MO3351 Doing and Practicing Transnational and Global History

Indigenous mobilizations against the State for their autonomy and self-determination has become a marker of 21^st century Latin American history. The challenge posed by indigenous people to internal colonialism (i.e. coloniality of power embedded in nation-state building after decolonization) threatens the ideas of nationhood, peoplehood, and citizenship the state has used since independence. It is completely re-writing the Latin American nationalist project.

         From this resistance is where a new form of politics is forming, what is being called ‘Spirit Politics.’ Indigenous communities, in their reflection of the past and fight for autonomy, revalidated the old organizations and functions of their political sphere. In all these cases the shamans role in politics is stressed along with their relation to politics and culture—giving birth to the terms ‘Spirit Politics.’ New indigenous leaders mix foreign with familiar, the present with the past, in the production of hybrid and groundbreaking works that are then claimed to be authentically ‘native.’ Through appropriating the instructions of dominant society, indigenous associations are inscribing their struggles within a global context—they produce their own knowledge and try to recover control over their natural and cultural resources.

         The hybridity of thought that indigenous communities are bringing into the mainstream, along with their perception of the world, is opening incredible doors for development of political and social thought. For example, the redefinition of Mapuche land as territory is made as much in political terms as in sociocultural terms. In political terms because they claim autonomy on their land and try to reorganize space according to their own social principles of organization. In sociocultural terms because the conceptualization of mapu, or territory, Mapuche people have goes far beyond the mere management of political differences. The territory is made out of several different spaces and places which are divided both horizontally and vertically. Mapuche conceptualization of the environment it entirely connected to the political project of reterritorialization. That is why the participation of Manchi (shaman)is so overwhelming in the movement. Manchi are not only playing a role as emblems of the Mapuche struggle for recognition of their cultural and political rights, they are also playing an internal sociopolitical role insofar as they are the ones who are believed to know which spaces are to be respected.

         Spirit politics is articulating politics through the eyes of the indigenous and giving their political agents agency. Its not about left and right wings, but rather incorporating their political and belief systems into the mainstream in order to make their rights understood as legitimate.

Since my project focuses on one film and one play, but my short essay did not include much on the transnational study of these mediums, I thought I would research the move to a transnational study of cinema. This move comes from the growing discontent with the way we have studied history in general. As early as 1993, Marsha Kinda posited a need to “read national cinema against the local/global interface”.[1] Since then, various developments in concepts of transnational cinema have developed, with different historians paving their own ways in the field. 

But why do we need a transnational history of cinema? By moving away from the limiting national boundaries, we can understand the complex relationships between the film, and the wider cultural and economic movements that existed unconfined by national boundaries. By viewing a film such as Omkara, the Bollywood adaptation of Othello which I will discuss in my project, as a postcolonial reaction, rather than a self-contained film, we can gain a greater understanding of the global cultural and economic climates within which it was produced, and which it was a reaction to. 

In addition, scholars such as Naficy and Marks have argued that transnational cinema history, by analysing cinematic representation of cultural identity, can challenge the western narrative, and its construction of cinema as a Eurocentric phenomenon.[2] Here, power-relations between global and local, or insider and outsider, as in the case of Omkara, are crucial to gaining a greater understanding of the film’s cultural backdrop. This is an avenue I would like to explore in my project, as I seek to understand how Omkara uses this distinction to point to problems in the colonial India past, and to call out and challenge Shakespeare’s hegemonic status.  

Will Higbee and Song Hwee Lim have highlighted an issue which we seem to have encountered frequently in this module. This is the danger that the national becomes negated in this specifically transnational analysis of cinema. We must not assume, they argue, that the transnational model does not bring with it its own boundaries and limitations.[3] Thus, we must analyse transnationally not only in the conceptual space, but we should also “examine its deployment in the concrete-specific so that the power dynamic in each case can be fully explored and exposed”.[4] So, it seems we are at the conclusion again that what is crucial to transnational study is that the nation is not completely forgotten or written over, but that it is removed as the sole method of understanding. I hope that, while discussing Omkara and the power dynamics exemplified within it, my project will consider this limitation in order to produce a transnational film history which delves deeper into the environment within which it was produced. 

[1] Kinder, Marsha (1993), Blood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Identity in Spain, Berkeley, California: University of California Press. p. 7. 

[2] See Naficy, Hamid (2001), An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, and Marks, Laura (2000), The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses, Durham and London: Duke University Press.

[3] Will Higbee & Song Hwee Lim (2010) Concepts of transnational cinema: towards a critical transnationalism in film studies, Transnational Cinemas, 1:1, pp. 7-21. 

[4] Will Higbee & Song Hwee Lim (2010) Concepts of transnational cinema: towards a critical transnationalism in film studies, Transnational Cinemas, 1:1, 7-21, p. 10. 

I have to admit, I was riding an absolute high this week in regard to this module; I found my key argument which linked my whole project together. Therefore, I wanted to get stuck into these readings on a topic that is so broad and malleable that I am sure that within 20 years’ time any history which conceptualises a self-contained system of humans influencing humans in isolation of the non-human, will be thrown upon the bone-heap. The history of the human will be considered antiquated and a product of a narrow-minded, human arrogance which realises itself throughout academia… of course, I do sound exceptionally glib, and I am trying to have fun while writing these. However, I do genuinely believe in the significance of what these “histories of the non-human” hold, and I believe that these histories contain within them a valuable, if not the most valuable, path for the development of future historiography.

                        One thing I wanted to test with this concept of the historical non-human was, how can we identify an intellectual history within a realm that includes the non-human? How can we bring in the non-human agent to a school of history which has at its core possibly the most human concept; the abstractions of our consciousnesses which we call ideas, emotions, and perceptions? To this end, the Emily O’Gorman and Andrea Gaynor piece was exceptionally useful.[1] This piece asks us to consider how human ideas may be impacted by nature, either through the direct-action of nature or through human semiotics, and how the actions and mentalities of nature may be impacted by the human. Also, through a series of semiotic leaps, how do some humans imprint the image of the non-human upon other humans and thus rob them of their agency and cultural intellectuality. O’Gorman and Gaynor relate this latter concept to post-colonial and classist power-relations over working-class Asian communities, however I thought this could be applied elsewhere. The portrayal of the autochthonous peoples who come from the lands now occupied by the USA could be an example of this. The images presented of these peoples as being part of the “natural” landscape of the now colonised North America, of them holding beliefs of an exoticised mysticism which provides them with their conceptions of the world through semiotic interpretations of nature, that they are part of the natural world which is now being ravaged and destroyed by the industrialism of the European-descended American, the image of which is used by such people as a poster-image for anti-littering campaigns, equates the agency and humanity of these peoples to that of the non-human.[2] Surely the act of dehumanisation and comparison to the non-human has been part of the process by which European migrants in America have intellectually justified the denial of rights and respect to these fellow humans, and thus the human perception of the non-human has effect on human ideas.

                        Other examples of non-human intellectual history could be the recent revelations regarding the increasing sophistication of whales learning to adapt to increased human hunting activity in the 19^th Century, with knowledge on how to avoid ships being passed down the generations; the intellectual afterlife of which is still exhibited by whales today after centuries of destruction by humans.[3] How did the techniques of those people who were employed to hunt these whales affect these whales? How does this reconceptualise our understanding of the non-human? Equally, questions ripe for historical exploration are presented by the fact that the non-human has not always been seen as a totally isolated system, and especially in the realm of religion we see the destruction of the human/non-human dichotomy through the common intersection of the realm of spirituality. For instance, take the reaction of Leo III to the storms in Constantinople in 726, how he connected this to the realms of politics and economy and believed that the storm was the surest sign that Byzantium had lost favour with God which explained the political and economic decline the empire had been suffering, and thus led to him to assume an iconoclastic position to try and appease the God whom he saw in nature.[4] This final example relates to my Black Metal project as it reminds me of an interview with Einar Selvik of Wardruna in which he argues that one of the great tragedies of modernity which he is fighting against is the role of Christianity in removing ‘both ourselves and “god” from nature and we need these things back.’[5] The loss of our ability to not only appreciate and respect nature, but also to consider ourselves as a part of nature, and even that our humanity could be shared with all other things “non-human”, whether this be through how we conceptualise nature or through a belief in a literally shared experience of all things human and non-human alike, is something worthy of analysis.

                        Perhaps I will not have enough space to discuss the role of nature within Black Metal in my final project, but its significance should not be overshadowed even for a second. The passion which these artists show for their local landscapes and their polytheistic connections to the environment so directly influences their music in its lyrical content, its cover art, and its “general feel”, as well as their patriotic and anti-modernist ideologies (see Ísland, Steingelda Krummaskuð by Misþyrming for a contemporary example). Ultimately, while this may seem like an unnecessarily long series of ramblings on my part (I would go on and actually write an essay applying all of this to Black Metal, but I fear becoming a “blog-hog”), I have to say the length of this blog is simply due to the way in which ideas of non-human intellectual history has inspired me to consider such ideas, and should we work through these ideas we may eventually get to a point where we can resolve the paradoxical crisis which plagues so many of us; how we view our agency as being absolute in having created the climate crisis we now face, while experiencing ever-increasing angst at our perceived lack of agency in being able to resolve this crisis in the future.

[1] Emily O’Gorman & Andrea Gaynor, “More-Than-Human Histories”, Environmental History, No. 25 (2020), 711-735.

[2] Christa Grewe-Volpp, “The Ecological Indian vs. the Spiritually Corrupt White Man: The Function of Ethnocentric Notions in Linda Hogan’s ‘Solar Storms’”, Amerikastudien, 47: 2 (2002), 269-283.

[3] Hal Whitehead, Tim D. Smith & Luke Rendell, “Adaptation of sperm whales to open-boat whalers: rapid social learning on a large scale?”, Biology Letters, No. 17 (2021).

[4] Bettany Hughes, Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities (London, 2017), 299-300.

[5] Einar Selvik in Dayal Patterson, Black Metal: The Cult Never Dies Vol. 1 (London, 2015), 113.

Over spiring break I felt I might mix up my blog posts a bit and write about something a bit different (although it is still related to Welsh history I’m afraid!). This is a story which I heard about a couple of weeks ago and wanted to share it on the blog. Although it has absolutely nothing to to with my project I found it really interesting and I hope you do too. 

In Porthmadog, there is a small island which sits just outside the tourist port. At first glance it appears rather in unremarkable. However, once you take a closer look, it becomes much more interesting. 

Slate from he nearby Blaenau Ffestiniog quarry was transported to Porthmadog whereby it would be shipped all over the world. Like most shipping operations these ships would pick up additional cargo along the way and transport it to wherever it needed to go. 

On the return journey back to Porthmadog the ships were loaded with Ballast from the ship’s trading destination to provide balance and stability. Upon returning to Porthmadog, the ballast was dumped in the harbour which over the course of a century created an island. Thus, this manmade island creates a picture of the global reach of the North Wales slate industry. For example, on Cei Ballast one finds a large collection of eclectic rocks such as altered mudstone from Portugal and marble from Italy as well as rocks native to Greece, Scandinavia, Canada and more. 

So how does this relate to transnational history?

This collection of rocks brings together material from all over the world and tells us about the nature and scale of trade that occurred. This is a fascinating example of a physical reminder of the transnational flows and transfers which have taken place and in this case have left a physical monument of these connections. Thus, perhaps we should look for alternate sources to consider when doing transnational history. This may offer an alternative way of looking at the world around us to try and spot any potential transnational links. Perhaps, then we could look out for similar ballast islands and compare them to Cei Ballast to learn more about the global shipping of materials and the transfer of goods. 

I’ve found this weeks readings on Global histories of the non-human interesting as they demonstrate how the field of transnational and global histories have moved on from looking at solely the actions and interactions between humans and have moved into the realm of studying the transfers and flows of non-human phenomena. This of course seems extremely relevant in a contemporary sense as its not uncommon to hear the phrase ‘viruses don’t care about borders’ used to describe the globe’s current predicament. Therefore, the emphasis appears to be on the need to address how the world has been shaped by phenomena outside of human control or in the case of climate change exacerbated by the actions of humans through Malm’s concept of the ‘fossil economy’. 

What interested me about this topic was the idea that similar to the debate we’ve come across earlier in the semester regarding the inclusion of nations in the field go transnational and global history: if we are going to incorporate non-human phenomena into global history, where does that leave humans? My immediate reaction to this was ‘of course humans need to feature somewhere otherwise we’re stepping into the realm of the sciences with their graphs and charts’. So perhaps we could look at how non-human factors have influenced particular groups of humans. Or look at how humans have impacted the non-human such as the extraction and burning of fossil fuels and the impacts of that process. However, I’m concerned that this may miss the point of what writing histories of the non-human is trying to achieve. I’m a bit confused but nonetheless interested in what the field aims to uncover.* 

Although we do need to take into account the limits and issues of thinking through the lens of the ‘anthropcene’. I liked the Malm’s point about not viewing the impacts of the fossil economy as being launched on a species wide level. Rather it was a small group of elites from empires such as Britain and France who initiated the the fossil economy and the ‘capitalocene’. Thus, there is limited utility in using ‘humanity’ as a single unit of analysis when analysing the impact of particular humans on non-human phenomena, or the impact of non-human phenomena on certain people.

I also think its important to note that just because this is isn’t the history I’m used to reading or studying doesn’t, in my mind, make it any less of a valid pursuit. It’s just a bit out of the norm as suggested by O’Gormon and Gaynor’s point that more-than-human and multi-species research has to be by nature experimental, due to the combing of sources and disciplines that have often been separated from one another or reserved for other disciplines of research. Therefore, histories of the non-human are likely to continue to evolve and develop. 

*After reading Bernhard’s chapter this confusion was cleared up somewhat, as the chapter appeared to take look at the impacts of a non-human phenomena on people and societies as well as other non-human factors such as livestock. Hence, the field has become a bit clearer to me. 

During the spring break I took a little time out to spend some quality time with my children, I also caught up on some tv and had some fabulous traybakes delivered that were absolutely amazing.  You may be wondering why I am telling you this.  Sometimes it is good to take some time out, to take stock and not to constantly pressurise ourselves to get everything done.  I went out for a few nice long walks just to be in the moment and not think about what was waiting for me at home, sometimes we need a little headspace just to clear the cobwebs away. 

This weeks readings

This week’s readings were very poignant for me, I am an activist ambassador for my work and I am always looking at how we can improve conditions and situations for animals, the planet and people.  As a person I have always looked into both sides of a story and tried not to bring bias into any situation.  The same goes with university work for my degree, whether it be weekly readings or research for an essay.  However, I can’t help but wonder after doing the readings this week if that sometimes in history too much is centred on the good things that come from a situation and not enough is focussed on the bad.  For example, my first year at university we did a lot of work on the industrial revolution and how it took the world into modern times with steam powered machines, railways and so on.  Yes, this all very true, but my question would then be at what cost did this happen?  Malm’s blog talks about the British empire and the extraction of coal from coal mines in India.  Where the workers were exploited, had to work in horrific conditions and also the damage to the planet at the same time.[1]  Was this necessary? No, was this about profit? Yes, some of it was. 

Whales and seals

The section in the article by Emily O’Gorman and Andrea Gaynor about the killing of seals reminded me of the shipping port in Dundee.[2]  The Whaling and seal industry was huge in Dundee from the mid eighteenth century and through the nineteenth century.  The oil from the animals were used in various ways and so were other parts of the animals.[3]  However, there was also a huge demand for baby seals due to the fine hair of their coat and the oil from them was more sought after.[4]  Was it necessary to kill thousands of baby seals for this?  Was it also necessary for many of the whale species and seals to be nearly extinct due to the amount of hunting that was going on?  My answer is no, there is a large difference between necessity and greed and I do think that in this case it turned from the former to the latter.      

[1] Andreas Malm, ‘Who lit this fire? Approaching the History of the Fossil Economy’ Blog: 2017 <https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3438-who-lit-this-fire-approaching-the-history-of-the-fossil-economy> [accessed 3 April 2021].

[2] Emily O’Gorman, and Andrea Gaynor. ‘More-Than-Human Histories’, in Environmental History, 25:4 (October 2020), pp. 711–35, p. 720.

[3] Friends of Dundee City Archives, The Dundee Whaling Industry 1756-1920 (2011), <FDCA – Dundee Whaling Industry> [accessed 3 April 2021].

[4] Ibid.

Upon perusing several recipes to fuel my insatiable desire for making edible things in general, I came across an interesting feature in the Cinnamon Roll. Cinnamon rolls (Skillingsboller or Kanelbullar depending on where you’re from) are quite an interesting pastry, in the sense that they have an ingredient that is rarely used in any cuisine outside of India.

For those that are unaware, most Scandinavian cinnamon rolls don’t just have cinnamon in them, they often add powdered green cardamom for its unique fragrance. What we typically refer to as green Cardamom (taxonomically: Ellataria Genera), is a relative of the Ginger Root and part of the same wider taxonomic family. This is not to be confused with black cardamom which is a specific species in the Amomum genera that has a much smokier scent and flavour. Where black cardamom originates in Nepal and the highland regions of Northern India. Green Cardamom has a much more widespread origin, Ranging from Southern India to South East Asia (mostly Malaysia).

This raises the question: how did this small pod travel from the place that it was grown, all the way to the far frozen reaches of Scandinavia and when? Admittedly, the research on the movement of this spice through various trade routes is thin. Preambles to papers discussing the medical properties of Cardamom use history to provide a brief introduction to the paper, and as a result, not much attention is paid to the history itself. As of now, Swedes consumes 18 times more Cardamom than the average country in baked goods and stewed desserts.

As myths go, the most popular narrative on how cardamom travelled so far north was through Vikings that found it in the “Bazaars of Constantinople”. In terms of periodisation, this makes sense. Vikings were largely around during the 11th Century and the Byzantine Empire as the Eastern Fragment of the Roman Empire didn’t fall until 1453 to the Ottomans. However, this account has been dubbed “unlikely” by Daniel Serra in An Early Meal-A Viking Age Cookbook & Culinary Odyssey, where he noticed that many of the early recipes incorporating Cardamom were almost identical to “Moorish” recipes. If we assume that Cardamom was introduced during the same period but through this route, it would still make sense. The Mediterranean trade route originating from the end of the silk road at Constantinople and Tyre, bypassed the ports of Algerica (now Gibraltar) and Al-Lixbuna (Lisbon), two major cities in the Iberian Ummayad Caliphate that survived the Abbasid overthrow in 750AD. From there, the spice would have travelled upwards towards London and onwards through the Hanseatic Trade Network, into Scandinavia. This is corroborated by an archaeobotanical study by Alexandra Livarda, which examined samples of spices originating in tropical or subtropical environments that were present in Northwestern Europe during the Roman and Medieval Periods. In a table of data, there were 5 separate samples of Elettaria cardamoum (Green Cardamom) that was recovered. In a brief digression, this paper is an especially interesting one. Combining statistical archaeological methods with conventional historical inquiry.

 With the question of how Cardamom reached the Scandinavian region answered, we can now move on to why as a spice, it is so widely used. The speculation that Serra asserts is that Scandinavia, being on the fringes of the European continent, “clung” to Medieval Cuisine much longer than the rest of the continent did. A critical analysis of this assertion would likely have to look at theories of social change and geography in the specific context of Northeastern Europe and ideas around cultural insularity and trade routes. This question of why a particular ingredient “sticks” to a specific food culture is a much more interesting one than how it got there. Perhaps with some more research, we’ll be able to understand the history of ho

Reflecting on my experience writing my short essay and my project proposal, I have begun to think more seriously about going down the project route instead of the essay route. Thinking back to the discussion Bernhard led during the unconference, it has become clear to me that my area of research is better suited for creating a project because there is a significant lack of credible primary sources. There are a plethora of secondary sources written on the topic, as well as many novels and films which deal with aspects of transnational reproduction, furthermore internet blogs and websites provide an excess of information on the topic. Sifted through with a critical eye, these sources hold lots of valuable and interesting information, but they cannot replace primary sources. In order to understand the local and global effects of transnational surrogacy, researchers must base their assertions off of the accounts from real people who are involved and affected by this process. A project would allow me to outline the secondary source material on transnational surrogacy and demonstrate my awareness of what kinds of primary sources I am looking for without actually having them. 

Furthermore, doing a project seems like the best option because hopefully it will award me the opportunity to continue this research into my fourth year in my dissertation. I have found this topic to be fascinating, not only because it is almost unbelievable to me that women’s wombs and the babies they produce have become commodified in the global capitalist system, but also because this phenomenon remains largely unregulated and infants are paying the price. It seems to me that something must be done to rectify this situation urgently, and the first step in that process is making a larger population of academics, policy makers, and citizens aware of this phenomenon. Three months ago if someone asked me what transnational reproduction was, I would have been at a loss for words, but now when I am asked what I am studying in history this year, I catch myself launching into an ethical discussion about the adverse effects of transnational reproduction. My hope is that with this project, in a tiny way, I can encourage a discussion around transnational reproduction that has an emancipatory aim. I have lots to learn on the topic, but I am very excited to continue educating myself so that at the end of this term I will have a project that is both an overview of the existing research on transnational reproduction as well as a starting point for further exploration next year. 

Upon examining the possibility of combining philosophical methods on inquiry to reinforce the discipline of history, I came upon several fascinating features of a specific Kyoto School affiliated philosopher that’s ideas were incredibly applicable to the field of Oral and Food history. This post can be read as an extension of the phenomenology portion of my short essay titled “Talking While Eating”: Combining the Methodological Frameworks of Food and Oral History. 

The two works that were drawn from was Fūdo (literally wind and earth) and a subsection of his work on Ethics namely Ningen (the Japanese term for humans). Both of these texts provide different perspectives on the nature of the individual experience. In many ways, one supports the other. Where Fūdo explains the interaction between the individual and nature. His Rinri 

(text on ethics) looks at the construction of Ethics in this context and extends it further into society. One may ask, what relevance does this have to the field of Oral and Food History? Let’s first tackle the oral history component.

Oral history is a field that has struggled with its subjectivity, specifically the subjectivity of memory. Alistair Thomson’s “Four Paradigm Transformations of Oral History” discusses how Oral History as a discipline in its current state ‘celebrates’ this subjectivity, while still finding ways to ensure the efficacy of its craft. Phenomenology is an especially suitable philosophical perspective when it comes to dealing with subjectivity. Instead of focusing on obtaining the “objective” view on history, through this perspective, we can accept that subjectivity is fundamentally a part of knowledge. However, as a perspective, it doesn’t take this at face value, things that are subjective need to be interpreted in a way that makes them useful. Because phenomenology’s focus on why and how we experience things, we can apply this directly to the construction and interpretation of memory.

For example, one of the biggest problems of Oral history is the bias of the interviewer as a conduit for knowledge. The way that the interviewer asks questions, can potentially impact the way that the interviewee responds or reacts to the question. Conventional phenomenological practices point to the use of something called “bracketing”, which essentially suspending our assumptions of reality to glean knowledge. Furthermore, the understanding of Oral Historians that we essentially ‘live in and influence society’ is essentially a phenomenological understanding of the world.

Tetsurō takes this fundamental assumption further in Ningen in the ethical sense by explaining that the source of ethics exists in the spaces “between” individual consciousness. That is “The individual, though fundamentally different from society, is effaced on society”. This is not unlike how Oral Historians understand the interaction between shared and individual histories. Where Tetsurō applies this to ethics, historians can understand it from a more practical perspective as the space where memory forms. My assertion from this point is that instead of treating individuals and society as distinct analytical entities, we can form them into some sort of “analytical nexus” and form new methodologies around that. This is still very much an idea in development, and I would appreciate suggestions on the matter.

The second part of Tetsurō’s philosophy is more pertinent to Food History. This concept of Fūdo, where the environment and climate impact the existence of an individual, resonates very strongly with Food History. In a rough line of logic, environment and climate “spawns” or are more likely to allow for the developments of certain types of food. In a practical sense, different foods have different geographical points of origin. That is, we see wheat more often in the North of China than we do in the South, where rice dominates. Instead of taking for granted that one region of the country eats wheat and the other rice, we as historians need to ask how the experience of eating rice or eating wheat, has an impact on the history of an area. This can also be more widely applied to the growth of say, papyrus reed in a certain region, and it’s link to the creation of paper. This way as historians we can relate environmental factors to historical processes in a more concrete manner.

These two ideas are just preliminary developments of a possible underpinning framework that could make a lot of sense in the practical investigation of history. I will be pursuing this vein and endeavour to deepen my understanding of phenomenology to understand it’s application to history.  

“To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities” is what martial arts king Bruce Lee said and did.[1] Bruce Lee adapted from his being one-quarter Caucasian and three-quarters Chinese, living both in the United States and Hong Kong. He adapted from his street-fighting abilities and utilised his skills by training in martial arts by the legendary Ip Man. Bruce Lee’s background and his roles in films – both in Hollywood and in Hong Kong – offer insight into how Asians (specifically East Asians) have been portrayed in Hollywood films during the Cold War. My project will aim to understand two fundamental questions:

1. What does a study of Bruce Lee in a transnational context tell us about East-West relations during the Cold War?
2. What does a study of Bruce Lee tell us about the representations of East Asian masculinity?

By researching racism experienced by Asian-Americans during the Cold War, especially during the Korean War and the Vietnam War, studying Bruce Lee as a case study could highlight perceptions of Asians and Asian-Americans in this period and how they are portrayed in films. Is Bruce Lee an exception to the general portrayal of emasculated Asians? Were perceptions of Asian masculinity changing, or did racist ideologies perpetuate them? My inspiration for this project stems from watching Murder by Death (Robert Moore, 1976) as a kid. I saw Peter Seller’s portrayal of a Chinese detective and immediately hated the stereotypical portrayal of a timid Asian man contrasted next to hypermasculine detective Sam Diamond, portrayed by Peter Falk. 

Taking a transnational approach to this project, I will examine Bruce Lee’s turbulent rise to fame and his role in both Hollywood and Hong Kong. Firstly, in Hollywood, Bruce Lee’s struggle to get hypermasculine roles and his eventual progress into him being given lead roles in films such as Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973) will be explored. Therefore, this is significant as the lens will highlight the general trend of hypermasculine roles given to white men versus emasculated roles given to Asian men. I will then look at Hong Kong and how Bruce Lee is depicted there. How different are the two areas comparing one man? Will the lens in which Asians view other Asians be different from Americans’ lens viewing an American-born Chinese? I will use an ethnographic method in studying how the locals view Bruce Lee versus how diaspora’s view the mixed martial artist. This method will be used because, during COVID, it is hard to gain access to online primary sources. Thus, fieldwork may be necessary to interview various non-white perspectives, including Filipinos and Indians. I believe non-white perspectives in Asia on Bruce Lee is significant as this multi-scaled dimension illustrates a various interpretation on the concept of Asian masculinity. 

The sources I will be using in this project will primarily be secondary sources, examining relations between the East and the West during the Cold War and Asian representation in Hollywood. These include Jane Junn and Natalie Masurka’s article on Asian American Identity and Sangjoon Lee’s article on Cinema and the Cultural Cold War. However, I will be using primary sources such as Bruce Lee films highlighting the emasculated or hypermasculine roles played by him and white men, respectively. Ultimately, I will be using transnational history as a lens to view masculine portrayals in films. Thus I will use AHR Conversation: On Transnational History and OXO: Or, the Challenges of Transnational History by Jan Rüger as main sources for my project. Their definitions of transnational history will be useful in this project’s investigation of how studying Bruce Lee as a case study can illuminate East-West relations during the Cold War, and the difference in representations of masculinity and how different audiences view Asians in masculine roles. Going beyond Hong Kong and Hollywood, this project will analyse Bruce Lee’s contributions and legacy in other areas around the world, such as Japan (he inspired some anime and manga franchises), Bollywood (films such as Deewaar), videogames (Streetfighter) and America (UFC Championship). 

Ultimately, my project will aim not to give Bruce Lee too much agency in ‘uniting’ the East and the West. Nevertheless, studying Lee as a lens into East-West relations during the Cold War, specifically, how Asians are represented in the West and how Bruce Lee will provide insight into emasculated versus masculine roles in films. 

Working Bibliography

Primary Sources

Nguyen, Bao (dir.), Be Water (United States, 2020).

Lo Wei (dir.), Fist of Fury (Hong Kong, 1972). 

Lee, Bruce (dir.), Way of the Dragon (Hong Kong, 1972).

Clouse, Robert (dir.), Enter the Dragon (Los Angeles, 1973).

Clouse, Robert and Lee, Bruce (dirs.), The Game of Death (Los Angeles, 1978). 

Chopra, Yash (dir.), Deewaar (Mumbai, 1975).

Streetfighter (videogame).

Secondary Sources

Ascarate, Richard John, ‘About Chinese Cinema’, Film Quarterly 62: 2 (2008), pp.72-76. 

Bayly, Christopher A., et al., ‘AHR Conversation: On Transnational History’, American

Historical Review 111: 5 (2006), pp. 1441-1464. 

Dumas, Raechel, ‘Kung Fu Production for Global Consumption: The Depoliticization of

Kung Fu in Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle’, Style 43: 1, (2009), pp. 65-85. 

Goto-Jones, Chris, ‘Is “Street Fighter” a Martial Art? Virtual Ninja Theory, Ideology, and the

Intentional Self-Transformation of Fighting-Gamers’ Japan Review 29 (2016), pp. 171-208. 

Hillenbrand, Margaret, ‘Of Myths and Men: “Better Luck Tomorrow” and the Mainstreaming

of Asian America Cinema’, Cinema Journal, 47: 4 (2008), pp. 50-75. 

Jennings, George, Brown, David and Sparkes, Andrew C., ‘“It can be a religion if you want”:

Wing Chun Kung Fu as a secular religion’, Ethnography 11: 4, (2010), pp. 533-557. 

Junn, Jane and Masurka, Natalie, ‘Asian American Identity: Shared Racial Status and

Political Context’, Perspectives on Politics 6: 2 (2008), pp. 729-740. 

Kato, M. T., ‘Burning Asia: Bruce Lee’s Kinetic Narrative of Decolonization’, Modern

Chinese Literature and Culture 17: 1 (2005), pp. 62-99. 

Kolluri, Satish and Lee, Joseph Tse-Hei, ‘Hong Kong and Bollywood in the Global Soft

Power Contest’, Indian Journal of Asian Affairs 29: 1/2 (2016), pp. 101-112. 

Lee, Sangjoon, Cinema and the Cultural Cold War: US Diplomacy and the Origins of the Asian Cinema Network (Cornell, 2020). 

Mackintosh, Jonathan D., ‘Bruce Lee: A visual poetics of post-war Japanese manliness’,

Modern Asian Studies 48: 6 (2014), pp. 1477-1518. 

Rüger, Jan, ‘OXO: Or, the Challenges of Transnational History’, European History Quarterly

40: 4 (October 1, 2010), pp. 656–668.

Yip, Man-Fung, ‘In the Realm of the Senses: Sensory Realism, Speed, and Hong Kong

Marital Arts in Cinema’, Cinema Journal 53: 4 (2014), pp. 76-97. 

[1] Bruce Lee, quoted in Bruce Lee.com, Website, <https://brucelee.com/podcast-blog/2017/11/28/74-to-hell-with-circumstances#:~:text=%E2%80%9CTo%20hell%20with%20circumstances%2C%20I%20create%20opportunities.%E2%80%9D&text=Bruce%20was%20in%20dynamic%20motion,with%20a%20proactive%2C%20positive%20tone.> [retrieved 10 March 2021].

I have been toying with the phrasing of this for a few days, because I want to present a number of questions in the hopes of gaining a better understanding of Dr Banerjee’s concept of “transversal history” and, while an assertion can be clumsily presented and written because it is a reflection of a reflexive writing/idea-formation process, to attempt to enter a discourse I need to try and communicate much more effectively than in other forms of writing. (Yes, this is the level of over analysis of the act of writing which occurs at this late an hour which inevitably leads me to pretentiousness)

                        Dr Banerjee’s piece for this week’s readings, Transversal histories and transcultural afterlives, inspired me in a number of ways. To make this relevant to the module, it has inspired me to attempt to implement more academic concepts to my analysis of the “big project” (as opposed to laying out a story of flows and discontinuities, I shall attempt to highlight the “discursive events” (this Foucauldian language is a tad intimidating) and see how these create new “afterlives” of ideas which then “die”). To this end, I wish to engage in a further discussion about the concepts presented within this piece, and so I shall attempt to layout my understanding of these concepts so that if I have misinterpreted anything (which will inevitably be the case) I can be corrected right away.

                        From my reading of the piece, I understand that “transversal history” is the analysis of the moment of intersection between a number of intellectual currents which run parallel to, or overlap, one another. At this point, the original currents die and are replaced by their reconceptualisations which offer a new outlook on the human experience: an afterlife to the original ideas. In this sense, an idea’s afterlife may have innumerable (or singular) origins while also contributing to potentially innumerable (or singular) posterities. Potentially my most significant question on this concept involves the idea of the “cultural”.

                        When deconstructing the monolith of “culture”, we create a number of discourses to analyse which exist independently of “culture”; my first question is, “without the institution of “culture” or any other structuralising binary agonisms, how do ideas retain historical continuity between transitions?” or, in other words, “what is the mechanism by which an idea attains “stickiness” across time and space?” Building upon this, I also ask whether ideas may be able to emerge ex nihilo or whether ideas may only gain legitimacy due to their connection to already existing ideas? I also ask, in an attempt to keep this blog relevant to the module requirements, “in discussing the opinion that over-contextualisation implies an anti-intellectualism, by saying that historical arguments have a form of validity due to their ability to talk to us in the modern-day, does that not suggest a form of intellectual fundamentalism, that there is a “right” and a “wrong” that underlines the ability for ideas to be able to be communicated across time and space?”

                        I do have many more questions, but I think I should keep them to myself, outside of this blog. I hope these made sense and that they can connect to other people in this module.

Poverty and Labour in the Jute Industry: Home and Away 

At the height of the jute industry both Dundee and Bengal were extremely influential and rich.  However, there was still large amounts of poverty in both areas and my project will focus on why this happened.  I will specifically concentrate on labour history in the jute industry in both places to try to understand the degree of poverty and what contributed to this.  Although, there are many other connections such as the movement of people, machinery and jute, my project will be a comparative one, which will compare both the Dundee and Bengal jute industries.  This will help to recognize power structures and capitalism within the factories and mills.

The comparisons that I will concentrate on will focus on the similarities and differences between Dundee and Bengal, and in particular the labour workforce in the industry.  In combination I believe these comparisons will help me to understand why this happened and ultimately answer my questions.  I will focus my project on three main areas, firstly, will be migration of the workforce into these areas, as at the height of the jute production there was a shortage of labour.  Secondly, I will go into the working and living conditions of the men, women and children who worked in the mills.  Thirdly, I will focus specifically on living costs and wages in both areas.  These three main areas will cut across boundaries such as gender, class and culture and should give a fuller understanding to the large amount of poverty that were in both Dundee and Bengal.   

There is a large amount of literature on the Dundee jute industry and the same with Bengal.  However, there is not much in the way of comparative studies between them, this I feel gives me a gap which I can try to fill through my own research.  Both primary and secondary sources will be imperative to this investigation.  In primary sources I have already found and will continue to look for statistical information, including population and migration figures; numbers and gender of workers in factories and I will also look into wages and living costs.  I will also use maps to give a more visual component to the project.  Due to the availability of these sources, it will be very hard to get everything I need; however, I have also found some of these within secondary sources that I will try to use to fill in the gaps. 

There is a large amount of secondary sources that I will be using including literature for Dundee from Jim Tomlinson, who has many titles that encompass the jute industry.  Eleanor Gordon, who focuses on women and the labour movement in different areas of Scotland including Dundee.  Emma M. Wainwright concentrates specifically on the Dundee jute mills as spaces of production, surveillance and discipline.  Victorian Dundee: Image and Realities edited by Bob Harris, Louise Miskell and Christopher A. Watley also gives comprehensive guide into migration and also the jute mill and flax mills in Dundee.  Literature for Bengal that I have been reading are Samita Sen’s Women and Labour in the Late Colonial India: The Bengal Jute Industry, to help me understand women’s position in the jute industry. Tara Sethia, who looks at the rise of jute manufacturing in both Dundee and Bengal.  Other authors include P. Bharadwaj who discusses partition and migration in his work and Dipesh Chakrabarty who focuses primarily on the working classes.

All of these together should give a comprehensive knowledge of the similarities and differences between Dundee and Bengal.  This will in turn, give me the answers to my original question of why there was large amounts of poverty at the height of the jute industry in both places? 

Transnational reproduction describes the process of using assisted reproductive technologies to create babies for parents residing in a foreign country. By questioning what factors drive transnational reproduction, this investigation will explore and problematize the ideologies and justifications which underpin the global reproductive market. It will question the human rights and ethical implications of this phenomenon, and investigate how incomplete legal frameworks fail to protect the people involved. Historiographically, the project draws on the work of feminists and postcolonial theorists. Arruzza, Bhattacharya, and Fraser locate the root of gender oppression in capitalist societies within the subordination of social reproduction to production for profit. Deomampo demonstrates how transnational reproduction is underpinned by racialized ideologies which reflect and reinforce local and global inequalities. These analyses will inform an exploration of how transnational reproduction results from a residuary colonial architecture which views subaltern women as tools in a global chain of labor, to be employed and exploited for the fulfillment of Western capitalist desires. 

The project employs a transnational perspective, going beyond the nation-state as a category of analysis, and drawing attention to the “in-between areas”, often neglected in traditional historical analyses. Comparative history will be used to analyze particularities – cost disparities, standards of care, cultural considerations, ethical and legal frameworks – which differentiate transnational reproduction processes according to country. Beyond comparative history, Subrahmanyam’s conception of connected histories will be employed to connect the disparate processes that culminate in transnational reproduction at both the micro- and macro-historical levels. 

Desai calls attention to many issues emerging from the global surrogacy industry. In her novel, intending parents travel to India to receive their baby, a product of their egg and sperm shipped to India. Luckily the English couple’s embryo is processed through Indian customs, without being stopped or sold to a third party, and safely implanted in a surrogate. However, the decision to be a surrogate is not easily accepted in India, and the woman’s agency in this situation is questionable. The money she will earn is her prime motivator, but her husband takes most of the proceeds. Commercial surrogacy is justified on the basis of mutual benefit – intending parents get a baby, and surrogate mothers earn money. However, surrogates receive less than half the money intending parents pay clinics, and this money is not enough to lift them out of poverty. 

Another alarming trend is the abandonment of children born to surrogate mothers in foreign countries. ‘Motherland’ illustrates one such case, that of Brigit, the product of an American couple’s embryo implanted in a Ukrainian woman. Despite facing significant developmental challenges which resulted in her abandonment, Brigit survives, but her parents send a letter requesting she be put up for adoption. This correspondence is legally inadmissible in Ukraine and Brigit is left without citizenship, in a country that lacks the medical and social resources she needs. Brigit is one of many children who find themselves in this legal gray area without parents or citizenship. Commercial surrogacy companies such as BioTexCom, whose registration in the Seychelles prevents Ukranian government oversight, escape prosecution by denying responsibility. 

Since commercial surrogacy for foreigners was banned in India (2017) and in Thailand (2015), the industry has relocated to Ukraine. A lack of transparency limits the availability of figures representing the industry’s scale and nature; furthermore, parents subjected to predatory commercial surrogacy practices often avoid legal action. Lamberton argues persuasively for the implementation of an international standard for the effective regulation of surrogacy to protect women and enable abandoned children to be granted automatic citizenship. Without a global framework, babies slip through the cracks, intending parents are taken advantage of, and surrogates are used without consideration for their mental or physical well-being. This money-making enterprise relies on desperate parents, vulnerable surrogates, and incomplete legal frameworks. Anything is a commodity in a free market – even reproductive rights and human beings. 

Bibliography 

ABC Australia, ‘Commercial Surrogacy Exploiting Women Of The Developing World?’, The Baby Makers, Journeyman Pictures, 6 May 2014, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj3EodH7lcY> [accessed 4 March 2021]. 

Arruzza, Cinzia, Bhattacharya, Tithi, and Fraser, Nancy, Feminism for the 99 Percent: A Manifesto (London, 2019).  

Bayly, Christopher, Beckert, Sven, Connolly, Matthew, Hofmeyr, Isabel, Kozol, Wendy, Seed, Patricia, ‘AHR Conversation: On Transnational History’, American Historical Review, 111: 5 (2006), pp. 1441-1464. 

Deomampo, Daisy, Transnational Reproduction: Race, Kinship, and Commercial Surrogacy in India (New York, 2016).

Desai, Kishwar, Origins of Love (New York, 2012). 

Hawley, Samantha, ‘Motherland: Ukraine’s Commercial Surrogacy Industry’, Journeyman Pictures, Youtube, 31 August 2019, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLCqSSZ3ui0> [accessed 4 March 2021]. 

Lamberton, Emma, ‘Lessons from Ukraine: Shifting International Surrogacy Policy to Protect Women and Children’, Journal of Public and International Affairs, 31 (May 2020), https://jpia.princeton.edu/news/lessons-ukraine-shifting-international-surrogacy-policy-protect-women-and-children.  

MacCarthy, Julie, ‘Why Some of India’s Surrogate Moms Are Full of Regret’,  Weekend Edition Sunday, NPR, 18 September 2016, <https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/09/18/494451674/why-some-of-indias-surrogate-moms-are-full-of-regret> [accessed 10 March 2021]. 

Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, ‘Connected Histories: Notes Towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia’, Modern Asian Studies, 31: 3 (1997), pp. 735-762.

Context

Garam Masala, Tikka Masala and Spiciness are all commonly discussed terms in the realm of Indian food overseas. The sheer ubiquity and nature of the “Indian Takeout” in the United Kingdom, often with an only passing resemblance to recipes found on the Indian Subcontinent, is something that perplexes Indians that have grown up eating food made and passed down from generation to generation. Furthermore, accompanying this mass presence of Indian Takeout as a phenomenon is the Garam Masala spice blend. A blend that is ever-present and often misused in adapted “Indian” recipes, that has come to represent all spices.

Scope and Aims of Project

The primary aim of this project is to fill a key research gap in the role of spices, specifically Garam Masala and the concept of “spiciness”, in the construction of the Indian Cultural identity. Western audiences generally see Indian food as a monolithic cuisine with little variety and being limited to misconceived notions of “Curry”. This reductionist view of Indian food takes on features that are distinctly Orientalist, in Edward Said’s original description.

As a result, this Orientalist view of Indian food culture has resulted in a massive gap in written historiography on the topic of the relationship between spices and cultural identity. On the other hand, on a family and personal level, many features that would have been constitutive of cultural identity building are taken for granted and thus not recorded in a manner that is “admissible” in the court of historical analysis. In many ways, Garam Masala and the concept of “spiciness” with its limited scope, is being used as a microcosmic analytical tool to understand the wider trends in Indian food culture. 

The project will analyse Indian food identity on two levels. Firstly, the investigation of the ground-up construction of Indian food identity and culture through oral historical and social anthropological methodologies. Specifically, cookbooks, personal interviews, family histories and postcolonial literature. This bottom-up methodology aims to uncover the patterns and paradigms present in perceptions of Indian food identity, through the lens of Indians themselves. 

The oral history perspective can be understood as a genealogical study of food knowledge and the patterns of this knowledge diffusion from generation to generation. The vast variations in how different families create, mix and utilise Garam Masala are in itself a constituent part of how food identity is constructed. Furthermore, cookbooks, provide a more formalised record of specific recipe usages and identity construction through written record. Although the recipes themselves provide a rich field for analysis, the accompanying introductions to the recipes and short condensed histories surrounding fundamental Indian foods are also very useful in this regard.

Finally, the analysis of literary depictions of Garam Masala, spices and “spiciness” takes a slightly more linguistic approach, with emphasis on how the literary discourse around these two phenomena impact how people view the Indian culinary identity. 

The second level of investigation involves the colonisation of Garam Masala as a symbol of Indian culinary identity throughout the Indian Subcontinent’s history. More specifically the narratives and trends of how Indian food culture made its way from India to the United Kingdom (UK). This portion will incorporate aspects of transnational migratory history and trace the movements of specific culinary practices and ingredients that have found their way into Garam Masala, as well as the subsequent colonisation and exportation of culinary practices. 

By analysing sources that trace the transnational movement of spices and the colonial adoption of Indian spices and Indian cuisine overall, I aim to trace the threads of gradual colonisation of Garam Masala and Indian food identity. The majority of the sources that will be utilised from this section will be a combination of Imperial and Postcolonial sources, to contrast these differing perspectives. Tracing the migratory patterns of individuals and groups that brought different variations of Indian food culture will be the main basis of my research. On the ground level, research into the evolution of Indian spice usage in the local British context will be studied through a mixture of oral histories, interviewing chefs working at Indian Takeaways and possibly members of the parliamentary committee on curry in the UK.