According to some scholars, the various traditions of criticizing colonial modernity in the human sciences (rather than literary criticism)—postcolonial, decolonial, settler colonial, and anti-imperial, are now spent. We disagree. Certain approaches and themes associated with these fields, to be sure, have been rendered anachronistic by ongoing socio-political transformations that have taken place within and across the countries of the peripheral fringe and the metropolitan core (including neoliberal globalization, mass migration, the proliferation of ethno-racial enclaves and camps for stateless peoples, the spread of populism) have blurred the boundaries between them; others have been ossified by intra-disciplinary academic debates and still others by ideologically monistic perspectives.
Without ignoring or belittling the criticisms that have been leveled against these counter-colonial traditions by critics and sympathizers alike, this conference seeks to rethink and renew them by having them engage with and transform each other’s understanding of the current and untimely aspects of the receding present.
This gathering aims to broaden the intellectual and political criticism of anti-colonial modernity by exploring from divergent perspectives the following: Popular Politics, Marxism, Palestine/Israel, Abolitionism, Migration, and Ecology. The roundtable includes speakers who have made significant contributions to the tradition of anti-colonial criticism broadly understood.
WHEN: April 27–28, 2024
WHERE: Wolff Conference Room, 6 E16th Street, Room 1103, New York City
See the full program and register here.
Presented by Critical Perspectives on Democratic Anti-colonialism, co-sponsored by the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility, the Janey Program in Latin American Studies, the University Student Senate, the Departments of Sociology and Politics at the New School for Social Research, with the support of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung–New York Office.
