Search Results (27)

This paper examines male characters in Nilakshi Chaliha Gogoi’s Assamese novel Oiya Mor Dibru-Saikhowa (Oh, My Dibru-Saikhowa) through the lens of Eco Masculinity, drawing primarily on Hultman and Pulé’s tripartite typology of industrial, eco-modern, and ecological masculinities. The study reads the novel’s two principal male characters—Bakul Bora and Seuj—as contrasting masculine trajectories shaped, respectively, by socio-economic deprivation, displacement, patriarchal conditioning, and legal criminalization on the one hand, and by maternal ecological ethics, generational mentorship, and affective formation on the other. The analysis proceeds through three connected registers. First, it attends to the novel’s narrative form, arguing that its principal focalizing consciousness is Dr. Irina Baruah, a physician through whose perception the male characters are largely presented. Second, it develops the political ecology of the Dibru-Saikhowa region—its colonial and postcolonial conservation history, the institutional gap between the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 and the Forest Rights Act 2006, and the slow violence visited on the Mising villagers of Laika and Dadhiya. Third, it engages intersectional critiques of eco-masculinity and confronts the structural tension of applying a male-centered framework to a female-focalized novel. The paper argues that Eco Masculinity, applied with due attention to narrative form, historical specificity, and eco-feminine agency, offers a productive tool for South Asian ecocritical scholarship, and it suggests two modifications to the framework that follow from this application. Full article

This article examines the question of under what conditions justice-learning in German-language Christian religious education (CRE), and thus in religious instruction (CRI)—both as content and as form—can live up to its normative self-image as a language school of freedom. The thesis pursued here is that this requires a self-enlightened approach to justice that critically receives the analytical power of postcolonial theories, but resists their epistemological relativism and remains anchored in the biblical heritage of God’s universal and at the same time preferential justice. After exploring the philosophical and theological heritage of reflections on justice and the resulting aporias in the theory and practice of CRE, postcolonial theories are examined in terms of their potential and their own theoretical limitations. This makes it possible to outline orientations for a self-enlightened, difference-sensitive, and at the same time universally-oriented reflection on justice that productively integrates postcolonial insights without abandoning the constitutive subject-orientation of CRE. Full article

Some scholars argue, over the past four decades, broadly that sport constitutes religious activity or, more specifically, that specific sports qualify as religious activity. In this paper, I provide two critical discussions which question the “sport as religion” position. These counterarguments are not based in theological-insider considerations supposing that religion is qualitatively distinct or sui generis as a means of defending religion’s uniqueness; rather, I provide a postcolonial rebuttal followed by a feminist critique of the “sport as religion” claims. These arguments combined demonstrate the continued colonial and patriarchal legacies attached to a “sport as religion” claim. None of these counterarguments, in as much as I can find, have been engaged by scholars holding the “sport as religion” position. My overall goal relates more to continuing a deeper discussion of religion, sport, and the potential interactions, overlaps, and engagements of these cultural phenomena rather than fully dismissing the “sport as religion” argument. In the end, I invite further consideration of the included arguments from scholars interested in sport and religion discourse. Full article

This article examines the persistent legal invisibility of the Kashmiri Pandits within international frameworks on indigenous rights and internal displacement. Despite meeting definitional criteria under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, the community remains unrecognised as either indigenous or internally displaced. Drawing on Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), constructivist norm diffusion and decolonial intersectional critique, this article argues that this exclusion arises not from normative ambiguity but from geopolitical selectivity and epistemic suppression. Through doctrinal analysis of India’s treaty commitments, including its accession to the Genocide Convention (1959) and its interpretative reservation to Article 1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (1979), this study reveals how recognition is constrained by state narratives of sovereignty and secularism. Supported by evidence from the NHRC inquiry, IDMC displacement data, and comparative experiences such as Native American recognition this paper demonstrates that categories of protection in international law are applied unevenly, depending on political compatibility rather than legal principle. It calls for renewed engagement with epistemic justice and narrative accountability in rethinking indigeneity and displacement in postcolonial contexts. Full article

This article examines the paradigm shift in Christian mission from conversion-centered models toward dialogical and justice-oriented praxis. Taking the Steyler Missionaries as a case study, this approach engages post-Vatican II theology, postcolonial critique, and Comparative Theology to demonstrate how mission can embody epistemic humility, contextual sensitivity, and theological hospitality. Based on qualitative interviews and textual analysis, the study highlights how dialogical mission reshapes Christian identity through mutual transformation rather than doctrinal transmission. The findings indicate that Comparative Theology provides a significant methodological and theological resource for interreligious engagement, enabling missionaries to move beyond hegemonic proclamation toward relational and ethically grounded witness. By integrating theological reflection with empirical insight, the article demonstrates how dialogical mission contributes to a reconfiguration of Christian witness in pluralistic and postcolonial contexts and offers a constructive framework for the future of mission practice. Full article

This article offers a new perspective on Miriam’s red jewel in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun (1860), interpreting it as a symbol of Jewish femininity, diasporic memory, and aesthetic resistance. Although the jewel has received little critical attention, this study suggests that it plays a central role in shaping Miriam’s identity and in articulating broader cultural anxieties around gender, ethnicity, and visibility. Through intertextual readings of Shakespeare’s Jessica and Walter Scott’s Rebecca and Rowena, the essay situates Miriam within a literary tradition of Jewish women whose identities are mediated through symbolic adornments. In addition to literary analysis, the article draws on visual art history—particularly Carol Ockman’s interpretation of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s 1848 portrait of Baronne de Rothschild—to explore how 19th-century visual culture contributed to the eroticization and exoticization of Jewish women. By placing Hawthorne’s portrayal of Miriam in dialogue with such visual representations, the essay highlights how the red jewel functions as a site of encoded cultural meaning. The analysis is further informed by feminist art theory (Griselda Pollock) and postcolonial critique (Edward Said), offering an interdisciplinary approach to questions of identity, marginalization, and symbolic resistance. While not claiming to offer a definitive reading, this article aims to open new interpretive possibilities by foregrounding the jewel’s narrative and symbolic significance. In doing so, it contributes to ongoing conversations in Hawthorne studies, Jewish cultural history, and the intersections of literature and visual art. Full article

Despite widespread recognition of Confucianism’s cultural importance among Malaysian Chinese communities, little is known about how its philosophical principles are reinterpreted and visually transformed by contemporary artists navigating postcolonial realities. This research addresses this gap through a mixed-method approach, combining quantitative data from 227 fine arts students, qualitative interviews with five representative Malaysian Chinese painters, and visual analysis of 50 key artworks. The results show that Confucianism functions not as a fixed doctrinal system but as a vital meta-framework that allows for the reimagining of core concepts, such as Ren (Benevolence) and He (Harmony), into tools for social critique and cultural negotiation. These ideas are expressed not through illustrative methods but via innovative symbolic and material strategies—ranging from fractured composition to technical experimentation—leading to a variety of personal styles rooted in a shared cultural logic. The study introduces a “critical translation” model for understanding the modernization of traditional philosophies within diaspora contexts, offering both theoretical insights and practical avenues for decolonizing arts education and fostering globally relevant, culturally authentic artistic practices. Full article

Eurocentric portrayals of Africa remain entrenched in European educational systems, perpetuating stereotypes of poverty, primitiveness, and exoticism. This study investigates how such representations are mirrored in German students’ mental conceptions and how they are interpreted by future educators. Using an interpretivist qualitative design, the study analyzes open-ended responses from 41 Grade 5 and 7 pupils at a lower secondary school in Münster, Germany, and written reflections from 17 teacher trainees enrolled in a master’s course in geography education. Thematic analysis reveals five dominant pupil schemas: poverty and deprivation, environmental determinism, racialization and othering, infrastructural deficit, and the wildlife-tourism gaze, rooted in media, textbooks, teachers, and social networks. Teacher trainees’ reflections ranged from emotional discomfort to critical awareness, with many advocating pedagogical pluralism, the normalization of African modernity, and the cultivation of critical consciousness. However, most proposals remained reformist, lacking a deep epistemological critique. The findings highlight the urgency of integrating decolonial theory, postcolonial critique, and epistemic justice into teacher education. Without such structural reorientation, schools will risk reproducing the very global hierarchies they purport to challenge. Full article

This paper examines Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island through a Hindu eco-spiritual framework to explore how ancient cosmological concepts illuminate contemporary environmental crises. Building upon the legend of Bonduki Sadagar and Manasa Devi, Ghosh narrates the rupture of sacred human–nature relationships in both colonial and postcolonial contexts. This study employs a tripartite conceptual lens of karma, dharma, and ecosystem drawn from Hindu philosophy to analyze how the novel frames environmental degradation, human moral failure, and ecological interconnectedness. Karma, as the law of cause and effect, is used to depict the consequences of human exploitation through natural disasters, climate migration, and the collapse of ecosystems. Dharma emerges as a principle advocating ecological responsibility and symbiosis between humans and nonhuman life. This paper argues that Ghosh tactfully intertwines Hindu metaphysics with contemporary ecological science to critique capitalist modernity’s environmental violence. The novel’s depiction of floods, the sinking of Venice, and the global refugee crisis dramatizes karmic consequences, while its evocation of myth–science convergence offers a vision of sacred interdependence. Ultimately, this paper concludes that Gun Island provides an urgent eco-spiritual model for reimagining planetary ethics and responding to the Anthropocene through humility, relationality, and spiritual responsibility. Full article

This auto-theoretical essay examines the philosophical and historical underpinnings of suicide through a critical analysis of the author’s own suicide note, employing psychoanalytic theory and post-colonial critique. Through historical investigation, the author traces how the concept of suicide, coined in 1642 by Sir Thomas Browne, emerged alongside new configurations of selfhood that were fundamentally shaped by colonial encounters, particularly the “discovery” of America and the rise in modern liberal thought. The analysis reveals how suicide’s conceptual structure is inextricably linked to Western modernity’s founding ruptures, where the capacity for self-destruction became a marker of Western subjectivity while being denied to colonized and enslaved peoples. The author concludes that suicide, far from being a purely personal act, is fundamentally structured by colonial history and white supremacy, functioning as a form of “white enjoyment” that attempts to resolve the metaphysical ruptures at the heart of Western consciousness. Full article

Research into the unio mystica has revealed what seems to be an area of “real discussion” between scholars of different traditions of mysticism, particularly those of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Although this research serves as a promising start to the dialogue among scholars, it has also raised many questions about a “shared moment” that is nevertheless expressed in “irreducibly diverse” and distinct ways in each tradition. What purpose, for instance, can generic cross-cultural categories serve when they mean little or nothing to scholars in each tradition? By contrast, tradition-specific vocabularies are profuse and often difficult to represent in interlinguistic contexts without significant explanation. The challenge of translating mystical texts, imagery, and ideas across cultures and linguistic traditions raises obvious concerns about the misrepresentation and distortion of traditions in an environment of post-colonial critique. Nevertheless, the continued promise of dialogue calls for specialists of these traditions—particularly non-western and non-Christian traditions—to approach, assess, re-formulate, and even challenge the categories of mysticism from within the conceptual and theoretical horizons of the traditions that they research. The present study models such an approach to scholarship in mysticism. It offers a (re)formulation of the unio mystica from within the theoretical frame of the 12th/13th-century Muslim/Sufi mystic, Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) and early members of his school of thought. By unpacking the primary terms involved in such an account—“God”, the “human being/self”, and “union”—from within the conceptual and theoretical horizons of that tradition, it problematizes the prevailing understanding of the unio mystica constructed from the writings of specialists in Christian mysticism. More importantly, it illustrates the payoff in terms of dialogue (incorporating the critique of existing theories) when each tradition operates confidently from its own milieu, developing its own theoretical resources for mysticism rather than prematurely embracing existing ideas or categories. Full article

This article, Queering Militarism in Israeli Photography, examines Adi Nes’s Soldiers series, a body of work that interrogates the intersections of queerness, militarism, and nationalism within Israeli society. By employing a distinctive “military circus” aesthetic, Nes challenges the rigid heteronormative and hyper-masculine archetypes embedded in Israeli military identity. His staged photographs depict soldiers in circus-inspired performative poses, blending military discipline with elements of the carnivalesque to subvert conventional representations of military masculinity. This approach creates spaces where queerness, vulnerability, and fluid identity defy the rigid confines of nationalist narratives. Using queer studies frameworks, performance theory, and postcolonial critique, this article analyzes Nes’s depiction of soldiers as both military subjects and circus performers, examining how these representations disrupt the “naturalness” of gender, power, and identity within the Israeli national ethos. Through a close reading of key images—such as the fire-breathing soldier, the acrobat on a tightrope, and the strongman figure—this article argues that Nes critiques homonationalism and exposes the co-optation of LGBTQ+ identities into militaristic frameworks. His images juxtapose exaggerated masculinity with homoerotic and introspective vulnerability, positioning the queer body as both a participant in and a subverter of the national narrative. Drawing on contemporary queer theory—including José Esteban Muñoz’s concept of “disidentification”, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s theories of queer shame and performativity, and perspectives on temporality, failure, and counterpublics following Elizabeth Freeman, Jack Halberstam, Michael Warner, and Sara Ahmed—this article frames queerness as an active site of resistance and creative transformation within the Israeli military complex. The analysis reveals how Nes’s work disrupts Zionist masculinities and traditional militaristic structures through a hybrid aesthetic of military and circus life. By reimagining Israeli identity as an inclusive, multi-dimensional construct, Nes expands queer possibilities beyond heteronormative confines and homonationalist alignments. This merging of critical queer perspectives—from the destabilizing of discipline and shame to the public visibility of non-normative bodies—posits that queer identities can permeate and reshape state power itself, challenging not only the norms of militaristic nationalism but also the boundaries of Israeli selfhood. Full article

In the burgeoning field of ecotheology, scholars have been compelled to propose typologies to introduce and categorize existing but diffuse ecotheological insights. Taking ecotheology as a particular epistemic theology, I argue for an alternative way of typologizing that entails meticulously examining the extent to which ecotheologians engage with competing epistemes, namely “postcolonial typology”. To illustrate, I will examine a range of ecotheological works from a postcolonial nation, Indonesia. I present three groups of ecotheologies: the “expansionist”, the “tribalist”, and the “essentialist” approaches (or strategies). The expansionist group extends or expands the systematic theology formerly introduced by European missionaries during the colonial period as a way to ecologize their theology. The tribalist approach prioritizes retrieving and incorporating local or tribal wisdom. Finally, the essentialist group focuses on identifying categorical frameworks that may signify “Indonesianness”, which involves a “strategic” choice of essentialism that yields to a national or transtribal theological cohesion. In the end, I will also note one pedagogical implication of employing postcolonial typology. Full article

What happened to the human soul in contemporary theories of preaching? The field of homiletics shows a wide variety of themes, approaches, perspectives, and theologies. Somewhere between the social critique, in postcolonial and post-human approaches, and sense-making, in cultural and experiential approaches, the issue of humanity re-emerges. This essay inquires whether and how it might be possible to re-envision preaching as a practice of care for the soul. The essay closes with a homiletical agenda in the form of three conditions for retrieving the soul in homiletics, a hermeneutical, a rhetorical, and a theological condition. Full article

In the closing decades of the 19th century, a wide range of Tamil authors and public speakers in colonial India became acutely interested in the notion of a Dravidian “race”. This conception of a Dravidian race, rooted in European racial and philological scholarship on the peoples of South India, became an important symbol of Tamil cultural, religious, and social autonomy in colonial and post-colonial Tamil thought, art, politics, and literature. European racial thought depicted Dravidians as a savage race that had been subjugated or displaced by the superior Aryan race in ancient Indic history. Using several key works of colonial scholarship, non-Brahmin Tamil authors reversed and reconfigured this idea to ground their own broad-reaching critiques of Brahmin political and social dominance, Brahmanical Hinduism, and Indian nationalism. Whereas European scholarship largely presented Dravidians as the inferiors of Aryans, non-Brahmin Tamil thinkers argued that the ancient, Dravidian identity of the Tamil people could stand alone without Aryan interference. This symbolic contrast between Dravidian (Tamil, non-Brahmin, South Indian) and Aryan (Sanskritic, Brahmin, North Indian) is a central component of 20th- and 21st-century Tamil public discourse on caste, gender, and cultural autonomy. Tamil authors, speakers, activists, and politicians used and continue to use the symbolic frame of Dravidian racial history to advocate for many different political, cultural, and social causes. While not all of these “Dravidian” discourses are meaningfully politically or socially progressive, the long history of Dravidian-centered, anti-Brahmanical discourse in Tamil South India has helped Tamil Nadu largely rebuff the advances of Hindu nationalist politics, which have become dominant in other cultural regions of present-day India. This piece presents a background on the emergence of the term “Dravidian” in socially critical Tamil thought, as well as its reversal and reconfiguration by Tamil social thinkers, orators, and activists in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. The piece begins with a brief history of the terms “Dravidian” and “Aryan” in Western racial thought. The piece then charts the evolution of this discourse in Tamil public thought by discussing several important examples of Tamil social and political movements that incorporate the conceptual poles of “Dravidian” and “Aryan” into their own platforms. Full article