Postcolonial Studies Research Network
About the Research NetworkThe Postcolonial Studies Research Network brings together an interdisciplinary group of established and emerging scholars whose research engages with a range of aspects of postcoloniality. These include the historical cultures of empire, and the contemporary cultural politics of indigeneity, of (post)colonial settlement, and of the diasporic condition. We make critical theoretical interventions into diverse historical and contemporary questions of ethics, political economy, cultural formations and representations, and the uses and implications of media and technology in relation to a variety of (post)colonial contexts, including Aotearoa-New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the Pacific Islands, India, South and South East Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. Coordinator Dr Chris Prentice Researchers
Research Projects and Network PublicationsProjectsNetwork collective, “Utopian Horizons: the Postcolonial Exotic.” A two-pronged collective research project investigating the contemporary persistence of old, and emergence of new or transformed discursive practices that, despite sustained postcolonial critique, rely on the category of the exotic. Just as exoticism construes ‘the other’ as the domesticated and known other, positing the lure of difference while assimilating its object to the circuits of consumption, utopias project an ideal state, an other place or state, as derivations from what is already given. One aspect of the project that focuses on how these discourses inter-connect in current discourses of national culture, difference and identity in Aotearoa-New Zealand is listed as a sub-theme under the University of Otago Centre For Research on National Identity project on Cultural Hybridity in New Zealand. The larger comparative postcolonial project comprises individual research contributions, a symposium planned for mid-2009 and a Master Class for the end of 2009. Simone Drichel, "The Other Other: Postcolonialism and Ethics": This project establishes pathways between postcolonial studies and deconstructive ethics in order to broaden the critical context for understanding postcolonial politics. It advances a theoretical model of an ethical postcolonial politics that is founded on a productive tension between ethics and politics. Dr Vijay Devadas and Dr Chris Prentice, “Contexualising Maori Television in Aotearoa-New Zealand,” a research project funded by a 2006 University of Otago Research Grant. This project has developed an archive of responses to proposals for, and eventual emergence of, the Maori Television Service in order to evaluate its relationship to wider cultural, economic and political relations and imperatives. Publications
Vijay Devadas & Chris Prentice, “Postcolonial Politics.” Borderlands e-journal, 6.2 (Oct 2007)_http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol6no2_2007/device_editorial.htm Researcher Profiles and PublicationsDr
Vijay Devadas, Department
of Media, Film and Communication Dr Vijay Devadas’s research interests traverse a number of areas including postcolonial theory, critical and cultural theory, and film and media studies, with particular emphasis on the relationships between media technologies, society, and critical theory. Within this, issues of democracy, sovereignty, community, ethics, and politics animate his research. Selected Recent Publications Devadas, Vijay & Selvaraj Velayutham, “Tamil Cinema and Hinduism”, in Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Volume 2. Knut, J, et al (eds). Brill, Netherlands (Forthcoming, 2009). Devadas, Vijay (2009), “Cinema in Motion: Tracking Tamil Cinema's Assemblage”, From Bombay to LA: The Travels of South Asian Cinema, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (9-10 Feb 2009) - Invited address. Vijay Devadas & Selvaraj Velayutham, “Encounters with ‘India’: (Ethno)-Nationalism in Tamil cinema”, in Tamil Cinema: The Cultural Politics of India's Other Film Industry. Selvaraj Velayutham (ed.) Routledge, London, 2008, 154- 171. Vijay Devadas, “Cartographies of Dis-location: K. S. Maniam and the Indian Diaspora,” in Literatures in Englishes of the Asia-Pacific Region: Perceiving from the Inside. Edwin Thumboo (ed). Marshall-Cavendish, Singapore and London, 2007, 325-340. Vijay Devadas & Jane Mummery, “Community Without Community.” Borderlands e-journal, 6.1 (May 2007) http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol6no1_2007/devadasmummery_intro.htm Selected Recent Conference Presentations Vijay Devadas, “When the Postcolonial is Insufficient: Reconfiguring the Literatures of Southeast Asia”, 12th Biennial Symposium on the Literatures and Cultures of the Asia Pacific Region, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City. (22-24 Nov 2007). Dr Simone Drichel, Department
of English Dr Simone Drichel has research interests in the area of continental philosophy and postcolonial theory, with a particular focus on questions of ethical subjectivity and deconstruction in a postcolonial context. Her article in Philosophy & Social Criticism teases out the ethical dimensions of postcolonial hybridity, and she has also written on the postcolonial trope of ‘the in-between’ as an ethical site of hospitality. As well as working on a book on the intersection of postcolonial theory and continental ethics, Dr Drichel is co-editing Frameworks, a new volume of critical essays on New Zealand writer Janet Frame. Selected Recent Publications Drichel, Simone (2009), “ ‘Signposts to a world that is not even mentioned’: Janet Frame’s Ethical Transcendence.” Frameworks: Contemporary Criticism on Janet Frame. Ed. Jan Cronin and Simone Drichel. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. 181–212. Drichel, Simone (2009): Cronin, Jan and Simone Drichel. “Introduction.” Frameworks: Contemporary Criticism on Janet Frame. Ed. Jan Cronin and Simone Drichel. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. ix–xxvii. Simone Drichel, “The Time of Hybridity.” Philosophy & Social Criticism 34, 6 (2008), 587-615. Simone Drichel, “Regarding the Other: Postcolonial Violations and Ethical Resistance in Margaret Atwood’s Bodily Harm.” Modern Fiction Studies 54, 1 (2008), 20-49. Simone Drichel, “Of Political Bottom Lines and Last Ethical Frontiers: The Politics and Ethics of ‘the Other.’” Borderlands e-journal 6, 2 (October 2007). Selected Recent Conference Presentations Simone Drichel, “Of Alterity and Other Others: Alan Duff and Jacques Derrida.” Presented at the New Zealand Studies Association (NZSA) Conference 2006: New Zealand, France, and the Pacific. Université Paris-Dauphine, France. 29 June – 1 July 2006. Simone Drichel, “‘Don’t Mess with Mister In-Between’:
On the Ambivalence of Being Between.” Presented at the International
Association of Philosophy and Literature (IAPL) Conference, 2006: Between
Three: Arts—Media—Politics. University of Freiburg, Germany,
5 — 10 June, 2006. Associate Professor Brendan
Hokowhitu, Te Tumu - School
of Mäori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies Associate Professor Hokowhitu's research interests include deconstructing historical and contemporary representation of Mäori in dominant discourses, especially in relation to masculinity, popular culture, film and media, sport and physical education. Selected Recent Publications Hokowhitu, B. (2009). “Mäori rugby and subversion: Creativity, domestication, oppression and decolonization.” International Journal of the History of Sport, 26 (16), 1-21. Hokowhitu, B. and Scherer, J. (2008). ‘The Mäori All Blacks and the Decentering of the White Subject: Hyperrace, Sport, and the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’. Sociology of Sport Journal, 25, pp. 243-262. Hokowhitu, B. (2008). ‘The Death of Koro Paka: “Traditional” Mäori Patriarchy’. The Contemporary Pacific, 20 (1), pp. 115-141. Hokowhitu, B. (2007). ‘Voice and the Postmodern Condition’. Junctures: The Journal of Thematic Dialogue, 9, pp. 7-14. Hokowhitu, B. (2007). ‘Understanding Whangara: Whale Rider as Simulacrum’. New Zealand Journal of Media Studies, 10 (2), pp. 22-30. Hokowhitu, B. (2007). ‘Mäori Masculinity: Overcoming Discourses of Savagery in Working with Mäori Men’. New Zealand Journal of Counselling, 27 (2), Special Issue: Working with Male Clients, pp. 63-76. Andersen, C. and Hokowhitu, B. (2007). ‘Whiteness, Naivety, Void and Control’. Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue, 8, pp. 39-49. Hokowhitu, B. (2007). ‘Mäori Sport: Pre-colonisation to Today’. In Sport in New Zealand Society (2nd edition), C. Collins & S. Jackson (eds.), Albany, New Zealand: Thomson, pp. 78-95. Selected Recent Conference Presentations
Dr Chris Prentice, Department
of English
Selected Recent Publications Chris Prentice (2009), “From Visibility to Visuality: Patricia Grace’s Baby No-Eyes and the Cultural Politics of Decolonization. ”Modern Fiction Studies. 55:2, 321-348. Chris Prentice, “From Benevolence to Partnership: the Persistence of Colonial Legacies in Aotearoa-New Zealand,” in Burden or Benefit? Imperial Benevolence and its Legacies. Eds Helen Gilbert and Chris Tiffin. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2008, pp. 119-135. Chris Prentice, ‘“A knife through time”: Robert Sullivan’s Star Waka and the Politics and Poetics of Cultural Difference.’ Ariel 37 (2-3), April-July, 2006, pp. 111-136. Selected Recent Conference Presentations Chris Prentice, “The Meanings of Biculturalism.” Presented at the “Biculturalism or Multiculturalism’” Conference, University of Canterbury, September 1-3, 2005. Chris Prentice, “Cultural Difference and/of the Literary Text.” Presented at the “Postcolonial Literatures: Priorities of Research” Conference, University of Innsbruck, Austria, July 13-17, 2005. Dr Angela Wanhalla, Department
of History and Art History Selected Recent Publications Upcoming EventsCitizenship in an Era of Global Crisis
University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand Citizenship Conference Website Keynote Speakers
We are today witnessing the biopolitical re-ordering of the world and various aspects of life in and through the notion of citizenship. This re-ordering is evident in such processes and instances as the ‘war on terror,’ the protests and violence in the Middle East, the outsourcing of labour, the movement of refugees and migrants, the construction of camps within nation-states, the increased policing of borders, and the imposition of techniques of governmentality. At the same time, we are also witnessing various challenges, predicated on specific notions of citizenship, which seek to rethink established, dominant conceptions of belonging: the struggles of indigenous communities, protest communities, and other marginalised and exploited peoples testify to the project of reconstituting how we might think of citizenship in the era of unprecedented crisis — financial, food, water, political, social, cultural, territorial, environmental and so on. Citizenship further invokes concerns about the forms of violence enacted through, because of, and by the idea of citizenship, and the protests, as well as resistances and struggles that have emerged out of discontent with articulations of citizenship, impelled by a desire to redefine what we mean by citizenship. ‘Citizenship in the Era of Global Crisis’ is, in other words, a call to explore the ways in which citizenship is used and abused variously from disciplining quotidian cultural practices to fostering the grounds for social protests and legitimating killing. In short, the role, conception, articulation and dissemination of citizenship has fundamental consequences in the globalised world today. In order to explore the multiple social, cultural, political and economic contexts within which these concerns are articulated, the conference is open to a range of disciplinary perspectives and approaches. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
The conference conveners invite abstracts of no more than 250 words and a short bio to be sent to Brett Nicholls at brett.nicholls@otago.ac.nz by 16 September 2011
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