Centre for Post-colonial Studies news
Forthcoming events
1968: 40 years on
The Centre for Post-colonial Studies is marking the 40th anniversary of the events of 1968 with a half-day symposium on Friday 21 November 2008 from 2 to 5 pm.
We are seeking expressions of interest from a wide range of fields for papers/presentations on the legacies of 1968. Each speaker will present for 20–30 minutes with 10–15 minutes for questions (though longer presentations will be considered). Please send a 150–200 word abstract to Danielle Every at cpcs@unisa.edu.au by 30 September 2008.
(Anti)racism and Pedagogy Conference
A conference organised by HRISS and Yunggorendi First Nations Centre for Higher Education and Research, 5 December 2008, Amy Wheaton Building, Magill Campus
This conference reflects on the pedagogical challenges presented by 'new forms' of racism that are distorting our societies. The papers and discussion will provide new theorisations of racism and propose pedagogical tactics as a skilful response. The speakers will be:
- Prof Pal Ahluwalia, University of South Australia
- Prof Linda Tuhiwai Smith, University of Waikato, New Zealand
- Assistant Prof Michalinos Zembylas, Open University of Cyprus
- Assoc Prof Sandy Grande, Connecticut College
- Dr Deborah Youdell, University of London
- Assoc Prof Zeus Leonardo, University of California
- Prof Crain Soudien, University of Cape Town
(Anti)racism and Pedagogy Conference home
A future seminar will mark 30 years since the publication of Orientalism (Edward Said). The centre will also host a seminar series on post-colonialism and cricket.
Chapters for the book from the 2007 Masterclasses are currently being reviewed. A new Masterclass series will run later in the year.
Further details of these seminars and conferences will
be posted on the website. If you would like to indicate your early interest,
or request information, please email the centre at
CPCS@unisa.edu.au.
Past events 2008
Neoliberalising race
David Theo Goldberg, University of California Humanities Research Institute, Presented by the Centre for Post-colonial Studies and the Flinders University Innovative Universities European Centre, 2 June, Magill Campus.
This seminar explored what happens to race and racism in the wake of neoliberalism. It addressed the logics of racial neoliberalisation as a set of technologies for managing demographic heterogeneities in the context of modernity's histories of globalisation. David Theo Goldberg directs the University of California Humanities Research Institute (www.uchri.org). He is also Professor of Comparative Literature and Criminology, Law and Society, as well as a Fellow of the Critical Theory Institute, at the University of California, Irvine. He has authored numerous books, including The racial state (Basil Blackwell, 2002) and Racist culture: philosophy and the politics of meaning (Basil Blackwell, 1993), and edited or co-edited many books, including Anatomy of racism (University of Minnesota Press 1990). His current monograph, The threat of race, will be published by Wiley-Blackwell in October 2008.
'Been there, done that...'
Barry Hindess, Research School of Social Sciences, ANU, 3 June, Magill Campus.
This familiar phrase is usually understood as indicating that one has already experienced the topic under discussion and become bored with it. I use it as my title to flag the view, first, that all portions of humanity go through essentially the same historical stages, and, second, that the West went through the more recent stages before anyone else, and thus that, whatever our non-western contemporaries may now be experiencing, the West has already 'been there, done that'. This view also underlies the patronising assumption that many in the non-western world belong in the past of the western present, that they are likely to have a false impression of their own pasts, which are merely truncated or incomplete forms of the past of the West itself. This destructive view is commonly, but not always, associated with a sense of western superiority. It is one of the foundations of modern western cosmopolitanism. In this seminar, its destructiveness was taken as a given and the speaker aimed, rather, to explore its origins. He suggested that the most important of these are to be found in the early history of European imperialism.
A version of this seminar has been published in Postcolonial Studies, vol 11, no 2, 2008, pp 201–213. You can download the article there.
Barry Hindess is Professor of Political Science in the
Research School of Social Sciences at ANU. He has published widely in the
areas of social and political theory. His most recent works are Discourses
of power: from Hobbes to Foucault, Governing Australia: studies in
contemporary rationalities of government (with Mitchell Dean), Corruption
and democracy in Australia and Us and them: anti-elitism in Australia (with
Marian Sawer), and numerous papers on democracy, liberalism and empire, and
neo-liberalism.