Janine Rich (Cultural Studies MA student) participated the Cultural Studies Association's 2018 Annual Conference, held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at Carnegie Mellon University between 31 May-2 June 2018. The title of her talk was "All the Others: Territorializing Racism in the Israeli State".
“All the Others”: Territorializing Racism in the Israeli State
Abstract
In 2013, the Israeli Ministry of Education instituted a mandatory, week-long program titled “The Other is Me”, intended to combat racism and bullying. Less than two years later, a book, Dorit Rabinyan’s All the Rivers, was banned for depicting a romantic relationship between a Muslim-Arab man and a Jewish woman. While these two events – a program intended to decrease racism vs. a censoring motivated largely by racism – appear to represent opposite political impulses, I argue that both events serve the same purposes of relocating racism, as well as its products, excesses and effects, onto the depoliticized grounds of personal choice and individual behavior. Racism becomes decoupled from politics and appears as merely a moral failing, both in those who exhibit racist behavior and those whose life possibilities are curtailed by racialized hierarchies of power. Through an analysis of these two events I will trace how the Israeli state, through its many public and private platforms and technologies, understands and mediates racism while maintaining as its organizing logic a racialized sociopolitical hierarchy of power. Finally, I argue that a firm reterritorialization of racism within the workings of the Israeli state – as something not accidental to the system, but intentionally produced and indeed constitutive of the system – must serve as the foundation of academic and activist work going forward.
Keywords: ‘Race’, ethnicity, Israel, racialization, Jewishness, identity, class
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Sümeyra Güneş
ISHS Confrence Paper Abstract
Humor as a Way of Resistance:
The Case of Zaytung
In her conference paper she will be working on the Turkish satirical news website Zaytung. She will analyze how Zaytung manipulates and makes use of humor while creating fictional news and crafting its own satirical agenda. What is this website’s role in Turkish politics and media? She regards Zaytung as a creative product of power, which plays its role as an alternative in resisting to silence. Zaytung is a social platform in which everyone can write their own fictional humorous news articles. A humorous alternative reality is produced and presented to the public view by Zaytung as a reaction to the discourses of mainstream journalism in Turkey. There is a historical and global context within which the desire for writing humorous fake news arises. Her research also focuses on what made people move beyond the truth and choose to share humorous fake news. Zaytung provides a new humorous perspective surrounded with irony in order to read and analyze the incidents taking place in a country like Turkey within a day. She will analyze not only how this satirical news website feeds itself on reality, but also how it demonstrates the absurdity in that reality by approaching it in a subversive and humorous way.
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Cultural Studies M.A student Süleyman Bölükbaş has been accepted to the conference called 2018 International Symposium on Gender Studies “(De)constructing Femininity and Masculinity” which will be held on June 30, 2018 at Birkbeck, University of London. He is to present his paper entitled “The Art of ‘Delikanlılık’: Masculinity Performance in Cholera Street” in the conference.
Abstract:
THE ART OF “DELIKANLILIK”: MASCULINITY PERFORMANCE IN CHOLERA STREET
In Cholera Street, which was based on the novel of the same name by Metin Kaçan and directed by Mustafa Altıoklar in 1997, it is possible to observe the development of specific kind of masculinity in Turkish society and culture. This type of masculinity is basically the “delikanlılık”, performance of which is observed in varoş culture. It is because the movie tells the story of people who live in Cholera Street and this place is basically a kind of varoş.. And this paper will address the “delikanlılık” in Cholera Street. Analyzing the development of character called Salih in his relations with other two significant male characters Arap Sado, and Reis, I will demonstrate how the “delikanlılık” is performed as masculinity. Drawing on theoreticians Michael S. Kimmel, Judith Butler and Raewyn Connell, I basically argue that the “delikanlılık” is a type of masculinity that is learned and performed through practice and imitation. While it is a sign of high level of hegemonic masculinity, it is also quite fragile and constantly gets challenged, especially by the counter figures. To begin with, I will initially explain concepts of varoş and “delikanlı”. Furthermore, I will demonstrate the theoretical perceptions of masculinity, hegemonic masculinity and gender performance, which are to illustrate the “requirements” to be a “delikanlı”. And finally, I will analyze the development of Salih throughout the movie to show how he becomes a “delikanlı” himself, which may provide an insight into gender practices in specific cultures in Turkey.