Essays
Cultural appropriation is not a new phenomenon in the Sámi context. Sámi handicrafts, duodji, have been and are still the subject of cultural appropriation. One of the central issues of cultural appropriation is that it gives the power to determine and decide on cultural objects to an actor outside the community, which weakens the self-determination of the community to manage the design themselves.
READColonial Continuity in Finland: Cultural Appropriation of Sámi Design
On the exploitation of Sámi design in Finland and how it reflects colonial continuity and power relations.
Where the striped hyenas are is not only a place in the imagination or in the past. Where the striped hyenas are is also a possibility for what the future could bring. It’s where they lie, waiting for their turn to return from their exile. Where the hyenas are is also where the ghouls and the djinn are, behind seven mountains, dreaming and chasing their world into being again.
READWhere the Striped Hyenas Are, or, A Tale Is a Map and a Compass: Some Fragments on the Fantastical, Land and Remembrance
Shayma Nader on how can the fantastical embody the political; what if all fantastical creatures were to rise up against the dispossessions and alienations from the lands that sustain them, to which they belong?
While azerbaijan was bombing Armenians with israeli and turkish UAVs and paying bonuses to turkish-backed Syrian mercenaries for beheading Armenians, the “international community,” whatever that’s supposed to mean at this point, expressed lousy words of “concern,” and displayed a nauseous stance of both-sideism, devoid of any tangible action. The existence of this unrecognised republic and its indigenous population wasn’t legitimate enough for world powers to lift a finger.
READViolent Septembers: An Armenian Perspective Amid the Ongoing Occupation
In the shadow of a devastating ethnic cleansing campaign by azerbaijan1, this essay paints a narrative of Armenians grappling with cultural erasure and ongoing threats.
Accused of being “shrewd, rogue, ill-mannered and undisciplined”, the black goat was constantly abducted and killed to prevent it from distorting the European landscape that Israel wished to create on the rubbles of the destroyed Palestinian one. In 1948, the year of the Nakba, Israel began importing a white Swiss goat to replace the black one. The white European goat was described as “polite, beautiful, healthy” and even “civilized”.
READApproaches to Palestinian Liberation: Magical Realism as Resistance Literature
Can literary magical realism be considered a type of resistance literature in the Palestinian context? This essay argues that magical-realistic manifestations—death-defying ghosts, the black goat, soil with resurrection powers, and the malleability of time—found in contemporary Palestinian literature play a significant role in resisting the ongoing effects of the Nakba.
European modes of living and cultures have become globalised and naturalised, so much so that critical conversations around European traditions today focus more on questions of racial diversity in, say, orchestras, ensembles, and European music and dance schools rather than why and how European cultural productions have become such a global commodity and signifier for class and and “civilisational” ascend to begin with.
READThe Innocence of (European) Instruments
European modes of living and cultures have become globalised and naturalised, so much so that critical conversations around European traditions today focus more on questions of racial diversity in, say, orchestras, ensembles, and European music and dance schools rather than why and how European cultural productions have become such a global commodity and signifier for class and and “civilisational” ascend to begin with.
Formal modes of engineering the well-being of the population are oppressive and exclusionary. Activists, scholars and citizens of the world have to find compassionate and strategic ways to enact their power of adaptability. Memes allow us to challenge conventional and restrictive forms of education, policy and collective action, fostering effective solutions for a broken system. Memes, as the new toolkit adopted by Internet users of India, has the potential to nurture democracy and pluralism, with the hope to preserve freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom to resist.
READPOOJA, What Is This Behaviour?: Memes as Political Participation & Toolkit of Digital Resistance in India
Abhinit Khanna discusses meme culture, misinformation, trolling, and data-muddying in times of pandemic and war using the visual language of digital artworks.
Educational institutions, just like all other institutions, can be considered microcosms of society, where prevailing attitudes and values manifest. Consequently, as racism permeates Finnish society, it also seeps into Finnish daycares.
READMicroaggressions & Everyday Racism in Finland’s Daycare System
Finland is often celebrated for its world-renowned daycare system and commitment to social equality. However, beneath the surface, many non-white families face a disquieting reality: a barrage of microaggressions and everyday racism that challenges the nation’s ideals of equity.
I am terrified, devastated, and drained. Every massacre makes me believe that this world does not deserve our dreams. Israel kills us in full view of the world, yet no one is doing anything to stop this genocide. The West’s presidents supported Israel and funded them to kill us. This war was not going to continue without the West and Arab leader’s consent.
READWhere Should We Go? No Place Is Safe in Gaza
Noura Selmi, a writer and translator from Gaza, has written us an account of her experience living in the south of Gaza amid Israel’s unfolding genocide of Palestinians.
This gives a more exhaustive picture of the Italian context; indeed, if, on the one hand, there is a total lack of rules and government measures to protect cultural work, on the other, many art workers themselves do not have the critical thinking attitude to analyze their own conditions and to claim their rights. The rise of neoliberal logic does not help this lack of political awareness, inasmuch as it fosters competition rather than solidarity and makes people more isolated and vulnerable.
READNo Country for Art Workers
On political imagination and activism as care, according to AWI – Art Workers Italia. How to hack the precariat-based neoliberal system and its ideology of individualisation by embracing an intersectional approach to civil rights and precarious lives.