Summer School: Postcolonial Interruptions? Decolonisation and Global Dis:connectivity

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Summer School: Postcolonial Interruptions? Decolonisation and Global Dis:connectivity

Organizer
Käte Hamburger Research Centre “Dis:connectivity in Processes of Globalisation” (global dis:connect) at Ludwig-Maximilians-University München
ZIP
81675
Location
München
Country
Germany
From - Until
03.08.2022 - 05.08.2022
Deadline
05.04.2022
By
Connections Redaktion, Leipzig Research Centre Global Dynamics, Universität Leipzig

Global dis:connect promotes dialogue between scholarship and art as co-equal means to approach dis:connective phenomena — interruptions, absences and detours of globalisation. Such phenomena often leave few traces in archives and defy direct observation in many cases, but artistic practice can often reveal and provide access to them. Therefore, the summer school welcomes advanced MA-students, PhD-students and artists alike.

Summer School: Postcolonial Interruptions? Decolonisation and Global Dis:connectivity

The period of decolonisation from the 1930s to the 1970s witnessed the transformation of global processes of integration and exchange, which were still coloured by empire. Cultural connections, political alliances, economic relations and personal networks became subject to scrutiny and interruption. Then and after, existing connections metamorphosed, and new ones arose. global dis:connect invites to explore how instances of dis:connectivity of various kinds have affected processes of globalisation in postcolonial settings.

The summer school is scheduled to take place from 3-5 August 2022 on the premises of global dis:connect (Maria Theresia-Str. 21 in Munich, Germany). Each day is to begin with a 90-minute master class, where we will discuss a text relevant to the topic of the day, after which participants will be able to present their projects for discussion. All sessions will be held in English.

global dis:connect promotes dialogue between scholarship and art as co-equal means to approach dis:connective phenomena — interruptions, absences and detours of globalisation. Such phenomena often leave few traces in archives and defy direct observation in many cases, but artistic practice can often reveal and provide access to them. Therefore, the summer school welcomes advanced MA-students, PhD-students and artists alike. Dissertation projects, grant proposals, exhibition projects and artistic interventions are all welcome. Participants can propose the presentation format that best fits their work, be it a traditional presentation, a film screening, an artistic intervention, moderated discussions and slide shows. All proposals should refer to the types of questions described below and stimulate discussion. The closing date for applications is 5 April 2022.

There are no participation fees. global dis:connect is endeavouring to secure funding to cover accommodation and travel costs for participants who require it.

For centuries, colonialism framed the history of globalisation and the processes of integration it comprised. By contrast, decolonisation emphasises disintegrative tendences that do not easily fit in an overarching narrative of integration. Essentially, decolonisation refers to the legal dissociation from heteronomous rule and the advancement of political, economic and cultural sovereignty. New states were the result — entities that decoupled from a greater political unit or that contributed to its dissolution (Osterhammel/Jansen). Interruptions and disconnections of various kinds were the consequence. Nonetheless, the period from the 1930s to the 1970s was a time of intense globalisation that witnessed the erection of a multilateral world order (Osterhammel/Peterson). Simultaneously, colonial structures (have) persisted in the form of enduring legal and institutional forms and epistemological repertoires. Thus, decolonisation was less a case of disintegrating globality than of a complex reconstitution of connective and disconnective processes around the world. We will probe these unexpected, interdependent and contradictory dynamics of global dis:connectivity in a novel approach to the historical study of decolonisation. The term dis:connectivity also provides a tool to unearth aspects of globalisation in our summer school that history and the humanities have largely ignored.

Please apply in writing by 5 April 2022 with the following documents:

- A CV (max. one page).
- A cover letter of one page explaining why you wish to take part in the summer
school.
- A description of what you intend to present at the summer school (max. two pages).
Proposals for presentations of artistic projects can include images, video still, or other media.
- A short, signed statement declaring the participant’s consent to present proof of complete vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 with a vaccine authorised by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

Please send us your application as a single PDF file and by email to: nikolai.brandes@lmu.de and a.nuebling@lmu.de. Following the invitation, we expect the participants to submit a paper (max. 15 pages) or other adequate material as a basis for discussion during the group sessions.

Programm

Invited guests include Maurits van Bever Donker, Stefan Eisenhofer, Karin Guggeis, Ayala Levin, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni

Starting with the topic of Managing dis:connectivity during decolonisation on the first day, we’ll consider how colonies and metropoles managed the effects of interruptions in colonialism’s global integrative dynamics. How exactly did decolonisation interrupt processes of globalisation in the realms of politics (e.g. regional integration and diplomatic/international relations) and economics (e.g. globalised production processes and supply chains, transnational investment and relations between producers and consumers)? How did they affect the global transfer of political agendas and aesthetic points of reference in, for example, the arts, culture, and civil engineering? What modes of dis:connective production in decolonisation are apparent between active disintegration, as in the case of indigenismo and rupture in Fanon’s sense, the maintenance of (phantom) connections and the establishment of new relations and networks, for example in the form of socialist states, the Non-Aligned Movement, pan movements and regional organisations?

Decolonisation reorganised not only the world’s laws, politics and economics, but its cognition as well. Colonial metropoles no longer dictated the official content and structure of mainstream knowledge production. With the topic Epistemology, decolonisation and dis:connectivity on the second day of the summer school, we will tackle dis:connective aspects of decolonisation in terms of historical ascriptions of meaning and epistemologies. We’ll focus on the cognitive emancipation from colonialism in the colonies and metropoles alike, asking how it evolved into new social ideals, images of the world and of history, visions for the future, political programmes and artistic concepts and theories. What possible trajectories did such reflections between national particularisms and new global interdependencies indicate for social, cultural and economic life in the wake of the interruption? Waning universalisms and the epistemological decolonisation that occurred in the course of postmodern reflection, which Young described as a ‘challenge’ to the colonial ‘totality’ played a key role, as for example in the universities not only of the global South.

The third day, titled After dis:connection, is devoted to the consequences of decolonisation. We’ll focus on how the ways of dealing with colonial pasts vary by context and period, bringing dis:connectivity into a temporal dimension. Enduring colonial thought patterns and stereotypes persist in the societies of former colonial powers. These societies typically dealt with their colonial pasts through denial and forgetting, which were punctuated by isolated periods of explicit engagement in the form of, for example, debates about the restitution of cultural goods. Colonial burdens were more visible in postcolonial states, with the cultural, social, territorial, geopolitical and economic orders along with the dependencies and hierarchies they inherited. To what extent are dis:connective concepts, like continuity, breach and interruption fruitful in describing and understanding these different modes of dealing with the past? In what way are debates about the politics of memory negotiations about a new global order, and what do they tell about dis:connectivities in the relations between postcolonial states and former colonial powers?

Contact (announcement)

nikolai.brandes@lmu.de
a.nuebling@lmu.de

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Published on
18.03.2022
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