Conference Brochure - Frankfurt Research Center for Postcolonial

Transcription

Conference Venue
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
Campus Westend
Grüneburgplatz 1
60323 Frankfurt am Main
Registration Desk
16th June
17th June
18th June
Casino Foyer
Casino Foyer
Casino 1st Floor
Main Entrance
Building
Rooms
1
IG-Hochhaus
2
Casino
3
House of Finance (HoF)
IG 0.201
IG 0.251
IG 0.454
IG 0.457
IG 1.314 (Eisenhower Room)
IG 1.418
Foyer
Cas 823
Cas 1.801
Cas 1.802
Cas 1.811
Cas 1.812
HoF E.20
5
Rechtswissenschaften & Wirtschaftswissenschaften (RuW)
RuW 1.101
Content
ABOUT THE FRANKFURT RESEARCH CENTER FOR POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES ............................................................ I
ABOUT THE CLUSTER OF EXCELLENCE ‘NORMATIVE ORDERS’ ............................................................................. I
CONFERENCE OVERVIEW .......................................................................................................................... II
CONFERENCE PROGRAM ........................................................................................................................... V
ABSTRACTS ............................................................................................................................................1
PANEL 1
POLITICAL PRACTICE AND THIRD WORLD/FEMINIST APPROACHES TO INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS .....1
PANEL 2
SAVING BROWN WOMEN? DELIBERATING THE “POST” IN POST-COLONIALISM AND POST-CONFLICT ....5
PANEL 3
TRANSNATIONAL SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND THE POSTCOLONIAL CONDITION..................................11
PANEL 4
BUILDING BRIDGES: CRITICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY AND POSTCOLONIAL THEORY ............................16
PANEL 5
CULTURE VS. CAPITALISM: POSTCOLONIAL EMANCIPATIONS AND THE AMBIVALENCES OF THE MARKET 21
PANEL 6
POSTCOLONISING METHODOLOGIES ......................................................................................29
PANEL 7
TEACHING POSTCOLONIAL KNOWLEDGE .................................................................................37
PANEL 8
BETWEEN SUBJECTION AND SUBJECTIVATION: POSTCOLONIAL-QUEER-FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES.........45
PANEL 9
POSTCOLONIAL PERSPECTIVES ON HUMAN RIGHTS ...................................................................52
PANEL 10
POSTCOLONIAL POWER AND CAPITALISM – CRITICAL APPROACHES TO CONTEMPORARY INTERNATIONAL
AID ................................................................................................................................57
PANEL 11
SECULARISM, RELIGION AND POLITICS: CRITICAL INTERVENTIONS ................................................66
PANEL 12
TRANSNATIONAL IN/JUSTICE IN A POSTCOLONIAL WORLD .........................................................73
PANEL 13
REVOLUTION RECONSIDERED – SLAVERY, ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE HAITIAN REVOLUTION ..............77
PANEL 14
POSTCOLONIAL PERSPECTIVES AFTER AUSCHWITZ .....................................................................82
PANEL 15
POSTCOLONIAL THOUGHT AND THE PROBLEM OF PERIODIZATION ................................................91
PANEL 16
TAKING POSTCOLONIALISM ELSEWHERE? POST-SOVIET POSTCOLONIALITIES ...................................94
PANEL 17
REPRESENTATIONS: THE (POST)COLONIAL 'BODY POLITIC' IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ..................102
PANEL 18
POSTCOLONIAL PERSPECTIVES ON CORRUPTION AND STATEHOOD ..............................................110
PANEL 19
WEAK STATES, FAILED STATES, DEVELOPMENTAL STATES – PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES IN
CONCEPTUALISING POLITICAL FORMATIONS IN POSTCOLONIAL AFRICA........................................115
PANEL 20
LES PRODUCTIONS CULTURELLES AFRICAINES DANS L’ECONOMIE MONDIALISEE (FRENCH/FRANÇAIS)..119
PANEL 21
POSTCOLONIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF URBAN SPACES .............................................................122
PANEL 22
DECOLONIZING ‘DEVELOPMENT’ AND ‘DEMOCRATIZATION’ DISCOURSES .....................................128
PANEL 23
POSTCOLONIAL EDUCATION ...............................................................................................132
PANEL 24
THE POLITICS OF AFFECT: RELICS, LANDSCAPES, AND CONFLICTS OF THE MIDDLE EAST ...................136
CULTURAL PROGRAM...........................................................................................................................138
NOTES ..............................................................................................................................................143
About the Frankfurt Research Center for
Postcolonial Studies
The Frankfurt Research Center for Postcolonial Studies (FRCPS), which is headed by Prof. Dr. Nikita
Dhawan, is one of the first research settings in the German-speaking academic landscape to
decidedly approach theoretical inquiry within the Social Sciences from a postcolonial perspective.
Research at FRCPS engages with postcolonial constellations and conflicts in all their complexities by
not only exploring issues of cultural politics, but also placing a strong emphasis on questions of
decolonization and democratization within evolving socio-economic and political orders. Research
focus is on human rights, justice, post-development, migration and transnationality, peace and
conflict and globalization from a queer-feminist-postcolonial lens. Accordingly, the implications of
race, class, sexual, religious and gender relations as shaped through colonialism for the structuring of
contemporary global politics are investigated, while simultaneously devoting attention to issues of
power, resistance and agency.
www.frcps.uni-frankfurt.de
About the Cluster of Excellence ‘Normative Orders’
The Frankfurt Cluster of Excellence „The Formation of Normative Orders“ explores the development
of normative orders with a focus on contemporary conflicts concerning the establishment of a “new
world order”. The network is funded by the national “Excellence Initiative” and combines a series of
research initiatives in Frankfurt and the surrounding area. The Cluster of Excellence examines past
and current processes of the formation of normative orders, to be understood as „orders of
justification“. In contrast to functionalist approaches which refer to factors external to norms, the
Cluster deals with international normative perspectives of participants on the procedures and
conflicts involved in the formation of legal or political orders. Starting from the combined
perspectives of the humanities and various social science disciplines, the research programme is
organised in four research areas: Conceptions of Normativity, The Historicity of Normative Orders,
Transnational Justice, Democracy and Peace, The Formation of Legal Norms between Nations.
www.normativeorders.net
In co-operation with:
finanziert aus Mitteln des Auswärtigen Amtes (AA)
i
Conference Overview
THURSDAY, 16 JUNE 2011
13.30-15.30
PANEL
PANEL
PANEL
PANEL
PANEL
Panel 1 - Political Practice and
Third World/Feminist
Approaches to International
Institutions
Panel 4 - Building Bridges:
Critical Political Economy
and Postcolonial Theory
Panel 5 - Culture vs. Capitalism:
Postcolonial Emancipations and the
Ambivalences of The Market I
Panel 6Postcolonising
Methodologies I
Panel 11 Secularism, Religion and
Politics: Critical
Interventions I
Casino. 1.802
HoF E.20
RuW 1.101
Casino 1.801
IG 1.314
Panel 6 Postcolonising
Methodologies II
Panel 11 - Secularism,
Religion and Politics:
Critical Interventions II
15.30-16.00
16.00-18.00
Coffee Break
Panel 3 - Transnational Social
Movements and the
Postcolonial Condition
Casino 1.802
16.00-18.00
Panel 9 - Postcolonial
Perspectives on Human
Rights
Panel 5 - Culture vs. Capitalism:
Postcolonial Emancipations and the
Ambivalences of The Market II
HoF E.20
RuW 1.101
The IG-Farben Campus: Its Past and Present.
Guided Tour
Meeting Point: IG-Farben Building, Main Entrance
18.00-18.30
18.30-20.30
20.30-22.00
21.00
Casino 1.801
IG 1.314
Film and Discussion - ‘Biko’s Children’
On the 35th anniversary of the 1976 Soweto Student Uprising
IG 0.201
Coffee Break
Keynote: Patricia Hill Collins
‘Winning Miss World: An Intersectional Analysis of Colorblind Racism’
Casino 823
Reception
Casino 1.801
Philipp Khabo Köpsell – Spoken word performance
Casino 1.802
ii
FRIDAY, 17 JUNE 2011
10.00-12.00
PANEL
PANEL
PANEL
PANEL
Panel 2 - Saving Brown
Women? Deliberating the
“Post” in Post-colonialism
and Post-conflict I
Casino 1.802
Panel 7 - Teaching
Emancipatory Postcolonial
Knowledge I
Panel 16 - Taking Postcolonialism
elsewhere? Post-Soviet
Postcolonialities I
Perspectives on Corruption
and Statehood
10.00-12.00
Casino 1.801
IG 1.314
RuW 1.101
Film, Photo Exhibition, Lecture and Discussion
‘Montañas imaRginales: Aesthetic Reflexions on Urbanity in the Periphery of Lima‘
Hof E.20
12.00-13.30
13.30-15.30
Lunch break
Panel 2 - Saving Brown
Women? Deliberating the
“Post” in Post-colonialism
and Post-conflict II
Casino 1.802
15.30-16.00
16.00-18.00
18.00-18.15
18.15-20.15
Panel 7 - Teaching
Emancipatory Postcolonial
Knowledge II
Panel 16 - Taking Postcolonialism
elsewhere? Post-Soviet
Postcolonialities II
Casino 1.801
IG 1.314
Panel 13 - Revolution
Reconsidered – Slavery,
Enlightenment and the
Haitian Revolution
RuW 1.101
Coffee Break
Thought and the Problem
of Periodization
IG 1.314
16.00-18.00
PANEL
Panel 23 - (Post-)Colonial
Panel 22 - Decolonizing
Panel 19 - Weak States, Failed
Education
States, Developmental States – ‘Development’ and
‘Democratization’ Discourses
Problems and Challenges in
Conceptualising Political
Formations in Postcolonial
Africa
Casino 1.802
Casino 1.801
RUW 1.101
Film and Discussion – ‘Decolonizing the University’
HoF E.20
Coffee Break
‘Frankfurt's Colonial Hangover – A City Tour’
Meeting point: Casino Foyer
iii
Panel 20 - African
Cultural Production in
the Global Economy
HoF E.20
SATURDAY 18 JUNE 2011
10.00-12.00
PANEL
PANEL
PANEL
PANEL
PANEL
PANEL
Panel 8 - Between
Subjection and
Subjectivation:
Postcolonial-QueerFeminist
Perspectives I
Panel 10 Postcolonial Power
and Capitalism –
Critical Approaches to
Contemporary
International
Aid I
Hof E.20
Panel 14 Postcolonial
Perspectives after
Auschwitz I
Panel 17 Representations: The
(Post)colonial ‘Body
Politic’ in Historical
Perspective I
Representations of Urban
Spaces I - Discourses of
the Postcolonial City:
Literary, Language and
Media Representations
Panel 24 - The Politics of
Affect: Relics,
Landscapes, and
Conflicts of the Middle
East
Casino 1.812
IG 1.418
Representations of Urban
Spaces II - Planning and
Regulation
Panel 12 - Transnational
In/Justice in a
Postcolonial World
Casino 1.802
10.00-12.00
Casino 1.801
IG 1.314
Exhibition – ‘New Towns in India‘
IG 0.457
12.00-13.00
13.00-15.00
Lunch break
Panel 8 - Between
Subjection and
Subjectivation:
Postcolonial-QueerFeminist
Perspectives II
Casino 1.802
13.00-15.00
15.00-15.45
15.45-17.30
Panel 10 Postcolonial Power
and Capitalism –
Critical Approaches to
Contemporary
International
Aid II
HoF E.20
Panel 17 Representations: The
(Post)colonial ‘Body
Politic’ in Historical
Perspective II
Panel 14 Postcolonial
Perspectives after
Auschwitz II
Casino 1.812
IG 1.314
Casino 1.801
Film and Discussion – ‘Jahaji Music: India in the Caribbean’
IG 0.251
Coffee Break
Keynote: Dipesh Chakrabarty
‘History and the Time of the Present’
Casino 1.801
iv
IG 1.418
Conference Program
THURSDAY 16TH JUNE 2011
12.00-13.00
Registration (Casino Foyer)
13.00-13.30
Welcome Remarks (Casino 823)
Rainer Forst [Cluster of Excellence “Formation of Normative Orders”]
Nikita Dhawan [Frankfurt Research Center for Postcolonial Studies]
13.30-15.30
Parallel Panel Sessions (Panels 1, 4, 5, 6 & 11)
Panel 1 - Political Practice and Third World/Feminist Approaches to International Institutions
(Cas. 1.802)
Panel Convenors: Katja Freistein/Philip Liste
Fanon’s Veiled Woman as an Affirmation of Feminism and a Critique of Colonialism
Oprarah Akagbulem T., Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria
The Samin’s Feminist Movement and Postcolonial Relation in Indonesia
Munawir Aziz, Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia
Inventing Sovereignty within the Colonial Encounter: Re-Writing the History of International (Criminal)
Law in the Context of European Imperialism
Sinja Graf, Cornell University, USA
Panel 4 - Building Bridges: Critical Political Economy and Postcolonial Theory
(HoF E.20)
Panel Convenors: Simone Claar/Nikolai Huke
Not a Trojan Horse: Provincializing The Scale Debate in the Political Economy of Globalisation
Enrique Martino Martin, Humboldt-University, Berlin, Germany
The Regulation of Globalising Reproductive Labour Markets
Liberty Lopez Chee, National University of Singapore
Comparative Political Economy and Eurocentrism: A Postcolonial Critique of the Varieties of
Capitalism Approach
Matthias Ebenau, School of Politics & IR, Queen Mary, University of London
Towards a Critical Theory of the Postcolonial Condition under Global Political Economy
Rationality, Hegemony and Political Encounters
Naveen Kanalu, Ecole normale supérieure, Paris, France
v
Panel 5 - Culture vs. Capitalism: Postcolonial Emancipations and the Ambivalences of The Market I
(RuW 1.101)
Panel Convenor: Katja Rieck
Transnational Polyvocality: Rural Chilean Women and the ‘Megamachine’ of Neoliberalism
Fernanda Glaser, SUNY Buffalo, New York
The Market Value of Culture in Wadi Araba
Annemarie Vermaelen, Ghent University, Belgium
Unveiling Social Business: A Pragmatic Weapon of Colonial Enslavement
Nazmus Sakib, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
Cultural Industries in the Global South. Towards Modernization or Modernities?
Christiaan M. De Beukelaer, University of Warwick, Great Britain
Panel 6 - Postcolonising Methodologies I
(Casino 1.801)
Panel Convenors: Joshua Kwesi Aikins/Nadine Golly/María Teresa Herrera Vivar
Decolonising Participant Observation. Writing one’s Privilege – Some Remarks on the Ongoing ‘Crisis
of Representation’
Vanessa Eileen Thompson & Harpreet Cholia, University of Frankfurt, Germany
Towards an Epistemology of Postcolonial Knowledge Production?
Mariam Popal, University of Freiburg, Germany
Critical Epistemological Inquiry and the Insider/Outsider Dichotomy
Anaheed Al-Hardan, University of Dublin, Ireland
Positioning, Post-Colonial Approaches and Decolonizing Methodology through Global Hip-Hop
Miye Nadya Tom, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Panel 11 - Secularism, Religion and Politics: Critical Interventions I
(IG 1.314)
Panel Convenor: Zubair Ahmad
The State of Secularism and the Ambivalence of Rule: Tales from South Africa
Annie Leatt, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Beyond the Universalisms of Islam and Secularism: the Emergence of a Western-Islamic Public Sphere
Dilyana Mincheva, Trent University, Canada
vi
Examining the Operations of ‘Religion’ and ‘the Secular’. Insights from Postcolonial and
Critical Scholarship for the Sociology of Religion
Nadia Fadil, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Interrogating Music of Tamil Nadu Using Religion-Secular Binary
Rajalakshmi Nadadur Kannan, University of Sterling, Scotland
Discussant: José Casanova, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown
University, Washington, D.C., USA
Permanent Exhibition: “I remember (2010-11)”
Pastel crayon and chalkboard paint on wooden board
Chris Campe
(Casino first floor)
15.30-16.00
Coffee Break
16.00-18.00
Parallel Panel Sessions (Panels 3, 5, 6, 9, 11)
Panel 3 - Transnational Social Movements and the Postcolonial Condition
(Casino 1.802)
Panel Convenor: Elisabeth Fink
Ethos of Liberation contra Politics of Liberalism: A Foundation for Anti-Slavery and Anti-Capitalist
Movements?
KŶĚƎĞũ>ĄŶƐŬǉ͕ĞŶƚĞƌŽĨ'ůŽďĂů^ƚƵĚŝĞƐ͕ŚĂƌůĞƐhŶŝǀĞƌƐŝƚǇ͕Wrague, Czech Republic
Critical Review of Transnational Social Movements Approach and the Diaspora
Luxshi Vimalarajah, Berghof Peace Support, Berlin, Germany
Structures of Coloniality and Transnational Civil Society in Costa Rica: Limits to Postcolonial
Imaginations
Johanna Leinius, University of Helsinki, Finland
Postcolonial Perspectives on Social Movements: A Study of the ‘Movement of Landless Rural Workers’
and the Zapatistas
Júlia Figueredo Benzaquen, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Panel 5 - Culture vs. Capitalism: Postcolonial Emancipations and the Ambivalences of The Market II
(RuW 1.101)
Panel Convenor: Katja Rieck
Post-colonizing Hospitality: Cycling the Returning Indian Migrant Guest in a Global Context
Malasree Neepa Acharya, Institute for European Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
vii
Food and Modernity
Stefan Stautner, Johannes-Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany
Colonising Sexualities: Operation of the Market, New Regimes of Gender and Popular Culture
Samuel Nowak, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
Good Girls Gone Gaga: Gender, Race and Sex Represented through Women in Pop Music
Jeannette Bello Mota, Universidad de Vigo, Spain
Panel 6 - Postcolonising Methodologies II
(Casino 1.801)
Panel Convenors: Joshua Kwesi Aikins/Nadine Golly/María Teresa Herrera Vivar
Decolonizing University Assessment. Explorations in Applied Postcolonial Anthropology
Leonie Bellina, University of San Francisco, USA
Decolonizing the Social Sciences and the Humanities
Lleshi Sokol, Central European University Budapest, Hungary
Studying Borderlands: the Political Dimension of Oral History Research
Olga Sasukevich, University of Greifswald, Germany
Panel 9 - Postcolonial Perspectives on Human Rights
(HoF E.20)
Panel Convenors: Olivia Rutazibwa/Eva Georg/Aylin Zafer
The Other Side of the Story. Human Rights, Race and Social Struggle from a Historical Transatlantic
Perspective
:ƵůŝĂ^ƵĄƌĞǌ<ƌĂďďĞ͕ Roskilde University, Denmark
Human Rights in the Perspective of Decolonizing Knowledge
Ana Claudia Tavares, Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Of Right between the 'Particular' and the 'Universal': the Case of sati
Sourav Kargupta, Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India
Human Rights Discourse and Undocumented Migration in the Context of Europeanization: Towards a
Postcolonial Rearticulation
Chenchen Zhang, LUISS University of Rome, Italy
viii
Panel 11 - Secularism, Religion and Politics: Critical Interventions II
(IG 1.314)
Panel Convenor: Zubair Ahmad
Fanon’s Intellectual Horizons on the Religion in Africa
Federico Settler, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Enduring Orientalism: The Concepts of Religion and Secularisation in Development Support
Stephanie Garling, University Erlangen-Nuernberg, Germany
‘German Moral Whiteness’- An Attempt to Theoretically Account for ‘Normative Superiority’
Anna-Esther Younes, Geneva University, Switzerland
Secularism or Religion-Based Tolerance? Two Conflicting Views on Politics and Religion in Postcolonial
India
Ulrike Spohn, Münster University, Germany
Film and Discussion - “Biko’s Children”
On the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the 1976 Soweto Student Uprising
Vuyisa ‘Breeze’ Yoko
(IG 0.201)
16.00 – 18.00 “The IG-Farben Campus: Its Past and Present.” Guided Tour (organized by
“Students Initiative at IG Farben Campus”)
Meeting Point: IG-Farben Building, Main entrance
18.00-18.30
Coffee Break
18.30-20.30
Keynote: Patricia Hill Collins (Casino 823)
Winning Miss World: An Intersectional Analysis of Colorblind Racism
20.30-22.00
Reception (Casino 1.801)
21.00
Philipp Khabo Köpsell – Spoken word performance (Casino 1.802)
ix
FRIDAY 17TH JUNE 2011
10.00-12.00
Parallel Panel Sessions (Panels 2, 7, 16 & 18)
Panel 2 - Saving Brown Women? Deliberating the “Post” in Post-colonialism and Post-conflict I
(Casino 1.802)
Panel Convenors: Rirhandu Mageza-Barthel/ Archana Krishnamurthy
Nationalism and Female Negotiation: the “Post-contact” Disconnection in Destination Biafra
Ofure Odede Maria Aito, Redeemer’s University, Mowe, Nigeria
Feminist Collaboration in the Context of Intersectional Discrimination and Post-war Violence –
Possibilities and Challenges
Eva Kalny, University of Hanover, Germany
Did LMS White Women Missionaries save Brown “Nadar” Women?: Triple Colonization of Bible
Women of South Travancore in 19th Century
Jayachitra Lalitha, Serampore University, India
Panel 7 - Teaching Emancipatory Postcolonial Knowledge I
(Casino 1.801)
Panel Convenors: Nadine Golly/Joanna James
Postcolonial Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: Experiences of Marginalized Students in Two
Indian Universities
Bharat Chandra Rout, National University of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi,
India
Teaching Emancipatory Post-Colonial Knowledge: An African University Teacher’s Experience
Nnanna Onuoha Arukwe, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria
Challenging Swedish Exceptionalism? Teaching while Black
Ylva Habel, Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden
Raising Mãori Student Achievement
Cadence Kaumoana, Te Awamutu, New Zealand
Panel 16 - Taking Postcolonialism elsewhere? Post-Soviet Postcolonialities I
(IG 1.314)
Panel Convenor: Alexander Vorbrugg
‘The Working Woman from Orient is not the Voiceless Slave Anymore’ – ‘Other’ Women and Soviet
Politics of Emancipation and Culturalization in the 1920-1930s (Volga-Ural region)
Yulia Gradskova, Södertörn University, Sweden
x
Soviet Colonialism? Contesting Visions of the Past in Post-Soviet Central Asia
Moritz Florin, Hamburg University, Germany
Post-Soviet Dynamics of Language in Azerbaijan: Challenges of Postcolonial Legacy in a Changing
Society
Gokhan Alper Ataser & Leyla Sayfutdinova, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey
Communism, Capitalism and Postcolonial Perspectives: Tracing Transition and Capital Displacements
in Local Communities of Central and Eastern Europe
DŝųŽƐǌDŝƐǌĐǌǇŷƐŬŝ͕&ĂĐƵůƚǇŽĨ^ŽĐŝŽůŽŐǇ͕:ĂŐŝĞůůŽŶŝĂn University Poland
Panel 18 - Postcolonial Perspectives on Corruption and Statehood
(RuW 1.101)
Panel Convenor: Philip Zehmisch
Continuity and Adaptation in Corruption Mechanisms in Post-Socialist Romania
Ivana Greti-/ƵůŝĂ͕hŶŝǀĞƌƐŝƚĂƚĞĂĂďĞƔ-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Informal Practices and the Access to Adequate Housing for the Urban Poor. The case of Bangalore,
India
Swetha Rao Dhananka, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Corruption is Good! Understanding Postcolonial State Formation beyond the European Paradigm
Peter Finkenbusch & Markus-Michael Müller, Free University Berlin/Leipzig University, Germany
Postcolonial Perspective on Corruption and Statehood – A look into Fiji as a State
Eroni Duaibe, Ravenshaw University, Cuttack, India
Film, Photo Exhibition, Lecture and Discussion - ‘Montañas imaRginales: Aesthetic Reflexions on
Urbanity in the Periphery of Lima‘
Karla Villavicencio
(Hof E.20)
12.00-13.30
Lunch break
13.30-15.30
Parallel Panel Sessions (Panels 2, 7, 13, 16, 20)
Panel 2 - Saving Brown Women? Deliberating the “Post” in Post-colonialism and Post-conflict II
(Casino 1.802)
Panel Convenors: Rirhandu Mageza-Barthel/Archana Krishnamurthy
Post What? Post Who? Post Where? Post How? Gendered and Sexualised Epistemic Violence in the
‘War on Terror’
Claudia Brunner, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria
xi
Gendered Counterinsurgency
Keally McBride & Annick T.R. Wibben, University of San Francisco, USA
Taking the “Post”-Conflict to its Neo-Imperial Centre: Liberal Multiculturalism, Neo-Imperialism and
Global Feminism
Liljana Burcar, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Panel 7 - Teaching Emancipatory Postcolonial Knowledge II
(Casino 1.801)
Panel Convenors: Nadine Golly/Joanna James
The Frame of Epistemological Innovation in Legal Education in India is the Reconditioning of Colonial
Past: Some Observations and Case Studies
Sanjay Singh, Ram Manohar Lohia National Law University, Lucknow, India
To Transform Education and Make it More Inclusive or Need for Questioning, Rethinking and
Reinventing Hegemonic Privileges?
Joyce Kemuma, Högskolan Dalarna, Sweden
The Challenges of Constructing Autonomous Social Sciences in the South: The African Experience and
the Way Forward
Gordon Onyango Omenya, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya
Concluding panel remarks with all panelists (Section I and II) from panel „Teaching Emancipatory
Postcolonial Knowledge“
Panel 13 - Revolution Reconsidered – Slavery, Enlightenment and the Haitian Revolution
(RuW 1.101)
Panel Convenor: Jeanette Ehrmann
‘Couté la Liberté dan coeur à nous’: The Slaves' Agency in Saint-Domingue's Revolution (1791-1801)
Antonio Jesús Pinto Tortosa, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Madrid, Spain
The Haitian Revolution and Spectres of Transatlantic Self-Emancipation
Raphael Hörmann, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany
Sacred Transvestism: Costume and Gender in the Visual Culture of Haitian Vodou
Charlotte Hammond, Royal Holloway, University of London, Great Britain
Black Atlantic’s Proteus: Pauline Melville’s Fiction, Enlightenment and the Counterculture of
Modernity
Steffen Klävers, Georg-August-University Göttingen, Germany
xii
Panel 16 - Taking Postcolonialism elsewhere? Post-Soviet Postcolonialities II
(IG 1.314)
Panel Convenor: Alexander Vorbrugg
Becoming Transnational between Post-Soviet and Post-Colonial: Narrations of Polish Female Migrants
in the West
Paula Pustulka, Bangor University, Great Britain
Is the ‘Post’ in Post-Soviet the ‘Post’ in Post-colonial? Reading David Edgar’s ‘Pentecost’
Avishek Ganguly, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, USA
Post-Soviet Women Intellectuals: The ‘Decolonial Options’ of Maria Arbatova and Madina Tlostanova
Ksenia Robbe, Giessen University, Germany
Panel 20 - African Cultural Production in the Global Economy
(HoF E.20)
Panel Convenor: Lotte Arndt
La recherche d’une authenticité culturelle et la quête identitaire dans les personnages féminins de Ken
Bugul et Kangni Alem
Eva Dorn & Aminata Mbaye, Universités Michel de Montaigne, Bordeaux 3, France; Frankfurt
University, Germany/ École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France; University of
Bayreuth, Germany
Bill Kouélany en marge de la Francophonie – L'émergence d'une littérature de subversion?
Sarah Burnautzki, University of Heidelberg, Germany/ École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales,
Paris, France
15.30-16.00
Coffee Break
16.00-18.00
Parallel Panel Sessions (Panels 15, 19, 22, 23)
Panel 15 - Postcolonial Thought and the Problem of Periodization
(IG 1.314)
Panel Convenor: Felix Schürmann
The Problem of Periodization in Postcolonial Thought: Disrupting the 'Unified' Colonizer in Colonial
Discourse
Gitika Gupta, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Questioning the Post-colonial: Post-orientalist Genealogies of British Multiculturalism
Zaki Nahaboo, Open University, London, Great Britain
Abdallah Laroui’s Concept of Historicism, Modernity and the Times of History
Nils Riecken, Free University Berlin, Germany
xiii
Panel 19 - Weak States, Failed States, Developmental States – Problems and Challenges in
Conceptualising Political Formations in Postcolonial Africa
(RUW 1.101)
Panel Convenor: Anna Krämer
The Otherness and the Reinforcement of Self in “Fragile States” Discourse: the Violence of Calling
Names
Isabel Rocha de Siqueira, King’s College, London, Great Britain
State Reconstruction in Post-conflict Africa: The Relevance of Ake’s Political Thought
Jeremiah O. Arowosegbe, University of Ibadan, Nigeria/ University of the Western Cape, South Africa
Rethinking Political Modernity in Africa: a Phenomenological Approach
Luc Ngowet, University Paris VII, France
Discussant: Katharina Lenner, Free University Berlin, Germany
Panel 22 - Decolonizing ‘Development’ and ‘Democratization’ Discourses
(Casino 1.801)
Panel Convenors: Beatriz Junqueira Lage Carbone/Mirjam Tutzer
The Power of Norms. Normative (Counter)-Hegemony within EU-Africa Relations
Franziska Mueller, Technical University Darmstadt, Germany
De-colonising the EU’s Democratisation Policy through the Maghreb Periphery
Bohdana Dimitrovova, College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium
On the Peripheral Ambivalence of Culture and Economy
Stefan Klein, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
Panel 23 - (Post-)Colonial Education
(Casino 1.802)
Panel Convenors: Susanne Becker/Archana Krishnamurthy
A Postcolonial Approach to the Internationalisation of Higher Education
Eva Hartmann, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Integration, Nation and Education – Postcolonial Questioning of an Entanglement by Means of a
Historical Perspective on a Current Discourse
Selma Haupt, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany
Disappearing Certitudes – About the Colonial Legacy in Education, (Post-) Colonial Knowledge
Structures and Counter-Hegemonic Struggles in Burkina Faso
Marietta Mayrhofer-ĞĄŬ͕hŶŝǀĞƌƐŝƚǇŽĨsŝĞŶŶĂ͕ƵƐƚƌŝĂ
A Course on Colonial Attitude and Representations
xiv
Ozlem Basak, Goldsmiths, University of London, Great Britain
Film and Discussion – ‘Decolonizing the University’
(HoF E.20)
18.00-18.15
Coffee Break
18:15-20:15
“Frankfurt's Colonial Hangover – A City Tour” (organized by “frankfurtpostkolonial”), Meeting point: Casino Foyer
SATURDAY 18TH JUNE 2011
10.00-12.00
Parallel Panel Sessions (Panels 8, 10, 14, 17, 21 & 24)
Panel 8 - Between Subjection and Subjectivation: Postcolonial-Queer-Feminist Perspectives I
(Casino 1.802)
Panel Convenors: Jasmin Dean/Astride Velho
The Disobedient Wife, and other Tales: Ghanaian Women During Decolonization
Nikki Owusu Yeboah, Northwestern University, Chicago, USA
From Body-Object to Body-Subject: the Subjectivation of the Female Body in Assia Djebar’s Novels
Hamdi Houda, University of Annaba, Algeria
Possession, Obsession and Consumption of the Body: from Colonial Narratives to Contemporary
Representations
Angelica Pesarini, University of Leeds, Britain
Voices from the Borderlands: Between Creativity and Frustration
Duygu Gürsel & Jael Vizcarra, Humboldt-University, Berlin, Germany
Panel 10 - Postcolonial Power and Capitalism – Critical Approaches to Contemporary International
Aid I
(Hof E.20)
Panel Convenors: Olivia Rutazibwa / Kai Koddenbrock
Owning Aid Effectiveness: Subversive Appropriation or Succumbing to Dominant Discourses?
Sonja Killoran-McKibbin, York University, Toronto, Canada
Developmental Aid and Civil Activism: Inseparable Concomitants or Irreconcilable Contenders?
Bhakti Deodhar, University of Leipzig, Germany/University of Wroclaw, Poland
Initiatives Africaines et Violence Symbolique du Pouvoir Postcolonial
Amzat Boukari-Yabara, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France
xv
A Neo-racism without Races
Alaíde Vences Estudillo, Universidad de las Américas Puebla, Mexico
Discussant: Aram Ziai, Hamburg University, Germany
Panel 14 - Postcolonial Perspectives after Auschwitz I
(Casino 1.801)
Panel Convenors: Ulrike Hamann/Cigdem Inan
Politicizing the Connections between US-American White Supremacy and German Anti-Semitism: The
Southern Negro Youth Congress as an Example of Anti-racist Analysis and Organizing in the 1940s in
the US
Noemi Yoko Molitor, Emory University, Atlanta, USA
Black Germans in National Socialist Germany
Rosa Fava, University of Hamburg, Germany
(Post)colonial ‘Adaptations’ of the Holocaust in Anita Desai’s ‘Baumgartner’s Bombay‘
Isabelle Hesse, University of York, Great Britain
“Near Easterners” and “Orientals”: On Anthropological and Archaeological Cartographies of the Near
East and its Impact on Modern Anti-Semitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
Felix Wiedemann, Free University Berlin, Germany
Panel 17 - Representations: The (Post)colonial ‘Body Politic’ in Historical Perspective I
(IG 1.314)
Panel Convenor: Verena Steller
Transgressing Imaginations of the Nation-State in British West Africa
Rouven Kunstmann, Oxford, Great Britain
The Nation, the State and Political Culture in ‚Native’ American Society
Jessica Knuff, University of South Carolina, USA
Historical Perspectives on Ethical and Political Subjectification of the Body Politic in India: Terrorism
and Non-Violence as Forms of Rupture of Colonial Normative Order
Orazio Irrerra, Université Paris VII-Denis Diderot, France
Colonizing the Biopolitics of Reproduction in Israel-Palestine
Sigrid Vertommen, Ghent University, Belgium
xvi
Panel 21 - Postcolonial Representations of Urban Spaces I - Discourses of the Postcolonial City:
Literary, Language and Media Representations
(Casino 1.812)
Panel Convenor: Andrea Gremels
Orient or the Centre of Englishness? The Image of London’s East End in Contemporary Art and
Literature
Karolina Kolenda, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
Language and the Postcolonial City: The Case of Salman Rushdie
Stuti Khanna, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India
Gendered and Ethnicized Subject Representations in Urban Spaces in Contemporary British Fiction
Sala Rahikkala, University of Oulu, Finland
Discussant: Andrea Gremels, Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany
Panel 24 - The Politics of Affect: Relics, Landscapes, and Conflicts of the Middle East
(IG 1.418)
Panel Convenor: E. Efe Cakmak
Words and Fireworks
E. Efe Cakmak, Sciences-Po, Paris & Gutenberg University, Mainz
A Landscape of War
Munira Khayyat, Columbia University, New York, USA
Egypt at the Linguistic Impasse of the Romantic Imagination: Animality, Melancholia, and Necrophilia
in Balzac, Vigny, and Gautier
Burcu Gürsel, Free University Berlin, Germany
The Aftermath of Memory in Lebanon
Yasmine K. Cakmak, Columbia University, New York, USA
Workshop – ‘New Towns in India‘
(IG 0.457)
12.00-13.00
Lunch break
xvii
13.00-15.00
Parallel Panel Sessions (Panels 8, 10, 12, 14, 17 & 21)
Panel 8 - Between Subjection and Subjectivation: Postcolonial-Queer-Feminist Perspectives II
(1.802)
Panel Convenors: Jasmin Dean/María Teresa Herrera Vivar
Reflections on Contemporary Class Struggles in Africa and Meanings for Queer Activism
Lyn Ossome, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
Pink Nights - The Queer Night-Club Culture in India and Music as the Site of Performance
Ankush Gupta, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
TBA
Panel 10 - Postcolonial Power and Capitalism – Critical Approaches to Contemporary International
Aid II
(HoF E.20)
Panel Convenors: Olivia Rutazibwa /Kai Koddenbrock
Secular Missionaries and Epistemic Power
Uchenna Okeja, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
Looking for the Relevant Counterfactual
Tomas Profant, University of Vienna, Austria
Regional Interventions and Universal Solutions: a Question of Aid?
Stefanie Wodrig, Hamburg University, Germany
The Digital Bridge: South-South Cooperation, India’s Emergent Aid Politics, and the Anthropological
Futures of Global e-Health Presences
Vincent Duclos, Université de Montréal, Canada
Discussant: Meera Sabaratnam, London School of Economics, Great Britain
Panel 12 - Transnational In/Justice in a Postcolonial World
(IG 1.418)
Panel Convenor: Franziska Dübgen
African Conception of Justice And The Colonial Experience: Limitations And Possibilities
Joseph C. A. Agbakoba, University of Nigeria
Global Citizenship Education – a Project of Social Justice or Imperialism?
Shelane Jorgenson, University of Alberta, Canada
xviii
Beyond Legal Justice: The Intricacies of Post-Conflict Truth and Reconciliation Mechanisms in The
Central African Great Lakes Region
Stanislas Bigirimana, University of Heidelberg, Germany
Justice and Injustice of Democracy Promotion
Dorothea Gädecke, Frankfurt University, Germany
Panel 14 - Postcolonial Perspectives after Auschwitz II
(Casino 1.801)
Panel Convenors: Ulrike Hamann/Cigdem Inan
Moderation: Liliana Feierstein, Heidelberg University, Germany
‚Wir sind dafür, die Sache in die Länge zu ziehen‘. Debating and Contesting Continuities and Ruptures
of Colonial Fascist and Nazi Practices in Austria
ĚƵĂƌĚ&ƌĞƵĚŵĂŶŶΘ>ŝŶĂŽŬƵǌŽǀŝđ͕ŬĂĚĞŵŝĞĚĞƌ<ƺŶƐƚĞ͕sŝĞŶŶĂ͕ƵƐƚƌŝĂ
Colonialism versus Shoah: The Color of Memory
Christelle Gomis, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France
A Post-Colonial Deconstruction of "German Exceptionalism"
Cengiz Barskanmaz, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany
"We are the new Jews". The Role of Turkish Immigrants in the German Erinnerungskultur
Defne Kadioglu, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey
Panel 17 - Representations: The (Post)colonial ‘Body Politic’ in Historical Perspective II
(IG 1.314)
Panel Convenor: Verena Steller
The Beginning of Education of Urban Women in Colonial United Provinces: Re-negotiating Cultural
Hegemonies in a Colonial- Post-Colonial Constellation
Pryamvada Teewani, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
What Gender Does the New Conception of the Nation in Latin America Entail?
Tania Mancheno, Hamburg University, Germany
Beyond Stasis: Kinetic Political Communities and the National Imaginary in Johannesburg
Samid Suliman, University of Queensland, Australia
Pior-ness, In-sidedness and Out-sidedness: Colour-assignment at the Foundation of the Settler BodyPolitic
Gaia Giuliani, University of Bologna, Italy/University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
xix
Panel 21 - Postcolonial Representations of Urban Spaces II - Planning and Regulation
(Casino 1.812)
Panel Convenor: Andrea Gremels
The Signs of Luanda: the City and the Politics of Textuality
Caio Simoes de Araujo, Universidade de São Paolo, Brazil
Negotiating Hybridity in the ‘New’ Indian City
Aditya Mohanty, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India
The Good, the Bad, the Ugly: Colonial Linkages and Postcolonial Ailments of African Muslim
Cityscapes
Aliyu Barau, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
Discussant: Johanna Hoerning, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
Film and Discussion – ‘Jahaji Music: India in the Caribbean’
Tejaswini Niranjana
(IG 0.251)
15.00-15.45
Coffee Break
15.45-17.30
Keynote: Dipesh Chakrabarty (Casino 1.801)
History and the Time of the Present
- End of Conference-
xx
Abstracts
PANEL 1
Political Practice and Third World/Feminist Approaches to
International Institutions
Convenors:
Katja Freistein/Philip Liste
While the two disciplines of IR and International Legal Scholarship (ILS) have begun to look for new
impulses from each other, recent “critical” debates in both fields seem to share common theoretical
and methodological points of reference. Respectively, they refer to law/international institutions in a
way that emphasizes what is called “the political.” Politically speaking, one could also argue that
these approaches have been upholding some kind of Western, male dominated hegemony. Arguing
in a tradition of post-colonialism and feminism, scholars in ILS and IR have criticized this and tried to
introduce non-Western/feminist thought into the debate. We aim to build on the parallels observed
in both fields and look for possible convergences within a framework of interdisciplinary thinking,
aiming for a new critical perspective. One of the playgrounds could be international organizations
where this hegemony has been tangible.
The Panel seeks to bring together researchers from International Law and interpretive International
Relations with scholars that focus on Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) and/or
Feminist legal scholars. Do Third World/Feminist positions go beyond critical positions already
present within the debates in IR? And how are these positions articulated within the discursive
arenas of international organizations? The panel poses the question to what degree specific Third
World/Feminist approaches of international law/international institutions have emerged, whether
regional specificities can be identified in this context and to what extent Third World/Feminist
approaches may have begun to shape the politics of international law and of international
institutions at the global level.
Fanon’s Veiled Woman
as an Affirmation of Feminism and a Critique of Colonialism
Oparah Akagbulem T.
Feminist political theorists question what has come to be regarded as the masculinist posture of
Frantz Fanon in his many writings. And they ask whether Fanon’s theories can provide a model for
women’s emancipation. This follows a strange union thought to exist in the twentieth-century
between feminism and black liberation politics, especially with regards to the black male
revolutionaries such as Fanon himself, and many others. Sexism, heterosexism, misogyny,
homophobia are said to be some marked characteristics and realities in the life and thought of many
black and Third World male thinkers and/or radicals. A chapter of Fanon’s work A Dying Colonialism
entitled “Algeria Unveiled” describes the central role unveiled Arab Algerian women play in counterterrorist insurgent activities on behalf of colonized subjects fighting against French colonialism during
the Algerian Revolution. Certain feminist critiques present Fanon, among other ways, as denying the
agency of women, since their action could only spring from the activities of men and aim at serving
only instrumental values. Fanon, therefore, in his many writings, has been seen as possessing, among
many other qualities, patriarchal and sexist tendencies. Thus, firming up the suspicion that
1
patriarchal ideology work to show how masculinity within this ideology is attempting to put up an air
of universality, in contrast to femininity used as its mere projection. Fanon’s Algeria presents a
patriarchal society, so the argument goes. Therefore, the woman’s wearing of the veil, an ostensible
symbol of her allegiance to the Islamic culture in the face of French colonialism, has been interpreted
severally to be imbued with patriarchal essence(s), in which case, Fanon’s insistence on it is
consequently viewed as a statement contrary to the aspirations of free woman and to certain extent
against liberal tendencies ironically projected by French colonialism. Unveiling the woman publicly
might be a “visible evolution” but the veil also has been given an added meaning through the
discourse of colonialism and Islam that colonialism and those sympathetic to it had failed to address.
This meaning is what prompts Fanon to insist that the veil should remain a veritable part of the
Algerian woman contrary to the bid of the French to unveil her.
Oparah, Akagbulem T. teaches philosophy at the Department of Philosophy of Science and
Technology, Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria. He holds B.A. and M.A.
degrees of the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria. He is currently developing a Ph.D. proposal
bothering on Frantz Fanon conception of violence as a model for the violence of the militant groups
in the Nigerian Niger-Delta region. His interests are in philosophy of gender, socio-political
philosophy, cultural philosophy, metaphysics and philosophy of language.
The Samin’s feminist movement and postcolonial relation in Indonesia
Munawir Aziz
The Samin movement as important cultural movement in Indonesian post-colonial discourse,
especially in Javanese local culture. Furthermore, the Samin’s movement not only as response to
colonialism when Dutch emphasized their political power in Indonesia, but to find moral and ethical
values from indigenous culture in coastal Java area. In earlier, Samin Surasentika is founding-father
this movement, factually as strength family from Mataram Kingdom in Javanese history of political
power. Surantika, campaigned to farmer society in grassroot level to avoid power hegemony of
colonialism, especially from VOC and Dutch goverment (Benda, 1987). Much more farmers following
Surantika campaigned to rejected colonialism, but not use violence strategy. Samin community use
unique strategy from their cultural modal; such as language strategy and integrated community with
cultural values. So, Samin community used cultural values as basis power to avoid power hegemony
from Dutch as colonial regime.
Surely, in historical noted, the Samin movement as important cultural pattern to response
colonialism, with basis power from cultural values, particularly moral goodness, ethical values, and
language strategy. The Samin’s movement not only dominated with man as founding to build basis
values and struggled in frontier, but also open opportunity to woman in their power community.
Nevertheless Samin’s woman to balancing movement, but to learned young generations in their
community. In other hand, the Samin’s woman is also contributed to hold cultural values as
important element in their community. The Samin movement is also strength to guard surround as
their earth, occasionaly in Samin’s community understanding that earth as mother to give
somethings to continuing their life in our world. The Samin’s movement in Indonesian history, in
postcolonial disourse as factual history to analyse colonialism in third world, and as starting point to
view how ‘west seems east’, (Said, 1979) and other mind how east responses to colonialism regime
among 19th and 20th century.
2
The Samin’s feminist discourse as alternative perspective to analyse postcolonial approaches in third
world, especially using feminist theoretical framework. So, this research want to find, explain and
analyse about the Samin’s feminist movement and values in third world at post-colonial era, as well
as how postcolonial theories responses many aspects in feminist movement in third world. This
research contribute to analyse postcolonial theories in feminist discourse in third world. This
research proposal to open mind about postcolonial perspective, especially in thirdworld and
international relation.
Munawir Aziz, researcher in Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies (CRCS), Gadjah Mada
University in Indonesia. Munawir Aziz is interested in research about the postcolonial, local culture,
and religious phenomena, especially identity and power relations. Publications include essays and
research papers in Tashwirul Afkar (Lakpesdam-Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesia), Relief (University of
Gadjah Mada), and in several newspapers in Indonesia and the broader Southeast Asian area.
Inventing Sovereignty within the Colonial Encounter: Re-Writing the History
of International (Criminal) Law in the Context of European Imperialism
Sinja Graf
Mainstream scholarship narrates the political history of International Law (IL) as a story set within
the relations amongst European nation-states. Colonialism and imperialism are presented as a
marginal subplot, the violence of which was terminally erased with the formal completion of decolonization. This historical moment is in turn presented as the point in time in which so called Third
World states first enter the realm of IL as a system of legal regulation between equal sovereigns.
This essay contests this narrative by arguing that, historically, the colonial encounter between
European and non-European powers has always been at the heart of IL's conceptual formation.
Specifically, the argument holds that IL and its founding doctrine of sovereignty have been
constitutively shaped by the relations between European and non-European entities. Seen through
this lens, European imperialism and colonialism move from the periphery to the center of the
political history and the academic study of the IL discipline.
Methodologically, the argument embraces an interstitial perspective on the history of sovereignty,
which locates the concept's origins within the colonizing relations between Europeans and nonEuropeans. The defusionist approach is refuted, which holds that the sovereignty doctrine was a
result of inter-European political relations and consequently spread, ready-made, around the world.
Empirically, the theoretical argument is elaborated by investigating the central intertwinement of
colonialism/imperialism and the legal discourse of sovereignty within the 16th/17th natural law
paradigm, 19th century positivism, and 20th/21st century TWAIL literature and critical legal scholarship
that retells the story of IL's history and sovereignty along the lines of its political violence and
constitutive exclusions. This illustration includes an analysis of the current reworking of Third World
sovereignty within scholarly and political writing on the Responsibility to Protect.
The essay closes with suggestions on how to apply the essay's findings to crafting an imperial history
of international criminal law (ICL) that is capable of illuminating the recent proliferation of ICL's
norms and institutions in terms of their historically hegemonic content and their continuing effect on
structuring international politico-legal relations.
3
Sinja Graf is a PhD student at the Government Department of Cornell University (2008 – 2013). She
holds an MA in International Law and Political Theory (expected October 2011) and a diploma in
political science ( Free University of Berlin). Her research Interests include post-colonial politics,
global justice and human rights, laws of war and humanitarianism, modern Western political theory,
ideology critique, comparative modernities, language and politics. The research for her dissertation is
about the imperial history of international criminal law, international law and colonialism in early
modern, modern and contemporary political theory.
4
PANEL 2
Saving Brown Women? Deliberating
Post-Colonialism and Post-Conflict
the
Convenors:
Rirhandu Mageza-Barthel/Aki (Archana) Krishnamurthy
“Post”
in
“Saving Brown Women” has been instrumentalized as the proverbial battle cry in various instances of
past as well as current North-South relations as a justification for political projects of domination and
political intervention. Tragically, as prominent postcolonial feminists have determined, one could
even suggest that the irony of the Third World woman’s position lies therein that her rescue seems
to legitimize conquest. Claiming their women “back” has conversely become the rallying ground for
many nationalist movements. At the same time, the Third World woman has also become the
ideological battlefield on whose body colonial and local patriarchies have struggled for influence. The
image of white (wo)men saving brown women continues to appear in mass campaigns and the mass
media. These “rescue narratives” are strongly juxtaposed to those accusations of non-intervention.
The most pertinent similarities between postcolonial and postconflict contexts lies therein that both
contexts are prone to – if not distinguished by – normative and military interventions. Postcolonial
feminists conclude that the “post” in postcolonial by no means represents an end of the effects of
colonialism in postcolonial contexts, just as feminist peace scholars assert that due to the
renegotiation of gendered power relations in postconflict processes a continuity needs to be drawn
between the ante- and post bellum periods. In this interdisciplinary panel, we seek to establish a
dialogue between these two perspectives, which oftentimes are read parallel to each other, by
discussing central issues of postconflict contexts drawing on postcolonial feminist insights.
In order to address these issues the panel is divided into two sessions. A first session focuses on the
multiple possibilities of agency and/or complicity of women in different contexts and periods of
(post-)conflict and (post-)colonial processes. Some of the questions under discussion here are: Under
which circumstances do women occupy what type of agency? And how is this agency linked to
gendered and militarized settings? What are possible forms of solidarity with women in the Global
South taking into account global and local power structures?
In a second session the analysis will center on the “War on Terror” as a very current illustration,
which invites us to deliberate the “post” in post-colonial and link it with feminist conflict analyses. In
the discussion, women’s bodies as sites of struggle between different patriarchies become pertinent.
Amongst other things, we turn to colonial legacies in recent discourses and military action in order to
gain more insight into how international gendered socio-economic inequalities interact with each
other and serve as a justification for armed interventions.
Aki (Archana) Krishnamurthy is a Political Scientist, who in the last few years worked internationally
with methods of the theatre of the oppressed from a gender perspective. She coordinated a project
of a touring exhibition in Latin America, which was constructed collectively and showed struggles of
women and men, engaging for peace from a gender perspective. Currently she is doing her PhD on
the role of shame in the reproduction of gendered power relations in Germany and southern India
from a postcolonial feminist perspective at the Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main.
Rirhandu Mageza-Barthel is a Research Associate at the Frankfurt Research Center for Postcolonial
Studies. Before joining the FRCPS Team, Rirhandu was a Doctoral Fellow in DFG-Research Training
5
Group “Public Spheres and Gender Relations. Dimensions of Experience” and a Guest Researcher at
the Primedia Chair for Holocaust and Genocide Studies of the University of South Africa. The working
title of her doctoral dissertation is “Engendering Peacebuilding: Women’s Stake in Rwanda’s postgenocide Transformation Process”. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Cape Town
and a Magistra Artium in Political Science from Goethe University Frankfurt. Her most recent
publications examine transnational gender politics in Rwanda and the xenophobic attacks in South
Africa.
Nationalism and Female Negotiation:
the Post-colonial Disconnection in “Destination Biafra”
Ofure O. M. Aito
The global environment is pitted with conflicts/differences that require immediate intervention for
survival of mankind. Such conflicts stem from cultural differences, political manipulation, and
economic dominance to religious intolerance. These issues of conflict are fluid, spreading like
‘bushfire’ across the world, resisting political analyses. Reconciling differences must move beyond
the patriarchal round-table discussion for negotiation. War is a major consequence of conflict that
resists resolution. It is the result of conflicts of idealization that is, either personal or public. The
consequences of war leave individuals or societies fragmented, disillusioned and paranoid. A major
disconnection in the paranoia of war is victimization, which itself is a factor of war and which points
to the subjective reality of war. Adopting a thematic approach within the apparatus of post-colonial
arguments, this study examines the biographical narrative of a woman warrior, acting as a negotiator
of reconciliation between the warring tribes and is caught in the cross-fires of ethnic-political
genocide of the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-1970, which also offers the platform for the redefinition
of female identity in Nigeria. Given the methodology adopted in this study, the focus is on the spinoffs of war: the participation and vulnerability of women during war, the national, cultural and
patriarchal outlook of war and the complications of nationalism, the female status in a given cultural
enclave and the consequences on the present socio-political dispensation. This study intends to
submit to the proposition that women are participants and victims, and are relevant negotiators in
internal politics or national discourse on conflicts resolution.
About Ofure O. M. Aito: I am a lecturer of Literature in Redeemer's University, Mowe, where I teach
gender studies, Postcolonial literature, African American literature. I am a recipient of an American
Fulbright grant on Studies on American Contemporary Literature, 2007, among other fellowships and
grants. I have written a number of papers on gender studies for publications and conferences. At
present I am researching into the involvement of women in conflict and resolution.
6
Feminist collaboration in the context of intersectional discrimination and
post-war violence – possibilities and challenges
Eva Kalny
Research and activism both structurally tend to focus on doing something “about” or “for” the
“investigated” or “helped” subject, and much less “with” the concerned persons. Both can and often
do reflect the author’s and activist’s perception of his or her own supremacy. In this presentation the
focus will be directed at the possibilities and challenges for research and action of persons with
feminist convictions in the context of other coinciding hierarchies and discriminations like racism or
classism, and high insecurity. Under such conditions, even the minimal request, “do no harm” with
activism or research can become a challenge difficult to resolve.
My analysis of this problem is influenced by my experience of learning from and with women rights
activists from different cultural backgrounds as well as from my own perspective as a Caucasian
woman doing research in post-colonial and post-war Guatemala on issues related to gender and
violence: Guatemalan governmental institutions lack credibility, the country’s juridical system is
unreliable and notoriously racist and sexist. The current destabilization of neighboring Mexico due to
its internal war against drug trafficking and organized crime, further debilitates weak Central
American post-war societies. Currently, about 40% of Guatemala’s territory is considered to be under
dispute or out of control of the state. Guatemala together with El Salvador and Honduras are now
considered to be one of the most insecure regions of the world with especially high rates of killings.
This context of permanent insecurity strongly affects any kind of activism within the country.
Transnational activism against violence against women on the other hand focuses on the idea of a
“gendercide” taking place in Guatemala.
In the division of labor between activism inside and outside the country, risks and access to resources
as well as the power of definition are distributed in a highly unequal way. I argue that for the
representation of gender-related violence it is crucial to contextualize this violence in its current
post-war and post-colonial context. It is equally important for any action undertaken to consider the
risks involved for all parties, and to respect the variety of feminisms and aspire for mutual learning
and inspiration.
Eva Kalny is a social anthropologist trained at the University of Vienna, Austria, and currently
working on a Post-Doc project on social movements in Guatemala at the Department of Sociology in
Hanover, Germany. Her PhD dealt with customary law in two different Mayan communities in the
highlands of Guatemala and the possibilities for its recognition. The study focused on family norms
and gender relations in the context of a post-colonial and post-war society highly fragmented by
class, ethnicity, religion, ideologies, etc., and published in Guatemala. She has also been active in
human rights organizations at the national and international level.
7
Did LMS White Women Missionaries save Brown “Nadar” Women?:
Triple Colonization of Bible Women of South Travancore in 19th Century
Lalitha Jayachitra
The greatest achievement of committed White women missionaries - both married and single – of
London Missionary Society (LMS), by the end of 19th century, was the large number of converts to
Christianity from the “low caste” people and the women pupils in the schools run by them. The
native Indian women and girls were portrayed to the British supporters of LMS that they were the
most pathetic victims of heathenism. Caste distinction was maintained through the mission of White
women missionaries as evident in the dichotomization of two categories of women - Zenana Nayar
women and Channar (Nadar) Bible women - in South Travancore. The mission of Zenana visitation to
high caste homes was introduced in 1860s by the SPFEE (the Society for the Propagation of Female
Education in the East) to gain access to the Nayar women with the Christian teachings simultaneously
with the mission of “civilizing” Channar (Nadar) women who converted in masses. This division did
reiterate the triple colonization in terms of gender and caste and race that the Bible women
particularly encountered during British colonial period. Would it be a harsh attempt to decode the
mission activity of White Missionary ladies as a colonial artifice, which ‘would reveal the missionary
women as racist agents of an imperial state’? Here the attempt is only to highlight how women as a
category of gender trapped in an ‘intricate web of race, class and gender that underpinned the age of
empire.’
Lalitha Jayachitra, an ordained Deaconess of Church of South India, is currently on the faculty of the
Tamilnadu Theological Seminary, Madurai, Tamilnadu, India. She teaches New Testament, Greek,
postcolonial theories and feminism. She submitted doctoral dissertation entitled, “Wife-Husband
Relationship in the Household Code in Ephesians 5:21-33” to the Senate of Serampore University,
India and is waiting for viva-voce. She has attended many national and international conferences
among which the most recent is the Postcolonial Roundtable in Boston, USA, in October 2010. She
has about 18 articles published in national and international journals and books. Her recent
publications on postcolonial theory and theology are:
Alternate Petrine Community as “A Third Space of Enunciation”: Decolonizing Imperial Agenda in
1Peter, in Bible and Hermeneutics, edited by C. I. David Joy (Tiruvalla: CSS, 2010), pp. 54-67.
A Postcolonial Feminist Biblical Interpretation: Mary Magdalene and Canonization in Bangalore
Theological Forum, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 1 (June, 2006).
TAKING THE “POST”-CONFLICT TO ITS NEO-IMPERIAL CENTRE:
liberal multiculturalism, neo-imperialism and global feminism
Lilijana Burcar
In western societies racial discourse has undergone a major change with the introduction of
multicultural framework based upon institutionalized promotion and seemingly open commitment of
Western governments to cultural pluralism and diversity. While rejected and even disavowed, racism
within this framework is in fact tacitly reproduced and re-entrenched at the very heart of liberal
democracies. This in turn does not only have direct bearings on Western states’ immigration policies
and accompanying re-definition of Third World immigrants as racialised others or visible minorities,
8
but also upon their foreign policy agendas and strategies. The direct effects of these policies can be
witnessed in the re-interpretation of non-western countries as inadequate and deficit cultures in
need of financial “stabilization” and military interventions benevolently extended on the part of the
US and its western neo-imperial allies. How the discourse of race is re-invigorated and once again
justified on the home turf of western democracies to manage and control racialised others as a
source of cheap and devalued labour force has direct consequences for the way constructs of race
and hierarchical categories of power are circulated and applied globally to re-define and control “the
material and symbolic boundaries” between the North and the South.
Hence the analysis of the new or so-called cultural racism is of essential importance for the
understanding of the way co-opted strands of contemporary feminism emerge in Western liberal
democracies and the variegated ways in which they are enlisted in the service of contemporary
western neo-imperialism.
Lilijana Burcar, Ph.D., teaches at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana. Her research focuses on feminist
theory and gender studies, post-colonial and neo-colonial studies, social justice and contemporary
British and American literatures. She is the author of A New Wave of Innocence in Children's
Literature: Conservative Backlash and the Significance of Harry Potter and Lyra Silvermouth
(published in Slovenian, 2007).
Post What? Post Who? Post Where? Post How?
Gendered and Sexualised Epistemic Violence in the ‘War on Terror’
Claudia Brunner
Insisting on different forms of ‘liberation’ of the ‘other’ women (and today: queers) has been
fostering asymmetric power relations and hierarchies and their (post)colonial conditionality until
today. We can name different examples of epistemic violence in the name of emancipatory sexual
and gender politics throughout time and space when focusing on allegedly delimited regions or areas
and periods of conflict.
But what if we take the contemporary ‘war on terror’ as a phenomenon, discourse and practice of
violent conflict that is said to encompass the entire globe? Its anti-emancipatory and racist effects
emanating in the name of progressive sex and gender policies are manifold, and we have certainly
not reached the ‘post’ in this conflict yet. So if it is a war at all, what would its ‘post’-period look like?
Which scenarios are thinkable and what are their implications in terms of gender issues?
Scholars of Feminist International Relations have been deconstructing the dichotomy between the
international and the domestic, and Postcolonial Critics have pointed out its stabilizing function for
asymmetric power relations. Scholars of peace and conflict studies have integrated some of the
former arguments, but remained hardly untouched by the latter analyses. In my talk, I want to bring
together feminist IR and postcolonial critique and confront the gendered and sexualized ‘war on
terror’-talk and politics with this perspective. From there, we can start to imagine what kind of
‘posts’ we can think of – for the better or the worse.
Claudia Brunner is currently working as a post-doc university assistant at the center for peace studies
and peace education at Klagenfurt University, Austria. Holding an MA and PhD in political science,
she specialises in gender and postcolonial studies, political violence, philosophy of science and
9
discourse analysis. Her latest work includes an intersectional analysis of mainstream suicide
terrorism research (‘Wissensobjekt Selbstmordattentat’, 2011) as well as a transdisciplinary critique
of neo-orientalism and occidentalism (‘Kritik des Okzidentalismus’, 2009). She has been studying,
lecturing and doing research at the University of Vienna, at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and at
Humboldt-University in Berlin before.
Gendered Counterinsurgency
Keally McBride & Annick T.R. Wibben
How do you convince a population that a foreign military is there to help them? By deploying women
to engage their hearts and minds. This was the rationale behind the development of all female
engagement teams as part of the United States’ counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan this
year. Though the team has now been recalled because they were unable to maintain the strict rules
about women in combat zones, it was remarked that their unit had been one of the most effective in
achieving their mission to create relationships with the local population – and that this effect was
achieved largely due to their gender which enabled them to more perfectly “penetrate” Afghan
culture and “lift the veil” on Afghan women’s lives. The manipulations of gender ideology on both
sides in the US-Afghani engagement are complex and nuanced. In the contemporary maneuvers of
gendered counterinsurgency, we see the merger of age-old adages that accompanied colonialism
and newer versions of the narrative, which couch their goals in terms of securitization instead of
acculturation. This project aims to investigate the gendered nature of counterinsurgency in the
current Afghan War. Ultimately, we make a theoretical and historical argument, which shows
gendered counterinsurgency to be strikingly close to the white man’s burden. Old wine, new bottles.
Keally McBride is Associate Professor to Politics and International Studies at the University of San
Francisco and the author of numerous articles and books, most recently Political Theories of
Decolonization: Postcolonialism and the Problem of Foundations (Oxford, 2011).
Annick T.R. Wibben is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of
San Francisco and author of Feminist Security Studies: A Narrative Approach (Routledge, 2010). She
also coordinates the Feminist Security Studies Network.
10
PANEL 3
Transnational Social Movements and the Postcolonial Condition
Convenor:
Elisabeth Fink, Goethe University Frankfurt
Since the 1970s a growing number of transnational social movements (TSMs) concerned with global
issues such as labour, gender justice, democratization and human rights have emerged on the
international political landscape. Although International Relations theorists initially showed
themselves reluctant to acknowledge TSMs as relevant political actors, they have increasingly
recognized them as founders of a ‘global civil society’ in which issues of transnational importance are
dealt with. As a result, numerous scholars and activists have expressed high expectations regarding
the transformative power of TSMs as promoters of human rights. Although various transnational
movements and campaigns undoubtedly played a crucial role in many cases, there is, however, a
downside to transboundary activism that requires critical exploration. Especially in the context of
North-South relations various problematic dynamics can be observed, amongst them: the
victimisation of women in the global south, the undermining of mobilizations on the ground and the
reinforcement of the stereotypical division of the world into modern (Western) and traditional (nonWestern) societies. It is in this context that IR theory about TSMs and political activism pertaining to
the global south has been criticized for reenacting an earlier colonial relationship by taking up the
‘white man’s burden’.
Against this backdrop, this panel seeks to provide a forum for exploring transnational social
movements as well as IR theory that engages with the ‘global civil society’, transnational networks
and activism from a postcolonial-feminist perspective.
Elisabeth Fink is research associate at the chair for Gender and Postcolonial Studies in the Cluster
“The Formation of Normative Orders” at the Department for Social Sciences at Goethe University.
She studied political science, history and educational science at the University of Southampton and
at Goethe University. Her PhD project is on the relation of transnational social movements and local
activism with regard to labour issues. Her research interests include postcolonial feminist theory,
gender and globalisation, women and work, labour movements.
Ethos of Liberation contra Politics of Liberalism: a Foundation for Anti-slavery
and Anti-capitalist Movement?
2QGĝHM/iQVNë
I will examine how postcolonial communities in Latin America are constructed through the basis of a
shared experience of colonial oppression. Main task is to show how this construction is guided by
specific ethos of action. Concretely I will investigate it through the comparison of constructive
components of John Rawls’s theory of political liberalism and of Enrique Dussel’s philosophy of
liberation. These philosophical theories will be used as types of textual narratives that – at least in
the case of Latin America – serve as written record of experience of violent past. In this context I will
focus on several moments that are constitutive for the formulation(s) of the postcolonial ethos of the
resistance, the self and the other from both perspectives: the postimperialist and the postcolonialist.
This dichotomy (the self and the other) is fundamental for comprehension of the role of the ethos of
resistance against several forms of violation in the struggle against social oppression, because it
reveals basic aspects of social understanding of these situations from main social positions (the
11
oppressor and the oppressed). I will concern with one of the fundamental aspects of the rawlsian
theory of justice: that of Rawls’s emphasis on social institutions (of basic structure of society) before
social action. Contrary the Dussel’s philosophy of liberation is based among others on notion of the
proximity (la proximidad), that is firmly linked with concrete human action. The proximity in Dussel’s
ethical conception essentially serves as a basis of ethos of action that is designed for the oppressed.
The oppressed face up widely to violent strategies of postcolonial condition and thus their social,
cultural and political position is crucial also for experience of the world as whole.
KŶĚƎĞũ>ĄŶƐŬǉ is a member of Centre of Global Studies, a joint workplace of Academy of Sciences of
the Czech Republic and Faculty of Arts of Charles University at Prague. He also teaches some courses
at Charles University at Prague concerning postcolonial studies. His research concerns postcolonial
studies, decolonial theorizing, critical theory and sociological thought. He is currently working on the
doctoral thesis which is devoted to comparison of Atlantic and Latinoamerican moral patterns.
Critical Review of Transnational Social Movements Approach
and the Diaspora
Luxshi Vimalarajah
The emergence of transnational politics of diaspora communities has become a powerful
phenomenon in contemporary world politics, international relations and transnational practice. They
can no longer be characterized as “immigrant politics” in the classical sociological sense or dismissed
as diaspora communities bringing along their homeland conflicts. The transnational dimensions of
these communities and their political practices now have serious implications for the “host” states
and societies on various levels. Yet, they hardly get any attention in the context of transnational
social movements.
Although there´s a growth of literature on global non-state actors- sometimes described as
transnational actors from below - the diaspora enjoys little attention in IR theory. In Keck and
Sikkink´s (1998) typology of transnational networks which is often cited as the foundation for the
analysis of global civil society, the diaspora is not included as an essential category. Cognizant of this
lacuna, Fiona B. Adamson (2008) has added the category of “shared collective identity” to the other
set of transnational networks in an effort to fill this gap. The peculiarity of this set of transnational
actors as depicted by Adamson is their “particularist, parochial, and often territorially and
ethnonationally specific visions of the political.” Echoing this view many scholars argue that it would
be misleading to use the transnational framework to analyse Diaspora movements as they go against
the notion of universalism, cosmopolitanism and liberal values. Furthermore, owing to the
conceptual confusion of the terms Transnationalism and Diaspora, it´s also often used
interchangeably. In addition to this, there´s a fierce debate about what constitutes diaspora,
depending on whether the scholar argues from a constructivist or an essentialist point-of-view, the
diaspora is seen either as a “constructed” or a “given” identity.
It is the intention of the paper to examine the taken-for-granted assumptions of “universalism”,
cosmopolitanism and liberal values in the research on transnational movements and a critical
examination of diaspora research which in my understanding is very much driven by security
concerns and utility aspects of the global north. The paper will also shed some light on the
complexity of Gender and Diaspora politics. This is a neglected aspect in the analysis of diaspora
12
movements and politics in general. Except for few exceptions (i.e. Nadje S. Ali Ali in Smith/Stares
2007), this aspect has not been included in the analysis of transnational politics. An open question in
this context would be whether Diaspora women conduct political affairs differently to their male
counterparts? How sensitive are male dominated diaspora organisations to this aspect? Do the same
social structures of clientalism, patriarchy and nepotism in homelands dominate transnational
practices in the diaspora?
Luxshi Vimalarajah is a senior coordinator at Berghof Peace Support in Berlin. She coordinates
Berghof Peace Support diaspora activities and collaborates with the Resistance and Liberation
Movements in Transition Programme run by Berghof Research Centre in collaboration with Berghof
Peace Support. During the Sri Lanka Project, she was responsible for the overall strategic planning
and assessment, as well as the management of a variety of programmes between 2003 and 2008. In
the context of the work of BPS in the Asia region, Luxshi was involved in projects related to gender
and peacebuilding. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. on the thematic complex of Diaspora and
Conflict Transformation. She has an MA in Political Science from the Freie Universität Berlin.
The Practices of Transnationally Networked Civil Society in Costa Rica:
Limits to Postcolonial Imaginations
Johanna Leinius
In my contribution, I draw from both transnational and postcolonial debate and argue that, even
though there are voices in both academic fields that are critical of current global dynamics, a general
tendency exists to frame transnational civil society as the site where democratization of and
resistance to the current world order are possible. The multiscalarity of globalization, transnational
social practices, and the use of new communication technologies are seen as contributing to a – at
least potentially – emancipatory and democratizing transnational civil society. In this context,
postcolonial scholarship tends to focus on the practices and perspectives of civil society actors that
are involved in explicitly decolonial struggles, while transnational studies sees ‘transnational civil
society’ constituted by a greater variety of diverse civil society organizations.
But studying the effects of neo-colonial domination in the contemporary world also means studying
the ways neo-colonial hegemony is constantly reproduced, legitimized or contested through the
actions, knowledges, and political subjectivities of those living in postcolonial contexts.
Understanding postcoloniality as the lived experience of people(s), I apply this view of the
interrelated dynamics of neo-colonial hegemony and postcoloniality to the study of transnational
civil society and examine how organized civil society in Costa Rica is connected to the networks of
international cooperation and transnational civil society and, more importantly, how these linkages
are perceived and reproduced through the practices and projects of these organizations. I discuss my
results with regard to their implications for conceptualizing the potential of postcolonial civil society
to offer alternative ways of thinking and acting.
I approach these questions through a qualitative study of organized civil society in Costa Rica that
draws mostly from semi-structured interviews conducted with representatives of non-governmental
organizations with transnational ties, analyzed from a post-structural perspective.
I argue that the interweaving of political, economic and epistemic hegemony anchored in the
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everyday practices of civil society actors is obscured through network logics that stress individual
agency and freedom. Success in acquiring international funding many times implies the adoption of a
certain perspective on development issues and, particularly in the Costa Rican case, necessitates the
endorsement of transnational projects. Consequently, the material and ideological content of their
daily work, but also its networked character affects not only the level of influence these
organizations might be able to achieve in transnational forums and networks, but also their
perspectives on global dynamics and the way in which they identify problems and frame solutions.
The emergence of transnational civil society networks in Central America consequently
simultaneously reinforces structures of coloniality and opens spaces for thinking otherwise, at least if
the logics of hegemonic domination are recognized and contested.
Johanna Leinius is a student of political science in the international Master’s degree program in
“Ethnic Relations, Cultural Diversity and Integration” at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She has
studied political science and political management in Bremen and Helsinki and has worked as a
student researcher for the Collaborative Research Center 597 in Bremen, for the Arias Foundation for
Peace in San José, Costa Rica, and for the FRCPS in Frankfurt. She has been very active in student
politics both in Germany and Finland and currently is engaged in representing the interests of
international students in Helsinki. Her research interests are postcolonial theory, the
modernity/coloniality/decoloniality collective, ethnic relations and transnational studies.
A postcolonial perspective of Social Movements:
a study of the MST and the Zapatistas
Júlia Figueredo Benzaquen
Postcolonial theory appears as an important contribution to critical sociology. The use of colonial in
the term postcolonial goes beyond the historical periods of political settlement and refers to various
situations of oppression. It is in this sense that peripheral societies or former colonies, as well as the
demands and experiences of social minorities, continue to be treated based on their functional
relations, similarities or differences with what is defined as "center" or "north".
The division of the world in North and South is not limited to a geographic question. It is the history
of capitalism what permits to think in those terms. The global North (a North established by
mappings constructed by the North itself) colonized the South. In this way, the South is a metaphor
for the systemic suffering caused by capitalism.
When suffering becomes unacceptable, intolerable, social movements arise to challenge the political
order. In contemporary times, many authors speak about New Social Movements (NSM). Labor
issues (represented by unions) are seen as old issues, however, they are quite contemporary and
deserve attention. Also, some claims are now classified as NSM, but they are much older than the
union demands ("old movements"). This happens because before they were not understood as social
movements. The claims of racial identity are not a new issue, for example. The slave revolts in Brazil,
with its various forms of resistance, such as escapes, formation of “quilombos”, suicide, etc., are
much older than unions. Thus, it is necessary to contextualize the social movements and not
distinguish between old and new social movements.
14
It is significant that the two major social movements in Latin America today are rural movements.
The Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) is a Brazilian social movement that has stood out
since the 1980s. The reasons for the existence of the MST goes back to the colonial history of land
concentration that has been perpetuated since the settlers sliced Brazilian territory according to their
convenience and disregarding the local population. In Mexico, the Zapatista National Liberation
Movement recovery, strengthens and reframes the slogan "Land and Liberty" of the revolutionary
Emiliano Zapata. The Zapatistas are fighting against the reality of oppression of indigenous
population and against social inequality caused by the neoliberal hegemonic globalization. Both
movements evolve around the key issue of the fight for the land; however, due to different contexts,
land is seen differently in each case.
The contextualization of social movements offers comparative conceptual tools that can promote the
links between these movements. This is possible by adopting a perspective of critical science that
comes from and looks to the South. A post-colonial perspective that aims at social transformation
and takes into consideration the plurality of social emancipation, working towards, as the Zapatistas
say: "a world where many worlds fit".
Júlia Figueredo Benzaquen is a student in the doctoral program “Post-colonialism and global
citizenship” of the Center for Social Studies (CES) and the Faculty of Economics at University of
Coimbra, Portugal. She holds a scholarship for PhD abroad by the “Coordination for Improvement of
Personnel of Superior Level” (CAPES) from the Brazilian government. She studied Sociology at the
Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), Brazil. After graduating she worked as a lecturer at the
Education Center of UFPE.
15
PANEL 4
Building Bridges: Critical Political Economy and Postcolonial
Theory
Convenors:
Simone Claar/Nikolai Huke
Since its inception, postcolonial theory has endeavoured to develop an understanding of society that
combines questions of imperialism and (international) class relations with asymmetric gender
relations and discourses of/in the “West”. Nonetheless postcolonial scholars’ engagements with
different perspectives from critical political economy remain limited.
The papers presented overcome this drawback and promote the discussion on possibilities and
problems of combining different critical political economy approaches (e.g. neogramscian
international political economy, economic geographic or cultural political economy) with postcolonial
theory. The presentations include papers bridging different approaches on a theoretical level as well
as papers that empirically research relations between forms of state and economies from a
postcolonial political economy perspective.
Simone Claar is Research Associate at the working group International Political Economy of the
Faculty of Social Science at Goethe University Frankfurt. She studied political science, geography and
peace and conflict studies at Philipps University Marburg and the University of Stellenbosch. In her
PhD project she focuses on how different socio-economic groups within South Africa shape trade
policy in the context of new generation issues, inter alia based on research stays at the Centre for
Civil Society (Durban) and South African Institute of International Affairs (Pretoria). Her recent
publications focuses on economic development in South Africa as well as on EU-South Africa
relations.
Nikolai Huke works as a lecturer and research assistant at Philipps-University Marburg. His areas of
interest include critical (International) Political Economy, theories of emancipatory change, trade
unions, European integration and migration policy. He is a member of the research project State
Project Europe (Institute of Social Research, Frankfurt/Main), the Association for Critical Social
Research (AkG) and the European Integration Research Group (FEI).
Towards a Critical Theory of the Postcolonial Condition under Global Political
Economy: Rationality, Hegemony and Political encounters
Naveen Kanalu
The present paper seeks to appraise certain aspects of the contemporary international political
economy and the dialectical and intertwined developments thereof for third world countries. The
actual globalized capitalist system is effective in the re-shaping of the postcolonial condition in a
binary form: on the one hand that of the general circuit of financial capital (which is predominantly
located in western economies) that is closely interlinked to national economies of the South and on
the other hand the existing functional mechanisms of International realpolitik; both of which
dominate and create asymmetric frameworks on which postcolonial (or neo-colonial) enterprises are
engaged. Following Critical Theory, Naveen Kanalu challenges the accepted notion that this
asymmetric international system is fundamentally an assertion of hegemonic international class
relations, which control institutions and networks of capital that pervade universally and have
16
serious consequences for labor/marginalized groups in the third world. Hence, any attempt to treat
these problems in the light of the present circumstances requires a combination of both a critical
approach to Political economy using Gramscian perspectives of hegemony and further, as he inquires
– the concept of ‘instrumental rationality’ as elaborated by the Frankfurt School, as a fruitful venture
to reformulate the idea, in terms of a reason that also generates this dominance of
Universal/particular that it pretends to envisage in Modern philosophy. This Euro-centric approach,
more than anything else, portends domination of societies and political economies of the ‘other’,
which continues in forms of international relations, laws, economic aid, neoliberal restructuring and
slow marginalization of political voice as the foundations of contemporary society. In order to
explicate this position, it is inevitable to also see the contours of global political order as it stands
today.
In the context of a War driven imperial hegemony and Multinational companies, an integrated web
of hegemonic relations are generating new class/regional/religious conflicts and cultural forms that
can be assessed, following Critical Theory, to think how subjective claims can be asserted and made
to matter at the global level. Naveen Kanalu shows - using India as a case in point - a trend whereby
global hegemonic interests and the comportment of the State and the national bourgeoisie have
triggered off a set of contradictory trends that exhibit at one level the deep rooted global
coordinates as well as, on another level the internal dynamics for civil society and polity that are
estranged from politics. The neoliberal reform process has opened up a new framework of
community relations, foreign relations, poverty and middle class aspirations and a new form of
cultural expression that undermines the possibility of critical discourse let alone engagement
politique. It is in the light of the broader philosophical challenges at attempting to trace the
genealogical and epistemological foundations of these issues that the question nevertheless, remains
as to how to conceptualize the postcolonial condition in order to engage in a theoretical framework
that equally encompasses a meaningful political dimension.
Naveen Kanalu is currently a Student in Philosophy at the Ecole normale supérieure and completing
his MPhil dissertation on the Concept of Truth in Adorno and Hegel at the Université de Paris X,
Nanterre. His areas of interest include German Idealism, Critical Theory, Modern Political Philosophy,
German Philology, Classical Political Economy and Postcolonial Theory. As an Indian student, he is
interested particularly in understanding the Ontological divide (West and the other) that is
predominant in Modern European thought and engaging in a dialogue that permits possible openings
to transcend this divide and find a common point of departure.
Not a Trojan Horse: Provincializing The Scale Debate in the Political Economy
of Globalisation
Enrique Martino Martin
In his paper Enrique Martino Martin highlights a relatively fundamental current debate in critical
human geography on the question of “scale”, in which the need to displace “methodological
nationalism” is agreed upon, but where there is a conflict on how the “local” and “global” should be
connected. On the political economy side are Bob Jessop and Neil Brenner who stand for a vertical
political economy of socially produced and overlapping scalar hierarchies configured through
capitalist production as inspired by the writings of David Harvey and Doreen Massey. Their “spatial
ontologies” of globalisation have been challenged by Sallie Marston and her colleagues in a series of
17
articles that deconstruct the hierarchies within the term “global capitalism” by drawing on Bruno
Latour and J.K. Gibson-Graham's critique of how the local-global binary is equated with the
powerless-powerful one.
Postcolonial theory operates with a similar oscillation in its conceptions of the global colonial
economy, which still often implicitly rests on the geographic imaginary of World-Systems Theory, the
starting point also of a spatially orientated political economy. The critiques to “provincializing
Europe” (Chakrabarty) and to make the centre “ex-centric” (Bhabha) have not taken place on the
level of the colonial economy but on the plane of epistemologically critiquing the “originary” status
of the “core”. Our aim is to show through empirical material how the colonial state and the capitalistsector in the Gulf-of-Guinea can be similarly “provincialized”. A postcolonial political economy
perspective is understood here as reflecting on the methodological implications of the critique of
conventional vocabularies of scale (local, national, global) as they are mapped onto categories of the
social (household/village, state, economy). In drawing a bridge to the well established camp of a
spatial political economy that has usefully charted the (re-)production and interrelations of inequality
in urban, regional as well as global space, the intention is not to bring in postcolonial theory as a
Trojan Horse to collapse the stability of its more critical hierarchies of scale. Rather both can be
mobilized at different intervals to undo the not only ahistorical but geographically “fetishist”
(Coronil) categories that divide continents for the sake of grand (but also local) narratives. A
productive tension rather than a mutual incompatibility between postcolonial theory and an
unravelling spatial political economy of globalisation will be explored with reference to his research
on the dialectics of colonial re-territorialization-and-commodification in the movement of Nigerian
migrant workers onto the cocoa plantations of Spanish-Guinea between the 1930s-and-1960s.
Enrique Martino Martin is enrolled as a PhD student in African History at Humboldt University Berlin
since February 2010, being supervised by Prof. Andreas Eckert. The provisional title of his thesis is
Global Equatorials between 1929 and 1968: Nigerian Contract Workers in the Colony of Spanish
Guinea and the Scales of Labour Mobilization. He is from Spain/Venezuela and completed his BA in
Geography and MA in Anthropology and Development Studies in the UK.
Comparative political economy and Eurocentrism: A postcolonial critique of
the Varieties of Capitalism approach
Matthias Ebenau
This paper seeks to develop a critique of the dominant ‘Varieties of Capitalism’ (VoC) paradigm of
comparative political economy, particularly of its understanding of Latin American economies, and to
draw a rough sketch of how postcolonial analysis can contribute to the formulation of a more
adequate perspective on contemporary socio-economic development. Thereby, it combines
criticisms formulated from political economy perspectives – regarding VoC’s methodological
nationalism and firm-centrism – with a postcolonial critique of its underlying categories. VoC
attempts to explain the emergence and persistence, stability and change of different ‘varieties’ of
national political economies, mainly by reference to firms’ solutions to coordination problems and
their institutional underpinnings. With respect to Latin American political economies, the basic
argument is that the prevailing ‘hierarchical’ mode of coordination is associated with an institutional
configuration that generates an economically and socially perverse but resilient comparative
advantage in low-skill, low-quality production. However, analytically the HME model fails to grasp the
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extent to which heterogeneity of the social and economic structures is constitutive of Latin American
political economies; how the existing social stratification is intertwined with racialised and cultural
hierarchies; and the asymmetric and hierarchical ways in which the ‘varieties’ are inserted into
transnational structures. In terms of its categories, VoC appears as a more sophisticated
reincarnation of the discredited ‘modernisation’ approaches with their static, ahistorical, and unitcentred explanations of ‘underdevelopment’ and legitimatory undertones. Thus, the ‘development of
underdevelopment’ is left uninterrogated, the problems of Latin American ‘varieties’ are explained as
results of ‘endogenous’ institutional shortcomings. The solutions are posited to lie (yet again) in
emulating the institutional strategies of the central economies. An alternative perspective can start
from the notion of the ‘modern/colonial world-system’ but should give more explicit consideration to
the insight from critical comparative political economy perspectives that capitalism comes in
historically and geographically distinct manifestations (if not ‘varieties’ in the sense of VoC).
Matthias Ebenau (Diplom-Politologe, MA International Political Economy) is a doctoral student in the
School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London. His research is
concerned with the comparative political economy of Latin America. He has published on the political
economy of free trade, especially in Central America, on social movements, on the current global
economic crisis, and on postcolonial theory. He is a member of the Association for Critical Social
Research (AkG).
The Regulation of Globalising Reproductive Labour Markets
Liberty Lopez Chee
The limited interaction between critical political economy and postcolonial theory may stem from
the delicate balance of re-articulating the ‘economic’ in social life without having to abandon the
economic in favour of discursive analysis and emphasis on ‘culture.’ A way out of this impasse is to
embed the ‘economic’ within a set of social relations which are products of historically-constituted
hierarchies of power based on gender, race and class.
There has already been important work on gendering political economy by making visible the work of
women. The linkages between the ‘productive economy’ and the ‘reproductive economy’ in this late
stage of capitalism are new avenues of research. Domestic and sex work, along with provision of care
services are now seen as the feminised version of ‘techno-muscular capitalism.’ The structural
changes of Post-Fordism in the past few decades have seen the flexibilisation of labour. Increasingly,
women from the peripheries have been incorporated into these circuits of flexible labour.
Taking the analytical tools offered by Regulation Approach, this paper argues that the transnational
commodification and exchange of reproductive labour, far from a naturalistic phenomenon
engendered by ‘globalisation’, is regulated by state forms. The regulatory state, as a mode of
regulation in the Post-Fordist regime of accumulation, deploys techniques to stabilise the supply and
demand of feminised bodies across borders. In order to guarantee the stability of this exchange, the
state performs dual roles. First, it is a participant in the governance of reproductive labour markets –
providing the institutional mechanisms which facilitate commodification and exchange. Second, the
state guarantees this transnational division of labour by perpetuating and legitimating inequalities
based on gender, race and class.
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Liberty Lopez Chee is a PhD student at the Department of Political Science, National University of
Singapore. Her dissertation is on the global governance of labour mobility in the Asia Pacific. Her
other research interests include international political economy, democratisation, postcolonial
studies and critical international relations. A recipient of the Australian Leadership Awards in 2007,
she did her master coursework on the Gold Coast, Queensland. She has been teaching politics and
French on and off for the last eight years and is engaged in civil society and new media in her native
Philippines. She has worked with social movements advocating reproductive justice and women’s
rights in her home country.
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PANEL 5
Culture vs. Capitalism: Postcolonial Emancipations and the
Ambivalences of the Market
Convenor:
Katja Rieck
Since the anti-colonial movements of the 19th century, many critiques of relations between North
and South, or the West and the Rest, have centered on the economy, most particularly the market,
as the site where poverty is produced and reproduced and colonial relations are perpetuated.
Against this has often been posited a romantic view of a time before the market and the encounter
with the West in which social relations were ostensibly kinder and more just and material conditions
more secure. There is thus a long-standing intellectual tradition that continues to this day, of
assuming that the market, and capitalism more generally, serve to channel the wealth and resources
from the South to the North (or, the East to the West), bringing the former only injustice and
poverty. Socio-cultural revival to reinvigorate or reinstate ‘traditional’ practices and social roles is, by
contrast, seen as the means of countering capitalism and the market, realizing colonial emancipation
and achieving a more just post-colonial order. But to what extent are such revivalist visions really
emancipatory? Do they in some cases not veil the continued existence of poverty and injustice in
apologetic discourses of cultural authenticity, or even push for the realization of a social order that
rests on its own forms of exploitation and oppression? And the undeniable dislocations of capitalist
transformation notwithstanding, has the spread of market relations really been the central cause of
the South’s impoverishment and marginalization? Or does the anti-market/anti-capitalist discourse
mask more complex, politically less comfortable dynamics at work? Have market reforms and
capitalist transformations perhaps also undermined the hold of oppressive political regimes,
countered conservative social ideologies and enabled the renegotiation of socio-political relations
such that groups previously marginalized have been able to overcome their subordinate positions?
These questions are the focus of this panel that aims to critically engage the culture vs. capitalism
dichotomy that has had considerable influence on many post-colonial discourses. By exploring the
ambivalences of both sides and examining the complex array of interests both emancipatory and
conservative that each serves it hopes to achieve a more nuanced understanding of the promises and
pitfalls of capitalism.
After having received her B.A. in International Political Economy at Princeton University, Katja Rieck
studied cultural anthropology and Oriental studies at the University of Frankfurt, from which she
received her M.A.. Currently she is a doctoral researcher working on a project for the Cluster of
Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders” that focuses on economic counter-discourses in
post-colonial social and political movements in late 19th and early 20th-century India.
Transnational Polyvocality:
Rural Chilean Women and the “Megamachine” of Neoliberalism
Fernanda Glaser
My paper is a case study that focuses mainly on fieldwork that I conducted for three years in Pena
Blanca, a location in Rural Chile where the community embodies an ancestral form of land tenure
which has its own regulation in the Chilean law, after the socialist Agrarian Reform in the early 70’s.
This community is committed to an ongoing project of reforestation and land tenure, given the
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increasing desertification in the region. Under this particular political praxis, I participated in
environmentally sustainable issues regarding water resources and engaged in political action with
the community. In this paper I will go over the different kinds of transnational capital pressures;
ranging from mining companies to real estate interests. I will show how this particular positionality
situates the tensions between the global and the local, using the latter as a lens to bring up
approaches that could improve research emerging from a particular socio-geographical context. The
paper will cover these tensions trough a Post Colonial Feminist analysis, drawing mainly on authors
such as: Jacqui Alexander, Chandra Mohanty, Noemi Klein and Deleuze & Guattari in order to address
class, gender, ethnic, territorial, and cultural intersections, as they are constantly affected by the
hegemonies of global neo-liberalism.
Likewise, homogenizing discourses within the U.S. Academy have treated local issues as well as small
scale communities with a condescending gaze that enhances geographical privileges within
metropolitan countries. This tendency exists also in the academic work concerned with women in the
transnational Global order, especially work which emanates from the Global North. It is here that I
wish to highlight the way in which transnational women’s and gender studies discourse must
distance itself from the transnationalizing discourses of global capitalizing institutions, namely the
IMF and the World Bank. I argue that more room for polyvocal versions of local stories/histories
about “development” in terms others than the neoliberal one are needed.
Against this global backdrop, I will examine how and where Pena Blanca inhabitants’ daily cultural
actions and practices have been shifting in terms of gender, as a result of the migration and
depopulation in rural areas. While some women’s situations improve in large cities and some of
them even become presidents of the nation , in small rural villages women still depend on their
husbands in brothers or other male relatives for family budget and land tenure. They are also
subjects of oppressive situations that have become more evident through the increasing rates of
domestic violence , unwanted pregnancy, female illiteracy, and others examples (LACWHN, 2008).
Fernanda Glaser is a Fulbright Scholar from Chile, currently working on her PhD in the Department of
Global Gender Studies, SUNY at Buffalo, USA. Her interests in rural development encompass the
application of social theories to local fieldwork practices on public health care along with
sexual/reproductive issues.
The Market Value of Culture in Wadi Araba
Annemie Vermaelen
When the setting of your research is a desert with Bedouins as the inhabitants, it is tempting to think
in romantic terms about ‘the culture’ of your research subject. The way the Bedouins of Wadi Araba,
which is the southern part of the Jordan Rift Valley in Jordan, live their lives could be described as
merely cultural. You can watch for instance the Bedouins of Wadi Feynan, part of Wadi Araba, while
standing on your balcony of an eco-lodge, looking down on them as the living heritage of Jordan. In
this perspective why would change be something good? Shouldn’t we conserve, protect the cultures
that are still free from capitalistic contamination?
At the same time when Jordan as a state is part of your broader research setting where besides
Bedouins also investors, a strong royal family, intelligent services, (inter)national non-governmental
22
organizations are present, you can analyze the same Wadi Araba/Wadi Feynan in terms of numbers,
investment and development opportunities and especially in terms of economic growth. In this
perspective it is all about change, creating opportunities. Why not connecting marginalized people to
a particular economic system and giving them the opportunity to step away from ‘tradition’?
Historical capitalism has created opportunities for emancipation in the different domains of society.
But I argue that it is not a reason to be too optimistic about its heritage and the directions it is taking
today. Wadi Araba is generally considered as an area where people still live an ancient lifestyle. Their
way of living is framed in another time and space outside the modern world. The only way to let
them catch up time and get connected to the modern world, is to make them follow the Jordanian
neoliberal path. In concrete terms this means for the Wadi Araba bringing in fixed schools, electricity
networks, brick houses, paved roads, telecommunication networks, selling handicrafts to the market,
teach the Bedouins management strategies, develop touristic attractions… At first sight it all seems
very innocent, but the affects with regard to power are as important to bring into the picture when
thinking about emancipation.
By doing my research which concerns the impact of (local and national, small and megalomaniac)
development projects on the rearrangement of ‘Bedouin life’ in Wadi Araba, I have been confronted
repeatedly with myself thinking in the dichotomy of culture-capital, good-bad. For that reason the
general approach of this paper will be more reflexive and will try to think beyond the mentioned
dichotomy. But also aims to enhance a more refined and knowledgeable framework to study
postcolonial realities in the margins in relation to the concepts of culture and capitalism.
The entrance point for the paper is that thinking about culture and capitalism in a postcolonial reality
as Jordan is not about good or bad, but about how they interact and how this affects people’s life.
Capitalism and in its later form of neo-liberalism as well as culture are on the ground not fixed.
Therefore this paper argues for a more dynamic analysis of culture and its relations to
capitalism/market and vice versa. Aihwa Ong might give a clue how to proceed when pointing out
that the challenge is to identify an analytical angle that allows us to examine the shifting lines of
mutation that the neoliberal exception generates (Ong 2006:12).
Annemie Vermaelen is a PhD candidate at the Middle East and North African Research Group
affiliated to the department of Third World Studies at the University of Ghent in Belgium. She has
almost finished her second year of research. The general focus is the techno-political dimension of
development projects and how they are applied and contested in a context as the Wadi Araba in
Jordan.
Unveiling Social Business: A Pragmatic Weapon of Colonial Enslavement
Nazmus Sakib
The socio-cultural movements that are supposedly working for the revival of traditional or
indigenous practices which are perceived to be out of the “mainstream” economic agenda are not
necessarily always working in line with the post colonial emancipation process by all means.
Empirical evidences are found that while some of these discourses sometimes tend to outweigh the
necessity of what is called the radical forces as well as it even questions the legitimacy of all other
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programs under the veil of “smooth” transformation of capitalist system as a dynamic system in
within.
Having said this supposition this paper works with the empirical evidences which backs the idea. As a
case study some examples from Bangladesh are analyzed. These examples are not picked only
because that the author has comparative advantage on this data set rather, Bangladesh is proved to
be the “guinea pig” of such experiments.
In fact the mouthful idea for which Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank
got Nobel Peace Prize was first tried in Bangladesh. Along with the Grameen Bank itself there are
some other MFIs’ working in a very integrated way. There are some other NGOs working on the so
called poverty reduction agenda. While what ultimate success these NGOs have achieved is
questionable, at the same time in most of the cases these projects have secured social and
administrative endorsements and recognition as a social business of benevolence. This can be
verified from the tax policy of Bangladesh that, although these NGOs are obtaining the highest rate
of returns over their investment, they are constantly being exempted from tax on the pretext that
they are doing a noble service of poverty reduction. But the process these NGOs’ are making such
high profit is not being questioned by the advocates of market although such high rate of profit is
abnormal under the demand supply framework of price mechanism in within.
While these projects are merely businesses from the perspective of capital at the same time
government of Bangladesh as well as the governments of other “third world” countries which are
being somehow pressurized to support these projects by actually granting subsidies in the veil of tax
reduction or exemption. Furthermore some of the once-radical-force or personal in these countries
whom are branded as pro-poor are found to be speaking in favor of such programs in the veil of
pragmatism. So these programs hardly have any opponent.
So the final outcome of these projects is that in one hand these are not capable of or willing to
eradicate poverty on the other hand they are getting social endorsement. So the sandwich effect of
these two negative outcomes is severing the sufferings of the ultra poor. And as the extensity of
poverty is not being represented in the measurements of poverty the real scenario is not translated
as well. In this paper a simple analytical model is developed to represent this effect.
Nazmus Sakib is a third-year undergraduate student in the department of economics at the
University of Dhaka. He is the author of “Can Agrarian Reform Lead to a Pro-Poor Growth?”, which
was published in the Bangladesh Journal of Public Administration. He has also presented papers at
the 6th South Asian Economics Students Meet in Dhaka as well as at the Cross Talk on Production
Sharing Contract of Gas field with MNCs’. During the last session he was General Secretary of the
Economics Study Center.
Cultural Industries in the Global South. Towards Modernization or
Modernities?
Christiaan M. De Beukelaer
In this paper, we will scrutinize the position of the cultural and creative industries in development
theory. Throughout the years, the notion of culture has significantly changed in development theory
and practice. Initially, within the modernization-paradigm, culture was seen as a factor impeding
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economic and social development of the ‘3rd world’. However, after the ‘cultural turn’ in
development thinking the notion that development always occurs in a culturally defined context and
culture should thus be at centre stage in development thinking has gained considerable currency.
Currently, under the hegemonic neoliberal political economy, the urge to commoditize every aspect
of our lives has also affected our conceptualization of culture in many ways. Culture is no longer
merely ‘a way of life’ in development thinking, as anthropologists tend to approach the subject, but it
is also a utilitarian articulation of ‘symbolic texts’ which are tradeable as any other commodity.
Cultural relations have been subjected to economic selection, and the commoditization has become
primordial to identity politics. Culture (or, mutatis mutandis, creativity) is accordingly
put forward as active locus of development. As a result, culture has ceased to be perceived as an
obstacle, or merely an aspect intrinsic to development, but increasingly constitutes a means to
catalyze cultural, human and economic advancement. Due to this increased attention to the global
commoditization of culture in development contexts through the so-called cultural industries, we
wish to explore its relation to the theoretical shifts in development; from modernization to
modernities.
Our aim is to critically engage with the literature surrounding development theory and practice. The
main question we are asking is how the increased attention to the cultural (and creative) industries
takes form in development thinking; and more specifically, how this may have changed (or could
change) the conceptual position of culture in development theory.
Christiaan De Beukelaer holds a BA in musicology (Universiteit van Amsterdam), an MA in cultural
studies (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) and is currently affiliated to the Centre for Cultural Policy
Studies (University of Warwick) as a PhD student while pursuing an advanced MA in cultures and
development (CADES, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) on an excellence scholarship awarded by the
Roger Dillemans Fund. His primary research focus is on the correlation between the cultural and
creative economy and ‘development’, thereby mainly looking at the conditions in developing
countries.
Post-colonizing Hospitality:
Cycling the Returning Indian Migrant Guest in a Global Context
Malasree Neepa Acharya
Within a world of circulating mobility, the returning transnational migrant reflects his or her own
form of resistance through a redefinition of host-guest relations. This paper explores the movement
of transnational entrepreneurs of Indian origin returning from the West (the EU and US) to a
postcolonial cosmopolitan India and its impact on binary power relations constituted by values of
hospitality. These entrepreneurs are transforming the peripheries of the cosmopolitan global city
through the gated communities where they reside and Special Economic Zones where they work
toward developing new business and change in India. 1990s continental philosophy reflected the link
between hospitality and migration as a critique of “anti-immigration agendas” (Rosello 2003)
whereby migrant guests were denied entry from the (in)hospitable ‘host’ nation (Derrida 1997;
Baudrillard 1993, Sayad 1991). Superimposing French interlocutors within a postcolonial context
where the Western host nation has colonized and later barred entry to its former colonial host-
25
turned-slave subjects, I theorize how the cyclical return of the transnational migrant creates a new
set of host-guest values that govern the framework of hospitality’s power relations. This return of
transnational migrants post-colonizes hospitality. Constantly shifting between hybrid and
simultaneous subjectivities in time and space in search of a newfound ‘home,’ I question (a) by
transforming their social relationships with subaltern ‘locals’ over time, how are power relations
constituted and (b) does an entrepreneurial act of return shift the migrant’s power relationship with
the West and India by pushing out of the cycling of colonial and postcolonial histories? The Indian
migrant functions as a semiotic conduit in itself—actively reconstituting the binary roles of host and
guest within the circulation of the very power relations he or she seeks to escape. In this way, the
Indian transnational migrant shifts his or her own power relationship with the West and India
pushing out of the cycling of postcolonial histories in the diaspora. A question remains as to whether
this post-colonization of hospitality by transnational movement to the Global South liberates the
migrant from the recurring guest-host power dynamic as an act of resistance or if the migrant-guestturned-host’s relationship to locals replicates itself as a new semiotic form of post-colonizing
oppression.
Malasree Neepa Acharya is a doctoral researcher in the Migration and Diversity cluster at the
Institute for European Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel. At Stanford University, she received her
M.A. (2007) in cultural and social anthropology with a focus in South Asian postcolonial studies, and
her B.A. Honors (2006) in public policy and music. Her current dissertation project, entitled, ‘BrainGain' Return of India’s High-Skilled Entrepreneurs: Home, Transformation, and Power in the
Cosmopolitan Global South, explores the impact on social relations and infrastructural changes as
entrepreneurs of Indian origin residing in the EU and US are returning to India’s cosmopolitan cities
to construct “home” through their own transmigrant imaginaries. In the next year, Neepa aims to
conduct interdisciplinary work integrating a multi-sited ethnography of India’s cosmopolitan cities,
the Silicon Valley (USA), and London (UK) with current movements of EU-India migration and mobility
policy.
Food and Modernity
Stefan Stautner
The famous proverb, Ýou are what you eat´, shows the meaning of eating in the construction of
identity. Eating is not only a biological necessity for our existence, but also, and to a large extent, the
production and consumption of food play an important role in the construction of identities and
social routines.
My aim is to show how consumers of food construct and actualise in the process of eating, their
identities along the concepts of Modernity and the West. By comparing the practices and discourses
between Germany and the Middle East (focus on Egypt, Jordan, Israel and Palestine) I will show how
the image of the West is formed in the process of food consumption.
As from now, the terms West and Modern could be used in a parallel manner. There are different
definitions of these terms in sociology and I do not want to limit my scope on certain parameters that
define something as ´modern´. Rather, the perspective of the individual consumer should be
considered. What he/she defines as modern or western is of paramount importance for the project.
The globalisation of certain foods and eating forms, especially the so-called system- and fast-food, is
26
often taken as a proliferation of (modern) ´western ways`, or rather the American Way of Life.
McDonald´s became the symbol for world-wide globalisation and capitalism. This project intends to
reveal, how through the process of consumption (or the demonstrative non-consumption) an image
of the West and Modernity (and often about America) is formed and individuals construct a ‘modern’
identity in this process. It will also allow us a closer look on modernisation processes worldwide. In
the context of globalisation, the increasing consumption and distribution of ready-made food, fast
food or convenience-products (like instant noodles) provide the opportunity to perform a certain
(western) life style.
Stefan Stautner is lecturer at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Munich and a PhD
candidate at the University of Mainz. He has spoken at several conferences, including the CanettisSypmosium 2010, Food and Politics in the Middle East 2010, Israel, Global flows, Dubai 2009 etc.). His
focus areas include gender studies, research methods, ethnography and cultural sociology (especially
modernity, identity and globalization – with emphases on non-western views on the west and
modernity).
Colonising Sexualities:
Operation of the Market, New Regimes of Gender and Popular Culture
Samuel Nowak
My paper aims to deal with a question of colonising sexual identities within the operations of the
market in Central Europe, particularly Poland. So far two narratives embracing the problem can be
identified here. Postcolonial/queer theoreticians find the market a critical sphere of intervention:
sexual identities are shaped and reproduced by global forces providing a false polyphony of
sexual/gender difference. Popular culture and its texts is thus regarded as a new form of supremacy
and supervision. The latter interpretation seeks to understand those identity politics as a sign of
victory over post-socialist regimes of gender. Having travelled around the world and crossed
international dateline, Western politics of identity are being applied in Central Europe to liberate
poor Poles, Czechs and Slovaks. I wish to argue that both perspectives suffer, as David Gauntlett puts
it, from a failure to explain what these products of the market mean to their audiences. It’s not
difficult to find the market guilty of being a new form of colonialism or to share an optimistic view of
the market conveying progressive discourses of sexuality. Through analysis of Polish popular culture,
a purely capitalist and profit-oriented product, I will try to challenge this assumptions and reconsider
market’s role in production of Foucauldian technologies of (sexual) self. This will also help me to
outline a kind of problematic status of postcolonial studies in Poland and possible ways of carrying
out postcolonial research in this new context. I will focus on popular men’s and women’s magazines
and advertising campaigns.
Samuel Nowak graduated from cultural studies and is currently a PhD candidate at Jagiellonian
University, Krakow, Poland. He also studied at Univeristeit Antwerpen and King’s College London,
where he was supervised by Prof. Richard Dyer. He is presently carrying out research on popular
culture and writing his thesis on media and gay identity in Poland. From 2003 till 2009 he was
involved in Culture for Tolerance Festival, Poland’s largest queer culture event. He has received
numerous academic fellowships i.e.: Tokyo Foundation Fellowship, Polish Minister of Science and
Higher Education Scholarship, Jagiellonian University Rector Scholarship.
27
Good Girls Gone Gaga:
Gender, Race and Sex Represented through Women in Pop Music
Jeannette Bello Mota
In the last years, artists within globalized music industry have increasingly come closer to a
standardized version of multifaceted media entertainers, which allows them little control over both
their work and their artistic personae, yet projects seemingly strong and counter discursive
personalities.
A consumerist dynamic becomes evident in all products coming from music and culture industry to
the point of shaping all aspects of the few selected artists that finally make it into the mainstream
music circuit. Thus, such instances of mass produced popular culture are inextricably linked to a
neoliberal capitalist discourse and they serve as a means to reproduce and spread the ideas of such
discourse. In each of the cases, popularization is carried out, primarily, through advertising and the
media and is constricted by the language used in them –both verbal and visual. These are seldom fit
to offer anything but a glimpse into more complex ideas, specifically ideas regarding culture and
identity. At a time when most of the socio-political discourses and identities that used to be
discernibly different have become merged into a multiplicity of compounds and configurations that
seemingly stand for diversity and/or plurality, I seek to interrogate what is left of those distinctive
discourses and identities and whether these new popular identities are really multiple, inclusive
and/or counter discursive.
This paper will analyze the influence of these tendencies in popular culture over issues of gender,
race and sexual identity through the analysis of some of the recent works of popular female pop, rap
and R&B singers like Rihanna or Nicki Minaj as opposed –or compared—to the media phenomenon
Lady Gaga. These artists and others have become the most played and visible female personae in
today’s main media outlets. I will explain how ideas and discourses are abbreviated and adapted into
mainstream popular music and what the effects of such cultural reductions are in the representation
of women and the uses of allegedly counter discursive practices, especially feminism. While these
examples apparently stand for visualizing and liberating forms of expression, they have become
moulds that regulate social and cultural behaviours which are at the same time underpinned by
traditional power structures typical of patriarchal and supremacist discourses.
Jeannette Bello Mota is a PhD student and researcher at the University of Vigo. She is currently
enjoying a pre-doctoral scholarship from the same institution and is working on her Thesis “Ethnicity
and Gender in Hip Hop Culture within and outside the United States”. She has published the chapter
entitled “Representaciones Femeninas en los Vídeos Musicales de Rap Estadounidense:
Hipervisibilidad e Hipersexualización de los Cuerpos de Mujer” in the edited book Violencias
(In)visibles: Intervenciones Feministas frente a la Violencia Patriarcal.
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PANEL 6
Postcolonising Methodologies
Convenors:
Joshua Kwesi Aikins/Nadine Golly/María Teresa Herrera Vivar
The panel “Postcolonising Methodologies” aims to further a critical debate about the need for a selfreflexive, multi-perspective and decolonising approach to the enterprise of doing qualitative
research.
While some of these insights are not new – feminist and postcolonial research has made enormous
contributions to the understanding of the interviewing process as an interactional site, which is
embedded in social power relations – there is very little reflection on the specific challenges that
emerge when doing empirical research from a postcolonial (feminist) perspective.
Given that the interaction between researchers and research participants is influenced by epistemic
(and often also socio-economic) inequalities, we aim to explore the question of how to deal with
these different positions within the “matrix of domination”?
How do different positions of diasporan, Black, of color or majority researchers vis-a-vis their
research subjects/communities impact both research experience and outcomes? How can the
increasing diversity of researchers be methodologically captured without loosing sight of questions of
privileges and differential power positions? What does it mean for diasporan, Black or researchers of
color to work within, from and partly for a privileged scientific context? How can those differential
positions and positionalities be named and claimed while avoiding the simplistic equation of
researchers with “their communities”? How can such experiences and perspectives contribute to a
decolonial methodology, in which the standardized notion of “the researcher” is complicated in
useful ways?
What research experiences emerge when dealing with the challenge not to position the research
participants as the “Other”?
What are the implications when using traditional methods of gathering empirical data in order to
obtain knowledge about migrant communities and Black communities/communities of color?
How can postcolonial perspectives and criticisms be developed as conceptual sources/tools in order
to further an epistemic decolonisation within qualitative research? Which decolonizing strategies and
practices can challenge the Eurocentric grounding of qualitative research methods and
methodologies?
Joshua Kwesi Aikins is a research fellow at the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology at
Bielefeld University, Germany. He studied political science at Free University Berlin, Germany. He is
preparing a doctoral thesis on Reshaping the Politics of Development - The dynamics of interaction
between Western-style and indigenous political institutions in Ghana. His research interests include
the dynamics of interaction between Western-style and indigenous political institutions in Ghana,
development programs in an postcolonial perspective, cultural and political representations of the
African Diaspora, Postcoloniality and memory politics as well as Critical Whiteness Studies.
Nadine Golly is a researcher and lecturer at the Department of Education, Leuphana University
Lueneburg, Germany. She studied sociology, political science and european studies at the Carl-vonOssietzky-University Oldenburg, Germany. She is preparing a doctoral thesis on Afro-Scandinavians
29
and their hidden experiences of birth, migration and adoption in Germany and Scandinavia after
World War II at the Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany. Her research interests include Black
Diaspora Studies, Racism, (Post)Colonialism, Migration, biographical research, Panafrican Agendas,
Critical Whiteness Studies and the interaction with Education for Sustainable Development.
María Teresa Herrera Vivar, M.A, is a researcher and lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences,
Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. She studied anthropology at Universidad Nacional Mayor de
San Marcos/Lima-Peru and sociology, political science and pedagogy at Goethe University Frankfurt.
She is preparing a doctoral thesis on the self-organisation of Latin-American domestic workers in
Germany. Her research interests include gender studies, migration, postcolonial theory, racism,
intersectionality and biographical research.
Decolonising participant observation.
Writing one’s privilege – some remarks on the ongoing ‘crisis of
representation’
Vanessa Eileen Thompson & Harpreet Cholia
In the 1980’s a ground breaking debate on questions of representation and the textual objectification
of the subjects of research marked by the tension of distance and dialogue has occured in the field of
cultural/social anthropology. In general this 'crisis of representation' is to be understood as a
discourse that called into question the legitimacy as well as the adequacy of ethnological
demonstrations. The question of the 'ethnographic authority' and its interdependency with
hegemonial power and rhetoric has come to the forefront of discussion. Although the debate was
also triggered by the crisis of ethnology, in which its links to colonialism was thematised, it
concentrated mostly on the process of ethnographic writing or graphisation (and at most processes
of decolonisation on a textual level) and was predominantly held by western white male scholars.
Furthermore the writing culture debate not only questioned its own theoretical and methodological
premise but also affected the model of research on which ethnology and ethnography are based on,
namely the method of participant observation. This ethnographical key method, understood as the
basic and defining research strategy for cultural anthropologists therefore witnessed a reflexive turn
as the method itself became an object in the analysis of the ethnographic process.
In our presentation we aim to further discuss questions of the 'ongoing crisis of representation' in
reference to a postcolonial approach to participant observation that expands the major premise of
the writing culture debate and includes the critical interventions of Black feminists and feminists of
colour. The conceptualization of the Halfie in anthropology, elaborated in the work of the
Palestinian-U.S. American professor of Anthropology and Women’s and Gender Studies Lila AbuLughod, is used as a starting point to draft the relationship between the Black researcher, or
researcher of colour and Black researched, or researched of color. By drawing upon findings from our
ethnographic research conducted with British-Asian women in London and Black women in Paris, we
aim to consider the concept of the matrix of domination with a high degree of granularity. Our aim is
to look at the balance of power between researcher and researched through the prism of
intersectionality vis-à-vis their own perceived matrixes and explore the intertwining of positions on
the one hand and the inequalities (epistemic, socio-economic, religious, sexual) on the other, thus
demonstrating what effect this has on conducting participant observation. Moreover we wish to
raise a key question against the backdrop of the decolonisation of participant observation: Whilst self
30
reflection in regards to one’s privilege is essential, one mustn’t lose sight of the persons who are
researched. How can one ensure that the writing of one’s privilege does not turn the process of
participant observation in on itself and centralize the privileged once more?
Harpreet Cholia, M.A., is currently the London researcher for the ERC Starting Grant Project: "New
Migrant Socialities. Ethnic Club Cultures in Europe" and a doctoral candidate in the department of
sociology at the Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany. She holds a BA in German and European
Studies and received an MA in Anglo-German Cultural Relations from Queen Mary University of
London. In her PhD research she is exploring how young British-Asian women manage social
networks through the use of urban spaces in London.
Vanessa Eileen Thompson, M.A., is a research assistant and doctoral candidate in the department of
sociology at the Goethe-University in Frankfurt, Germany. Recently she graduated with a M.A. in
philosophy and in her M.A. thesis entitled, “Frantz Fanon on Alienation through Colonisation”, she
has worked on Fanon’s notion of colonial alienation and on contemporary questions of decolonising
the Self against the background of his critical phenomenology of racism. Currently she is working on a
PhD dissertation, which explores forms of “gendered everyday racism(s)” in the lives of Black females
in Color-Blind France.
Towards an Epistemology of Postcolonial Knowledge Production?”
Mariam Popal
In my paper I would like to focus not only on qualitative research and strategies of decolonization but
on the question of knowledge production in the (western) higher education and postcolonial
criticism on a whole.
Drawing on approaches of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Trinh Minh-ha, bell hooks and Paolo Freire
and Gyan Prakash I would like to elaborate on the question of subaltern knowledge production
where the subject (- position) of the “scientist” and researcher is not one of mitigating and/or
analyzing, but one that learns to un-learn her_himself. Such a positionality carves out space so that
“the other” can speak. Four trajectories are taken into account: a- a non-positivistic premise towards
the outcome of the research, b- noting the blind spots, silences and anxieties of (neo-)colonial and
dominant theoretical and philosophical texts one has to deal with before exploring the research
question and c- techniques and strategies of the language, the tone and prose, of the written
research which should conduct a palimpsestic rewriting of the subject-object-binarism, d- forms of
complete solidarity from an ethical (Levinas) as well as an essentialist strategic (Spivak) point of view
with the participants of the research, so that the question of the research with its (one`s own)
authority, assumptions and premises is changed, and a range of differing forms of views can be seen
which are beyond control and categorization. That means that with time the premises, objectives
and methodologies of academic knowledge production itself are questioned and have to change
towards much more democratic understandings of what knowledge is.
Mariam Popal received her Ph.D. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Hamburg,
Germany with a dissertation on the portrayal, meaning and function of the “Sharia” and the role of
“woman” as an authority of law by drawing on postcolonial theories. She writes and teaches
interdisciplinary in the field of Feminist Postcolonial Studies/Critical Whiteness Studies. Institutionally
she is affiliated with the Middle Eastern Studies University of Freiburg, Germany and the Center for
31
Gender Studies University of Basel, Switzerland. Her research interests focus on Multiculturalism,
Citizenship and Law, Feminism, Islam, Judaism, Blackness and the epistemology of counterhegemonic translocal spaces in literarily philosophical texts. Currently she is working on her
habilitation treatise on Postcolonial Feminist Ethics.
Insiders/Outsiders and Critical Epistemologies
Anaheed Al-Hardan
The feminist, post/colonial and indigenous critiques of normative positivist epistemologies and
research practices have posed a formidable challenge to normative knowledge production on various
‘others’: women, the colonised and the racialised. This challenge has come by way of arguments that
range in scope from the embodiment of vision and all knowledge claims; the need to attend to
neo/colonial structural relations of power in a ‘post/colonial’ world; and the epistemological
whiteness inherent in racialised epistemologies on First Nations in colonial-settler societies . In this
paper, I consider the implications of these critiques in relation to researchers who are engaged in
research on societies, which are not only their own, but moreover, that continue to live in various
states of colonialism and statelessness. Within this context, I address the notion of an
‘insider/outsider’ researcher that has risen as a result of and a response to the critiques above,
employed as part of a critical research agenda by researchers who are implicated in myriad ways in
both the colonised societies that they research, and in the neo/colonial (Anglophone) academy
within which their research is produced. . I argue that although this notion of an insider/outsider may
be useful by way of providing an opening for critical and reflexive epistemologies and research
practices, it falls short of adequately addressing the myriad questions of power, representation and
research participants own agencies vis-à-vis the insider/outsider researcher in the research field.
Through this discussion, I propose alternative ways of thinking of the encounters in the field which
complicate and move beyond auto/research within neo/colonial contexts as revolving around
insider/outsider researchers.
Anaheed Al-Hardan completed a PhD in the Department of Sociology at Trinity College, University of
Dublin in Ireland. Her dissertation ‘Remembering the Catastrophe: Uprooted Histories and the
Grandchildren of the Nakba’ employed critical auto/ethnographic research practices and investigated
the Syria-based Palestinian refugee community’s social history, commemorative practices and
collective memory. She is an incoming Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in
Berlin, Germany.
Positioning, Post-Colonial Approaches and Decolonizing Methodology
through Global Hip-Hop
Miye Nadya Tom
This paper is the result of research that was conducted in an urban Native American community and
at an indigenous institution of higher education in North America and on community-based projects
for non-formal education in communities around the periphery of Lisbon, Portugal – the population
of which is defined by post-colonial migration from Portuguese-Speaking African Countries. Research
used hip-hop culture and rap music (an often politically subversive cultural movement that emerged
from the African-American context in the USA) as a site of enquiry that could integrate different
socio-historical contexts and theoretical traditions. Like rap music, academic enquiry can too
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incorporate various discourses and disciplines, cutting across time and space to disassemble and
reassemble dominant forms of knowledge. The conceptual, ethical and methodological approach of
this study was based primarily on the recognition that research, much akin to its use of global hiphop, was itself “contact zone” and a site of struggle and resistance against the very forms of
knowledge that have historically silenced, denigrated or eliminated peoples, culture and knowledges.
Research explored how hip-hop was appropriated and used by members of these communities to
deconstruct dominant knowledge systems, to reinforce cultural identity, and use it towards a
transformative education.
As a scholar of Native American and Russian descent, who specializes in the Social Sciences within
the trans-disciplinary language and approaches of Post-Colonialism(s) (largely debated in Native
American academic circles and communities alike), my work has sought to decolonize my approaches
to research. Furthermore, much Native American scholarship has pursued scientific inquiry and
knowledge production by and for Indigenous communities. Such was reflected upon in my
positioning: in an academic setting at one of the oldest universities in Europe, when approaching an
urban Native American community, and
when approaching communities around Lisbon. On one hand, this has been translating my stances on
research to meet the academic standards to which they will inevitably be measured. On the other
hand, it has been the continuous struggle with whether or not I have been able to decolonize my
methodologies when approaching these communities: first, as a relatively white foreigner in Portugal
and, second, lacking the ability to spend significant time in any of the communities that were part of
my research (including “my own community”). I was unable to conduct research in any of their
interests, granted that research was to be conducted between two countries and within a short
amount of time. Acknowledging such limitations, however, hip-hop culture and rap music became a
means of establishing research-participant complicity – a site to co-construct dialogue around the
politics of knowledge, identity and colonialism with an ambivalent regard towards academic enquiry.
Miye Nadya Tom is an enrolled member of the Walker River Paiute Tribe in Nevada, USA and was
raised in Northeast Los Angeles, USA. She received her BA in International Studies with a regional
emphasis on Europe from the University of San Francisco, USA. In fulfilling her regional emphasis, she
ŚĂƐƐƚƵĚŝĞĚĂƚƚŚĞŽŵƉůƵƚĞŶƐĞhŶŝǀĞƌƐŝƚǇŽĨDĂĚƌŝĚ͕^ƉĂŝŶĂŶĚWĄǌŵĄŶǇWĠter Catholic University in
Budapest, Hungary. Since fall of 2007, she has been pursuing her doctorate in Post-Colonialisms and
Global Citizenship, at the Centre of Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. She is
currently writing her thesis, “Hip-Hop Culture, Community and Education: Post-Colonial Learning?”.
Decolonizing University Assessment.
Explorations in Applied Postcolonial Anthropology
Leonie Bellina
What could happen if research on diversity (-politics) within academic settings were to be done from
postcolonial perspectives, through methodologies that aim to decolonize, as a critical intervention in
dominant practices and policies? The questions raised of dominant practices/discourse could make
the dominant unrecognizable to itself, rather than making the ‘Other’ knowable to dominance. This
kind of transgression requires a different invitation to participate: an unconditional one (Derrida). US
universities regularly undergo a review process by the accrediting agency, in which ‘diversity’ has
become a category of assessment. However, dominant discourse on diversity-politics is mainly
33
concerned with the ‘inclusion’ of the ‘other’. The irony appears in translation: in German, to include
(einschliessen) also means ‘to lock up’. A ‘locking up’ that often happens in assessment research in
the positioning of ‘diverse others’ as objects of knowledge, and contributors of ‘authentic voice’, in
processes of knowledge production geared towards presenting the university as accreditationworthy. These problematics framed a research project on diversity I was asked to conduct in my
position as researcher at a University in San Francisco, during the re-accreditation review. But: what
makes such knowledge production ethical and relevant, and for whom? In collaboration with the
program in Postcolonial Anthropology and student activist groups, we were able to design the
research in a critical postcolonial framework, productive of ethical parameters for our project:
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“participatory” as subversive of unilateral models of knowledge production, and attentive to
the contingency of knowledge (making) embedded in power-relations
using critical experimental ethnography (Marcus & Fisher) as interrogative of difference;
postcolonial feminist interventions as engendering (multiple) differences, and
“deconstructive” as in critical (methodological and personal) engagement with the multiple
and intersecting positionalities of participants and researcher, and their constantly shifting
interactions during the interview process.
The paper discusses these frameworks and how they shaped the research, as part of decolonizing
methodologies in a postcolonial Anthropology that uses its histories and legacies as a ‘colonial
discipline’ to critically reflect on its disciplinary responsibilities in a post?colonial world. Emancipatory
anthropological praxis opens possibilities for scholarship to subvert its own role as a tool of violent
representational and discursive regimes, by prioritizing scholarship as advocacy in alliance with those
who traditionally have been made legible as Anthropology’s ‘others’. The paper discusses the
challenges that arise from refusing this ‘othering’, from interrupting notions of representation
(making), and from conceiving of research as inherently political rather than ‘scientifically neutral’.
One example will be the choice of participants: activist-members of the university with shared
concerns rather than shared identities in regards to diversity, and on the responses of university
hierarchy to these choices. The study found that the participants shifted the focus of inquiry from
“assessing their education” to “educating their assessment”. A process of politicization and alliance
building that led to challenging structures of knowledge production at the university and envisioning
new forms of participation and accountability; in short: demanding an “unconditional invitation” to
processes of decolonizing knowledge making.
Leonie Bellina strategically identifies as white european queer femme, raised with working class and
migration/displacement backgrounds. Her work is wrought by the responsibilities and commitments
arising from her positioning in histories of domination and struggle as they shape multiple presents.
She holds an MA in Postcolonial Anthropology; her activist and academic backgrounds include
gender/queer studies, postcolonial studies, and environmental studies. Her research interests
include environmental-justice based analysis of discourses on ‘sustainable development’, as they are
productive of new normative orders and forms of global governance; praxis of emancipatory
education; practices of memorialization and counter-memory, and “decolonizing the colonizer”.
34
Decolonizing the Social Sciences and the Humanities
Sokol Lleshi
Postmodern thinking is considered to be insufficient let alone equipped with the necessary
conceptual and methodological tools to address the process of de-colonizing the social sciences, or
de-linking the epistemic violence induced by social sciences due to being implicated on what Walter
D. Mignolo calls ‘monotopic’ epistemology of modernity. The argument as construed by Mignolo
aims to do away with modern epistemology by establishing a differential locus of enunciation that
provides for ‘an other thinking’. In this paper I posit Mignolo’s project of decolonizing social sciences
to Foucault’s concern over the disqualification and suppression of subjugated knowledges. By
contrasting these two authors, I intend to show that there is a possibility to bridge postmodern or
poststructuralist thinking with postcolonial thinking in the way how ‘an other science’ is to be
practiced, if at all. De-linking thinking from the epistemology of modernity and all the universal
categories that follow implies according to Mignolo a re-inscription of subalternized knowledges
from a differential locus of enunciation that undoes the Eurocentric practice of science. Nonetheless,
this de-colonizing project does not seem to do away with certain categories of thought and practices
inherited from the coloniality of power. I argue in this paper that Mignolo’ s references made to
intellectuals as agency of change via border thinking in postcolonial societies, and his reference to
minimal rationality or the endorsement of ‘ an other logic’ follows a similar practice of the modernity
regarding the re-inscription of the suppressed in the present. On the other hand, the ‘insurrection of
subjugated knowledges’ understood by Foucault as a knowledge that is local, regional and
differential implies a practice of intervention in the present that precludes total theorization, and
colonization of the re-inscribed suppressed knowledges. What Foucault’s concept of ‘insurrection of
subjugated knowledges’ seems to lack is the locus of enunciation that Mignolo historicizes and
stresses. I try to argue that a possibility of de-colonizing social sciences can be achieved by
positioning ourselves and our research projects in a differential locus of enunciation that engenders
the epistemological break with the epistemology of modernity but at the same time renouncing the
attempt of ‘representing’ subjugated knowledges from the position of a totalizing theorist as
Foucault would warn us. Henceforth, the recognition of the epistemic colonial difference which is
lacking in postmodern thought can be complemented with the practice of the intervention/reinscription of suppressed knowledges that resist institutionalization, or unitary theorization.
Sokol Lleshi's educational background is in political science. He comes from Albania which has been
historically at the periphery of empires, colonized for a short period of time by Fascist Italy. These
issues of the past have not been really discussed, through a postcolonial framework. He has worked
as a lecturer of political science in the University of Tirana. His concern has been to surpass the false
dichotomy between the legacy of Marxist ideology’s categories of thought as disseminated by state
socialist regime and the liberal arts education.
Studying Borderlands: the Political Dimension of Oral History Research
Olga Sasukevich
The paper is focused on the methodological problems of analyzing new borderland regions which
appeared on the ruins of the Soviet Union and as a result of the European Union enlargement.
Concentrating on the particular case of the Belarus-Lithuania border I am trying to overcome the
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descriptive approach to the border regions and to conceptualize new borders in a theoretical and
historical context.
Taking into consideration both affirmative and critical discourses towards globalization I argue that in
spite of their different interpretation of the global processes they are rather similar in
conceptualizing borders. Both approaches underline only the negative aspects of political borders
which are considered either as a barrier for global flow of capital or as a territorial line dividing the
world and the people.
Focusing my attention on the community of women who are involved in border trade on the BelarusLithuania border, I argue that a border can be regarded as an important resource of employment and
welfare for people inhabiting borderland regions. Therefore,I consider the including local standpoint
on borders into the academic discourse as a crucially important issue for debates on the processes of
de-and re-bordering in the globalizing world.
Applying oral history research I try to stress two important methodological issues. The first of them is
connected with the political dimension. I am interested in how the academic work can be used for
solving the problems of inequality, gender and class deprivation and subordination. Appealing to
Nancy Fraser’s idea of justice in a globalizing world, I consider using oral history not only as a
methodological but also as a political choice. According to Fraser, redistribution, recognition, and
representation are three mutually dependent attributes of justice in the modern global conditions
(„three-dimensional theory of justice“). In my paper I focus on the third of them – representation –
because, as Fraser argues, representation is the root of political justice as a „parity of participation“
in decision-making processes. My suggestion is that academia on a par with media, Internet, NGOs to
a certain degree can be considered as a public space through which the misrepresented usually get
an access to the political process.
The latter issue stresses the position and role of a researcher in the process of representation. I
presuppose that the representation of marginalized groups is possible through the academic work
but the representation of their voices is determined by the figure of a researcher, the rules of
academia, the unbalance in the social and cultural capital of a researcher and of her/his
interlocutors. Oral history is often considered as a possibility of “giving voice” to marginalized groups
of people. However, I consider but find this conception to be rather problematic because it does not
help to overcome the existing inequalities between a researcher and an interlocutor in the situation
of their interaction. Doing my research on the borderland between Belarus and Lithuania I try to spot
the strategies of including the experience of the border inhabitants in the academic debates but on
the basis of interests’ balance. Keeping in mind Gayatri Spivak’s prominent question, I argue that it is
possible only through the overcoming academic disciplinary and hierarchical boundaries.
Volha (Olga) Sasunkevich is currently a PhD-student at the Graduate School Baltic Borderlands:
Shifting Boundaries of Mind and Culture in the Borderlands of the Baltic Sea Region, Greifswald
University, Germany. She received an MA in Cultural Studies with specialization in Gender Studies
from European Humanities University, Vilnius, Lithuania. The main research interests include feminist
theory and methodology, border studies, discourses of globalization, oral history.
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PANEL 7
Teaching Postcolonial Knowledge
Convenors:
Joanna James/Nadine Golly
“So the voice that I now seek is both individual and collective, personal and political, one reflecting
the intersection of my unique biography with the larger meaning of my historical times.”
“I felt that it was important to examine the complexity of ideas that exist in both scholarly and
everyday life and present those ideas in a way that made them not less powerful or rigorous but
accessible. Approaching theory in this way challenges both the ideas of educated elites and the role
of theory in sustaining hierarchies of privilege.”
(Patricia Hill Collins 1991)
In this session we seek papers from scholars who examine the experience of teaching emancipatory
postcolonial knowledge. The strategy of decolonization as an analytical approach to knowledge
systems is one example of promoting emancipatory knowledge. Therefore, we aim to examine how
the concept of decolonization can be worked with to focus on postcolonial criticism and how it can
be used and taught in scholarly life. Decolonization is positioned as a critical scholarly movement. In
the session we intend to explore the many ways in which the teaching of knowledge is negotiated:
What kind of challenges confront decolonizing scholars (Black scholars/scholars of colour) especially
at predominantly white institutions? How can or does the presence and teaching of decolonizing
scholars challenge imperial, epistemic realities? How can critical re-interpretations of hegemonic
knowledge create decolonizing, emancipatory postcolonial knowledge and practice? How can it be
taught? Does teaching emancipatory postcolonial knowledge have an impact on knowledge
organization, academic/scholarly recognition, academic hierarchies of privileges and the production
of knowledge?
In a concluding panel discussion, all panelists of the panel will get together to follow up on the so far
presented possibilities and strategies, drawing on initially asked questions that concern the
challenges confronting decolonizing scholars and how the concept of decolonisation can be worked
with, used and taught in scholarly life.
Joanna James is currently finishing her studies in sociology, socialpsychology and political science at
the Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. Her thesis entitled “Postcoloniality in Germany: Scenarios
of everyday racism using the example of Black German realities of life and white defense
mechanisms” explores the everyday realities of Black Germans shaped by racism on the basis of the
postcolonial whiteness discourse in Germany. Her research interests include Black Diaspora Studies,
Postcolonial Studies and research on racism and whiteness.
Nadine Golly is a researcher and lecturer at the Department of Education, Leuphana University
Lueneburg, Germany. She studied sociology, political science and european studies at the Carl-vonOssietzky-University Oldenburg, Germany. She is preparing a doctoral thesis on Afro-Scandinavians
and their hidden experiences of birth, migration and adoption in Germany and Scandinavia after
World War II at the Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany. Her research interests include Black
Diaspora Studies, Racism, (Post)Colonialism, Migration, biographical research, Panafrican Agendas,
Critical Whiteness Studies and the interaction with Education for Sustainable Development.
37
Postcolonial Teaching and Learning in Higher Education:
Experiences of Marginalized Students in Two Indian Universities
Bharat Chandra Rout
Colonialism is more of an “ideological orientation” continuously reflected in practices of its various
forms of legacy than a mere political or administrative subjugation. It penetrates into mainstream
structural-functional apparatuses and build its’ ideological and hegemonic nexus in every day
practices. Since colonial legacy is structurally routed, the most celebrated action of decolonization
sometimes becomes an act of colonialism. This point becomes relevant when one carefully looks at
the ideological and normative directions of various basic structures and functions of a society. The
process of recognizing such ideological and hegemonic practices in education; giving rights and
voices to the marginalized students and attempting to have a diverse, inclusive and multicultural
curriculum and pedagogy is known as the process of decolonizing higher education. In India, not only
there does a link exist between the selection of (school) knowledge that was made under colonial
rule and present-day pedagogy and curricula, but the very idea of ‘what is worth teaching’ remains to
this day clouded by a colonial view of Indian society. The cultural function of colonialism which
evolved from the beginning of the nineteenth century was positioned in the view that indigenous
knowledge and culture was ‘deficient’. Under this backdrop, present paper deals with the postcolonial teaching and learning experiences of the marginalized students in Indian Higher Education.
The marginalized communities in India are Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) which are
recognized in legal and constitutional terms and were not only suffered from long Caste
discriminations and geographical isolation but were denied their basic human rights for long in Indian
Society. Caste is a social stigma which allocates identity on the basis birth-occupation linkages for
various social communities. Since there is a strong societal demarcation on the basis of allocated
identity among various social groups, it was obvious that the paradigm of higher education and the
nature of knowledge is so construed (mostly by higher castes as they only could access higher
education in lieu of their higher social standing) was alienated to the experiences of lower castes
(SC/ST). After India’s independence in 1947, quantitatively the representation of SC/ST in
political/decision making bodies was too small to make a meaningful impact on the nature of
teaching, learning and knowledge in higher education in India.
The paper is based on the interview taken from students and teachers from two universities in India.
Since affirmative action (AA) is one of the important features of Indian higher education, and it is the
AA students broadly for whom the struggle for post-colonial knowledge formation and dissemination
is quite more substantial, separate interview from them were taken for knowing how they perceive
present construction and transaction of knowledge in their institutions. Study finds the views of
marginalized students (including teachers from marginalized communities) on the formation and
practices of knowledge, administrative behaviour and larger campus interactions is too radical and
want them to dethrone often through forces of their political groupings. Further, there found to exist
an ideological cold war between the beneficiaries of AA and non-beneficiaries in Indian higher
educational institutions taking its route in caste division of Indian society and furthering its’ reach to
the merit-efficiency principles to access and participate in higher education which ultimately have its
impact on the university teaching and learning and shaping the nature of knowledge.
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Bharat Chandra Rout currently works as a research scholar, PhD, at National University of
Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), New Delhi, India. He also works as Convener of
Capability Approach and Education Network (CAEN) of Human Development and Capability
Association (HDCA). He is specialized in the area of Inequalities in education, Politics and public policy
in education, the debate of race/caste/class in educational access and participation and affirmative
action, Political philosophy, ideology and State/Democracy. He also holds membership of several
national and international professional/academic institutions/organizations, i.e. HDCA, Global
Development Network (GDN), International Political Science Association (IPSA), Comparative
Education Society of India (CESI) etc. He is the author of several research publications in national and
international peer-reviewed journals and has participated in various national and international
conferences. He is currently pursuing a research study towards PhD entitled “Affirmative Action for
Weaker Sections of Students in Institutions of Higher Education in India”.
Teaching Emancipatory Post-Colonial Knowledge:
An African University Teacher’s Experience
Nnanna Onuoha Arukwe
This paper discusses the experience of an up-coming African university lecturer engaged in teaching
‘emancipatory postcolonial knowledge’ to young African minds for the past five years. The young
Africans that the lecturer has interacted with are in the age range of 20-31, they are fairly distributed
between both genders and are all university undergraduates taking the courses: Sociology of
Decolonization and Contemporary African Social Thought. In addition to first hand interaction in and
out of classroom between the lecturer and the students, the paper, amongst others, relies on course
evaluation data obtained from course evaluation questionnaires given to the students at the end of
the courses. The paper notes a significant difference in the preference of course topics, amongst
others, by gender among the students, a difference which qualitative data shows to derive from the
implications for gender equality that knowledge of such topics have for the students. The paper thus
concludes that the designing and teaching of social science courses in Africa generally will be more
beneficial for African decolonization, as well as meaningful and exciting for the students thereby
easily awakening their latent abilities, if knowledge that inspires thinking in gender equality terms is
built in at every level as a matter of principle.
Nnanna Onuoha Arukwe was educated at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He is currently a
Lecturer and a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, of the same
university. The coauthor of two books, he has additionally published a number of articles on a wide
variety of topics in sociology and anthropology; and discussed such topics nationally as well as
internationally. As a part of his contribution to the teaching of courses like Contemporary African
Social Thought and Sociology of Decolonization, he has recently published a text book, Since Equiano:
History and Challenges of African Socio-Political Thought.
Challenging Swedish Exceptionalism? Teaching while Black
Ylva Habel
Sweden imagines itself as a race-less, tolerant country, purportedly less affected by postcolonial
relations than other nations, by virtue of its welfare politics, and its democratic, egalitarian
39
principles. This national self-image, which is situated within a regional discursive framework of
Nordic exceptionalism, has been contested by intersectional, postcolonial, critical race and whiteness
studies; yet there is a widespread conviction that Sweden has had no real part in the imperial
adventure, and therefore is untouched by colonial and postcolonial social dynamics. These persistent
claims to political innocence are forcefully reproduced as three forms of positioning: sanctioned
ignorance, normative colorblindness, and white liberal doubt. Working as a Black scholar and teacher
within a postcolonial curriculum in this context involves several challenges.
My paper, which will shortly be published in an anthology called Black Populations Globally:
Educational Perspectives, Challenges and Prospects for People of African Descent Worldwide (eds.
Kassie Freeman, Ethan Johnson and Kelvin Shawn Sealey, eds., Routledge, 2011) exemplifies some of
the pedagogical challenges I face as a Black film and media studies scholar in pedagogical situations
where I teach predominantly white students about media representations of the African Diaspora.
Taking my point of departure in Swedish everyday discourse that negates the significance of race, I
will visualize some of the obstacles that I have encountered in teaching situations on predominantly
postcolonial courses. While working to encourage students to let go of sanctioned ignorance about
racial issues, one of my greatest challenges has been to make them unlearn the colorblindness that
has long been a cherished part of Swedish identity.
Ylva Habel is Assistant Professor and Research fellow at the department of Media and
Communications Studies at Södertörn University College. She defended her dissertation Modern
Media, Modern Audiences: Mass Media and Social Engineering in the 1930s Swedish Welfare State in
2002. Her current project, with the working title Black Impulse: The Stockholm Reception of the
African-American artists Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson, focuses upon the media discourses on
stardom, race and gender in this context. Discussions revolve around how material media culture is
mobilized by the artists to negotiate colonial and postcolonial signification. Her resarch interest
revolve around the intersections critical whiteness studies, postcolonial perspectives, media history,
and cultural studies.
Raising MĈori Student Achievement
Cadence Kaumoana
The intended outcome of this research is to provide recommendations to the secondary school and
tertiary sectors to ensure the successful eduĐĂƚŝŽŶĂů ĂĚǀĂŶĐĞŵĞŶƚ ŽĨ DĈŽƌŝ͕ ŝŶĚŝŐĞŶŽƵƐ ĂŶĚ Ăůů
ƉĞŽƉůĞƐŽĨƚŚĞŐůŽďĞ͘dŚĞƌĞƐĞĂƌĐŚǁŝůůďĞĨŽƵŶĚĞĚĨƌŽŵĂĐĐŽƵŶƚƐŽĨDĈŽƌŝŝŶĚŝǀŝĚƵĂůƐǁŚŽĚŝĚŶŽƚ
complete secondary school and still managed to create positive, successful lives for themselves and
their families and the generations to come. One of the main research outcomes is to provide positive
ĂĐĐŽƵŶƚƐ ŽĨ ǁŚĂƚ ĐůĞĂƌůǇ ǁŽƌŬƐ ĨŽƌ DĈŽƌŝ ƉĂƌƚŝĐŝƉĂŶƚƐ ƚŽ ĞŶƐƵƌĞ ƐƵĐĐĞƐƐ ŝŶ ƚŚĞŝƌ ůŝǀĞƐ ĂŶĚ
recommendations for methods to implement within the secondary school educational structure. The
ƉĞŽƉůĞ ƚŚŝƐ ƐƚƵĚǇ ǁŝůů ďĞŶĞĨŝƚ ĂƌĞ ƚŚĞ ůĂƌŐĞ ŶƵŵďĞƌ ŽĨ DĈŽƌŝ ŝŶĚŝǀŝĚƵĂůƐ ƚŚĂƚ ĚŝĚ ŶŽƚ ĐŽŵƉůĞƚĞ
secondary school to know that their potential can be realised and achieved. This will in turn have
huge repercussions on the generation iŶǀŽůǀĞĚǁŝƚŚŝŶƚŚĂƚǁŚĈŶĂƵĂŶĚƚŽŐĞŶĞƌĂƚŝŽŶƐƚŽĐŽŵĞ͘dŚŝƐ
study will also benefit current indigenous students, teachers within secondary schools and tertiary
institutions and also vitally important, those in charge of management systems and indigenous
support structures within the schools and institutions by providing them with clear
recommendations that are affirme, The intended outcome of this research is to provide
40
recommendations to the secondary school and tertiary sectors to ensure the successful educational
ĂĚǀĂŶĐĞŵĞŶƚŽĨDĈŽƌŝ;ŝŶĚŝŐĞŶŽƵƐEĞǁĞĂůĂŶĚĞƌƐͿ͕ŝŶĚŝŐĞŶŽƵƐĂŶĚĂůůƉĞŽƉůĞƐŽĨƚŚĞŐůŽďĞ͘
dŚĞ ƌĞƐĞĂƌĐŚǁŝůůďĞĨŽƵŶĚĞĚĨƌŽŵĂĐĐŽƵŶƚƐ ŽĨ DĈŽƌŝ ŝŶĚŝǀŝĚƵĂůƐ ǁŚŽ ĚŝĚ ŶŽƚ ĐŽŵƉůĞƚĞ ƐĞĐŽŶĚĂƌǇ
school and still managed to gain tertiary qualifications and create positive, successful lives for
themselves and their families and the generations to come. One of the mairesearch drives is on the
ability to maximise curriculum potential through curriculum design, assessment and content.
The people this study will ďĞŶĞĨŝƚĂƌĞƚŚĞůĂƌŐĞŶƵŵďĞƌŽĨDĈŽƌŝĂŶĚŝŶĚŝŐĞŶŽƵƐŝŶĚŝǀŝĚƵĂůƐƚŚĂƚĚŝĚ
not complete secondary school to know that their potential can be realised and achieved.
Recommendations will be made to support secondary school learners by realising their potential and
providing strong support structures and a curriculum that maximises this potential.
dŚŝƐǁŝůůŝŶƚƵƌŶŚĂǀĞŚƵŐĞƌĞƉĞƌĐƵƐƐŝŽŶƐŽŶƚŚĞŐĞŶĞƌĂƚŝŽŶŝŶǀŽůǀĞĚǁŝƚŚŝŶƚŚĂƚǁŚĈŶĂƵ;ĨĂŵŝůǇͿĂŶĚ
to generations to come. This study will also benefit current indigenous students, teachers within
secondary schools, tertiary institutions and also vitally important, those icharge of management
systems and indigenous support structures within the schools and institutions by providing them
with clear recommendations that are affirmed, proved and justified.
Lived, shared experiences by university graduates will assist in outlining what is working currently,
what has worked and what can work - using a surplus theorising approach rather than deficit
theorising it is envisioned that positive elements will be used to guide the pathway forward together.
About Cadence Kaumoana: Education has been a constant part of my life – and it continues to be so.
A solo mother of three amazing boys, I reside on my ancestral land of the mighty Waikato in New
Zealand. We are descendents of Tainui waka (Travelling Outrigger) (Pirongia te Maunga (Pirongia is
the Mountain), Kawhia te Moana (Kawhia is the Ocean), Hiiona te Marae (Hiiona is the Meeting
,ŽƵƐĞͿĂŶĚĂƐƚŚĞƚƌĂĚŝƚŝŽŶĂůDĈŽƌŝƉĞƉĞŚĈ(tribal saying) emphasises; I desire to be nurtured in the
rohe of my people, to grow in our reo, our ways of being and understanding and our beliefs as has
been for generations before me. With this knowledge I can then begin to understand what it is to be
DĈŽƌŝ ;ĂŶ ŝŶĚŝŐĞŶŽƵƐ EĞǁ ĞĂůĂŶĚĞƌͿ ĂŶĚ / ǁŝůů ďĞ ĂďůĞ ƚŽ ƉĂƐƐ ƚŚŝƐ ŬŶŽǁůĞĚŐĞ ŽŶ ƚŽ ƐƚƵĚĞŶƚƐ͕
eduĐĂƚŽƌƐĂŶĚŵǇŽǁŶƚĂŵĂƌŝŬŝ;ĐŚŝůĚƌĞŶͿĂŶĚǁŚĈŶĂƵ;ĨĂŵŝůǇͿ͘/ĂŵĂĨŝƌŵďĞůŝĞǀĞƌƚŚĂƚĂŶǇƚŚŝŶŐŝƐ
achievable if you are confident in your identity and have the drive and determination to overcome
barriers and aim for the stars. I am a registered secondary school teacher and now work at tertiary
level as a curriculum designer. Currently I am completing my Masters in Education - my focus being
Maximising Curriculum Potential.
The frame of epistemological innovation in legal education in India is the
reconditioning of colonial past: some observations and case studies
Sanjay Singh
Legal education in India is a colonial legacy. The broader frame well within which the legal education
is provided is also under the impact of colonial attitude and approach. The emancipatory
epistemological academic discourse seems to be subservient to the colonial methodology. Whatever
differences that are visible with reference to historical development in legal education are only
structural and content is more the less the same. The experimentation in 1987 with the
establishment of first national law university model initiated a new paradigm of legal education in
41
India. This step may be perceived as an innovation. This tradition gained momentum and at present
there are fifteen national law universities and there are many more to come in future. When one
perceives the whole shift in legal education with the introduction of National law Universities, one
can carefully says that the change is only structural where three year degree course is replaced by
five year course, whereas the other variables of the system are the same. The experimentation,
innovation and creation expected out of this new system could not be met. Why the experimentation
which was expected to depart from colonial mind set and epistemology could not do so must be
understand from the course content and organization of the curriculum.
The first two years teaching in national Law universities is dominated by the subjects of humanities
and social sciences. The pure legal subjects come after the second year. The expectations of
introducing the social science subjects particularly, economics, sociology, psychology, political
science was to provide the students a basic background of the reality of socio-cultural, economic and
political spheres of Indian democracy. This background helps in understanding legal issues in totality
with a proper context. The subjects of social sciences in Law universities are termed as “liberal”
subjects (particularly in Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia National Law University). This connotation of liberal
attached to the social sciences gives the legal academic course a meaning which is not liberal or
which is still in the clutches of colonial legacy. This suggests the legal academics with reference to
content and aspiration is very much the extension of colonial epistemology whereas, the social
science subjects other than law are acting as emancipatory academic instrument for the
emancipation from the colonial past.
This contradiction with reference to this dichotomy between liberal and non liberal subjects creates
an epistemological conflict. The creativity, experimentation and innovation of the student
community are suppressed by this contradiction. The post colonial academic domain with reference
to legal studies has its own contradictions. Innovative new post colonial methodology of
emancipation is absent on the part of legal academic front. The role of humanities and other social
sciences seems to be of utmost importance in creating and experimenting with new epistemological
ground and teaching frame.
Sanjay Singh obtained his Master’s degree from Department of Sociology, University of Lucknow in
the year 1995. In the same year he was awarded the U.G.C. Junior Research Fellowship. He has been
teaching undergraduate and postgraduate classes since 1998. He obtained his Ph.D degree in the
year 2008.He has presented many research papers in National and International seminars and
conferences. He is member of many academic and professional bodies. He is member executive,
Ethnographic and Folk Culture Society, India. He has published articles and reviews in different
journals. He is one of the editors of Macmillan Advanced Research Series on Asian Youth and
Childhoods. His area of interest is women’s studies, dalit studies, sociology of politics and social
change.
To transform education and make it more inclusive or need for questioning,
rethinking and reinventing hegemonic privileges?
Joyce Kemuma
To transform education and make it more inclusive or need for questioning, rethinking and
reinventing hegemonic privileges?
42
When considering significant changes needed in order to transform and make education more
inclusive in Sweden, this paper dwells on teachers’ (and other staff’s) hegemonic pedagogical
practices and researches that have constructed those ethnically-defined as none Swedes as a point of
departure. From this springboard, the paper proceeds to raise questions and even discuss the need
for challenging mainstream teachers’ talk, perceptions, constructions and practices tantamount to
exclusionists’ discourse. Exclusionists’ discourse is a paradox in a democratic country with ‘education
for all’ as a democratic social right. How then can a true and/or all inclusive discourse take over or
become more embraced? To transform education and make it more inclusive, the paper argues that
mainstream hegemonic practices in institutions of learning have to be interrogated, negotiated and
renegotiated, rethought and if possible, reinvented. That all in positions of power in learning
institutions, have to reflect, question and rethink on how they position others based on skin color,
culture and gender and what the consequences of their actions (conscious or not, spoken and
unspoken) are. Unless this reflexive rethinking or emancipatory project in each one takes place,
learning spaces will not truly entertain, engage and wholly embrace an all inclusive discourse. If this
is not done, “education for all” will remain as a democratic rhetorical and utopian ideal. A crucial
question the paper finally raises but falls short of answering is; how can the emancipatory project be
achieved and what means will be necessary and efficient in achieving this, and hopefully, leading to
transformation at the micro-personal and later at the macro-institutional and societal levels?
Joyce Kemuma was born and grew up in Kenya. Before relocating to Sweden she had attained a
Bachelor of Education degree and a Masters Degree in education. She also had four years’ working
experiences as a teacher-trainer. From February 2006 on she works as a senior lecturer and
researcher at Högskolan Dalarna. In September 2000, she attained a PhD (department of Education,
Uppsala University). Her research spanning over a decade focuses on adult immigrants’ integration
into new immigration spaces (in particular, negotiating for entry into new labour markets) by
examining the interaction between individual biographical experiences and the new spaces- where
people of colour are described with different objectives such as; ethno-cultural groups, blacks, visible
minorities, minorities and people of colour, descriptions which obviously state that these immigrants
are differently constructed as the ‘other’. Her studies are specifically, about how individuals go
about/deal with learning and acquiring knowledge, experiences and approaches deemed relevant to
new immigration spaces.
The Challenges of Constructing Autonomous Social Sciences in the South: The
African Experience and the way forward
Gordon Onyango Omenya
With regard to the African continent, the colonial episode profoundly affected every aspect of
African life as colonialism brought with it certain ways of reconstructing (or distorting African social
reality). Education for example, was a powerful weapon used in transforming African society during
the colonial encounter. Consequently, institutionalized or formalized Western education in Africa is a
product of the colonial legacy. The thrust of colonial education was to deny the colonised useful
knowledge about themselves and their world and, in turn, transmit a culture that embodied, and was
designed to consolidate dependency and generally undermine the colonized capacity for creativity in
all spheres of life. In destroying these institutions, the whole colonial machinery’s thrust was the
depersonalization of Africans or de-Africanisation. This process took cruder and deepened forms in
43
the case of those African countries with extensive white minority colonial settlerism. In lieu of
Afrocentricity, the colonialists tried to establish European conceptions of social reality, social
knowledge and social truth. The universalizing pretensions of such conceptions during the colonial
inroads have been a major source of tensions and conflicts in their encounter with indigenous African
philosophical traditions and practices. This was inevitable since European moral, intellectual and
cultural traditions had very little theoretical resources to cope with diversity. Western
postmodernism, which tinkers with such a problem, is illustrative of the problematic and historical
nature of Eurocentrism (Teboa, 2001:23).
According to Noor (1999:56), a pivotal issue confronting African social sciences is the nature of the
relationship between it and the western academy, and particularly what should be done to overcome
the assumed secondary status of African social science. The legacy of colonialism has always posed
problems for the autonomy of the colonised regions in all spheres of life, including the academy. The
anti-colonial struggles and the post-colonial struggles against economic domination strongly
influenced the evolution and character of social science, infusing it with strong tendencies to be
independent and oppositional. Now, it appears that forces of global domination once again threaten
to subvert the development of endogenous African social science (Appandurai, 1998:2). It is against
this background that this paper tries to examine the alternatives and reflections on how social
sciences could be decolonized in the postcolonial Africa in order to alienate it from the dependency
syndrome of the west in terms of theoretical formulations, knowledge production and publishing
among the African intellectual community. The paper will be analysed using the postcolonial
theoretical framework.
Gordon Onyango Omenya is currently doing preliminary work for his PhD studies (2010-2014) at
Kenyatta University. He was appointed as a lecturer in September, 2010 and he is currently teaching
History at Kenyatta University at the Department of History, and Political Science. His research
interest include tRelations Between The African and Asian Communities of Kenya’s Nyanza Province
1901-2002.
44
PANEL 8
Between Subjection and Subjectivation:
Postcolonial-Queer-Feminist Perspectives
Convenors:
Jasmin Dean/María Teresa Herrera Vivar/Astride Velho
“We examined our own lives and found that everything out there was kicking our behinds – race,
class, sex, and homophobia. We saw no reason to rank oppressions (...).” (Barbara Smith)
This panel will focus on the analysis of auto/biographical experiences, especially processes of
subjection and subjectivation in the context of racism and hetero/sexism. Othering, as a set of
ambivalent and contradictory experiences, is based on power, desire and defense. Not only does the
marginalized Other experience subjugation and humiliation through racist, hetero/sexist,
postcolonial and post-Holocaust operating regimes; rather the Other's very subjectivity is
interpellated by these conditions. At the same time, the Other contests this and constructs itself,
thereby stepping outside the object status to become a subject.
How are racism and hetero/sexism, for example, experienced on a subjective level in our everyday
lives and in auto/biographical accounts? How are (amongst others) the experiences of racism and
hetero/sexism interconnected? Which theoretical approaches are able to explain intersectional
experiences and processes of subjectivation? How can we visualize multiple vulnerabilities as well as
options and practices of agency and resistance? Analyzing auto/biographical experiences and using
them as a starting point for theory is an interesting epistemological approach. It can be an alternative
to dominant epistemologies that adhere to knowledge production about marginalized positions. The
panel seeks to address challenging questions about representation and positionality. Who
undertakes research on whom, and who is silenced through or within that research? One of the goals
of this panel is to provide a space for marginalized voices within academia.
About Jasmin Dean: I obtained a diploma in Social Science from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
in 2006 and worked as a lecturer in Gender Studies, Educational and Political Science in Bielefeld and
Berlin. Currently, I am a Ph.D. student in Contemporary History at the “Zentrum für
Antisemitismusforschung” (Technische Universität Berlin). I am working on a dissertation about
individual and collective processes of subjectivation in the context of racialisation in Germany since
1989/90. My research interests include migration, diaspora and gender, with a special focus on the
conjunction of racism and hetero/sexism in everyday experiences and autobiographical accounts as
well as passing and identity politics in the context of normative orders.
María Teresa Herrera Vivar, M.A, is a researcher and lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences,
Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. She studied anthropology at Universidad Nacional Mayor de
San Marcos/Lima-Peru and sociology, political science and pedagogy at Goethe University Frankfurt.
She is preparing a doctoral thesis on the self-organisation of Latin-American domestic workers in
Germany. Her research interests include gender studies, migration, postcolonial theory, racism,
intersectionality and biographical research.
About Astride Velho: I´m currently a PhD Student. Before, I did my M.A. in Psychology at Munich
University and did social work with refugees and migrant families. My PhD thesis is on
”Subjectivation under the conditions of experiences of racism in Germany - Implications for self-
45
organizations and psychosocial practice”. I´m a Hans Böckler Foundation scholarship recipient.
Publications:
Othering and its effects – Exploring the concept in: Writing Postcolonial Histories of Intercultural
Education, eds. Heike Niedrig /Christian Ydesen ( Peter Lang Verlag, August 2011)
http://www.muenchen.de/Rathaus/dir/antidiskriminierung/148634/index.html
Un-)Tiefen der Macht. Subjektivierung unter den Bedingungen von Rassismuserfahrungen in der
Migrationsgesellschaft in: Rassismus bildet. Subjektivierung und Normalisierung in der
Migrationsgesellschaft, eds. Anne Broden /Paul Mecheril (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, May 2010).
The Disobedient Wife, and other tales:
Ghanaian Women During Decolonization
Nikki Owusu Yeboah
In this paper, I draw on the oral history of my grandmother. Akua Fremah: an elderly, illiterate
Ashanti woman, as she narrates her negotiation of shifting patriarchal structures during Ghana’s
decolonization movement. Following in the tradition of postcolonial and feminist scholars who
identify the intimate realm as a site of political mediation, (Butler, Mbembe, Yuval-Davis), this paper
focuses on Fremah’s account of her marriage. However, much of this theory remains limited to those
national moments when the nation-state has already established itself as a hegemonic force. What
happens when we shift our critical lens from the post-colony to the instabilities and ambiguities of
transitional peƌŝŽĚƐ͗ǁŚĞŶƚŚĞƉŽǁĞƌŽĨ ƚŚĞ ŶĂƚŝŽŶ ŝƐ ƵŶĚĞƌ ŶĞŐŽƚŝĂƚŝŽŶ͸ŝŶ ƉƌŽĐĞƐƐ ĂŶĚ ǇĞƚ ƚŽ ďĞ
reified?
Using Akua Fremah’s narration of the failure of her marriage, this work complicates scholarship that
often links women’s symbolic value to their ability to embody the boundaries of tradition within the
nation-state. Contrary to some post-colonial feminist scholarship, Fremah’s stories reveal that during
the anti-colonial moment, women’s successful performance of traditional roles might have actually
hindered their success within society. Fremah ascribes the loss of her status position as first wife to
the undesirability of her cultural performance, which marked her body as “villager”. During the anticolonial period, “the village” began to acquire a feminized cultural space in opposition to a rational,
urban, phallic state apparatus. Simultaneously, women’s bodies were being used to mobilize
traditional practices as a counter Western hegemony, hailing it as the site of a uniquely African
modernity. However, within Ghana, the village as a site of tradition came to acquire a signification of
backwardness, linked to a lack of education and ironically, a threat to the progress of a young nation.
Nikki Yeboah is a second year Performance Studies student at Northwestern University in Chicago.
Her research broadly asks, how might a woman tell the story of African liberation? Drawing from the
oral histories and ethnographies of a generation of women who witnessed Ghana’s transition to
independence, her dissertation project contributes to an alternative anti-colonial canon. Storytelling
becomes the medium of exchange, a technology for women to re-imagine and re-member
themselves within, between and beyond dominant historical narratives. These stories are then retold as a staged documentary performance in Ghana, as a way of contributing to a repertoire of
knowledge. Born in Ghana, West Africa, Nikki Yeboah emigrated to Canada at a young age, majoring
in Radio and Television Writing at Ryerson University, Toronto before acquiring a Masters degree in
46
Communication and Culture at York University, Toronto. She has also worked as the associate editor
of The Saturday Statesman, a national newspaper published in Ghana.
From body-object to body-subject:
the subjectivation of the female body in Assia Djebar’s novels
Hamdi Houda
In The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, Bill Ashcroft et al. highlight how the body was used as a strategic
element in defining the colonized self as Other. For the critics, “The ‘difference’ of the post-colonial
subject by which s/he can be ‘othered’ is felt most directly and immediately in the way in which the
superficial differences of the body […] are read as indelible signs of ‘natural’ inferiority of their
possessors” (321). The body, as a tangible entity and a visible sign, helps identifying individuals and
significantly contributes in the process of their social, cultural and symbolic ‘categorization’. This
hierarchised differentiation can be easily perceived when it comes to male-centered discourses.
Indeed, biological differences between men and women were, and are still, at the base of the notion
of ‘gender’; a notion upon which patriarchal societies are primarily organized and constructed. In
such societies, “[le] corps socialisé” (20), as Pierre Bourdieu suggests, legitimates social practices and
dogmas that were initially behind its construction and which confers to women a marginal and
subordinate position. For women, this circular logic leads to a state of permanent consciousness of
the body –an entity that identifies, categorizes and marginalizes them. The liberation of the female
body from the confines of diminishing phallocentric discourses becomes de facto a sine qua non for
the assertion of female subjectivity.
In the Algerian context, the use of the female body is even more significant as the latter is considered
by both patriarchal discourses and practices as the ultimate taboo. The female body, with its
attributes and other correlated aspects like gestures, voice, and look, is denied public sphere. More
importantly, the latter is induced with a high symbolic in relation to the whole society whereby the
honor of the group, ‘el-horma’, becomes dependent on the physical ‘integrity’ of women. Such
traditional roles play a central role in the differentiation of the local culture from the western
/colonizer’s one making of women a site for ideological struggles in (post)colonial contexts. The
preservation of the female body becomes accordingly synonymous with the preservation of a whole
set of social values and traditions which are regarded as the core of Algerian social and cultural
identity. Writing the body in such context becomes a highly transgressive act as it brings to light what
by the force of tradition was long kept, both symbolically and literally, invisible.
In regard of such context, the present paper aims at analyzing the use of the female body in Assia
Djebar’s works. From a ‘negative’ consciousness of bodies that were used to define them as inferior
Others, the characters’ awareness of their bodies turns to a positive one. Their individual quests and
experiences leads to a high attentiveness to corporal language and help the female protagonists
assert their subjectivity and connect with female-Others. More than a simple source of sexual
pleasure and desire, the body is regarded as an efficient means of communication and
transcendence.
About Hamdi Houda: I’m an Algerian PhD student in comparative literature. My thesis deals with the
strategies of subversion and transgression in the novels of the contemporary Algerian francophone
woman writer Assia Djebar and the African-American novelist Gloria Naylor. This research is inscribed
47
in the theoretical frame work of postcolonial feminism. I’ve participated in many colloquiums,
seminars, and summer school dealing with women, gender and/or postcolonial issues. I was a
member of the research group France-Maghreb: «écrire sous/sans le voile: femmes, Maghreb et
écriture», ENS -Lyon (France) and presently a member of: «Pratiques Culturelles en Algérie- Genèse
et emprunts» at the University of Annaba – Algeria. I’m also a lecturer at the University of 08 Mai 45
–Guelma (Algérie).
Possession, obsession and consumption of the body:
from colonial narratives to contemporary representations
Angelica Pesarini
On 9 May 1936 Mussolini declared the birth of the “Italian East Africa” empire, created through
massive use of chemical weapons, the creation of lethal concentration camps, and the devastation of
entire communities. Sexual force was a crucial component in the process of expansion; therefore the
representations of African women were arbitrarily manipulated by the regime to eroticise and
stimulate soldiers’ participation in the war. Among the consequences of these sexual promises was
the birth of ‘mixed-race’ offspring. However, to promote the “defence” and the “prestige” of the
‘Italian Aryan race’, the Regime created a series of racial laws aimed at Jews in Italy and Africans in
the colonies, which criminalised the action of Italian men recognising “mixed race” children.
Abandoned and unrecognised children were educated as “Italians” by Catholic missionaries in special
institutions for ‘mixed race’ children.
One of those children was my paternal grandmother who lost her Somali mother in 1939 (when
racial laws reached their pinnacles) and was not recognised by her biological Italian fascist father. She
was sent to one of those institutions at the age of 7 years old to leave only when she was 17. On the
other side of my family, my Eritrean maternal grandmother established a relationship with an Italian
communist who escaped Italy in order to avoid a forced militarisation with Mussolini’s Black Shirts.
They had three “Italian” children and one of those children is my mother. All of these generations are
linked through the heterogeneous and complex experience of colonialism that cannot be simply
identified in crystallised dichotomies, but rather understood taking into analysis scenarios of genuine
love, sexual violence, mutual consent, racism, economic opportunism and so on.
Nevertheless Italy today is still perceived as separated from its colonial history, and the term “postcolonial” is particularly problematic since the narratives of many individuals have not been
acknowledged. In the Italian collective imagination, colonialism seems to be idealised through the
popular myth “Italiani brava gente” (Italians are good- hearted people), nourishing a vision of Italian
colonialism as different, “civilising”, devoid of racism and “able to offer work opportunities”.
(Pickering Iazzi 2002). The crucial historical continuum, correlating the effects of Italian colonial
sexual and racial policies on contemporary Italy, has been completely neglected.
Starting from autobiographical accounts, this paper assesses how colonial fantasies and
representations of the female ‘other’ during the Fascist regime have shaped and influenced the
consideration and the formation for contemporary stereotypes. Therefore the aim of this paper,
based on my PhD research, is to analyse how the formation of racial and sexual stereotypes during
the colonial regime, not only legitimated forms of sexual violence and sexual exploitation, but also
48
how it led to a manipulation or ‘colonisation’ of the collective imagination in order to construct an
Italian identity in opposition to an African “otherness”.
About Angelica Pessarini: I'm currently a PhD student enrolled at the Centre for Interdisciplinary
Gender Studies at the University of Leeds. I received a Msc degree in ‘Ethno-Anthropological
Disciplines’ at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” and a Msc degree in ‘Gender, Development and
Globalisation’ at the London School of Economics and Political Science. I am interested in the debates
exploring the intersections of race, gender sexuality and class, with particular regards to colonial and
postcolonial contexts. I conducted research on gender, identity and the development of economic
activities with regards to Roma women in Italy and I have analysed strategies of survival, risks and
opportunities associated with male prostitution.
Voices from the Borderlands: Between creativity and frustration
Duygu Gürsel & Jael Vizcarra
In formulating our research interests, our migration stories as women of color have played an
important role. We are two aspiring academics with different experiences as first-generation
immigrants in the United States and Germany. Besides losing a white privilege we had in Mexico and
Turkey, in Berlin we confront to varying degrees a symbolic violence because, in one of our cases, we
do not fit the stereotype of the Turkish immigrant woman. In the other, coming “from the US” makes
any of our concerns for equality and justice in Germany irrelevant. This brought us to consider that
our very being as immigrant women in this space and time makes us vulnerable and limits us due to
the absence of certain rights. Furthermore, the hegemonic expectations placed upon us as aspiring
women of color academics in Europe, often times make us feel constrained. Our interests in
immigrant struggles, feminism, and in new tools and new bodies of knowledge have been a direct
result of our subjectivities. In more than one case, the objectivity of our work has been challenged
because we identify and associate ourselves “too much” with the networks and people we work
with. These confrontations with German postcolonial and post-Holocaust power structures have led
us to formulate the following questions: How is my individual experience of racism and sexism linked
to wider group struggles for immigrant rights in a local and supranational context, and what are the
conflicts that we have faced when we became active in these group struggles? How is standpoint
theory marginalized in German Social Science, and how can we resist this in an institutional setting
from our vulnerable positions? In this paper, we would like to discuss these questions: The
problematic of the individual-group link in standpoint theory and the marginalization of standpoint
theory in Germany through our processes of subjection and subjectivation as feminist immigrant
women of color in Germany. Our aim is to show how the individual struggle against marginalization
in the academy is bound to collective struggles and the knowledge produced through those struggles.
About Jael Vizcarra: I am a Chicana from the Mexico-US borderlands finishing my first year as a Ph.D.
student in Sociology in the Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences, at the Humboldt Universität zu
Berlin. I am currently working on a dissertation about the strategies of inclusion of Mexican and
Turkish immigrant women in the informal economy of Berlin and Los Angeles. My research interests
include intersectionality, migration, gender, and race/ethnicity.
49
About Duygu Gürsel: I obtained a dual M.A. degree from the German-Turkish Masters Program in
Social Sciences from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara and the Humboldt Universität zu
Berlin. I wrote an M.A. Thesis on the anti-racist immigrant network Kanak Attak under the title,
“Kanak Intellectuals and the Struggles of Migration in Germany”. My research interests include the
intersection of migration and social movements with a focus on intellectuals and knowledge
production. Currently, I am a Ph.D. student in Sociology at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. I am
active in Kritnet (Netzwerk kritische Migrations- und Grenzregime Forschung) and in anti-racist
networks.
Reflections on contemporary class struggles in Africa
and meanings for queer activism
Lyn Ossome
Feminist and queer theorists have set out clear arguments around the ‘simultaneity of oppressions’ –
the idea that challenges experiences of oppression as being differentiated and separated along
mutually exclusive categorizations of gender, class, race or ethnicity, rather than intersecting –
especially applicable to individuals and groups whose struggles are highly essentialised in popular
understanding. The normalized and compulsory heterosexual shaped identity in nationalist and anticolonial struggles of liberation in Africa, and continues to infuse strong patriarchal elements into
contemporary economic, social and political emancipation projects. Furthermore, the acceptability of
gender-binary analytical categories in the understanding of freedom and equality has similarly
circumscribed engagement with alternative notions of ‘the oppressed’. The marginalization or
silencing of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, and Intersex (LGBTI) struggles within mainstream
engagements with class struggles in Africa is, it may be argued, one of postcolonialism’s incomplete
projects. A number of scholars arguing the intersectionality of race, class and gender, have
challenged these positions. For example, radical African feminists who dispel myths regarding the
inevitability of African women’s oppression, consider diversity among African women across various
ethnic, national and sexual locations. Their perspectives fit squarely within a history of international
‘Black’ radicalism characterized by an opposition to ‘all forms of oppression, including class
exploitation, racism, patriarchy, homophobia, anti-immigration prejudice, and imperialism’ (Black
Radical Congress, 1998). Majority of (social justice) spaces, however, remain subject to prejudices
that defy the logic of class oppression and in so doing, generate a false basis for a differentiated class
struggle. Appropriating from postcolonial scholarship the idea of the ‘subaltern’, my proposal seeks
to reflect on these issues by deconstructing the observed tensions between LGBTI activism and
contemporary class struggles in Africa, questioning what appear as ‘progressive’ agenda within
various social movements, including the World Social Forum and women’s movements with which
LGBTI communities seek self or group identity; the experiences of the said communities as they
actively contribute to, interact with and locate themselves within these social struggles; and the
dynamics that influence these relationships. My aim is to locate queer-feminist activism/resistance
broadly within class struggles in Africa, asking as some postcolonial theorists have, ‘what it means to
be human together’, and what nuanced forms of power an understanding of this resistance might
help us theoretically expose.
Lyn Ossome is doctoral student in the Department of Political Studies, University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She is a feminist researcher and activist whose published works, in
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journals, books and monograph, have focused on the political economy of women’s reproductive
work, sexuality, land rights, migration and the politics of aid. Her current research interests include
queer intersectionalities, land and agrarian reform, and the impacts of cultural transformation on
migrant women.
Pink Nights –
The Queer night-club culture in India and Music as the site of Performance
Ankush Gupta
This paper investigates the emerging ‘exclusively for queer community’ night club culture in India
through the lenses of global economy, gender discourse and urban heterotopia (Fouccault). Music,
here becomes the site of performance and thus forms the nucleus of questions of ideology, language
and identity. The class disparities within the queer movement, the spaces- their selection and
segregation, the exclusivity/inclusivity of these events (as the paper tries to re-evaluate ‘otherness’),
the gender play and certainly the questions around agency and hierarchy within the queer
community in these spaces are all addressed through an analytical/evaluative study of the music that
is played in these spaces. Apart from the obvious Welsch-ian paradigm of transculturality, the central
question, certainly is,‘What constitutes this music?’ and through this single question, the author
opens up a proliferation of questions that need to be addressed in view of the significance of this
‘new sub culture’ in Indian metropolitan spaces. Can music, then, be really looked at as a fluid entitya language with a syntax but no semantic code of the linguistic type, and thus, incarnating the multilayered cultural matrices through its own form? How does this music ‘transform’ owing to the
constant negotiation with several socio-politico-cultural forces? How does this music deal with
experiences, like transcendence? The author, tries to understand this through the parallel placement
of the music from ‘sufi’ traditions and with their homo-erotic contents and the queer club culture.
Ankush Gupta is an M.Phil student in Theatre and Performance Studies in the School of Arts &
Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is also a trained Hindustani classical singer
from Bhatkhande University, Lucknow and is now learning Carnatic Classical music from the
International Kathakali Centre, New Delhi. He has composed music for several popular productions
with eminent personalities and toured Japan with one such production ‘The Lotus Path’. He has also
written papers for several colloquiums and and participated in the Warwick symposium in 2009.
51
PANEL 9
Postcolonial Perspectives on Human Rights
Convenors:
Olivia Rutazibwa/Eva Georg/Aylin Zafer
Since the adoption of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the United Nations
General Assembly in 1948, there has been an intensification of controversial debates regarding the
possibility of formulating a concept of human rights which would be applicable irrespective of race,
class, nationality or gender. These ambitions are critically challenged by those who consider human
rights to be culturally embedded. They argue that human rights discourse is not universally valid, but
emerges in specific cultural contexts. As a Western concept with its origins in the European
Enlightenment, human rights are regarded with suspicion by those who see it is as a tool that
historically has been instrumentalized for cultural-imperialist purposes. As an important aspect of
legitimizing colonialism’s “civilizing mission”, the origins of human rights seem to haunt its validity.
On the other hand, some scholars have argued that despite the originary violence, human rights
bears within itself enabling potential.
Postcolonial thought is faced with the challenge of negotiating between universal and
culturalrelativist conceptions of human rights. On the one hand it acknowledges the necessity for
universal human rights. On the other hand postcolonial thought takes the critique of the cultural
specificity of human rights discourse seriously by focusing on the colonial past of human rights
struggles. Another important issue is the issue of gender, violence and cultural politics. Whether the
headscarf controversy in various European countries, or the debate about genital cutting in Africa,
public discourses tend to argue for the necessity of the West to intervene and to save native women
from cultural oppression. Feminist postcolonial theory has made important contributions in
challenging hegemonic human rights discourse. This panel seeks to promote an interdisciplinary
approach to these questions and welcomes papers that address the politics of human rights from
sociological, political, juridical or philosophical perspectives.
Olivia U. Rutazibwa (1979), journalist (Africa desk editor) at the Brussels based magazine on global
issues MO* Magazine, and a doctoral researcher at the Center for European Studies, Ghent
University Belgium. She was previously a researcher at the European University Institute in Florence,
Italy. Her research deals Post-Kolonial and Critical perspectives on EU Ethical foreign Policy towards
sub-Saharan Africa, Democratisation, Interventionism, Human Rights and Development.
Aylin Zafer currently finishes her Magistra Artium degree in Political Science at the Goethe
University, Frankfurt. Her thesis focuses on human rights and postcolonial thought. She is a member
of the FRCPS.
Eva Georg studied Sociology, Peace and Conflict Studies and Gender Studies in Marburg/Germany
and Oslo/Norway. Her diploma thesis “Solidarity postcolonial – a critical perspective on solidarity in a
global context” takes a critical glance on the grasp of solidarity of people from the global north and
asks for colonial continuities in their motivation for solidarity with the global south.
52
The Other Side of the Story. Human rights, race and social struggle from a
historical transatlantic perspective.
Julia Suárez Krabbe
This paper presents some central antecedents to human rights thinking, paying special attention to
two historical periods -that of the conquest and colonization of America, and that of the
independence and republican period in Latin America. Both periods must be seen taking into account
the transatlantic power struggles that took place in each period, in which racial hierarchisation
played a central role. Thus, the period of conquest and colonization is marked by the relations
between the indigenous and slave populations vis a vis Spanish colonial powers, and the period of
independence and republicanism by these movements’ relation to (Northern) Europe, but also to
indigenous and black populations in the American continent.
In the colonial period emerges the modern notion of what it means to be human together with the
idea of ‘the rights of peoples’ and international law –among others in the context of the Valladolid
debates. The period of independence of Latin American countries clearly marks the strong effects
that struggles such as the slave and indigenous rebellions throughout the continent were having, by
which parts of the colonial elites embraced the idea of racial equality and almost all that of the
abolition of slavery. However, the elites have largely succeeded in invisibilising these indigenous and
slave/black struggles which played a role in these ideas emerging in the first place.
In overall terms, the paper aims to expand our knowledge on the history of human rights, including
into it not only the Latin American dimension, but the dimension of Latin American subaltern
struggles. Finally, it aims to contribute to a thorough understanding of current critiques that some
Latin American social movements are currently launching at human rights.
:ƵůŝĂ^ƵĄƌĞǌ<ƌĂďďĞholds a PhD degree from the School of Intercultural Studies, Roskilde University,
Denmark. In her research she uses indigenous theory to discuss human rights and development. She
works specifically with the spiritual and political authorities from the four indigenous groups in Sierra
Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia (Arhuaco, Kankuamo, Kogi and Wiwa). In addition, her research
involves decolonization, spirituality, education, methodologies and decolonial feminism. She is also a
founding member of the Collective Andar Descolonizado, a collective of north-south collaboration
aimed at decolonizing knowledges and political practices.
Human Rights in the perspective of Decolonizing Knowledge
Ana Claudia Diogo Tavares
In this paper I examine Rights, especially the language of human rights from the perspective that we
call the Decolonizing Knowledge, which is the defense of the construction of new epistemologies that
seek to break the perspective of modernity which hides coloniality. These perspectives converge in
an attempt to take new epistemological attitudes to transcend the western thought founded on the
paradigm of modernity /coloniality, in order to build a "border thinking" (GROSFOGUEL, 2008;
MINGOLO, 2005) or a "post-abyssal thinking" (SANTOS, 2007).
Some authors concerned with the issue of the relationship between coloniality and modernity,
identify how the modernity of the developed countries was made possible by the unequal power and
53
violence used against other countries. (Escobar, 2005; GROSFOGUEL, 2008; MIGNOLO, 2005;
SANTOS, 2007, LEVI-STARUSS, 1970) The colonization of knowledge is therefore the result of the
violent relationship established between the colonizers and the colonized countries.
The story of the emergence of "rational" law is intertwined with the rise of liberal-individualist
ideology of modernity, or rather the "rational" rights now recognized as the source of human rights
are sustained by this ideology with pretensions of universality. Therefore, the same way that
modernity was made possible by coloniality, universal human rights, written statements in Europe,
also owe their existence to the denial of humanity colonized groups.
From this framework, we wondered in what context it is possible to construct a rupture of the
capitalist paradigm of Western modernity that uses the language of human rights, founded on the
abstract universality of humanity and the denial of broad segments of the population.
Studies on human rights today, albeit in the context of abstraction that can characterize the legal
studies and law in general, advocate the readings of the equality with respect to differences and
otherness, of finding a substantive equality as opposed to formal equality characteristic of liberal
assumptions and of social contract. (PIOVESAN, 2006)
The assumption of equality inherent in human beings which justifies the need for differential
treatment, or as Mingnolo frames, of different rights, is not ignored, quite the contrary, it is stated in
international human rights treaties. And in a context marked by the appropriation /violence, as
emphasized by Santos, they may be appropriate for organizations in their emancipatory claims, as an
example of contra-hegemonic use of hegemonic instrument.
Ana Claudia Diogo Tavares holds a Master's degree in Sociology and Law at the Universidade Federal
Fluminense (UFF), and is currently pursuing a PhD degree in Social Sciences, Development,
Agriculture and Society of Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (CPDA/UFRRJ). She works also as
a legal adviser for social movements in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and is a member of the Brazilian NGO
Centro de Assessoria Jurídica Popular Mariana Criola.
Of Right between the ‘Particular’ and the ‘Universal’: the Case of sati
Sourav Kargupta
In his late essay ‘Toward Perpetual Peace’, Immanuel Kant posited the right of hospitality both as
natural and juridical. The Kantian proposal called for an ethics that would go beyond ‘philanthropy’
and situate hospitality as a ‘right’(Recht) common to all. To put it schematically, in this context, the
postmodern shift would lie in moving from the expression ‘ethic of hospitality’ to ‘ethics is
hospitality’, pointing to the limits that Kant put to his ‘cosmopolitan law’ where only a right of
‘visitation’(Besuchsrect) is secured and not of residence(Gastrecht). Ethics as hospitality would not
wait for the other to visit as other, outside and alien, but it is rather the recognition of the irreducible
presence of the other in self, with hospitality as a way of ‘being-there’(Dasein). But how to
understand this ethical shift in the context of the ‘universal’ and ‘particular’ of human rights? How to
retain the irreducible specificity of a (culturally located) ‘event’ without losing the responsibility
toward the other(cultures), indeed to ‘universality’ working as a reference frame that ensures the
possibility of(inter-cultural) translation? Activism, especially feminist politics seems to base itself on
the grounds prepared by the ‘moment of the universal’, but how also not to lose the underpinning of
54
singular instances? In an address on Human Rights Jacques Derrida mentioned that the problematic
of Universal Human rights is one of ‘translation’. How to align this statement with his reading of
translation as the double bind between ‘translatability’ and ‘un-translatability’ of a particular
text/cultural experience? The proposed paper would draw on the deconstructive underlining of
‘ethics’ as a responsible decision that oscillates between the ‘universal’ and the ‘particular’, letting go
of neither to comment on a problematic situated in a specific time and space, namely the feminist
readings of the debates around sati(widow-immolation), legally banned in colonial India.
The question of 'right' is closely implicated in the discourse around sati. As theorists like Rajeswari
Suder Rajan and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak have shown, here woman's voice gets lost between two
competing statements: "she must be saved" and "she wanted to die" one erasing the agency of the
woman, the other dubiously claiming agency in her death. The crucial impasse has been this: how to
retain the agency and subjectivity of the tortured woman without giving-in to the pro-sati motto "she
(voluntarily) wanted to die". To put it otherwise, how to criticize sati as a performance of a brutal rite
and also retain female subjectivity and right without giving in to a conservative 'pro-life' argument.
And here the crucial contradiction with the ‘universal’. Would a ‘pro-life argument’ in the theoretical
debate around sati not weaken the campaign for the right of abortion for women, or for euthanasia
rights in a global framework? How to retain both(the critique of ritual murder and a right to chose
death in specific instances regaining feminist subjectivity) in an argumentative scheme that respects
an opening to the ‘other’? This paper would try to critically address this impasse.
Sourav Kargupta holds a Master's degree in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University. He
worked in the project "Nationalist Ideology and the Historiography of Literature in South Asian
Cultures" at the Martin Luther University, Halle, Germany funded by the Volkswagenstiftung. He is
currently pursuing a PhD degree at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta (CSSSC),(PhD
program affiliated to Jadavpur University), India under the title: "Torture and Inscription of the
Bengali self on the Woman's Body: A Feminist Reading of Pain and Subjectivity". Other interests
include: Feminist Theory, Post-colonial and Post-modern theory.
Rights Discourse and Undocumented Migration in the Context of
Europeanization: Towards a Postcolonial Rearticulation
Chenchen Zhang
Human rights discourse has been criticized by postcolonial theorists for its hegemonic narrative of
progress, discriminatory universalism, and most importantly, the questionable construction of the
sovereign “subject” of human rights. Similarly, liberal discourse of European citizenship and
“cosmopolitan Europe” has been interrogated for that it fails to take the history of colonial
expansionism and the crucial role of otherness in constituting the identity of the subject into
account. Bearing these in mind, this paper focuses on the theoretical significance of undocumented
migration in the purportedly denationalized Europe: how does it reveal the intrinsic contradictions in
human rights discourse, and how does it reflect the irony of the concept of European citizenship?
Motivated by such initial questions, the paper seeks to first look at the so-called “dark side” of
human rights which is nowhere more ruthlessly disclosed by the case of undocumented migrants.
This is not only because the undocumented, as homo sacred, has nothing but “human rights”, and
therefore indicates the dilemma most famously formulated by Hannah Arendt: human rights are
55
either the rights of the citizen (as a void) or the rights of those who has no rights (as a tautology); but
also because the presence of illegal migrants, most of which are from Europe’s former colonies,
demonstrates how human rights discourse has sustained the politics of exclusion and points to the
importance of reconsidering the colonial encounter. While human rights along with European
integration stand for a liberal initiative of transnationalization or denationalization, the politics of the
undocumented in EU member states has involved a process of renationalization.
Although it is argued that critical reflections on the discourse of human rights are necessary, the
paper is not aimed to reject the idea of human rights as such, but rather, it is aimed to resuscitate
the idea and rediscover its values. The political practice of undocumented implies, though not to be
too optimistic, the possibilities of rearticulating human rights: the rights not confined to the
ostensibly homogenous “self” and the rights not silenced by the hegemonic narrative of human
rights as civilizing mission. This articulation will, again, entail scrutinizing the experience of
postcolonial world and overcoming the dehistoricized and autonomous subject of human rights. In
the correlated terrain of Europeanization, one can only expect an inclusive concept of European
identity after revisiting its colonial past and postcolonial present, and hence moving beyond the
dichotomic opposition of Europe and its “others”.
Chenchen Zhang received her first degree in International Relations from Tongji University
(Shanghai, China), and Master's degrees in International Studies from Peking University and the
University from Tokyo respectively. One of her theses was focused on the dilemma of nationalist
discourse in early-twentieth-century East Asia. Currently she is studying at the LUISS University of
Rome as being enrolled in the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate programme on "Globalisation, the
EU and Multilateralism". Her researched project is centred on the theoretical implications of
migration for the concepts of territoriality, national identity and citizenship rights in liberal political
theory.
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PANEL 10
Postcolonial Power and Capitalism – Critical Approaches to
Contemporary International Aid
Convenors:
Discussant:
Olivia Rutazibwa/Kai Koddenbrock
Aram Ziai
Global Governance is seen to be the universal solution to all major challenges facing the world
presently. The international aid business, which encompasses diverse areas ranging from
peacekeeping to “development”, as well as democracy promotion to humanitarian aid, is at the
heart of the global governance debate. The questions conventionally asked revolve around how
to deliver aid more efficiently; how to more effectively enforce the respect for universal human
rights as well as gender and minority rights; and how to react more rapidly and sustainably in
cases of conflict, violence or disaster.
Yet the procedural interpretation of these valid concerns neglects one very important question:
where is power located in these enterprises and how does it manifest itself? For instance, what
kind of power is involved when the West intervenes in the Congo or Bosnia, or when it sends
food and medicine to Haiti? Is it in language, in the way we name things? Is it in the relations of
production, in the differentiation between the haves and the have-nots?
Postcolonial interrogations of the power of Orientalism and the epistemic violence preventing
the Southern subaltern from being heard have triggered important discussions in the Social Sciences
so that even the more conservative (sub-)disciplines are starting to pay attention to these
critical perspectives. Postcolonial theorists not only trace the continuities of colonial power in the
present, but also point to the denial of power in the “West’s” intervention in the “Rest” of the
world. At the same time, the ambivalences brought on by capitalism – with its simultaneously
enabling and destructive traits – seem to render any conceptions of oppression and inequality
challengingly ambivalent. The persistent difficulty to come to terms with power in contemporary
capitalism is complemented by reigning poststructuralist conceptions of power that see it as
mostly “productive”. The latter identifies power everywhere and as offering opportunities to
everyone. Contrary to the 1970s when Marx-inspired dependency theorists blamed the core (the
West plus Japan) for the exploitation of the periphery (the Rest), today the core appears to be in
crisis and losing its pivotal role. Herein lies the appeal of the Global Governance model today –
a harmonious concept that has lost track of the workings of power.
This panel invites papers that take a fresh look at power in the international aid system, both
empirically and/or theoretically. All disciplines are invited and inter-disciplinary papers are
encouraged. Beside postcolonial perspectives, we particularly welcome papers that look for ways
to reintegrate Marxist insights in the analysis of international aid as well as feminist and other
critical contributions that focus more on issues of language and representation or papers that
examine the merits of both.
Olivia Rutazibwa (1979), journalist (Africa desk editor) at the Brussels based magazine on global
issues MO* Magazine, and a doctoral researcher at the Center for European Studies, Ghent
University Belgium. She was previously a researcher at the European University Institute in Florence,
57
Italy. Her research deals Post-Kolonial and Critical perspectives on EU Ethical foreign Policy towards
sub-Saharan Africa, Democratisation, Interventionism, Human Rights and Development.
Kai Koddenbrock is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Magdeburg and a Fellow
with the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin. He holds a Diploma in International Cultural and
Economic Studies from the University of Passau. Kai was a consultant to the United Nations Office for
the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the GTZ and worked as seminar facilitator at
the Harvard University Advanced Training Program on Humanitarian Action and for Inwent. His
research focuses on Euro-America’s persistent urge to intervene in the global South and the possible
rationalities involved.
Aram Ziai studied Sociology, Political Science and some more, AZ has been teaching at the
universities of Aachen, Magdeburg, Kassel, Amsterdam, Hamburg and Vienna. Currently, he is a
Senior Researcher at the Center for Development Research in Bonn and co-chair of the section of
development theory and policy of the German Association of Political Science (DVPW). His main
areas of research are discourse analysis of development policy, international political economy, PostDevelopment and postcolonial approaches..
Owning Aid Effectiveness: Subversive Appropriation or Succumbing to
Dominant Discourses?
Sonja Killoran-McKibbin
International aid is one of the most tangible manifestations of the development industry in the
Global South today. It is an important source of funding for many nations yet donors retain decision
making power – determining the quantities, forms and programming priorities of aid. With relatively
few donors and numerous countries dependent on aid financing, recipients are left to compete for
aid dollars, and adapt themselves to external priorities. The role of aid in promoting donor, rather
than recipient, interests has been well-documented and the use of aid in disciplining countries of the
Global South and has been seen countless times over the last decades. In response, aid has been
adapted through the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the subsequent Accra Agenda which
seek to improve the impact of aid monies through institutional and policy changes. However, these
agreements are based on a tacit assumption that aid is fundamentally altruistic but is hampered by
an inadequate institutional context and that achieving aid effectiveness is just a matter of tweaking
policies. The resulting policies thus ignore the political economic interests that shape aid allocations,
and the unequal access to decision-making within aid relations.
This paper uses a postcolonial political economic analysis to ask the question of whether such policy
frameworks open space for the strategic appropriation of the language of “effectiveness” to enhance
recipient power within aid relations. To respond to this question, I examine Bolivia’s implementation
of the Decreto Supremo 29308 which uses the Paris Declaration to limit the capacity of donors to act
within the national economy, explicitly prohibiting all conditionality of funds, and all ideological
components of projects, while demanding that all projects enter within Bolivia’s National
Development Plan. The MAS government, under the leadership of Evo Morales has used the D.S.
29308 to radically alter aid agreements with key donors with varying levels of success; failure to
comply led to breaking diplomatic relations with the USA, while Spain has sought to meet all
requirements of the decree. Although there have been numerous accusations that the Paris
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Declaration is inadequate in addressing the ills of aid, Bolivia’s implementation of the D.S. 29308
appears to suggest a possibility for countries to exploit such frameworks to achieve greater national
sovereignty and advance national projects for decolonization without compromising access to aid
funding.
Sonja Killoran-McKibbin is a PhD candidate in Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto,
Canada and holds a master’s degree in Planning and the Political Economy of Development from
CIDES-UMSA in La Paz, Bolivia. Her research examines the intersection of international aid and
extractive industries in Bolivia.
Regional interventions and universal solutions: a question of aid?
Stefanie Wodrig
In the last two decades, the discourse about interventions in Subsaharan conflicts has changed in the
sense as these were often represented as regional approaches opposed to e.g. proxy wars implying
the intervention of the Cold War superpowers. One model case of this intervention practice is
Burundi where the elder statesmen Julius Nyerere and Nelson Mandela represent the practice of
regional mediation. The chaining together of intervention and regionness is associated with the hope
that the region better accounts for contextual particularities, i.e. the local culture. Arguing from this
perspective, it is somewhat striking that the regional mediation in Burundi led to the ‘universal’
frames of good governance, development and reconciliation. These frames represent the common
toolbox of the international community and remain abstract instead of representing culturally
specific solutions. How did this gap between pretence, i.e. finding a culturally-bounded solution, and
outcome, i.e. a universal tool, become possible?
From a discourse theoretical point, the presence of the alleged ‘universal’ frames of conflict
resolution in the model case of regional intervention might be a crucial element of the regional
discourse. This might be understood as an indication of the hegemonic dimension of this ‘universal
conflict resolution’ discourse. Subsumed to the Burundian case, the entry of South Africa into the
regional initiative has altered the discourse: the conflict resolution techniques – here represented by
the universal frames of good governance, development and reconciliation – have their origins in the
US academic debates in the 1980s and were first fully applied in the South African transition from
apartheid towards democracy. “Appropriating and readapting the technique, South Africans became
the best advertising agents for this new type of action.“ (Hara 1999, 141) Thus, when Mandela
became chief mediator, the regional discourse was linked towards this universal conflict resolution
toolkit.
However, the presence of ‘universal’ frames might also indicate that the regional construction of
intervention was not the dominant one, but has been trumped by the discourse of the international
community. As the regional initiative lacked the necessary resources to finance the intervention, the
practice of financing it through aid might be an open door for modifying the construction of
intervention. This became evident with the death of the regional chief mediator and former
president Julius Nyerere and the search for a replacement. At this moment, the regional (East
African) discourse on intervention prominently encompassed Tanzania and Uganda who opted for
Ketumila Masire, former President of Botswana, as the replacement for Nyerere arguing that he
would secure their regional leadership. However, the international community, led by the US, pushed
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hard to have Mandela accepted (comp. International Crisis Group 2000, 17) indicating, that the
international construction of intervention trumped the regional one. This latter perspective shall be
pursued within this paper. As a guiding question it is asked, how the donor dependency affects the
regional practice of intervention in the Burundian conflict?
Stefanie Wodrig, M.A., born in 1982, studied between 2003-2010 Political Science, Public Law and
Spanish Literature at the University of Heidelberg and York University/Toronto. Since April 2010, she
is part of the Hamburg International Graduate School for the Study of Regional Powers which is
located at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies. Her Ph.D. project aims to understand
how regional interventions in Burundi and Zimbabwe have reproduced or modified regional patterns
of politics.
Initiatives africaines et violence symbolique du pouvoir postcolonial
Amzat BOUKARI-YABARA
Le développement des conflits dans l’Afrique indépendante a été inauguré dès 1960 au Congo. La
crise qui secoue encore cette ancienne colonie belge marque une forme d’échec de la communauté
internationale, mais également des instances africaines dans la résolution des conflits. En cherchant
à démontrer que l’Organisation des Nations-Unis fut toujours un obstacle supplémentaire à la paix,
sauf en Namibie (1989-90) et au Mozambique (1992-94), le politologue Horace Campbell avança la
thèse selon laquelle les débâcles enregistrées par les Casques Bleus en Angola, au Congo ou dans la
Corne de l’Afrique entreraient dans le cadre d’une « industrie de la paix » (peace industry) gérée par
des experts et des consultants dont les intérêts dépendent de la poursuite du conflit. Les
interventions internationales en Afrique témoigneraient ainsi des échecs du concept de la paix et du
paradigme de la « résolution de conflit » (conflict resolution) qui se résume à « gérer le chaos »
(managing chaos), ou à assimiler la paix à l’absence de guerre, et la démocratie à la tenue
d’élections.
Pour discuter de cette thèse radicale, nous soulignerons la manière dont l’usage de la force et de la
justice internationale renforcent le déséquilibre de la démocratie en Afrique en limitant les initiatives
citoyennes locales au profit des interventions internationales. Nous tenterons de comprendre
pourquoi les périodes d’élections, reliées aux luttes sociales autour de l’accès au pouvoir comme
modalité du partage des richesses, occasionnent encore aujourd’hui bien plus de troubles que le «
tribalisme » pur et simple. Ensuite, nous continuerons la réflexion sur la violence symbolique en
rappelant, avec Achille Mbembe, que ce qui distingue les pays africains des autres pays sous la tutelle
d’une organisation comme le FMI est l’existence de contraintes semblables à celles qu’on imposerait
à un pays militairement vaincu. La question de la dette est implicite. Mais qui doit payer quoi, et à
qui? Enfin, au-delà de cette vision humanitaire de l’aide qui renforce une « logique d’émasculation
de l’État [qui] va de pair avec la logique d’excision de la souveraineté », nous tenterons d’évoquer,
comme alternative, les missions de paix menées par les femmes africaines, et par des organisations
telles que le Comité des Femmes Africaines pour la Paix et le Développement (African Women
Committee on Peace and Development, 1997) et la Conférence des Femmes Panafricaines sur la Paix
(Pan-African Women Conference on Peace, Zanzibar, 1999).
Amzat BOUKARI-YABARA est Docteur en Histoire de l’Afrique (EHESS), Paris.
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A Neo-Racism without Races
Alaíde Vences Estudillo
The word ‘race’ now is rarely used in official discourse as it recalls the sort of scientific racism that
argued that one subhuman group was naturally condemned to congenital inferiority in relation to
another. To use it would be a threat to the progress of science. Nevertheless, its essential role, to
establish hierarchies and justify exploitation among humans is still being manifested, though now it
has being smuggled into development discourse.
Based on recent literature that describes ‘economic development’ as new way to justify colonial
dominance, this article sets out challenging the idea that development policy can bring social justice.
It suggests that this type of intervention operates in the frame of a neo-racism which classifies world
humanity in two cultures; one culture is considered to be more modern and economically
progressive while the other is not only considered backward, but in need of market discipline.
By analyzing the incorporation of Third World women into the garment industry, the primary aim is
to explore how ‘development’ asserts itself as a neo-racist project in the strict sense of justifying that
some human subgroups are backwards who need to be reformed. Since the garment industry
facilitated the entrance of masses of Third World women into paid labor, their participation in this
economic sector was seen as an efficient path for integrating them in the development process. Due
to the exploitative dynamic of the garment jobs, this strategy can be mistakenly interpreted as real
improvement in the living conditions of these women. However, as the article proves there is a
continuous attempt in the development discourse to justify that these jobs provide benefits to Third
World women.
I will argue that the idea of ‘development achievement’ not only determines, but normalizes the
exploitation of the Third World women in the garment industry as it produces neo-racist perceptions
of them and their communities. Infantilizing them and constructing them as culturally backward,
development policy argues that the entrance of Third World women into the garment jobs is the only
resource that they have for overcoming the cultural obstacles that block their empowerment. This
logic distracts from the companies’ role in reinforcing the conditions of poverty of garment workers
and ignores the fact that these companies, and the population who own the commodities, are
profiting from the exploitation of garment workers.
The article shows how the same neo-racist illusion of supporting prosperity from the development
policy re-adapts itself to the Corporate Social Responsibility of Inditex; a world leader of fashion
retailing. This Spanish corporation relays on the argument that the jobs in the garment industry are a
good source that poor and unskilled women can have to someday achieve development. This
argument has an impact in the social imagination that justifies the exploitation of the workers, in the
sense that it produces the believed that a job in the sweatshop is the best that could happened to
Third World women.
Alaide Vences Estudillo is a Third World ecofeminist, currently volunteering in an eco-village in the
south of France. In September 2010 she completed an Erasmus Mundus Master in Gender Studies at
the Central European University, in Hungary and Universidad de Granada, in Spain. In 2006 she
graduated from the bachelor in International Relations at the Universidad de las Américas- Puebla, in
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México. From 2004 to 2006 she worked as research assistant in the project Tlaxcala, migration or
local development?, which analyzed the social implications that migration has for two communities in
the central region of México.
Secular Missionaries and Epistemic Power
Uchenna Okeja
With the publication of Dambisa Moyo’s book titled Dead Aid in 2009, an increased discussion of aid
to developing countries from different angles ensued. Most of the discussions have focused on the
economic and moral sides of the aid industry. In this paper, I discuss how this has led to the
negligence of a very vital aspect of the practice of aid, namely, the epistemic dimension. Thus, I ask:
what is the connection between aid giving, taking and the power of knowledge? How does the
relationship of these concepts play itself out in relation to epistemic (in)justice and what are their
impacts on both the givers and receivers of aid? To address these questions, this paper focuses on 1)
a characterization of the process of secular missionarism with a view to 2) establishing the epistemic
(in)justice involved in the patterns of relations engendered. This leads to the central argument that 3)
there is a fundamental epistemic imbalance in the practice of aid namely, epistemic
disenfranchisement.
Thus, to dislodge the misdeeds of this imbalance, the suggestion here is that there is the need to
create a real dialogue situation where neither of the parties will be linguistically credited or debited
with propositions that ultimately cripple their epistemic agency overtime. This is suggested as the
most viable means of navigating the rough waters of linguistic and epistemic representation of the
other in the practice of aid by the secular missionaries.
About Uchenna Okeja: PhD student, Philosophy, Goethe University Frankfurt and Visiting Assistant
Professor, Catholic University of America, Washington D.C.
Looking for the relevant counterfactual
Tomáš Profant
The goal of this presentation is to discuss the third dimension of power as conceptualized by Lukes.
In Foucauldian terms it could be also called the productive power of discourse – the power to
produce subjects. After explaining what does Lukes have in mind an example from the
“development” world follows. This is Abrahamsen's example of self-discipline by the state in the
international arena. The rest of the paper focuses on the most important aspect of Lukes' concept –
the relevant counterfactual at the local level. That means to argue that one needs to look for some
kind of proof that there indeed is a false consciousness at work. This however is not the case with
identity. Here the Foucauldian argument is useful – power changes the subject, it changes its identity
to desire “development”. De Vries offers a useful elaboration. “Development” works as “the desiring
machine”. It generates and banalizes desire. Instead of participating at the banalization part, the
“development” practitioner needs to follow the proposal made by de Vries - s/he needs to offer the
Real Thing – the small object of “development”. Here the argument is similar to Habermas' position
to a cultural change. It is not possible to transfer the ecological perspective of a species conservation
on cultures. The change in culture is part of its reproduction. This is problematic for the argument
advanced by Lukes. There is no relevant counterfactual, since tradition can only be subjective. It
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depends on the people who live it and it is impossible for someone from outside to state objective
interest of society regarding its tradition. We are left with what Gibson and Graham call
resubjectivation. There is not much difference between resubjectivation and cultural imperialism.
Cultural imperialism is not bad in itself, only the extent of it and its force is questionable in this
regard. However, the content of cultural imperialism is obviously being questioned by the
postcolonial authors. But this is the tool we are left with and it needs to be acknowledged and filled
with a different content.
dŽŵĄƓ WƌŽĨĂŶƚ studied International Relations and European Studies and Political Science at the
Masaryk Univeristy in Brno and received master degrees in both fields. He also studied International
and Non-governmental Organisations in Grenoble and received Certificat d'Etudes Politiques.
ƵƌƌĞŶƚůǇ dŽŵĄƓ ŝƐ Ă WŚ ƐƚƵĚĞŶƚ Ăƚ ƚŚĞ hŶŝǀĞƌƐŝƚǇ ŽĨ sŝĞŶŶĂ ĂŶĚ ĂŶĂůǇƐĞƐ ƚŚĞ ĚĞǀĞůŽƉŵĞŶƚ
discourse studying NGOs and development governmental agencies in Bratislava and Vienna. His
focus lies in post-development and the unequal North-South power relations.
Developmental Aid and Civil Activism:
Inseparable Concomitants or Irreconcilable Contenders?
Bhakti Deodhar
Foreign-aid program of advanced capitalist ‘northern’ countries have identified civil society as the
key ingredient in promoting ‘democratic development’ in the economically less developed states in
the ‘south’. The logic behind this can be encapsulated as follows: development requires sound
policies and efficient implementation. To achieve this goal, the actors in charge of drafting and
executing the developmental policies should be impartial and held accountable for their actions. Civil
society groups can act as both- active players in and watchdogs of the planning and implementation
of policies. Thus they ensure democratic operation of state actions. Therefore aid to such
associational forms of civil participation promotes the cause of participatory democracy and ‘good
governance’.
However admirable and cherishable these intentions and objectives of the international
development practitioners may sound, this model runs into immediate problems, when attempts are
made to operationalize these ambitious plans through the instrument of foreign aid. Problems arise
not only because of complex ancestry of the term civil society’ itself but also because the course of
political events is too manifold and unpredictable to conform to the sanitized conception of civil
society produced by the aid-policy analysts. Above all the sterile images of civil societal activism in
the donors’ minds fail to grapple with the dynamic socio-political realities of the receiving region.
This happens partly because the western conceptualization of a civil society is used as the prime
analytical and normative prism to discuss the forms of societal engagement in the south, but more
importantly because they fail to grasp the perverse dimension of the pro-democratic drive in postdictatorial societies. Recent examples of assaults on populist democratic governments by elitist civil
society groups in Phillipines (1986) and Thailand (2006) as well as military coup in Burundi (1996),
where the civilian regime was overthrown by military junta using the foreign aid call in question the
normative commitment to the development of civil society as an enlightened, liberal, progressive
citizenry envisaged by the aid agencies.
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Second important fallacy in the developmental aid program is its explicit bias towards neo-liberal
economic orthodoxy. Civil society groups- as long as they do not contravene the market-centered
policies – are “sound”; when they deviate from this logic, they are “ineffective” and “regressive”.
Free market economics removes decision-making power not only from the purview of the state but
also from political community, even a democratically constituted one. While keen to see repressive
authoritarian rule circumscribed by effective civil activism, the aid agencies simultaneously
disempower the social groups by subverting public institutions to private gains. This inherent
contradiction has remained so far relatively unchallenged.
My paper attempts to highlight the problems associated with the foreign aid enterprise in the south.
By discussing concrete case studies on civil societal dynamism in some of the developing countries in
the south, I critically analyze the instrumental role of international aid agencies in attaining their selfproclaimed ideal of an effective civil society.
About Bhakti Deodhar: Coming from the research background in German studies (Germanistik), I
recently completed MA in Global Studies course offered by a European Consortium of Erasmus
Mundus Program. I had received the prestigious Erasmus Mundus scholarship as a Third World
Scholar amounting to 42,000 Euros by European parliament to study at the University of Leipzig and
University of Wroclaw. Currently based in UK I am working on my PHD proposal in the
interdisciplinary field of European cultural studies.
The Digital Bridge: South-South Cooperation, India’s Emergent Aid Politics,
and the Anthropological Futures of Global e-Health Presences
Vincent Duclos
Over the last ten years, India has emerged as the site of various experiments in the field of
telemedicine or e-Health. Generally taking the form of public-private partnerships (PPP), Indian
telemedicine projects aim primarily to link rural areas to urban Super-Specialty Hospitals providing
medical expertise (tele-consultations, tele-radiology, tele-pathology etc) at-a-distance. In the larger
ambience of medical markets integration and of a growing South-South economic cooperation, the
techno-humanitarian ethos inherent to this national scenario are increasingly being used as the
stepping stone to set up India-led global initiatives such as the SAARC Telemedicine Network or the
Pan-African e-Network Project. Revolving around capacity-building, technology transfer and
expertise transmission, India’s South-South cooperation initiatives highlight neglected sites of power
in international aid politics as well as allow call for an anthropological inquiry into digital modes of
becoming-in-the-world.
The objectives of this paper are twofold. It first proposes that as a framework for economic
partnerships and trade, South-South cooperation is questioning the spatial configurations of power
immanent to postcolonial theories. Centre-periphery geographies and imperial power relations are
of little help in grasping the emergent technoscientific horizons of international aid. If Indian
economic and techno-medical aspirations could certainly be traced back to some colonial legacy,
their contemporary manifestations have to be understood within a global economic scenario able to
trigger unexpected relations that the postcolonial’s state-centered world may well be ill-equiped to
apprehend. Secondly, it will be suggested that E-Health networks are not merely highways allowing
information to circulate « freely » (as though in « weightlessness ») but occasions to engage
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anthropological interest in the entanglements of technicity and humanity. Optical fibre, satellite
dishes, ECGs or CT-Scans are mediums of politics, forging new ethical spaces of connectedness. The
Indian digital bridge into Africa is not so much about communication or enlightened medical decision
making, as it is about producing new ways to be(come) in the world.
About Vincent Duclos: I am a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at the Université de Montréal, Canada,
currently conducting fieldwork about Indian e-Health initiative, whether within India or abroad. My
broader theoretical interests are in anthropology and philosophy of science and technology. My
research focuses on the India’s breakthrough in the African ICT and medical sectors, either in terms
of market expansion or as aid to development. Within the last few years, I presented or published
several papers on related topics, both in French and in English. I am also a member of the Editorial
Board of Altérités.
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PANEL 11
Secularism, Religion and Politics: Critical Interventions
Convenor:
Discussant:
Zubair Ahmad
José Casanova
The topic secularism is of significant interest to the Social Sciences. In its dominant expression, this
important organizing principle of modern politics is understood as the separation of religion and
politics, and is in turn interpreted as a precondition for individual freedoms and therefore seen to be
central to a tolerant, peaceful, stable, modern democratic society. The historical narrative commonly
offered to support such an analytical understanding – which on the one hand serves as a genealogical
explanation and on the other as a normative justification and leitmotif – goes back to the reformative
and revolutionary centuries in Europe during which religion supposedly became clearly separated
from power. A process of functional differentiation referred religion to the personal and private
realm, in contrast to politics that occupied the public sphere. Although the so-called “deprivatization
of religion” or “explosion of politicized religion” has initiated an ongoing debate about the
secularization thesis in general as well as the separation of religion and politics in particular, critical
postcolonial approaches seem either absent or marginalized within this discourse. Against this
backdrop, this panel seeks to provide a forum for critical inquiry of secularism, religion and politics
and their perceptions from a postcolonial perspective.
Zubair Ahmad is studying Political Science, Comparative Religious Studies, Psychoanalysis and Islamic
Studies at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Currently he is writing his thesis on the subject of “The
Religious-Secular Divide: A Postcolonial Approach”. His research interests include modern political
theory, particularly ideas and concepts of secularism, religion and modernity; postcolonial thought,
Islam and West, progressive Muslim approaches to hermeneutics, social and gender justice. He is
member of the FRCPS.
José Casanova is Professor of Sociology and Senior Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace,
and World Affairs at Georgetown University, where he heads the Program on Religion, Globalization,
and the Secular. Previously he served as Professor of Sociology at the New School for Social Research
in New York from 1987 to 2007 and has held visiting appointments at New York University, at
Columbia University, at Vienna's Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, at the Central
European University in Budapest, at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, at the Freie Universität Berlin,
at the University of Uppsala, and at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg in Göttingen. He has published widely in
the areas of sociological theory, religion and politics, transnational migration, and globalization. His
best-known work, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago, 1994) has become a modern
classic in the field and has been translated into six languages, including Japanese and Arabic, and is
forthcoming in Indonesian, Farsi, and Chinese. He is also the author of Europa's Angst vor der
Religion (Berlin U.P., 2009).
The State of Secularism and the Ambivalence of Rule: Tales from South Africa
Annie Leatt
Colonial and Apartheid South Africa used both Christianity and traditional leadership to legitimate
white rule and govern black subjects. Both were necessary to a polity that refused the democratic
imperative to ground political power in the social through representation. The democratic transition
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of the mid 1990s claimed to achieve two ends. The first was the de-racialisation of the law and
citizenship, putting “all who live in South Africa” on an equal footing, at least in the eyes of the law.
The second was to become secular. In this paper, I attend to the details and legacies of this political
negotiation as a process of state formation and secularisation in order to theorise secularism in a
context of a powerful religious lobby and the recognition of traditional leadership as part of the
state. As the call for papers suggests, secularism is not best apprehended as an intellectual project,
or as any kind of simple guarantee of peace or freedom. Taking from a range of authors, I develop an
argument that draws from this recent assertion of secularism in South Africa, and that I think has
some resonance for an analysis of other postcolonial states. I argue that political secularism is about
the subordination of religion and tradition to the politics of the nation-state. I suggest that this
subordination can have many mechanisms – exclusion, violence, co-option and appropriation among
them. It also has three main areas of intervention – institutional relations, ideological and legislative
foundations, and governance. Using these to develop a matrix of political secularism, I show how the
changing, contested and ambiguous relationships between the social and the political animate and
challenge the possibility of a government ruling secularly. In doing so I point to situations, evident in
many postcolonial states where there is a strong counter majoritarian law, weak or porous
government, highly localised social powers, transnational religious movements with political
aspirations, or all of these.
Annie Leatt has masters degrees in Religious Studies from the University of Cape Town and the
University of California, Santa Barbara. Her early research looked at the effect of modernity and its
political forms on religious and social movements in Buddhist polities in East Asia. Between 1998 and
2006, she worked in various applied research and non-government bodies in areas of gender
violence, sexuality, HIV/AIDS and social policy in relation to poverty and children. Her doctoral work
at WISER was on the role of faith bodies in the context of post-1994 South Africa and its political,
social and economic transitions. She is particularly interested in ethics of care, faith-based
organisations’ involvement in the delivery of statutory social services, and discourses of moral
degeneration and regeneration. Currently she is a lecturer for Religious Studies at University of Cape
Town, South Africa.
Beyond the Universalisms of Islam and Secularism:
the Emergence of a Western-Islamic Public Sphere
Dilyana Mincheva
A new class of postcolonial Muslim intellectuals working in western academic environment has been
engaged actively in the last 20 years in the controversial enterprise of developing a theoretical
approach on Islam (within the various fields of theology, psychoanalysis, and historical-literary
theory), which “liberates” the theological message from its strict reference to dogma. In a number of
western debates which concern the presence and visibility of Islam in the West today (such as the
hijab affair in France, the Salman Rushdie controversy, the Theo Van Gogh murder in Amsterdam,
Ayaan Hirsi Ali case, the cartoon affair, the ghettoization of Islam, the debates around building of
mosques in Europe, the enactment of sharia laws, etc.) these Muslim scholars express readiness to
leave the strict disciplinary boundaries of their academic research in order to make statements on
Islam, western society, values, and religious universalism and past colonial legacies. Despite the
difference in the approach (Tariq Ramadan versus Abdelwahab Meddeb, Muhammed Arkoun versus
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Muhammad Talbi, Fadela Amara versus Fatima Mernissi) these thinkers usually insist that the debate
between Islam and modernity is a matter of complex historical, cultural, and civilizational exchange.
This debate concerns as much the capacity of Islam to adopt secular paths to modernity (despite the
negative investments of the orientalist scholarship) as the ability of western publicness today (in the
face of academic, social, political, and cultural institutions) to confront Muslims and Islam, first, as an
interlocutor and, second, as a structure embedded in the historical and colonial narrative of the
West. The hypothesis that my work explores is that current debates on religion and publics, existing
on the boundaries of various disciplines, exploiting various vocabularies, and employing various
media channels gives impetus to a new, Western-Islamic public sphere. Out of the existent
postcolonial dynamics new actors and observers emerge in the academic and intellectual field who
criticize the main framework of secularism as well as the models of legitimacy and power which are
inscribed in it. In the proposed paper I intend to reveal how this new Islamic critique, present in the
work of four disparate Western-Muslim intellectuals – Muhammed Arkoun (theology, social science,
history), Malek Chebel (literary studies), Fethi Benslama (psychoanalysis) and Fatima Mernissi
(feminism) – contributes to the formation of a polyphonic space – beyond the academia – in which
numerous (sometimes contradictory and exclusive) arguments meet and exist, not in agreement, but
in infinite dialogue. Critical of Islam and critical of the West, this new Islamic argumentation provides
conceptually new tools for dealing with the complicated historical legacies of western colonialism.
Dilyana Mincheva is presently pursuing her PhD at the Department of Cultural Studies, Trent
University, Canada. Her thesis is titled “Islam and Publicity: the Emergence of a Western-Islamic
Public Sphere”. She obtained her Master in Arts in the field of Arabic Studies from University of Sofia,
Bulgaria.
Examining the operations of ‘religion’ and ‘the secular’. Insights from
postcolonial and critical scholarship for the Sociology of Religion
Nadia Fadil
The question of the definition of religion has always been a thorny issue in the subfield of Sociology
of Religion. This has not only to do with the difficulty of finding a consensual definition of religion,
but also with the impact this question has on the way certain sociological phenomena are observed
and assessed, especially in relation to the question of secularisation. While the concept of
secularisation has been at the heart of the sociological endeavour from its inception, it has also been
the object of fierce debates. This has not only to do with the observations of the persistent role of
public religious movements in various parts of the world, but also – and more fundamentally - with
the question of the definition of religion. Depending on the definition used (substantial or
functional), different conclusions can indeed be drawn on the status of religion in modernity, and its
persistent role. While this observation has lead some scholars to abandon the paradigm of
secularisation altogether due to the arbitrary definition of religion it draws upon and to dismiss it as
ideological, other have rather chosen to avoid this question - while being aware of its problematic
aspects - and to settle for a pragmatic definition of religion. This paper proposes to overcome this
tension by arguing that some new insights can be gained from the critical and postcolonial
scholarship on the study of religion and secularisation. This research field characterises itself by an
abandonment of the quest for a ‘neutral‘ or ‘universal‘ definition of religion which would enable us
to observe the religious phenomena in an objective manner. Yet it also doesn’t take this as a reason
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to disqualify the concept, nor to abandon the sociological project of examining the process of
secularisation. Such a critical and postcolonial scholarship rather encourages us to situate concepts in
their cultural and historical particularity whilst at the same time observing their cultural
dissemination, their performativity and the way such distinctive legacies regulate and structure our
modern societies. This perspective allows us, in other words, to displace the question from
validity/invalidity, authenticity/inauthenticity to a critical deconstruction and understanding of the
way a particular ‘notion’ of religion (understood as a systems of belief) is being constituted,
disseminated and contested. This question will be illustrated through an analysis of a number
concrete cases from the Belgian public debate on the Public visibility of Muslims (i.c. the question of
halal food at school, ritual slaughtering and the hijab controversy).
Nadia Fadil studied sociology and anthropology at the Catholic University of Leuven (KULeuven),
Belgium, and holds a PhD in Sociology from the same university. She is currently affiliated as at the
Centre for Sociological Research of the KULeuven as a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research
Foundation Flanders (FWO). Her research interests revolve around questions of subjectivity and
embodiment, secular governmentality, liberalism and multiculturalism focused on the presence of
Muslims in Europe.
Interrogating Music of Tamil Nadu Using Religion-Secular Binary
Rajalakshmi Nadadur Kannan
The paper will discuss the modern classification of the music of Tamil Nadu, [South India], in terms of
the religion-secular binary introduced during the colonial period. Modern understanding of music of
Tamil Nadu comprises of three major ‘types’, namely Karnatic music, Tamil film music and Tamil folk
music. Since the early 20th century Karnatic music has typically been classified as ‘religious’ music,
while Tamil folk and film music as ‘secular’. This classification, which I will suggest is arbitrary, reflects
wider issues of colonial and commercial power, was applied by recording companies and increasingly
adopted by high-caste English educated Indian elites themselves.
But, such colonial discourse of religious/secular divide is problematic because the dichotomy is not
indigenous and arguably contradicts the dominant Indian philosophical schools of Vedanta in terms
of which high-caste elites traditionally thought and which are considered to be the divine
metaphysical rationale behind ritual practices, castes, and Karnatic music itself. I will argue that
distinction between religious and non-religious secular domains emerged in European thinking as a
product of the Enlightenment and out of the needs of colonial and commercial classification.
Christian missionaries who came to India have for centuries represented the people of India as
heathens whose ritual practices were superstitious and barbaric. The Indian independence
movement was clearly a rejection of such condescension by Christian invaders. However, the
discourse has to some extent been superseded by the discourse on religion(s) separated from the
non-religious secular domains such as science and the state. Such a discourse implies a ‘religious’
domain separate from, and essentially distinct from, a non-religious one. Paradoxically, while aiming
to be anti-Western, Indian elites appropriated colonial discourse on religion/secular dichotomy to
‘reestablish’ Karnatic music. There is thus a deep conflict between, on the one hand, modern
commercial practices and concepts of copyright, and on the other the indigenous elite idea of music
as a divine gift and inspiration. There is a further conflict between the elitist (especially Brahminnical)
indigenous basis of divine-inspired music and the individualism implied by copyright laws. While
69
Karnatic music is partly commercialized, caste-based ‘ownership’ of Karnatic music is present–a very
different concept of ownership than the western commercial one.
Rajalakshmi Nadadur Kannan is a PhD candidate at the University of Stirling. Her dissertation project
focuses on the problems in copyrighting South Indian music, which has, traditionally, been shared by
community as a collective knowledge not owned by one individual. She obtained a M.A. in Journalism
and Mass Communication from University of Madras, India and in Communication from University of
Maine, U.S.A.
Fanon’s intellectual horizons on the Religion in Africa
Federico Settler
In the paper I propose to explore the idea of African religion as it emerges in the work of Frantz
Fanon's with specific reference to the defining influences of Aime Cesaire and Richard Wright. Where
Cesaire affirmed continuity with Africa as a spiritual home of the African diaspora, Wright saw Africa
as suffering from a psychic fracture as a result of the colonial and pre-colonial religion. This caused
Fanon to rethink his vision of Africa in terms of Cesaire's early negritude as the spiritual recovery of
indigenism and Wright's industrialized modernity. Thus while Fanon develops a position where (1)
the idea of Africa is expanded through black intellectual exchange around, and across the Atlantic, (2)
he struggles to transcend the essentialized and contested notion of Africa a religious and thus premodern. He appears to suggest that this would continue to inhibit the black intellectual vision of
modernity and political liberty on the continent. I will argue that in the end Fanon’s 'black utopia' or
national culture - wherein Africans need to roll back the curtain(s) of race, colour, religion and
tradition – is not simply defined by a critical engagements with Cesaire and Wright. I will
demonstrate that through his privileging of Christianity and Islam, intended to obscure his position
on religion, he instead expose his reservations about indigenous religion, whether Caribbean, African
or Arab.
Federico Settler received his doctorate from the University of Cape Town; his dissertation focused on
religion in the work of Frantz Fanon. He specializes in the study of expression of black identities and
black intellectual traditions in postcolonial Africa. He holds an M.A. from the University of Cape Town
and a B.A. (Hons) from the University of Durham. Currently he is research director at the Institute for
Comparative Religion, University of Cape Town.
Enduring Orientalism: The concepts of religion and secularisation in
development support
Stephanie Garling
According to Edward Said Orientalism divides the world into Occident and Orient. The other, the
Orient, is presented as unpredictable and unknown, irrational and potentially dangerous. It is
profoundly complex and needs experts to put the knowledge surrounding it in order and explain it
both to itself and to audiences in the Occident. In recent years we have witnessed an increasing
tendency to think of colonialism as a period of history that is now behind us – a period beyond
Orientalism is reached. Conversely the presentation will argue that these structural elements of
Orientalist discourses named before are still enduring. They are persistently (re-)produced and filter
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knowledge. After a short theoretical introduction to the work and thoughts of Edward Said and its
critics the presentation will show how the elements exist in programmatic papers published by actors
in the policy field of development support. It is the so called ‘ambivalence of religion’ which provides
them with esprit and legitimacy and creates a normative understanding of ‘secularisation’ which calls
for religion and politics to be partners and foes at the same time. The aim of the presentation is not
to call for cultural relativism or to claim scholars who have taken post-Saidian ‘postcolonial turn’ to
be free from complicity but to remain sceptical of such claims that declare the period of domination
has come to an end.
Stephanie Garling studied political studies at Leipzig University. Since 2007 she has enrolled her PhD
project, entitled “The concepts of religion in development support”. She has worked for different
NGOs in Tanzania and Bangladesh.
‘German Moral Whiteness’–
An Attempt to Theoretically Account for ‘Normative Superiority
Anna-Esther Younes
This paper deals with the intersections of Whiteness and Morality in Germany and the way it repositions itself anew over time and space. Morality can serve to justify and re-perform the
‘emancipated/enlightened self’ as opposed to the ‘un-emancipated other’ still in need of
‘enlightenment’. There are three main assumptions: 1) Enlightenment ideas and morals never had a
clear beginning nor end and thus have to be exercised over and over again, in order to not lose their
‘civilization appeal’. If they were stopped being performed vis-à-vis an ‘Other’, ‘Western civilized
Morality’ would lose its identity. 2) Western moral genealogies of justice, freedom and rationality are
not only gendered and racialized in theory, but also embodied as ‘women’s statues (Justicia, Statue
of Liberty) in order to be protected by ‘rationality’ (‘the Thinker’). In that sense, it is ‘white women’s’
liberty and justice that has to be protected, ‘brown women’ that have to be saved, and the ‘rational
white man’ combating the ‘unenlightened brown man’. 3) Western White Morality exists in at least
two relationalities: As Property (defines the object of morality itself) and as Possession (defines the
relationship one can establish with morality). That way we can account for not only changing
discourses and moral framings, but also for people of color buying into moral standards that support
White Morality’s realm of governmentality to those in need of correction. Morality was chosen as
opposed to ‘ethics’ since it is according to Cicero not set in a ‘space’, but constantly changing through
time and space. This research will thus try to theoretically account for a White Morality, where
mechanisms are assumed to be similar, yet contexts differ. Here, it will be German White Morality
trying to save the Muslim woman’s body, combating the terrorist male and liberating suppressed
‘Muslim homosexuals’, which will serve as example during the presentation.
Anna-Esther Younes born in East-Berlin in 1982, but has moved and lived since then in diverse places
such as Palestine, Israel, India, USA, Switzerland and Lebanon. After having studied International
Relations in Tübingen, Geneva and Berlin, I decided to change the academic field for my PhD and join
the Anthropology Unit at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. My master’s thesis dealt with Anarchist
and movement theories in Palestine/Israel and I have worked extensively on Gender issues. Through
my published work on Hamas’s Women’s Movement I became interested in questions of morality. In
Geneva, I am working on the second generation of Palestinian-Germans in conjunction with German
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Moral Whiteness and how people have come to understand themselves differently from ‘White’
German society.
Secularism or religion-based tolerance?
Two conflicting views on politics and religion in postcolonial India
Ulrike Spohn
In India, there has been a great deal of debate about secularism, summarized in a volume edited by
Rajeev Bhargava. Bhargava is also one of the most visible Indian scholars in a global academic debate
about secularism, critically assessing standard Western ideas about secularism and advancing his
vision of a distinctively Indian secularism as a trans-cultural ideal. In his numerous writings on this
topic, Bhargava laments the exclusionary stance many mainstream Western understandings of
secularism take towards religion and develops an alternative account of the design and functioning
of secular institutions. According to Bhargava, Indian secularism is not hostile to religion but accepts
that many people wish to relate to something beyond their ordinary earthly existence and to express
their moral views accordingly in public. So, however modified, Bhargava accepts the concept and
terminology of secularism, claiming that the tight link between secularism and European history
established by theorists who reject secularism as a “gift of Christianity” alien to Indian culture is
exaggerated. T.N. Madan and Ashis Nandy belong to the theorists who oppose this view and dismiss
secularism as a foreign political strategy intruding India with processes of modernization, which is to
say, westernization. Madan perceives of secularism as an ideology hostile to religion, arising from a
dialectic between modern science and Protestantism. In his view, its implementation is arrogantly
ignoring the fact that for the large majority of Indians, their faith is essential to them in terms of
establishing their place in society and giving meaning to their life. Nandy sees secularism as an
integral part of a modern nation-state system and as the expression of a colonial state of mind that
looks with a rationalistic and scientific gaze at religion as something to be engineered and made
consistent with modern ways of living – which can mean its relegation to the “private sphere” or
even its extinction. Both Madan and Nandy reject secularism as a political strategy to deal with
religious diversity in India and instead resort to notions of tolerance they believe to be inherent in
India’s religious traditions. The paper to be presented at the conference deals with these conflicting
views of secularism which indicate the difficulty of handling in a postcolonial context like India a
political concept that in terms of genealogy and justification is frequently linked to the West. Apart
from elaborating on the views outlined in this abstract, the paper will focus on a critical assessment
of the stance that secularism should best be expelled from India in favour of some notion of
tolerance rooted in religious traditions. Are Madan and Nandy right to reject secularism as a concept
generating rather than mitigating problems of communal violence, or is India well advised to
promote an alternative form of secularism, like the one designed by Bhargava, which is supposed to
fit its state as a society marked by deep religious diversity?
Ulrike Spohn is a PhD student at Münster University and a research assistant at the Chair for Politics
and Religion at the Department of Political Science. She graduated from the University of Leipzig in
March 2009 and holds an MA in political science, sociology and English philology. Currently Ulrike is
working on her dissertation about different concepts of secularism and the question whether (some
form of) secularism can serve liberal democracies well to cope with religious pluralism. She is
specializing in political theory and is particularly interested in theories of liberalism and their critics.
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PANEL 12
Transnational In/justice in a Postcolonial World
Convenor:
Franziska Dübgen
Europe has manifold relations to its former colonies. For decolonizing its political and ethical ties and
for achieving more justice towards it “partners”, from a postcolonial angle, it needs to confront the
neocolonial nature of many of those relationships that perpetuate systematic injustices – be they
within the economic, political or symbolic realm. With regard to our particular focus, certain
asymmetries, subtle or overt forms of domination, and (counter)hegemonic struggles challenge the
moral philosophical debates on transnational justice within a postcolonial context. If we consider
Africa and Europe to be one context of transnational justice, what kernel aspects of the concept of
“justice” should we consider: Do we emphasize recognition of one’s particular historical identity, fair
modes of production, or democratic representation on the level of politics as the central vehicle for
transnational justice? Taking into account the historical dimension of war and colonialism, we also
need to address justice with regard to its restorative function. What kind of contradictions might we
confront while using all these different parameters? And in how far are the epistemic realm and the
moral grammar, in which those relations are discussed, themselves important sites for justice? – In
dialogue with the contributions and debates among African, Western, and Jewish philosophers and
whilst focusing on different empirical contexts, this panel sheds light on these questions from a
multi-disciplinary perspective. Following on from that, we will inquire upon what kind of progressive
role cooperation could play and in how far it runs the risk of reiterating the imperial project. As a
remedy, morality in itself might be regarded as a capital for human development, one paper will
argue, which could further just and dignified living conditions. We hope for a lively, productive, and
critical debate on these ethical and political concerns in a globalizing postcolonial world.
Franziska Dübgen is part of the research group „Normative foundations of development policy“ at
the Excellence Cluster „Normative Orders“ (Frankfurt) and of the FRCPS Colloquium. She is preparing
the PhD in philosophy on questions of transnational justice, solidarity in post-colonial, times and
(post)development theory. Her research topics include critical theory, African philosophy, critical
race studies, historical materialism and poststructuralist theories. She has recently published articles
on topics related to critical development theory and ethics in English and German. Her first
monograph is entitled „Beyond the tribal – an anti-racist ethics in Lévinas and Foucault“ (2008).
African Conception Of Justice And The Colonial Experience:
Limitations And Possibilities
Joseph C. A. Agbakoba
This paper examines the traditional African conception of justice and moral rectitude in relation to
Africa’s colonial and post colonial experience. The paper looks at justice as an aspect of the stock of
moral capital in Africa; and how this moral capital or paucity of moral capital has shaped the
response of Africa to the colonial and post colonial experiences. I argue in this paper that moral
capital – and the related notion of social capital – are crucial in determining the nature of human
agency in any given context; which in turn is a key element in determining what a fair and just order
would be and how to build or maintain such an order. The notion of human agency enables us to
determine how much of the responsibility of an unjust situation experienced by an individual or
collective goes to the supposed victim or passive agent; and how much goes to the active agent. I
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argue that the correction of transnational injustice, given the form of agency expressed by Africans,
requires a multifaceted approach in which international cooperation to achieve institutional reforms,
reorientation in values and knowledge acquisition should go simultaneously with the rectification of
perceived injustice in international political, economic and cultural relations.
Joseph C. A. Agbakoba is professor of philosophy at the University of Nigeria. He was visiting senior
lecturer in the Department of Classics and Philosophy of the University of Cape Coast, Ghana from
2006 to 2007; head of philosophy at the University of Nigeria from 2007 to 2010. Currently, he is at
the Goethe University, Frankfurt as a research fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
having been awarded the Georg Forster Fellowship for experienced researchers. He is the President
of the Nigerian Philosophical Association and regional coordinator for Africa of the Council of
Research in Values and Philosophy, Washington, DC. Agbakoba has held fellowships in Budapest,
Bayreuth and Leiden. He is widely published in Nigeria and many other countries including, Germany,
USA; UK; Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Romania and India. His current research interest is in the area of
cultural philosophy generally and particularly in economic and development philosophy.
Justice and Injustice of Democracy Promotion
Dorothea Gädeke
Ever since the late 1980s international and especially European actors have increasingly become
involved in democracy promotion activities - not only but particularly in Africa. The political
institutional setting of recipient states that had for a long time been conceived as a framework for
development cooperation has grown to become regarded as a legitimate and indeed essential field
of intervention itself. Yet, this shift has not gone unchallenged. Empirically, the fact that many
transitional states which receive(d) substantial amounts of democracy aid slid back into new forms of
authoritarianism or formed hybrid regimes raises doubts as to the mere possibility of democracy
promotion. Besides and more importantly, a growing number of states criticize and reject foreign
democracy promotion normatively, denouncing it as illegitimate foreign interference. They gain
support from post-colonial authors arguing that democracy promotion has to be understood as a
new form of Western colonialism and imperialism.
Even though they hardly use the language of justice, the paper takes these postcolonial critiques as a
starting point to analyze whether democracy promotion does constitute an injustice - and to
understand what it is that might make it unjust. This requires, as a first step, a specification of the
notion of justice; my approach builds upon a broadly republican perspective, which focuses on the
injustice of non-domination. On this basis I will secondly analyze the relation between justice and
colonialism/imperialism in order to identify the particular moral wrong of imperialism. Thirdly and
lastly, I will discuss in how far the critique of democracy promotion is justified and what – if any - role
democracy promotion has to play in the context of transnational justice.
Dorothea Gädeke is currently working on her PhD at the research cluster on Normative Orders at
Goethe-University Frankfurt, where she is part of an interdisciplinary doctoral research group on
normative conditions of foreign aid. Her main research interests focus on issues in international
political theory and covers theories of global justice, ethics of foreign aid, ethics of migration and
refugee policy, Critical Theory, and Neorepublicanism.
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Beyond Legal Justice The Intricacies of Post-Conflict Truth and Reconciliation
Mechanisms in The Central African Great Lakes Region
Stanislas Bigirimana
Truth and Reconciliation commissions, in addition to international tribunal courts, and traditional
processes of administering justice have been credited as the best possible ways of ending cycles of
violence, massacres and genocides. In post second World-war Europe for instance, the Nuremberg
International Military Tribunal is renown for its trials of those who conceived and executed the
Shoah. The model of international tribunals has been recently replicated in Rwanda and former
Yugoslavia. In other countries such as in South Africa, the model adopted was the one of a Truth and
Reconciliation Commission that is based on the principle of “restorative” justice rather than on penal
justice. Restorative justice implies reintegration of perpetrators in the community after repentance,
punishment, or forgiveness. Restorative justice is based on the African traditional value of ubuntu
(humanness). This model that was made popular by the South African Truth and Reconciliation
Commission at the end of the apartheid, has been in gestation for many years in Burundi. In the
Democratic Republic of Congo, the International Criminal Court (ICC) instituted after the Rome
Statute got involved and issued warrants of arrests. The functioning and the intricacies of these
institutions are difficult to follow. Not only mechanisms of legal justice were confronted with some
logistical difficulties but also although prestigious international institutions and mechanisms raised
great hopes for the victims and engulfed huge budgets, it had remained difficult to principles of
justice that guided them.
Stanislas Bigirimana holds a Masters of Arts in Philosophy and a Master of Business Administration
(MBA). His academic interests include epistemology, business ethics and African philosophy. He is
currently writing a doctoral thesis on the Epistemological Implications of the Information Revolution
at the University of Heidelberg (Germany). He has taught at Arrupe College, in Harare (Zimbabwe),
the University of Zimbabwe, at the Zimbabwe Open University and at African University in Mutare
(Zimbabwe).
Global citizenship education – a project of social justice or imperialism?
Shelane Jorgenson
Global citizenship education (GCE) in post-secondary institutions is an emergent and contested
discourse, policy and practice. According to several scholars, the purpose and intent of GCE is to
develop in students a global ethic of social justice (Abdi & Shultz, 2007; Dower, 2003). In response to
the neoliberal push for post-secondary institutions to internationalize, educators have attempted to
achieve these objectives by sending students abroad on short-term excursions to work, study and
volunteer in regions of Africa. While the `global' discourses such as globalization, global ethics and
global citizenship, which are used to frame and legitimize these practices, signify a shift from the
dominance of Western-centric epistemology towards multi-centric philosophies and practices, the
imperial implications of these practices cannot be ignored. Currently, people living on the peripheries
are often excluded from mainstream global citizenship discourse (Giroux, 2004; Spivak, 2003), thus
challenging its `global' foundations. In this paper, I unpack the tensions and contradictions of colonial
and neoliberal rationalities that are embedded within GCE practices. The questions that I address in
this excavation pertain to whose notion of global citizenship is used to frame whose experiences?
75
And, (how) can GCE be a project of justice rather than imperialism? To contextualize my argument, I
draw on a case study of a GCE program at the University of Alberta that sends pre-service teachers to
Ghana for four weeks to volunteer as teachers in a rural village. Through a critical discourse analysis
of documents pertaining to the program, I elucidate the dominant discourses that inform and shape
this program and more importantly, what these discourses and practices mean for the project of
justice.
Shelane Jorgenson is a PhD student in the Department of Educational Policy Studies in the Faculty of
Education, University of Alberta, Canada. Currently, she is coordinating the Global Citizenship
Curriculum Development project and is a student research fellow for the Center for Global
Citizenship Education and Research at the University of Alberta. Her research interests include
internationalization of higher education, global citizenship, and global philosophies of education.
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PANEL 13
Revolution Reconsidered –
Slavery, Enlightenment and the Haitian Revolution
Convenor:
Jeanette Ehrmann
The emergence of the Western concept of modernity and its accompanying normative ideals of
liberty, equality and human rights are inextricably linked to the Age of Revolution. According to
Hannah Arendt, they are outcomes of “the two great revolutions at the end of the eighteenth
century” – thereby referring to the American and the French Revolution. The revolutionary
foundation of the free Black republic Haiti in 1804 after the first successful slave rebellion ever, by
contrast, remains largely unexplored within the history of political thought up until now. Both the
displacement of this singular event from the collective memory of Europe and its silencing in the
canonical writings of political theory and the history of ideas do not only mask that slavery in the
Caribbean was a constitutive element of a genuinely modern capitalist world system and hence of
modernity itself. The fact that the enslavement of Non-Europeans gained momentum beyond the
Atlantic occurred simultaneously to emancipation within Europe also complicates the accounts of an
Enlightenment discourse that is relayed as a distinctly Western success story. This is particularly
pertinent when, in terms of the moral progress of a united humanity, the ideological foundations of
racial slavery as well as gender and class differences provided by Enlightenment thinkers are wiped
away. Based on these silences and ambivalences, the idea of the panel is a critique of the
representation of the Haitian Revolution as an imitation of the French Revolution by stressing the
slaves’ agency in their autonomous liberation from colonial domination, from racism and from
slavery and by tracing the transatlantic exchange processes of emancipatory movements in Europe
and the Caribbean. In addition to this historical perspective, the panel will also touch on current
forms of resistance provided by Haitian Vodou against dominant heteronormative gender norms and
on the critical potential of Caribbean fiction as a counterculture to Eurocentric modernity in the
context of postcoloniality.
Jeanette Ehrmann is a Research Associate at the Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative
Orders“ and the Institute for Political Science, Goethe University Frankfurt. She studied Political
Science, Sociology, Social Psychology and Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology at Goethe
University Frankfurt and at the University of Cyprus, Nicosia. In 2008, she graduated with a thesis on
transnational justice from a postcolonial feminist perspective. She has been awarded scholarships
from the German National Academic Foundation and from the Heinrich Böll Foundation. Currently,
she is a fellow of the Université Franco-Allemande and a participant of the Collège doctoral
d’histoire, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her area of specialization is the intersection of
political theory, postcolonial theory and feminist theory with a special focus on race and gender in
political thought. Her PhD thesis is ongoing with the working title “Enlightenment and State of
Exception. The Haitian Revolution as an Event and Critique of European Modernity”.
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‘Couté la Liberté dan coeur à nous’:
The Slaves' Agency in Saint-Domingue's Revolution (1791-1801)
Antonio Jesús Pinto Tortosa
In this lecture, I defend that the slaves' discontent with their condition was crucial to explain their
uprising the 21 August 1791 and also that they had different objectives in the revolution depending
on their socio-cultural background, either as African-born or “elite” slaves. Despite their different
interests, they were all loyal to the French King, whom they regarded as their defender against the
colonial white elite's abuses. Some French monarchists, exiled in the Caribbean after the storming of
the Bastille, and the Spanish Dominican government took advantage of their royalist loyalty and
upraised them in the name of Louis XVI. Therefore, the revolutionary outbreak was caused by
external factors that would never have succeeded had the slaves not had their own reasons for
rebelling. Toussaint de l'Ouverture incarnated the described thesis and evidenced that the slaves'
interests always prevailed, regardless of any foreign strategic interests. Ambition made him change
sides and back the French Republic, promoting fast at France's service and becoming the Supreme
Commander of the whole island in 1801.
Antonio Jesús Pinto Tortosa is a PhD student at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). He
works for the Comparative Studies Group on Caribbean and Atlantic World and the research line “De
ŝŵƉĞƌŝŽƐǇĐŽůŽŶŝĂƐ͗ƐŽĐŝĞĚĂĚĞƐǇĐƵůƚƵƌĂƐĂƚůĄŶƚŝĐĂƐ͕͟ďŽƚŚĚŝƌĞĐƚĞĚďǇƌ͘ŽŶƐƵĞůŽEĂƌĂŶũŽKƌŽǀŝŽ͘
In his thesis, he studies the impact of Saint-Domingue's revolution in Spanish Santo Domingo,
focusing on the Spanish Crown's interests in the slave uprising, as well as the development of the
Dominican Spaniards' mentality from Santo Domingo's cession to France in 1795, up to the
restoration of the Spanish sovereignty there in 1809. He works under the supervision of Dr. Inés
ZŽůĚĄŶ͕ĚŝƌĞĐƚŽƌŽĨƚŚĞƉƌŽũĞĐƚ͞ŝĐĐŝŽŶĂƌŝŽďŝŽŐƌĄĨŝĐŽĞƐƉĂŹŽůĚĞŵŝŶŝƐƚƌŽƐĚĞhůƚƌĂŵĂƌ͕͟ǁŚĞƌĞŚĞ
also collaborates. Since September 2009, he has enjoyed a grant in the “Residencia de Estudiantes de
Madrid” by the Town Hall of Madrid.
The Haitian Revolution and Spectres of Transatlantic Self-Emancipation
Raphael Hörmann
This paper seeks to address a pivotal aspect of the Haitian Revolution that has so far received
comparatively little attention in the critical debates of the ‘Haitian Turn:’ the rhetorical, visual and
ideological interconnections that have been drawn up between self-emancipatory movements in the
Caribbean and in Europe, between the revolutionary liberation of the slaves and the feared
revolutionary liberation of the European lower-classes.
Marcus Wood in his recent study of transatlantic emancipation propaganda The Horrible Gift of
Freedom (2010) has argued that slave revolts (among them most notably the Haitian Revolution)
constituted “no-go areas” for the white emancipation movement. According to Wood they exploded
the emancipation myth that liberty had to be bestowed upon the passive slaves by white abolitionist
as a “gift.” Paraphrasing Fanon’s argument in Peau noire, masques blancs (1952) about the
pernicious influence of this myth on the black diasporas, Wood argues that genuine freedom can
never be given but must be taken in an act of revolutionary self-liberation: through “cleansing
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revolutionary violence” (2010, 27). This model, I would argue, applies most closely to the Haitian
Revolution as the world’s only successful slave revolution.
Drawing largely on the British discourse, I want to first discuss whether this threat that the Haitian
spectre of self-emancipation posed to the emancipation myth could help to explain why the Haitian
Revolution was anathema to most British abolitionists? In a second step I want to briefly explore how
this spectre of self-emancipation was also applied to the rebellious European lower classes, which, in
visual images and texts, were frequently equated with slave rebels on Saint-Domingue. Focusing on
the British-Jamaican radical abolitionist and revolutionist Robert Wedderburn, I will finally
demonstrate that conjuring up the horror of the Haitian Revolution and the spectre of violent selfemancipation could be used in an ideologically diametrically opposed way: as an empowering call for
universal liberation, both for slave revolutions across the Caribbean and for proletarian revolution in
Britain.
Raphael Hörmann studied German and English/American Literature at the universities of Constance
and Edinburgh. In 2007 he graduated with a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of
Glasgow. Since then he has held postdoctoral positions at the University of Rostock and at the
German Historical Institute in London. He currently is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the
University of Gießen. His major research project is dealing with Anglophone Gothic narratives of the
Haitian Revolution. Publications include essays on German and English 18th- and 19th-century
revolutionary literature, on Marx and on English contemporary representations of the Haitian
Revolution. He is co-editor (together with Gesa Mackenthun) of the essay collection Human Bondage
in the Cultural Contact Zone: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Slavery and Its Discourses (2010). His
book Writing the Revolution: German and English Radical Literature, 1819-1848/49 is forthcoming.
Sacred Transvestism.
Costume and Gender in the Visual Culture of Haitian Vodou
Charlotte Hammond
In the ‘performance’ of everyday life, processes of disguise and impersonation can be an effective
strategy, enabling us to blend to our surroundings and pass unnoticed. As Peggy Phelan suggests,
“the binary between the power of visibility and the impotency of invisibility is falsifying. There is real
power in remaining unmarked” (1993: 6). Underpinned by an analysis of the historical control of
dress and gender in pre- and post-revolutionary Haiti, this paper will examine themes of visibility,
performative power and religious belonging in two contemporary visual texts that depict male-tofemale transvestism within the practice of Haitian Vodou and in relation to the dominant gender
norms that circulate in Haitian society: Of French and Haitian origin, Anne Lescot’s and Laurence
Magloire’s Des Hommes et des Dieux (2002) and British artist, Leah Gordon’s, Bounda par Bounda: A
Drag Zaka (2008).
Through an analysis of the style in which the filmmaker frames sacred spaces of inside and outside in
these works I will consider the bodies, costumes and guises that yield authenticity and value in
Haitian culture. More broadly, how do the subjects of these films manoeuvre within the hegemonic
conditions imposed upon them, yet simultaneously resist those same conditions? Can male-to-male
desire only be apprehended or even ‘accepted’ within the tolerant milieu of Vodou?
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Charlotte Hammond is a PhD candidate in the departments of Drama and French at Royal Holloway,
University of London. Her AHRC-funded interdisciplinary research project is on cross-gender
performances within contemporary Francophone Afro-Caribbean visual culture, focusing on the
islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe and Haiti and their diasporas in metropolitan France. Please visit:
http://leblogdehammond.wordpress.com
Black Atlantic‘s Proteus.
Pauline Melville‘s Fiction as a Counterculture of Modernity
Steffen Klävers
To an extent incomparable to that of any other geopolitical region in world history, the Caribbean
has continually suffered from almost 400 years of slavery and exploitation as a consequence of
Western imperialism and colonialism. Although acts of revolt, like the Haitian revolution of 1791,
initially seemed to answer back against a means of ending the systematic capitalist culture of
European oppression, the aftermath of colonial rule is still felt in the present day Caribbean.
A key aspect in the history of Caribbean oppression is the binary between the spheres of the ,central‘
West and its Grand Narratives of Enlightenment, and, on the other hand, the non-westernized,
,peripheral‘ cultures and societies of the Caribbean. Having in mind Hegel‘s master-slave-dialectics as
a key element of modernity, the European invaders constructed an image of the other as humanly
and morally inferior, as can be discerned from various documents, in order to legitimate slavery. The
interests of a mercantile (especially British) elite helped to establish the gruesome and brutal system
of the triangular slave-trade and plantation slavery, which implied inhuman living conditions for
millions of African (and later also Indian) slaves. Paul Gilroy‘s ,Black Atlantic‘ is a crucial reference
point in this context. A central aspect in his theory is the postulate that any counterculture of
modernity, as which he values his theory, must resist constraints of Western Enlightenment-binaries
and constructs, such as the concept of the nation state. As such, the Black Atlantic is not meant to
have an opposing function: it is rather considered to be a „political and cultural corrective“, as Laura
Chrisman describes it - a corrective of the postulated coherent rationality of modernity. In contrast to
a supposedly stable and coherent modernity, the Black Atlantic is „a nontraditional tradition, an
irreducably modern, ex-centric, unstable, and asymmetrical cultural ensemble that cannot be
apprehended through the manichean logic of binary coding“ (Gilroy). In my presentation - and in this
context -, I want to suggest that the fiction of Guyanese writer Pauline Melville can be labeled as
,Black Atlantic‘: Her novel and short-stories include very subtle, but numerous acts of little revolts
against modernity in the sense explained above. By the means of selected text passages, I want to
show what kind of narrative techniques and strategies Melville employs in order to question the
legacies of Empire, which lay as a kind of invisible, but still perceivable haze above all of her stories.
Her mostly allegorical, rarely literal and often grotesque and surreal descriptions of everyday-life in
Guyana, England and elsewhere may provoke a kind of amazement, awe, and even amusement at
first. But in a second (and third) reading, a kind of metanarrative closure sets in, which reveals that
Melville‘s stories can be situated in a discourse of ongoing struggle against the tides of modernity
and postcoloniality: hostile living conditions, feelings of alienation, racism, loss of and search for
identity, and cultural displacement are central elements in her stories. Melville‘s usage of myth is
especially important in this context.
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Steffen Klävers studied Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, English Literature and
Philosophy at Georg-August-University Göttingen. He graduated in December 2010 with a thesis on
Neo-Slave Narratives, which was supervised by Prof. Dr. Brigitte Glaser and Prof. Dr. Rebekka
Habermas. He is currently working on a PhD thesis in the field of globalisation studies, gender studies
and contemporary anglophone literatures.
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PANEL 14
Postcolonial Perspectives after Auschwitz
Convenors:
Moderator:
Ulrike Hamann/ŝŒĚĞŵ Inan
Liliana Ruth Feierstein
This panel presents positions that critically engage with the challenges raised by simultaneously
remembering the legacies of both colonialism and the Shoah, without losing sight of historical
breaks, changes, and dis/continuities. This involves paying attention to particular manifestations of
domination without staging a rivalry between them.
Beyond a linear continuity between these two events, the panel suggests the need to broaden the
focus of investigation by analyzing the overlapping similarities and interacting mechanisms of
(colonial) racism and anti-Semitism. Critical race theorists have long demonstrated the
interrelatedness of racism and other hierarchical constructions such as gender and class. An
intersectional perspective demonstrates anti-Semitism to be a power relation that is similar to but
functionally distinct from racism. In order to think through a divided, yet shared history, the difficult
legacies of the Middle Passage, the plantation slavery system, colonial genocides, and the Shoah
need to be addressed.
It has become clear that the pursuit of such a double perspective, postcolonial and post-Holocaust (in
an epistemic sense of thinking the present from the Holocaust and from colonialism), has to meet the
challenges of unfolding the overlaps as well as the differences in the historical practices of racism and
anti-Semitism, in terms of specific manifestations of discrimination, persecution and exploitation.
This panel elucidates the urgency for better understanding and theorizing the challenges of current
social and political conflicts. The panel is split into two sessions.
ŝŒĚĞŵ/ŶĂŶ is a PhD student at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Hamburg. She holds a
diploma in sociology from the Freie Universität of Berlin. Her research focuses on the intervention of
affect theory in postcolonial theory and gender studies. In the framework of this transversal and
interdisciplinary approach, she examines the politics of affectivity within the discourse of migration.
Ulrike Hamann is a PhD student of the Frankfurt Research Center for Postcolonial Studies and a
research fellow of the junior research group “Transnational Genealogies” of the Cluster of Excellence
“Normative Orders” of Frankfurt University, Germany. She studied Cultural Studies at Humboldt
University of Berlin. Her current PhD-project engages with strategies against racism during German
Colonialism.
Liliana Ruth Feierstein is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Heidelberg, Project
"Narratives of Terror and Disappearance. Fantastic Dimensions of Argentina’s Collective Memory
since the Military Dictatorship" (European Research Council). 2007 Ph.D in Philosophy, HeinrichHeine-Universität, Düsseldorf (Augsburg Prize for Scholarship in Intercultural Studies 2008), Master in
Sciences (Educational Research), Center for Advanced Research and Studies (CINVESTAV), University
of Mexico, Educational Science, Universidad de Buenos Aires. Her research areas include: Childhood,
political violence, and trauma, Ethics and pedagogy (Benjamin, Levinas, Derrida), Children’s
literature, Intercultural and interreligious education and integration.
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Politicizing the connections between US-American White Supremacy and
German Anti- Semitism: The Southern Negro Youth Congress as an example of
anti-racist analysis and organizing in the 1940s in the US
Noemi Yoko Molitor
Established in Richmond, Virginia, in 1937, the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC) emerged out
of the National Negro Congress, and organized for social justice and civil rights in the US South.
Supported by W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary McCloud Bethune, and others, the SNYC was comprised of
students from Black colleges across the country, steelworkers, sharecroppers, Boy and Girl Scouts,
YWCA and YMCA members, and many more. It totaled 11.000 members at its peak, and published
the newsletter Calvacade.
Laying groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement to come, the 12-year activism of the SNYC included
organizing for voting rights, for unionizing, and for the inclusion of African American history into
public school curricula. It challenged segregation laws and ran anti-lynching campaigns. The SNYC
also documented the structural discrimination against African American communities through the
prices of consumer goods. For example, in Miami, African American communities, already
economically disadvantaged compared to white communities, were made to pay 25-30% more than
white consumers for the same food and products. This is just one example of the SNYC’s
interconnected analyses of economic discrepancies, class hierarchies and racism. Furthermore, the
SNYC was friendly towards socialist ideas, had many communist members, and joined other social
justice groups, including the Southern Conference for Human Welfare and the NAACP, in an
interracial Southern alliance towards political and economic justice.
In a time of anti-Communist state rhetoric, the SNYC emphasized fascism as a threat to democracy.
At conferences across the South, members discussed the connections between the fascism of
German National Socialism and that of segregation and the Jim Crow laws in the US. In their 1939
headquarter location in Birmingham, Klu Klux Klan members and local police subjected the SNYC’s
organizational meetings to surveillance, intimidation and attacks. Police commissioner, Eugene ‘Bull’
Connor, used Alabama’s segregation laws to prevent interracial organizing and to intimidate local
churches, so that the SNYC would lose their meeting spaces. As McCarthyism rose, the label
‘Communist’ was used to delegitimize organizations such as the Southern Conference for Human
Welfare and also the SNYC, classifying them as subversive and anti-American. Soon, the FBI
investigated the SNYC for their communist and anti-racist theorizing and activism, classifying their
work as potential high treason.
In my paper I will focus on the FBI’s undercover investigation of the aforementioned conferences,
and trace the FBI’s attention to the SNYC’s articulation of anti-racist and anti-fascist analyses. I will
foreground the anti-racist analysis developed by the SNYC, with particular attention to its
transnational, interconnected analysis of fascism and racism. I seek to engage how the SNYC’s multiissue perspective enabled its members to develop a deep analysis of racism, and further, how they
connected their work to other early Civil Rights groups, such as the NAACP, and larger multi-racial,
anti-racist social movements in the US. How does this legacy still inform multi-issue organizing in the
South today, and how might the SNYC’s transnational anti-racist perspective help us formulate more
thorough accounts of racism, fascism and imperialism as they pertain to Germany and the US?
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Noemi Y. Molitor is currently a graduate fellow at the Department of Women’s, Gender and
Sexuality Studies at Emory University, Atlanta, GA, with a concentration in Feminist Post/Anticolonial
Studies and Critical Racism Studies. She holds a Magister Artium in Gender Studies and European
Ethnology from Humboldt University, Berlin, and has spent a year of graduate studies at Cornell
University. Her research focuses on racism, colonialism and heteronormativity in immigration
discourses in Germany and the USA. Noemi is a member of Southerners on New Ground, a multi-issue
LGBTQ based social justice organization, working towards racial and economic justice and for
immigrant rights in the U.S.
Black Germans in National Socialist Germany
Rosa Fava
The National Socialist regime combined different kinds of racism against various racialized groups
(Sinti and Romanies, people from Slavic speaking countries, Blacks) with a specific version of antiSemitism, by which also Jews were conceptualized as a biological ‘race’. The basis for this was the
aim to breed a pure ‘Aryan’, or German, ‘race’, cleansed from the ‘blood’ – considered to carry
heritable information – of all other ‘races’, but also of people with disabilities, the so called antisocial, and criminal people.
The study of the living conditions of the tiny minority of Black Germans in National Socialist Germany
gives insight into the specific interference of colonial racism against Blacks and National Socialist
political concepts like ‘Rassenhygiene’ (hygiene of ‘race’) and ‘Volksgemeinschaft’. In contrast to the
policy against Jews – and also against Sinti and Romanies – there was no program for murdering
Black people, even if youngsters were sterilized, marriages between Blacks and ‘Aryans’ were
forbidden, and a number of Black Germans were detained in concentration camps.
At the same time Blacks were needed as actors for movies propagating German colonialism and
supremacy, some as interpreters, and certain circles of colonial revisionists tried to help individuals
coming from the former German colonies in acquiring jobs. Furthermore, foreign policy was making
efforts to establish good relations with potential partners against France and England in the
colonized world, while some officers of the German army committed massacres against Black
soldiers of the French army. Colonialism and colonial racism formed an integral part of German
society, even after the loss of its colonies in the First World War, and are one of the sources for the
concepts of the German ‘Herrenmensch’ (master race), and of the ‘Raumpolitik’ (racially based
geopolitics) in Eastern Europe. Anti-Semitic ideology is nonetheless specific regarding the attribution
of superiority, of world domination, of parasitism, of the personification of financial capitalism and
modernity, of exploitation, domination, and alienation in the concept of the enemy ‘Jew’.
Close examination of both written sources about and the actual practice of National Socialists
regarding the minority of Black Germans and other Blacks in Germany in comparison to Jews, Sinti,
Romanies, and ‘Slavic peoples’, is necessary in order to understand precisely the National Socialist
formulation of ‘race’ and its contradictions, when trying to establish social, national, cultural, or
religious groups as inferior ‘races’ in relation to the ‘Aryans’, or as ‘jüdische Gegenrasse’ (‘Jewish
anti-race’, in opposition to the Aryans).
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Learning about the Holocaust and other National Socialist crimes is often conducted by the study of
the biographies of the more widely recognized persecuted individuals and groups. I will argue that
the inclusion of biographies of Black Germans provides a method for opening the view on colonial
structures in National Socialist Germany.
Rosa Fava is a teacher of history, she has worked with the educational service at the Neuengamme
Concentration Camp Memorial, Hamburg, and since 2008 is working on her PhD about ‘The
Discourse of Erziehung nach Auschwitz in German immigration society’.
(Post)colonial ‘Adaptations’ of the Holocaust in Anita Desai’s Baumgartner’s
Bombay
Isabelle Hesse
My paper examines how Anita Desai’s ‘Baumgartner’s Bombay’ (1988) expands on the Holocaust and
Jewish minority identity by comparing the experience of the Jews in Germany to the suffering of
colonial subjects in India. The German-Jewish protagonist, Hugo Baumgartner, flees from Nazi
Germany to colonial India before the outbreak of the war. He experiences the genocide and the Nazi
regime from a distance and only through the sparse information he receives through radio
announcements and his mother’s censured letters from the concentration camp. Baumgartner’s
inability to belong, even before the outbreak of WWII, and his separation from Germany and the
Nazis emphasizes that it is his foreignness which makes him an alien, and not particularly his
Jewishness. This ‘unbelonging’ is echoed when he feels that he is a foreigner, a ‘firanghi’, in colonial
and postcolonial India as well. Desai challenges the idea of the Jew as eternal ‘other’ in relation to
the Holocaust, and places Jewish identity inside the larger context of minority discourse. She situates
the European genocide as a comparative framework, or rather as a point of entry, to illustrate the
suffering of non-European victims of colonization, to a European and Western audience. I want to
suggest that the author is not only placing Jewishness inside a colonial/postcolonial Indian context in
order to stress its status as minority identity, but moreover, that she is using Jewish identity, the
minority identity par excellence - along with the Holocaust, as a paradigmatic instance of minority
suffering - in order to demonstrate the predicament of the colonial subjects at the hands of
European colonialism. By accessing partition violence through a German-Jew’s eyes, Desai refuses
the Eurocentric view of the Holocaust as a unique catastrophe and foregrounds the suffering of other
minorities.
Isabelle Hesse is a second-year PhD student at the University of York, UK, where she is working on a
thesis entitled ‘The Outsider Inside: Ideas of Jewishness in Contemporary Jewish and non-Jewish
Literature’, under the supervision of Dr Anna Bernard. Her research interests include Colonial and
Postcolonial Literatures (especially South Asian and Black British Writing), Israeli and Palestinian
Literatures, Holocaust Studies and Human Rights.
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‘Near Easterners’ and ‘Orientals’: Anthropological and Archaeological
Cartographies of the Near East and its Impact on Modern Anti-Semitism in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries
Felix Wiedemann
There can be no doubt that associating the Jews with ‘the Orient’ in order to prove their supposedly
foreign origin belongs to the oldest and most durable stereotypes of European anti-Semitism.
Thereby, this ‘orientalization’ of the European Jews had always raised questions about their exact
ethno-historical place inside a wider ‘oriental’ or ‘Near Eastern’ context. At the turn of the 20th
century, however, the discussion about the origin and ‘racial’ belonging of the Jews was increasingly
shaped by the new anthropological and archaeological knowledge, which had been generated by
European scholars in the course of the scientific penetration of the Ottoman Empire. Anthropologists
and archaeologists hiked through the Near East in order to capture and to measure the local
population as well as the historical remains. These explorations demonstrate the confluence of
anthropological and archaeological narratives: Current as well as historical peoples were grouped to
families or ‘races’ and assigned to distinguished geographical landscapes in order to establish an
exact ethno-historical cartography of the region from early mankind to modern times. However, due
to the alleged origin of the Jews, Near Eastern anthropology and archaeology immediately affected
the contemporary debate about the ‘Jewish race’.
In my presentation I will focus on the sharp distinction between the supposed two main ‘races’ of the
Near East in the German scientific literature: the ‘Oriental’ or ‘Semitic race’ and the ‘Hittite’ or ‘Near
Eastern race’. This classification had been initially introduced by the anthropologist and archaeologist
Felix von Luschan, and immediately influenced the scholarly debate about the anthropology of the
Jews. Following Luschan, the Jews were no longer grouped to the ‘Semitic’ or ‘Oriental race’, but
appeared as predominantly ‘Near Eastern’ and as descendants of the ancient Hittites. This implied at
the same time a sharp distinction between ‘Near Eastern’ Jews and ‘Semitic’ Arabs – a differentiation
which not least affected the discussion on the emerging conflict in Palestine, and was thus later
adopted by völkisch and National Socialist authors due to political reasons. Focussing on this
classification, I want to demonstrate the impact of colonial anthropology and archaeology in the
Near East on modern anti-Semitism. Thereby, such analysis sheds light on the general confluences –
as well as on the differences – of the colonial discourse on race and anti-Semitism at the turn of the
20th century.
About Felix Wiedemann: PhD in Modern History with a dissertation on images and interpretations of
the European witch-trials in the 19th and 20th centuries (2006). Master in Modern History with
Political Science and Philosophy as minor subjects at Freie Universität Berlin (2002). Scientific
Researcher for the Yad Vashem Archives in the Berlin Federal Archives (2000-2009). Fellow at the
Berlin ‘Excellence-Cluster TOPOI. Space and knowledge in ancient civilizations’, with a project on the
history of ancient Near Eastern Studies (2010).
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Wir sind dafür, die Sache in die Länge zu ziehen. Debating and Contesting
Continuities and Ruptures of Colonial, Fascist and Nazi Practices in Austria
/LQD'RNX]RYLý(GXDUG)UHXGPDQQ
Departing from an analysis of the very specific form of racism that Anti-Semitism took, culminating in
the Shoah, it becomes obvious that one can only talk about racism in the plural: as racisms. In spite
of the multiplicity of interrelations and interdependencies based on time or content existent
between the different forms of racisms, the similarities and differences, the specific configurations
must be precisely examined in order to understand their logic and position oneself to fight against
them.
The analysis of “Grenzkolonialismus” becomes vital in examining contemporary neocolonial practices
taking place in Mid-Eastern and Eastern Europe. In the case of Austria, the relevance of approaching
contemporary continuities of history-political strategies becomes clear through the use of the term
“Donauraum” to define the target area of its current eastward economic expansion policies within
the framework of so-called “European integration.” This label for Austria's contemporary neocolonial
practices warmly refers to the positively loaded notion of the “Donaumonarchie” and connects
precisely to the moment in which the claims to power towards the East are still viewed as legitimate
within a historical narrative of nostalgia.
While nostalgia plays a role in hegemonic narratives on the one hand, competition complicates
resistance on the other. The disjuncture of the left between anti-national and anti-imperial positions
is transposed onto history-political spaces, thereby converting them into battlefields of memory
where “Gedächtniskonkurrenzen” dominate the discourses. Ambivalences like relativizing genocides
and reproducing colonial notions on the one hand and relativizing the Shoah and ignoring its
causality with regards to the existence of the state of Israel on the other, create the impression that
the commemoration of different forms of repression and extermination is impossible. This must be
defined as a “crisis” of the left since emancipatory struggles are impossible without a precise
historical analysis of the different modes of oppression. To end this crisis would mean to establish a
new politics of memory, based on an intertwined post-colonial and post-Shoah reflection.
Eduard Freudmann, born in 1979 in Vienna, researches and intervenes in the intersection between
art and politics, power relations and social contexts, contemporary theirstory/ourstory and media
mechanisms, and strategies of exclusion and the commodification of knowledge. He is a filmmaker,
author, and art interventionist in public space, living and working in Vienna. Since 2007 he has been
an Assistant Professor at the Department for Post-Conceptual Art Practices at the Academy of Fine
Arts Vienna and the initiator of “Plattform Geschichtspolitik,” an open collective of students,
activists, and teachers associated with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna who are trying to establish a
continuous process of critical reflection and public dealing with the Academy’s participation in
Colonialism, (Austro-)Fascism and Nazism.
>ŝŶĂ ŽŬƵǌŽǀŝđ is an artist and PhD student at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Her artwork and
research, consisting predominantly as a series of diagrammatical visualizations of theory, analyze the
mechanisms of appropriation, privatization and militarization of structures such as education,
culture, the body, and land. She is a board member of the Austrian Association of Women Artists
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(VBKÖ) and a researcher on the WWTF (Vienna Science and Technology Fund) project “Creating
Worlds” of the platform eipcp (European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies).
Challenging the French postcolonial nation
Christelle Gomis
In the French public sphere, memories of colonialism and the Shoah are frequently opposed as rivals.
Why does this explosive cocktail of memory competition regularly blow in the media? Colonialism
and the Shoah both represent painful chapters in the French collective memory. After a long period
of silence, the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people has become the focus of a real memorial
obsession. Since the 1970s, debates about this episode provoke passionate confrontations. The
French President Nicolas Sarkozy even intended to leave the memory of each deported child in the
care of every elementary pupil.
Contrarily, although characterized by the same virulent discussions, French colonial memory is rarely
evoked. Colonial history is still considered to be peripheral, located outside the French republican
nation. Attention is redirected towards the end of colonialism and its so-called “benefits”. This
differentiated treatment has been duly noticed, but this staged rivalry between the Jewish genocide
and colonialism often leads to the stigmatization and the exclusion of colonial histories from the
French collective memory. What is at stake in this memory competition? I aim to show that racial
definitions of the French minorities are at the core of this apparent antagonism.
Christelle Gomis is a Master candidate in History at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
(EHESS) in Paris. After a B.A. in German Studies and a M.A. in African Studies, I am researching
theories and practices in French and German ideologies of ‘race’ as an artificially constructed
category of ‘modern’ knowledge. My first work is about the sexual and racial politics of the French
empire after the World War I. My new study probes the place of postcolonial and racial components
in the governmental practices towards the French banlieues.
A Post-Colonial Deconstruction of "German Exceptionalism"
Cengiz Barskanmaz
Due explicitly or implicitly to Auschwitz, a common sense of racism has emerged in German
scholarship on racism, as well within anti-racist activism. I call this phenomenon “German
exceptionalism.” German racism is regarded as a vicious exceptional phenomenon incomparable to
any other racial formation. As such, this understanding of racism is determined by the construction
of “German context”. This "German context" is understood as an exceptional or singular space with
its own special form of racism. This understanding is strongly correlated with the historical
construction of the German ”Sonderweg” (special path) and the “belated German nation.” In this
paper I argue that German exceptionalism is the consequence of and the point of departure for a
white nationalist narrative that historically, epistemologically, and ideologically reproduces the
German nation as white, often epitomized in “because-of-our-past” rhetorics. This very discourse
marginalizes and excludes post- and anti-colonial narratives, centering the white German subject
(“our” history) within the nation and drawing demarcations of who belongs to the nation.
Furthermore and paradoxically, anti-racist activists of Color, either unwittingly and/or because they
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are forced to, also adopt this discourse. In my opinion, German Exceptionalism is the elephant in
German anti-racist spaces.
Another implication of the myth of German exceptionalism is the taboo regarding and the avoidance
of the notion of ”Rasse”. Recent institutional initiatives on the abolition of “Rasse” in legal texts (e.g.
German Institute for Human Rights) should be read against the backdrop of German exceptionalism.
My aim with this paper is to challenge and to deconstruct this very atomic, isolated, and provincial
understanding of racism. I argue that a transnational post-colonial perspective on German racism in
all its historical and epistemological varieties necessarily involves a deprovincializing of German
racism. Arguing for a transnational and relational (David T. Goldberg) understanding of racism means
transgressing this very particular nationalism. German racism needs to be (re)located in a particular
racial context including post-colonial and post-national-socialist readings rather than being framed as
exceptional.
Cengiz Barskanmaz graduated 2003 from the Law Faculty of the Catholic University of Leuven
(Belgium). Currently, he lives in Berlin where he is an antiracist activist and is also working on his
doctorate at Humboldt University. His dissertation focuses on the question of a proper legal
understanding of racism. He has also published articles on this matter, including a discourse analysis
of the headscarf decision of the German Constitutional Court. In 2009 he was a visiting scholar at
Columbia Law School. His areas of research include racism and constitutional and anti-discrimination
law, post-colonialism, and intersectionality.
Rethinking German-Turkish Experience
Defne .DGÖRøOu
Three generations, or two-and-a-half million people of Turkish ethnicity currently reside in Germany.
Thus far, the relationship between Turkish immigrants and their children, and majority society has
tended to be conflictual, and discussions around the presumed inability of the so-called GermanTurks or Turkish-Germans to integrate are commonplace in German public discourse. The reactions
on the part of the Turkish minority to counter their social exclusion and political and economic
marginalization range from identification with the African-American minority in the United States to
‘stubborn’ attachments to the country of origin and the Muslim faith. In this paper I engage one
particular aspect of the relationship between the Turkish minority and German society: the
construction of present everyday racism against the backdrop of Germany’s Nazi past. Zafer Senocak,
himself the author of a book on the triangular connection between Turkish, Jewish and German
identity, has suggested that Turks in Germany must engage with the history of the Third Reich and
the Holocaust if they wish to gain a more thorough understanding of their own position in society.
One of these engagements takes place in the cultural realm: besides Senocak, there are other young
second-generation German-Turkish authors and comedians who have ventured into this rather
uncanny terrain and rethought Turkish experience in Germany with regards to the long shadow cast
by the Federal Republic’s past. Among them are cabaret artist Serdar Somuncu, who gained attention
through his readings of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Feridun Zaimoglu, whose widely celebrated and
hotly debated debut Kanak Sprak (1995) is written in a sociolect with Yiddish elements. In this paper I
focus particularly on these artistic constructions, which Ruth Mandel called the “Turkish-Jewish-
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German nexus” (2008: 133), and ask if it is possible to gain an alternative understanding of the
relationship between the Turkish diaspora and natives through these constructions: How do Turkish
immigrants challenge German identity, what is their role in the country’s (re)engagement with its
past, and at what points are the lines between victim and perpetrator blurred, particularly in light of
Turkey’s own (non-)engagement with the Armenian genocide and the increase of anti-Semitic
sentiments among Muslim migrants? The aim of this article is to critically debate these questions, to
identify the shortcomings of existing ethno-religious categorizations, and to challenge the presumed
host/migrant society divide by complicating the relationship between Turks and Germans and adding
a deeper historical perspective.
Defne <ĂĚŦŽŒůƵ was born in Wuppertal, Germany in 1984 and received her Bachelor's degree from
Düsseldorf University’s Social Sciences Department in Germany. She continued her studies at the
University of Essex’s Human Rights Department where she graduated with a Master of Arts degree in
2008. She is currently is pursuing her PhD at Bogazici University in Political Science and International
Relations, and will take her comprehensive exam by the end of this year. Her research interest lies in
the realm of minority representation and recognition as well as in the field of postcolonial and racism
studies in conjunction with theories of subjection. In her dissertation she would like to work on the
Turkish immigrant community in Germany.
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PANEL 15
Postcolonial Thought and the Problem of Periodization
Convenor:
Felix Schürmann
In the early 1990s, Anne McClintock reproached Postcolonial Studies for not fulfilling their own
claims of overcoming conceptions of a linear and homogenous historical time. Instead of surpassing
totalizing attempts of categorizing time and contributing to the understanding of time
conceptualizations in “non-Western” cultures, studies of postcolonial critics introduced a no less
universalizing periodization of the past – “along an epochal road from ‘the pre-colonial’, to ‘the
colonial’, to ‘the post-colonial’.” In this spirit, the “pre-colonial time” in particular becomes blurred
into an insufficiently differentiated time-container for referencing the past.
Yet postcolonial thought deems universalistic models of periodization, sequential epoch categories
and normative historical teleologies to be logics of an epistemological order established in the course
of European imperialist expansion. These logics, as technologies of history-writing, absorbed
disparate histories into a monolithic logic of hegemonic meta-narratives that continuously privilege
European ideas. However, can the postcolonial – employed as designation for an epoch itself – ever
advance without referencing an epoch-based conception of historical time?
Felix Schürmann is a PhD candidate at the Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative
Orders” at Goethe University Frankfurt. His current research focuses on interactions between coastal
communities in various parts of Africa and sailors from whaling vessels during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. He studied History and German Literature at the Leibniz University Hannover
and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Abdallah Laroui’s Concept of Historicism, Modernity and the Times of History
Nils Riecken
The aim of my paper is to analyze the concept of historicism in the works of the Moroccan public
intellectual, historian and novelist Abdallah Laroui (born 1933). Laroui is a renowned and contested
intellectual figure in Morocco and the Arab world. He published both in French and Arabic on a
variety of topics, including modern Arab reform debates and intellectual history, modernity and
Islam, Moroccan history and politics as well as the history and theory of historiography.
I argue that Laroui’s use of the term historicism – which is related to but different from established
understandings of this concept in European historiography – is a critique of the representation of
Western modernity as an abstract, seemingly universal model in empty, homogenous time.
Historicism as Laroui defines it is a form of dialectical, epistemological historical critique. It is not a
philosophy of history, but rather a methodology of understanding oneself and others in a temporal
perspective. By analyzing different temporalities of the various levels of human activity, Laroui’s
approach introduces a relativizing element into periodizations and puts the empty, homogenous
time of modernity in its place.
This perspective is embedded into a notion of universal history that is opposed to an abstract
universalism as well as culturalist or organicist views of culture which are based on a typological
notion of time. By analyzing his distinction between a philosophical, theo-logical and sacred vision
and a more profane vision of history, time, and objectivity in European, North African, and Middle
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Eastern historical traditions, I will show that his response to modernity and its colonial trajectory is
basically an argument about time.
Nils Riecken is doing a PhD in Islamic Studies at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and
Societies. His project is an intellectual biography of the Moroccan public intellectual, historian and
novelist Abdallah Laroui (working title ‘Abdallah Laroui and the Location of History. An Intellectual
Biography’). He is currently in the third year of the programme. He has studied History, Islamic
Studies and Political Science in Freiburg, Leipzig, Halle, and Cairo.
The Problem of Periodization in Postcolonial Thought: Disrupting the 'Unified'
Colonizer in Colonial Discourse
Gitika Gupta
The present paper reiterates the call for historicization and differentiation of colonial discourse and
seeks to dismantle the neat periodizations within Postcolonial Thought by attempting to include the
colonizer-colonizer dialogical interaction at the inter-subjective level in the colonial discourse
proposed by Homi Bhabha. It will focus mainly on the Portuguese Empire in order to complexify the
'unstable psychic sphere of colonial relations' in Bhabha's colonial discourse on mainly two points.
First, the argument will highlight that while the civilizing mission of the British Raj forms the bedrock
of the Bhabhian colonial discourse, one of the principal raison d'être of the Portuguese empire was
christianizing mission, the civilizing part being a latent part of it and in what way this affects the
'psychological guerilla warfare' in the colonial discourse. The second point of the paper's argument
would engage with how this particular agenda in trying to hide a fear, creates a 'psychic economy of
stereotype' of this 'an-other' (different from the Other), thus affecting the psychic ambivalence of the
'modern' British colonizer. The ambivalent desire and fear of the Other as will be argued, also
included what the British colonizer feared- not being able to successfully resist the desire for the
Other like the preceding colonizers. By psychoanalytically reading the discourse of Portuguese
miscegenation, the 'fractured' identity of the colonizer as in colonial discourse would be further
destabilized to reveal his multiple intermediary positions. It will be explored how this colonizercolonizer dialogical interaction within colonial discourse problematizes Bhabha’s formulation –
‘almost the same but not white’ reserved and employed exclusively for the colonized.
Currently Gitika Gupta is working on a Ph. D thesis in the field of Portuguese Postcolonial Studies at
the University of Coimbra, Portugal. My work focuses on the 20th century Goan fiction especially
prose in English engaging with Portuguese colonialism.
Questioning the Post-Colonial: Post-Orientalist Genealogies of British
Multiculturalism
Zaki Nahaboo
The paper argues that developing a post-Orientalist approach to history is necessary when
empirically invoking the postcolonial as an analytical concept. It explores this through the case of
British multiculturalism. The position advanced aims to avoid the pitfalls identified by McClintock
(1992) and Shoshat (1992), through decentring and critiquing a politically complicit postcolonial time
via Foucauldian genealogies.
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I begin by specifying how genealogical investigations, in contrast to traditional forms of history, can
be undertaken to chart British multiculturalism’s history as a species of difference management. The
postcolonial enters as a useful frame with which to investigate the present absences of colonial
forms of knowledge, in a manner which neither fetishizes it as an absolute rupture nor projects
immutable colonial legacies. Here I draw upon Hall’s (1996) repudiation of the post-colonial as
denouncing a certain break between the ‘then’ or ‘now’, ‘there’ or ‘here’. Hall instead demonstrates
the colonial as a ‘constitutive outside’ in the formation of modernity. With this formulation of the
postcolonial combined with British multiculturalism as a potentially post-Orientalist empirical
example, the paper will show that British multiculturalism can indeed be shown to bear traces of
colonial governmentality. This challenges a linear narrative of its development from a post-1948
“multicultural” Britain. Yet this genealogical approach is sensitive to the ruptures and contingent
processes constitutive of British multiculturalism, which the term postcolonial cannot encompass. It
takes into account the multi-vocal constitution of multiculturalism, decentring the postcolonial as a
wholly adequate frame of analysis.
Zaki Nahaboo is a PhD candidate in Politics and International Studies at the Open University. His
research focuses on how cultural difference is managed within island colonies and contemporary
Britain. The research is affiliated with the European Research Council funded project: OECUMENE,
seeking to investigate citizenship after Orientalism. Zaki holds MSc Political Sociology (LSE) and BA
Sociology (Goldsmiths College).
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PANEL 16
Taking Postcolonialism elsewhere? Post-Soviet Postcolonialities
Convenor:
Alexander Vorbrugg
The history of Russian/Soviet imperialism and present-day post-Soviet realities are more or less
absent from the field of postcolonial studies so far. While some critique this as a substantial lack and
others claim that there are good reasons for this absence, others argue that there is no general
answer to the question whether it is helpful and adequate to apply postcolonial theory to post-Soviet
contexts or not. If “postcolonialism” does not merely describe the condition of (formerly) colonized
contexts, but rather offers a critical perspective to look at power relations, then the question is not
whether a country ìs´ postcolonial or not, but rather what happens when we apply postcolonial
approaches and tools to specific issues in different contexts.
Attempts to `fill the gap´ between post-Soviet and postcolonial studies have dealt with very different
issues like: What was and is the role of the Russian/Soviet Other in Western identity-formation and
politics? How can Russian and Soviet imperialism (colonialism?) be conceptualized? How can the
“Soviet experiment” be understood in relation to modernity and Western hegemony? What
challenges and chances do new perspectives on `real-life socialism´ bear for those who draw on
Marxism? Despite conceptual questions, the analytical potential of postcolonial approaches in this
context has been debated. Can they help understand the shifts and changes that occurred after the
collapse of the Soviet Union and the reconfiguration of 'the' old geopolitical world order; the
renegotiation of spheres of influence, the rearticulation of histories and nationalities, drifting
identities and epistemologies?
The travel and transfer of `postcolonial´ ideas to contexts alien to their òrigins´ may be contested
and challenging - but it holds the potential of bringing in new perspectives from and on the “vanished
Second World”, to enable voices and stories to be heard that have not been previously
acknowledged and share experiences from different parts of the world, circumstances and
disciplinary backgrounds. Postcolonial tools and arguments can help understand and make visible
specific forms of exploitation and oppression in the `peripheries´ of the Russian/Soviet empires, the
changing notions and specific intersecting effects of `race´, gender, sexuality, religion and class and
respective forms of subjectivation, and rearticulate political struggles and questions of emancipation
in these localities. Arguably, the inclusion of these (hi)stories might in turn influence postcolonial
studies.
The contributions to the first session provide insights into the shifting cultural, economic and political
landscapes in (post-)Soviet contexts. They point to the entanglement of Soviet modernization
narratives, the role of the respective “other” (Western imperialism alongside the `backward people´
within the own empire) and Soviet identity policies. Furthermore, they address questions of how
Soviet legacies continue to shape local living realities, identities and power structures, in which ways
they are contested and in how far postcolonial perspectives might be helpful to grasp the hybrid
nature of these intermingling and coexisting realities.
The second session introduces distinctive, situated perspectives on post-Soviet realities – from and
on marginalized subject positions; from and on the margins of the former Second World. The
contributions start from situated experiences of gendered working conditions and gendered
intellectual spaces, nationalism and racism, cultural ruptures and melanges and elaborate on the
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possibilities and restrictions of applying analytical categories from the field of postcolonial studies to
grasp and challenge these realities
Alexander Vorbrugg studied Human Geography, Sociology and Slavonic Studies in Tübingen,
Frankfurt/Main and at Moscow State University. He is Research Associate at the Department of
Human Geography at Goethe-University Frankfurt, focusing on changing modes of governmentality,
the reconstitution of economic spheres and marketization processes in the former Soviet Union.
Currently he is working on a project with the title “Property Rights and Communal Services: The
Implementation of Local Self-Government in Rural Russia”.
‘The working woman from the Orient is not the voiceless slave anymore’ –
‘Other’ women and Soviet Politics of Emancipation and Culturalization in the
1920-1930s (Volga-Ural region)
Yulia Gradskova
This presentation is based on my postdoctoral research project and is an attempt to apply postcolonial theories to analysis of Soviet policies towards women from ethnic minorities. After the
Bolshevik revolution of 1917 a big number of people categorized as non-Slavic or non-Christian by
origin (inorodtsy) had to be transformed into Soviet citizens. At the same time, a big part of the
former inorodtsy continued to be called “people of the Orient”, while women – their political and
social emancipation was an important part of the Bolshevik rhetoric – got to be named “woman of
the Orient” (zhenshchina Vostoka, vostochnitsa) or just “national minority woman” (natsmenka,
natsionalka).
Thus, the aim of my presentation is to explore some of the discourses and practices regarding the
“work for emancipation” of women from the former colonies. I follow Michel Foucault’s theory on
power/knowledge and postcolonial re-evaluations of modernity made in works by Edward Said and
Walter Mignolo. The presentation is dealing with people living in the multicultural region between
Volga and Ural – mainly Tatars, Bashkirs and Mari. The study is based on archive materials
(Commission for improvement of work and everyday life of women) as well as on the kulturnost
campaign’s pamphlets.
“Orient” can be understood as an important part of the Bolshevik geo-political imagination: sooner
or later all women in Asia would become equal to men and free from colonial and capitalist
exploitation. Soviet publications dedicated to work among women or among national minorities
usually criticize former colonial oppression of the local population by the Russian Empire. At the
same time, Soviet modernity could be seen, similarly to the Western one, as based on a linear
concept of time and the assumption of developmental differences, using the image of “barbarians”
as an important reference point for justifying the work for “progress”. The new Soviet language of
“emancipation” was connected to a developmental logic and insisted on the need to “help” in order
to overcome the “backwardness” of the “woman of the Orient”. “Backwardness” is usually presented
in publications as a scientific fact that is based on multiple statistical information on economy and
population. At the same time, Soviet publications on emancipation of women are usually hostile to
feminist movements (in the West as well as in Turkey or Iran), as well as to the local visions of
women’s emancipation or modernization (like djadidist educational politics towards Volga Muslim
women before 1917). The Otherness of women of the “backward people” had to be overcome
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according to the design of the new centre with the help of the new, Soviet knowledge about the
“woman of the Orient”. The presentation shows that the “new” knowledge usually was based on
ethnographic data collected by imperial research institutions, while the “woman of the Orient” was
simultaneously constructed as essentially backward and willing to radically reconstruct her identity
according to the needs of Soviet modernity.
Yulia Gradskova is postdoctoral researcher at Södertörn University, Sweden. She graduated from
Moscow State University; in 2007 she defended her PhD (Soviet People with Female Bodies:
Performing Beauty and Maternity in Soviet Russia in the mid 1930-1960s) in Sweden. In 2008-20010
she took part in the research project “Family and the strong state: emancipation or coercion?”
Is the ‘post’ in Post-Soviet the ‘post’ in Post-colonial? Reading David Edgar’s
Pentecost
Avishek Ganguly
My presentation reads a literary text, British playwright David Edgar’s award winning play Pentecost
(1995), to explore the openings and limits of interpreting the Post-Soviet situation, particularly in
South-Eastern Europe, as a postcolonial condition. While Maria Todorova’s groundbreaking work on
‘Balkanism,’ similar to but different from Edward Said’s notion of ‘Orientalism,’ sparked an early
rethinking of the relationship between the post-Soviet and the postcolonial, recent perspectives on
theorizing the Post-Soviet range from the more reactionary coinage of ‘New Europe,’ a favorite of
conservative political commentators, to the historian Mark von Hagen’s interesting re-deployment of
‘Eurasia’ as an ‘Anti-paradigm.’ Prominent thinkers of contemporary Europe in the humanities –
Derrida, Balibar, Habermas – on the other hand, have opened up newer and productive ways of
engaging this question through a reading of literary texts. Pentecost – an art-historical whodunit
meets refugee hostage drama taking place in a South Eastern European country - features
prominently among the recent theatrical responses to Post-Soviet/post-communist Europe by wellknown playwrights from England. Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest (1990) about post-Ceausescu Romania
would be another good example. I argue that the question of post-Soviet Europe as well as ‘Europe’
as such is staged in Pentecost in a way that points to the problems of easy periodization of the ‘post’
in postcolonial (e.g. dis/locating the Ottoman imperial legacy in the region) while rethinking the
specificity of the postcolonial as an analytical category.
Avishek Ganguly is Assistant Professor of English at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence,
USA. His research and teaching interests are in Postcolonial and Global Literatures in English, Modern
and Contemporary Drama, Literary and Cultural Theory, and South Asian cultural studies. He will be
completing his PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, New York in
2011.
Soviet colonialism? Contesting visions of the past in post-Soviet Central Asia
Moritz Florin
Ironically, Central Asian centrality makes it peripheral for almost everyone else on the Eurasian
landmass: It is a border region for China, India, the Persian, Arabic and Turkic cultural hemispheres,
for Russia and for Europe. While for at least ten centuries Islamic, respectively Persian and Arabian
civilizations exerted the strongest cultural influence, the encounter with the Russian metropole has
96
shaped the last 150 years of history in Central Asia. One task Central Asian intellectuals have faced
since independence is to grapple with this multifaceted past, and especially with the Soviet legacy.
We can most clearly observe this “grappling” in the very vivid discussions on identity that have
sprung up in post-independence Central Asia. Two types of narratives have (re)appeared since
perestrojka: First, various transnationalisms can be observed. These narratives for example place an
emphasis on a common Turkic, common Islamic, common russophone, common Eurasian, a common
nomad, or simply common “Asian” heritage. Secondly after independence rigidly ethno-national,
often state-sponsored narratives appeared, thereby usually deemphasising the Soviet or pre-Soviet
commonalities of the Central Asian states. These narratives are sometimes based on “völkisch”
theories, sometimes they are openly racist, and generally speaking they build on essentialising,
primordialist historical narratives.
When analysing these narratives, it can be shown that Soviet concepts continue to shape
mindframes, and that postcolonial theory can help to conceptualise post-Soviet debates on the
Soviet past. Colonial concepts such as developed versus backward, civilized versus primitive, rational
versus irrational lie at the core of Central Asian discourses, and post colonial scholarship should
attempt to analyse the Soviet, respectively colonial origins of such pairs. In my paper I will therefore
argue that – even if we do not equalize the terms “Soviet” and “colonial” – we can and we should
apply postcolonial theory to an analysis of the political, social, and cultural history of Central Asia.
My research is based upon elite-interviews, as well as published literature by notable central Asian
public intellectuals (those intellectuals, who are most visible in public debates; at present these are
mostly writers, directors, and historians). In my paper I will take a comparative approach, mostly
focusing on Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, since these two examples most clearly show the contrasting
ways of imagining Soviet pasts.
Moritz Florin graduated from Hamburg University, where he is Reasearch and Teaching Assistant at
the Department of History. His research is focused on Eastern European and Central Asian history currently he is working on a PhD-thesis under the working-title: „Wettstreit der Identitäten:
Sowjetpatriotismus, Nationalismus und Islam in Kyrgyzstan, 1953-2010”. (Contested Identities: Soviet
Patriotism, Nationalism and Islam in Kyrgyzstan 1953-2010).
Post-Soviet Women Intellectuals:
The ‘Decolonial Options’ of Maria Arbatova and Madina Tlostanova
Ksenia Robbe
In the wake of major geopolitical shifts in the countries of the former Soviet Union that resonated in
the Eurasian and global space, political analysts, sociologists and cultural critics have been
unravelling the epistemological transformations that underlie and follow those processes. In postSoviet cultures, the position and agency of intellectuals have certainly been changing, but her/his
social status and role are nevertheless still circumscribed by a male-dominated vision of political
engagement. In a broader social perspective, gender roles have also been transformed under the
pressures of neoliberalist economy. However, the posture of a female intellectual, within the
basically old scenarios of politics and culture, has not (yet) been starkly affected by the processes of
change.
97
In my paper which only starts inquiring in this field, I wish to perform a gendering gesture by looking
at the alternatives to this dominant model posed by women from an uneasy place in the post-Soviet
intellectual establishment. In so doing, I will not attempt to draw a comprehensive portrait of a ‘postSoviet woman intellectual’. Nor shall I simply dwell on the thesis of Russian/Soviet intellectuals’
double positioning – between Eurocentrism and nationalism, modernity and tradition, being
colonized by the ‘West’ and themselves colonizing the ‘East’. Rather, bearing in mind intellectuals’
complicities with power, I will inquire into the gendered modes of critique towards East/West
polarizations and the Soviet legacies in the work of institutions at varied levels.
I will focus on two public figures with quite audible critical voices and on the options of de-colonizing
which they suggest in their writing - from the state institutions and the ideology determining the
present gender and ethno-cultural relations. I adopt the idiom of ‘decolonial option’ from the critical
texts of Madina Tlostanova and Water Mignolo who define it as “an act of de-linking from the
rhetoric of modernity and the logic of coloniality”, a strategy of combating ‘global coloniality’ beyond
postcolonialist critique. The journalist texts of Maria Arbatova, a renowned writer and political figure,
in turn, provide interesting formulations of locally specific feminism and (cultural) politics rising from
a revisionist approach to Western/capitalist and Eastern/socialist models. Proceeding from the
authors’ theoretical stands, I will focus on their creative writing - Arbatova’s memoir My name is
Woman and Tlostanova’s autobiographical novel In Your World I am a Stranger – to examine their
characters’ difficult and uncertain ways towards a position of effectively criticizing and transforming
social hierarchies.
Ksenia Robbe holds an M.A. in Oriental and African studies from St. Petersburg State University,
Russia. She is currently a Ph.D. fellow at the International Graduate Centre in Giessen (Germany)
working on her thesis, “Dialogics of Motherhood”, which explores the imaginaries of motherhood in
South African women’s writing from a cross-cultural perspective. Her research interests include
African literature and history, postcolonial and transnational theory and writing, gender theory,
autobiography, and theories of dialogism. She has read papers on South African literature and
culture at several international conferences; two of her first academic essays are to appear in the
next few months.
Post-Soviet Dynamics of Language in Azerbaijan:
Challenges of Postcolonial Legacy in a Changing Society
Gokhan Alper Ataser & Leyla Sayfutdinova
Following the dissolution of the USSR, former Soviet republics undertook attempts of deSovietization and de-Russification in varying degrees. One aspect of this process was the language
policy, i.e. the rearrangement of the status of Russian on the one hand and national languages on the
other. In Azerbaijan, this process entails more than the reshaping of the language policy and the
weakening yet resilient existence of Russian language alongside Azerbaijani became a symbolic
divisive line for the society. On the one hand, the process of nation-building involves the removal of
Russian as an ‘imperial’ language from official public usage; however Russian is still being used in
informal settings even in the higher ranks of state bureaucracy. Despite the official removal, there
are still few limitations on education in Russian or cultural contacts with Russia and/or in Russian.
Although - after the dissolution of Soviet Union - Russian speakers constitute a rather small minority,
they are often better educated, and command of Russian is often perceived as a symbol of higher
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culture. Conversely, from a different point of view, the use of Russian language is considered as a
continuation of Russian cultural domination. Russian speakers are also sometimes accused of cultural
hybridity which is seen as detrimental to the national identity. Although the policy of removal of
Russian as an official language is rather different from most other postcolonial contexts, the
discourses of domination and hybridity that accompany continuing use of Russian in Azerbaijan are
consistent with post-colonial discourses elsewhere. By comparing the Russian language practice in
Azerbaijan to other postcolonial experiences we attempt to test the limitations of postcolonial
language perspectives in post-Soviet space.
Gokhan Alper Ataser has received his BS degree from the department of sociology, Koc University,
Istanbul. He obtained his degree in MS at the department of sociology at the Middle East Technical
University (METU) in Ankara, Turkey. He is now a PhD candidate at the same department, studying
the transformation of political elite in Azerbaijan. His current fields of interest include the statesociety relations in post-Soviet societies, democratization, and sociology of mass communication. He
is a research assistant at the department of sociology at Selcuk University, Konya/Turkey.
Leyla Sayfutdinova was born in Baku, Azerbaijan. She had studied Law at Baku State University
(Baku, Azerbaijan ) and Conflict Studies at St. Petersburg State University (St. Petersburg, Russia). She
is now a PhD Candidate in Sociology at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. Her
research interests cover post-socialist transformation, particularly in the urban context, stratification,
sociology of work, and nation-building.
Becoming transnational between post-Soviet and post-colonial:
narrations of Polish female migrants in the West
Paula Pustulka
Not surprisingly, Poland is very rarely mentioned in the post-colonial debates. To a large degree, it is
also omitted in many analyses of post-Soviet reality. Although in the international relations'
terminology it was not a soviet country, it did belong to the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain, with the
real-life socialism very much in operation. The appearance of homo sovieticus has more or less
tangible yet apparent implications for the contemporary Poles. Women were the ones to be
particularly exploited and manipulated to reinforce the doctrine and conveniently implement the
ideology, as they struggled to reconcile work and family, performing a so called “double shift” on the
labour market and later in the private sphere of their homes. In recent years, Poland became one of
the most prominent sending countries for intra-European migration. Again, women were especially
active in moving to the metropolises of the globalized West, where they have often encountered
‘ethnic’ and ‘racial’ diversity for the very first time. Shortly after Polish mass-migration, the citizens of
other Eastern European block countries began their journeys to the West, constituting yet another
layer to the already greatly heterogeneous communities.
In my presentation, I wish to explore the interconnectedness of post-socialist narrations and those
pertaining to post-colonialism. Upon their arrival to the neoliberal democracies of the West, women
from other backgrounds must quickly adapt to the market economy, both in terms of managing their
households, and when it comes to their participation in employment. They often find themselves in
the same labour market sectors, namely obtaining the domestic, (children and elderly) care and petty
99
trade jobs, as the immigrants from the former colonies, as well as those from other CEE countries are
likely to get.
Based on the stories of Polish women living in Germany and the United Kingdom, I want to show the
hierarchies that still govern the processes of “othering”, identity formation, and the sense of cultural
and political belongings. I will demonstrate how gender features into the personal dialogues of postsocialist and post-colonial.
Paula Pustulka is a PhD candidate at the School of Social Sciences and a holder of 125 Anniversary
Research Scholarship at Bangor University in Wales, UK. She is a sociologist researching the issue of
contempoary migrant mothering of Polish women in the United Kingdom and Germany from a
comparative perspective. Paula has graduated with a Master’s degree with honors from Jagiellonian
University of Krakow, Poland, where she is originally from. She has been previously awarded a yearly
scholarship at Antioch College in the US and participated in the Erasmus Program in France.
Communism, Capitalism and postcolonial perspectives:
Tracing Transition and Capital Displacements in Local Communities of Central
and Eastern Europe
0LâRV]0LV]F]\ĕVNL
Central and Eastern Europe has undergone intensified processes of economic, political and social
transition during the last 20 years. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the formerly dependent
countries faced market freedom with free market economy replacing central planning and
completely reshaping the structure of industry and employment. In the process of systemic transition
unemployment raised and the majority of big, formerly state-run companies were closed down due
to their lack of competitiveness. Among the remedies for the employment crisis, Foreign Direct
Investment (FDI) was strongly desired. Local governments, trying to boost the regional economies,
desperately searched for this form of support especially in the early stages of transition. Almost
twenty years later, due to globalization and economic advances of the richer countries of Central and
Eastern Europe, a new trend emerges. Facing the costs' raises, many of the keystone investors decide
to withdraw to cheaper and less developed states of the region.
My project analyses a case from this trend. I examine a situation in which a major Asian car-parts
producer decided to move a well-established, large size factory from Poland to Romania - the
transfer is said to have given 27% of savings per annum. The final displacement took place in 2009,
after 16 years of the investor's presence. An empty factory building and almost 1000 employees from
the last dismissal poll were left behind. An almost identical factory with the same equipment, similar
work conditions and management was created in a similar, post-communist industrial zone in
Western Romania.
Approaching the problem, my project focuses on the power relationships in these two local
communities. I employ methods from the disciplines of social anthropology and sociology and apply
analytical perspectives from the field of postcolonial studies. Using its assumptions for the case, I
describe the social shifts relating to two sets of elements influencing the local culture: (1) postcommunist heritage and (2) post-capitalist intangible remains of one particular foreign investor.
Considering these elements, I aim to identify symptoms of the local culture's evolution caused by the
100
stimuli of central planning and FDI. I focus on the power relationships resulting from the economic
processes (of both sets) and try to identify and describe patterns of cultural change, drawing on
postcolonial theory. In doing so, I focus on changes in rules, norms, procedures, strategies and tactics
of obtaining and maintaining power on the local level. In my presentation, I will describe them by
tracing the actions of the main local actors - trade unions, social circles, local governments and
economic entities - and identifyig main patterns of the process of change. The research is based on
expert interviews, participatory observation and hard data analysis.
DŝųŽƐǌ DŝƐǌĐǌǇŷƐŬŝ is a PhD student in the field of Social Anthropology at Jagiellonian University
Cracow. He graduated in sociology (Jagiellonian University, Poland) and international business
(Cracow University of Economics, Poland). Working on his PhD project, he explores the social impact
of foreign investment in local communities - his research sites being located in Northern Mexico,
WŽůĂŶĚ͕hŬƌĂŝŶĞĂŶĚZŽŵĂŶŝĂ͘DŝųŽƐǌDŝƐǌĐǌǇŷƐŬŝǁŝůůďĞĂǀŝƐƚŝŶŐƐĐŚŽůĂƌĂƚƚŚĞhŶŝǀĞƌƐŝƚĂƚĞĂĂďĞƐ
Bolai in Cluj Napoca (2011/2012) and at the University of California in San Diego (2012-2013).
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PANEL 17
Representations: The (Post)colonial 'Body Politic' in Historical
Perspective
Convenor:
Verena Steller
The imagination of the body politic is of paramount importance to Western Political Theory,
Philosophy, History and the Social Sciences. Here, political representation is envisioned as a threefold
entity: It refers to, first, the theologically-based visualization of the absent sovereign; second, a
political mandate and, third, the “identity representation” of a nation-state. How has this way of
imagining the state and its body politic changed due to the colonial experience of the 18th–20th
centuries? Were the body politic, its theory and practice transformed? Do models of “good
governance” and international organizations, for example, respond to competing concepts of
representation and embodiment of non-Western sociological, philosophical thought? And what
impact does this influence have on the theory and practice of domestic and foreign policy? This panel
consisting of two sections would like to discuss techniques of representation and ways to imagine
the state at the intersection of Postcolonial Studies and Social Sciences, International Relations,
Political Philosophy, Law and History.
Verena Steller is a researcher in the Cluster of Excellence on the Formation of Normative Orders. Her
research focuses on British legal history, imperial history, international relations and the cultural
history of diplomacy (Ph.D., University of Bochum). She is currently working on ‚Imperial Justice?
Free Trade on Trial: justification narratives and experiences of (in)justice in the British colonies of the
19th century’.
Transgressing Imaginations of Anti-colonial Nationalism in British West Africa,
c. 1940 to 1960
Rouven Kunstmann
Anti-colonial nationalists in the Colony of the Gold Coast and the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria
applied visual methods in popular print media to mobilise and emotionalise society thereby gaining
votes and access to power during the era leading into independence. The visual but also material
spheres of nationalist newspapers tell a story about changes in colonial patterns of originally
marginalised groups’ anti-colonial nationalism.
My presentation elucidates nationalists’ self-representations and representations of colonial and
international authorities in photographs published in largely distributed daily newspapers. Within
selected issues the methods of representations reveal hierarchical and subordinating body politics of
West African nationalism. However, these representations also deeply rooted in print-capitalism
within the British Empire’s newspaper industry.
Some distinct nationalist groups led by publishers and politicians like Kwame Nkrumah, Nnamdi
Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo appropriated and contested each other’s positions on nationalism.
Symbols of power and prestige related nationalists to traditional structures of authority to present
them as successors of hegemonic rule. The visual embedded in a material became a framework of
anti-colonial nationalism and its colonial traits to disseminate imagined post-colonial nations in
British West Africa.
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Rouven Kunstmann is reading for a Doctor of Philosophy in History at the University of Oxford, St.
Antony’s College. He studied History, Philosophy and Political Sciences at the Leibniz Universität
Hannover (Germany), the Universidad de Deusto in Bilbao (Spain) and the University of Oxford
(England). His research interest is on West African nationalism in the era leading into independence.
The Nation, the State and Political Culture in ‘Native’ American Society
Jessica Marie Knuff
This paper will examine how the processes of US state building have influenced national and political
identities of Native Americans. An historical analysis of Native American theories of the nation and
political governance will be provided. Individual and communal identities are influenced by both
national and state structures. By examining the distinction between the national and state levels in
the United States, we can observe the role the state plays in creating narratives of ‘nativeness’ and
‘Americanness’.
The former half-century has been marked by intense decolonization around the globe. It has also
been a time when the native inhabitants of colonialized territories have reasserted and redefined the
parameters of their particular nations. Often, however, the retreat of the occupier never occurs and
the history of the established state is negotiated to include engulfed nations. In these circumstances,
states must carefully regulate and control the identities and political powers of indigenous
minorities. This control is asserted through state promoted legal, social and religious institutions.
US body politic is often studied in a way that maximizes nation-state rhetoric and minimizes the
conflicting national identities it encompasses. Native Americans living in the United States were
officially granted citizenship in 1924 with the Indian Citizenship Act. This act, however, was not fully
implemented until 1948. American body politic, state practices, and the American colonial
experience have greatly transformed the political culture within Native American tribes. Traditional
models of “good governance” and body politic for native peoples in the US are in constant conflict
with ‘Western’ political theory.
Jessica Marie Knuff is a Political Science Ph.D. student at the University of South Carolina. She is also
completing a Graduate Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies at USC. Jessica Knuff received her
BA and MA from The American University of Rome, Italy and St. John’s University respectively.
Terrorism and Non-violence as Forms of Rupture of Colonial Normative Order
Historical Perspectives on Ethical and Political Subjectivation of Body Politic in
British India
Orazio Irrera
Starting from the analysis of the late Foucault on the isomorphism between government of the self
and government of the others, this paper focuses on the question of the emergence of a body politic
against the colonial normative order in British India, insofar as it turns out to be framed in a historic
and geopolitical configuration of the relationship between truth-manifestation and forms to give to
one’s own existence.
Two particular structures of ethical and political subjectivation that fashion resistance to colonial
power will be examined here: terrorism and non-violence. Both these matrices of subjectivation have
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historically risen on the basis of some kind of problematization regarding the regime of practices that
individuals had to exercise on themselves in order to be able to resist and fight against the colonial
order. From here, two different ways of thinking the interplay between the manifestation of an
ethical and political, not negotiable “truth” and the forms to be given to one’s individual and
collective existence to enable these fundamental claims have stemmed. It is then from such interplay
that the paper deals comparatively with two fields of historical and philosophical problematization of
resistance to colonial normative order in British India:
1) The first one concerns the activities of the early terroristic groups in Bengala, i.e. “Anushilan
Samiti” and “Jugantar”. In this case, I would like to analyze in particular how, both in propagandistic
publications and in recruitment and training activities of those groups, it was important the
problematization of the “character” (“charitra”) and the elaboration of a precise kind of subjectivity
and of the practices necessary to produce it. I would also show also how, in this context, the writer
and poet Bankim Chandra Chattopadyaya was a relevant source to refashion the epic and cultural
Indian tradition in order to structure “body politic” through ethical and political subjectification
against the colonial normative order.
2) The second one is the essential interplay between “satyagraha” and “ahimsa” that Gandhi
proposed through the ascetic stylization of his own life, as well as through his practices of nonviolent resistance. I’ll read the relation between these two notions in the light of the political
intention of setting up not only struggle strategies against the British rule, but a whole regime of
practices that the individuals have to exercise on themselves in order to produce shifts of perspective
with respect to the way of thinking one’s own existence and relation with the others (i.e. a specific
formation of a body politic). In this sense, ethics appears to be a relevant condition for the access to
the political and, as a consequence, it models a specific representation both of a body politic and of
the kind of practices connected to it.
Orazio Irrera holds an MA degree in Philosophy (University of Pisa, 2002) and PhD in Philosophy
(University of Pisa/University of Paris VIII-Saint Denis, 2008). He is a member of the "Centre de
Sociologie des Pratiques et des Représentations Politiques" (CSPRP) of the Université de Paris VIIDenis Diderot. Currently, he is Co-director of the project “mf/materiali foucaultiani”, an Italian
journal (and a multilingual website – Italian, French and English) with an international scientific board
on Michel Foucault’s work and its uses, as well as member of the scientific board of "Réseau Terra".
Colonizing the biopolitics of reproduction in Israel-Palestine
Sigrid Vertommen
According to Meira Weiss (2002) Israeli society is obsessed with fertility, in a way that not only
focuses on quality and the so called semi-eugenic quest for the perfect baby (Remennick, 2005;
Hashiloni-Dolev, 2006), but also on quantity. Israel’s reproductive policies are considered to be highly
pronatalist. Israel has more fertility clinics per capita than any other country in the world. Assisted
reproductive technologies as IVF, ICSI, donor insemination, surrogacy, egg donation,
cryopreservation are not only widely accepted and extremely popular in Israel (Israeli women are
also the world’s heaviest consumers of IVF-technology), but they are also quasi fully state sponsored.
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However, as Rhoda Kanaaneh (2002) has rightly pointed out, this state-sponsored pronatalism should
be viewed as a selective pronatalism since it is only the Jewish part and not the Arab “residual” part
of the nation that is being encouraged to 'multiply and be fruitful'. There is a national preoccupation
over too many Palestinian/Arab bodies and too few Jewish bodies, and even fewer Jewish bodies of
the right Ashkenazi type. This existential fear is enhanced even further by the high birth rates of the
Palestinians that thus pose a demographic threat to the collective Jewish body.
The urge to “reproduce Jews” (Kahn, 2000) has often been explained in a cultural way, focusing on
the centrality of reproduction in Judaism and the Jewish culture. Contemporary social scientists (in –
and outside Israel) reproduce this bio-culturalist paradigm by limiting their research to the
reproductive practices of Jewish Israeli women, even though 24% of the Israeli population consists of
non-Jews, 20% of them being Palestinians or “Arabs”. Following Ann Laura Stoler (2002), I perceive
the management of the sexual and reproductive practices of the colonizer and the colonized not just
as reflections of the colonial order of things, but as one of its cornerstones. The intimate world of
reproduction and family planning served and still serves as a seed-bed for the politics of empire,
linking the micromanagement of the individual female body to the macro surveillance of the social
body or the population.
I will argue that in order to decolonize the social sciences studying reproductive medicine and health
in Israel, we first need to “colonize” it. This implies coming to terms with the fact that the Israeli
reproductive policies were produced and are reproduced within a settler-colonial logic of elimination
of the Oriental Other (Wolfe, 2007). I will argue that instead of focusing on cultural narratives of
Jewishness to explain Israel’s pronatalist stance, we should also look at the political economy of
reproduction in Israel. This perspective should not only take into consideration the centrality of
reproduction within the Zionist settler colonial project, but also Israel’s leading economic position in
biotechnological equipments and especially in assisted reproductive technologies.
Sigrid Vertommen is a research fellow at the Middle East and North African Research Group of the
Department of Third World Studies of the University of Ghent, Belgium. Her research focuses on the
biopolitics of reproduction in settler-colonial societies and takes Israel as a case-study.
The Beginning of Education of Urban Women in Colonial United Provinces:
Renegotiating Cultural Hegemonies in a Colonial- Post colonial Continuum
Priyamvada Tiwari
Practical interest and proselytizing zeal were the motives behind British enterprise in the field of
education. In the absence of such incentives, women’s education was promoted as a reform process
intended to play an emancipatory role. As the British Empire in the late nineteenth century
developed into a more ordered, coherent whole, the ideologies produced by the Raj crystallized as
well. After the Indian Revolt of 1857, the British reorganized the governance of India and then quickly
developed justifications for their expanded role in the subcontinent In the case of Indian women the
derision that constituted the indifference towards their education was grounded in the doubly
unproductive categories of inferior race and gender. While Macaulay’s Minute spelt out the possible
utility of men’s education, nothing was said about the education of native women, since it was of no
use to the Empire. The middle class male intelligentsia of India, on the other hand, preferred to take
upon itself the onus of reforming women’s rather than providing them the instruments of reform. In
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this paper I have attempted to study the coalescing of the British and Indian reformist strategies on
the issue of women’s reform and the way in which administrative policies related to women’s
education was informed by them.
As against the Saidian monolith of oriental structure, or the subalternist dichotomy of oppressor and
the oppressed, the above account appreciates the multifaceted multilinear process that transmission
of knowledge among women in the colonial era was. It does not suggest that the government played
any form of emancipatory role in the process of education of women. The colonial agency was aided
by and even marched in coalition with patriarchal tendencies which is very well illustrated in the way
context and method of education altered over the decades in deference to popular sentiments.
Government aided institution were meant only to satisfy the middle class necessity of restricted
education for women and to demonstrate welfare activities on paper. The quality of education
imparted was never a concern and government schools were simply designed to accommodate the
growing number of girls. This legacy persist even today good education is through private or
missionary institutions, Government schools almost always symbolizing a below average quality of
education in the state.
While investigating the growth of women’s education however one has to be cautious of the multiple
layers of cultural co-ordinates that influenced this process. I shall draw attention to the multiple
manifestations of patriarchy that were implicit in the colonial endeavor towards the promotion of
women’s education.. I look upon education as an entry point in this paper through which I try to
understand the colonial attempts at reforming women’s status in UP prior to the beginning of any
other form of formal schooling for women, except, of course the sparsely located missionary efforts.
I have divided this paper into different chronological sub-themes. I begin with a study of the different
modes of indigenous education of women in colonial UP that existed prior to the advent of organized
forms of instruction. In a separate segment I study individual zeal towards the promotion of
education, which prepared the way for modernized school education undertaken by the colonial
state. A relatively broad segment is then devoted to studying the ways in which colonial agencies
encouraged and also hampered women’s education reinforcing and renegotiating in the process the
patriarchal hierarchy of knowledge. I have used a wide array of primary sources including archival
records and pivotal secondary works for writing this paper.
Priyamvada Tiwari is Ph.D. candidate in History at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi,
researching “Women’ Education in Colonial UP” under the supervision of Prof Tanika Sarkar. She is
looking into the state, missionary and Arya Samajist Agencies in the field of women’s education in
order to locate the continuum that colonial and postcolonial tendencies posit in this sphere. She
teaches Modern Indian History at Benaras Hindu University, Varanasi to undergraduate and post
graduate students and is currently on leave to pursue her Ph.D. Her M.Phil Dissertation was based on
“Political Activism among Women of Awadh (1920-1925)” in which she attempted to trace the
transcended boundaries of the public and the private by women in the peasant and the
nationalist movements during the period under study.
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Aesthetics & Gender. And of how they came together in the Latin American
patria
Tania Mancheno
In the 19th Century, the independence process in Latin America was characterized by the longing for
the model already existing in European state-nations. The shift from colonial power was due to the
performance of those major figures fighting for self-determination (the so-called caudillos), but who
in fact fought also for European recognition. This scenario has characterized the region’s political
geography for more than a century.
However, the designation of the nation as the “home” or “native country” has, ironically, a feminine
connotation: Patria has been the term used for referring to that “imaginary space”
(Anderson/Bhabha), which has been politically used for developing narratives of independence,
ethnicity, citizenship and belonging.
The aim of this paper relies in demonstrating first, how gender plays into constructions of national
collectivities and identities building narratives and strengthening attachments and second, how
genderized conceptions of the nation articulate the ways in which the boundaries of imagined
communities may be radically revised without reproducing them. For this theoretical challenge, I
implement deconstruction as a theoretical breakthrough that supersedes previous critical
possibilities. Deconstruction is, however, dependant on the description of what should be
deconstructed. This paper begins, therefore, by a historical reconstruction of nation-state building
process. After analyzing how the Latin American experience of nation-state’s building presents an
alter-evolution, when compared to the European experience, a scrutiny of nation-state’s as body
politic will follow. Here, I will focus on the genderized conceptions of patria and its aesthetical
dimension.
Tania Mancheno studied political science with a main focus on political theory and political
philosophy at the University of Hamburg. Currently she writes her PhD at the University of Hamburg
at the Chair of History of Thought and Ideas. She works on modern intercultural critical political
theory, citizenship-studies and border-studies.
Beyond stasis:
kinetic political communities and the national imaginary in Johannesburg
Samid Suliman
The trope of the national ‘body politic’ has long dominated our political imagination, and reflects the
formalisation and normalisation of the territorial nation-state as the defining fact of political life.
Perplexingly, this imagination has persisted despite the explicitly mobile character of political, social,
cultural and economic affiliations throughout both colonial and postcolonial epochs, and the fact
that there are many people for whom the citizen-state rubric is wholly inappropriate (the guestworker, the illegal immigrant, the exile, the refugee, the mercenary, the global citizen). However,
despite the persistence of the Westphalian narrative of a territorially delineated, economically
discrete and socially homogenous nation-state, numerous alternative expressions and practices of
political community have challenged the supposedly fixed cartographies of domestic and
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international politics. One such challenge has emerged from contemporary global migrations.
Whereas the dominant geopolitical imaginary dictates that people ought to belong to, or be excluded
from, spatially-defined national political communities, contemporary global migrations are often
animated by multiple political imaginaries and socioeconomic exigencies. Drawing upon empirical
observations of Africa’s ‘global city’, Johannesburg, this paper argues that the persistence of the
Westphalian narrative conceals the complex, contradictory and diffuse practices of political
community that defy the spatial and temporal coordinates of the Westphalian imaginary by their
intrinsically kinetic quality. In other words, it will be argued that multiple ‘bodies politic’ have been
constituted across space and through movement contra formal political narratives, and don’t map on
to conventional understandings of world politics. Furthermore, it will be argued that the
concealment of such kinetic political communities has serious implications for the attainment of
socioeconomic justice in a world that is on the move more than ever before.
Samid Suliman is a doctoral candidate and tutor in the School of Political Science and International
Studies at The University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia). His doctoral research is focussed on
migration and the formation of political communities that are constituted through movement, and
he has broader interdisciplinary interests in postcolonial theory, historical sociology, political
geography, urban studies, literary studies and cultural studies. In 2010, Samid attended the Oceanic
Conference on International Studies in Auckland, New Zealand and was invited to participate in the
Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism, hosted by the Wits Institute for Social and
Economic Research (WISER) at the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa).
Prior-ness, in-sidedness and out-sidedness:
colour-assignment at the foundation of the settler body politic
Dr. Gaia Giuliani
Since the very beginning of the history of Western modern colonialism and therearticulation of the
European political space in states in mid 16th century, continental and overseas territorialities/human
communities have been portrayed geometrically and chronologically, according to the coordinates of
the colonial and continental body politic’s prior-ness, in-sidedness and out-sidedness, and visualised
in terms of colours. This is true for the experiences of the formation of continental as well a settler
states. Homeland and overseas’ discovered lands’, and continental and colonised populations’ biodiversity were defined through a variety of colour lines that, in their ravelling, delimitated the
racialised space of both the colonial dominion overseas, and the national body politic in Europe. This
set of crossing lines has generally separated the dominant group from the dominated and, within the
dominant and the dominated group, it has separated a number of subgroups of a different gender,
class, culture and religion. Differently from other contexts (exploitation colonialism) where the
relation between dominant and dominated, colonising and colonised presupposes a bipolar power
relation, in settler colonial locales the dominated group has been sharply divided in two slightly
distanced groups: prior inhabitants (indigenes) and outsiders (migrants).More consistently with the
traditional formation of States in Europe indeed, the political-anthropological component of the
dominant group, residing in the settled space becomes “native”. Its native-white body politic
constitutes the sovereign dimension of in-sidedness or Sameness and claims for itself a homological
relation with its own (conquested) territory. Assuming, indeed, that there is no casual connection
between colour taxonomies, their topographical inscriptions, and a particular idea of the body
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politic, my question is: is a peculiar economy of colours at play in 18th and 19th British settler
colonialism? Assuming that there is one, how does this economy work to underpin the particular
structure of the settler body politic? How does it help neutralising what is before and fixing a precise
(visual) boundary that distinguishes the new political entity (the inside) from what is outside?
Gaia Giuliani is currently scholar in Colonial and Postcolonial studies at the Dept. Politica Istituzioni
Storia of the University of Bologna (Italy). She is also Associate visiting scholar at Transforming
Culture Research Centre (University of Technology Sydney, 2008-2011), and Endeavour Research
Fellowship recipient (2009-2010).
Amongst her publishing: the book Beyond curiosity on James Mill’s History of British India (Aracne
2008), several journal articles and book-chapters in Italian and English on the colonial imaginary and
race relations entailed in British colonial and settler colonial experience, on the contemporary
transnational debate on race and racism, and on Fascist bio-politics, from a Whiteness Studies and
Critical Studies on Race view-point. Her articles have been published in authoritative academic
journals – Il pensiero politico, Filosofia politica, Interventions, Scienza e Politica, Studi Culturali – while
book-chapters have been published by important Italian and international editors (Peter Lang,
Compositori, Diabasis). She is also member of the editorial board of the Italian academic journal
«Studi Culturali». She has translated in Italian R. Guha and G.C. Spivak, Selected Subaltern Studies
(2002) and more recently Talal Asad, On Suicide Bombings (2009). Her research field includes also
Gender Studies and Feminist theories: she has recently published on the Feminist Review (2008) and
translated in Italian Judith Butler’s Subjects of Desire (Laterza 2009). In 2011 she will translate
Chandra Mohanty, Feminism without Borders (Ombre Corte).
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PANEL 18
Postcolonial Perspectives on Corruption and Statehood
Convenor:
Philipp Zehmisch
In public discourses, a variety of phenomena and practices such as “black marketing”,
“mismanagement” or “bribing” are subsumed under the all-embracing label of “corruption”. Media
and scientific representations of so-called corruption focus primarily on previously colonized states
and contrast them to European contexts. Economic appropriations of state resources and sinecures
are depicted as irrational and immoral deviations from the ideal of a rights-based, lawful, democratic
state, which is associated with the West. The perceived deficit is often attributed to the “corrupt
nature” of individuals: autocratic politicians, greedy administrators, cruel warlords and all sorts of
non-official, informally working capitalists are held responsible for rendering state economies
ineffective and therefore “weak”, “fragile” or “hollow”. They are furthermore accused of abusing
their positions of power and authority vis-à-vis their subjects, especially victimizing women and
children.
Contrary to these approaches, more empirically “thick” analyses relate such “corruption” to an
overlap and entanglement between the public and private spheres. Maladministration is accordingly
analysed as a result of insufficient institutionalization of the nation-state in society and a lack of
emancipation between state and civil society in a Weberian sense. Here, “corrupt” practices seem to
be governed by specific “rational” forms of parochial loyalty to kin or (neo)patrimonial,networks of
patronage and clientelism. Furthermore, people are accused of having absorbed these practices into
their everyday life. A manifestation of this phenomenon is the frequently invoked metaphor of the
“belly” in African and South Asian contexts indicating that a person has “consumed” money.
To provide a departure from either normative accusations or explanatory justifications of “corrupt”
behaviour in prevailing discourses, the panel aims to focus on actor-centred perspectives
investigating the nexus of corruption and postcolonial statehood. It invites contributions based on
empirical and theoretical research asking how the postcolonial condition is related to practices
deemed “corrupt”. How do people cope with the often ambiguous tensions between social (kinship)
obligations and legal-juridical duties as citizens/subjects of a state? How are informal networks
structured and how are they morally connoted by the actors themselves?
What creative and performative strategies, often particularly gendered, do they employ in their
everyday lives while acting in “corrupt” ways? Is there an ethics of corruption? Apart from focussing
on the life-worlds of the “corrupt”, it is also worth focusing on empirical terms in order to gain
conceptual clarity. Derived from local settings and practices, they resonate in everyday languageusage. An orientation towards local terminologies could therefore lead to a reassessment of
generalized moral connotations attached to everyday “corrupt” practices.
Philipp Zehmisch is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, LudwigMaximilians-University Munich, Germany, and a Research Associate on the project “Migration and
Place-making in the postcolonial Andaman Islands, India”, funded by the German Research Council
(DFG). His field research on the Andaman Islands is on-going, with earlier spells conducted in 2006
and 2009. His thesis examines how local articulations of agency, belonging and identity in migratory
contexts are negotiated in a pluralist society. His research interest is located at the disciplinary node
of Political Anthropology, Critical Migration Research and Postcolonial Studies.
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Informal practices and the access to adequate housing for the urban poor.
The case of Bangalore, India
Swetha Rao Dhananka
What is in the way of enabling adequate housing to the urban poor in a global city, such as
Bangalore? The role of formal state institutions in enabling access to basic socio-economic citizenship
rights, such as adequate housing, is pivotal. India has drafted and ratified a vast body of law and
policies ensuring access to basic citizenship rights. To gage the access to housing for the urban poor
in a post-colonial context, such as India, it does though not suffice to study the provisions in the
formal institutional, legal framework. Such an approach is apt for societies, in which accountability
and responsiveness of the state work according to formal rules and impersonal policy criteria. But in
many post-colonial, developing countries interactions between formal and informal institutions
represent a complex configuration of personified power, rational short-term calculus and sustenance
of the status quo. The issue of squatters and informal housing in India is exemplary to illustrate such
a paradoxical configuration: On the one hand the use, development and ownership of land is
regulated by formal institutions and formal rules, but the reality functions through informal
institutions like informal networks, clientelism, corruption and informal rules. The clash of these
rationalities represents an interesting site to analyze the interaction between formal and informal
institutions and to analyze the existing skewed access mechanisms to adequate housing for the
urban poor.
First, a theoretical, analytical framework, leaning upon a neo-institutional framework, will serve to
outline possible interactions between formal and informal institutions and their effect on access
mechanisms. Second, some empirical findings will be presented to depict how formal provisions
clash with informal practices, such as corruption, clientelism and problem-solving networks that
substantially skew the access to adequate housing for the urban poor in the city of Bangalore. Third,
it will be argued that despite the institutional obstacles discussed above, agency is the most
promising way to assure adequate housing for the urban poor. Empirical evidence deriving from
qualitative fieldwork conducted in Bangalore in 2010 will be presented, providing an outlook for
possible ways in which marginalized groups could engage directly or indirectly with the state to claim
adequate housing – these claims being crucial for the millions of squatters in India, for whom a
secure home would bring dignity and would make them unfold surprising capabilities.
Swetha Rao Dhananka is a PhD candidate and a junior lecturer at the institute of political and
international studies at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. She is interested in sociology of
political behaviour, urbanization and its effects on societies, Asian culture and history. Currently she
is writing her PhD thesis in the domain of social movement and urban governance and is teaching
“analysis of quantitative data”.
Continuity and Adaptation in Corruption Mechanisms
in Post-Socialist Romania
Greti-Iulia Ivana
When talking about the state, there are two main directions that I believe need to be considered
from the post-colonial perspective. The first is one coming from social theorists like Weber, or later,
Nettl or Foucault, who emphasize the institutional apparatus, the political structure and the
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manifestations of power. On the other hand, there’s George Steinmetz who conceptualizes the state
in cultural terms. Although I am aware of the interdependence of institutional and societal aspects, I
will assume this methodological distinction for analytic purposes. I consider colonialism to have a
great impact on both these dimensions, but, if the impact on communities and culture is subtle and
requires longer periods of time, the institutional organization is easily changeable and not without
consequences.
In the current paper, my emphasis will be on the evolution of corruption in Romania during and after
the Soviet influence. After conducting a series of interviews with middle aged Romanians about their
perceptions of corruption in the two periods, a few points were revealed. Before 1989, Romania had
a very particular distribution of power. The state (and by state I mean the Communist Party) had all
conventional meanings of power one can think of. Communist leaders decided all sorts of details in
everyday life, starting from the management of schools or, who received social housing, to what
newspapers should write about, who got arrested or who delivered a speech at a local celebration.
At a higher level, this system created an easy gateway to all sorts of power-political engagement. At a
lower scale, all those with no access to power, capitalized their jobs through networking. For
instance, a person, who was in a position of selling socks (which were difficult to find at the time)
would befriend a doctor, of whom he thinks, will treat his child right. This form of mutual need was a
way of bypassing communist power, but it was largely insignificant at the time.
However, the construction of statenhood in Romania after 1990 enabled high levels of corruption. In
its post-colonial period, Romania had to deal not only with the fall of a regime, but with the fall of an
entire institutional infrastructure. When parts of that monolithic power melted, people started to
utilize the mutual relations that had been previously created out of need and turned these into forms
of small corruption. Furthermore, political engagement remained a key element in succeeding at a
higher level. In other words, corruption, or the pre-eminence of the private sphere over the public
one, flourished due to a system that left no legitimate public alternative. So, when the public
alternative became available, it had no meaning to anyone, or, in Bourdieu’s words, no cultural
capital. The doctor is now paid from the public insurance to treat the child right, but the salesman
knows that benefits have always been mutual. And since socks don’t matter any more, he’ll give the
doctor some money. Thus, the formal state is doubled by a prior cultural 'tissue' that undermines
institutional norms every day.
Greti-Iulia Ivana is a graduate student at the MA program in Research Design and Data Analysis
within the Department of Political Sciences, Babes Bolyai University, Cluj Napoca. She has received
her BA at the Faculty of Sociology from the same University. Greti-Iulia is interested in comparative
political sciences and the reshaping of public institutions during the transition period in Romania. She
has won international research grants and has participated at conferences with a focus on processes
of democratization, social inequalities, as well as the inter-conditionality of public and private
spheres. She is planning to pursue a PhD in social research.
Postcolonial Perspective on Corruption and Statehood –
A look into Fiji as a State
Eroni Duaibe
Fiji became independent in 1970. Since then, it has experiencedthree coups, which roots can be
traced back to colonial days. When the Fiji Islanders were coming to terms with all this, the first
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accounts of the 2007 report of the auditor general started to emerge. The early prognosis was,
predictably, ominous. The admonishments of the Public Accounts Committee, which reviewed the
report and submitted it to the interim cabinet during July and August, started to repeat like a tape
loop.
The auditor general has exposed that since the 1990s, Fiji's inept and awkward civil service has been
a hotbed of corruption, with blatant, systematic and consistent abuse of millions of dollars in public
funds and aid money at the highest levels. A previous auditor general report described government
agencies as "fraught with widespread abuse and ineptitude". It added, "Corruption was a cancer that
had spread from the prime minister's office throughout the rest of government." Corruption and
Statehood had become synonymous. So much so that it was a norm to be a corrupt person to enter
into politics. This was gravitational in nature as civil servants were confident to follow suit as their
superiors were condoning such activities.
Since the Political Adjustment in December 2006, the Military Government was mandated by the His
Excellency, the President of the Republic of Fiji, to nip corruption in the bud and put in place a
mechanism that would ensure a corrupt free Fiji. This led to the formation of the Fiji Independent
Commission against corruption. The Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption was established
on 4 April 2007 to investigate acts of corruption in Fiji. To ensure independence, the Commissioner is
directly accountable to His Excellency the President and is accountable only to him. This ensured that
no one will be above the law of corruption, whether politician or Government employee or ordinary
citizen alike. This paper will look into how corruption had born itself in the context of Statehood. It
will also discuss the strategic steps that the current government is taking to weed out corruption.
Eroni Duaibe is a student at Ravenshaw University in Cuttack,India.
Corruption is Good! Understanding Postcolonial State Formation
beyond the European Paradigm
Peter Finkenbusch & Markus-Michael Müller
The notion of corruption holds a privileged place within the analytical repertoire deployed by
“Western” Political Science in order to understand postcolonial states and societies and their most
pressing “problems”. Our paper wants to offer an alternative interpretation of the “problem” of
corruption. By taking corruption “serious”, we argue that far from being a “deviant”, “backward”,
“traditional” or “pre-modern” practice, or a sign of state “weakness” or even state “decay”, the
widespread centrality of “corruption” is the defining feature of postcolonial statehood. The paper
sets out with the argument that state formation in “most of the world“ cannot be adequately
understood through established paradigms of European state formation. As postcolonial states did
not make (large scale) war and war did not make (post)colonial states, state centralization in “most
of the world” did not take a coercion-intensive path, nor did it trigger a political “monopoly
mechanism” (Elias). Also, socio-economic perspectives depicting state formation as derivative of
bourgeois-capitalist development do not capture the dynamics of postcolonial state formation,
either. Rather, postcolonial state formation was based on practices of informal negotiation between
the governed and the governing. These informal bargaining processes were and are based on a
particular technology of rule which we call “politics of appropriation”. This technology, we argue,
represents a basic element of postcolonial governmentality, which includes the widely accepted and
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encouraged appropriation of state resources by the “governed” as the most important resource for
“governing the population” and creating state legitimacy “by other means”.
It is this focus on the “functionality” of corruption, we argue, that allows for a more nuanced
understanding of vernacular notions of the “political”. While the Western norm of a separation
between “public” and “private” has undeniably become an important element of postcolonial
processes of subject formation, local normative subjectivities have remained fundamentally
fragmented. Understanding postcolonial state formation, thus, necessarily involves an understanding
of how political actors navigate this normative pluralism and employ western discourses of
“corruption” in a “functional” way.
By addressing both, the abstract “functionality” of corruption for state formation processes, and the
vernacular uses of corruption discourses and practices, we propose to offer theoretical building
blocks for provincializing European state formation processes and for bringing politics back into the
overly normative and moralizing debate on corruption in the “postcolony”.
Markus-Michael Müller is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Area Studies, Universität
Leipzig. His main research interests include state theory, critical security studies, urban studies and
political development(s) in Latin America and other regions of the postcolonial world. He has
published journal articles and book chapters dealing with (in)security and statehood in Latin America
and he is the author of the forthcoming book “Public Security in the Negotiated State. Policing in
Latin America and Beyond (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan)”.
Peter Finkenbusch is a research associate and PhD student at the Collaborative Research Centre 700
“Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood: New Modes of Governance?”. As part of the research
project C3 “Transnational Security Governance: Organized Crime and Governance-Interventions in
Mexico and Central America” he is studying the local appropriation and rejection of transnational
norms of statehood.
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PANEL 19
Weak States, Failed States, Developmental States –
Problems and Challenges in Conceptualising Political Formations
in Postcolonial Africa
Convenor:
Discussant:
Anna Krämer
Katharina Lenner
Within political science, concepts of the state, employed to analyse formations in the Global South,
are essentially based on a deficit analysis, reproducing the vision of a Western ideal-type state as the
universal norm. Especially in the context of sub-Saharan Africa, statehood is often completely denied.
Hence, states emerging from colonialism are defined through their dysfunctions within a set of
theoretically determined state functions. At the same time the internal actors of these states are
solely represented as being corrupt and criminal. In doing so these approaches – such as the failed
state/weak state debate, good governance strategies, but also Neo-Patrimonialism etc. – fail to
analyse the actual functionality and the specific historical articulation of post-colonial states. In
continuation of 19th century colonial discourse, Africa is portrayed in a binary opposition to
US/European societies as the West’s absolute other (cf. Mbembe). The political and economic
dominance of Western states, supranational institutions and non-governmental international and
transnational actors continues to be justified by the presumed superiority of the Western world.
Furthermore, the deficit analysis of African states is used to legitimise humanitarian, technocratic
and military interventions depending on developmental practices ‘in vogue’.
In order to counter such misleading approaches underlying dominant state concepts, approaches
aiming to render visible the specific (historical) functionality of post-colonial state formations must
be developed and discussed.
Therefore this panel raises the question of how to conceptualise African states emerging from
colonialism, while considering the colonial continuities in contemporary knowledge production.
Through which discursive fields and strategies are African states constructed in an inferior position?
What are the consequences of these forms of representation for current development practices e.g.
on the backdrop of democratisation programs or good governance strategies? And finally, how can
the specific functionality of post-colonial African states be analysed? Taking into account the
multitude of political structures and articulations which cannot be seen through a state model forged
on the idea of a Western ideal-type state, this panel will go beyond the discussion of state concepts,
by asking whether the notion of “state” itself is appropriate as an analytical tool within this context,
or if we had not better try and overcome this term by historicising the spatial structures and the
plurality of political orders.
Anna Krämer studied Political Science and Francophone and Hispanic Literature in Frankfurt and
Caracas. She is currently writing her doctoral thesis under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Nikita Dhawan.
Her project presents a postcolonial critique of conceptions of statehood in sub-Saharan Africa within
political science. Thereby she discusses alternative approaches to the political formations on the
African continent on the theoretical basis of postcolonial (African) theories combined with Gramscian
and Neo-Gramscian state theory.
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Katharina Lenner studied Political Science and Middle Eastern Politics in Berlin and London and is
currently a research associate at the Centre for Middle Eastern and North African Politics, Freie
Universität Berlin. She is a founding member of reflect! Association for Political Education and Social
Research, and part of the coordination team for the transnational exchange project 'Gender and
Emancipation – Perspectives from East and West'. Her research interests are statehood in the Global
South, postcolonial theories, politics of development, symbolic domination as well as politics and
society in the Arab World. She is currently writing her doctoral thesis in the thematic field of state
transformation in the Global South, analysing poverty reduction policies in Jordan.
The Otherness and the Reinforcement of Self in “Fragile States” Discourse:
The Violence of Calling Names
Isabel Rocha de Siqueira
Much has been said about the artificial and negative construction of labels such as “failed” or “fragile
states” and how they are based on an idea of a successful opposite figure, the Western modern
democratic state. It remains to be understood, however, how these labels are constructed
internationally, what practices are enabled in these dynamics and who has a voice in that matter. A
sociological approach is needed in order to answer those questions; an approach focusing on
practices and on everyday subtle struggles for position and voice. The aim is to understand how ideas
of Self and Other are being enacted through these practices of labelling, by scrutinizing precisely
what these practices consist of.
Moreover, such an approach would bring to the fore the question of how so-called “fragile states”, or
the actors related to them, are positioned in these dynamics of labelling and identity, putting aside
the assumption that there is no dialogue but only silence on the other side of these practices. I argue
that one should not presuppose so-called “fragile states” do not engage in these naming exercises, as
this presupposition is in itself a form of silencing the Other. In that sense, an in-depth sociological
investigation may lead us to ask if and how “fragile states” engage with these labellings. In fact, being
the target of labelling practices might seem better than being the object of plain indifference. I
propose to look thoroughly into these dynamics and draw attention to a more subtle yet powerful
form of violence, one which calls into being through the simple practice of labelling, by turning the
object into a “happy participant”.
Isabel Rocha de Siqueira holds a Bachelor Degree in Journalism (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do
Rio de Janeiro, PUC-Rio) and a Master’s Degree (MSc) in International Relations (PUC-Rio). She is
currently a Ph.D. student at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, under the
supervision of Prof. Didier Bigo. She wrote her Master's thesis on the sociological construction of the
“fragile states” idea, proposing it to be seen as the product of quotidian struggles among an
international network of professionals from different fields. Her doctoral project looks even further
into the deconstruction of this labelling.
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Rethinking Political Modernity in Africa:
A Phenomenological Approach
Luc Ngowet
Scholars have studied African politics mainly from the standpoint of two disciplines: anthropology
and political science. Political anthropologists have focused their research on various forms of
political organisations in traditional African societies. These researchers have established typologies
of socio-political structures and reached the now well accepted conclusion that there are societies
without a state. Although political anthropologists have also studied African and non-African modern
institutions, their discipline is still perceived as a “science for non-Western traditional societies”. By
comparison, political scientists believe that Africa is a valuable source for comparative purposes.
Most political scientists would study political phenomena such as the lack of an autonomous state or
the role of informal institutions in Africa with one main concern in mind: what would be the
contribution of these phenomena to the theory of political science? While anthropology and political
science have certainly contributed to an empirical knowledge of African politics, the overall
epistemological approach of these self-proclaimed value-free disciplines remains tainted with an
ambiguous worldview. Anthropology appears deeply rooted in its colonial legacy despite its humanist
agenda and repeated attempts to change its theoretical premises; while political science is more
concerned by the “market” value of African politics in the development of political theory rather than
the intrinsic significance of its subject matter.
This paper asserts that a comprehensive study of political modernity in Africa – i.e. the historical
trajectory of multifaceted African politics and political experiences – requires a paradigm shift
grounded on two fundamental premises: 1) Well before anthropology and political science became
scientific disciplines in Western academia, African intellectuals had developed important and
systematic ways of their own to reflect on politics and, subsequently, prescribed norms and solutions
on what would constitute an ideal socio-political life; 2) As a result, a study of traditional and modern
political phenomena and experiences such as state, democracy, justice, freedom, power, legitimacy
and authority in Africa, would need to start with the African discourse. This does not imply that
anthropology and political science are without help to grasp some aspects of African politics. Our
démarche suggests, however, that a sound and complete understanding of the meaning of state,
freedom, justice, democracy and management of ethnicity in complex African contexts should start
with a thorough examination of how these phenomena have been experienced, expressed and
conceptualised by Africans in modern times. In other words, this paper attempts to lay the
foundations for a phenomenological approach to African political phenomena and experiences.
Luc Ngowet is a Political Affairs Officer with the Department of Political Affairs of the United Nations
Secretariat, New York. He holds Master Degrees in Philosophy and Political Science from PanthéonSorbonne University and is currently a doctoral candidate in Political Philosophy at Paris VII Denis
Diderot. He is the author of Petites misères et grand silence. Culture et élites au Gabon (2001).
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State Reconstruction in Post-conflict Africa:
The Relevance of Ake's Political Thought
Jeremiah Oluwasegun Arowosegbe
Studies on post-conflict reconstruction in Africa have glossed over the need for state transformation
as a prerequisite for sustainable peace building in post-conflict societies. This presentation fills this
crevasse and discusses the relevance of Ake's political thought for state reconstruction in postconflict Africa. It underlines the need for the autochthonous transformation of the state as a central
component of peace building and post-conflict transition in the continent as Ake had suggested.
Drawing on Sierra Leone, it theorizes Ake's works on the state in Africa against the backdrop of
externally-driven state reconstruction projects hinged on hegemonic discourses of nation-building in
post-conflict situations. The presentation introduces Ake's corpus as a basis for critiquing on-going
state rehabilitation attempts and urges a return to endogenous initiatives of rebuilding the state
from below as a condition for achieving a sustainable democratic reconstruction of the state in postconflict Africa.
Jeremiah O. Arowosegbe (PhD) is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research,
University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa. His major areas of research and teaching
interests are African intellectual history, African politics, African political thought, political theory and
political thought. His other areas of research and teaching interests are critical theory, development
studies, postcolonial studies and subaltern studies.
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PANEL 20
Les productions culturelles
mondialisée (French/Français)
Convenor:
Lotte Arndt
africaines
dans
l’économie
With the beginning of the 1990th a new discourse about African cultural production gains
importance, embracing a variety of fields such as literature, cinema, visual and fine arts. It is
characterized by emphasizing the individuality of cultural producers, to oppose itself to exotistic
categorizations and to call collective ascriptions/identities into question.
Nevertheless, neither the exotistic discourse and the interest in a presumable authenticity and
tradition cease, nor does the individualistic positioning provoke the disappearance of the hierarchies
and constraints which authors, filmmakers, and artists in Africa and the diasporas have to deal with.
Often, their international career depends on their success in institutions of the North. This does not
only include the confrontation with the expectations of the Northern publics and the marketing
concepts of editors, producers and galleries, requiring challenging strategies for self-affirmation. In
fact, the figure of the exiled, the migrant, life in the diaspora themselves happen to become
emblems of the decentred globalized world.
This framing reduces just as much the possibilities to overcome an identitarian perspective and to
address migration at a social level, as it restrains the possible speaking positions of the cultural
producers. As representatives of hybridity and transculturality they become the symbols of an
anticipated postnational world.
The panel focuses on the conjunctures of cultural production in Africa and the diaspora in the 1990s,
questions the effects of the end of cold war for the discursive formations of the 1990s and examines
strategies of subversion and appropriation that are developed in artistic positions. A special focus will
lay on the gender dimensions of this regime of representation.
Lotte Arndt is working on her PhD about Cultural magazines dealing with Africa in Paris. She is
affiliated to Humboldt Universität Berlin (African Cultural and Literature Studies) and Paris VII, Denis
Diderot (Sociology).
La recherche d’une authenticité culturelle et la quête identitaire dans les
personnages féminins de Ken Bugul et Kangni Alem
Aminata Cécile Mbaye & Eva Dorn
Il semble que depuis les années 1990, les écrivain-e-s africain-e-s façonnent une nouvelle esthétique,
s’insérant dans une littérature populaire et politique. De nouvelles stratégies littéraires émergent,
axées sur une « culture du quotidien », dans lesquelles les questions sexuelles et identitaires
acquièrent une place singulière et prépondérante. Ces dernières, liées aux problématiques du
multiculturalisme et de la mondialisation dans un contexte postcolonial, se situent à l’intersection de
plusieurs questionnements. Notre communication, s’appuyant sur une analyse littéraire et
anthropologique, portera sur la comparaison d’œuvres différentes, de Ken Bugul et Kangni Alem,
dont les récits donnent à voir des destins croisés de femmes migrantes ou errantes, prises dans des
relations diverses. Il s’agira, pour nous, de percevoir comment une hybridité culturelle, sexuelle,
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sociale, née de la migration ou de l’adoption de valeurs jugées occidentales, figure dans le
dévoilement de vécus particuliers.
Pour cette raison, les récits fictifs de Kangni Alem et autobiographiques de Ken Bugul, représentent
des exemples paradigmatiques en tant qu’ils prennent la forme d’une recherche initiatique, donnant
lieu à une introspection ambiguሷe ; entrelacs d’un ressenti d’un déracinement et d’une quête d’authenticité.
Ken Bugul se fait connaître par une série d’autobiographie: Le baobab Fou [1983], la deuxième :
Cendres et braises [1994] et la troisième : Riwan ou le chemin de sable [1999], qui provoquèrent un
grand nombre de controverses. L’écrivaine dut en premier lieu changer son vrai nom, Mariétou
M’Baye, et adopter un pseudonyme, Ken Bugul (autrement dit « personne n’en veut » en wolof), car
les éditeurs trouvaient son premier roman trop osé pour une femme, musulmane de surcroît. La
sortie de Riwan ou le chemin de sable fut accompagnée de vives critiques, émanant de féministes des
deux côtés de l’atlantique, ces dernières s’étonnèrent que l’auteure fût devenue la 28e épouse d’un
marabout. L’écrivaine/narratrice construit son identité féminine à travers l’écriture et narre son
expérience migratoire en Belgique, le récit de ses amours, son positionnement féministe, en
choisissant d’aborder des thèmes controversés comme la polygamie et l’homosexualité. Kangni
Alem, jeune auteur togolais, décrit, pour sa part, le voyage d'une protagoniste métisse, Héloïse, en
quête de ses origines, de la France vers un pays non-existant, artificiel. À TiBrava, nom inspiré de
Togo Brava Suite de Duke Ellington[1971], premièrement elle ne retrouve pas son père, mais à la
place une soeur, de laquelle elle tombe fortement amoureuse. Cette histoire d'amour prend son
essor dans le roman Cola Cola Jazz [2002] et trouve sa suite dans Canailles et charlatans [2005]. Une
fois de plus, une identité se construit à travers les voyages et la découverte d'une sexualité, mais
cette fois-ci en partant de l'imaginaire d'un auteur masculin. Kangni Alemdjrodo est née à Lome en
1966, après les indépendances, et fait parti d'un réseau littéraire bien visible depuis les années '90,
recevant également un écho politique au Sénégal.
Aminata Mbaye est doctorante en Anthropologie au laboratoire du Centre d’Etudes Africaines
rattaché à l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales EHESS et à Bayreuth International Graduate
School for African Studies BIGSAS.
Eva Dorn, doctorante de Lettres modernes en Cotutelle entre les Universités Michel de Montaigne,
Bordeaux 3 et l'Université de Goethe à Francfort, travaille et vit actuellement en France.
Bill Kouélany en marge de la Francophonie –L'émergence d'une littérature de
subversion?
Sarah Burnautzki
L'institution de la Francophonie, ce vestige culturel du projet colonial, se dote aujourd'hui dans des
discours officiels de la vocation de promouvoir la diversité culturelle dans le monde. Elle se défait
cependant plutôt mal du soupçon d'avoir comme fonction non-avouée principalement celle de
protéger un certain nationalisme culturel 'de souche'. Ainsi et devant le constat d'une réelle
imperméabilité de la Francophonie envers des formes esthétiques non-conformes, il devient urgent
d'interroger l'activisme biaisé de ce « système littéraire francophone » (Moura 2010) tout en tenant
compte des interdépendances entre champ littéraire, champ politique et champ économique. C'est
dans ce contexte d'une promotion de textes littéraires tout à fait sélective que se forme ce que
j'appellerai un véritable genre ou paradigme africain. Créee dans l'interaction subtile d'acteurs
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représentant d'un côté les instances de consécration littéraire et qui oeuvrent à la détermination des
normes esthétiques du centre parisien et, d'autre côté, d'auteurs qui se conforment à ce
déterminisme esthétique, il peut paraître impossible qu'une quelconque expression littéraire se fraye
un chemin à la reconnaissance littéraire en dehors du « système littéraire francophone ».
Nonobstant je m'intéresse ici à la question de l'existence éventuelle d'une sub-littérature, émergeant
malgré les contraintes imposées par le dispositif économique, politique et culturel qui détermine et
qui contraint la production littéraire de langue française. Mise à l'écart par le désintérêt des éditeurs
français, les textes ici en question attendent parfois encore la publication et restent de ce fait
inaccessible pour les lecteurs. Par conséquent, chercheurs et critiques littéraires ne tiennent guère
compte de ces productions de textes et de leurs éventuelles positions littéraires alternatives et pour
la même raison il s'agit-là de textes qui restent largement 'invisibles'. Or, il sera argumenté ici que la
non-diffusion de ces textes contribue à rendre la littérature dite 'africaine' éditée plus homogène
qu'elle ne devrait le paraître.
En soulevant la question de savoir en quoi la problématique de l'existence d'une sub-littérature
africaine peut être pertinente, je propose de partir du présupposé qu'on peut parler d'alternative
esthétique dès qu'une écriture s'articule à l'encontre des modes d'écritures et des modèles
identitaires acceptées par les instances de consécration littéraires (maisons d'édition, critiques
littéraires, jurys etc.). Il faudra alors s'interroger sur les pratiques narratives et esthétiques qui
subvertissent les normes imposées par le centre littéraire parisien. Pour ce faire je me propose
d'examiner un texte inédit de l'artiste et écrivaine congolaise Bill Kouélany. Avec Fragment de rêve
sauvé du vent, elle crée un texte hybride, à savoir une autobiographie fictionnelle qui, au niveau
esthétique, semble tenir à la fois du journal intime et de l'écriture automatique à l'instar du
surréalisme. Rappelant en outre de part son penchant anti-mimétique prononcé l'expressionnisme
cru et violent d'un Sony Labou Tansi – ce texte à présent non publié pourrait être qualifié de véritable
écriture de la submersion. Récusant toute classification, à la fois du côté de la Négritude et du côté
du rayon 'littérature africaine postcoloniale' (souvent exotique et digeste selon le goût d'un public
occidental) s'agirait-il donc ici, d'un point de vue esthétique, d'une tendance littéraire à la fois
provocatrice et innovatrice? Tout semble confirmer qu'on contre-courant littéraire qui perturbe les
normes esthétiques établies par la Francophonie existe en marge des circuits de la reconnaissance
littéraire.
Sarah Burnautzki est doctorante au centre d'études africaines de l'EHESS de Paris et à l'Université de
Heidelberg en Allemagne. Elle prépare une thèse en anthropologie sociale et en littérature en
cotutelle entre les deux institutions. Son domaine de recherche étant la littérature postcoloniale
francophone en Afrique, sa thèse s'intitule « Conflits de pouvoir littéraire, enjeux politiques et jeux
identitaires autour de l’ethnicisation de la littérature française ».
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PANEL 21
Postcolonial Representations of Urban Spaces
Convenor:
Discussant:
Andrea Gremels
Johanna Hoerning
Throughout the world, cities and perceptions of the urban have been marked in their development
by colonial and postcolonial structures and power relations. Various questions are being raised to
analyse urban postcolonialisms and postcolonial cities, such as: How do urban spaces reflect and
(re)produce power relations in shaping social practices and interactions? To what extent are urban
realities represented and (re)constructed through discourse? And what role do the arts, such as
literature and film, play in the creation and representation of discursive and/or imaginary spaces?
From an interdisciplinary perspective, international researchers from English Literature Studies,
Geography, Sociology and Social Anthropology, will discuss the phenomenon of the material,
imaginary and imagined appropriation of urban spaces in two sessions: The first concentrates on
discourses of the postcolonial city in literature, language and media representations, whereas the
second considers planning and regulation discourses and their material dimensions.
Andrea Gremels is a Research Associate, Lecturer and PhD candidate at the Department of Romance
Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt. In the area of Latin American and Francophone Literatures her
main research interests are cultural and postcolonial literary theory and the Carribean. Her
dissertation deals with the question of exile and transculturation in contemporary Cuban literature in
Paris. As co-editor she published the volume Cuba: La revolución revis(it)ada in December 2010
(together with Roland Spiller).
Johanna Hoerning is a Research Associate, Lecturer and PhD Candidate at Goethe University
Frankfurt/Germany, Department of Social Sciences. Her research interests are urban sociology,
sociology of space, postcolonial studies and social movement research. Currently, she is working on a
critique of megacity-discourse with reference to Brazilian cities.
Orient or the Centre of Englishness? The Image of London’s East End in
Contemporary Art and Literature
Karolina Kolenda
The paper will discuss the image of London’s East End as Orient which has prevailed in literature and
visual arts since the 19th century and which defines the East Ender as the British/English “Other”. This
image will be contrasted with the original notions of Englishness formulated by Peter Ackroyd in his
fiction and non-fiction, as well as by Gilbert and George in their art works, to suggest a possible
revision of the categories of centre vs. periphery that function in the postcolonial discourse and
which are used to describe power relations in urban space.
In literature and visual arts London’s East End has often been presented as an Internal Orient. Both in
travel reports written by the visitors (e.g. Thomas de Quincey, The Confessions of an English Opium
Eater), as well as in the work of Londoners the East End has been traditionally described as an
unknown land inhabited by “aliens”. These were mainly Ashkenazi Jews from the Eastern Europe, the
Irish, the Chinese, and later, after the Second World War, the Bangladeshi and other ethnic
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minorities. Representatives of the poor working class of the East End, with their “dirty habits” and
their typical “irreligiousness”, were viewed as “savages” or “heathens”. The image of London as
divided into civilized West and the savage East has, of course, reflected the relations between the
imperial centre and the colonized lands, where the latter is treated as a source of cheap labour.
Englishness has been traditionally identified with the countryside, reason (or common sense) and
Protestant faith. In the writings of Peter Ackroyd (novels, essays, non-fiction) Englishness is
reformulated into a vision that embraces completely opposite elements. The centre lies in London,
and in particular in the East End. The real English spirit has its roots in the Catholic past and has been
preserved in popular art forms (street theatre, vaudeville, carnival) and working class entertainment.
What is more, the real nature of Englishness is its ‘mongrel’ character; the source of its strength is
the constant inflow of new blood. In their artistic practice Gilbert and George, British artists living in
the East End, provide a similar vision, especially in their ‘London E1 Pictures’. Hybridity, ethnic
diversity, pop culture, and the vernacular, are presented as constitutive elements of English cultural
identity.
In this paper I will try to argue that although the problems of cultural representation of the East End
are to a large extent a question of the relations between centre and periphery that should be
analysed from the postcolonial perspective, the representations of East End as an imagined centre of
Englishness as suggested by Ackroyd and Gilbert and George offer an alternative perspective in which
also gender and class relations are taken into consideration.
Karolina Kolenda (1982) is a graduate of Art History and English Studies at the Jagiellonian University
in Krakow, Poland. At present she is a PhD candidate at the History Department and Philology
Department of the Jagiellonian University, preparing a dissertation on representations of cultural
identity in British literature and visual arts. She is a lecturer at the English Studies Department at the
Jagiellonian University, as well as an art critic, art curator and translator.
Language and the Postcolonial City: The Case of Salman Rushdie
Stuti Khanna
In this paper, I shall investigate the language of Salman Rushdie’s early novels in the specific context
of the postcolonial metropolis of Bombay (now Mumbai) that they are set in. Critical discussions of
Rushdie’s language have tended to fall into two “camps”: one treats his novels as textual markers of
an enlivening, celebratory polyvocity, while the other sees in them reification and stagnation,
markers of inauthenticity and entrapment within both the foreign language of the (ex-)colonial
master as well as the transnational, “flattened” lingo of global consumer capitalism. Such discussions
have also tended, by and large, to discuss the question of language in Indian writing in English in
terms of the loose baggy monster of “Indian-English,” a category that I believe is far too diffuse to
enable any focussed analysis of the matter. My objective here is to avoid, as far as possible, both
critical poles; each has a validity that is at the same time partial. Further, instead of floundering in
the undefined and undefinable flaccidity of the category of “Indian-English,” I intend to ground my
discussion within the specific locus of the city of Bombay, the consistent locale of Rushdie’s early
novels: Midnight’s Children (1981), The Satanic Verses (1988), The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995), and The
Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999). I propose that the language of these novels cannot be seen outside
of its relationship with the city of Bombay. City-speak, or the hybrid form taken by language(s) and its
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registers in the Third World metropolis is, I hope to demonstrate, the primary basis for the
polyphony of these novels. I shall argue in this paper that the fractured, multi-faceted and multilayered realities of the postcolonial metropolis can be most immediately accessed by an examination
of the language in these novels, both in terms of the language of characters, as well as of ways in
which the city itself speaks/writes. In other words, the language of these novels enacts the
heterogeneities and contradictions of a Third World postcolonial metropolis, acquiring in the process
the multi-tonality that it embodies. My analysis is by no means a purely celebratory account of the
diversity and multiformity of city-life; it will take into account the fact that much of this diversity and
multiformity is predicated upon grossly unequal and unfair access to resources. It also does not
overlook the limitations and omissions of Rushdie’s “script-writing” and its attempt to simplify and
gloss over some of the fractures across the surface of the cityscape. At the same time, this discussion
will seek to break out of the powerful-powerless dichotomy and draw out the ways in which these
categories are never fixed and invariable but closely interact and impact upon each other. Language,
in particular the bambaiya argot that has such an important presence in Rushdie’s novels, actualizes
and expresses such interanimation resonantly.
Stuti Khanna is Assistant Professor in English Literature at the Department of Humanities and Social
Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, in Delhi. She recently completed her Ph.D. at Oxford
University, a comparative analysis of the city in the fiction of James Joyce and Salman Rushdie. She
has published articles on Salman Rushdie in journals such as ARIEL and the Journal of Postcolonial
Writing.
Zadie Smith’s White Teeth – Gender, Ethnicity and Urban Space
Salla Rahikkala
In my presentation I will concentrate on analysing contemporary British fiction. My aim is to
scrutinise gendered and ethnicised subject representations in urban space. I will discuss the matter
with the help of the novel White Teeth (2ooo) by Zadie Smith. I will analyse a micro-space of one
white, middle-class family and the relationship between them and two characters with hybrid ethnic
background. By close-reading Smith’s novel I will suggest that this family constitutes a colonial space
in postcolonial London. I will then proceed to analyse the multiple ways characters of mixed origins
negotiate their roles within the family. In addition, I will examine the processes of Othering as
described in the novel. My paper will show how ethnicity and gender representations gain different
meanings according to literal spaces they are constructed in.
The aim of my paper is to combine politics of location and identity politics in a way that also takes
into account changing and unstable meanings attached to culturally defined markers such as gender
and ethnicity. Hence, this paper aims to offer at least a partial intersectional approach by analysing
gender and ethnicity together. However, since I wish to deepen and broaden the perspective of the
analysis I will include the concept of space in it. I will suggest that intersectional categories are
signified for the most part in relation to space. In this paper, space is discussed through such themes
as Othering, eroticisation, exoticisation, inclusion and exclusion.
Space is somewhat inescapable for events and characters – in literature as well as in real life – are
always situated somewhere, in a case of White Teeth, in 1990s London. Space, however, is also a
highly complex concept that includes not only physical components but also social factors. Thus,
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scrutinising space in this paper means analysing the (often unequal) relationships within the abovementioned family, not merely analysing space in a sense of actual, physical home. Space is not stable
and unchangeable but instead recreated and reproduced in the acts of subjects. Hence, the
characters in White Teeth are able to change space as well as renegotiate and challenge spatial
conditions.
Salla Rahikkala from Oulu, Finland, is currently working as a researcher supported by grant at the
University of Oulu. She graduated in 2008 and works on her PhD since last year. She studied
literature as main subject for her Master of Arts’ degree and continues in this discipline for her PhD.
In her dissertation she analyses the meaning of space and places, as well as intersectional and
transsectional subject representations in contemporary British fiction. Her main areas of interest are
postcolonial and feminist literary studies.
The signs of Luanda: the city and the politics of textuality
Caio Simões de Araújo
For Lefebvre both the city and the urban are constantly produced, invented, and appropriated by
social actors, especially through signifying practices and production of meaning. Lefebvre’s notion of
conceived, abstract, space is central to account for the role played by cultural and literary
representations in the making of urban space and place. Moreover, Rama’s notion of the lettered
city, although mostly relating to Latin America, is better understood as a general effort in locating
discourse, literature and the politics of representation as a central subject of urban studies. In fact,
Rama’s differentiation between a “lettered” and a “real” city is less the reflection of a disjunction
between the imagined and the real, the word and the building, than an awareness of the political
implications of signs, discourses and representations in the exercise and legitimacy of power.
In this paper, I will be focused in the highly complex cityscape of Luanda, capital of Angola, reading it
as a palimpsest, i.e., a parchment where numeral layers of meaning were overwritten and resignified in the very text (and intertextualities) of culture and power. As a central concept in
postcolonial studies, the notion of the palimpsest allows us to better understand “place” as
experienced by the postcolonial subject, since it reveals the complex arrangements by which
processes of mapping, naming, fictionalization and legal and administrative “writing” produced
“place” in moments of colonization, resistance and liberation. The city, as both constituted and
constitutive of what Spivak called the “politics of textuality”, is a privilege space from which to
question the many possible correlations between aesthetical and the political, the built environment
and narrative processes.
I will use an eclectic methodology, appropriating insights from urban studies, anthropology,
postcolonial studies, history, and sociology in order to better analyze discursive formations in the
negotiation of colonialism, communism and the postcondition, as well as its performance in the
urban. I propose to critically address works as: O Desejo de Kianda, O cão e os caluandas, by
Pepetela; Luuanda, by Luandino Vieira; Quem me dera ser onda, by Manuel Rui; a vast range of
newspapers collected from 2007 and 2010, as well as colonial and post-colonial legal and
administrative texts related to the regulation and planning of the urban. Some of the questions I will
address are the following: How these different kinds of texts, from literature to law, work in the
process of urban place making? How the multiples narratives and discourses about the city relate to
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and compete with each other, and to which extant can we talk about any homogeneous reading of
the cityscape? If discourse is not just speech (parole), but is actually productive of materiality, what is
the correlation between these discursive devices and the immediate materiality of the city, in its
architecture, monuments, and other component of the cityspace?
Caio Simões de Araújo is a researcher in the Centre for Linguistic and Cultural Studies of the
University of the State of São Paulo, Brazil, in the cluster for Democratic Citizenship, Ideology and
Culture. He is also a Gradute Student in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology of the
Centre European University (CEU), Budapest, in a program involving specialization in Urban Studies.
From 2008 to 2010, he was awarded a research scholarship by the Foundation for Science and
Technology (FCT) in the Centre for Social, at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, and worked in an
International Research Project on Legal Pluralism in Luanda, in a cooperation between the University
of Coimbra and the Faculty of Law of the University Agostinho Neto, in Angola. His main interests are
Urban Studies, Legal Anthropology, Urban Sociology, Postcolonialism and the politics of
representation.
Negotiating Hybridity in the ‘new’ Indian City?
Aditya Mohanty
Be it ‘New’ Economy, ‘New’ Middle Class or even ‘New’ Media for that matter, newness seems to be
the leitmotif of the post-industrial era. However following Castells’ classic formulation of ‘space of
flows’ and ‘space of places’, one is compelled to squint at the seeming spatio-temporal sublimation
of the ‘old’ for the ‘new’. But the existing scholarship in the arena tends to bypass such
developments as mere off-shoots of neo-liberalism. The present paper therefore proposes to
operate through the lenses of ‘mimicry’ as a tool of analysis, applied to an ethnographic study of
urban restructuring in the Indian megalopolis of Delhi.
The paper on its part especially focuses on the ‘Urban (Re)newal’ and ‘New Urbanism’ drives that are
being pursued by the State and the Market respectively. To elaborate further, on one hand, the
Indian State has of late, embarked on the World-Bank funded ‘Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban
Renewal Mission’ (JNNURM) as an antidote to the dual city syndrome. The paper strongly contends
hereupon that the present policy completely ignores the very specifics of urban renewal in
developing countries like India. On the other hand, the Market through its real estate avatar (i.e., the
DLF City Enclave in this case) has reinvented the suburbia by invoking a ‘phantasmagoria’ of global
life-style amongst the nouveau riche. Whether it is glitzy malls or branded home décor, the inflection
of consumerist imagery is indeed compelling in such spaces. It elucidates upon these facets by
interrogating the skewed operational dynamics of the JNNURM project and the ‘unintended
consequences’ of the growth of fringe cities. That is to say, if the former tends to close in the existing
service delivery differentials within the cityscape, the latter nullifies it by unbottling the genie of
gentrification and informalisation of urban spaces. Interestingly enough what needs to be examined
hereupon are the modalities through which a ‘new urbanism’ imagery effectuates a re-regulation of
the city and the countryside.
In toto, the paper attempts to look into the ways in which the two fold process, viz., (i) a valorization
and de-valorisation of the cityscape and (ii) neo-liberal urban restructuring, tends to locate the basic
question of the ‘Right to the City’. One ought to hence identify the splintering “post-metropolitan”
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landscape, which in a post-colonial city, portends to be an archipelago of enclosures that
differentially barricades individuals hailing from diverse social cleavages.
Aditya Mohanty intends to emerge as an academician of repute specializing in Culture Studies and
the Sociology of Development. Consequent to his Masters in Sociology at JNU, his four-year (20052009) stint in the voluntary sector has lent an invaluable degree of empiricism to his sociological
imagination. Since July 2009, he has been pursuing a PhD in Sociology at IIT, Kanpur as an Institute
Fellow. His doctoral thesis herein, which is tentatively titled, “Localism in a Megalopolis: The Case of
Bhagidari in Delhi”, attempts to squint at the poetics and politics of civil society in postcolonial urban
spaces.
The Good, the Bad, the Ugly:
Colonial Linkages and Postcolonial Ailments of African Muslim Cityscapes
Aliyu Barau
Colonialism had created permanent changes across colonised cities. It promoted social stratification
and spatial dichotomisation which have lasting effects on urban socio-spatial organisation and
ecological harmony. At least, one can give credit to colonial urbanism for perfecting multiculturalism
in the urban geography of the former colonies. However, in many African Muslim cities the spirit of
colonial urbanism persists through the inherited manpower which mainly thrives on western town
planning worldviews. The colonial economy, religion, recreation brought about changes to the
traditional African cityscapes. Within short time, colonial urbanism projects itself above the
combined influences of pre-colonial and Islamic urban management systems in such cities. However,
that is not without serious social and ecological implications for the African cities. This paper reviews
the postcolonial urban situations in the millennium-old city of Kano in northern Nigeria. The
diagnosis is premised on three different postcolonial discourses namely, modernisation paradigm;
culture-contact theory; and dependent peripheral capitalism. It appears that the public perceive that
with sense of mixed feelings. For the city’s current urban physical and social milieus, there is strong
evidence that the overriding influences of colonial concepts that characterise contemporary land use
policies do not generate favourable climate of sustainable urban development in the 21st century. Of
course this is not an outcome of lack of concord between African traditions, Islam and West. Instead,
the knowledge-means, dialogue and governance generate the seeming disagreements between
western planning values and inherent socio-ecological values of the African urbanism. The people
vested with skills of urban management and administration ‘thought’ and ‘act’ colonial, while
majority of the urban populace ‘think’ and ‘act’ in African socio-spatial mode.
Aliyu Salisu Barau was born in Kano, Nigeria in 1974. He was trained as geographer from first to
master’s degrees. He taught geography and environmental studies for eight at the Federal College of
Education, Kano. He travelled to Europe, Middle East, North and East Africa for conferences. His
interest in Kano nourished his interest to publish two books on the city namely: The Great Attractions
of Kano, and An Account of High Population in Kano State. He has also written and narrated
documentary films on Kano City. Aliyu is currently PhD researcher on urban sustainability at the
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.
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PANEL 22
Decolonizing
Discourses
‘Development’
and
Convenors:
Beatriz Junqueira Lage Carbone/Mirjam Tutzer
‘Democratization’
Discourses on development and democratization build on the notion of the global North and South
as divided entities. This notion encompasses the roles of people and their perspectives according to
their particular positions in global power and hierarchical structures. Development and
democratization in this case are seen as necessary and desirable, albeit due to humanitarian, security
or economic reasons.
As suggested by postcolonial criticism, the development idea is already part of a discourse. Ilan
Kapoor reminds us that there is no policy-making, which has not previously been imagined by,
mediated through or embedded in cultural productions including particular languages, images and
rhetorics. The reconstitution of the communicative process, which helps to shape the identity of a
group, requires the rescuing of the "sign" to which cultural ambivalences may be linked as well as
their historical continuities. It refers to what Foucault calls “a task concerned with detaching the
power of truth from the forms of hegemony (social, economic, cultural) within which it operates at
present”.
Once again, these discourses help to define the norms and connected interventions of the former
colonizer in the colonized world. By comparison, the development discourse obscures the
continuation of unequal access to the global market through the international division of labor and
exploitation of women’s mostly unlawful and informal work.
Therefore, the panel attempts to find ways to decolonize the mentioned discourses through the
writing of counter-historiographies and the observation of the agency of the subaltern. It draws
attention to how this agency can explore ways of contesting global power structures and create
opportunities to embed new actors and their perspectives in the global arena. In this panel, we shall
highlight the necessity of considering these mutually influencing factors, in particular the discourses
and actions which shape current representations of the subaltern and power structures. We shall
also examine the factors that hinder or impede the articulation and hearing of the knowledge and
perception of the subaltern groups.
Beatriz Junqueira Lage Carbone graduated in International Relations and later wrote a dissertation
for a Master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Campinas, in Brazil. In 2009 she was
awarded a grant for writing a research paper on the theme of Food Security (FAO (UN)/Unicamp).
Since October 2010, she is a PhD candidate under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Nikita Dhawan at the
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, in Germany. Her thesis is about conditional cash transfer
programs and predominant representations concerning the poor in Brazil. Her current research
interests are Postcolonial theory and power-knowledge relations, poverty, gender and prejudice in
Latin America.
Mirjam Tutzer holds a B.A. in Political Science and Mag. (M.A.) in International Development from
the University of Vienna, Austria. Currently she is a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Dr.
Nikita Dhawan at the Goethe-University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. In her dissertation she
focuses on questions of representation and agency by the subaltern in the context of ‘development’
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in Nairobi, Kenya. Hereby special consideration is laid on postcolonial legacies of power, inequality
and problem definition on the international as well as national level and their gendered implications.
The power of norms.
Normative (counter)-hegemony within EU-Africa relations
Franziska Müller
“Normative power”, “civilian power”, “hegemon” or “soft power” – various terms have been coined
to describe the EU’ s external role. In fact, the European conception of power cannot be reduced to
pure geopolitical interests. Instead, being a “power over ideas” comes closer to the EU’s identity as a
global actor. Yet most debates on normative power carry a strong Eurocentric and self-legitimizing
bias, as they do not question terms such as “export” or “diffusion” and tend to forget about
contestations of norms. Empirical research on such forms of European external governance has
mainly focused on issues such as democracy promotion within neighbouring countries. EU-Africa
relations have only seldom been a subject of political science research. Thus, my research interest
lies in offering a critical perspective on normative power in the field of development policies and
specifically regarding productive linkages between aid and trade.
Empirically-wise my paper focuses on European practices within developmental and aid policies.
Here I take a closer look at EU-Africa relations with a specific focus on the free trade negotiations
between the EU and the Southern African Development Community (SADC): What we can find here is
the ongoing search for a new relationship that replaces the trade-focused protectionist Lomé regime
with a post-liberal order that is shaped by the policy narratives of “partnership” and “ownership”,
and aims to build a bridge between the discourses of trade, aid, security and development. Yet, on
the micro-level of discourses and narratives, the political project of “norm export” lacks its
persuasive power specifically when applied in postcolonial contexts. Struggles over meaning,
practices of re-interpretation and normative contestation are a common feature.
Theoretically-wise the aim of my paper is to critically challenge the debates on “norm export” and
“norm diffusion” within IR theory, with the help of a theoretical framework combining approaches of
critical IR theory and interpretive policy analysis.
Franziska Müller holds a M.A. in Political Science/International Relations and Cultural Anthropology.
She has been a researcher for “AgChange – Conflicts of Agricultural Policy” at University of Hamburg,
is an alumna of the Heinrich-Boell Foundation and currently works as a researcher at TU Darmstadt.
Her work focuses on Critical International Relations, EU external governance, Trade and development
policy and qualitative research. Her PhD thesis focuses on normative and discursive changes within
EU-Africa relations.
De-colonising the EU’s democratisation policy
through the Maghreb periphery
Bohdana Dimitrovova
Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Morocco this paper attempts to decode the EU democratisation
policy from the recipient’s point of view and to examine the ways Moroccan actors respond to
European democratisation practices and discourses. From a theoretical point of view, this paper is
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shaped along the line of post-colonial theories which have been overlooked in EU foreign policy
studies and which critically engage with the core-periphery nexus. Considering that the role of postcolonial is to listen as well to learn from historically silenced voices it is then theoretical opportunity
to investigate the ‘Other’ not as a threat but rather as a source of new ideas, as an opportunity for
the EU’s much needed self-reflection and re-assessment of its policies. Inspired by the post-colonial
understanding of the periphery which allows the possibility of impacting upon the centre this paper
moves away from assumptions of submissive and passive Morocco. It is argued that postcolonial
theories are well-equipped to address anomalies and contradictions produced in the context of
modernisation which is at the heart of the EU external relations.
Bohdana Dimitrovova is a Research Associate at the International Relations Diplomacy Department
at the College of Europe in Bruges and Associate Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy
Studies in Brussels. Prior joining the College in 2010 she was at the Centre for Border Research at
Radboud Nijmegen University where she conducted research on external perceptions of the EU
foreign policy in the Maghreb countries. In 2008 she was awarded a post-doctoral research grant by
the Volkswagen Stiftung within its European Foreign and Security Policy Studies Programme. Ms.
Dimitrovova was selected as OSCE Polling supervisor for elections in Kosovo (2001) and EU election
observer in Burundi (2005) and Congo (2006).
On the peripheral ambivalence of culture and economy
Stefan Klein
This paper aims to critically assess the notion of “postcolonial” from a former colonial stand through
the strenuousness of sustaining a generalized “”stance. Doubting a market seen only in terms of its
downturns, I initially clarify how an alternative to a market-driven economy could only be envisaged
from what in Brazilian social theory is called a “”or “”viewpoint, since colonies did not bear concrete
choice of abiding to the market, at best being able to steer certain directions of their development.
This led way to “developmentalism”, for decades the chief economic theory in Brazil blending a
blurred nation-project with capitalist economic development. Although the general rules followed
capitalist organization culture cannot be negated, leading to a particular kind of economic
organization –specially as a vast and differentiated Brazilian territory makes it fairly difficult to speak
of homogeneous economy, culture and population. Thereafter I take up the theory of Celso Furtado
who in his book Myth of economic development (1973) already pointed out as indispensable that
Brazil should part ways with established economic models to pursue a path of its own. His
interpretation refers to general limits posed by (lacking) natural resources to widespread capitalist
development, simultaneously hinting a path that could be taken by Southern (“”) countries. This
debate shall also deal with the validity or not of the well known “”concept as applied to a certain
trajectory of development. Since economic debate in Brazil strongly embraced the relation between
the roles of the state and the entrepreneurI shall stress differences in comparison to the
“theory”formulated by Max Horkheimer.
Hence Furtado's theory implies a dialectic approach, underlining how the type of linkage enforced
certain changes in a country to demand more or less profound adapting needs throughout the rest of
the world, especially in regard to postcolonial regions. Such a tie expresses the impossibility to
pinpoint the market in isolated fashion as responsible for certain changes: it has to be seen as “part”
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of a whole including culture. Thus I address the (dialectic) interactionof culture and economy in
creating an ongoing ambivalence.
Stefan Klein obtained a M.Sc. in Sociology (2006) at Universidade de São Paulo (USP) on domination
and emancipation in capitalist society under Herbert Marcuse's critical theory. Since 2008 he writes a
doctoral dissertation (CNPq grant) at USP on aspects of university and Bildung in the critical theory of
Max Horkheimer, having spent twelve months as doctoral scholar (2009/2010) at Goethe Universität
Frankfurt (DAAD-grant). Currently he is assistant professor at the Instituto Federal de Educação,
Ciência e TecnoloŐŝĂĚĞ'ŽŝĄƐ͘
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PANEL 23
Postcolonial Education
Convenors:
Susanne Becker/Aki (Archana) Krishnamurthy
Not only Postcolonial Theory has emphasised that education and educational systems are main
factors when it comes to reproducing social inequalities in society. To understand inequalities within
a (post-) colonial framework we have to detect colonial legacies within education. Therefore the role
of educational systems in reproducing colonial knowledge will be the focus of this panel. Hereby not
only educational systems in former colonies are part of a postcolonial system of education. This
panel also asks how (post-) colonialism has influenced and still effects education in countries of the
global north, criticizing especially a nation-based/nationalised logic of knowledge production.
Although the term education and the educational system as such has to be seen as a colonial legacy
in many contexts we want to discuss the possibilities of decolonizing education and how to
decolonize knowledge production within the given structures of an educational system.
Susanne Becker holds a degree in Sociology from Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. Her
research interests are feminist postcolonial theory, critical migration studies and the study of social
inequalities. Her PhD project focuses on negotiations about the value of language and is supervised
by Prof. Nikita Dhawan at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University Frankfurt.
Aki (Archana) Krishnamurthy is a Political Scientist, who in the last few years worked internationally
with methods of the theatre of the oppressed from a gender perspective. She coordinated a project
of a touring exhibition in Latin America, which was constructed collectively and showed struggles of
women and men, engaging for peace from a gender perspective. Currently she is doing her PhD on
the role of shame in the reproduction of gendered power relations in Germany and southern India
from a postcolonial feminist perspective at the Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main.
A postcolonial approach to the internationalisation of higher education
Eva Hartmann
For around 200 years, universities have been instrumental in enabling the national bureaucracy to
administer society and constituting the nation state with its “imagined community” (Anderson 1991).
The massification of higher education is to be seen in the context of the further extension of the
state as a welfare state, which went hand in hand with increased social mobility and a scientification
of politics (Wagner, Wittrock et al. 1991; Wittrock 1991; Meyer, Ramirez et al. 1992). The current
internationalisation strategy of higher education challenges this national orientation. This shift has
major implications for the way we study higher education. In this paper I argue that we need to
overcome a methodological nationalism that has dominated the research on (higher) education so
far. Methodological nationalism takes the national state as the unquestioned analytical unit, and
runs the risk of overlooking the interdependency between different countries and reifying the
equation between nation, state and society (Chernilo 2006; Beck 2002). By contrast, this paper
outlines a new research agenda that takes the global as point of departure and develops an
interdisciplinary perspective that draws on accounts from Higher Education and Social Mobility
studies, Post-colonial Studies and Critical International Political Economy (IPE) (Hartmann 2011). The
contribution outlines a theory of the university and education in more general terms that takes into
account its context including time and scale. It illustrates the implications of such a different
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perspective for the conceptualisation of reforms aiming at increasing social mobility and access to
higher education institutions. At the core is the changing function of higher education when the flow
of global students is about to become part of a vision according to which each student, regardless of
his or her origins, should have access to all the universities of the world. The paper will conclude with
some recommendations that not only address international but also national policy-making. The
Swiss policy and politics in this field will be taken as a case in point with a view to illustrating the
latter dimension.
Eva Hartmann is a Lecturer in the Institute of Political and International Studies of the University of
Lausanne. Her work focuses on the internationalisation of higher education and the global labour
market, state theory, international law and international political economy. Her most recent book
analyses the global dimension of the Bologna Process from a state-theoretical and postcolonial
perspective. She has also written on the difficult relation between international law and politics.
Integration, nation and education – Postcolonial questioning of an
entanglement by means of a historical perspective on a current discourse
Selma Haupt
Reflecting the concept of the nation in its historical emergence and at the same time focusing on the
formation of the concept of Bildung/education, I want to show that these two ideas strongly belong
together, historically as well as currently. This alliance became socially relevant in the beginning of
the 19th century, the century of the nation building processes as well as in Germany of the
emergence of the intellectual bourgeoisie (Bildungsbürgertum). In this time the two concepts (nation
and Bildung) influenced each other as well as their success was mutually dependent. This can be
shown for example in Fichtes discourses to the German nation or in the (national) monolingual
habitus that emerged in this time and is still effective today. In a discourse analysis of the actual
“integration”-debate I want to show, how a postcolonial perspective on nation and
Bildung/education can sharpen and interpret this debate by showing how this has been discussed
and what the patterns were. A postcolonial question of the alliance of integration, nation and
education in the actual discourse will then show a different picture of this debate and can open up
new perspectives in the field of emancipatory postcolonial knowledge.
Since 2009 Selma Haupt is a research associate at the faculty of educational and social science at
Bergische Universität Wuppertal. She is writing her dissertation on "The Nexus of Education and
Nation. A Discourse Analysis of Historical and Current Entanglement".
Disappearing certitudes –
about the colonial legacy in education, (post-) colonial knowledge structures
and counter-hegemonic struggles in Burkina Faso
Marietta Mayrhofer-ĞĄŬ
Scholarly approaches to instruction, teaching, learning and knowledge sharing are still predominantly
produced in the institutional sites of the Western academy in Europe and the USA. During the last
decades, the so called “eurocentric” educational theory has mainly focused on the expansion of
various types of schooling and their impact on social (in)equality. The developed theories have been
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to a large extent quantitative-oriented. Three main criticisms are worth to be mentioned: 1. Most of
the theories are based on the social structures of “Western” societies, considering the school system
as part of modernity, interpreted as an (expanding) intra-European phenomenon (Escobar 2004). 2.
They do not consider, exclude and/or erase the experience of colonial conquest and occupation in
the global “South” (Connell 2007). 3. They usually separate so-called “indigenous education” from
“formal education”, without questioning the dichotomy between “modernity” and “tradition”.
Reducing the term education to governmentally legitimated schooling implies that there had been no
education in what was later to become Burkina Faso before the French occupation. Was the
occupied country thus a “terra nullius”, a blank space, before? Of course, it was not – but the fact
that sociologists usually refer only to “modern school systems” and “literacy rates” may symbolize
the power relations between different forms of knowledge. Postcolonial theorists from the global
South were using alternative approaches since the very beginning: e.g. Frantz Fanon, Paolo Freire,
Ivan Illich and Joseph Ki-Zerbo. Their works have become part of the classical canon of critical and
postcolonial theory, but they are often neglected when it comes to empirical analysis in modern
education sciences. In this lecture, I thus take on the question of hegemonic or rather unequal
knowledge structures and try to relate theoretical perspectives from the global “South” with
empirical data from Burkina Faso. The fact that teachers are punishing pupils for the use of their
mother tongue at school is discussed in the light of a possible multiplicity of equally legitimated
forms of knowledge. If we can understand the main structures of “coloniality” in French Westafrica
(1900-1960) and if we conclude that there is a colonial legacy in education – are there “counter
hegemonic struggles” or “everyday forms of resistance” (James C. Scott)?
Marietta Mayrhofer-ĞĄŬ, born in 1985, holds three MA degrees in International Development,
Sociology and French Studies from the University of Vienna. She has volunteered with various NGOs
in and outside Europe and became a lecturer at the University of Vienna in 2010. As a student of law,
teacher and researcher, she focuses on alternative perspectives from the global “South” and critical
education in transcultural environments. Her PhD thesis in sociology aims at a reconstruction of
colonial knowledge structures in French West Africa (AOF) and its heritage for today, including
empirical research in Burkina Faso.
A Course on Colonial Attitude and Representations
Ozlem Basak
In this paper, I will be explicating the decolonising potential I envisage for a lecture course that I
designed as an interdisciplinary elective at undergraduate level. This course investigates ‘colonial
attitude’ as a ‘life’ phenomenon, implicit or explicit in cultural politics, and traces it in its historical
and contemporary guises and disguises in the public domain. Through a series of lectures, case
studies, learning activities and exercises, students will critically engage with postcolonial theory,
explorations of colonial mentality and representations, and repercussions of ‘coloniality’. The course
aims to foster critical thinking and to raise awareness against ‘coloniality’. This course adopts an
interdisciplinary approach which combines methods /perspectives of social, historical, and cultural
studies with critical theory to explore the relationships between theory, power, representations and
socio-historical circumstances in terms of an enduring ‘colonial attitude’ in its various appearances. I
envisage this as an interactive and experimental course that would allow for critical interruptions to
eurocentric representations and attitudes, be it in theory, academia, media or in wider social
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relations and practicalities. This would be the major task in opening the way to multiple cultures and
perspectives. As well as introducing students to the basic concepts and debates in postcolonial
theory, the course aims to develop students’ ability and responsibility for critical understanding and
assessment of ‘coloniality’ in theory and practice. Students are expected to gradually develop the
intellectual capabilities and academic skills to apply the acquired critical theoretical framework to the
analysis and evaluation of socio-cultural phenomena and public discourse. Revisions of Eurocentric
knowledge that persists in Western academia would be crucial in exposing and deconstructing
colonial mentality and its representations.
About Ozlem Basak: Returning to postgraduate study after a period of professional career, I
completed an MA in English Literature & Humanities and another MA in Cultural Studies. I’m
currently a PhD Student at Goldsmiths, University of London studying the work of Heidegger and his
critique of Western philosophical tradition which can perhaps be taken as an attempt of decolonising the Western mind. I have interdisciplinary research interests in critical theory,
contemporary thought, social and cultural thought; literary theory, especially post-structural thought
and post-colonial studies. I’m currently interested in the worldwide movements of de-colonial
thinking.
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PANEL 24
The Politics of Affect: Relics, Landscapes, and Conflicts of the
Middle East
Convenor:
E. Efe Cakmak
One of the most inspiring developments of the last few decades in the humanities and the social
sciences is a bridging-effect. This bridging has been long in the making, particularly in the works of
Bruno Latour, and finally it has found its expression via what has been coined the “affective turn.”
The affective turn in the humanities and the social sciences respond to the “linguistic turn,” whose
revolutionary discourse today dominates not only literary studies but the humanities at large. The
poetics of “things” and “landscapes,” according to this trajectory, is framed by the idea of ‘affect’ as
developed by Deleuze and Guattari and further by Thrift in ‘non-representational theory’, a rubric
that moves us beyond the preoccupation of subjectivity and discourse in social theory. Attempting to
open researcher’s imagination to a study of non- or pre-linguistic registers of experience, the nondiscursivity of affect allows a ‘scenic or territorializing’ bent of thought. Papers in this panel focus on
things, landscapes, and relics as they relate to memory and its politics. We will analyse, with a crossdisciplinary approach, the non- or pre-linguistic registers of experience, memory, and politics in a
(post)-colonial environment, namely the Middle East.
Words and Fireworks
E. Efe Cakmak
On the one hand we have the predictable Islamophobic “fears about Islamic uproars” – but on the
other, we have the argument that revolts across the Arab world were organized by the “educated,”
somewhat “westernized” youths. The latter, that is to say the whitification of the Spring 2011 revolts
is also the position of most left-wing intellectuals today. It clearly is a response to the logic of the
“fears about Islamic uproars.” But this discourse says one thing and one thing alone: let the Egyptian
women fold the flags high and pick up a child or two, and let's find a painter too – voila! But why play
Delacroix? Is this the only thing we can do? Is there any other way of representing the revolts? How
can we take the ritualistic, Islamic aspect of the Arab revolts seriously? How do Fridays mark the
spring of year 2011? How did mosques function during the revolts as places of gathering? How to
account for the figure called Tahrir square of Egypt?
E. Efe Cakmak is a Visiting Fellow at Sciences-Po in Paris and Gutenberg University in Mainz.
A landscape of war
Munira Khayyat
This paper examines the landscape as a site of convergence of life and war. The landscape in
question is the borderland of South Lebanon that unfurls as an agricultural-military complex formed
in entangled cycles of seasons, and seasons of war. This paper is an ethnographic inquiry into life in a
rural warzone, a naturalized battlefield, a life-world strung between the arts of cultivation and
sciences of devastation. Fields of tobacco, ancient olives, haunted oaks, goats and bees, purple
grasslands and thorny wilderness: what do those tell us about war? This paper attends closely to the
136
stories of the land and the practice and process of agriculture to gain an understanding of the
rhythms of cultivation and conflict shaping South Lebanon and the experience of inhabiting war.
Munira Khayyat is a PhD candidate in Anthropology, Columbia University
Egypt at the Linguistic Impasse of the Romantic Imagination:
Animality, Melancholia, and Necrophilia in Balzac, Vigny, and Gautier
Burcu Gürsel
In Balzac’s “Une passion dans le désert” [“A Passion in the Desert,” 1830], Alfred de Vigny’s
unfinished historical novel Scènes du désert (L’Almeh) [Scenes from the Desert; 1831], and Théophile
Gautier’s Roman de la mommie [Romance of the Mummy, 1858] fiction explores the military and
archeological invasion of Egypt as a linguistic impasse. Language is questioned as the terrain of
radical otherness and desire between human (in the form of the French invading soldier) and animal
(in the form of the leapord of the desert) that borders on the zoophilic (Balzac). Language is the
polyglot’s key to and burden of a complicit and melancholic consciousness, in the midst of violent
historical change (Vigny). Language becomes, this time, the medium to be recreated in the likeness
of a mythic archaeological artifact, giving life to fetishistic and necrophilic desire (Gautier). In all
these works language itself becomes the figure, onto itself, of the aestheticization of the
transgressive, against the backdrop of military transgression.
Burcu Gürsel is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at FU-Berlin.
The Aftermath of Memory in Lebanon
Yasmine Khayat
War, civil and uncivil, has riddled Lebanon’s terrain and engendered multiple sites of trauma that
have been largely ignored and allowed to withdraw into the wayside of history and memory.
Lebanon’s lengthy civil war (1975-1990) was “publicly forgotten” for over a decade and
architecturally papered over in the post-war period. When the violence receded, a new form of
epistemic violence wreaked havoc on the memory of war, even encouraging collective amnesia
through face-lifting urban (re)design. Glaring reminders of war were either removed from the city
center in the post-war period, forgotten, or re-presented. These sites and spaces of memory and
trauma continually haunt the city yet lack the currency of ‘official’ public memorials. My paper
examines such ‘forgotten’ sites of trauma associated with war in Lebanon and inquires into their
fraught relationship to memory production. I read these forgotten sites of memory as antimonuments that enable memory through their very absences. How these subdued memory sites
struggle to represent their pasts and fashion their narratives for future generations forms the crux of
my inquiry. Does memory necessarily atrophy in the absence of a memorial framework? My project
ultimately seeks to illuminate whether these subdued, erased, or even dislocated sites can loom
even larger in their absence. Inquiring into the relationship between structure and memory
production will also reveal some of the complexities of Lebanon’s politics of mourning and the state
of memory discourse at large within a country that is still reeling from its war-ridden past(s).
Yasmine Khayat is a Ph.D. Candidate in MEALAC (Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures) and
ICLS (Institute for Comparative Literature and Society) at Columbia University.
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Cultural Program
Spoken Word Performance
Philipp Khabo Köpsell
Afrodeutsche Wort- und Streitkunst
16 June 2011
9:00 p.m.
Casino 1.802
About Philipp Khabo Köpsell:
Berlin-based poet and spoken word performer of German and South African descent. Koepsell is a
recent graduate of Humboldt-University's African Studies department and is currently enroled at
University Bayreuth for Intercultural Anglophone Studies.
He is author of "Die Akte James Knopf. Afrodeutsche Wort- und Streitkunst", a book of poetry in
which he reflects on racism, society and Germany's colonial past. In addition to the book and his
readings/performances based on his work he is creator of the weblog "Die James Knopf: Fussnoten zu
Gesellschaft und Rassismus, Empowerment und Performance". The blog features satirical essays,
academic papers, poetry and video clips on the topic of racism and empowerment.
Workshop
Maddalena d’Alfonso & Michele Vianello
New Towns in India – The new Indian landscape
18 June 2011
10:00-12:00h
IG 0.457
Presentation with visual material
The research is aimed at a critical and historical reconstruction of a relevant episode of modern
urbanism: the foundation of nine modern new towns in India, commissioned by Nehru in the
aftermath of the Partition and programmed to re-balance the demographic pressure, modernise and
democratise the country. The cities, among which Chandigarh is the most renown example, with its
hierarchized-traffic streets grid and its Capitol Complex, have not been only the spatial prefiguration
of process of change in the strategies for producing settlements. In fact, thanks to the work of
international teams (as well as Le Corbusier, O. Koenigsberger successively UN collaborator, J. Drew,
M. Fry, P. Jeanneret, A. Mayer, P. L. Varma along with local professionals), these cities have set up an
original perspective in terms of spatial justice, religious and ethnic coexistence and secularity of
public space. The research is willing to explore the links connecting the European urban and social
development and the Indian one, considering modernity as a common classicality, although
burdened of contradictions. The objective is to bring out the values signified, during the construction
of modernity in its Indian version, by hybridisations between local and international ideas and
between utopia and context.
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Film Screenings
Biko’s Children –
On the occasion of the 35 anniversary of the 1976 Soweto Student Uprising
th
16 June 2011
16:00-18:00h
IG 0.201
Biko’s Children (14 Mins, 2007)
Directed by Vuyisa ‘Breeze’ Yoko
“If Biko was alive he would have been hip-hop …”
- Breeze
We all know what Biko said yesterday but what does he have to say about today and tomorrow? In
this piece the filmmaker goes in search of Biko and uses Biko’s philosophical mirror to force
reflection. Two young black South Africans who use Biko’s image as part of their daily bread and
butter are forced to make sense of his teachings and to engage in a meaningful conversation with
their “father”… Who are the people who claim Biko? How do they make sense of his thoughts now?
Breeze Yoko is a Johannesburg-based multimedia artist specialising in video and graffiti. In 2007,
Biko’s Children won an Audience Award at the Tricontinental Film Festival, South Africa. The
following year it gained international acclaim, picking up the Special Jury Award at the Sienna Film
Festival, Italy, and a nomination for the Blachèere Foundation Prize at the Dak’Aart Biennale,
Senegal. Following this success Yoko was selected to take part in the 2008 Berlinale Talent Campus.
Yoko’s work is informed by global street culture and the universal language of hip-hop. It is also
concerned with pan-Africanism, and the reclaiming and forging of old and new “schemes, forms and
strategies” (as Biko put it) in the realms of culture and politics.
Decolonizing the University: Fulfilling the Dream of the Third World College
17 June 2011
16:00-18:00h
HoF E.20
Decolonizing the University: Fulfilling the Dream of the Third World College (23 min, DV, 2010)
Directed by John Hamilton
On February 26th and 27th, 2010, a gathering of activists, artists and scholars commemorated the
40th anniversary of Ethnic Studies by coming together at the University of California at Berkeley to
renew and revisit the idea of the Third World College and of decolonizing the university. Viewed by
participants as both a celebration and a space for urgent work, the conference emphasized how the
university can and should become a more welcoming space to people of color as well as an
important institution that forges the desegregation and decolonization of society and knowledge at
large. The documentary shows highlights of the two days gathering.
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Jahaji Music: India in the Caribbean
Followed by a discussion with Tejaswini Niranjana
18 June 2011
13:00-15:00h
IG 0.251
Jahaji Music: India in the Caribbean (112 mins, DV, 2007)
Directed by Surabhi Sharma, conceptualised and co-produced by Tejaswini Niranjana
From the mid-nineteenth century Indian labourers arrived in the Caribbean on boats, bringing a few
belongings and their music; the beginnings of a remarkable cultural practice. More than 150 years
later musician Remo Fernandes travels to the Islands to explore potential collaborations and create
new work. Jahaji Music is a record of a difficult, if unusual and complex, musical journey. We walk
around Trenchtown with Bob Marleys teacher and rastafari philosopher Mortimo Planno; accompany
calypso and soca singer Rikki Jai to Skinner Park; chat with visual artist Chris Cozier in the Savannah;
follow Dancehall Queen Stacey to Weddy Weddy Wednesday; groove to Lady Saw’s lyrics; record a
new song with Denise Saucy Wow Belfon and are guests at an East Indian Hindu wedding.
Endeavouring, through it all, to weave a story of memory, identity and creativity. Jahaji Music is an
attempt to make meaning of aspects of contemporary culture in Trinidad and Jamaica, even as it is a
witness to the nature and possibilities of artistic collaboration.
About Tejaswini Niranjana:
Tejaswini Niranjana is Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore,
India. Her most recent book is Mobilizing India: Women, Music and Migration between India and
Trinidad (Duke UP, 2006). She is also the author of Siting Translation: History, Post-structuralism and
the Colonial Context (California, 1992). She has published widely in the areas of feminist theory,
translation, and film studies, and is an executive editor of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies journal.
Guided Tours
The IG-Farben Campus: Its Past and Present
Guided tour provided by „Initiative Studierender am IG Farben Campus“
(Students Initiative at IG Farben Campus)
16 June 2011 16:00h – 18:00h
Meeting Point: IG-Farben Building, Main entrance
This guided tour deals with the role of the IG Farbenindustrie AG, a corporation of the main German
chemical factories founded in 1925 that grew in stature during National Socialism. The IG
Farbenindustrie AG had its headquarters in the IG Farben building, which now houses several
departments of the Goethe University. IG Farben ran its own concentration camp – Buna/Monowitz
– situated close to Auschwitz, where thousands of people – mainly of Jewish descent – provided
forced labour. Those who were or became unable to work were sent to the gas chambers of the
extermination camp.
The guided tour will address the past history and role of IG Farben in the preparation of World War II
on the one hand, and it will also touch on post-war events and the compensation issue on the other.
140
The biography of Nobert Wollheim, for whom the memorial on the grounds of the campus has been
named, will provide a closer look at the many murder victims and the few survivors. Being a survivor
of forced labour at the concentration camp Buna/Monowitz himself, he filed a compensation suit
against the IG Farben AG in the 1950s. Additionally, the ongoing negotiation with the university on
finding adequate means of remembering the crimes of the IG Farben AG on these grounds will be
addressed.
The Students Initiative at IG Farben Campus was founded when the Goethe University moved into
the IG Farben building in 2001. Since then, the initiative critically addresses the University’s way of
dealing with the past of the new campus on the grounds of the former IG Farben Headquarters and
with the University’s own history during National Socialism. In addition to annual commemorations
and the reading of names of NS victims, in 2010 the initiative organised a lecture series entitled
„Studieren nach Auschwitz. Universität und Nationalsozialismus“ (Studying after Auschwitz.
University and National Socialism).
http://initiativestudierenderamigfarbencampus.wordpress.com
Frankfurt's Colonial Hangover
A City Tour
17 June 2011
18:15h
Casino Foyer
Challenging the current public understanding that 'Germany has only played a minor role in colonial
conquest', we would like to invite you to find a counter reading in the cityscape of Frankfurt. Among
the many relicts of its citizen's involvement in the colonial project and the promotion of racism in all
kinds of academic as well as popular spheres, the development of new forms of colonial revisionism
and romanticism are evident beneath the skyline of Europe's bank metropole.
The tour will take about two hours and is generally suitable for wheelchairs and pushchairs. Please
allow us to be prepared by giving us a short notice on any special needs:
ffm@postkolonial.net or +49 (0)162 54 78 149
Organized by: „Frankfurt postcolonial“
Exhibitions
Chris Campe
I remember (2010-11)
Casino, first floor
Pastel crayon and chalkboard paint on wooden board
In fall 2010 I came to Chicago and took a class in postcolonial theory at an art school. I was reading
Said, Bhabha and Spivak and trying to connect thoses theories with the history and politics of
racialized identity and everyday racism in the U.S. This made me wonder about the unquestioned
assumptions I had grown up with on a farm in rural northern Germany during the 1980s. Inspired by
141
Joe Brainard's poem "I remember", in which Brainard recounts individual pieces of memories from
his childhood in Oklahoma and his life as a gay artist in New York City during the 1960s and 70s, I
compiled a kind of personalized postcolonial history.
About Chris Campe: Chris Campe studied Illustration because as she says drawing was the only thing
she kept trying even though it never came out the way she wanted it to. She has worked as an
illustrator and graphic designer and published a book on shop signs in Hamburg. Currently, she
studies Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. Chris Campe draws,
writes and organizes. In her work she wants theory to do something for drawing, other than just
retrospectively analyzing the results and she would like drawing to do something for critical theory,
other than straightforwardly illustrating it. Chris is particularely interested in visual representation of
gender identities in drawing. Some of that interest is documented on her website
www.queeristics.de
Karla Villavicencio
Montañas imaRginales: Aesthetic reflexions on Urbanity
in the periphery of Lima
17 June 2011
10:00-12:00h
HoF E.20
Video Projection, Lecture and Discussion
Montañas ImaRginales is an artistic project that wants to give a new perspective of urban development
and its aesthetic codes in a Latin American postcolonial context. The presentation of a photographic
documentation and a video projection focuses on a group of indigenous Peruvians settled as migrants on
the hillside of Lima’s periphery. Karla Villavicencio demonstrates how these immigrants transform the
city’s landscape by constructing architectural spaces, urban structures and organisations that lead to the
material and symbolic creation of an intangible patrimony based on collective values. Regarding
territorial, social and political questions within a postcolonial frame, the presentation aims at showing
how this marginalised group of indigenous migrants reconquers urban spaces dynamically.
Karla Villavicencio studied in Peru and Spain and finished her PhD in architecture at the Universidad
Europea in Madrid. She works as an artist on projects that consider the evolution of city spaces in
multicultural societies throughout the world. Her intention is to show the visual memory of social
processes in architectural spaces of contemporary cities. Further information can be found on her
webside:
http://karlavillavicencio.blogspot.com
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Notes
143
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Conference Brochure - Frankfurt Research Center for Postcolonial

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