GLASS Faculty Roundtable - Postcolonial Frictions? - (Dis)Locating the ‘pre-modern’ in Asian Modernities
| Datum | vrijdag 14 juni 2013 |
|---|---|
| Tijd | 11:00 – 13:00 uur |
| Locatie | Gravensteen, Rm 1.11 |
Farish Noor will kick-off the roundtable by speaking about the recent ‘invasion’ of East Malaysia by Southern Filipinos who claim an ancestral right to their ‘native land’. He uses this example as a way to look at the question of the postmodern postcolonial nation state in Asia and is concerned with the following questions:
- Can we really escape primordialism (ethno-nationalism and ties of blood and belonging) in a postcolonial world today? – Are these ties really a symptom of the pre-modern interrupting the course of modernity (ie. an abberation) or are they forms of subaltern resistance that may not necessarily be negative? – How do we understand the process of capital-driven democratic development in Asia today? I view countries like Malaysia, Indonesia as hybrid states that contain elements iof both the modern and pre-modern, and without having to create a new hybrid typology, can we rethink our premises for modernity and the project of Modernity?
General Roundtable Questions:
1. Where is the ‘primordial’ in the post-colony? How do state and capital stage, appropriate or re-configure the primordial and the pre-modern?
2. How do contesting claims of lineage and ancestry (through the tropes of ethnicity, regionalism, sovereignty, cultural practice, etc.) disturb the idea of a monolithic ‘national-modern’ in the post-colonies?
3. Are frames of ‘hybrid’, ‘alternative’, and ‘multiple’ modernities valid or sustainable for theorizing the Asian modern?