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Call for Papers "Postcolonialism and the Hit of the Real" International Conference New York University New York (USA) 6-8 March 2008 __________________________________________________ How valid, in retrospect, is the founding claim of the postcolonial that it offers a different view of the real? If the world outside the west had been understood through traditions of western representation which ignored the reality of what was actually there, silencing different cultures, epistemologies, and the lives that were lived in them, how successfully has postcolonial studies intervened to enable the former subjects of Western representations to determine the representation of their own realities? Reflecting a desire to address the materiality of questions that provided the original impetus for postcolonial thinking, scholars from a range of perspectives have attempted to reinsert the notion of the 'real' at the center of their academic praxis. Recent and historical interest in the value and valence of 'experience', the location and teleology of the 'vernacular', and a formalistic aesthetics of realism all converge around the specters of the real, together constituting a major theoretical effort to rearticulate the terms of what constitutes postcolonial reality and experience, and how, through what modes, forms, and genres, such realities might be best represented. We seek to confront through this conference one of the ongoing tensions in postcolonial studies: the concern for articulating aesthetic issues of realism and representation and theoretical reflections upon the real, with the complex postcolonial realities of underdevelopment, violence, political instability and gender inequality. This conference hopes to augment these addresses to the real and pursue further engagement with the conditions of its possibility or impossibility. We invite papers that will: - Offer definitions and discussion of the real, reality, and realism in the postcolonial context; - Explore the real understood as the material, historical, or political aspects of postcolonialismor challenge this understanding; - Theorize underdevelopment and the existing empirical methods of description, analysis, and measurement; - Inquire into the identification of the real with such terms as experience, truth, authenticity, and reality, in the postcolonial context; - Define the limits and possibilities of postcolonialism as critique, intervention, politics; - Revisit the relationship between formal realism (in cinema, literature) and postcolonial reality: was there a disjuncture, as has been suggested, between European social realism and the colonial world; and is there, concomitantly, a better fit between that reality and alternative models of realism? - Rethink the division of intellectual labor which would posit theory as the domain of the West/metropole and the periphery as the raw material or ground of reality for such theoretical productions; - Examine anew the dialectic of form and content in postcolonial texts: has providing a more adequate representation become an end in itself? What are the consequences of the privileging of content over form and value? What role do cultural forms, more broadly, and genre, more specifically, play in the determination of postcolonial canon formation? How might we explain the dominance of the novel and film among the various forms of literary and cultural expression? Confirmed keynote speakers: Pheng Cheah (University of California, Berkeley) Simon Gikandi (Princeton) Anne McClintock (University of Wisconsin) Alok Rai (University of Delhi) While we expect proposals for papers and panels to be located within the broad problematic of postcolonialism and the real, they need not be limited to the questions listed above. We welcome analysis of a broad range of issues and texts (literature, cinema, theatre, popular culture, visual arts, theory), theoretical interventions, disciplinary and interdisciplinary reflections, and provocations. We also welcome contributions discussing material relevant to geographies of colonialism outside that of the British Empire (e.g. French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese colonies or former colonies). Please visit the conference web-site for updates on program, registration and accommodation details in due course. Individual Papers: Please send abstracts of 150-200 words with the subject line, Postcolonial Conference Abstract, by December 15, 2007. Panel Proposals: Each panel should include 3 presenters and the name of the panel organizer. No presentation to exceed 20 minutes in length and no panel to exceed 1-1/2 hours. Please include a brief description of the panel as well as individual abstracts for each of the papers. Please include full name, institutional affiliation, title, phone number and email address with your proposal. Convenors: Professors Toral Gajarawala, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Jini Kim Watson, Robert JC Young (NYU) Contact: Postcolonial Conference New York University Email: [email protected] Web: http://www.nyupoco.com/html/conference_2008.html __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org
