
Edited by Sarah Wood and Catriona MacLeod
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Recommended by H茅l猫ne B. Ducros
Through his role as heroic Papillon, a French convict sentenced to forced labor who escaped the hellish 鈥渂agne鈥 鈥 also nicknamed 鈥渄ry guillotine鈥 鈥 star actor Steve McQueen helped inscribe Guyane (French Guiana or Lagwiyann in Cr茅ole) in the cultural imagination of generations. A recent cinema adaptation of the convict鈥檚 m茅moires just last year took over to perpetuate yet again among younger generations the myth of Guyane as the French penal colony it was from 1854 to 1946. Locating Guyane attempts to go beyond the clich茅 to unfix this 鈥渙utermost region of the European Union鈥 or, as it is called in French an 鈥渦ltra-peripheral region,鈥 away from stereotypes and bounded definitions. It explores ways in which this ambiguous and contested territory can be geographically, historically, politically and culturally reconceptualized, ridding it of persistent ascribed meanings while also testing its marginalization in a post-colonial world. Sarah Wood and Catriona MacLeod have gathered valuable contributions, which together reimagine Guyane and Guyanais to better 鈥渟ite鈥 them in academic discourses by enabling the transgression of borders separating disciplines as well as Anglophone and Francophone scholarship. The book engages a reflection on the textual representation of Guyane historically, its position in the French Empire鈥檚 ideological construction, and the identity(ies) of those living in this 鈥渕ultipositional鈥 European territory, the only one within the South American continental area. The compilation also considers voices and perspectives from Guyanais themselves, encouraging a shift in the production center for Guyane studies that have most often given us a gaze looking into the French 诲茅辫补谤迟别尘别苍迟 from an outside. The book is a fascinating challenge to historiographies of Guyane as it peels off the layers of its changing relationships with France and other places in the world, detangles its history of contact, reveals the actors involved in its many transitions from place of forced exile to high-tech center, highlights the role its penal past has played in making it 鈥減eriphery鈥, and explains what being Guyanais today entails in a globalized world of flows where local Kreyol traditions and Maroon narratives get reinvented and shaped in the context of cultural commercialism and global art markets.

By Christopher R. Hill
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Recommended by Louie Dean Valencia-Garc铆a
It was something of a miracle that the peace movement had recovered its own name after the Second World War given it had been 鈥渆ffectively marginalized by the challenge posed by Hitler鈥 On the eve of war, the absolutely pacifism of the [Peace Pledge Union] could even appear tantamount to pro-Nazism.鈥 Christopher R. Hill鈥檚 Peace and Power in Cold War Britain: Media, Movements and Democracy, c. 1945-68 provokingly looks at the relationship between the anti-nuclear movement of the 1960s in Britain and the rise of television, which culminated with 鈥渞adicals reconfigure[ing] their social identities as Britain became a postcolonial power.鈥 He argues: 鈥淩adicals鈥攍argely out of a desire to participate in political issues from which they were excluded鈥攈ave been highly influential in fashioning forms of political participation and expression during epochs of media change.鈥 To this end Hill, makes comparisons of the use of television by radicals to 鈥淟evellers and pamphleteering鈥hartists and unstamped newspapers and鈥uffragettes and photojournalism.鈥 Seen through the lens of one of the cultural movements of the era, Peace and Power in Cold Ware Britain shows the evolution of Britain into a strong participatory democracy. Hill is particularly skilled at pulling apart careful distinctions in class dynamics, particularly in the post-World War II period when there was considerable malleability; this is especially present in his chapter 鈥淢iddle Class Radicalism and the Media.鈥
For Hill, 鈥淔or all the wide-ranging criticism and reservations that radicals had of television, it did have democratizing affects in political and public life in the mid-to-late 1950s and these were driven, ironically, by commercial rather than public service broadcasting.鈥 Not unaware of other contemporary social issues that would affect the anti-nuclear movement by the end of the decade, such as the anti-Vietnam movement and the tumult of 1968, Hill鈥檚 narrative demonstrates the complexity of the violence that struck televisions by that year. Although Herbert Marcuse might have contemporarily denounced television for its contribution to a consumer culture, through this captivating work we see ways in which television worked to promote radicalism.
Published on November 8, 2018.