Culture Wrappings: An Excerpt from “The Mourners”
Like any respectable Indian family, the Shantis didn’t use the house kitchen, they cooked in their garage.
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Kurdistan in VHS – The postcolonial questions of Kurdish films
The postcolonial occupation with art enables a negotiation that positions itself permanently against the colonial gaze, and in doing so can actually be and become a form of resistance.
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Europe’s Nightmare: The Practice of Decoloniality
Current power relations are the direct result of the colonial division of the world and, in particular, the organization and state of labor since the colonization of the Americas. It is why today we can no longer speak of colonialism, but of coloniality. And identifying coloniality creates an intervention.
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Culture Wrappings IV: Closeted Puja
The home mandir is integral to daily living. It’s your ‘last stop’ before you start your day and before you go to bed. If something good happens, you go here to show your gratitude. When something challenging or terrible happens, you come here for comfort and strength.
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How Colonialism Continues to Shape Thinking in Germany Today
Many people who grow up in Germany believe that colonialism belongs to the distant past and has no influence on them. However, this is not true. Postcolonialism is reflected in the Eurocentric worldview, the media, language and in consumer behaviour.
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Postcolonialism and a Critique of Humanism
In discussing humanism, one is talking about the dignity of human beings and the moral imperative for humane actions. As much as we can justly perceive these hard-earned principles as standards to be maintained, we, as advocates committed to these universally conceived principles, must equally admit their historically ambivalent and abusive role.
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Culture Wrappings III: Please Keep Your Beautiful Feet Away from my Beautiful Books
Granted, the cartoon sidewalks are usually spotless apart from the occasional pile of leaves and errant chewing gum, but that doesn’t mean it would have been any better if they’d taken their shoes off. Feet on books? No. Just, NO.
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Culture Wrappings: Sanskar aur Parampara (Culture and Tradition)
I would argue that we were raised to see the best parts of our culture and that some of it was made visible via Bollywood. However, this was a world we visited rather than took at face value as the life we should be expected to lead. It is that which has allowed me to hold these films dear whilst still being critical.
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Culture Wrappings
Culture and religion aren’t merely things you carry with you. For some reason, I thought they were just two significant chunks of the building material shaping the me-ness. But I learned over time that they are things which largely exist in boxes.
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Cottbus City Tour: postcolonial meets postsocialist
When you think of Cottbus, its (post)colonial entanglements might not be the first thing that come to mind. But a small group affiliated to the local university have taken up the task of confronting just these aspects of the city’s history. At the tail end of August, on a broiling late summer day, I was lucky enough to be allowed to tag along on this tour in Cottbus, which bills itself not just as postcolonial, but as postcolonial-and-postsocialist.
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