Cultural Critique 

About: Cultural Critique is an academic journal published by University of Minnesota Press. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Politics & Modernity. It has an ISSN identifier of 0882-4371. Over the lifetime, 933 publications have been published receiving 14461 citations.

The problem of speaking for others

Abstract: dian women. She writes them in first person and assumes a Native identity. At the 1988 International Feminist Book Fair in Montreal a group of Native Canadian writers decided to ask Cameron to, in their words, "move over" on the grounds that her writings are disempowering for Native authors. She agrees.' 2. After the 1989 elections in Panama are overturned by Manuel Noriega, President Bush of the United States declares in a public address that Noriega's actions constitute an "outrageous fraud" and that "the voice of the Panamanian people has spoken." "The Panamanian people," he tells us, "want democracy and not tyranny, and want Noriega out." He proceeds to plan the invasion of Panama.

The Autonomy of Affect

Abstract: Just images, no words, very simple. It was a story depicted in a short shown on German TV as a fill-in between programs. The film drew complaints from parents reporting that their children had been frightened. That drew the attention of a team of researchers. Their study was notable for failing to find much of what it was studying: cognition. Researchers, headed by Hertha Sturm, used three versions of the film: the original wordless version and two versions with voiceovers added. The first voice-over version was dubbed "factual." It added a simple step-by-step account of the action as it happened. A second version was called "emotional." It was largely the same as the "factual" version, but included at crucial turning points words expressing the emotional tenor of the scene under way.

The Race for Theory

Abstract: I have seized this occasion to break the silence among those of us, critics, as we are now called, who have been intimidated, devalued by what I call the race for theory. I have become convinced that there has been a takeover in the literary world by Western philosophers from the old literary elite, the neutral humanists. Philosophers have been able to effect such a takeover because so much of the literature of the West has become pallid, laden with despair, self-indulgent, and disconnected. The New Philosophers, eager to understand a world that is today fast escaping their political control, have redefined literature so that the distinctions implied by that term, that is, the distinctions between everything written and those things written to evoke feeling as well as to express thought, have been blurred. They have changed literary critical language to suit their own purposes as philosophers, and they have reinvented the meaning of theory. My first response to this realization was to ignore it. Perhaps, in spite of the egocentrism of this trend, some good might come of it. I had, I felt, more pressing and interesting things to do, such as reading and studying the history and literature of black women, a history that had been totally ignored, a contemporary literature bursting with originality, passion, insight, and beauty. But, unfortunately, it is difficult to ignore this new takeover, because theory has become a commodity that helps determine whether we are hired or promoted in academic institutions-worse, whether we are heard at all. Due to this new orientation, works (a word that evokes labor) have become texts. Critics are no longer concerned with literature but with other critics' texts, for the critic yearning for attention has displaced the writer and has conceived of herself or himself as the center. Interestingly, in the first part of this cen-

On Race and Voice: Challenges for Liberal Education in the 1990s

Abstract: Isn't the whole point to have a voice?" This is the last sentence of a recent essay by Marnia Lazreg on writing as a woman on women in Algeria.1 Lazreg examines academic feminist scholarship on women in the Middle East and North Africa in the context of what she calls a "Western gynocentric" notion of the difference between First and Third World women. Arguing for an understanding of "intersubjectivity" as the basis for comparison across cultures and histories, Lazreg formulates the problem of ethnocentrism and the related question of voice in this way:

Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies

Abstract: Aman and a woman embrace. Each stands poised, contained. They look past each other, eyes focused on distant points in the space. Like mirror images, their legs strike out, first forward, then back. As one, they glide across the floor, bodies melded at the hips, timing perfectly in unison. They stop expectantly. The woman jabs the balls of her feet sharply into the floor, each time swivelling her hips toward the leading foot. The man holds her lightly, steering her motion with the palm of this hand at her back. This is tango ...