Panel session 2: Identities in Transition: the Deconstruction of Self/Other binaries in Popular Culture I

Session chair: 

Lorenzo Rinelli

Department of Political Science

University of Hawai'i at Manoa

Session Intro: Confronting and critically interrogating the construction of “Otherness,” our panel speakers – who come from places as diverse as Germany, the Ivory Coast, New York, and Singapore – will highlight and discuss manifestations of shifting identities in contemporary culture. Carmen Nolte will explore villain Voldemort’s “politics of evil” in Harry Potter, focusing on the text’s deconstruction of binary-based fascist rhetoric, while Kristine Kotecki examines African Cinema’s response to the Self/Other dichotomy as perpetuated by colonialism and imperialism. Phillip Drake discusses the production of the myth of primitive human ecology and how the myth limits contemporary environmental discourse, and Cheryl Naruse analyzes how the Singaporean film Perth destabilizes notions of how the Self/Other is constituted through alienation and new desires under postcolonial conditions.

The Politics of Evil: Resonances of Hitler and Fascist Ideology in Harry Potter

Carmen Nolte

English Department

University of Hawai'i at Manoa

So What if I Like Cinderella? African Film Forgets to be ‘Authentic’

Kristine Kotecki

Department of Cultural Studies

University of Hawai'i at Manoa