Culture as Decolonial Resistance

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****Call for Papers****
Workshop on “Culture as Decolonial Resistance and Power”
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Location/ Dates: University of St Andrews, 9-10 June 2020
Keynote Speaker: Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan (Spoken Word Poet and Writer)
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International Relations (IR) has seen a ‘cultural turn’ in recent years, with scholars paying greater
attention to the norms, identities and ‘soft power’ of states, regional/global institutions, and world
orders. Aesthetics and art in world politics has also, rightly, grown as a sub-field. While hegemonic
cultures and ‘cultural production’ have garnered a lot of interest, non-hegemonic culture and art has
historically been relegated to the private sphere, exoticised, or misunderstood in IR and related
disciplines. Moreover, attempts to mediate the aesthetics of postcolonial diasporas, racialised
communities, or the Global South, through a hegemonic/colonial gaze, are fraught with problems.
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While these cultural/aesthetic turns are relatively recent developments in mainstream IR,
postcolonial, decolonial, and critical race thinkers have long argued that culture has always played a
significant role in world politics. Literature, music, art, film, museums, fashion, food, and
photography have all been used to legitimate, normalise and uphold systems of colonial oppression
and extraction at local and global levels. But of course, culture is not only an instrument of
imperialism. Anti-colonial revolutionaries, thinkers, theologians, and civil rights activists have
historically advocated culture as a powerful, creative, and subversive form of resistance against
dehumanisation, erasure, and appropriation. As we witness a global rise in nationalist-supremacist
ideologies in mainstream, monopolised ‘political spheres’ today, resistance in the so-called ‘cultural
sphere’ takes on renewed importance.!
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This workshop, therefore, aims:
• to explore the role of culture as a site/strategy of resistance, disruption, and solidarity, versus
colonialism and racism in local or global contexts;
• to give a space to scholars and activists who are working at the intersection of politics and
art to share their specific knowledges of cultural power, be it in poetry, art, music, food,
theatre, architecture, museums etc.;
• to consider alternative/fresh ways of conceptualising the relationship between politics and
culture, relevant to colonised, formerly colonised, or racialised communities;
• to discuss the commodification and co-optation of anti-hegemonic ‘cultural production', and
how that can be resisted.!
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Submissions from non-academics working in this field are very welcome. Please submit a 300-word
abstract to: jkng@st-andrews.ac.uk. The deadline for abstracts is Monday 30th March 2020.
Papers presented at the workshop will be considered for publication in an edited volume.
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Limited funds are available to support travel and accommodation: up to £200 for UK/Europe-based
participants, or £400 for those coming from outside Europe. Priority will be given to nonacademics,
postgraduate researchers, or early-career researchers. Please indicate clearly on your
submission email if you are requesting financial support, and how much.
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The workshop is kindly sponsored by the Colonial/Postcolonial/Decolonial BISA Working Group;
St Andrews School of International Relations; St Andrews Centre for Arts and Politics.