The research project Tropes of Polarity: Visual Representation and Afrodiasporic Identities analyzes colonial, postcolonial, diasporic, and contemporary identities through the medium of photography and its tropes, to investigate phenomena of West African and Afro diasporic identity constructions that indicate alternations of coexisting cultural identities and perspectives. The articulation of identity in relation to postcolonial circumstances, postmigration and intercultural polarities are central to the project. The research focuses specifically on the context of West Africa and its diaspora in Europe, particularly on the context of Ghana. The research goals are dedicated to discussing notions of a transcultural form of code switching within the photographic context. Arguing that alternating switches between different cultural perspectives have enabled the formation of contemporary spectral identities throughout time, thus proposing an interpolation to the notion of hybridity. The doctoral thesis identifies a resultant resistance, subversion, and agency that finds itself reflected in the potentiality of transnational migrant knowledge, multiplicity, and friction, while being negotiated under the premise of intersectionality, and within a postmigrant condition. The thesis finally claims that all the manifestations above are embedded in photographs as a mnemotechnique.
Date of Award | 10 Sept 2024 |
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Original language | English |
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Awarding Institution | - Universidade Católica Portuguesa
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Supervisor | Isabel Capeloa Gil (Supervisor) & Michael Basseler (Co-Supervisor) |
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- Photography
- African diaspora
- Postcolonialism
- Decoloniality
- Code switching
- Mnemotechnique
- Transformed representation
- Transcultural entanglements
- Doutoramento em Estudos de Cultura
Tropes of polarity: visual representation and afrodiasporic identities
Peters, D. (Student). 10 Sept 2024
Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis