Program - The International Association for Philosophy and Literature

friday MORNING | 4 July 2008
movement of the trans-local and the contrapuntal. This account
will be refracted through a critique of reductive readings of the
postcolonial subject in terms of crude binaries, such as counter-hegemony and
counter-discourse. Finally, the terrain is freshly traversed through a series of
staged elisions and possible sublimations, which are aimed at creating ruptures
within a ‘monotheistic’ West’s project of globalization.
Merle Williams (English, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, SOUTH
AFRICA)
Hélène Cixous’ Manna: The Face of Suffering and the Ethics of Witnessing
Michael Titlestad (Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of
the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, SOUTH AFRICA)
”Such Desponding Thoughts:” Abjection and Despair in Four Shipwreck Narratives
Ashleigh Harris (English Literature, University of Uppsala, SWEDEN)
What Revolt in the Postcolony Today?
David Watson (American Literature, University of Uppsala, SWEDEN)
Another Origin of the World: Jean-Luc Nancy and the South
FR [IS-04] STOREY HALL SEMINAR ROOM 003
VERNACULAR COSMOPOLITANISMS: SUBALTERN INFLECTIONS
Organized, Chaired and Introduced by Sneja Gunew (English and Women’s Studies,
Universty of British Columbia, Vancouver, CANADA)
The concept of vernacular cosmopolitanisms acknowledges global contexts and
responsibilities while simultaneously recognizing that these are always rooted
in and permeated by local concerns. Discrepant modernities are the general
contexts and vernacular cosmopolitanisms contribute to an agnostic democratic
process that includes the scattered hegemonies of subalterns.
Ivor Indyk (Whitlam Chair in Writing and Society, University of Western Sydney,
NSW, AUSTRALIA)
Indigenous Cosmopolitanism
Wenche Ommundsen (English Literatures, University of Wollongong, NSW,
AUSTRALIA)
Sex and the Global City
Chandani Lokuge (English, Monash University, Clayton, AUSTRALIA)
Vernacular Cosmopolitanism: A Fictocritical Approach
Margery Fee (English, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, CANADA)
Vernacular Cosmopolitanism in Montreal
Purushottama Bilimoria (Philosophy, Deakin University, Geelong and University of
Melbourne, VIC,AUSTRALIA)
TBA
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