Exclamat!On: an Interdisciplinary Journal
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Squirrell | Poetry EXCLAMAT!ON: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL IDENTITIES Volume 2 | June 2018 Exclamat!on: An Interdisciplinary Journal IDENTITIES ii First published in 2018 by Exclamat!on: An Interdisciplinary Journal University of Exeter Department of English The Queen's Drive Exeter EX4 4QH Available on: http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/english/research/publications/exclamation Exclamat!on: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2018 Copyright in the individual contributions is retained by the authors. Submissions to the journal are welcome and should be addressed to the editors ([email protected]) All submissions in this publication are subject to double blind peer-review. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the permission of the editors. Front cover image: Eleanor Shipton 2017 ISSN 2515-0332 iii EDITORIAL BOARD EDITORS Sarah-Jayne Ainsworth Teresa Sanders PhD English PhD English University of Exeter University of Exeter [email protected] [email protected] ASSISTANT EDITORS Christina Clover [email protected] (PhD Creative Writing) Joe Van Bergen [email protected] (MA English/Film) Ash Gannicott [email protected] (PhD English) Molly Ryder [email protected] (PhD English) Eleanor Shipton [email protected] (PhD English) SOCIAL MEDIA OFFICER Essie Karozas-Dennis [email protected] (MA English) iv CONTENTS Editorial vii Towards a Post-Identity Future: Gloria Anzaldúa on Disability 1 and Minority Identity Politics Elaine Ruth Boe Black Nana 17 Kim Squirrell My Father Said 18 Kim Squirrell ‘Doa sjteet d’r Joep’: Memory and Public Space in a Former 19 Mining Town In the Netherlands Celine Frohn The City and The Self: Intertextuality, Masculine Identity and 40 Images of Postmodernity in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) and Michael Mann’s Heat (1995) Gemma Ballard To Liberate and Lament: The Duality of Digital Culture and 59 Chechnya’s Concentration Camps for Russian LGBT Citizens Oliver Portillo Who’d Want a See-Through Daughter? 77 Christina Clover Engmalchin and the Plural Imaginings of Malaysia: or, the 87 ‘Arty-crafty Dodgers of Reality’ Brandon Liew v ‘I am Cinderella’: Naming, Power and Identity 111 Sally King Identities in Fiction: The Imposed identity of Leopold Bloom 134 Linda Horsnell No D 147 Rinat Harel Queer Victorian Identities in Goblin Market (1862) and 149 In Memoriam (1850): Uncovering the Subversive Undercurrents of the Literary Canon Jonathan Hay Tracking the Intersectional Oppression of the Black Woman in 173 the United States Shannen Grant Discontinuity and The Tramp: Understanding Discontinuity as 194 a Constitutive Element of Charles Chaplin’s ‘Charlie’ Identity Chris Grosvenor Disability, Performativity, and the Able-Gaze 213 Ash Gannicott The Leopard 229 Svetlana Yefimenko Contributors 241 vi EDITORIAL Producing this, the second volume of Exclamat!on: An Interdisciplinary Journal on the theme of ‘Identities’, could be compared to “difficult second album” syndrome. Inherent in this volume’s production was the challenge of following the new, innovative first volume, demonstrating the extent to which the journal has grown and developed, whilst simultaneously retaining the “sound” that people associate with the first “album”. The first volume of Exclamat!on was a gamble: as editors, we had little, if any, experience, and there were plenty of lessons learned. Moving forward with this second volume we endeavoured not to be complacent. We sought to facilitate the journal’s expansion and development, and to ensure that it will continue once our individual tenures as editors comes to an end. As such, the first development was to thematise this second volume. The idea of ‘identities’ is a fundamental one within our society, as well as a topical theme within academia, and one which we felt spoke to all aspects of English, Creative Writing and Film. Identities are negotiable, fluid and contingent on context, and it is the ways in which ‘identities’ can be read and interrogated that forms the basis of the articles, short stories and poems in this collection. In order to orchestrate the growth of the journal, this year we opened our call for submissions to research and taught postgraduates from across the UK. Despite being a fledgling publication, we were thrilled to receive such an excellent array of submissions, and are delighted to be able to include pieces by people from several universities. As Exclamat!on grows in reputation, we hope that the number of submissions will continue to increase, whilst maintaining the already established high quality and ethos of the journal. Finally, next year will see a change of personnel, as Sarah-Jayne completes her PhD, and Teresa will be joined by a new co-editor, thereby ensuring both continuity and development. This volume is being launched at the inaugural Exclamat!on conference, the theme of which - ‘Networks and Connections’ – also constitutes the theme of the third volume, to be published in the vii summer of 2019. In initiating this theme a whole year in advance, and having a conference on the subject, we have sought to invite potential contributors to present their work, begin conversations, as well as to create their own ‘networks and connections’. Postgraduate students are the academics of the future; their peers are the colleagues who will undertake the journey with them. We are therefore proud to be playing our part in encouraging discussion, collaboration and intellectual development. We could not have produced this volume without support. We would therefore like to thank our editorial team for all of their hard work, from overseeing the peer review process, to copyediting, to promoting Exclamat!on via our new social media platforms. We are indebted to colleagues – both internally and externally – for peer reviewing at a busy and challenging time within Higher Education. We are also grateful to the University of Exeter’s College of Humanities Postgraduate Activities Award and Doctoral College’s Researcher-Led Initiative Award for funding the journal. Finally, We would like to thank Cathryn Baker, PGR Support Officer within the University of Exeter’s HASS team, for her unwavering enthusiasm and support. We think this “second album” is, in some ways, better than the first. The development of the thematic material, the variety and blend of the voices, as well as the greater confidence and experience of the editorial team have combined to produce a volume which, we believe, strikes the right chord and will be hailed as a classic. Teresa Sanders & Sarah-Jayne Ainsworth viii Exclamat!on: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2 Towards a Post-Identity Future: Gloria Anzaldúa on Disability and Minority Identity Politics Elaine Ruth Boe Nothing is fixed. The pulse of existence, the heart of the universe, is fluid. Identity, like a river, is always changing, always in transition, always in nepantla.1 Gloria Anzaldúa’s writing has entered scholarly discourses through feminism, Chicana studies, political activism, race theory, and queer criticism. Much scholarship has explored the importance of the body in Anzaldúa’s texts, and scholars have now begun to consider how disability studies might offer new perspectives. Anzaldúa strove to ‘write from the body’, because she supposes ‘that’s why we’re in a body’.2 The increasing popularity of disability studies and the publication of an email correspondence between Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating in The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader have lent momentum to a disability studies approach to Anzaldúa’s writing. Anzaldúa felt her hormonal imbalance, hysterectomy, and diabetes were pivotal for her authorship, telling Keating, ‘[m]y resistance to gender and race injustice stemmed from my physical differences’.3 Yet Anzaldúa’s relationship to disability as an identity label is not without complications. Her ideas about selfhood, which Keating describes as a 1 Gloria Anzaldúa, ‘now let us shift… conocimiento… inner work, public acts’, in Light in the Dark/ Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality, ed. by AnaLouise Keating (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015), pp. 117-159 (p. 135). 2 Gloria Anzaldua,́ ‘Turning Points: An Interview with Linda Smuckler (1982)’, in Interviews/Entrevistas, ed. by AnaLouise Keating (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 17-70 (p. 63). 3 Gloria Anzaldua,́ ‘Last Words? Spirit Journeys: An Interview with AnaLouise Keating (1998-1999)’, in Interviews/Entrevistas, ed. by AnaLouise Keating (New York: Routledge, 2000) pp. 281-291 (p. 288). 1 Boe | Towards a Post-Identity Future ‘global citizenship of sorts’, conflict with certain disability theorists.4 Since Anzaldúa thought of herself as a model for others to ‘take these ideas, think about and expand on them’, this essay explores Anzaldúa’s relationship to disability and the body in light of debates on minority identity politics.5 For Anzaldúa, identification through externals such as disability, race, or sexuality will not bring about the revolution in society’s hierarchies she desires. She looks beyond the scope of many disability theorists; she looks forward to changing the world. I base Anzaldúa’s theory of disability identity on her 2003 email exchange with Keating. In the email, Anzaldúa does not identify as disabled or diabetic.6 Yet, she does not ‘deny or reject the fact that [she is] disabled’, adding that she does not ‘feel distanced from [her] “disability”’.7 This essay does not aim to label Anzaldúa as disabled.8 Rather, it hopes to better understand why Anzaldúa rejects a disability 4 AnaLouise Keating, ‘Introduction: Reading Gloria Anzaldúa, Reading Ourselves… Complex Intimacies, Intricate Connections’, in The Gloria Anzalduá Reader, ed. by AnaLouise Keating (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), pp. 1-15 (p. 11). 5 Gloria Anzaldua,́ ‘Making Alliances, Queerness, and Bridging Conocimientos: An Interview with Jamie Lee Evans (1993)’, in Interviews/Entrevistas, ed. by AnaLouise Keating (New York: Routledge, 2000) pp. 195-209 (p. 200). Anzaldúa scholars point out the importance of recognizing one’s subject position as a writer in relation to race, ethnicity, and social class.