as a response to the crisis of comparatives of the mid-20th century, with a special role in the formation of its methodology played by the German comparatist scientist H. Dyserinck and his Aachen School. The article analyzes the influence on the formation of the imagology of post-structuralist and constructivist ideological-thematic complex (auto-reference of language, discursive history, construction of social reality, etc.), linguistic and cultural turn in the West in the 1960s. Shown is that, extrapolated to national issues, this set of ideas and approaches has led to a transition from the essentialist concept of the nation to the concept of a nation as an “imaginary community” or an intellectual construct. A fundamental difference in approaches to the study of an image of the “Other” in traditional comparativism and imagology, which arises from a different understanding of the nation, has been distinguished. It is concluded that the imagology studies the image of the “Other” primarily in its manipulative, socio-ideological function, i.e., as an important tool for the formation and transformation of national and cultural identity. The article identifies ideological, socio-political factors that prepared the birth of the imagology and ensured its development in western Humanities (fear of possible recurrences of extreme nationalism and fascism in post-war Europe, the EU project, which set the task of forming a pan-European identity). It is concluded that the imagology, on the one hand, has actualized an important field of scientific research — the study of the image of the “Other”, but, on the other hand, in the broader cultural and historical perspective, marked a departure not only from the traditions of comparativism and historical poetics, but also from the humanist tradition of the European culture, becoming part of a manipulative dominant strategy in the West. To the culture of “incorporation” into a “foreign word” in order to understand it, preserve it and to ensure a genuine dialogue of cultures, the imagology has contrasted the social engineering and the technology of active “designing” a new identity.


2021 ◽  
pp. 107-136
Author(s):  
James C. Nicholson

Chapter Five discusses the origins of the International Race and the British contestants' transatlantic voyage to America. August Belmont II, chairman of the powerful Jockey Club in New York, convinced Benjamin Irish, the farmer and caterer of relatively modest means who owned Epsom Derby winner Papyrus, to agree to a match race against a to-be-determined American horse. Kentucky Derby champion Zev was the likeliest choice. Admiral Cary T. Grayson, friend and physician to former president Woodrow Wilson, owned the other leading American candidate, My Own. But Hildreth and Sinclair manipulated the selection process. Newspaper coverage of the procedural gamesmanship helped to hype the event. Sportswriters' profiles of the men associated with the English horse -- including jockey Steve Donoghue, who had risen from a rough industrial town to become the most famous rider in the world, and a modest second-generation Newmarket trainer named Basil Jarvis -- spread the ballyhoo nationwide.


2019 ◽  
pp. 40-61
Author(s):  
Margaretta Jolly

The chapter unpacks the book’s method as a history of living activists, set in the context of feminism’s affiliation with oral history and life-course analysis. It discusses the S&A oral history archive on which the book is based, outlining how S&A approached interviewee selection and representation, and acknowledging how such questions continue to divide the movement. Offering an overview of feminist oral history practice, addressing the ethics involved and the interpretative challenges of working with memory, subjectivity and emotion, it shows how the ‘baby boomers’, ‘second generation migrants’ and ‘lesbian-feminists’ who powered the WLM were shaped by the post-war worlds in which they grew up, and talked back to these categories, particularly as they gained control over fertility. The chapter concludes with the story of Sue Lopez, women’s footballer and champion for women’s rights in the sport, demonstrating oral history’s ethical challenges whilst celebrating an inspiring athlete and campaigner. 149 words


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 844-863
Author(s):  
Sophie Hennekam ◽  
Sabine Bacouel-Jentjens ◽  
Inju Yang

Drawing on an extended case method approach consisting of observations, analysis of organisational documents and semi-structured in-depth interviews with first- and second-generation migrants working in a French car manufacturing company, this article examines how and why diversity management practices are perceived differently by first- versus second-generation migrant workers. Using social identity theory and equity theory as a theoretical framework, it was found that first- and second-generation migrants have different social expectations, which, in turn, influence their self-image, as well as their perception of organisational justice. The interaction between their social identity and their perception of justice affects how they appraise diversity management practices in their organisation. The study extends previous research on migrant workers and diversity management by building a conceptual model that outlines how and why diversity management practices are perceived differently by first- versus second-generation migrants.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 861-880 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ksenia Gnevsheva

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: The paper aimed to investigate style-shifting in the use of ethnolectal features in first- and second- generation bilingual migrants. Design/Methodology/Approach: Three groups of speakers (first- and second-generation Russian–English bilinguals as well as monolingual Anglo Australians) were audio-recorded in three different styles (conversation, interview, and reading). Data and Analysis: Their production of the goose and trap vowels across the styles was analyzed quantitatively. Findings/Conclusions: Overall differences were found between the groups such that first- and second-generation speakers produced more Russian-like vowels compared to the monolinguals; with the biggest differences between the first-generation speakers and the other two groups. In terms of style-shifting, no significant differences were found in the monolingual speakers, and both first- and second-generation speakers were found to produce most Australian English-like vowels in the conversation style. At the same time, certain differences between the two bilingual groups surfaced, such as no significant differences in the first-generation speakers’ production of the goose vowel and in the vowels’ linguistic conditioning. Originality: Previous studies have compared ethnolects in the first- and second-generations of migrants and mainstream varieties in order to theorize ethnolect formation. Several studies have also investigated intraspeaker style-shifting between more ‘mainstream’ and more ‘ethnic’ in ethnolect speakers, but such style-shifting is rarely compared across generations. Significance/Implications: The similarities and differences between the two bilingual groups suggest that ethnolectal features may be originally derived from the community language but may be reallocated to other sociolinguistic meanings in the second generation.


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