Afterlives of Postcolonialism

An international conference on Postcolonial theory, weekend of October 25-26

Location: Small Cinema, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths, New Cross
How to get there: www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/find-us
Cost: free

In recent times some scholars have proclaimed that postcolonial theory has exhausted its critical energies- at the very time that it has been taken up by scholars and activists not located in English or Literature departments, the area where postcolonial theory made its early impact and sometimes found an institutional home. The Centre for Postcolonial Studies at Goldsmiths is organising a conference on the "Afterlives of Postcolonialism"- the 'after' referring both to its life/lives after the proclamation of its death, and also to its life after/outside the study of literature. In what ways can/has postcolonial theory been taken up by artists, architects and scholars of art and architecture, by those who study politics, anthropology and sociology, and area studies, and to what effects? Does it merely provide another way of 'reading' texts, to does it have the potential to destabilize and reconfigure practices and disciplines? And what happens to postcolonial theory when it moves into politics, art, sociology, and area studies; what mutations does it undergo, or need to undergo? Drawing upon speakers from a range of geographical (India, the U.S., South Africa, Palestine, the U.K.) and disciplinary locations (everything from architecture to art, film, music, politics...), involving practitioners as well as theorists, this conference asks whether postcolonial theory still has any life in it- and what sorts of lives it is leading once it travels outside of literature.

Sponsored by the Politics Department of Goldsmiths, the Institute of Postcolonial Studies, Melbourne and the international journal, Postcolonial Studies.

Confirmed speakers include:
Harry Harootunian, History and East Asian Studies, New York University
Lindsay Waters, Harvard University Press (Executive Editor of Humanities)
Ivor Chipkin, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Eyal Weizman, Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths
Robert Fine, Sociology, Warwick University
Sandi Hilal, UNRWA, West Bank
Rangan Chakravarty, film producer, Kolkota
Alessandro Petti, International Art Academy, Palestine
Gurminder Bhambra, Sociology, Warwick University
Paramita Brahmachari, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkota
Sonia Boyce, Artist, AHRC Research Fellow, Wimbledon College of Art & Design, University of the Arts London
Andrew Cross, Artist
Marko Daniel, Curator of Public Programmes, Tate Modern
Leon Wainwright, Manchester Metropolitan University

Provisional Programme

Day One
Saturday 25 October 2008

10.00-10.15:
Opening Remarks

10.15-11.15  Keynote
Lindsay Waters
(Harvard University Press)

11.15-11.25 Coffee/tea break

11.30-1.00 Session One: Architecture
Decolonizing Architecture (Eyal Weizman, Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti)

1.00-2.00 Lunch

2-00-4.00 Session Two: Art
Constructing the Politics of Landscape ((Marko Daniel, Tate Modern; Andrew Cross, Artist; John Timberlake, Fine Art, Middlesex University; Virginia Nimarkoh;  Richard Noble (Art, Goldsmiths)

4.00-4.25 Coffee/Tea break

4.30-6.00 Session Three: Art
The Indeterminacy of Otherness (Sonia Boyce, Artist; Raimi Gbadamosi, Artist; Leon Wainwright, Manchester Metropolitan University; Qasim Riza Shaheen, Artist)

Day Two
Sunday 26 October 2008

10.00-11.00 Keynote
Harry Harootunian 
(New York University)

11.00-12.30 Session One: Roundtable
Area Studies knowledges, Postcolonial Critique

12.30-1.30 Lunch

1.30-2.30 Session Two: Film and Music
Popular Cultural Production, the Nation and the International (Rangan Chakravarty and Paramita Brahmachari)

2.30-2.45 Coffee/Tea break

2-45-4.15 Session Three: Social Sciences
Cosmopolitanism, democracy and the postcolonial (Ivor Chipkin, Robert Fine and Alberto Toscano)

4.15-4.45 Coffee/tea break

4.45-6.00 Session Four: Roundtable
Postcolonial futures/The future of Postcolonialism

For further details:
E-mail: s.seth@gold.ac.uk --> s.seth
Telephone: 020 7919 7740