conference_2008


	NYU Postcolonial Colloquium open to all those with an interest in postcolonial studies

Postcolonialism and the Hit of the Real Conference 6-8 March 2008 New York University Conference theme How valid, in retrospect, is the founding claim of the postcolonial that it offers a different view of the real? If the world outside the west had been understood through traditions of western representation which ignored the reality of what was actually there, silencing different cultures, epistemologies, and the lives that were lived in them, how successfully has postcolonial studies intervened to enable the former subjects of Western representations to determine the representation of their own realities? Reflecting a desire to address the materiality of questions that provided the original impetus for postcolonial thinking, scholars from a range of perspectives have attempted to reinsert the notion of the 'real' at the center of their academic praxis. Recent and historical interest in the value and valence of 'experience', the location and teleology of the 'vernacular', and a formalistic aesthetics of realism all converge around the specters of the real, together constituting a major theoretical effort to rearticulate the terms of what constitutes postcolonial reality and experience, and how, through what modes, forms, and genres, such realities might be best represented. We seek to confront through this conference one of the ongoing tensions in postcolonial studies: the concern for articulating aesthetic issues of realism and representation and theoretical reflections upon the ‘real’, with the complex postcolonial realities of underdevelopment, violence, political instability and gender inequality. This conference hopes to augment these addresses to the ‘real’ and pursue further engagement with the conditions of its possibility or impossibility with papers that will: Offer definitions and discussion of ‘the real’, ‘reality’, and ‘realism’ in the postcolonial context; Explore the ‘real’ understood as the material, historical, or political aspects of postcolonialism—or challenge this understanding; ‘Theorize’ underdevelopment and the existing empirical methods of description, analysis, and measurement; Inquire into the identification of the ‘real’ with such terms as ‘experience’, ‘truth’, ‘authenticity’, and ‘reality’, in the postcolonial context; Define the limits and possibilities of postcolonialism as critique, intervention, politics; Revisit the relationship between formal realism (in cinema, literature) and postcolonial reality: was there a disjuncture, as has been suggested, between European social realism and the colonial world; and is there, concomitantly, a better fit between that reality and alternative models of realism? Rethink the division of intellectual labor which would posit theory as the domain of the West/metropole and the “periphery” as the raw material or ground of reality for such theoretical productions; Examine anew the dialectic of form and content in postcolonial texts: has providing a more adequate representation become an end in itself? What are the consequences of the privileging of content over form and value? What role do cultural forms, more broadly, and genre, more specifically, play in the determination of postcolonial canon formation? How might we explain the dominance of the novel and film among the various forms of literary and cultural expression? . While we expect papers and panels to be located within the broad problematic of postcolonialism and the real, they need not be limited to the questions listed above. We welcome analysis of a broad range of issues and texts (literature, cinema, theatre, popular culture, visual arts, theory), theoretical interventions, disciplinary and interdisciplinary reflections, and provocations. We also welcome contributions discussing material relevant to geographies of colonialism outside that of the British Empire (e.g. French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese colonies or former colonies). January 15th 2008: Please note that the call for papers is now closed. We thank all those who submitted individual and panel proposals. Please see the Conference Program page for papers that will be presented at the conference. E-mail Address: pococonference2008@gmail.com Convenors: Professors Toral Gajarawala, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Jini Kim Watson, Robert JC Young (NYU) Sponsored by: Anglophone Research Project, Department of English, NYU Comparative Literature Department, NYU Deutsches Haus, NYU Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies . Conference web-site: http://www.nyupoco.com/html/conference_2008.html

		Images: Dancers celebrating a wedding, Southall, London, June 2007