CFP: Questioning Hybridity-Discourse (Deadline: Sept.30, 2010) – NeMLA, New Brunswick, NY, April 7-10, 2011
CALL FOR PAPERS
Questioning Hybridity-Discourse: Colonial Métissage, Postcolonialism, and Globalization
42nd Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
April 7-10, 2011
New Brunswick, NY – Hyatt New Brunswick
Host Institution: Rutgers University
This panel seeks papers that address hybridity from colonial, postcolonial and global perspectives. Proposals should critically examine postcolonial discourse on hybridity and offer new theoretical and empirical perspectives on the problematic relation of postcolonial studies to globalization. Papers that question the role of hybridity-discourse as a counter hegemonic agency are particularly welcome. Please submit 250-500 word abstracts to Amar Acheraiou at acherayou@sympatico.ca by September 30, 2010.
Panel Abstract
A key feature of colonial cultures and colonialist discourse, hybridity has become a predominant topic in postcolonial studies over the last three decades or so. Well received in postcolonial circles, the concept of hybridity, alongside its corollary ‘the third space’, has also elicited criticism from a number of scholars, including Aijaz Ahmad, Arif Dirlik, Marwan Kraidy, and Amar Acheraiou. This proposal addresses hybridity from colonial, postcolonial and global perspectives. It profoundly rethinks this concept and investigates the problematic relationship of postcolonial studies with globalization.
The question of postcolonial engagement with globalization has, of course, been recurrent in postcolonial studies. Ania Loomba (1998) and Krishnaswamy and John C. Hawley (2007), for instance, urged postcolonial scholars actively to engage with the material conditions of ‘globality.’ Despite these calls, however, the postcolonial field remains deeply embedded in the culturalist turn with hybridity-theory as its most manifest articulation. Postcolonial discourse is, in short, reluctant to involve itself with the concrete hegemonic global power networks which are pursuing, in different guises, the former imperial domination. Of interest to our argument, here, is the fact that this neocolonial global order is hybrid, rather than monolithic. It is a cluster of power structures in which global corporate economic, financial, and political institutions, based mostly in the West, are allied to elite comprador groups from the former colonies. This proposal is attentive to this neocolonial expression of global power networks. One of its main aims consists precisely in suggesting new theoretical and empirical directions that would bring postcolonial studies to a more active and critical commitment to this neocolonial globality. Ultimately, this proposal questions the role of postcolonialism, more specifically hybridity-discourse, as a counter hegemonic agency.
Deadline: September 30, 2010
Please include with your abstract:
Name and Affiliation
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee with registration)
The 42nd Annual Convention will feature approximately 360 sessions, as well as dynamic speakers and cultural events. Details and the complete Call for Papers for the 2011 Convention will be posted in June: http://www.nemla.org.
Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA session; however panelists can only present one paper (panel or seminar). Convention participants may present a paper at a panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable. Do not accept a slot if you may cancel to present on another session.
