of representation in ethnographic writing (see abstract below), for
CASCA/AES's next meeting in Vancouver (May 13th-16th). If you are
interested in participating, please send us an abstract by January
25th the latest.
Looking forward hearing from you ,
Karine Vanthuyne
EHESS/IRIS
karine.vanthuyne@mail.mcgill.ca
and
Kee Howe Young
McMaster University
kee_yong@hotmail.com
SITES OF COSMOPOLITANISM: NARRATIVES WITHOUT CLOSURE
Postcolonial critics are amongst "us", arriving as intellectuals or
savvy computer engineers, instead of slaves or indentured labourers.
They have caught our imagination. "We" feel the need to have a
conversation with "them" – if only to expand our anthropological
horizons. But is a "conversation" possible when both parties (excuse
the simplification) have not "unlearned" the trappings of their
respective privilege? To quote Spivak, can there be a fruitful
"conversation" when "we" have yet to "learn that [our] privilege is
[our] loss"? Can the voice and scholarship of the so-called subaltern
be imaginable or even readable if authors do not subscribe to the
prevailing paradigmatic lexicon of Western epistemology? Each paper in
this panel is informed by this conundrum. In their respective accounts
- informed by ethnography at cosmopolitan sites - they negotiate the
problematic of representation in the hope of "unlearning" their
"privileges." In this way, we are able to evaluate the epistemological
closure inherent in anthropology, history, globalized capital, human
rights and so on, all terrains of ideology in the 21st century.
