Third Conference of the Postcolonial Europe-Network
in collaboration with the DFG Research Training Group Globalization and
Literature: Representations, Transformations, Inventions
LMU Munich, June 26-28, 2014
Meteorologies of Modernity.
Climate
Change and Weather in the Contexts of
Postcolonialism and Globalization
Postcolonialism and Globalization
The
conference sets out to explore weather, climate and climate changes, both past
and present, from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The aim is to broaden
existing theoretical frameworks and to examine, historicize and contextualize
discourses on climate and weather. Particular consideration will be given to
literature and the arts, which we consider as an archive where specific
meteorological knowledge is not only registered but also scrutinized and
produced.
As
the title Meteorologies of
Modernity suggests, one
cannot understand global warming without addressing its social, economic and
political dimensions: the history of industrialization and colonization, or the
(western) notions of, e.g., time, space but also freedom and, finally, the
human. By putting a particular focus on weather, the conference proposes to
examine another inherently modern phantasm and its relation to and/or
repercussions for present discourses on global warming: namely, the ability to
not only observe and predict, but to actually control and even produce weather
and climate.
The
conference takes at its starting point the claim put forward by various
scholars that the present climate change calls for a reformulation of the
concepts, methodologies, and institutional structures of contemporary
humanities in general. According to historian Dipesh Chakrabarty, the planetary
crisis of global warming has brought about a collapse of the distinction
between the humanities and sciences: Due to the sheer number of human
population and the excessive use of fossil fuel and other resources, humankind
has now come to possess a geological force that is not only capable of shaping
local environment, but of determining climate, weather and environment on a
global scale. Consequently, these phenomena are no longer clearly pertaining to
the realm of the “natural,” and therefore an object of study of the sciences.
Chakrabarty’s idea of the “anthropocene” as the geological epoch in which
humans constitute a geophysical as well as political agent poses a number of
challenges to traditional approaches, both on a theoretical and methodological
level. As the historian points out, what is required is to “bring together
intellectual formations that are somewhat in tension with each other: the
planetary and the global; deep and recorded histories; species thinking and
critiques of capital.”[1] The conference proposes to do this by
putting into dialogue postcolonial studies and theories of globalization and by
exploring questions of (postcolonial) justice, capitalism, and history.
Scholars
in the field of postcolonial studies and ecocriticism in particular are in the
process of developing frameworks in which to address questions of environmental
(in)justice in national and global formations of domination, i.e. to understand
the historical and political dimensions of how and why the effects of global
warming affect certain communities, regions or nations more strongly than
others. While most scholars would probably agree with Elizabeth Deloughrey and
George Handley’s claim that postcolonial ecology must be more than an extension
of postcolonial methodologies into the realm of the material world, it remains
an ongoing task to explore the profile, methodologies and frameworks of such a
postcolonial ecology. In what ways are the modern notions of the political,
such as the nation state, affected and possibly altered? How, indeed, can we
visualize notions of time and space that extend our familiar, i.e. modern
temporal and spatial imagination? What temporalities does the discourse on
climate change itself produce or forestall, by the use of, i.e., the
affectively highly charged word “crisis”? How is our sense of history affected
when all the future seems to bear is the advent of humanity’s end?
The
conference wants to explore these and other questions, particularly by drawing
on the methodologies of literary and cultural studies, by bringing to the fore
how literature and the arts allow us to critically and imaginatively engage with
the representational challenges the discourses about climate, climate change
and weather have to offer. As, for instance, a renewed interest for the topic
in the context of cultural and literary studies has shown, weather bears a
specific affective as well as metaphorical potential. Particular attention has
moreover been given to cultural practices of “meteorology” – i.e. the daily
practices of observation, cataloging, charting, and measuring oneself, the
weather and the environment – as they constitute and shape (modern)
subjectivities and a sense of relation to environment and being in the world.
We would like to analyze to what extent narratives of weather and climate
crises of different epochs display a “global consciousness,” how this is
reflected in their narrative strategies, and which new knowledge systems and
power constellations are being formed.
By
contextualizing and historicizing meteorological knowledge from the viewpoints
of historiography, literary studies, and cultural studies, the aim is to bring
perspectives from postcolonial studies, ecocriticism and globalization theory
into dialogue and to reflect upon the wider implications of climate change for
the concepts, methodologies and institutional structures of contemporary
humanities. The conference will have as contributors both established and young
scholars of the various disciplines.
***********************************************************
Confirmed Speakers:
Dipesh Chakrabarty
(University
of Chicago)
ElizabethDeLoughrey (University
of California, Los Angeles)
Eva Horn (University
of Vienna)
Graham Huggan (University
of Leeds)
Bernhard Malkmus (Ohio State
University)
Mirko Bonné (Writer in
Residence, Weather Stations Project, Berlin)
Cornelia Lüdecke (University of
Hamburg/TU Munich)
************************************************************
Conference Program
Thursday, 26 June 2014
Conference
Venue: IBZ, Amalienstr. 38
13.30: Introductory address (Sarah Fekadu, Fabienne
Imlinger, Sandra Ponzanesi)
14.00: Panel I: Charting a Challenging Terrain (Chair:
Sarah Fekadu)
Robert
Stockhammer (LMU Munich) Philology in the
Anthropocene?
Nicole
Seymour (LMU Munich) Climate Change,
Cinema, and “Bad” Affect
16.00–16.30: Coffee break
Panel II: Mapping Climate Zones: From the Temperate…
Oliver
Grill (LMU Munich) Unpredictable
Weather. Meteorologic Calculations in Humboldt’s Kosmos and
Stifter’s Nachsommer
Bernhard
Malkmus (Ohio State University) Man in the
Anthropocene: Max Frisch’s Eschatological Meteorology
18.30–19.00: Coffee break
19.00 Dipesh Chakrabarty (University of Chicago)
Beyond Capital:
Time, Scale, and the Climate Crisis
20.30 Reception
Friday, 27 June 2014
Conference
Venue: IBZ, Amalienstr. 38
9.00 Panel III …to the Polar…(Chair: t.b.a.)
Cornelia Lüdecke (University of Hamburg/TU Munich) The International
Polar Year 1882/83 and the Investigation of Climate Change around 1900Lars
Jensen (Roskilde University) The Island that came
in from the Cold: Greenland, Climate Change, and the Scramble for the Arctic
11.00–11.20: Coffee break
Prem
Poddar (Roskilde University) Writing on Water:
East India Himalayas
12.20–13.20: Lunch
13.20: Panel IV: …to the Tropical… (Chair: Fabienne
Imlinger)
Eva
Horn (University
of Vienna) Tropes of the
Tropics: The Anthropology of Hot Climate
Patrick
Ramponi (Hagen University) Weather Manipulation
and Weather Stress: Literary Meteoropathics and Climate Theory in a Global Age
15.20–15.40:
Coffee break
Hanna
Strass (Munich) “There’s going to be
a drought. A wrong thing was done.” Weather Phenomena in Linda Hogan’s People of the Whale
Antonia Mehnert (Munich) Strange Flight
Behavior: Climate Change, Butterflies, and Eco Cosmopolitanism in Barbara Kingsolver’s Latest Cli-fi
Novel
17.40-18.00: Coffee break
18.00 Reading by Mirko Bonné, Writer in Residence Weather Stations
Project / Berlin
19.30 Dinner
Saturday, 28 June 2014
Conference
venue: French Library, Ludwigstr. 25, 4th floor
9.30: Panel V: Island Climates (Chair: Sandra
Ponzanesi)
Johannes Ungelenk (LMU Munich) The Climate of the
Isle: Shakespeare’s Tempest
10.30–11.00: Coffee break
Elizabeth
DeLoughrey (U.C.L.A.) The Sea is Rising:
Visualizing Climate Change in the Pacific
Graham
Huggan (University of Leeds) Unlucky Country? Australian Literature,
Risk, and the Global Climate Challenge
13.00: Closing remarks (Sarah
Fekadu, Fabienne Imlinger, Sandra Ponzanesi)
Hosts: Prof. Robert
Stockhammer (Comparative Literature, LMU Munich), Prof. Tobias Döring (English
Literature, LMU Munich)
Organizing team: Dr. Sarah Fekadu (English Literature, LMU
Munich), Dr. Fabienne Imlinger (Comparative Literature, LMU Munich), Dr. Sandra
Ponzanesi (Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University)
Contact: sarah.fekadu@anglistik.uni-muenchen.de,globalisierung@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
************************************************************
Postcolonial Europe Network (PEN) is funded by NWO (Netherlands
Organisation for Scientific Research).
The
project, conducted by Sandra Ponzanesi (Utrecht University, the Netherlands) in
collaboration with European partners, aims to establish an international
platform for developing research into new forms of conceptualizing Europe from
a multidisciplinary perspective engaging several disciplines (literary, media,
gender studies) in the Humanities and the Social Sciences (sociology, political
theory). PEN aspires to develop theoretical and methodological tools for
representing and imagining Europe in a postcolonial and postimperial
perspective.
International
partners: Utrecht University,
University of Leeds, University of Munich, London School of Economics,
University of Naples, University of Roskilde and University of Iceland,
University of Warwick.
The Research Training Group Globalization
and Literature: Representations, Transformations, Inventions is funded
by the DFG (German Research Fund). The DFG Research Training Group sets out
to examine the function of the literary in processes of globalization from a
broad historical perspective, ranging from antiquity to the present day. The
research interests focus on the interaction between literature and globalizing
dynamics: on the one hand, the transformation of the functions of literature by
historically variable media relations (e.g. the changing status of books in
societies in which communication is globalized by means of the internet); on
the other hand, the ways in which literature not only represents and reflects,
but also criticizes and intervenes in globalization processes.
[1] Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2009. “The Climate of
History: Four Theses.” Critical
Inquiry 35: 197-222. P. 213.
Second Conference of the Postcolonial Europe-Network in collaboration with Postcolonial Studies Initiative (PCI), Centre for the Humanities (CfH)
and the Graduate Gender Programme (GGeP)
Utrecht University, April 18-19, 2013
Postcolonial Transitions in Europe:
Conflict, Transitional Justice and Cosmopolitanism
Convener: Sandra Ponzanesi
This
conference focuses on the relevance of postcolonial theories for the
understanding of world-systemic transformations and the shifts in geopolitics
in terms of conflict, transitional justice and cosmopolitanism. New crises such
as conflicts, terrorism, trafficking, and human rights violation go beyond the
boundaries of the nation state and European frontiers and require new
analytical tools for the understanding of these rapid transformations.
By
investigating culture with the innovative, interdisciplinary and transcultural
tools of postcolonial critique Europe emerges as a complex space, which is
often imagined and oblivious of its politics of inclusion and exclusion towards
migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, as well as of its take on internal
conflicts, political transitions and cosmopolitan imaginary. In order to tackle
the new crises that plague Europe and beyond, this conference will bring
together the complementary and synergizing expertise of postcolonial scholars
who work across different disciplinary fields such as conflict studies, law,
ethics, memory studies, human rights and international relations as well as the
arts, visual culture, music and digital platforms. The goal is to inform a new
wave of young scholars and academics on how to assess the emergencies and
transitions of the present through an ability to acknowledge the working of the
past and rethink Europe as a new possible cosmopolitan space.
The
conference will focus on conflict, transitional justice and cosmopolitanism
examining the narrative that walks the line between, before and after, memory
and truth, compensation and reconciliation, justice and peace. Some of the
participants will examine communities ravaged by colonialism and the harm that
colonial and postcolonial economic and social disparities cause. The
comparative and interdisciplinary exchanges will generate a better understanding
of difficult pasts to present communities, questioning the many possible
trajectories from disruption to truth, reconciliation and healing, with
particular focus on Europe.
***********************************************************
Confirmed Speakers:
Postcolonial Cosmopolitanism in an Austere Europe
(Warwick
University, UK)
Transitional Justice, Dialogical Truth and the Arts
(Utrecht
University, NL)
Development of International Criminal Justice.
The Example of the International Criminal Tribunal
of the Former Yugoslavia
(ICTY,
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, NL)
Combined and Uneven Development: Towards a New Theory
of World-Literature
(Warwick
University, UK)
Cosmopolitanism in Deep Time
(Columbia
University, USA)
Late Postcolonialism
(New York University,
USA
***********************************************************
Conference Programme
Day 1
Location: Academic Building (domplein 29) Kanunnikenzaal (entrance achter de dom 7)
9.00-9.30 Coffee
9.30-9.45 Opening
Sandra Ponzanesi (Utrecht
University, NL)
Postcolonial
Transitions in Europe
9.45-10.45 Keynote
Bruce Robbins (Columbia University, USA)
Cosmopolitanism
in Deep Time
10.45-12.00 Panel
1
Chair: Graham Huggan
Paulo de Medeiros (Utrecht University, NL)
Postimperial Nostalgia
Lars Jensen (Roskilde
University, Denmark)
A Greenlandic
Cosmopolitanism for an Emerging Postcolonial Moment
Max Silverman (University of
Leeds, UK)
The Palimpsest and
Cosmopolitical Memory
12.00-13.15 Panel
2
Chair: John McLeod
Sabrina Marchetti (European
University Institute, Italy)
The Colonial
Legacy in the Memories of Migrant Women: Eritrean and Afro-Surinamese Domestic
and Care Workers in Postcolonial Europe
Koen
Leurs (Utrecht University, NL)
Technology as a
Refuge? Opportunities and Constrains in Migrant’s Use of Digital Media.
Jess Bier (University of Maastricht, NL)
The Colonizer in
the Computer: The British and Israeli Influence in Palestinian Authority
Cartography
13.15-14.00 Lunch break
14.00-15.00 Keynote 2
Neil Lazarus (Warwick University)
Combined and Uneven Development: Towards a New Theory
of World-Literature
15.00-16.15 Panel
3
Chair:
Paulo de Medeiros
John McLeod (University of Leeds, UK)
Transculturation and Adoptive Being
Dirk Göttsche (University of Nottingham, UK)
Cosmopolitanism, Emplacement and Identity in Recent
Postcolonial Literature in German
Birgit Kaiser (Utrecht University, NL)
The Subject of Transnational Literature: Diffraction
in the Mirror in E.S Özdamar's 'Der Hof im Spiegel'
16.15-16.30 Coffee
Break
16.30-17.30 Keynote 3
Robert Young (New York University)
Title: Late Postcolonialism
Programme Day
2
location: Academic Building (domplein 29): Kanunnikenzaal (entrance achter de dom 7)
9.00-9.30 Coffee
9.30-10.30 Keynote
4
Kate Mackintosh (ICTY, International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, NL)
Developments of International Criminal Justice. The
Example of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
10.30-12.15 Panel
4
Chair: Max Silverman
Chair: Max Silverman
Jolle
Demmers (Utrecht University,
NL)
Neoliberal Discourses on Violence: Monstrosity and
Rape in Borderland War
Julia Suárez-Krabbe ((Roskilde
University, Denmark)
Decolonising Human Rights and Democracy. Thinking
Through History and the Nation from Andalucía.
Kristín Loftsdóttir (University of Iceland, Iceland)
International Development, Colonial Memory and
Belonging
Emmanuelle Radar (Utrecht University, NL)
Europe and Cambodia; Postcolonial and Post Khmer
Rouge Transitions in Rithy Panh’s Work.
12.15-13.15 Keynote
4
Rosemarie
Buikema (Utrecht
University, NL)
Transitional Justice, Dialogical Truth and the Arts
13.15-14.00 Lunch break
14.00-15.00 Keynote 6
Gurminder K. Bhambra (Warwick University, UK):
Postcolonial
Cosmopolitanism in an Austere Europe
15.00-16.15 Panel
5
Chair: Lars Jensen
Lene
Bull Christiansen (Roskilde University, Denmark)
Public
Intellectuals and Affective Icons: The Afropolitanism of Danish Aid Celebrities
Sara Fekadu (University of Munich, Germany)
Re-Mapping Uneven Geographies: Globalized Labour,
Neo-Imperialism and the Body in the Cinematic Art of Steve McQueen
Brigitte Hipfl (University of Klagenfurt, Austria)
Exploring Migratory Culture in Contemporary Austrian
Films
16.15-17.30
Panel 6
Chair: Kristín Loftsdóttir
Gianmaria Colpani (Utrecht University, NL)
‘The Sexual Fortress':
Sexual Nationalisms and the European Assemblage.
Peter Maurits (Munich University, Germany)
From Member to Migrant: On the Future of the European
Union’s Exclusion Policy
Emanuelle Santos (Utrecht University, NL)
Postcolonial Thought on the Postcolony: the Same
European Dance with its Other?
17.30-17.45 Closing Remarks
***********************************************************
The conference is free of charge, but for
registration and information please mail: s.ponzanesi@uu.nl
***********************************************************
Postcolonial Europe Network PEN is funded
by NWO (Dutch National Endowment for the Humanities).
The project, conducted by Sandra Ponzanesi
and Paulo de Medeiros (Utrecht University, the Netherlands) in collaboration
with European partners, aims to establish an international platform for
developing research into new forms of conceptualizing Europe from a
multidisciplinary perspective engaging several disciplines (literary, media,
gender studies) in the Humanities and the Social Sciences (sociology, political
theory). PEN aspires to develop theoretical and methodological tools for
representing and imagining Europe in a postcolonial and postimperial perspective.
***********************************************************
The conference was made possible with the collaboration of:
***********************************************************
The PEN
conference is organized back to back with the Edward Said Memorial
Conference “In Time of Not Yet” (April 15-17, 2013).
Organized by the Centre for Humanities in Utrecht, in collaboration with the Treaty of
Utrecht 2013 commemoration.
The Edward Said Memorial conference “In The Time Of Not Yet” inaugurates
the commemoration of the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. The three-day conference will
focus on the role of culture in diplomacy and peace-making. With Mariam Said as
honorary chair, each day will feature renowned speakers on Edward Said’s work,
such as Judith Butler, Etienne Balibar, Maestro Daniel Baremboim, Gayatri
Spivak, Marina Warner and many others.
http://cfhutrecht2013.com/edward-said-memorial-conference/
LIQUID EUROPE: ONE-DAY SYMPOSIUM AT THE
LEEDS HUMANITIES RESEARCH INSTITUTE (LHRI)
JUNE
1st 2012 (9.45a.m. - 4.15p.m)
Keynote
speakers
Prof. Zygmunt Bauman, Emeritus Professor of Sociology,
University of Leeds
Prof. Tony Allan, Emeritus Professor of Geography,
SOAS
Schedule
9.30 - 9.45: Tea/coffee available at the LHRI
9.45 - 10: Symposium opens: introductory remarks (Graham Huggan)
10 - 10-45: Open discussion of the following: Zygmunt Bauman, ‘On Being
Light and Liquid’ (Foreword to Liquid Modernity); Iain Chambers,
‘Maritime Criticism and Lessons from the Sea’; Peregrine Horden and Nicholas
Purcell, ‘The Mediterranean and “the New Thalassology”’ (Discussion led by
Graham Huggan; the pieces mentioned above should be pre-read)
10.45 - 11.00: Tea/coffee/biscuits
11.00 - 12.00: Keynote address: Prof. Zygmunt Bauman, ‘A brief (unfinished)
history of the nation-state, European invention’ (30-minute talk followed by
discussion)
12 - 1.30: Lunch (provided at the LHRI)
1.30 - 2.30: Keynote address: Prof. Tony Allan, ‘Co-existing conflict and
cooperation over water resources: how we have coped despite increasingly
intense competition’
(30-minute talk followed by discussion)
2.30 - 2-45: Tea/coffee/biscuits
2.45 - 4.15: Presentations by doctoral members of the White Rose network:
Hannah Boast, Christine Gilmore, Will Wright (3 x 20-minute talks followed by
discussion)
4.15: Symposium closed
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