Symbole de la « renaissance culturelle kanak », le festival d’arts mélanésiens de Nouvelle-Calédonie, Mélanésia 2000, vient de fêter en 2015 son quarantième anniversaire. Cette manifestation a vraisemblablement constitué le ferment culturaliste de la revendication nationaliste qui, dans les années 1980, parvint à ériger la coutume en symbole unificateur du peuple kanak, contre le statu quo colonial. Engagée depuis plus de deux décennies dans un processus de décolonisation – dont l’issue politique et institutionnelle demeure incertaine –, la Nouvelle-Calédonie connaît les effets d’une politique de rééquilibrage au profit du peuple autochtone, notamment sous la forme d’une valorisation sans précédent de l’identité culturelle kanak, d’une sauvegarde des patrimoines traditionnels matériel et immatériel, et d’une action soutenue en faveur du développement culturel et de la création artistique à dimension océanienne.Il convient de retracer la genèse de cette « renaissance identitaire », à la lumière des débats épistémologiques qui ont agité l’anthropologie océaniste de l’époque, notamment autour des questions de la (ré)invention des traditions, et de leur utilisation à des fins de conscientisation identitaire et de mobilisation politique. Plus encore, le travail des sciences sociales – et de l’anthropologie en particulier – permet d’inscrire dans une perspective historique le processus, toujours en cours, d’édification des cultures en tant qu’identités collectives objectivées, données à voir, et sanctifiées (ou non) par une reconnaissance officielle et une inscription à l’intérieur de l’espace public. Avec l’émergence d’un nouveau champ social, qui prend en charge cette « gestion du symbolique » (Dubois, 1999), une recherche ethnographique menée auprès des acteurs sociaux permet de montrer en quoi les représentations de l’identité kanak, qui furent longtemps l’apanage de militants autochtones et d’intellectuels engagés, incombent désormais à une catégorie constituée de professionnels de la culture, de l’art, et du patrimoine.Au final, cette étude largement rétrospective entend contribuer à une compréhension à la fois épistémologique et sociologique du changement social et culturel en Nouvelle-Calédonie, depuis la conversion d’une crispation identitaire nationaliste (1975-1988) jusqu’au projet multiculturel d’une « communauté de destin » induit par la mise en œuvre de l’accord de Nouméa (1998-2018). / A symbol of “Kanak culture revival”, the festival of Melanesian arts Melanesia 2000 has just celebrated in 2015 its 40th anniversary. This event was in all likelihood the cultural catalyst for the nationalist movement which in the 1980’s successfully established la coutume (“kastom”) as a unifying symbol for the Kanak people in opposition to the colonial status quo. Having been engaged for more than two decades in a process of decolonization – the political and constitutional outcome of which remains uncertain – New Caledonia is now experiencing the effects of a policy of rebalancing in favour of the indigenous people, notably in the form of an unprecedented appreciation of Kanak cultural identity, the preservation of tangible and intangible heritage and the active promotion of cultural development and artistic creation within a wider Pacific cultural context.It is important to retrace the genesis of the “Kanak renaissance” in light of the epistemological discussions that animated Oceanian anthropology in the period, especially the debates around the (re)invention of traditions and their instrumentalization to promote identity consciousness and political mobilization. The social sciences – and especially anthropology – make it possible to place in historical perspective the ongoing process of the making of cultures as collective identities that are objectified, put on display and sanctified (or not) through their official recognition and inscription within the public arena. With the emergence of a new cultural field entirely dedicated to “the management of symbols” (Dubois, 1999), ethnographical research carried out with the social actors makes it possible to show that the representations of Kanak identity that were for a long time the domain of indigenous militants and engaged intellectuals are now the domain of curators and managers of art and cultural heritage.Finally, this largely retrospective study aims at a better epistemological and sociological understanding of social and cultural change in New Caledonia in the period since the hardening of Kanak nationalism (1975-1988) up until the multi-cultural project for a “shared future” brought about by the application of the Noumea Accord (1998-2018).

During the 1990s, most African countries experienced what has been termed their ‘second independence’ (cf. Bratton and Hyden 1992), a period of political upheaval and transformation leading to the introduction of democratic rule. In many countries including South Africa and Cameroon, the process triggered fresh debates about the status and role of chiefs. The popular assumption in ‘struggle circles’ such as the African National Congress (ANC) was that chiefs would be relegated to the background in the democratic era, thus giving room to people’s power and new forms of accountability. But the reality was that the introduction of democracy created a situation whereby many rural people felt excluded economically from the boundless promises of the new dispensation. This dissatisfaction among rural people brought into question the legitimacy of some structures such as the local government even though the ruling ANC continued to enjoy much support among the masses. This in turn provided an enabling environment in which some, but not all, chiefs could make new claims for legitimacy. This is because some chiefs remain discredited by their past association with apartheid authorities. Chief Tshivhase is one of the few chiefs who has successfully associated himself with the ANC both at the national and provincial levels. This has given him space to act decisively in certain ways on behalf of the poor at the local level, thereby winning credibility among rural people. Thus, his credibility is two-fold – with the national politicians, because he is one of them, and with the people of the chiefdom. Chief Tshivhase’s ability to renegotiate his status and gain new legitimacy as chief is a particular example of how the game of neo-liberal democracy is played out in post-apartheid South Africa. In the chiefdom of Bali Nyonga in Cameroon, Chief Ganyonga’s career looks rather similar to Tshivhase’s in so far as he too has risen to national prominence in the ruling party in Cameroon, the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) in the era of democracy. But Cameroon’s democratic transition was contradictory in the sense that it introduced the form of democracy but not its substance, leaving the ruling party the ability to manipulate and suppress the opposition and civil society. It was against this background that Ganyonga’s prominence in the CPDM contributed to undermining his legitimacy in the eyes of his subjects because they believed that his prominence in the party left them without any shield from the predation and manipulation of the state. Ganyonga was seen to be in ‘illicit cohabitation’ with a self-serving ruling party, at a time when his subjects wanted to use their newfound rights as citizens to vote the opposition into office. But Ganyonga’s involvement in the politics of the so-called ‘Anglophone problem’ helped to legitimise his participation in modern politics as a chief. Against this background, this thesis examines why both chiefs used their positions as a springboard into national politics? It also establishes the kinds of legitimacy claimed by these chiefs and to what extent the masses are persuaded by such claims and how the chiefs’ involvement in national politics has affected the relationship between them and their subjects. This thesis therefore makes a case for the importance of comparative research on chiefs in the era of democracy and the predicaments they face therein. The thesis argues that contrary to exhortations about the incompatibility of chiefs and democracy, the reality is that political transition in both countries produced contradictions which created space for chiefs to fill but on condition that they were able to draw from different kinds of legitimacy and had not been discredited by their past or present involvement with the postcolonial state. / Dissertation (MA (Social Science))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Anthropology and Archaeology / unrestricted

In asking ‘How do queer Palestinian womyn ‘queer’ Palestinian identity”, the present research focuses on the various forms of traditional, narrative, and creative resistance practices of Palestinian womyn who challenge the following three narratives: 1) the national narrative which tags ‘queer’ as ‘Other’ and which posits the national movement at the top of the hierarchy of struggles; 2) the colonial narrative which is sustained by the Israeli public relations campaigns aiming to portray Israel as a modern, progressive, safe gay haven for queers, in opposition to a Palestine and Arab World which are said to be integrally homophobic, barbaric, regressive, etc. in an attempt to ‘pinkwash’ the occupation; and 3) the neocolonial narrative in which Western and Israeli Jewish queer movements reproduce colonial dynamics in their attempt to ‘save’ Palestinian queers who are deemed to be powerless, voiceless victims in need of saving.

Cette thèse porte sur l’impuissance de l’ambition littéraire à transcrire fidèlement la barbarie absolue. A partir de la poétique de la disgrâce, elle interroge d’abord le rapport entre écriture et expérience extrême puis, met en exergue les stratégies narratives régissant les récits qui tentent une littérarisation d’expériences jugées indicibles. Elle est ensuite une réflexion sur le statut même de la littérature contemporaine. L’analyse poétique conduit à affirmer dans une première partie que les récits de la catastrophe sont construits autour d’un dilemme : l’indicible, fondé sur l’impuissance du langage rationnel à la nommer, et la nécessité malgré tout de dépasser les frontières de « l’impossible à dire ». Et c’est le renversement de l’écriture de la disgrâce en disgrâce de l’écriture comme procédé esthétique qui permet ce dépassement. La deuxième partie permet de constater la récurrence de certains invariants se présentant comme éléments pertinents de littérarité. C’est notamment le cas du recours à la désacralisation de l’écriture. Celle-ci engendre une littérature du vide, de l’incertitude. C’est ensuite la notion de fragmentation du sujet qui place véritablement nos œuvres tantôt dans la littérature postmoderne occidentale ou bien dans littérature de la postcolonie africaine. / This thesis deals with the unability of literary ambition to faithfully transcribe absolute barbarism. Using the poetics of disgrace, it questions the relationship between writing and extreme experience on the one hand, and brings out the narrative strategies governing the stories attempting a novelization of experiences judged unspeakable on the other. It is then a reflection on the very status of contemporary literature.The poetic analysis leads us to affirm in a first part that tales of catastrophe are built on a dilemma: the unspeakable; based on the powerlessness of rational language to name it and the necessity, despite it all, to transcend the frontiers of the “impossible to say”. And it is the reversal of the writing of disgrace into the disgrace of writing as an aesthetical means which allows this transcendence. The second part allows us to see the recurrence of some invariants presenting themselves as pertinent elements of writing. This engenders a literature of the void, of uncertainty. It is then the notion of the subject’s fragmentation which truly places our works either in western postmodern literature or in African postcolonial literature.

This research aims to understand self-translation as a postcolonial, social, political, cultural and linguistic phenomenon and it focuses on how it communicates a hybrid transcultural identity that not only challenges the monolingual literary canons and concepts of national homogeneous identities, but also subverts to patriarchal society. Thus, I understand self-translation as a mean of empowerment and contestation. The cases under study are Puerto Rican writers Rosario Ferré and Esmeralda Santiago, and their novels The House on the Lagoon and América’s Dream, written in English and translated into Spanish by the authors themselves. I believe that Rosario Ferré and Esmeralda Santiago are representative of a group of writers, artists and intellectuals who through their work originated from the island and from the U.S. Diaspora, have aimed to give voice to a Puerto Rican postcolonial hybrid identity that has been silenced until recently. Therefore, they disrupt the official national cultural and linguistic discourse about the Puerto Rican identity that has been weaved by the Spanish language in opposition to U.S. colonialist attempts of linguistic and cultural assimilation. This dissertation is located in the intersection between the fields of comparative literature, translation, cultural, gender and postcolonial studies. The question that guides this research is: Is self-translation in the case of Puerto Rico, a result of cultural hybridity in Puerto Rico’s postcolonial context?Therefore, this is a multidisciplinary research project that integrates elements from the humanities and the social sciences. Methodologically, it integrates qualitative and quantitative approaches. Hence, hybridity is embedded in this research not only because it discusses English and Spanish writing, but because it includes textual analysis, content analysis and statistical analysis. The main finding is the deep conection between socio-political context, language, culture, identity, power and translation that supports the idea that self-translation is a postcolonial act, which in the case of Puerto Rico is strongly related to hybridity as an everyday practice of identity affirmation.

Literature emerging from borderland, transnational or diaspora contexts doesn’t always fit the mould of the dominant national culture where the author resides. Usually this literature is published in the language of the larger society, but sometimes authors prefer to use the language variety in which they write as one of many tools to resist assimilation and highlight their independent or hybrid identity; such is the case with Matilda Koén-Sarano's Judeo-Spanish folktales and Susana Chávez-Silverman’s Spanglish crónicas. When this is the case, translation from these varieties must be done in a way that preserves the resistance to assimilation in a different linguistic context. In this thesis I begin by defining Judeo-Spanish and Spanglish as language varieties, consider who uses them, who writes in them, and the political or personal motivations of the authors. I then problematize the broad issue of translating texts written in nonstandard language varieties. I consider power in translation generally and into English more specifically. I nuance the binary between rejecting translation completely, and embracing it wholeheartedly as essential. In the final two chapters I turn my attention to specific challenges that presented themselves in translations from Judeo-Spanish and Spanglish and explain how these challenges informed my approaches and strategies. No single translation approach or strategy emerges as a monolithic solution to all problems. Nevertheless, my original contribution to knowledge lies in the nuanced discussion and creative application of varying degrees of ethnolects (or literary dialects), writing based in phonetics, and intralinguistic translation that are explained and that are evidenced in the original translations found in the appendices.

While dominant International Relations (IR) theory has constructed the concept of security in such a way that excludes economic sanctions from considerations of violence, the track record of embargo tells a different story, one with a significantly higher death toll. This project challenges the borders of the hegemonic IR discourse to make room for a theoretical and political account of the deadly impacts of sanction regimes. Through a discourse analysis of IR theory, using Laclau and Mouffe’s holistic discourse theory, it looks to the spaces of meaning negotiation emerging from feminist IR theory. The renegotiated concepts of human security and structural violence make visible economic sanctions as acts of violence, and displace the binary oppositions of international/domestic, military/economic, public/private which shield embargo from the sight of its own violence. Having broken embargo out of its conceptually locked box, this project pushes further, and interrogates the connections of embargo and empire. Embargo functions to uphold imperial control and Western interests, while (re)producing racist colonial narratives. While deconstructing and reconstructing three competing understandings of embargo – embargo-as-nonviolent, embargo-as-violence, and embargo-as-imperial – I interrogate the political implications of hegemonic ways of knowing. I argue that, by challenging the hegemony of IR, we can unmask the practice of embargo, and locate its violent role in upholding imperial structures of power. / Graduate

This dissertation seeks to ethnographically explain an apparent paradox: the tremendous popularity of U.S. country & western (C&W) in postcolonial St. Lucia. The music's reputation as a "white" expressive form contradicts the decolonization ethos of a young, predominantly Afro-creole nation and appears to challenge an emerging St. Lucian postcolonial identity. I show how St. Lucians use C&W to effect significant continuities with Afro-creole culture. Its creolization in the St. Lucian context makes C&W a compelling expression of post-colonial identity. I argue that with considerable genius, St. Lucians have creolized ways to dance to C&W much as they creolized European country and court dances in earlier centuries. In this instance, however, the music was already more creole than is customarily admitted. St. Lucians make U.S. C&W their own by curating songs with a particular Caribbean resonance, creolizing the dance on habanera beats, and syncretizing it with marginalized Afro-St. Lucian folk practices. Denying simplistic cultural imperialism, St. Lucians have reclaimed C&W, highlighting its under-acknowledged but already creole ingredients, merging it with their own Afrocreole folk forms, and transforming it into a music of black social experience. The dialogic continuities are many: storytelling; working-class and real-life themes; social dance context of communal, cross-island exchanges; instruments and genres from Africa, including fiddle and banjo, yodel and drum; updating of the already creolized Kwadril complex; and, perhaps most revealing, the way the dance creolization incorporates the habanera beat. Given these continuities, the popularity of country & western in St. Lucia seems virtually over-determined rather than counter-intuitive. To analyze this specific challenge of cultural decolonization, I develop the concepts of "postcolonial creolizations" and "empire rollover." I trace the varied meanings of the term creole--and suggest that its variability should be the foundation of theoretical potency. I use Bakhtinian notions of intertextuality to examine how expressive forms from different worlds come into dialogue with each other, and show how the conversations eventually produce new creations. I show how postcolonial creolizations prompt us to rethink how power relations get reconfigured in postcolonial contexts. I argue that by attending to ways that postcolonial actors are shaping creolization processes now, we can better understand how colonial and modern imperial forces come together to challenge meaningful decolonization and sovereignty. I call this convergence process "empire rollover." This refers to the uneven processes involved as one form of imperialism gives way to subsequent imperial relations. I use this concept to answer important questions regarding the degree to which power is reclaimed in postcolonial transformation of expressive culture and to what extent creolization is decolonized. I show how the St. Lucia banana industry case epitomizes the phenomena economically wherein colonial-type benefits rollover to a new imperial power (U.S.) and continue to accrue, while advantages gained during decolonization do not. The C&W case, in contrast, shows how St. Lucians use "imperialist" forms in creative, distinctively St. Lucian ways, such that it is not simply an expression of neocolonial relations.

In this thesis, the author explores the main factors that may have contributed to the development of human trafficking in terms of sexual exploitation in Sweden. The aim is to identify the background of the main women and young girls exposed to human trafficking and to identify the factors that could potentially decrease the development of human trafficking. The theoretical underpinnings, which incorporated the push and pull model, the postcolonial feminist theory and the routine activity theory, as well as the information provided by the seven semi-structured interviews, provided a necessary framework to analyze and discuss the findings. The knowledgeable and experienced informants of this qualitative thesis consist of relevant authorities and organizations in the field of human trafficking. The findings of this thesis suggested that human trafficking in women and your girls for sexual exploitation is driven by poverty, the experience of war, lack of opportunities, the trafficker’s greed for profit and the demand for prostitution from countries such as Sweden. The findings moreover presented that the women and young girls that generally are exposed to human trafficking in terms of sexual exploitation, usually originate from third world countries and through circular migration within Europe. The results of this thesis furthermore presented various aspects and areas of improvement that are needed for relevant actors, in order for them to jointly work towards their common goal; to combat human trafficking cases in Sweden.

Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994) de l’autrice Edwidge Danticat relate l’histoire de Sophie, une jeune femme Haïtienne qui quitte Croix-Des-Rosets pour New York où elle rejoint sa mère biologique, Martine. Le récit et le passage à l’âge adulte de Sophie sont une exploration de l’acculturation, de la violence politique, et des abus sexuels intergénérationnels auxquels le personnage fait face. The Dew Breaker (2004), un roman divisé en plusieurs nouvelles, raconte les récits de différents personnages dont les vies s’entrecroisent sous les dictatures de François et Jean-Claude Duvalier. Ce texte explore la multiplicité des perspectives étant les résultats directs d’une politique de terreur et de ses effets sur le long-terme sur les différents personnages. Au centre se trouve deux personnages : Ka Bienaimé, une jeune Haïtiano-Américaine qui idéalise la figure paternelle qu’elle perçoit comme une victime du régime dictatorial de Duvalier, et son père, un immigrant Haïtien qui cache son passé de ‘dew breaker’, un Tonton Macoute, qui travaille comme agent d’exécution violent de la dictature. Ces deux romans décrivent les dommages psychologiques, interpersonnels et culturels causés par la violence d’un régime autoritaire. Dans ce mémoire, mon intention est d’analyser comment Danticat utilise les personnages de Sophie et Ka pour enquêter sur des questions relatives au trauma et aux trahisons émotionnelles. Mon étude soutient que dans ces textes, l’autrice crée un espace où les notions d’hybridité et de créolisation se mélangent et donnent naissance à de nouvelles formes de discours. Plus particulièrement, j’offre que la langue Créole aide le lecteur à "come to a better understanding of the cultural, physical, and the historical realities of Haiti" (Sarthou 20). En reconnaissant leurs traumatismes passés comme faisant partis intégrants de leurs êtres, les personnages de Danticat gagnent en autorité et choisissent de confronter leur passé. Ce mémoire sera divisé en trois chapitres. Dans un premier temps, j’explore comment l’hybridité et le langage Créole créent un espace pour articuler de nouvelles formes d’identité. Dans un second temps, j’examine comment l’autrice utilise Breath, Eyes, Memory pour redéfinir la mémoire et les traditions. Dans un troisième chapitre, j’analyse comment The Dew Breaker entremêle les notions de violence, les souvenirs et le pardon pour interroger le potentiel d’une guérison émotionnelle. / Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994) tells the story of Sophie Caco, a young Haitian girl who moves from Croix-Des-Rosets, Haiti, to New York City to reunite with Martine, her birth mother. Her coming-of-age-narrative becomes an exploration of cultural displacement, political violence, and intergenerational sexual abuse. The Dew Breaker (2004), a novel as short stories, recounts the tales of different characters whose lives intersect under the Haitian regimes of both François and Jean-Claude Duvalier. The text explores a multiplicity of perspectives representing the long-term effects of political terror on a host of characters. At their center are Ka Bienaimé, a young Haitian-American woman, who has idealized her father, whom she has perceived as a victim of the Duvalier regime, and her father, a Haitian immigrant hiding his past as a dew breaker, a Tonton Macoute, working as a violent enforcer of the dictatorship. Both novels depict the psychological, interpersonal, and cultural damage caused by the violence of an authoritarian regime. In my thesis, I investigate how Danticat uses the characters of Sophie and Ka to interrogate questions related to trauma and emotional betrayal. My study argues that in these texts the author creates a space where notions of hybridity and creolization mingle and give birth to new forms of discourse. More particularly, I provide an account of how the Creole language helps the reader to "come to a better understanding of the cultural, physical, and the historical realities of Haiti" (Sarthou 20). In acknowledging the traumatic experiences of their past as part of themselves, Danticat’s characters exercise agency by choosing to address the past. I will thus divide my thesis in three chapters. In Chapter One, I explore hybridity and creolized language as a space to articulate new forms of identity. In my second chapter, I examine how the author uses Breath, Eyes, Memory to reformulate memory and reclaim tradition. In Chapter Three, I analyze how The Dew Breaker interweaves explorations of violence, remembrance, and forgiveness to interrogate the potential for emotional healing.