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Postcolonial Networks brings together scholars, activists, and leaders with the urgency of a movement to foster decolonized relationships, innovative scholarship, and social transformation.

Postcolonial Networks Board

Imagining Santa: Washington Irving and the Development of the American Tradition of Christmas

December 24th, 2011|

Santa Claus and the way we celebrate Christmas was imported from British tradition by an American author; namely, in the work of Washington Irving. Irving’s description of Santa included in Irving’s History of New York (1809), and his description of Christmas traditions in England in The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (published serially between 1819 and 1820), have greatly influenced the way we apprehend the holiday;before Irving’s work came out, Christmas was not generally celebrated in the new United States of America.

Red Dawn: Specters of Communism in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall Past Lives

July 27th, 2011|

Critical reception to Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010), a Thai film that won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in the year of its release, remains wildly polarized. In one camp, mostly populated by professional film critics, the verdict flirts with ecstasy...

The Debate Goes On: More on “The Secret in Their Eyes”

July 3rd, 2011|

In my previous post, on the Argentine film "El secreto de sus ojos" (The Secret in Their Eyes, Juan José Campanella 2009), I made some criticisms on a review of the film written by Matt Losada for the journal Cineaste. I was very glad to find out that Mr Losada read my entry and published his own response in this website. Here I would like to reply to Mr Losada, taking issue with some of his patronising accusations about my views on Argentine justice and on the Oscars. My objective is not to pursue a personal contest with my interlocutor but to clarify some notions on Argentine recent history and contemporary politics, notions which are extremely important and which underlie all discussions on Campanella’s film.

Racism, multiculturalism, and everything cinema teaches us.

June 19th, 2011|

David Cameron’s speech on multiculturalism a few months ago spurred a lot of analysis, attracting both appreciation as well as consternation from the most unexpected quarters. The question is, are there large parts of his country's political history that Mr. Cameron's speech just did not bother with? And if so, can we earn more by looking at the cultural artifacts of that country, such as postcolonial minority filmmaking in Britain?

A response to Mariano Paz’ "Memory, History, Forgetting…"

May 20th, 2011|

In his recent entry—Memory, History, Forgetting, and Oscars: The Secret in Their Eyes and film criticism of Latin American cinema—here on Postcolonial Networks, Mariano Paz offered an evaluation of the film El secreto de sus ojos and the Oscar it received, along with a critique of “the standard of Anglophone film criticism of Latin American films.” To represent film criticism in English he chose an article I recently wrote on the film for the journal Cineaste.

Memory, history, forgetting, and Oscars: The Secret in Their Eyes and film criticism of Latin American cinema

April 27th, 2011|

Upon its release in Argentina in 2009, Juan José Campanella’s El secreto de sus ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes) opened up a widespread debate in the national media – something to be expected from a film that revisits the violence of the recent Argentine past in the form of a commercial genre film.

Part 2: Art as the Big Other, Exiting The Matrix

March 14th, 2011|

Art is a semblant. Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan posited that a semblant | Is something that is meant to take the place of an apparent lack but is itself not the object intended to replace the lack. Lacan adds that desire is something we all have but in the idealistic sense will never obtain. In the aftermath of this reality, art is meant to respond. But art itself is filled with a void, and the goal of an artist is to tarry the circumference of this void and attempt to make sense of the ontological struggle of humanity.