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 Han- centred 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 Songhay- Zarma 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.