Joining postcolonial and critical scholars of African history, our group critiques the concepts of linear time and the ordering of the past into discrete epochs. As Derek Gregory in The Colonial Present writes, the convention of assuming sharp breaks between historical periods is simplistic. History -is always more complicated than that: always plural, always contested, and shot through with multiple temporalities and spatialities- (Gregory, p. 3). This workshop grapples centrally with these historical complications, to argue that colonial constellations of power, knowledge and geography are powerfully at work in the present. These contested histories, and their multiple temporal and spatial dynamics, actively shape the structures in which people make and narrate history, represent and read different bodies, and reproduce racialised spaces. The workshop aims to bring together researchers who in their individual work analyse various aspects of plural temporalities and spatialities and together want to reflect on current debates and challenges in African Studies.
The workshop will apply the innovative method of -poaching- as a way to present and discuss participants’ papers. The Matsutake Worlds Research Group initially developed this method (Faier 2010); researchers interested in alternatives to conventional conference formats have applied it. Eben Kirksey, Craig Schuetze and Nick Shapiro describe the practice of poaching as following: -Rather than conventional 15-minute papers about their own work, authors [double] as discussants, coming to the event with texts that they purloined from other participants. Panelists ‘[poach]’ the writing of others.- (Kirksey, Schuetze and Shapiro 2011, p. 129). Thus, each participant is requested to write a paper for the workshop, but instead of presenting their own paper will present another participant’s paper. The poaching method not only deepens discussion about individual papers but also facilitates more collaborative scholarship. Kirksey, Schuetze and Shapiro describe poaching as -an exercise in scholarly generosity- (p. 130).
The workshop takes place on the day immediately prior to the 7th European Conference on African Studies (ECAS), which will be organised and hosted by the University of Basel from 29 June – 1 July 2017. Funding is available to assist with accommodation costs during the workshop for participants based on the African continent. Please submit an abstract of your paper of about 300 words and a short statement about your motivation to participate in the workshop by 01.03.2017 to melanie.boehi@unibas.ch or j.buechele@unibas.ch.
Bibliography:
Lieba Faier, -Thoughts for a World of Poaching-, Cultural Anthropology Website, 10.10.2010, https://culanth.org/fieldsights/276-thoughts-for-a-world-of-poaching.
Derek Gregory, The Colonial Present (Malden: Blackwell Publishing 2004).
Eben Kirksey, Craig Schuetze and Nick Shapiro, -Poaching at the Multispecies Salon: Introduction-, Kroeber Anthropological Society 100 (2011) 1, pp. 129-153.