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Conference Announcement "Race-Making and the State: Between Postracial Neoliberalism and Racialized Terrorism" 10th Annual Critical Race and Anti-Colonial Studies Conference Researchers and Academics of Colour for Equality (R.A.C.E.) University of Alberta Edmonton, AB (Canada) 8-10 October 2010 __________________________________________________ Despite the ‘wilful forgetting’ evident in much Canadian and international studies scholarship, racial thinking, race-making and racial imaginaries long have served the imperial and colonial designs of empires and states alike. German philosopher Eric Voegelin was among the first to think through the relationship between race-making and the state. In Race and State, he insisted that the racial idea was a fundamental element of the modern state. For Voeglin, it was irrelevant whether race was a biological or genetic fiction; this did not belie its power or its real life political, material or social salience. Hannah Arendt in turn persuasively argued that race thinking has been wide-spread across the west since at least the eighteenth century, and functioned as a political device to differentiate the ‘primitive’, ‘savage’ and ‘barbarian’ from the ‘civilized’. Racism was a powerful ideological weapon in imperialist policies including the ‘scramble for Africa’ and in the dispossession of Indigenous lands. In Society Must Be Defended, the French social theorist Michel Foucault advanced the notion of ‘state racism’ as one expression of the biopower of the modern state, which unleashed governing technologies to ‘make live’ some groups and ‘let die’ others. Other important works on the ‘racial state’, prominent among them, Omni and Winant (1994), Anthony Marx (1998), David Theo Goldberg (2002), Sherene Razack (2008) and Sunera Thobani (2007), have linked imperial and colonial racisms to the conceits of modern liberal states, which purport to be race neutral, colour-blind and even postracial, while masking, reproducing and even reinforcing historical inequities. The nature of race thinking and race-making are differently configured in two dominant logics of the twenty-first century: neoliberalism’s racial imaginaries of an individualized, atomized person who can leave behind her or his racial, ethnic and gendered self and the racial imaginaries of 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’, which make clear that ‘outsider groups’ are always already shaped by racial and gendered markers. Arguably neoliberalism has depoliticized race and racism, indeed, all structural inequalities. It has reduced racism to a psychological shortcoming that can be mediated through the promotion of cross-cultural understanding. In this context, we are confronted with the paradoxical claim that while there may be racism, apparently there are no racists and no systemic conditions of racial inequality. This paradox disdains historical memory of institutional and structural racism and ‘forgets’ that racial thinking and race-making have shifted over time, space, and regimes with sometimes devastating effect. What is racism and who if anyone can be called a racist? Race-making and the ‘racial state’ too often are imagined as cases of exceptions, such as Nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa. This too elides the everyday and normalized practices of race-making and racism and obscures meaningful anti-racist practices. In such contexts, what do anti-racism and decolonization mean? How do they manifest in theories, practices and policies? Confirmed speakers include: - Achille Mbembe. Witswatersrand, Johannesburg, and Duke University - L. H. M. Ling, The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs - Sherene Razack, OISE/University of Toronto. - Sunera Thobani, Gender and Women’s Studies, University of British Columbia - Robert A. Williams, Jr., Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy, University of Arizona - Professor Patricia A. Monture Programme: FRIDAY, 8 OCTOBER 2010 PRE-CONFERENCE LIFELONG LEARNING: MENTORING & PD WORKSHOPS 8:30 REGISTRATION 9:30-11:00 Workshop 1: Indigenous Human Rights “Translating Critical Race Theory into Practice.” With Robert A. Williams, Jr., Thomas Sullivan Professor of Law and American Indian Studies, University of Arizona Law School. 11:00-11:15 BREAK 11:15-12:45 Workshop 2: Race, Equity & The Academy “From PHD to Tenure and Promotion.” With Dr Narda Razack, Associate Dean (Faculty), Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University 12:45-2:00 LUNCH 2:00-3:30 Workshop 3: Teaching Race in the Academy “Teaching Critical Race Theory.” Workshop with Professor Angela P Harris, Berkeley Law School and Bady Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Buffalo Law School 3:30-4:00 Workshop Rapporteur Synopsis 4:00-6:00 BREAK 6:00-6:30 CONFERENCE OPENING CEREMONY 6:30-7:30 Keynote Address: Robert A. Williams, Jr. “From Aristotle to Avitar: The Idea of the ‘Savage’ in American Legal Thought.” 7:30-9:00 Opening Plenary: Indigenous Peoples, Knowledge and the Academy SATURDAY, 9 OCTOBER 2010 8:00 am REGISTRATION Continental breakfast provided 9:00-10:00 Keynote Address L.M. Ling. “Asia is a Woman: On Patriarchy, Territorialization and Transformative Strategies.” 10:00-10:15 BREAK 10:15-11:45 SIMULTANEOUS SESSIONS 11:45-1:00 LUNCH 1:00-2:30 SIMULTANEOUS SESSIONS 2:30-2:45 BREAK Coffee and tea provided 2:45-4:15 SIMULTANEOUS SESSIONS 4:20-6:00 Closing Plenary – Representations of Race & Indigeneity 6:15-8:30 RECEPTION & BOOK LAUNCH SUNDAY, 10 0CT0BER 2010 8:30- REGISTRATION Continental breakfast provided 9:00-10:00 Keynote Address 10:05-11:35 SIMULTANEOUS SESSIONS 11:40-1:10 SIMULTANEOUS SESSIONS 1:10-2:00 LUNCH 200-3:30 Closing Plenary – Terror, Torture and Democracies: Race, Gender and the Other 3:30-4:00 CLOSING CEREMONY For more information: Dr. Malinda S. Smith, Conference Convenor, Associate Professor, Political Science, University of Alberta Email: [email protected] Priscilla Campeau, Conference Committee Chair, Centre for World Indigenous Knowledge and Research (CWIKR), Athabasca University Email: [email protected] Conference website: http://www.criticalraceconference.arts.ualberta.ca __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org __________________________________________________
