PCI Public Lecture: New Directions in Literary Postcolonial Studies: Prof. Deepika Bahri - Nov 26
Public lecture by
Deepika Bahri
(Emory University)
26 November 2014
Time: 15.15-17.00
Location: Drift 25, room 102
Convenors:
Birgit M. Kaiser (Dept of Comparative Literature)
Christine Quinan (Graduate Gender Programme)
Postcolonial Biology: Empire, Psyche, Flesh
The term hybridity originated in botany and
zoology in reference to mixture between species, and subsequently gained
force in debates about race in anthropology and biology. In literary
and cultural studies, however, it has been used most successfully to
theorize non-hierarchical spaces between fixed identities
and social heteroglossia in linguistic utterances. This departure
from its original usage, stemming from the exposure of race as
fiction in the biological sciences and resistance to notions of
racial or cultural purity in critical theory, tends to
discourage further exploration into alternative conceptions of bodily
hybridity. An interest in the biological impact of colonialism,
however, needs to go beyond the idea of mixture based on
deterministic difference. Colonial investment in racial border patrol
and categorization was accompanied by imperial designs on impressionable, plastic
body-minds at the level of ideology as well as the micromanagement of
the bodily grammars of behavior. The politics of the imperial
civilizing mission, founded in notions of racial and cultural superiority,
not only re-calibrated knowledge systems, but also bodily
aesthetics and comportment in matters as fundamental as how to eat,
speak, sit, shit, spit. This project turns to characters
in literature to explore hybridity as the interplay of biology, culture, and aesthetic
norms.
Together with the lecture, Deepika Bahri will
also be teaching a masterclass for advanced MA and PhD students on Postcolonial Aeshetics. The masterclass will take place on Thursday, 27 November
2014 (14.30-17.00 at Utrecht University). For more information, please email: B.M.Kaiser@uu.nl or C.L.Quinan@uu.nl.
Deepika
Bahri is Associate Professor in the English department at
Emory University. Her research focuses on postcolonial literature, culture, and
theory. She is the author of Native
Intelligence: Aesthetics, Politics, and Postcolonial Literature
(University of Minnesota Press, 2003) and co-editor of two collections of of
essays: Between the Lines:
South Asians and Postcoloniality (Temple UP, 1996) and Realms of Rhetoric: Inquiries into the
Prospects of Rhetoric Education (SUNY Press, 2003). In 2006 she
edited Empire and Racial Hybridity, a special issue of the journal, South
Asian Review. She is currently working on the representation of
Anglo-Indians, Eurasians, and racial hybrids in postcolonial literature.
She is also a member of the Postcolonial Studies
Network at Emory University (https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/postcolonialstudies/)
The lecture is part of
the lecture series New Directions in Literary Postcolonial Studies, organized by Birgit
M. Kaiser and Christine Quinan with the Postcolonial Studies Initiative PCI. It is financially supported by the PCI and the research area
Cultures, Citizenship and Human Rights (CCHR), Utrecht University (http://cchr.uu.nl)
Cultures, Citizenship and Human Rights (CCHR), Utrecht University (http://cchr.uu.nl)
Earlier speakers in
the series were Emily Apter (NYU) in June 2011, Réda Bensmaïa (Brown) in
October 2012, and Ato Quayson (Toronto) in October 2013.
