CfP =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=93Making_Sense_of_Catastrophe=94=2C_?=Cambridge 2012

[Dirk Uffelmann]

Call for Papers: 
"Making Sense of Catastrophe: Postcolonial Approaches to Postsocialist
Experiences"
Cambridge University, King’s College, 23 – 26 February 2012

Organisers: Alexander Etkind (University of Cambridge), Dirk Uffelmann
(University of Passau)
Keynote Speaker: Michael Rothberg (University of Illinois)
www.memoryatwar.org

Moving from adolescence to adulthood, the postsocialist world is undergoing
multi-directional transformations that would have seemed unbelievable twenty
years ago. Bustling economic development combines with corruption, violence,
and cynicism, which reign over the postsocialist space. Three causal schemes
compete to explain this large-scale process. One derives the postsocialist
present from the legacies of the Soviet past. Another ascribes
responsibility to the global crisis of the traditional West. A third
episteme draws on analogies and contrasts between postsocialist and
postcolonial transformations, both of which have shaped the 21st century as
we experience it.
   
Writing in 2001 from different hemispheres, David Chioni Moore called upon a
"Global Postcolonial Critique" of the postsocialist world, while Alexander
Etkind speculated about "internal colonization" in Russia’s past and
present. Independently, the last decade has seen a booming development of
Memory Studies, which has transferred its focus from its original subject of
the aftermath of the Holocaust to broad conceptions of "cosmopolitan"
(Daniel Levy, Nathan Snyder) and "multi-directional" memory and
"post-memory" (Marianne Hirsch), concepts that have been applied globally
from Latin America to the Pacific.
 
With this workshop, we intend to consolidate a new research agenda that
combines three independently developed fields, Postcolonial Studies,
Postsocialist Studies, and Memory Studies, in their application to Eastern
Europe and Northern Eurasia. Is the terror in places like Katyn or Kolyma,
as in Auschwitz, unrepresentable, or have art and history learned how to
represent these events? How do we need to revise postcolonial categories
such as orientalism, hegemony, or the subaltern when referring to places
such as Belarus or Kazakhstan? How are people across the postsocialist world
making sense of its serial catastrophes? What does the memory of the past
teach us about power and culture in the present and in the future?
 
We invite both theoretical and empirical contributions to these and related
questions. We wish to establish a dialogue between experts who specialize in
different parts of the planet. Interested scholars from the postcolonial and
postsocialist worlds are equally welcome.

Proposals shall consist of an abstract of 300-500 words and a short CV.
Please send your applications to Jill Gather <jg611 at cam.ac.uk> by 1 October
2011. Please also inform us if you wish help with financing your travel to
Cambridge. We will provide participants with accommodation from 23 to 26
February 2012. The reimbursement for travel expenses will be negotiated on
an individual basis. 

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