School of Languages and Linguistics - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview AvailableLiminal lieux de mémoire(Liverpool University Press, 2021-06)This article examines the representation of postcolonial memory in Tony Gatlif’s 2004 film Exils / Exiles. The constant movement that occurs in the film through travel, music, and dance reinforces the permanent dislocation of the film’s pied-noir and beurette protagonists. The film’s road-movie narrative represents, on the one hand, a gravitational pull away from the French Republican integrationist ‘centre’ towards an increasingly complex and diverse landscape of cultural identities linked by France’s colonial history, and on the other, a sense of nostalgia for an Algeria that no longer exists and may never have existed. In so doing, Exils represents modern metropolitan France as a dynamic and polycentric postcolonial space whose lieux de mémoire can and should be positioned not only in geographical and cultural territories that lie outside its contemporary national borders, but also in the liminal spaces that characterize the migrant experience. In line with the title of Gatlif’s film, the protagonists find themselves in a state of permanent exile, both from Algeria and from France. The ‘destination’ of the return to cultural origin, Algeria, emerges as a fundamental but nevertheless mirage-like lieu de mémoire that, notwithstanding its cultural and geographical significance, serves primarily to facilitate a deeper understanding by the protagonists of their personal and collective identity that has long been internalized in the unanchored liminal space of the postcolonial migrant journey.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableRomanticizing the Romani: Unruly Representations of the "Internal Other" in the Work of Tony Gatlif(LIVERPOOL UNIV PRESS, 2022)Of French-Algerian and Andalusian-Romani descent, French film director Tony Gatlif offers an intriguing insight into the culture of one of Europe’s most marginalized, misunderstood and misrepresented others: the Romani (Gypsies). This article examines the rules of engagement in Gatlif’s representation of cultural minorities, particularly in relation to his claims to cultural “truth” and authenticity in his filmmaking. Also explored are the dynamics of exoticism and the narratives of perpetual discovery that characterize Gatlif’s success on the film festival circuit, which has its own set of rules and vested interests when it comes to film programming in the context of a self-serving, heavily mediated and orientalist altruism. Such dynamics reveal as much about the idiosyncrasies of film critics, curators and audiences as of the filmmaker himself, all of which combines to form the rules of engagement in filmmaking and spectatorship in the exoticized and “othered” space of World Cinema.
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ItemO is for orientalism: The dynamics of the sexual tourist gaze in laurent cantet's vers le sud/heading south (2005)(Liverpool University Press, 2021-03-01)This article explores the Orientalist dynamics of North/South sexual tourism in Laurent Cantet’s Vers le sud/Heading South (2005). The narrative of the film is structured around the self-interested motivations of three white middle-aged bourgeois Western women who travel from North America to Haiti in the late 1970s in order to explore their sexuality in what they perceive as an island paradise, effectively exiling themselves from the codified social behavior expected of them in their homeland. The women avail themselves of the pleasures offered by young black Haitian men, often in exchange for money or goods, and fuel one-sided fantasies of romantic love with their local hosts, seemingly oblivious to the Orientalist nature of such an imbalance of social and economic power. The article explores the historical context of the political repression and violence of late-1970s Haiti under the Duvalier regime, as well as the manifestations of spatial politics represented in the film. In its Haitian setting, Vers le sud sheds light on a relatively unfamiliar cultural and social milieu for the Western/Northern audience, with the director keenly aware of the exoticism of the subject matter and the impossibility of the film to maintain its neutrality in a problematic engagement with the Orient/South. The article argues that the privileged position of the film’s protagonists is matched not only by Cantet’s directorial gaze, but also by the intellectual detachment of postcolonial scholars such as the article’s authors, who acknowledge that their engagement with the subject matter risks re-enacting the Orientalist dynamics they seek to expose.
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ItemNon-Love in a Non-Place: Liminality and Dislocation in Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Loveless(International Journal of Russian Studies, 2021)In this article Andrei Zvyagintsev’s film Loveless (2017) is analysed from the angle of domestic space using the theoretical prism of liminality and non-places. It is argued that, while the concept of home may be defined as private and personal, as opposed to public and impersonal, the domestic space in this film, far from being a comforting and reassuring destination in itself, can be read as liminal, as transitory, as a space ‘in-between’ or, indeed, a space which, ideally, should be a sanctuary, but which is, in fact, vulnerable to external forces. The article also examines Loveless in the light of Marc Augé’s seminal work, Non-places: An Introduction to Supermodernity, in particular the extent to which his theory of non-places may, in certain instances in this supermodern globalised world, be as applicable to the domestic space as it is to the increasingly ubiquitous and liminal public spaces of airports, hotels, shopping centres and other typical non-places. It is demonstrated that, as in Zvyagintsev’s earlier films Elena (2011) and Leviathan (2014), Loveless uses a framing technique which highlights the centrality of domestic space in the film. From the outset, the film is concerned with the ‘in-betweenness’ of the characters’ lives, and domestic space plays a key role in this, although it is not consciously sought or coveted by the characters, but rather a consequence of their actions. It is argued that tragedy is not a feature of Loveless: in its place are incomplete transitions, rites of passage awaiting their natural fulfilment. It is this dislocation and liminality which pervades the entire atmosphere of the film and gives it its almost unbearable sense of foreboding.
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ItemFrom Post-Soviet to Post-National: Domestic Space as Non-Place in Andrei Zviagintsev’s 'Elena' and 'Leviathan'(Mustafa Yaşar, 2018)In this article two films directed by Andrei Zviagintsev, Elena (2011) and Leviathan (2014), are compared and contrasted from the point of view of Marc Augé’s concept of place and non-place. Although these two films differ in specific details, similarities exist at several levels which are frequently linked with the theme of domestic space. Both films utilise similar framing techniques which place the respective main domestic spaces at the structural and thematic forefront of each plot. Both films employ a binary locational symmetry: while Elena juxtaposes a Soviet-era apartment with a modern luxury apartment, Leviathan operates with a single domestic space which stands opposed to the world outside and is, ultimately, destroyed by it. In each film the main domestic space is usurped by nefarious and dishonest means, in Elena by the murder of Vladimir by the eponymous heroine who thereafter brings her family to live in the new apartment, and in Leviathan by the scheming mayor who, it is assumed, murders Nikolai’s wife and destroys his house for the purposes of building a new church. The ultimate casualty in both films is moral truth which finds its perfect setting in the modern world of non-place.
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ItemThe Fragility of Domestic Space within Corruptive Non-Place in Andrei Zviagintsev’s "Leviathan"'(Ural Federal University, 2018)In this article the authors analyse Andrei Zvyagintsev’s feature film Leviathan (2014) from the perspective of domestic space using Marc Augé’s theory of nonplaces. As in Zvyagintsev’s film Elena, the film uses a framing technique, placing the domestic space in question, in this case the site of Nikolai’s house, in the film’s central role. From the outset the house is depicted as somehow fragile and unprotected from the outside world, and, as the plot progresses, this vulnerability increasingly comes into play. The main instigation for the events which follow comes from the town’s corrupt mayor, who plans to purchase Nikolai’s house for a fraction of its true value and build a church on its site. This action brings Nikolai’s former army colleague Dmitry, now a successful Moscow lawyer, into the action, leading directly to infidelity on the part of Nikolai’s wife (Liliya), and, ultimately, her death, presumably at the hands of the corrupt mayor. The external corrupting force of non-place and non-language, seen clearly in scenes such as that at the city court, where the clerk reads the court’s decision at an improbably fast tempo, increasingly enters Nikolai’s home and family situation, and, ultimately, undermines, then destroys, the integrity of private domestic space and the lives and identities of those who inhabit it.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableAspirations of Home in Post-Soviet Russia: Domestic Spaces and National Resonances in Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Elena(Ural Federal University, 2016)