Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

inging together objects and subjects of conflict, disagreement and difference, and how this intervention
(and its analysis) can enrich academic work on media and conflict.
Tomoaki Morikawa
Ground Zero as a Hallowed/Hollowed Ground
This paper explores the contentious nature of the memory of 9/11 by focusing on the issue of slavery.
Although slavery is not an issue that is usually associated with 9/11, this paper argues that it needs to be
rethought through in the context of the terrorist attacks, because the commemoration of 9/11 has
functioned as an ideological state apparatus of memory through which to facilitate the erasure of public
memory of this violent system of human bondage from American history so as to produce and reproduce a
national historical narrative. This paper attends to three case studies of commemoration: the International
Freedom Center, the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan, and the symbolic primary building of the
new World Trade Center complex. Through these case studies, it will examine the ways in which Ground
Zero has been reconstructed in ways to silence the public memory of slavery.
Birgit Kleist Pedersen* & Jette Rygaard* Do people really live in Greenland? Cultural representations in
documentaries with Greenland as a backdrop
Greenland being in a process of taking the next step towards Autonomy, an increasing number of reverse
discourses seem to be in game. The presentation will focus on the ascribed as well as the self-ascribed
cultural representations of Greenland and Greenlanders/Inuit as depicted in documentaries from around the
turn of the Millennium until now. The discussions will revolve around questions such as: When are films
about Greenland even representing Greenlanders/Inuit and reversely, when they are, what kind of meaning
does this produce: when is this problematic, and when is this even an advantage? Further on, the
presentation will touch upon the issue of the impact of the tradition of ethnographic films about Greenland
produced by Greenlanders and non-Greenlanders respectively till today. Finally, the presentation will discuss
whether and how the “traditional” representation of Greenland is included – in what way and for what
reasons, if so.
9V
Wayward Politics (Chair, Nadine Attewell)
Christopher Patterson Wayward and Willful Women in Wayne Wang’s Chinese Box
Chinese migrants to America have traditionally come from China’s hinterlands (Taiwan, Guangdong, Hong
Kong), and their historical presence, since the Cold War, has provided a view of Chineseness that contrasts
the People’s Republic, which has functioned as the “other” to American liberalism. This presentation
considers narratives of Chinese migrancy by exploring contrasting attitudes towards migrants from the
Chinese mainland to the hinterlands and finally to the West. These narratives split most dramatically in
viewing migrants as either “wayward subjects,” migrants who become “corrupted” by foreign influence, or
as “willful subjects,” migrants whose disobedience is seen as expressing agency and desire for freedom. I
consider how both of these views of migrancy are re-interpreted in Wayne Wang’s film about the 1997
handover of Hong Kong, Chinese Box (2007). I engage with Alys Weinbaum’s theories of waywardness as
“constitut[ing] the motor of national belonging,” (27) and Sara Ahmed’s theory of willful subjects as those
imbued with ungovernable agency and desire. I ask how these figures are imbricated within overarching
structures of global capitalism across Asia, and how they can call attention to other groups (Filipinas,
Indonesians, South Asians) who have played formative roles in constructing global Chineseness.
239