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Conference Announcement "Critical and Decolonial Dialogues Across South-North and East-West" International Workshop Roosevelt Academy, University of Utrecht Center for Global Studies and the Humanities, Duke University Middelburg (Netherlands) 7-9 July 2010 __________________________________________________ The aim of the three days workshop is to build a series of critical dialogues around issues of Education, Development, (un)Freedom, Conviviality, Global Justice and Epistemic Decolonization with the ultimate goal of instigating conversations and collaborative projects between decolonial approaches and current European critical visions in the humanities and the social sciences. The workshop seeks to create networks of epistemic and political actions and interventions toward building alternatives. The collapse of abstract universals (Christianity, Liberalism, Marxism, Islamism) as the road to Paradise are enough evidence that there is no one global future or destiny to work toward, but the need to change the present demands to take seriously the concept and practice of “dialogue.” A dialogue that is only possible within a diversity of horizons. In Europe, there is a legacy of critical reflection on modernity that is rarely brought to dialogue with decolonial thinking. On the other hand, decolonial reflection on modernity is grounded on a genealogy of thought that is rarely, if ever, taken into consideration by European critiques of modernity. What are the issues, the concerns, the concepts, the investments of these two trajectories of critical thoughts? What do they have in common and to what extent they complement each other? By critical reflections we refer here to the legacies of the Frankfurt School but also to post-modern and post-structuralist critique of modernity in Europe. By decolonial reflections we refer to the legacies of decolonial political revolutions after WWI, to the epistemic legacies that emerged from that experience (i.e. Gandhi, Shengor, Cesaire, Cabral, Fanon) as well as to current de-colonial thinking in South America, the Caribbean, among Native Americas and Latino/as in the US. The dialogue South-North and East-West intends to cut across hegemonic geopolitics of knowledge. By critical reflections we also mean pursuing research that on the one hand unveils the persistent rhetoric of modernity, growth, development, happiness that hides its need to increasing poverty, growing marginalization and unhappiness for billions of people in the planet. The workshop is grounded on the belief that there is great need to bring together committed researchers, thinkers and practitioners to engage in a series of open and learned dialogues. In particular this workshop aims to promote a South-North theoretical encounter around the need to work toward decolonization of knowledge, and hence epistemic justice. By critical reflections we also mean pursuing research that on the one hand unveils the persistent rhetoric of modernity, growth, development, happiness that hides its need to increasing poverty, growing marginalization and unhappiness for billions of people in the planet. The workshop is grounded on the belief that there is great need to bring together committed researchers, thinkers and practitioners to engage in a series of open and learned dialogues. In particular this workshop aims to promote a South-North theoretical encounter around the need to work toward decolonization of knowledge, and hence epistemic justice. Website: http://trinity.duke.edu/globalstudies/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/100215-critical-and-decolonial-dialogues-Final.pdf Contact: Dr Rolando Vázquez Roosevelt Academy Utrecht University P.O. Box 94 NL-4330 AB Middelburg Netherlands Phone: +31 118 655525 Email: [email protected] __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org __________________________________________________
