Ecocentric Movies: Bisexual and Italian Transculturations in Turn-of-the-Millennium Cinema
2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 9; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/15299710802660052
ISSN1529-9724
Autores Tópico(s)Cinema and Media Studies
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size This article appeared in Naoki Sakai and Jon Solomon (eds.) Traces # 4: Translation, Biopolitics, Colonial Difference (Cornell University Press, 2006). Permission to reprint it is kindly acknowledged here. Notes 1. Ecological discourse often emphasizes a sense of place and the bonds between a culture and its physical space. In Starhawk's (2002) Starhawk. 2002. Webs of power: Notes from the global uprising, Gabriola Island, , Canada: New Society Publishers. [Google Scholar] Webs of Power, and especially in the chapter “Our Place in Nature” (pp. 160–168), indigenous cultures are presented as models for alternative forms of globalization and the new social order the global movement wishes to create. Starhawk claims that “developing bonds to place” (pp. 163–166) is essential to reverse the process of corporate globalization. As she explains, “The whole system we call ‘globalization’ is predicated on the destruction of this bond [to place]” (p. 165). Although these voices may not intend to construct transcultural persons as less ecologically aware than indigenous persons, their rhetoric tends to marginalize transcultural subjects from ecological discourse. 2. I propose to view affiliations with bisexual and Italian identities as social spaces that enable certain transcultural modes. They are post-modern versions of what Pratt (1992) Pratt, M. L. 1992. Imperial eyes: Travel writing and transculturation, London and New York: Routledge. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] calls “contact zones,” the areas where groups from cultures unknown to each other met and interacted during the modern colonization processes (pp. 1–15, also in Kraniauskas, 2000 Kraniauskas, J. 2000. Translation and the work of transculturation. Traces, 1(1): 95–109. [Google Scholar], p. 970). In these social spaces, Italy and bisexuality exists neither as signifieds nor as signifiers per se, but rather as symbols of a Lacanian order, stages in an ongoing process of semiosis that transfers the unit signifier/signified to a new symbolic level. 3. In the course of antiquity Italy became the center of the Roman empire, which encompassed most known areas in classical cultures. But in modernity it became the prey of European colonial powers such as Spain, Austria, and to a lesser extent, France. Spain dominated southern Italy for several centuries (1559–1713 and beyond; Garzanti, 1985 Garzanti. 1985. La nuova enciclopedia universale, Milan: Author. [Google Scholar], p. 1323). In Spanish colonial parlance the region came to be known as las Indias para aca, the Indies on this side (namely to the East of Spain, as opposed to the West Indies). 4. In late modernity Italy established some form of colonial dominion over Somalia, and Eritrea (1896), and later, with Mussolini, Albania (Garzanti, 1985 Garzanti. 1985. La nuova enciclopedia universale, Milan: Author. [Google Scholar], p. 734). 5. In antiquity, the Latin poet Horace was a major voice that viewed eroticism as a learnable form of artistic expression; in modernity the Italian memoir writer and adventurer Giacomo Casanova speaks in a similar perspective (Casanova, 1997 Casanova, G. 1997. The history of my life, Vols. 1–12, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. [Google Scholar]; Horatius Flaccus, 1961 Horatius Flaccus. 1961. The collected works of Horace, New York: Dutton. [Google Scholar]). 6. The concept of mimesis, from Aristotle's Poetics, pervaded early-modern Italian thinking about aesthetics. The Italian school systems still values imitation as a mode of learning. For example, in teaching writing, the imitation of models for style and elegance is still widely practiced today. 7. In an Italian Renaissance painting, the frame never cuts off a human body part. Even as some coverage of genital areas was encouraged, frontal nudity was not connoted as pornographic. But chopping of a human figure would be disrespectful of its integrity, and therefore prostituted, which is the meaning of the Greek root pornč (Garzanti, 1987 Garzanti. 1987. Il grande dizionario della lingua italiana, Milan: Author. [Google Scholar], p. 1448; Librairie Larousse, 1985 Librairie Larousse. 1985. Petit Larousse Illustré, Paris: Author. [Google Scholar], p. 791). 8. More on the bisexual movement and women's participation in it in Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio's (2003) Anderlini-D'Onofrio, S., ed. 2003. Women and bisexuality: A global perspective, New York, London: Harrington Park Press. [Google Scholar] Women and Bisexuality: A Global Perspective; Lani Kaahumanu and Loraine Hutchins's (1991) Kaahumanu, L. and Hutchins, L., eds. 1991. Bi any other name: Bisexual people speak out, Boston: Alyson. [Google Scholar] Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out; Merl Storr (1999) Storr, M. 1999. Bisexuality: A critical reader, London: Routledge. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] Bisexuality: A Critical Reader; Clare Hemming (2002) Hemming, C. 2002. Bisexual spaces: A geography of sexuality and genders, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar] Bisexual Spaces: A Geography of Sexuality and Genders. 9. The numerous books on bisexuality of the 1990 that reflect this movement include: Maria Pramaggiore and Donald E. Hall's (1996) Representing Bisexualities: Subjects and Cultures of Fluid Desire; Naomi Tucker's (1995) Tucker, N. 1995. Bisexual politics: Theories, queries, and visions, New York: Harington Park Press. [Google Scholar] Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries, and Visions,; Bi Academic Intervention's (1997) Bi Academic Intervention. 1997. The bisexual imaginary: Representations, identity, and desire, London: Cassell. [Google Scholar] The Bisexual Imaginary: Representations, Identity, and Desire; and Marjorie Garber's (1995) Garber, M. 1995. Vice, versa: Bisexuality and the eroticism of everyday life, New York: Simon & Schuster. [Google Scholar] Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life. 10. For an insider's critique of this insularity and provincialism, see De Marco Torgovnick (1994, pp. 6–7 and ff.) 11. My use of the word jouissance is related to Lacanian theory but does not quite coincide with it. On the one hand, Lacan (1982) theorized female jouissance as erotic ecstasy based on mysticism. On the other, he conflated the clitoris with the penis as signifieds to which the phallus refers (essays on “The Signification of the Phallus” and “Jouissance”). But the clitoris, unlike the penis, is purely an organ of pleasure, having no reproductive function. My jouissance is physical and spiritual and is related to women's ability to “be” more than one, theorized by Irigaray (1985) Irigaray, L. 1985. This sex which is not one, Edited by: Porter, C. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. [Google Scholar] in This Sex which is Not One, and to imagine the pre-Oedipal as an amniotic immersion into the other, as in Cixous's (1973) Cixous, H. 1973. L'Essort de Plusje. L'Arc, 4652: 54 [Google Scholar] “L'Essort the Plusje.”
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