Continuing Postcolonialism, the 9th SLACLALS conference, was held from 21-22 July, 2023, at Water's Edge Hotel, Colombo.
Continuing Postcolonialism
We are interested in two clear trajectories: postcolonialism’s continuing relevance to a reading of the contemporary geopolitical and geocultural order, and its position as a commodity/product for global marketing in which subalternity, indigeneity, ethnic identity are part of the academic, publishing and pedagogic “chic.”
In a 2012 essay, Robert JC Young writes:
The only criterion that could determine whether “postcolonial theory” has ended is whether, economic booms of the so-called “emerging markets” notwithstanding, imperialism and colonialism in all their different forms have ceased to exist in the world, whether there is no longer domination by nondemocratic forces (often exercised on others by Western democracies, as in the past), or economic and resource exploitation enforced by military power, or a refusal to acknowledge the sovereignty of non-Western countries, and whether peoples or cultures still suffer from the long-lingering aftereffects of imperial, colonial, and neocolonial rule, albeit in contemporary forms such as economic globalization.
Young emphasizes the continuing cultural and theoretical work of postcolonialism in the globalized era. What is the nature of this continuing work? How does postcolonial theory and literary cultural production deal with planetary conditions of continuing exploitation,
climate crisis, eco-disaster? What does postcolonialism do in response to nativism, fundamentalisms and cultural nationalisms that both contest and constitute nation-state formation in the post-colony? How is it to deal with contentions and contests of indigeneity and globalized subaltern movements?
Postcolonial literary production is both a response to and a product of the new world (dis)order, whose features have been inventoried above. But it is often a critical response and a critique of both, the postcolony and the new world. We hope to examine the responses of postcolonial literature and thought to not only conditions of postcoloniality but of planetarity as well.
But we are also interested in the appropriation, via what Lisa Lau terms “re-orientalism,” of the postcolonial literary production into the global marketing of “Third World chic.” Is there a “Brand Postcolonial” at work somewhere? What would make up the brand “postcolonial” for global consumption?
The conference will focus in particular on the relevance (or otherwise) of postcolonial theory to the interrogation of the following or any other relevant topics:
In a 2012 essay, Robert JC Young writes:
The only criterion that could determine whether “postcolonial theory” has ended is whether, economic booms of the so-called “emerging markets” notwithstanding, imperialism and colonialism in all their different forms have ceased to exist in the world, whether there is no longer domination by nondemocratic forces (often exercised on others by Western democracies, as in the past), or economic and resource exploitation enforced by military power, or a refusal to acknowledge the sovereignty of non-Western countries, and whether peoples or cultures still suffer from the long-lingering aftereffects of imperial, colonial, and neocolonial rule, albeit in contemporary forms such as economic globalization.
Young emphasizes the continuing cultural and theoretical work of postcolonialism in the globalized era. What is the nature of this continuing work? How does postcolonial theory and literary cultural production deal with planetary conditions of continuing exploitation,
climate crisis, eco-disaster? What does postcolonialism do in response to nativism, fundamentalisms and cultural nationalisms that both contest and constitute nation-state formation in the post-colony? How is it to deal with contentions and contests of indigeneity and globalized subaltern movements?
Postcolonial literary production is both a response to and a product of the new world (dis)order, whose features have been inventoried above. But it is often a critical response and a critique of both, the postcolony and the new world. We hope to examine the responses of postcolonial literature and thought to not only conditions of postcoloniality but of planetarity as well.
But we are also interested in the appropriation, via what Lisa Lau terms “re-orientalism,” of the postcolonial literary production into the global marketing of “Third World chic.” Is there a “Brand Postcolonial” at work somewhere? What would make up the brand “postcolonial” for global consumption?
The conference will focus in particular on the relevance (or otherwise) of postcolonial theory to the interrogation of the following or any other relevant topics:
- The Humanities and Literature in contemporary Postcolonialism
- Diasporic/Migrant Experience
- Postcolonialism and Climate Crisis
- Vernacular Postcolonialisms
- Neocolonialism
- Gender and Postcolonialism
- Nativism/Nationalism/Indigeneity
- New World Order/Disorder
- Fundamentalisms
- Subalternity
- Literary Production/Literary Marketing in Postcolonial spaces
- Contemporary Postcolonialism and Language Studies
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