Journal articles on the topic 'Romans postcoloniaux'

Les romans africains francophones analysés, outre le chaos lié à une écologie humaine postcoloniale qui décentre la nature et marque la déconnection de l’homme africain de ses lieux traditionnels, configurent les conditions de possibilités de tendre vers une renaissance. La descente dans les vallées, l’escalade des montagnes, des collines et des arbres, le refuge dans les grottes, l’initiation dans les forêts ou le retour au village constituent une pratique des lieux naturels symboliques qui traduit, au travers des imaginaires ascensionnels, mystiques et cycliques qu’ils figurent, le franchissement du seuil du chaos postcolonial pour affirmer une écologie décoloniale (Malcom Ferdinand) porteuse d’un espoir de renouvellement. Une analyse mythocritique (Gilbert Durand) et écopoétique (Pierre Schoentjes et Xavier Garnier) du corpus permet de poser la nature comme espace liminal où s’effectue l’initiation à l’ère « post pandore postcoloniale ».

Cet article examine une forme d’écriture environnementale oblique qui se manifeste dans des œuvres non manifestement dévolues à la représentation de la nature. L’enjeu de cette réflexion est d’envisager une version discrète de l’éthique environnementale et d’interroger ses modes d’articulation aux engagements postcoloniaux, à travers l’étude de deux romans historiques du Canadien Joseph Boyden consacrés à l’histoire des Amérindiens, Three Day Road (2005) et The Orenda (2013).

La littérature contemporaine de l’océan Indien, et de l’île Maurice en particulier, livre des portraits marquants de femmes violentes et/ou criminelles. Cette violence est d’autant plus saisissante qu’elle émane d’espaces post-esclavagistes et postcoloniaux dans lesquels les femmes ont été victimisées et leurs corps réifiés. Peut-elle être lue comme une reprise de pouvoir paradoxale qui déferait les assignations de genres et troublerait l’ordre des dominations ? Considérer la violence ou le crime commis par des femmes comme simplement réactionnels risquerait toutefois d’aboutir à une dépolitisation de leur acte. La littérature contemporaine, en insistant sur une intersectionnalité des rapports de classes, de couleurs, d’âges, met en exergue la colère qui gronde chez ces femmes. Le crime peut-il être l’une de ces « tactiques » qui consistent à trouver une place pour soi dans un lieu imposé et configuré par l’autre, voire comme une stratégie politique qui aiderait à la constitution d’un nouveau langage pour dire les mondes postcoloniaux ? Nous nous posons ces questions à propos de deux romans mauriciens, Le Journal d’une vieille folle d’Umar Timol et Blue Bay Palace de Nathacha Appanah. Mots-clés : Ile Maurice, violence féminine, crime, pouvoir, intersectionnalité, stratégie

This article first aims to establish a genealogy of critical stances on knowledge construction on, about, and from Romani groups in academia. It focuses on critical perspectives that have challenged Eurocentric binary categorizations. Such categories have resulted in the historical perception of a universal “Gypsy”/“non-Gypsy” divide despite the diverse contexts in which Romani identities are negotiated in daily life. The text addresses the writings of authors who have been critical of how central this divide has been to the constitution of Romani Studies as a field, most of whom have relied on insights from Edward Said´s Orientalism (2003 [1978])and other postcolonial theorizations. The theoretical insights brought into conversation come from ethnographic work with Romani individuals and groups whose mobilities exceed imagined European borders. Based on this work, the second part of the article gives an example of the consequences of Eurocentric categorizations: a review of how Romani transatlantic migration and presence in the Americas has been conceived in academic texts. To conclude, the author puts forward engagements with Romani transatlantic passages as one of the ways in which postcolonial stances can actually be operationalized in academic practice. Throughout the argument, transatlantic experiences become not only an epistemic tool but also a case study for a refined understanding of Romani life worlds.

It can be argued that apart from critically applying the theoretical framework of Postcolonial Studies to Romani Studies, we can effectively describe the position and the history of the European Roma by applying some of the insights of Indigenous Studies. Dipesh Chakrabarty’s conception of “heterotemporality” may play an important role in the dialogue between postcolonial and indigenous theories, addressing temporal plurality of coexistent cultures. In my paper I argue that the hierarchy of powerful and weak narratives is always inscribed into the heterogeneity of historiographies – that is, the plurality of heterotemporal narratives is always inherently hierarchical, being a political construction. I am discussing Béla Osztojkán’s There is Nobody to Pay Jóska Átyin, the magnificent Hungarian Romani historical novel published in 1997, to trace the representations of epistemological oppression, to explore how the colonized, the Romani subaltern is taking part in the discourse of heterotemporality, and finally to see how the fragmented – “different” – historical knowledge is created and articulated in a literary work.

In this paper, colonialism is used as a key concept for a discussion on the relationship between classical archaeology and archaeological practice in the Maghreb region. Archaeological studies of rural water management in Algeria, Tunisia and Libya are reviewed, focussing on the representation of the Romans and the indigenous people. Drawing on postcolonial theory, an alternative approach to water management in the Maghreb during the Roman period is suggested. A strong relationship between modern colonialism and the representation of ancient colonialism in archaeological writings is evident from my analysis. It is suggested that postcolonial approaches may contribute to a revaluation of the Maghreb as an archaeological region.

Christian missionaries played a major role in the process of Othering Sinti and Roma. This “Other” was – like the colonial subject – mainly viewed as primitive, uncivilized, superstitious, and heathen. From the early nineteenth century, Protestant missions were established in Germany to “civilize” and educate Sinti and Roma. This paper takes a critical stance on these Protestant missionary efforts in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, highlighting the relevance of postcolonial studies for Romani studies. Firstly, I outline interconnections between stereotypes related to Zigeuner in the colonial metropole and “primitives” in the peripheral areas, which is then followed by an analysis of Protestant views on these two subordinate groups and the ways in which knowledge was transferred between Protestant missionaries across time and space. Finally, this analysis is followed by a methodological reflection on the benefits and limitations of postcolonial studies for critical Romani studies.

Ancient history: A postcolonial view on Roman identity Prof Dr Felix K Maier, Professor for Ancient History at University of Zurich, explores the paradoxical dynamics of different identities in the multicultural Roman Empire. My history research project analyses the dynamics of different identities in the Roman Empire from around 50-150 AD. The Roman Empire is generally considered a ‘story of a success’ concerning the integration of the conquered peoples. The Romans surpassed other empires regarding temporal extension and maintained their power with little military presence. However, it was not only open rebellions that could have threatened Roman domination; it was also – and quite paradoxically – the successful integration of conquered peoples. This had to do with a couple of interdependent aspects.

Le pouvoir politique est un concept relationnel dans la mesure où il est exercé par des hommes sur et pour des hommes, dont il s’agit de se faire obéir. Pour le commandant postcolonial africain, l’exercice du pouvoir s’apparente ainsi à une relation de contraintes et de violences parfois extrêmes imposées aux citoyens. Dès lors, la finalité du pouvoir n’est plus de servir, mais de se servir et d’asservir ; et le commandant postcolonial, en asservissant ainsi ses concitoyens, actualise l’idée du « Homo homini lupus », l’homme est pour l’homme un loup, lancée par le dramaturge latin Plaute, puis popularisée par le philosophe anglais Thomas Hobbes. La littérature africaine a souvent brocardé ce travers, dénoncé la déshumanisation du peuple ainsi que l’ensauvagement du commandant africain à travers les horreurs. Le présent article voudrait relever dans quelques romans et pièces de théâtre, des représentations qui montrent comment, par sa violence, le commandant postcolonial désacralise l’homme et se désacralise lui-même pour finalement s’ériger en anti-Homme.

Le diseur de vérité de l’ivoirien Ahmadou Kourouma a toutes les qualités d’une oeuvre charnière, mais demeure largement méconnue des lecteurs. La présente étude analyse les rapports de filiation thématiques entre l’unique pièce de l’auteur et ses romans ainsi que les techniques d’occupation et d’organisation des espaces scénique et langagier, et la juxtaposition du conte traditionnel et du théâtre postcolonial. L’étude retrace le procès du mensonge, annoncé explicitement dans le titre, à travers l’analyse des procédés et processus dramaturgiques et discursifs employés.

Depuis la nuit des temps, le monde était un ensemble subdivisé en plusieurs communautés distinctes dont les frontières étaient soit naturelles, soit artificielles. Cependant, les mouvements migratoires de la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle ont renversé cet ordre des valeurs en donnant naissance à des communautés hybrides et multiculturelles. Ces mutations n’ont pas épargné la littérature qui, elle aussi, connaît actuellement des productions artistiques hétérogènes, l’hybrides et métisses. Dans cette dynamique et à la lumière de la théorie postcoloniale, cet article se propose de démontrer que dans la production romanesque de Marie NDiaye, le concept de « limite » ou de « frontière », au sens traditionnel, n’est plus opérant. Ce changement s’observe au niveau thématique d’une part et, d’autre part, au niveau formel. À ce deuxième niveau, la notion de genre littéraire est déconstruite et on assiste à la production des romans qui renferment en leurs structures d’autres genres. Notre raisonnement s’appuie sur un corpus principal de deux romans En famille (1991) et Mon cœur à l’étroit (2007).

Cet article analyse les structures thématiques importantes de la littérature africaine contemporaine, en examinant une sélection de romans acclamés par la critique, telle celle de Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Akwaeke Emezi, Abdelrazak Gurnah, Alain Mabanckou, Ben Okri et Laila Lalami. L’analyse révèle que ces textes fournissent des aperçus nuancés sur les complexités des pratiques socio-culturelles, artistiques et historiques contemporaines en Afrique. Il soutient la thèse que, bien que les auteurs contemporains affichent des engagements thématiques sur la perte/crise d’identité, l’aliénation et l’héritage colonial, leurs récits révèlent des innovations stylistiques et de nouvelles perspectives. Americanah de Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explore l’identité culturelle et la migration, élucidant les défis de la navigation dans différentes cultures. Freshwater de Akwaeke Emazi remet en question les notions de genre et de spiritualité, en cartographiant profondément la multiplicité au sein d’une identité. L’œuvre de Gurnah confronte l’héritage du colonialisme, reconsidérant les concepts d’appartenance et de relecture de l’histoire. Black Moses d’Alain Mabanckou offre un commentaire social vivant sur le Congo postcolonial. The Famished Road de Ben Okri utilise magistralement le réalisme magique pour sonder la spiritualité et la désillusion postcoloniale. Les écrits de Lalami mettent en évidence les complexités de la diaspora et du déplacement. Mon papier examine en outre l’émergence de la nécropolitique en tant que préoccupation thématique dominante, décodant comment les auteurs africains subvertissent les structures de pouvoir oppressives et les inégalités systémiques. Il conclut que ces œuvres littéraires favorisent une compréhension plus profonde des humanités africaines, incitent le lecteur à une réflexion critique sur les inégalités mondiales et soulignent le besoin urgent de réforme sociale.

Our contribution is about the translation of postcolonial and francophone Moroccan literature, and especially the case of the novel Les Temps noirs written by Abdelhak Serhane. Being written by an author not belonging to the Hexagon, this literary text reveals a decentering writing practice to which the translator must be very attentive when translating this novel. This is how, first, we sought, using the postcolonial approach, to elucidate the postcolonial writing that underlies this novel, as well as its characteristics and its stake. The aim is to show the role of cultural translation in the author’s writing project in order to include his native languages, especially Arabic and Berber. Then, we presented the strategy for translating this novel into Arabic according to the bermanian approach whose primary objective is to preserve otherness intact. It is, finally, these traces of the Other that we have analyzed and commented on in order to demonstrate, in the end, that the translation of the Other in this novel implies a return to its original language and culture.

Le roman Quichotte de Salman Rushdie appartient à la tradition des fictions dites Donquichottesques de la littérature anglaise tout en revisitant certains des thèmes centraux des œuvres de Rushdie. Cet article évaluera comment Rushdie imite Don Quichotte afin de se plonger dans deux de ses préoccupations les plus fondamentales en tant que romancier : (1) la satire des attitudes sociales envers l’immigration et l’identité culturelle, et (2) l’écriture de romans. Cette analyse montrera le penchant postmoderne et postcolonial de Rushdie dans son approche des problèmes sociaux. Plus concrètement, il révélera la découverte par Rushdie du roman de Cervantès.

Cet article propose une réflexion à propos de la figure roma-nesque du chien en contexte postcolonial, et plus spécialement dans l’espace francophone africain. Partant de la polysémie du terme et de son association avec une pensée cynique elle-même plurielle et évolutive, l’étude met en avant la récurrence d’une figure canine « au sens propre », point d’ancrage d’un « canisme » littéraire aux prises avec la récurrence contemporaine de la posture cynique. L’étude des romans de Patrice Nganang et de Fiston Mwanza Mujila permet à ce titre d’envisager le chien comme vecteur d’une interrogation à propos de l’identité conçue dans la confrontation au « maître » et dans la mise en doute de la frontière interspécifique.

In this article, I will address issues of race using the “Romani question” in Serbia’s Guča trumpet festival as a case study. I will specifically consider a selection of Guča-related themes pertinent to the question of race, while simultaneously discussing the theoretical and ideological underpinnings of this complicated concept vis-à-vis issues of national identity representation in post-Milošević Serbia. Informed by previous critical studies of race and popular music culture in South/Eastern Europe within the larger postcolonial paradigm of Balkanism, this work will seek to illustrate the ambiguous ways in which the racialization of the Serbian Self and the Romani Other is occurring in the Guča Festival alongside the country’s and region’s persistent denial of race. Using the above approaches, I will conduct a critical cultural analysis of selected racial issues in the festival with reference to eclectic sources, including more recent critical debates about race and racism in South/Eastern Europe within the broader context of postsocialist transition, EU integration, and globalization. My final argument will be that, despite strong evidence that a critical cultural analysis of the “Romani question” in Serbia’s Guča Festival calls for a transnational perspective, earlier Balkanist discourse on Serbia’s indeterminate position between West and East seems to remain analytically most helpful in pointing to the uncontested hegemony of Western/European white privilege and supremacy.

Ex oriente lux? From the Southern Tropics in any case, since certain myths from former times, forgotten and buried under indifference, come back to us rejuvenated and transformed. In this article, we treat one myth — ‘myth’ given the extent of its cultural hypertext — which arose, strangely but almost necessarily, in an ancient French colony: the Île-de-France (Mauritius). It may seem fairly obvious that Paul and Virginie (hero and heroine of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s eponymous novel) should have returned to haunt the literature of the Île-de-France and her “sister island”, La Réunion. We examine three novels: the first transcribes the idyllic couple in terms of a realism based on a form of local colour (Georges Azéma, Noëlla, 1874). The second ends up destroying the pastoral eclogue of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (Loys Masson, Les Noces de la vanille, 1962, English title: The Overseer). The third novel, Le Chercheur d’or by J.M.G. Le Clézio (1985, English title: The Collector), abandons the island setting in order to preserve the myth. Whether colonial or postcolonial, the old myth, dressed in new clothes, invites us to a dialogue between different centuries and different cultures.

L’auteure offre un texte qui souligne l’édification du discours féministe dans l’Afrique francophone subsaharienne postcoloniale. En partant des premières publications subversives produites par les Africaines sur la condition sociale des femmes, elle fait ressortir leur apport aux études féministes. Deux essais, La parole aux négresses d’Awa Thiam (1978) et Lettre d’une Africaine à ses soeurs occidentales de Calixte Beyala (1995), ainsi que deux romans, Une si longue lettre de Mariama Bâ (1979) et Elle sera de jaspe et de corail. Journal d’une misovire de WereWere Liking (1983), servent de grille d’entrée afin de suivre dans sa trajectoire la construction de ce discours féministe africain. Ainsi, l’exploration de ces quatre ouvrages permet de rendre visible et audible la contribution invisibilisée des Africaines à la francophonie féministe blanche dominante. Par ailleurs, l’auteure montre que le discours féministe africain, dans sa formulation, est résistant à l’égard de certains principes du féminisme blanc dominant.

Relationship South-North in a postcolonial context with Alain Mabanckou ABSTRACT: Starting from the problematic which tries to raise the question of the relationship between Black and White people, and also the reason that underlies such a relationship, this article attempts to bring elements of answer to a broad questioning from two novels by Alain Mabanckou: Black Bazar (Black Bazaar) and Tais-toi et meurs (Shut up and die). The article analyzes the relationship between Black and White people in a postcolonial context, which manifests itself in a relationship of tension, rejection of the other, but also with intimacy and greed. The Africa/Europe encounter, having been made under dramatic conditions that lowered the Black to the rank of animal, devoid of any faculty of reasoning, some White men continue to see the Black men with the same gaze of inferior human beings. For the analysis, and to clearly define the field of the study, we rely on work in the field of postcolonial studies in order to achieve more effective results. RÉSUMÉ: A partir de la problématique qui tente de soulever la question du rapport entre le Noir et le Blanc, et aussi le pourquoi d’un tel rapport, cet article tente d’apporter des éléments de réponse à un large questionnement à partir de deux romans d’Alain Mabanckou : Black bazar et Tais-toi et meurs. L’article analyse les rapports entre Noir et Blanc dans un contexte postcolonial, qui se déclinent en rapport de tension, de rejet de l’autre, mais aussi d’intimité et de convoitise. La rencontre Afrique/Europe ayant été faite dans les conditions dramatiques qui rabaissaient le Noir au rang de l’animal, dépourvu de toute faculté de raisonnement, certains Blancs continuent de voir le Noir avec ce même regard d’être inférieur. Pour l’analyse, et pour bien cerner le champ de l’étude, on s’appuie sur les travaux dans le domaine des études postcoloniales afin d’aboutir à des résultats plus efficaces

L’article traite de la traduction du roman de guerre africain Allah n’est pas obligé d’Ahmadou Kourouma. De manière générale, le style de l’écrivain est connu pour les nombreux africanismes qui le colorent et l’enrichissent. Dans le roman mentionné, le narrateur veut s’adresser à tous les lecteurs possibles des romans francophones, c’est pourquoi sa narration entremêle des éléments linguistiques provenant de différentes aires culturelles (français littéraire, africanismes et anglicismes) et de différents registres (langue enfantine, langue familière, définitions du dictionnaire). Cette diversité linguistique oblige le traducteur du roman vers une langue étrangère (par exemple vers le slovène) à développer une stratégie cohérente basée sur l’analyse, dans laquelle la fonction de divers éléments dans la structure du récit sera d’abord déterminée (crédibilité psycho-linguistique, distance ironique pour souligner l’insupportabilité de la réalité décrite...) et ensuite le niveau de traduisibilité de ces éléments. En parallèle, nous examinerons comment la traductrice slovène du roman a résolu les problèmes et dans quelle mesure elle a réussi à transférer dans sa langue la diversité linguistique du roman d’Ahmadou Kourouma.

Imperialism emerged in the late 19th century. Europe's supremacy in various areas of life which led to the view that Europe is above other parts of the world that are uncivilized and culturally fell behind, and that needed to be civilized. This attitude lead to negative phenomena such as racism - contesting the rights of other races and colonialism - conquering territories inhabitated by people of other cultures. The world seen from an imperialist perspective was most often the one colonized by Europe, postcolonial research has critized the way in which European colonial powers (especially England and France) created values of subordinate cultures and established relations between center and margins. However, the notion of discursive domination is spread quickly to all relations between colonizers and colonized, which is why this second group includes all gender and ethic groups that did not have cultural independece, but were marginalized and subjected to institutional repression. As different cultural minorities began to form resistance to agressive political, gender, and racial domination, postcolonialism also represents a disagreement with the passivity towards cultural supremacy which is symbolized in empires that no longer even existed. The novel A Passage to India represents Forster's interests in Indian culture, which was colonized by Great Britain. A Passage to India is an exploration of the spiritual and cultural contrast of the two cultures of East and West.

Dans le présent article, l’auteure examine les critiques portées à la traduction des auteurs africains sub-sahariens, en particulier, Ahmadou Kourouma, écrivain emblématique, connu pour son style unique et son usage particulier des langues. L’analyse critique des traductions de ses deux romans révèle deux approches à la traduction des oeuvres littéraires des écrivains de l’Afrique sub-saharienne postcoloniale : l’approche de normalisation qui domine la traduction des oeuvres littéraires minoritaires vers les canons littéraires dominantes selon l’étude de Batchelor (2009), et l’approche de décolonisation des pratiques de traduction qui renforce les marques de visibilité des langues minoritaires. Nous soutenons l’idée que la critique de Schaefer sur les deux traductions anglaises d’En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages de Kourouma (la traduction de Carrol Croates et celle de Frank Wynne) s’inscrit dans l’approche de décolonisation. De son côté, Stemeers présente des arguments en faveur des stratégies de normalisation employées par Frank Wynne dans la traduction anglaise d’Allah n’est pas obligé. Or, sur quelles bases théoriques fondent-elles leurs critiques ? Quels éléments des traductions forment l’objet de leurs critiques et quelles en sont les limites ? Ces quelques points constituent le point de départ pour notre réflexion.

In this article we analyze the two-sided stelae of Lucus Augusti and its hinterland, unique pieces throughout the Roman Empire, with the aim of compiling the information we have about them and analyzing them from the perspective of postcolonial romanization theories. To this end, Bourdieuʼs theory of habitus is fundamentally used, understanding habitus as a generator of principles of social behavior. The use of the toga in the representations of these stelae and their link with Roman citizenship are key to understanding who commissioned these funerary monuments, as well as the correct interpretation of the themes on the reverse provide us with new data. The analysis of the granite blocks allows us to know that they were not large stelae or with an epigraphic text that is now lost, but that it was a conscious choice which they did not have text rather images on both sides. The two-sided stelae are the reflection of a local custom, that is, part of a new hybrid culture: the provincial Galician-Roman culture. *This article was supported by a PhD fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Universities called “Ayudas para la Formación de Profesorado Universitario” (FPU19/00148). This research was conducted within the framework of the R+D+i project “Nuevas bases documentales para el estudio histórico de la Hispania romana de época republicana: ciudadanía romana y latinidad (90 a.C. – 45 a.C.)” (PID2019-105940GB-I00) (4 years).

The article comprises two sections: in Section One I sketch out the history and the evolution of French philology, understood both as an academic discipline and as an academic/administrative unit within Polish universities, officially known as Departments of French (Philology). In Section Two I reflect on my personal experience of that evolution, as it has affected my professional choices and academic career. Both meanings of “French philology” (discipline and institution) are rooted in German academic tradition to which the entire system of Polish humanities is indebted. Until the 1990s, French philology was synonymous with French studies, understood as the teaching and the academic study of French language and literature. Like other humanities departments in Poland, French philology departments inevitably functioned under the pressure of current political forces. Yet, French philologists in Poland never lost touch with the world’s evolving humanities or the changing scholarly paradigms. Following the radical political transformation of 1989, traditional French philology in Po-land opened up to a whole new range of scholarly fields (literatures and cultures of francophone countries), theories (postmodern and postcolonial studies), and approaches (interdisciplinary scho-larship). Thus Polish romanists have joined the international scholarly community. In the article, I document these processes, reflecting on my own university career: I started off as a traditional scholar doing research in the literature of French Middle Ages, then moved on to studying Canadian and American Francophone cultures, to eventually become involved in interdisciplinary studies at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales” at the University of Warsaw.

Dans ce texte, l’auteure entend réfléchir sur les mythologies du métissage au Canada et au Brésil, en tenant compte des débats contemporains sur la composition d'une identité métisse américaine. La thématique du métissage est l’un des aspects les plus importants de l’idéologie postcoloniale en ce qui a trait aux représentations identitaires, et les discours qu’elle engendre permettent de concevoir une théorie de l’identification. Selon Roger Toumson, la figure du métis américain, forgée dans la confluence de diverses cultures, est constituée du croisement de trois figures mythiques cardinales: Ulysse (ou son équivalent analogique antérieur, Thésée), Œdipe et Caïn. Ces trois personnages mythiques, représentant le parricide, le matricide et le fratricide, constituent une matrice à partir de laquelle se développent des adaptations, des métamorphoses et des transcodages référentiels qui donnent forme à des représentations jugées modernes ou postmodernes du métis. Dans cet article, nous analyserons quelques romans québécois qui abordent la vie des nomades chasseurs de bisons, avec leurs principes d’organisation des rapports sociaux définissant des manières spécifiques de penser la vie communautaire. Au Brésil, c'est le modèle des communautés des sertões qui établit la base sémantique de l’organisation des communautés développant des systèmes solidaires de partage. Ce modèle deviendra une thématique privilégiée pour l’examen de la nature des métis.

L’écrivaine franco-marocaine Leïla Slimani a fait irruption sur la scène littéraire française avec son premier roman, Dans le jardin de l’ogre (2014), qui raconte l’histoire d’Adèle Robinson, une Parisienne de la classe moyenne supérieure qui a un goût prononcé pour les situations sexuelles à risque, penchant qui menace de faire voler en éclats sa vie trop stable. Son deuxième roman, Chanson douce (2016), a définitivement consacré Slimani en tant qu’écrivaine en France et à l’étranger. Couronné par le prestigieux Prix Goncourt et acclamé par la critique littéraire, ce deuxième roman est également devenu un bestseller mondial. Inspiré de faits réels, Chanson douce met en scène une nounou qui tue les deux enfants de la famille pour laquelle elle travaille. Le roman surprend le lecteur par son rythme aux allures de thriller et par la précision glaçante de son écriture. Alors que l’histoire de ses deux premiers romans se déroulait dans une France contemporaine, les romans les plus récents de Slimani qui font partie d’une trilogie annoncée, Le Pays des autres (2020) et Regardez-nous danser (2022), plongent le lecteur dans l’histoire récente du Maroc depuis les années 1960 et dresse un portrait détaillé d’un pays en mutation sous la forme d’une saga familiale d’inspiration autobiographique. Le présent entretien prend comme point de départ les écrits les plus récents de l’écrivaine et rassemble les points de vue Slimani sur la nature entremêlée de l’histoire et de l’histoire personnelle ou du récit, la fonction de l’écrivain et de l’écriture à l’ère contemporaine, ainsi que sur les outils nécessaires pour raconter une « histoire vraie ». Nous nous attelons également au passé colonial du Maroc et à la notion d’altérité, ainsi qu’aux approches décoloniales. Nous interrogeons ensuite le projet féministe à travers un prisme postcolonial et nous abordons la question des héritages féministes tout en nous tournant vers la Française du futur et ce à quoi elle pourrait ressembler dans un pays en pleine mutation politique. Cet entretien a eu lieu dans le cadre de la série « Giving Shape to the World: Contemporary Writing in French Today » à l’Institut Français à Londres pendant le Mois de la Francophonie en mars 2022.

Lors de sa parution en 1979, le second roman de Simone Schwarz-Bart, Ti Jean L’Horizon, a été célébré par la critique et considéré comme une extension aux Antilles françaises de l’héritage indigéniste des écrivains haïtiens Jacques Roumain et Jacques Stephen Alexis. L’auteure a également été associée à Maryse Condé et les deux auteures guadeloupéennes ont été perçues comme remettant en question le mythe du retour à l’Afrique si cher au mouvement de la Négritude. Enfin, lorsque le mouvement de la créolité s’est manifesté vers la fin des années 1980, les romans de Schwarz-Bart ont été considérés comme ses précurseurs. Aujourd’hui, la question se pose de savoir si Ti Jean L’Horizon est encore pertinent pour le lecteur antillais. Ne pourrait-on pas approcher le roman sous un nouvel angle et en tirer de nouvelles significations ? Cet article se propose d’en examiner quelques-unes, examinant l’odyssée de Ti Jean du point de vue de l’écocritique postcoloniale et d’une lecture décoloniale de l’histoire guadeloupéenne. En effet, s’il a su résister au passage du temps et s’il fait encore sens, c’est que la quête de Ti Jean aborde aussi les enjeux environnementaux suite au passé esclavagiste et aux changements idéologiques de la région. En cela, le roman se révèle précurseur des récents appels à préserver les paysages et biotopes insulaires, à lutter contre le dérèglement climatique aux Antilles.

Despite the statist imagination of the ‘nomad’ pitted against an overtly instrumental understanding of space, ‘modern’ techniques of statist demographic control, and increasing surveillance on mobility, the trope of nomadology in the context of India often characterizes ‘the return of the repressed’. The Buddhists in the Ancient, the Bhakti‐Sufi practitioners in the Medieval, and certain anti-imperialist ideologues in the Modern have perpetually latched on to the trope to articulate political dissidence. Thinking in these terms, the invocation of nomadology in Critical Theory ‐ by Deleuze and Guattari, Rosi Braidotti, Michel de Certeau and Edward Said, among others ‐ alluding to non-conformity, non-linearity and political subversion, has an intellectual history that is often purportedly grounded onto ‘India’. My article will explore how the dichotomy between the ‘good’ wanderer and the ‘bad’ wanderer in the ‘Indian tradition’ was premised upon a highly contingent process of religio-political partisanship and struggles over territorialization. Using the nineteenth-century Orientalist discourse on the Romani community and the Beats’ obsession with ‘India’ (cf. the Beat Movement) as case studies, this article, from the postcolonial vantage point, demonstrates how the impulse to assume nomadology as characteristic of ‘India(n-ness)’ ‐ to have perpetually existed in the ‘Indian’ cultural repertoire ‐ is symbolic of an ahistorical and essentialist notion of ‘India’.

This article examines the cultural politics of bastardy in the films of Tunisian filmmaker Nouri Bouzid at a time when questions of national and cultural identity have come to the fore in Tunisia in the wake of the Revolution of Freedom and Dignity. Nouri Bouzid is the doyen of Tunisian cinema. Not only was he involved in every major postcolonial film, whether as a screenwriter, a scriptwriter, or even as an actor, but he single-handedly directed more than half a dozen films, each of which enjoyed wide national and international acclaim. His debut film, Man of Ashes, dramatizes the trauma of child molestation and the collapse of filial relations as well as the emergence of a new generation of men who seek to recast filial and familial relations beyond blood ties and familial limitations. This same cinematic pursuit is further developed in his later films with striking consistency and perseverance. At a time when the postrevolutionary public sphere is saturated with heated debates around Tunisian national identity, propelled by fantasies of purity and virile filiation, Bouzid’s bastard characters serve, the author argues, not only to warp and reclaim the political playing field for revolutionary purposes but also to remind Tunisians of the disturbing legacy of bastardy (instituted by a long history of colonial rape from the Romans to the French) to which they had been and continue to be heirs, and with which they have to reckon. Studying the rhetoric of bastardy in Bouzid’s cinema leaves us in the end with the touching yet unsparing conclusion that for Bouzid there are no Tunisians until they have assumed their bastardy.

Le roman de jeunesse Rêves amers de Maryse Condé est paru pour la première fois dans le magazine Je bouquine en 1987 avant d’être repris par les éditions Bayard jeunesse en 2001. Portant sur l’expérience tragique de la migration, il s’attache à mettre en évidence la pérennité de l’esclavage social (Mbembe 2013). « Le roman francophone des Antilles apporte aussi un changement considérable dans la nature des êtres humains. Les hommes et les femmes qui en sont les héros n’appartiennent pas à une catégorie bien définie. Ils mettent à mal le concept de race. Ils sont le résultat d’influences diverses. Ils portent en eux des sangs multiples et sont souvent des métis, sensibles à la couleur de leur peau qui conditionne la qualité de leur existence » confiait récemment Maryse Condé dans un entretien mené par Roger Célestin (153). Cet ouvrage, qui était dans sa forme initiale paru peu de temps avant Traversée de la mangrove, traite d’Haïti et de la Caraïbe comme des espaces de révolte par rapport à la malédiction historique des rapports brutaux de la colonisation (Carruggi). Si le roman Rêves amers a eu une certaine réception dans le cadre de la littérature jeunesse et de la pédagogie, il reste relativement négligé des études littéraires universitaires. Pourtant, la référence à Haïti est centrale avec l’avènement de la première République noire indépendante du Nouveau Monde. Notre hypothèse est que Maryse Condé a proposé un ouvrage didactique destiné à former les jeunes générations pour qu’elles réinterrogent ce qui est enseigné dans une optique postcoloniale. Le contenu, les thèmes et le style de cet ouvrage lui ont servi de matrice pour la série de romans qui ont suivi. Notre étude portera sur l’analyse de la relation entre la mort et le rêve pour dégager un positionnement fondamental sur la manière de rendre compte de relations socio-historiques issues du colonialisme. Dans ce cadre, Haïti demeure la promesse d’une émancipation inachevée qui est enseignée aux jeunes générations. Ces œuvres semblent négligées par la critique peut-être parce que leur facture didactique est beaucoup plus nette.

Cet article est un compte-rendu du livre : Maya Boutaghou, Occidentalismes, romans historiques postcoloniaux et identités nationales au XIXe siècle, Juan Antonio Mateos, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Marcus Clarke, Jurji Zaydan. Paris : Honoré Champion, 2016, 526 p. EAN 978274532985.

Appreciation for the literary qualities and structural function of Romans 8:18−30 abounds. Recently, some attention has also been given to ostensible anti-imperial sentiments in the letter that Paul directed to a Jesus-follower community in the heart of the Roman Empire. Tensions and ambiguities inherent in this passage become more pointed when it is read with attention to the interplay between creation, conflict and empire. The focus of this contribution is on how creation is portrayed and negotiated in Romans 8:18−30, given its underlying Jewish setting which ought to be filled out by the imperial-infused environment. Acknowledging an anti-imperial thrust in Romans 8:18−30 but reading from a postcolonial perspective offers the advantage of accounting specifically for ambivalence typical of conflict situations characterised by unequal power relations, all of which are appropriate and vital for the interpretation of this passage.

La littérature postcoloniale italienne interroge le statut du texte tant sur le plan de son appartenance à un auteur et à une tradition ou canon littéraires nationaux, que sur le plan de l’homogénéité de la langue, des rapports de pouvoir entre les langues (et les littératures) et les stratégies de traduction. Le cas de Immigrato (1990) de Mario Fortunato et Salah Methnani, ainsi que les romans de Ubah Cristina Ali Farah, Madre piccola (2007) et Il comandante del fiume (2014), nous permettront de discuter ces hypothèses.

RÉSUMÉ. Cet article cherche à contribuer au discours littéraire francophone en effectuant une analyse comparative des représentations de la peinture des inégalités sociales dans la trilogie de Keita Fatoumata. Les trois romans illustrent de manière concourante ce que la femme africaine vit tous les jours et ils mettent également en lumière la façon dont la femme est subjuguée par les habitudes coutumières et culturelles en Afrique postcoloniale. La question de recherche principale s’articule autour du vécu global des femmes marginalisées. S’inspirant des théories féministes postcoloniales et de la masculinité hégémoniques, l’article examinera comment le patriarche étouffe la féminité. La théorisation de Spivak « les subalternes, peuvent-elles parler ? » est la question autour de laquelle cette communication s’articule. « La conscience de l’oppression » de Simone De Beauvoir démontre qu’on partageant leurs expériences, les femmes enchainées peuvent se détacher de toutes les maux qui les oppriment. L'analyse de ces romans montre que les questions de genre amplifient la soumission de la femme en Afrique. Cette étude aborde le lévirat, l’excision et la polygamie. Nous concluons que la femme peut se détacher des inégalités sociales qui l’étouffent. Mots-clés : excision, femme, lévirat, patriarche, polygamie ABSTRACT. This article seeks to contribute to Francophone literary discourse by performing a comparative analysis of the portrayal of social inequalities in Keïta Fatoumata's trilogy. The three novels illustrate in a concise way what the African woman lives every day and they also highlight how the woman is subjugated by customary and cultural habits in postcolonial Africa. The main research question revolves around the overall experience of marginalized women. Inspired by post-colonial feminist theories and hegemonic masculinity, the article will examine how the patriarch stifles femininity. Spivak's Theorization "Can Subalterns Speak? Is the question around which this communication is articulated. Simone De Beauvoir's "conscience of oppression" demonstrates that by sharing their experiences, chained women can detach themselves from all the ills that oppress them. The analysis of these novels shows that gender issues magnify the submission of women in Africa. This study addresses levirate, excision and polygamy. The article concludes that women can be detached from the social inequalities that suffocate them. Keywords: polygamy, excision, levirate, woman, patriarch

Résumé Cet article propose d’appréhender le questionnement à l’oeuvre dans les deux premiers romans de Kourouma, Les soleils des indépendances et Monnè, outrages et défis. Au-delà d’une simple réécriture de l’histoire de l’Afrique depuis la conquête coloniale jusqu’aux lendemains des indépendances, l’écriture de Kourouma s’engage dans la voie d’une herméneutique de la destinée négro-africaine qui se joue entre deux pôles : d’une part, l’expérience de la dérive et de la crise ontologique, d’autre part, la quête d’une nouvelle cohérence d’être et d’une nouvelle articulation de soi. Kourouma met en scène l’errance qui frappe l’Africain exilé du monde traditionnel et s’interroge sur les conséquences esthétique, épistémologique et ontologique liées à cet exil.

Le genre de reportage journalistique connu sous le nom de faits divers a joué un rôle démesuré dans la production de stéréotypes raciaux en France, depuis l’apogée de l’antisémitisme à la fin du XIXe siècle jusqu’à la cristallisation du discours anti-immigré à l’époque postcoloniale. Cet article aborde ce que Dominique Kalifa a appelé la “fait-diversification” du reportage à l’ère du nativisme pour interroger les fictions de la race : les stratégies narratives sur lesquelles repose la pensée raciale, mais aussi les efforts récents pour subvertir les stéréotypes raciaux dans le domaine de la fiction. Depuis les années 1970, des activistes, écrivains et cinéastes ont réécrit le genre des faits divers dans une critique soutenue des stéréotypes raciaux, des collectifs de théâtre pour migrants aux romans de Leïla Sebbar, Ahmed Zitouni et Ahmad Kalouaz et aux films de Matthieu Kassovitz et Alice Diop. Contre la “fait diversification” des relations sociales basée sur une compréhension paranoïaque de la différence raciale, ces fictions narratives proposent de sortir des fictions de la race.

Bu çalışmanın amacı, İngiltere’de sömürgecilik sonrası edebiyat yelpazesinde öne çıkan Timothy Mo’nun Ekşi-Tatlı (Sour Sweet) ve Kazuo Ishiguro’nun Çocukluğumu Ararken (When We Were Orphans) romanlarını Edward Said’in Oryantalizm (Orientalizm) eserinde ele aldığı ötekilik (otherness) kavramı bağlamında incelemektir. Çalışma boyunca söz konusu romanların Edrward Said’in doğu ve batı kavramlarının sadece insanlar tarafından adlandırılan coğrafi bölgelerden ibaret olduğunu; bu bölgelerin her ikisinin de bir tarihi, geleneği, düşüncesi, hayal gücü kelime hazinesi olduğunu ve bu nedenle bu ikisi arasındaki ayrımın bir kurmacadan ibaret olduğu iddiasını desteklediği üzerinde durulmuştur. Eser incelemelerine geçmeden önce İkinci Dünya Savaşı sonrası günümüzde emperyalizm olarak bilinen çağdaş sömürgeciliğin tanımına ve ortaya çıkışına değinilerek eserlerin yazıldığı döneme ilişkin gerekli bilgiler sunulmuştur. Ayrıca emperyalizmin etkilerinin edebiyata ne şekilde yansıdığından bahsedilerek Edward Said’in bu bağlamdaki rolüne ve oryantalizm tanımına yer verilmiştir. Daha sonra ilk olarak Çinli yazar Timothy Mo’nun Ekşi-Tatlı (Sour Sweet) romanı daha sonra da Japon yazar Kazuo Ishıguro’nun Çocukluğumu Ararken (When We Were Orphans) romanı Edward Said’in öteki kavramı bağlamında incelenmiştir. İnceleme sonunda sömürgecilik sonrası (postcolonial) yazarların sömürgecilik sonrası meselelere bakış açıları birbirinden farklı olsa da kültürel kimlik ve ötekileştirmeden kaynaklanan sorunlar ve ait olma isteğinin her iki romanda da yer aldığını sonucuna varılmıştır. Ayrıca ister doğulu ister batılı olsun herkesin yaşadığı koşullara göre kendini yaşadığı topluma ait hissetmeme duygusunu tecrübe edebileceği ve bu nedenle bu hissin batılıların iddia ettiği gibi sadece doğululara has bir his olmadığı sonucuna varılmıştır.

I begin this bilingual (Bosnian-English) hybrid (scholarly-personal-fictional) essay, with my search for queer languages of my own, a fraught, complex process both due to my personal circumstances of immigration, and the larger history of suppression of queer expression in the Balkans and beyond. For the throughline of the discussion, I use the relatively recent portmanteau in English, bussy (boy+pussy for the anus), that has given birth to a wealth of Internet memes often featuring similar coinages, and my attempt to find its equivalents in several other languages. English and Bosnian will alternate, with their subcategories ranging from academic to confessional — so only those who read both will be able to understand everything. I first look at the Soviet Russian gay slang recorded by Vladimir Kozlovsky and then move to a fuller discussion of the Turkish queer jargon named Lubunca, which like its Greek counterpart Kaliardá, has a prominent corpus of Romani borrowings. Some of these words appear in an almost identical form, with the same or similar meanings, in a number of European languages that I am familiar with: Bosnian, English, French, and German. While my queerness does not happen to provide a sense of linguistic belonging, it does enable me to note a much-neglected postcolonial queer aspect of the European language map, the Romani element, which I happily write about in the essay. As for bussy and its translations, I argue that such terms – playfully confusing and reassigning holes in English and other languages, in recent and distant times – present occasions for queerer, more pleasurable and expansive imaginings of human bodies, desires, and the world around us.

This article is concerned with dance as an embodied form of collective remembering in the Andean department of Ayacucho in Peru. Andean dance and fiesta are inextricably linked with notions of identity, cultural heritage and history. Rather than being simply aesthetic —steps to music or a series of movements — dance is readable as being a deeper embodiment of the broader struggles and concerns of a people. As anthropologist Zoila Mendoza writes, in post-colonial countries such as those in Africa and Latin America, dance is and was a means “through which people contested, domesticated and reworked signs of domination in their society” (39). Andean dance has long been a space of contestation and resistance (Abercrombie; Bigenho; Isbell; Mendoza; Stern). It also functions as a repository, a dynamic archive which holds and tells the collective narrative of a cultural time and space. As Jane Cowan observes “dance is much more than knowing the steps; it involves both social knowledge and social power” (xii). In cultures where the written word has not played a central role in the construction and transmission of knowledge, dance is a particularly rich resource for understanding. “Embodied practice, along with and bound up with other cultural practices, offers a way of knowing” (Taylor 3). This is certainly true in the Andes of Peru where dance, music and fiesta are central to social, cultural, economic and political life. This article combines the areas of cultural memory with aspects of dance anthropology in a bid to reveal what is often unspoken and discover new ways of accessing and understanding non-verbal forms of memory through the embodied medium of dance. In societies where dance is integral to daily life the dance becomes an important resource for a deeper understanding of social and cultural memory. However, this characteristic of the dance has been largely overlooked in the field of memory studies. Paul Connerton writes, “… that there is an aspect of social memory which has been greatly ignored but is absolutely essential: bodily social memory” (382). I am interested in the role of dance as a site memory because as a dancer I am acutely aware of embodied memory and of the importance of dance as a narrative mode, not only for the dancer but also for the spectator. This article explores the case study of rural carnival performed in the city of Huamanga, in the Andean department of Ayacucho and includes interviews I conducted with rural campesinos (this literally translates as people from the country, however, it is a complex term imbedded with notions of class and race) between June 2009 and March 2010. Through examining the transformative effect of what I call the chorography of place, I argue that rural campesinos embody the memory of place, dancing that place into being in the urban setting as a means of remembering and maintaining connection to their homeland and salvaging cultural heritage.The department of Ayacucho is located in the South-Central Andes of Peru. The majority of the population are Quechua-speaking campesinos many of whom live in extreme poverty. Nestled in a cradle of mountains at 2,700 meters above sea level is the capital city of the same name. However, residents prefer the pre-revolutionary name of Huamanga. This is largely due to the fact that the word Ayacucho is a combination of two Quechua words Aya and Kucho which translate as Corner of the Dead. Given the recent history of the department it is not surprising that residents refer to their city as Huamanga instead of Ayacucho. Since 1980 the department of Ayacucho has become known as the birthplace of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and the ensuing 20 years of political violence between Sendero and counter insurgency forces. In 2000, the interim government convened the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC – CVR Spanish). In 2003, the TRC released its report which found that over 69,000 people were killed or disappeared during the conflict and hundreds of thousands more were forced to leave their homes (CVR). Those most affected by the violence and human rights abuses were predominantly from the rural population of the central-southern Andes (CVR). Following the release of the TRC Report the department of Ayacucho has become a centre for memory studies investigations and commemorative ceremonies. Whilst there are many traditional arts and creative expressions which commemorate or depict some aspect of the violence, dance is not used it this way. Rather, I contend that the dance is being salvaged as a means of remembering and connecting to place. Migration Brings ChangeAs a direct result of the political violence, the city of Huamanga experienced a large influx of people from the surrounding rural areas, who moved to the city in search of relative safety. Rapid forced migration from the country to the city made integration very difficult due to the sheer volume of displaced populations (Coronel 2). As a result of the internal conflict approximately 450 rural communities in the southern-central Andes were either abandoned or destroyed; 300 of these were in the department of Ayacucho. As a result, Huamanga experienced an enormous influx of rural migrants. In fact, according to the United Nations International Human Rights Instruments, 30 per cent of all people displaced by the violence moved to Ayacucho (par. 39). As campesinos moved to the city in search of safety they formed new neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the city. Although many are now settled in Huamanga, holding professional positions, working in restaurants, running stalls, or owning shops, most maintain strong links to their community of origin. The ways in which individuals sustain connection to their homelands are many and varied. However, dance and fiesta play a central role in maintaining connection.During the years of violence, Sendero Luminoso actively prohibited the celebration of traditional ceremonies and festivals which they considered to be “archaic superstition” (Garcia 40). Reprisals for defying Sendero Luminoso directives were brutal; as a result many rural inhabitants restricted their ritual practices for fear of the tuta puriqkuna or literally, night walkers (Ritter 27). This caused a sharp decline in ritual custom during the conflict (27).As a result, many Ayacuchano campesinos feel they have been robbed of their cultural heritage and identity. There is now a conscious effort to rescatar y recorder or to salvage and remember what was been taken from them, or, in the words of Ruben Romani, a dance teacher from Huanta, “to salvage what was killed during the difficult years.”Los Carnavales Ayacuchanos Whilst carnival is celebrated in many parts of the world, the mention of carnival often evokes images of scantily clad Brazilians dancing to the samba rhythms in the streets of Rio de Janeiro, or visions of elaborate floats and extravagant costumes. None of these are to be found in Huamanga. Rather, the carnival dances celebrated by campesinos in Huamanga are not celebrations of ‘the now’ or for the benefit of tourists, but rather they are embodiments of the memory of a lost place. During carnival, that lost or left homeland is danced into being in the urban setting as a means of maintaining a connection to the homeland and of salvaging cultural heritage.In the Andes, carnival coincides with the first harvest and is associated with fertility and giving thanks. It is considered a time of joy and to be a great leveller. In Huamanga carnival is one of the most anticipated fiestas of the year. As I was told many times “carnival is for everyone” and “we all participate.” From the old to the very young, the rich and poor, men and women all participate in carnival."We all participate." Carnavales Rurales (rural carnival) is celebrated each Sunday during the three weeks leading up to the official time of carnival before Lent. Campesinos from the same rural communities, join together to form comparsas, or groups. Those who participate identify as campesinos; even though many participants have lived in the city for more than 20 years. Some of the younger participants were born in the city. Whilst some campesinos, displaced by the violence, are now returning to their communities, many more have chosen to remain in Huamanga. One such person is Rómulo Canales Bautista. Rómulo dances with the comparsa Claveles de Vinchos.Rómulo Bautista dancing the carnival of VinchosOriginally from Vinchos, Rómulo moved to Huamanga in search of safety when he was a boy after his father was killed. Like many who participate in rural carnival, Rómulo has lived in Huamanga for a many years and for the most part he lives a very urban existence. He completed his studies at the university and works as a professional with no plans to return permanently to Vinchos. However, Rómulo considers himself to be campesino, stating “I am campesino. I identify myself as I am.” Rómulo laughed as he explained “I was not born dancing.” Since moving to Huamanga, Rómulo learned the carnival dance of Vinchos as a means of feeling a connection to his place of origin. He now participates in rural carnival each year and is the captain of his comparsa. For Rómulo, carnival is his cultural inheritance and that which connects him to his homeland. Living and working in the urban setting whilst maintaining strong links to their homelands through the embodied expressions of fiesta, migrants like Rómulo negotiate and move between an urbanised mestizo identity and a rural campesino identity. However, for rural migrants living in Huamanga, it is campesino identity which holds greater importance during carnival. This is because carnival allows participants to feel a visceral connection to both land and ancestry. As Gerardo Muñoz, a sixty-seven year old migrant from Chilcas explained “We want to make our culture live again, it is our patrimony, it is what our grandfathers have left us of their wisdom and how it used to be. This is what we cultivate through our carnival.”The Plaza TransformedComparsa from Huanta enter the PlazaEach Sunday during the three weeks leading up to the official time of carnival the central Plaza is transformed by the dance, music and song of up to seventy comparsas participating in Carnavales Rurales. Rural Carnival has a transformative effect not only on participants but also on the wider urban population. At this time campesinos, who are generally marginalised, discounted or actively discriminated against, briefly hold a place of power and respect. For a few hours each Sunday they are treated as masters of an ancient art. It is no easy task to conjure the dynamic sensory world of dance in words. As Deidre Sklar questions, “how is the ineffable to be made available in words? How shall I draw out the effects of dancing? Imperfectly, and slowly, bit by bit, building fragments of sensation and association so that its pieces lock in with your sensory memories like a jigsaw puzzle” (17).Recalling the DanceAs comparsas arrive in the Plaza there is creative chaos and the atmosphere hums with excitement as more and more comparsas gather for the pasecalle or parade. At the corner of the plaza, the deafening crack of fire works, accompanied by the sounds of music and the blasting of whistles announce the impending arrival of another comparsa. They are Los Hijos de Chilcas from Chilcas in La Mar in the north-east of the department. They proudly dance and sing their way into the Plaza – bodies strong, their movements powerful yet fluid. Their heads are lifted to greet the crowd, their chests wide and open, eyes bright with pride. Led by the capitán, the dancers form two long lines in pairs the men at the front, followed by the women. All the men carry warakas, long whips of plaited leather which they crack in the air as they dance. These are ancient weapons which are later used in a ritual battle. They dance in a swinging stepping motion that swerves and snakes, winds and weaves along the road. At various intervals the two lines open out, doubling back on themselves creating two semicircles. The men wear frontales, pieces of material which hang down the front of the legs, attached with long brightly coloured ribbons. The dancers make high stepping motions, kicking the frontales up in the air as they go; as if moving through high grasses. The ribbons swish and fly around the men and they are clouded in a blur of colour and movement. The women follow carrying warakitas, which are shorter and much finer. They hold their whips in two hands, stretched wide in front of their bodies or sweeping from side to side above their heads. They wear large brightly coloured skirts known as polleras made from heavy material which swish and swoosh as they dance from side to side – step, touch together, bounce; step, touch together, bounce. The women follow the serpent pattern of the men. Behind the women are the musicians playing guitars, quenas and tinyas. The musicians are followed by five older men dressed in pants and suit coats carrying ponchos draped over the right shoulder. They represent the traditional community authorities known as Varayuq and karguyuq. The oldest of the men is carrying the symbols of leadership – the staff and the whip.The Choreography of PlaceFor the members of Los Hijos de Chilcas the dance represents the topography of their homeland. The steps and choreography are created and informed by the dancers’ relationship to the land from which they come. La Mar is a very mountainous region where, as one dancer explained, it is impossible to walk a straight line up or down the terrain. One must therefore weave a winding path so as not to slip and fall. As the dancers snake and weave, curl and wind they literally dance their “place” of origin into being. With each swaying movement of their body, with each turn and with every footfall on the earth, dancers lay the mountainous terrain of La Mar along the paved roads of the Plaza. The flying ribbons of the frontales evoke the long grasses of the hillsides. “The steps are danced in the form of a zigzag which represents the changeable and curvilinear paths that join the towns, as well as creating the figure eight which represents the eight anexos of the district” (Carnaval Tradicional). Los Hijos de ChilcasThe weaving patterns and the figure eights of the dance create a choreography of place, which reflects and evoke the land. This choreography of place is built upon with each step of the dance many of which emulate the native fauna. One of the dancers explained whilst demonstrating a hopping step “this is the step of a little bird” common to La Mar. With his body bent forward from the waist, left hand behind his back and elbow out to the side like a wing, stepping forward on the left leg and sweeping the right leg in half circle motion, he indeed resembled a little bird hopping along the ground. Other animals such as the luwichu or deer are also represented through movement and costume.Katrina Teaiwa notes that the peoples of the South Pacific dance to embody “not space but place”. This is true also for campesinos from Chilcas living in the urban setting, who invoke their place of origin and the time of the ancestors as they dance their carnival. The notion of place is not merely terrain. It includes the nature elements, the ancestors and those who also those who have passed away. The province of La Mar was one of the most severely affected areas during the years of internal armed conflict especially during 1983-1984. More than 1,400 deaths and disappearances were reported to the TRC for this period alone (CVR). Hundreds of people were forced to leave their homes and in many communities it became impossible to celebrate fiestas. Through the choreography of place dancers transform the urban streets and dance the very land of their origin into being, claiming the urban streets as their own. The importance of this act can not be overstated for campesinos who have lost family members and were forced to leave their communities during the years of violence. As Deborah Poole has noted dance is “…the active Andean voice …” (99). As comparsa members teach their children the carnival dance of their parents and grandparents they maintain ancestral connections and pass on the stories and embodied memories of their homes. Much of the literature on carnival views it as a release valve which allows a temporary freedom but which ultimately functions to reinforce established structures. This is no longer the case in Huamanga. The transformative effect of rural carnival goes beyond the moment of the dance. Through dancing the choreography of place campesinos salvage and restore that which was taken from them; the effects of which are felt by both the dancer and spectator.ConclusionThe closer examination of dance as embodied memory reveals those memory practices which may not necessarily voice the violence directly, but which are enacted, funded and embodied and thus, important to the people most affected by the years of conflict and violence. In conclusion, the dance of rural carnival functions as embodied memory which is danced into being through collective participation; through many bodies working together. Dancers who participate in rural carnival have absorbed the land sensorially and embodied it. Through dancing the land they give it form and bring embodied memory into being, imbuing the paved roads of the plaza with the mountainous terrain of their home land. For those born in the city, they come to know their ancestral land through the Andean voice of dance. The dance of carnival functions in a unique way making it possible for participants recall their homelands through a physical memory and to dance their place into being wherever they are. This corporeal memory goes beyond the normal understanding of memory as being of the mind for as Connerton notes “images of the past are remembered by way of ritual performances that are ‘stored’ in a bodily memory” (89). ReferencesAbercrombie, Thomas A. “La fiesta de carnaval postcolonial en Oruro: Clase, etnicidad y nacionalismo en la danza folklórica.” Revista Andina 10.2 (1992): 279-352.Carnaval Tradicional del Distrito de Chilcas – La Mar, Comparsas de La Asociación Social – Cultural “Los Hijos de Chilcas y Anexos”, pamphlet handed to the judges of the Atipinakuy, 2010.CVR. Informe Final. Lima: Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación, 2003. 1 March 2008 < http://www.cverdad.org.pe >.Bigenho, Michelle. “Sensing Locality in Yura: Rituals of Carnival and of the Bolivian State.” American Ethnologist 26.4 (1999): 95-80.Connerton, Paul. How Societies Remember. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1989.Coronel Aguirre, José, M. Cabrera Romero, G. Machaca Calle, and R. Ochatoma Paravivino. “Análisis de acciones del carnaval ayacuchano – 1986.” Carnaval en Ayacucho, CEDIFA, Investigaciones No. 1, 1986.Cowan, Jane. Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990.Garcia, Maria Elena. Making Indigenous Citizens: Identities, Education and Multicultural Development in Peru. California: Stanford University Press, 2005.Isbelle, Billie Jean. To Defend Ourselves: Ecology and Ritual in an Andean Village. Illinois: Waveland Press, 1985.Mendoza, Zoila S. Shaping Society through Dance: Mestizo Ritual Performance in the Peruvian Andes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.Poole, Deborah. “Andean Ritual Dance.” TDR 34.2 (Summer 1990): 98-126.Ritter, Jonathan. “Siren Songs: Ritual and Revolution in the Peruvian Andes.” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 11.1 (2002): 9-42.Sklar, Deidre. “‘All the Dances Have a Meaning to That Apparition”: Felt Knowledge and the Danzantes of Tortugas, New Mexico.” Dance Research Journal 31.2 (Autumn 1999): 14-33.Stern, Steve J. Peru’s Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest: Huamanga to 1640. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982.Taylor, Diana. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.Teaiwa, Katerina. "Challenges to Dance! Choreographing History in Oceania." Paper for Greg Denning Memorial Lecture, Melbourne University, Melbourne, 14 Oct. 2010.United Nations International Human Rights Instruments. Core Document Forming Part of the Reports of States Parties: Peru. 27 June 1995. HRI/CORE/1/Add.43/Rev.1. 12 May 2012 < http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6ae1f8.html >.

In August 2006 the LiveJournal (hereafter LJ) community sga_flashfic posted its bimonthly challenge: a “Mission Report” challenge. Challenge communities are fandom-specific sites where moderators pick a theme or prompt to which writers respond and then post their specific fan works. The terms of this challenge were to encourage participants to invent a new mission and create a piece of fan fiction in the form of a mission report from the point of view of the Stargate Atlantis team of explorers. As an alternative possibility, and this is where the trouble started, the challenge also allowed to “take another author’s story and write a report” of its mission. Moderator Cesperanza then explained, “if you choose to write a mission report of somebody else’s story, we’ll ask you to credit them, but we won’t require you to ask their permission” (sga_flashfic LJ, 21 Aug. 2006, emphasis added). Whereas most announcement posts would only gather a few comments, this reached more than a hundred responses within hours, mostly complaints. Even though the community administrators quickly backtracked and posted a revision of the challenge not 12 hours later, the fannish LiveJournal sphere debated the challenge for days, reaching far beyond the specific fandom of Stargate Atlantis to discuss the ethical questions surrounding fannish appropriation and remix. At the center of the debate were the last eight words: “we won’t require you to ask their permission.” By encouraging fans to effectively write fan fiction of fan fiction and by not requiring permission, the moderators had violated an unwritten norm within this fannish community. Like all fan communities, western media fans have developed internal rules covering everything from what to include in a story header to how long to include a spoiler warning following aired episodes (for a definition and overview of western media fandom, see Coppa). In this example, the mods violated the fannish prohibition against the borrowing of original characters, settings, plot points, or narrative structures from other fan writers without permission—even though as fan fiction, the source of the inspiration engages in such borrowing itself. These kinds of normative rules can be altered, of course, but any change requires long and involved discussions. In this essay, we look at various debates that showcase how this fan community—media fandom on LiveJournal—creates and enforces but also discusses and changes its normative behavior. Fan fiction authors’ desire to prevent their work from being remixed may seem hypocritical, but we argue that underlying these conversations are complex negotiations of online privacy and control, affective aesthetics, and the value of fan labor. This is not to say that all fan communities address issues of remixing in the same way media fandom at this point in time did nor to suggest that they should; rather, we want to highlight a specific community’s internal ethics, the fervor with which members defend their rules, and the complex arguments that evolve from all sides when rules are questioned. Moreover, we suggest that these conversations offer insight into the specific relation many fan writers have to their stories and how it may differ from a more universal authorial affect. In order to fully understand the underlying motivations and the community ethos that spawned the sga_flashfic debates, we first want to differentiate between forms of unauthorised (re)uses and the legal, moral, and artistic concerns they create. Only with a clear definition of copyright infringement and plagiarism, as well as a clear understanding of who is affected (and in what ways) in any of these cases, can we fully understand the social and moral intersection of fan remixing of fan fiction. Only when sidestepping the legal and economic concerns surrounding remix can we focus on the ethical intricacies between copyright holders and fan writers and, more importantly, within fan communities. Fan communities differ greatly over time, between fandoms, and even depending on their central social interfaces (such as con-based zines, email-based listservs, journal-based online communities, etc.), and as a result they also develop a diverse range of internal community rules (Busse and Hellekson, “Works”; Busker). Much strife is caused when different traditions and their associated mores intersect. We’d argue, however, that the issues in the case of the Stargate Atlantis Remix Challenge were less the confrontation of different communities and more the slowly changing attitudes within one. In fact, looking at media fandom today, we may already be seeing changed attitudes—even as the debates continue over remix permission and unauthorised use. Why Remixes Are Not Copyright Infringement In discussing the limits of unauthorised use, it is important to distinguish plagiarism and copyright violation from forms of remix. While we are more concerned with the ethical issues surrounding plagiarism, we want to briefly address copyright infringement, simply because it often gets mixed into the ethics of remixes. Copyright is strictly defined as a matter of law; in many of the online debates in media fandom, it is often further restricted to U.S. Law, because a large number of the source texts are owned by U.S. companies. According to the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8), Congress has the power to secure an “exclusive Right” “for limited Times.” Given that intellectual property rights have to be granted and are limited, legal scholars read this statute as a delicate balance between offering authors exclusive rights and allowing the public to flourish by building on these works. Over the years, however, intellectual property rights have been expanded and increased at the expense of the public commons (Lessig, Boyle). The main exception to this exclusive right is the concept of “fair use,” defined as use “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching..., scholarship, or research” (§107). Case law circumscribes the limits of fair use, distinguishing works that are merely “derivative” from those that are “transformative” and thus add value (Chander and Sunder, Fiesler, Katyal, McCardle, Tushnet). The legal status of fan fiction remains undefined without a specific case that would test the fair use doctrine in regards to fan fiction, yet fair use and fan fiction advocates argue that fan fiction should be understood as eminently transformative and thus protected under fair use. The nonprofit fan advocacy group, the Organization for Transformative Works, in fact makes clear its position by including the legal term in their name, reflecting a changing understanding of both fans and scholars. Why Remixes Are Not Plagiarism Whereas copyright infringement is a legal concept that punishes violations between fan writers and commercial copyright holders, plagiarism instead is defined by the norms of the audience for which a piece is written: definitions of plagiarism thus differ from academic to journalist to literary contexts. Within fandom one of the most blatant (and most easily detectable) forms of plagiarism is when a fan copies another work wholesale and publishes it under their own name, either within the same fandom or by simply searching and replacing names to make it fit another fandom. Other times, fan writers may take selections of published pro or fan fiction and insert them into their works. Within fandom accusations of plagiarism are taken seriously, and fandom as a whole polices itself with regards to plagiarism: the LiveJournal community stop_plagiarism, for example, was created in 2005 specifically to report and pursue accusations of plagiarism within fandom. The community keeps a list of known plagiarisers that include the names of over 100 fan writers. Fan fiction plagiarism can only be determined on a case-by-case basis—and fans remain hypervigilant simply because they are all too often falsely accused as merely plagiarising when instead they are interpreting, translating, and transforming. There is another form of fannish offense that does not actually constitute plagiarism but is closely connected to it, namely the wholesale reposting of stories with attributions intact. This practice is frowned upon for two main reasons. Writers like to maintain at least some control over their works, often deriving from anxieties over being able to delete one’s digital footprint if desired or necessary. Archiving stories without authorial permission strips authors of this ability. More importantly, media fandom is a gift economy, in which labor is not reimbursed economically but rather rewarded with feedback (such as comments and kudos) and the growth of a writer’s reputation (Hellekson, Scott). Hosting a story in a place where readers cannot easily give thanks and feedback to the author, the rewards for the writer’s fan labor are effectively taken from her. Reposting thus removes the story from the fannish gift exchange—or, worse, inserts the archivist in lieu of the author as the recipient of thanks and comments. Unauthorised reposting is not plagiarism, as the author’s name remains attached, but it tends to go against fannish mores nonetheless as it deprives the writer of her “payment” of feedback and recognition. When Copyright Holders Object to Fan Fiction A small group of professional authors vocally proclaim fan fiction as unethical, illegal, or both. In her “Fan Fiction Rant” Robin Hobbs declares that “Fan fiction is to writing what a cake mix is to gourmet cooking” and then calls it outright theft: “Fan fiction is like any other form of identity theft. It injures the name of the party whose identity is stolen.” Anne Rice shares her feelings about fan fiction on her web site with a permanent message: “I do not allow fan fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes.” Diana Gabaldon calls fan fiction immoral and describes, “it makes me want to barf whenever I’ve inadvertently encountered some of it involving my characters.” Moreover, in a move shared by other anti-fan fiction writers, she compares her characters to family members: “I wouldn’t like people writing sex fantasies for public consumption about me or members of my family—why would I be all right with them doing it to the intimate creations of my imagination and personality?” George R.R. Martin similarly evokes familial intimacy when he writes, “My characters are my children, I have been heard to say. I don’t want people making off with them.” What is interesting in these—and other authors’—articulations of why they disapprove of fan fiction of their works is that their strongest and ultimate argument is neither legal nor economic reasoning but an emotional plea: being a good fan means coloring within the lines laid out by the initial creator, putting one’s toys back exactly as one found them, and never ever getting creative or transformative with them. Many fan fiction writers respect these wishes and do not write in book fandoms where the authors have expressed their desires clearly. Sometimes entire archives respect an author’s desires: fanfiction.net, the largest repository of fic online, removed all stories based on Rice’s work and does not allow any new ones to be posted. However, fandom is a heterogeneous culture with no centralised authority, and it is not difficult to find fic based on Rice’s characters and settings if one knows where to look. Most of these debates are restricted to book fandoms, likely for two reasons: (1) film and TV fan fiction alters the medium, so that there is no possibility that the two works might be mistaken for one another; and (2) film and TV authorship tends to be collaborative and thus lowers the individual sense of ownership (Mann, Sellors). How Fannish Remixes Are like Fan Fiction Most fan fiction writers strongly dismiss accusations of plagiarism and theft, two accusations that all too easily are raised against fan fiction and yet, as we have shown, such accusations actually misdefine terms. Fans extensively debate the artistic values of fan fiction, often drawing from classical literary discussions and examples. Clearly echoing Wilde’s creed that “there is no such thing as a moral or immoral book,” Kalichan, for example, argues in one LJ conversation that “whenever I hear about writers asserting that other writing is immoral, I become violently ill. Aside from this, morality & legality are far from necessarily connected. Lots of things are immoral and legal, illegal and moral and so on, in every permutation imaginable, so let’s just not confuse the two, shall we” (Kalichan LJ, 3 May 2010). Aja Romano concludes an epic list of remixed works ranging from the Aeneid to The Wind Done Gone, from All’s Well That Ends Well to Wicked with a passionate appeal to authors objecting to fan fiction: the story is not defined by the barriers you place around it. The moment you gave it to us, those walls broke. You may hate the fact people are imagining more to your story than what you put there. But if I were you, I’d be grateful that I got the chance to create a story that has a culture around it, a story that people want to keep talking about, reworking, remixing, living in, fantasizing about, thinking about, writing about. (Bookshop LJ, 3 May 2010)Many fan writers view their own remixes as part of a larger cultural movement that appropriates found objects and culturally relevant materials to create new things, much like larger twentieth century movements that include Dada and Pop Art, as well as feminist and postcolonial challenges to the literary canon. Finally, fan fiction partakes in 21st century ideas of social anarchy to create a cultural creative commons of openly shared ideas. Fan Cupidsbow describes strong parallels and cross-connection between all sorts of different movements, from Warhol to opensource, DeviantArt to AMV, fanfiction to mashups, sampling to critique and review. All these things are about how people are interacting with technology every day, and not just digital technology, but pens and paper and clothes and food fusions and everything else. (Cupidsbow LJ, 20 May 2009) Legally, of course, these reuses of collectively shared materials are often treated quite differently, which is why fan fiction advocates often maintain that all remixes be treated equally—regardless of whether their source text is film, TV, literature, or fan fiction. The Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works, for example, does not distinguish in its Content and Abuse Policy section between commercial and fan works in regard to plagiarism and copyright. Returning to the initial case of the Stargate Atlantis Mission Report Challenge, we can thus see how the moderator clearly positions herself within a framework that considers all remixes equally remixable. Even after changing the guidelines to require permission for the remixing of existing fan stories, moderator Cesperanza notes that she “remain[s] philosophically committed to the idea that people have the right to make art based on other art provided that due credit is given the original artist” (sga_flashfic LJ, 21 Aug. 2006). Indeed, other fans agree with her position in the ensuing discussions, drawing attention to the hypocrisy of demanding different rules for what appears to be the exact same actions: “So explain to me how you can defend fanfiction as legitimate derivative work if it’s based on one type of source material (professional writing or TV shows), yet decry it as ‘stealing’ and plagiarism if it’s based on another type of source material (fanfiction)” (Marythefan LJ, 21 Aug. 2006). Many fans assert that all remixes should be tolerated by the creators of their respective source texts—be they pro or fan. Fans expect Rowling to be accepting of Harry Potter’s underage romance with a nice and insecure Severus Snape, and they expect Matthew Weiner to be accepting of stories that kill off Don Draper and have his (ex)wives join a commune together. So fans should equally accept fan fiction that presents the grand love of Rodney McKay and John Sheppard, the most popular non-canonical fan fiction pairing on Stargate Atlantis, to be transformed into an abusive and manipulative relationship or rewritten with one of them dying tragically. Lydiabell, for example, argues that “there’s [no]thing wrong with creating a piece of art that uses elements of another work to create something new, always assuming that proper credit is given to the original... even if your interpretation is at odds with everything the original artist wanted to convey” (Lydiabell LJ, 22 Aug. 2006). Transforming works can often move them into territory that is critical of the source text, mocks the source text, rearranges relationships, and alters characterisations. It is here that we reach the central issue of this article: many fans indeed do view intrafandom interactions as fundamentally different to their interactions with professional authors or commercial entertainment companies. While everyone agrees that there are no legal, economic, or even ultimately moral arguments to be made against remixing fan fiction (because any such argument would nullify the fan’s right to create their fan fiction in the first place), the discourses against open remixing tend to revolve around community norms, politeness, and respect. How Fannish Remixes Are Not like Fan Fiction At the heart of the debate lie issues of community norms: taking another fan’s stories as the basis for one’s own fiction is regarded as a violation of manners, at least the way certain sections of the community define them. This, in fact, is not unlike the way many fan academics engage with fandom research. While it may be perfectly legal to directly cite fans’ blog posts, and while it may even be in compliance with institutional ethical research requirements (such as Internal Review Boards at U.S. universities), the academic fan writing about her own community may indeed choose to take extra precautions to protect herself and that community. As Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson have argued, fan studies often exists at the intersection of language and social studies, and thus written text may simultaneously be treated as artistic works and as utterances by human subjects (“Identity”). In this essay (and elsewhere), we thus limit direct linking into fannish spaces, instead giving site, date, and author, and we have consent from all fans we cite in this essay. The community of fans who write fic in a particular fandom is relatively small, and most of them are familiar with each other, or can trace a connection via one or two degrees of separation only. While writing fan fiction about Harry Potter may influence the way you and your particular circle of friends interpret the novels, it is unlikely to affect the overall reception of the work. During the remix debate, fan no_pseud articulates the differing power dynamic: When someone bases fanfic on another piece of fanfic, the balance of power in the relationship between the two things is completely different to the relationship between a piece of fanfic and the canon source. The two stories have exactly equal authority, exactly equal validity, exactly equal ‘reality’ in fandom. (nopseud LJ, 21 Aug. 2006) Within fandom, there are few stories that have the kind of reach that professional fiction does, and it is just as likely that a fan will come across an unauthorised remix of a piece of fan fiction as the original piece itself. In that way, the reception of fan fiction is more fragile, and fans are justifiably anxious about it. In a recent conversation about proper etiquette within Glee fandom, fan writer flaming_muse articulates her reasons for expecting different behavior from fandom writers who borrow ideas from each other: But there’s a huge difference between fanfic of media and fanfic of other fanfic authors. Part of it is a question of the relationship of the author to the source material … but part of it is just about not hurting or diminishing the other creative people around you. We aren’t hurting Glee by writing fic in their ‘verse; we are hurting other people if we write fanfic of fanfic. We’re taking away what’s special about their particular stories and all of the work they put into them. (Stoney321 LJ, 12 Feb. 2012)Flaming_muse brings together several concepts but underlying all is a sense of community. Thus she equates remixing within the community without permission as a violation of fannish etiquette. The sense of community also plays a role in another reason given by fans who prefer permission, which is the actual ease of getting it. Many fandoms are fairly small communities, which makes it more possible to ask for permission before doing a translation, adaptation, or other kind of rewrite of another person’s fic. Often a fan may have already given feedback to the story or shared some form of conversation with the writer, so that requesting permission seems fairly innocuous. Moreover, fandom is a community based on the economy of gifting and sharing (Hellekson), so that etiquette becomes that much more important. Unlike pro authors who are financially reimbursed for their works, feedback is effectively a fan writer’s only payment. Getting comments, kudos, or recommendations for their stories are ways in which readers reward and thank the writers for their work. Many fans feel that a gift economy functions only through the goodwill of all its participants, which remixing without permission violates. How Fan Writing May Differ From Pro Writing Fans have a different emotional investment in their creations, only partially connected to writing solely for love (as opposed to professional writers who may write for love but also write for their livelihood in the best-case scenarios). One fan, who writes both pro and fan fiction, describes her more distanced emotional involvement with her professional writing as follows, When I’m writing for money, I limit my emotional investment in the material I produce. Ultimately what I am producing does not belong to me. Someone else is buying it and I am serving their needs, not my own. (St_Crispins LJ, 27 Aug. 2006)The sense of writing for oneself as part of a community also comes through in a comment by pro and fan writer Matociquala, who describes the specificity and often quite limited audience of fan fiction as follows: Fanfiction is written in the expectation of being enjoyed in an open membership but tight-knit community, and the writer has an expectation of being included in the enjoyment and discussion. It is the difference, in other words, between throwing a fair on the high road, and a party in a back yard. Sure, you might be able to see what’s going on from the street, but you’re expected not to stare. (Matociquala LJ, 18 May 2006)What we find important here is the way both writers seem to suggest that fan fiction allows for a greater intimacy and immediacy on the whole. So while not all writers write to fulfill (their own or other’s) emotional and narrative desires, this seems to be more acceptable in fan fiction. Intimacy, i.e., the emotional and, often sexual, openness and vulnerability readers and writers exhibit in the stories and surrounding interaction, can thus constitute a central aspect for readers and writers alike. Again, none of these aspects are particular to fan fiction alone, but, unlike in much other writing, they are such a central component that the stories divorced from their context—textual, social, and emotional—may not be fully comprehensible. In a discussion several years ago, Ellen Fremedon coined the term Id Vortex, by which she refers to that very tailored and customised writing that caters to the writers’ and/or readers’ kinks, that creates stories that not only move us emotionally because we already care about the characters but also because it uses tropes, characterisations, and scenes that appeal very viscerally: In fandom, we’ve all got this agreement to just suspend shame. I mean, a lot of what we write is masturbation material, and we all know it, and so we can’t really pretend that we’re only trying to write for our readers’ most rarefied sensibilities, you know? We all know right where the Id Vortex is, and we have this agreement to approach it with caution, but without any shame at all. (Ellen Fremedon LJ, 2 Dec. 2004)Writing stories for a particular sexual kink may be the most obvious way fans tailor stories to their own (or others’) desires, but in general, fan stories often seem to be more immediate, more intimate, more revealing than most published writing. This attachment is only strengthened by fans’ immense emotional attachment to the characters, as they may spend years if not decades rewatching their show, discussing all its details, and reading and writing stories upon stories. From Community to Commons These norms and mores continue to evolve as fannish activity becomes more and more visible to the mainstream, and new generations of fans enter fandom within a culture where media is increasingly spreadable across social networks and all fannish activity is collectively described and recognised as “fandom” (Jenkins, Ford, and Green). The default mode of the mainstream often treats “found” material as disseminable, and interfaces encourage such engagement by inviting users to “share” on their collection of social networks. As a result, many new fans see remixing as not only part of their fannish right, but engage in their activity on platforms that make sharing with or without attribution both increasingly easy and normative. Tumblr is the most recent and obvious example of a platform in which reblogging other users’ posts, with or without commentary, is the normative mode. Instead of (or in addition to) uploading one’s story to an archive, a fan writer might post it on Tumblr and consider reblogs as another form of feedback. In fact, our case study and its associated differentiation of legal, moral, and artistic justifications for and against remixing fan works, may indeed be an historical artifact in its own right: media fandom as a small and well-defined community of fans with a common interest and a shared history is the exception rather than the norm in today’s fan culture. When access to stories and other fans required personal initiation, it was easy to teach and enforce a community ethos. Now, however, fan fiction tops Google searches for strings that include both Harry and Draco or Spock and Uhura, and fan art is readily reblogged by sites for shows ranging from MTV’s Teen Wolf to NBC’s Hannibal. 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