HomePolitical, cultural and intellectual South-North circulations in the post-Bandung era: towards a connected history of the Commonwealth
Political, cultural and intellectual South-North circulations in the post-Bandung era: towards a connected history of the Commonwealth
Circulations politiques, culturelles et intellectuelles Sud-Nord dans la période post-Bandung : vers une histoire connectée du Commonwealth
Published on Tuesday, January 09, 2024
Abstract
By choosing to focus on South-North circulations, this seminar is dedicated to the deconstruction of the “British Empire” as a homogeneous category to write and think about the intellectual, artistic, and political histories of the people who circulate and inhabit this polity known as the Commonwealth of Nations in the post-Bandung era. Working from the assumption that committed artists, intellectuals and political activists from the Global South have networked and connected within this space, we seek to interrogate the counter-hegemonic nature of the knowledge, theories and artistic practices produced during the post-Bandung era. We thus call for the study of the circulation and transfers of political and cultural ideas but also the intellectual trajectories of individuals, collectives and institutions.
Announcement
Argument
For the past fifty years, decentring national and imperial narratives has been on the research agenda of most postcolonial, subaltern or third space intellectuals (Whitchurch, 2012) regardless of their geopolitical locations across the globe. Greater inspection of the histories of colonialism and imperialism revealed, amongst other things, the complex effects of the international division of labour between the global North and the global South (Gupta et al., 2018) on knowledge production, forms of governance, socio-economic models, and cultural representations. Nonetheless some critics of postcolonial theory argue that countering the universalizing power of Western particularism within the former colonies led to the reproduction of similar binaries and asymmetrical logics (Spivak, 1999; Hardt and Negri, 2000; Grosfoguel, 2007). According to these critics, postcolonial approaches only managed to recentre colonial Empires in the histories of former colonized spaces while ignoring, among other things, the effects of “longue durée”. Incidentally, the colonial relationship was indirectly reduced to the unilateral exchanges between a “centre” and “periphery”, downplaying the political, cultural and intellectual circulations from the peripheries to the centre (Magubane, 2004) or between peripheries. In that respect, postcolonial intellectuals would have failed the test of de-territorializing knowledge (Mignolo, 1987).
By choosing to focus on South-North circulations, this seminar is dedicated to the deconstruction of the “British Empire” as a homogeneous category to write and think about the intellectual, artistic, and political histories of the people who circulate and inhabit this polity known as the Commonwealth of Nations in the post-Bandung era (Chakrabarty, 2005; Lee, 2019). Working from the assumption that committed artists, intellectuals and political activists from the Global South have networked and connected within this space (Wainwright, 2011; Tomaselli, Mboti and Rønning, 2013; Craggs and Wintle, 2016), we seek to interrogate the counter-hegemonic nature of the knowledge, theories and artistic practices produced during the post-Bandung era. We thus call for the study of the circulation and transfers of political and cultural ideas but also the intellectual trajectories of individuals, collectives and institutions. Our main objective is to uncover new perspectives on transnational networks, histories and cultural productions, opening the way for connected histories of the Commonwealth (Torrent, 2019) through the study of South-North circulations and South-South connections within Northern spaces.
Program
16 February 2024
Aix-Marseille Université (Salle 2.44, 2ème étage, bâtiment T1 Maison de la Recherche, Campus Schuman, Aix-en-Provence)
- Eléana Sanchez (Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès et Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, France), At the heart of the Empire: British universities as meeting places between South and North.
15 March 2024
CY Cergy Paris Universit, (Salle des thèses)
- Ruth Craggs (King’s College London, United Kingdom), Learning and challenging diplomacy: diplomatic training as a space for contesting the postcolonial international order?
12 April 2024
Université de Picardie Jules Verne (salles E001-E002, Campus Citadelle)
- Leon Wainwright (Open University, United Kingdom), South-North Circulations and Mid-century Dynamics: British Art and the Caribbean.
14 June 2024
CY Cergy Paris Université (salle des thèses)
- Marie Fourcade et Tiziana Leucci (EHESS, France), Cultural and artistic exchanges in the connected history between India, Italy and the United Kingdom.
Attendance
The seminar’s sessions take place on Friday mornings, from 10.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. As this seminar was organised with the support of three research teams, the sessions will alternate between the three different universities’ locations: Aix-Marseille Université, CY Cergy Paris Université and l’Université de Picardie Jules Verne.
It is possible to attend the sessions online: please e-mail us at anais.makhzoum@u-picardie.fr ; camille.martinerie@univ-amu.fr or lauriane.simony@cyu.fr in order to receive the Zoom link.
Subjects
Places
- Cergy Paris Université
Cergy, France (95) - Aix-Marseille Université
Aix-en-Provence, France (13) - Université de Picardie-Jules Verne
Amiens, France (80)
Event attendance modalities
Hybrid event (on site and online)
Date(s)
- Friday, February 16, 2024
- Friday, March 15, 2024
- Friday, April 12, 2024
- Friday, June 14, 2024
Keywords
- connected history, Commonwealth, circulation
Contact(s)
- Anaïs Makhzoum
courriel : anais [dot] makhzoum [at] u-picardie [dot] fr - Camille Martinerie
courriel : camille [dot] martinerie [at] univ-amu [dot] fr - Lauriane Simony
courriel : lauriane [dot] simony [at] cyu [dot] fr
Information source
- Anaïs Makhzoum
courriel : anais [dot] makhzoum [at] u-picardie [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Political, cultural and intellectual South-North circulations in the post-Bandung era: towards a connected history of the Commonwealth », Seminar, Calenda, Published on Tuesday, January 09, 2024, https://doi.org/10.58079/vk0i
