(Highlight Notice) The Diasporic Everyday: Labour, Creativity, Survival

（亮点预告）侨民的日常：劳动、创造力、生存

• 批准号: AH/P007139/1
• 负责人: Andrew Warnes
• 金额: $ 1.64万
• 依托单位: University of Leeds
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2017 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FP007139%2F1
• 关键词: Highlight; Notice; Diasporic; Everyday; Labour

Certain binary oppositions remain prevalent in Western culture, and have done so since the Enlightenment. The production of civilised culture has and is often thought to rely upon the availability of significant leisure time, being long understood as the province of a privileged elite. Beauty and function, too, often sit in a rigid dichotomy, and aesthetic appreciation even now can be associated with the mind in opposition to the body. It is difficult to overstate the power of these historic dichotomies or the extent to which they still shape discussions about art and creativity throughout British and other national cultures. But it is also hard to overstate diasporic culture's capacity to dislodge their entrenched powers of assumption. In a wide variety of creative spheres, throughout the historic territories of the diaspora, the dichotomisation of leisure and art, and indeed of beauty and purpose, founder, growing powerless to explain the different, democratic, achievements of African peoples. Carnivals flower amid grinding violent poverty; Africa-tinged pit barbecue flourishes on the plantation; dances seem somehow to confound the ordeals of physical work; and in an array of other contexts expressivity asserts itself within an everyday life difficult to escape. The story of the blues that Langston Hughes once told, in other words, seems neither isolated nor unique. Invented in the field itself, as he speculated, and chiefly "to relieve the monotony" of difficult work, this functional lyricism instead only exemplified an alternative diasporic mode in which expressivity of all kinds happened amid racist toil and guarded against its multiple physical and psychological pains. Alongside the blues among other lyrics of survival our new network explores some of the other key accomplishments of the diasporic everyday. It places Arthur France's establishment of the Leeds carnival at a time of extreme institutional racism into a wider diasporic pattern of active cultural resistance. It draws together US and UK food scholars to consider how slave cooks throughout the Black Atlantic interwove African food traditions into their everyday work, carving out new cultural and economic resources in a situation that remained sadistically hostile to African culture in the round. And it also welcomes back to Leeds Susan Kiguli, our East African alumnus, who has now won acclaim throughout the continent for her own explorations in oral poetry. Kiguli's involvement in our network promises to enrich our interdisciplinary reflections on the different, and differently indispensable, roles verse has performed among diverse diasporic communities uninterested in Eurocentric dichotomies of beauty and function. Each of these everyday activities is fascinating in its own right, and through our roundtables our network will deepen understanding of them all. Above all we aim, however, to deepen our understanding of the diasporic philosophy which stands behind each such manifestation, unlocking the liberating, democratic investment in everyday creativity that they hold in common. Beauty, in the diasporic everyday, often manifests itself through function; basic imperatives of hunger and survival animate inspiration; and the permanence and perfection of the monument often seems less important than the moment of creativity itself. Yet as they thus synthesise this alternative cultural sensibility, our roundtables will also call attention to the ways in which it reflects outwards and onto those other vernacular or creative traditions, beyond the diaspora, which also confound agreed dichotomies of work and leisure and beauty and function. By the end of our programme, indeed, it will be clear that Hughes's "Story of the Blues" amongst other diasporic affirmations offer liberation to us all, confirming that all have access to art and creativity--that all culture, even, might belong to the everyday of us all.

自启蒙运动以来，某些二元对立在西方文化中仍然普遍存在。文明文化的产生一直被认为依赖于大量闲暇时间的可用性，长期以来被认为是特权精英的领域。美和功能也常常处于一种严格的二分法中，审美即使在现在也可以与心灵与身体相关联。很难夸大这些历史上的二分法的力量，也很难夸大它们在多大程度上影响着英国和其他国家文化中关于艺术和创造力的讨论。但也很难夸大散居文化推翻他们根深蒂固的假设力量的能力。在各种各样的创意领域，在流散的历史领土上，休闲和艺术的二分法，实际上是美和目的的二分法，创始人，越来越无力解释非洲人民不同的，民主的成就。在极度贫困中，狂欢之花绽放；非洲风味的坑式烧烤在种植园里盛行；舞蹈似乎在某种程度上混淆了体力劳动的折磨；在一系列其他情境中，表现力在日常生活中难以逃脱。换句话说，兰斯顿·休斯曾经讲述的蓝调故事似乎既不孤立也不独特。正如他所推测的那样，这种功能性抒情诗是在这个领域本身发明出来的，主要是为了“缓解”困难工作的单调感，相反，它只是一种另类的散居模式的例证，在这种模式中，各种各样的表达都发生在种族主义的辛劳中，并防范其多重生理和心理上的痛苦。除了蓝调和其他关于生存的歌词外，我们的新网络还探索了散居者日常生活中的其他一些关键成就。它将亚瑟·弗朗斯在极端制度性种族主义时期建立的利兹狂欢节置于积极文化抵抗的更广泛的流散模式中。它将美国和英国的食品学者聚集在一起，考虑整个黑大西洋地区的奴隶厨师如何将非洲的食物传统融入他们的日常工作中，在对非洲文化始终充满残酷敌意的情况下，创造出新的文化和经济资源。我们也欢迎我们的东非校友苏珊·基古利回到利兹，她在口头诗歌方面的探索已经赢得了整个非洲大陆的赞誉。Kiguli对我们网络的参与有望丰富我们对不同的，不同的不可或缺的，诗歌在不同的散居社区中所扮演的角色的跨学科反思，这些社区对以欧洲为中心的美和功能二分法不感兴趣。每一项日常活动都有自己的魅力，通过我们的圆桌会议，我们的网络将加深对所有这些活动的理解。然而，最重要的是，我们的目标是加深我们对每一种这样的表现背后的流散哲学的理解，释放他们共同拥有的对日常创造力的解放和民主投资。在散居的日常生活中，美往往通过功能表现出来；饥饿和生存的基本要求激发了灵感；纪念碑的永久性和完美性似乎往往不如创造力本身那么重要。然而，当他们因此综合了这种另类的文化敏感性时，我们的圆桌会议也将引起人们对它向外反映的方式的关注，以及对其他方言或创造性传统的反映，超越了散乱，这些传统也混淆了工作与休闲、美丽与功能的公认二分法。事实上，在我们节目的最后，我们会清楚地看到，休斯的《蓝调的故事》（Story of the Blues）以及其他流散的肯定为我们所有人提供了解放，确认了所有人都有机会接触艺术和创造力——甚至所有的文化都可能属于我们所有人的日常生活。