How 1940s American pop songs framed the world beyond the United States as exotic playgrounds or lands of folly and belittled non-Europeans. The songs discussed: “Civilization (Bongo, Bongo, Bongo),” “The Coffee Song,” “The Maharajah of Madagor,” “Managua, Nicaragua,” and “Rum and Coca Cola.”
Categories: ZiR • Tags: colonialism, Donald Trump, international relations, neo-colonialism, popular music, songs
Well just look at all the other Musas in this dive, one by one, and imagine—as I do—how they could have survived a shot fired in bright sunlight or how they managed never to cross paths with that writer of yours or, in a word, how they’ve managed to not be dead yet. — The Meursault Investigation, Kamel Daoud (translated by John Cullen) The question is not whether Lincoln [in the Gettysburg Address] truly meant “government of the people” but […]
Categories: ZiR • Tags: Baltimore unrest, Camus, colonialism, Franz Fanon, identity, L’Étranger, memory, Nietzsche, racism, self-determination
by fritztucker
Qallunaat! Why White People Are Funny by Mark Sandiford, National Film Board of Canada I just watched a great film, Qallunaat! Why White People are Funny, an anthropological study of White people featuring the Inuit writer Zebedee Nungak. He begins: We Inuit are deeply fascinated by Qallunaat and their ways. The word “Qallunaat” is used universally by Inuit to describe White people. But it doesn’t refer so much to skin color, as a state of mind, a culture that has reached all corners […]
Categories: Fritz Tucker • Tags: anthropology, capitalism, children, colonialism, education, ethics, film, gender, History, immigration, politics, race
