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Call for Papers Theme: Human Rights Beyond the Law Subtitle: Politics, Practices, Performances of Protest Type: International Workshop Institution: Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University Location: Sonipat, Haryana (India) Date: 16.–18.9.2011 Deadline: 30.3.2011 __________________________________________________ ‘Human Rights Beyond the Law: Politics, Practices, Performances of Protest’, is a workshop being organized by the Collaborative Research Programme on Law, Postcoloniality and Culture at the Jindal Global Law School, NCR of Delhi, India. The workshop is supported by the Brown International Advanced Research Institutes, Brown University, USA. POSING THE PROBLEM Human Rights, liberalism’s most potent aphrodisiac, is an inescapable concern for many of us in the academy, despite our critical consciousness about the cruelly liberal genealogy of its idea and practice. For us human rights remains, to invoke Gayatri Spivak: “that which we cannot not want.” This consciousness has constituted each of us (and our subterranean others) as ‘desiring’ nationalist, heterosexual and entrepreneurial subjects to whom liberalism offers means like the market, secularism, merit, multiculturalism – and of course Human Rights Law – as remedies for inequality, subordination, exclusion and annihilation. How then do we engage the law, without falling into the trap of liberalism? Can we afford to completely disengage with liberal rights? At what cost do we move beyond the legalese of human rights? Does speaking the liberal language operate as a strategy for people’s movements, or is it a co-option of it? And as Wendy Brown enquires: “how might the paradoxical elements of the struggle for rights in an emancipatory context articulate a field of justice beyond “that which we cannot not want”?” One way to articulate a field of justice beyond “that which we cannot not want” is to document practices and performances of protest – as Resistance, Solidarity and Insurgency – in the postcolony that are deeply committed to talking ‘Human Rights’ but beyond and without the disciplined captivity of law, modernity and markets. Discussions at this workshop would aim at displacing the centrality of the law in giving meaning to ideas of justice and its liberal vicissitudes and to chart the limits of the legal archive. The ‘beyond’ metaphor is not a disengagement with the law, but one which allows us to delimit law’s habitus. This workshop chooses to focus on the materiality of subaltern protests by travelling through various forms of re/presentations of peoples, spaces, their resistances and acts of solidarity and insurgency in the postcolony that don’t require the law’s scaffolding to erect its articulation of rights. The workshop hopes to draw on the diversity of experiences of its participants to engage in a “counter-topographic” mapping of protest practices by ‘old’ and ‘new’ subalterns, particularly across certain locations in the conventional North, the Antipodes, Latin Americas, Africa and South and South East Asia. Along with being a project in building transnational solidarity through activist scholarship, it will also build an archive of images/ representations of performances of protest to put theory under the scanner of “small voice[s] of history”. THEMATIC CLUSTERS The workshop will be organized around four thematic clusters: I. The Tyranny of Rights II. Re/presentations of Resistance III. Bodies in Protest IV. Organizing the Transnational KEYNOTES Jasbir Puar (Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers University, USA), Barrymore Bouges (Africana Studies, Brown University, USA), Rustom Bharucha (Independent Writer, Culture Critic and Dramaturge, India), Boaventura De Sousa Santos (Sociology, University of Coimbra, Portugal), Gail Omvedt (Dalit Studies Scholar and Activist, Indira Gandhi National Open University, India) CALL FOR PAPERS/ PROPOSALS The workshop aims to bring together scholars, activists, illustrators, performers, musicians, photographers and filmmakers to excavate archives and imagine repertoires of bodily practices of subaltern protest that both engage and critique the law. Abstracts/ proposals should pertain broadly to the theme of the workshop and its four thematic clusters. Non-English abstracts/ proposals are also welcome as long as it is accompanied by an English translation/ transcreation. If you’d like to discuss your abstract/ proposal before submitting it, please feel to write to any of the organizing committee members (emails below). More details on the workshop are available at: http://www.protestworkshop.jgu.edu.in Paper abstracts, proposals to curate exhibitions/ films, and proposals for performances (not exceeding 1000 words) need to be emailed to [email protected] no later than March 30, 2011. Decisions will be announced by April 30, 2011. PUBLICATION PLANS Organizers are in negotiation with publishers to consider either an edited book volume (which will include illustrations/ art work/ photographs) and/or a special issue of a journal emerging from of the workshop. FUNDING Partial funding for travel may be available for participants from Southern countries only whose abstracts/ proposals have been accepted. If you require funding, please attach a letter with your abstract/ proposal. Decisions regarding funding will be made only after acceptance of abstracts/ proposals. ORGANIZING COMMITTEE OISHIK SIRCAR, Assistant Professor, Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat, India - [email protected] VIK KANWAR, Assistant Professor, Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat, India - [email protected] RAJSHREE CHANDRA, Associate Professor, Janki Devi Memorial College, Delhi University, India - [email protected] NAVPRIT KAUR, Research Associate, Institute for Development and Communication, Chandigargh, India - [email protected] Contact: Oishik Sircar/ Vik Kanwar Collaborative Research Programme on Law, Postcoloniality and Culture Jindal Global Law School O.P. Jindal Global University Sonipat Narela Road Sonipat, Haryana - 131001 India Phone: +91 8930110702 Email: [email protected] Web: http://www.protestworkshop.jgu.edu.in __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org __________________________________________________
