Postcolonial Theory

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by Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings

Three Artists, Three Cities, Three Continents: Weng Fen, Hema Upadhyay and Bodys Isek Kingelez

by Mark Haywood

Paper given at Contemp Art 12, Minar Sinan Fine Art University,, April 2012.

Published in Duyan (ed.) 'New Questions on Contemporary Arts' (DAKAR, Istanbul, 2012)

Three Artists, Three Cities, Three Continents:
Weng Fen, Hema Upadhyay and Bodys Isek Kingelez

more Three Artists, Three Cities, Three Continents:
Weng Fen, Hema Upadhyay and Bodys Isek Kingelez


Since the millennium there have been several international curatorial surveys that have used cities as comparative exemplars. These have included Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis, the opening exhibition of London’s Tate Modern in 2001, Design Cities 1851-2008 at Istanbul Modern and, earlier this year, the Pompidou Centre’s Paris-Delhi-Bombay.

In February 2008 the United Nations’ Revision of World Urbanization Prospects predicted that by the end of that year, for the first time in human history, more than half the world’s population would be living in urban, rather than rural locations. Hania Zlotnik, Director of the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), which prepared the report, noted that, ‘Although Asia and Africa are the least urbanized areas, they account for most of the urban population of the world.’  It is frequently predicted that the archetypal city of the twenty-first century will be the non-Western (or southern hemisphere) megalopolis.

In light of these events and trends the paper compares the work of three contemporary artists from China, India and Africa, each of whom has made large installations based on burgeoning of local megacities. The artists surveyed are Weng Fen (China), Hema Upadhyay (India) and Bodys Isek Kingelez (Democratic Republic of the Congo). It is argued that despite obvious similarities of subject and format, the three artists’ works actually reflect widely differing local perspectives, concerns and futures. 

Review - David N. Gellner (ed.), Varieties of Activist Experience: Civil Society in South Asia (New Delhi, 2010) and Ethnic Activism and Civil Society in South Asia (New Delhi, 2009)

by Uday Chandra

Forthcoming in Social Movement Studies 12 (1), 2013

"Eyes the Same Color as the Sea": Santiago's Expatriation from Spain and Ethnic Otherness in Hemingway's the Old Man and the Sea

by Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera

The Unnatural Creature: How the Production of Knowledge reflects Western Cultural History in Frankenstein

by David Price

Conference Paper for Panel on Post-colonialism - St. John's Grad Conference May 2012

Can the subaltern eat? Anthropophagic culture as a Brazilian lens on post-colonial theory

by Gazi Islam

Biopolítica borbónica en Chile: el discurso antropológico sobre la ociosidad y el vagabundaje

by Patricio Lepe-Carrión

En editorial para ser publicado en el libro colectivo "Revisando el presente. Ensayos críticos desde el sur". CEAPEDI. Universidad Nacional del Comahue - Argentina.

The Intersections of Archaeology and Postcolonial Studies.

by Matthew Liebmann

2008. In Archaeology and the Postcolonial Critique, edited by M. Liebmann and U. Rizvi, pp. 1-20. Altamira Press, Lanham, MD.

Intimacy with the Danish nation-state: my partner, the Danish state and I - a case study of family reunification policy in Denmark,

by Linda Lund Pedersen

Whiteness and Postcolonialism in the Nordic Region:
Exceptionalism, Migrant Others and National Identities.  (ed.) Loftsdóttir, K. and Jensen, L. Ashgate.  Forthcoming 2012, Oct

12.1 (Con)figuring Sport Flyer

by Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings

(Con)figuring Sports explores the ways in which sporting endeavours offer writers and artists an opportunity to... more (Con)figuring Sports explores the ways in which sporting endeavours offer writers and artists an opportunity to reflect upon the conflicts, tensions and cultural transformations which sport configures. This issue is edited by Shirley Chew and John McLeod.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Journal Special Issue: Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies

by Karen Soldatic

CALL FOR PAPERS:
Journal Special Issue: Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies
more CALL FOR PAPERS:
Journal Special Issue: Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies

Disability and Colonialism: (dis)encounters and anxious intersectionalities

Guest Editors: Shaun Grech (Manchester Metropolitan University) & Karen Soldatic (University of New South Wales)

We are pleased to announce that we will be guest editing a special edition entitled Disability and Colonialism: (dis)encounters and anxious intersectionalities on behalf of the established refereed journal Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies.

The aim of this special issue is to position disability within the colonial (the real and imagined), through which to explore a range of (often anxious) intersectionalities as disability is theorised, constructed, and lived as a post/neocolonial condition. While postcolonial theory and associated fields (e.g. critical theory, cultural studies etc.) have engaged with race, gender and ethnicity in the exploration of themes of identity, representation, space, historicity and the neocolonial, they have almost wholly bypassed disabled people- paradoxically limited to the subjectification of the able-bodied, or rather disembodying colonialism. Westerncentric fields of study such as disability studies often remain detached from the global South, the histories, contexts and cultures of these specific geopolitical spaces, and how disability is ontologically constructed and lived through a history replete with signifiers of power and empire and that frame the global. While some have adopted colonialism as a metaphor for the experience of disability (see for example Shakespeare, 2000), of colonized bodies by the medical profession, the colonial encounter per se, its creation of and implications for the disabled subject, remains inadequately theorised. In turn, disability is persistently removed from history and any contemplation of the post or neocolonial and efforts (discursive or material) at decolonizing these spaces and those within.

The special issue aims to transcend disciplinary, epistemological, methodological, spatial and historical boundaries. Engaging indigenous, post/neocolonial, disability studies, critical theory, psychology, Latin American Cultural Studies, and a range of other perspectives and literatures, and prioritising voices from the global South, we invite authors to engage in critical debate around colonialism to explore a range of thematic concerns (not exclusively):

• Colonial representations and the construction of the disabled body and mind
• The violence and disablism of colonialism
• Intersections of race, ethnicity, culture, gender and disability
• Empire and the domestication of bodies: globalisation, economics and beyond
• Disabled identities, metaphors and language, and their roles in subjugation
• From the colonial to the post/neocolonial: disability and contemporary lineages of imperialism
• Social identities and visions of disability
• Colonial medicalisation: identifying, labelling and ‘treating’ the disabled body
• The Christianising mission, biblical renditions and the disabled subject
• Decolonizing epistemologies, practices and lives: renegotiating power and contemplating global justice

We encourage authors to engage work on Southern theory and movements and approaches prioritising and promoting Southern epistemologies and counter-hegemonic knowledges emerging from struggles for justice.

Those wishing to submit an article, please email your full manuscript to both Shaun Grech (S.Grech@mmu.ac.uk) and Karen Soldatic (ajks123@bigpond.com). Please insert ‘Submission for Disability and Colonialism Special Issue’ in the subject line. Manuscripts will be sent anonymously for double peer review, and comments and recommendations relayed to authors through the editors.

Articles should not exceed 8,000 words in length, and include a 300 word abstract. The journal style guide is available here: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=1369-801X&linktype=44.

Manuscripts should be submitted by no later than: 1st January 2013

Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2011. Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies. Political Geography. 30 (2), 90-98.

Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that... more Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that violence is 'irrational' marks particular cultures as ‘other’. Neoliberalism exploits such imaginative geographies in constructing itself as the sole providence of nonviolence and the lone bearer of reason. Proceeding as a ‘civilizing’ project, neoliberalism positions the market as salvationary to putatively ‘irrational’ and ‘violent’ peoples. This theology of neoliberalism produces a discourse that binds violence in place. But while violence sits in places in terms of the way in which we perceive its manifestation as a localized and embodied experience, this very idea is challenged when place is reconsidered as a relational assemblage. What this re-theorization does is open up the supposed fixity, separation, and immutability of place to instead recognize it as always co-constituted by, mediated through, and integrated within the wider experiences of space. Such a radical rethinking of place fundamentally transforms the way we understand violence. No longer confined to its material expression as an isolated and localized event, violence can more appropriately be understood as an unfolding process, derived from the broader geographical phenomena and temporal patterns of the social world.

Neoliberalising violence: of the exceptional and the exemplary in coalescing moments

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2012. Neoliberalising violence: of the exceptional and the exemplary in coalescing moments. Area 44 (2), 136-143.

This paper sets out to develop two related ideas. First, it seeks to identify how both violence and neoliberalism can... more This paper sets out to develop two related ideas. First, it seeks to identify how both violence and neoliberalism can be considered as moments. From this shared conceptualisation of process and fluidity, I argue that it becomes easier to recognise how these two phenomena actually converge. Building upon this conceived coalescence of neoliberalism and violence, the second aim is to recognise how the hegemony of neoliberalism positions it as an abuser, which facilitates the abandonment of those ‘Others’ who fall outside of neoliberal normativity. I argue that the widespread banishment of ‘Others’ under neoliberalism produces a ‘state of exception’, wherein because of its inherently dialectic nature, exceptional violence is transformed into exemplary violence. This metamorphosis occurs as aversion for alterity intensifies under neoliberalism and its associated violence against ‘Others’ comes to form the rule.

CULTURAL SOCIOLOGY AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN A WORLD OF FLOWS: RECAPTURING AMBIGUITY, HYBRIDITY, AND THE POLITICAL

by gianpaolo baiocchi

Please cite as: Baiocchi, Gianpaolo. 2012. CULTURAL SOCIOLOGY AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN A WORLD OF FLOWS: RECAPTURING AMBIGUITY, HYBRIDITY, AND THE POLITICAL. In Alexander, Jacobs, and Smith Eds, The Handbook of Cultural Sociology (Oxford University Press)

Illegal evictions? Overwriting possession and orality with law’s violence in Cambodia

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. Forthcoming. Illegal evictions? Overwriting possession and orality with law’s violence in Cambodia. Journal of Agrarian Change.

The unfolding of a juridico-cadastral system in present-day Cambodia is at odds with local understandings of... more The unfolding of a juridico-cadastral system in present-day Cambodia is at odds with local understandings of landholding, which are entrenched in notions of community consensus and existing occupation. The discrepancy between such orally recognized antecedents and the written word of law have been at the heart of the recent wave of dispossessions that have swept across the country. Contra the standard critique that corruption has set the tone, this paper argues that evictions in Cambodia are often literally underwritten by the articles of law. Whereas ‘possession’ is a well-understood and accepted concept in Cambodia, a cultural basis rooted in what James C. Scott refers to as ‘orality’, coupled with a long history of subsistence agriculture, semi-nomadic lifestyles, barter economies, and–until recently–widespread land availability have all ensured that notions of ‘property’ are vague among the country’s majority rural poor. In drawing a firm distinction between possessions and property, where the former is premised upon actual use and the latter is embedded in exploitation, this article examines how proprietorship is inextricably bound to the violence of law.

Moving Worlds Info Volume 12

by Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings

The iron cage re-revisited: Institutional isomorphism in non-profit organisations in South Africa

by Frederik Claeyé

co-authored with Terence Jackson

accepted for publication in Journal of International Development, 12(5)

Non-profit organisations (NPOs) are being pushed to become ‘more business-like’, reflecting global discourse on ‘aid... more Non-profit organisations (NPOs) are being pushed to become ‘more business-like’, reflecting global discourse on ‘aid effectiveness’ underpinned by managerialist modes of thinking that may be inappropriate to local contexts. We examine the nature of the tendency towards institutional isomorphism empirically investigating this with fourteen NPOs in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, using a conceptual framework derived from Institutional Theory. This suggests that institutional isomorphism is shaping management in NPOs. However, this theory seems inadequate in explaining resistance to these forces. We go on to explain the limitations of using a purely institutionalist lens and suggest how the integration of Postcolonial Theory may benefit further research.

Last Call for Papers "Raumwissen und Wissensräume"; Deadline 25-04-12

by Stefan Schreiber

Call for Papers: "Raumwissen und Wissensräume. Interdisziplinärer Theorie-Workshop für NachwuchswissenschaftlerInnen" des Lesezirkels der Cross Sectional Group V „Space and Collective Identities“ des Exzellenzclusters „Topoi. The Formation and Transformation of Space and Knowledge in Ancient Civilizations” vom 7.–9. August 2012 in Berlin

more info at: http://www.topoi.org/event/raumwissen-und-wissensraume/

Curriculum as difficult inheritance

by Aparna Mishra Tarc

Curriculum and Pedagogy

In search of adventure: Ladislav Mikeš Pařízek, a Czech in the Congo

by Martina Vitackova

this is a result of a thrilling archival search after a forgotten Czech adventurer and writer. the paper was presented at the Congo in Literature/Congo in de literatuur/Congo dans la littérature conference in Hasselt (belgium in 2008 and published in Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 46 (2009).

Ladislav Mikeš Pařízek’s books, articles and lectures had a large impact on the image of the Congo as it existed in... more Ladislav Mikeš Pařízek’s books, articles and lectures had a large impact on the image of the Congo as it existed in communist Czechoslovakia from the 1940s till the 1970s, but this Czech traveller and writer has almost been forgotten. Through an analysis of his works and of reviews of these works published in newspapers of the 1950s, the nature of the African discourse as it was created in communist Eastern Europe, as well as the (mis)use of this discourse by the ruling party, is revealed. Special attention will be paid to the illustrations accompanying his books, articles and lectures.