Deorientalizing Citizenship? Experiments in Political Subjectivity

The possibility of conceiving practices of citizenship after orientalism points to experiments that uncover, rearticulate and provoke subjugated forms of politics. Through addressing the intersections between orientalism, colonialism and citizenship (panel 1), exploring possibilities of democratic politics for decolonizing citizenship (panel 2) and troubling universal claims to rights (panel 3), we ask what images of citizenship are emerging in relation to the process of deorientalization? It is this experimentation itself, rather than its outcomes, that constitutes 'citizenship after orientalism' as a field of investigation.

Keynote speakers

Walter Mignolo (Duke University)
Citizenship, Knowledge and the Limits of Humanity (II)

Saba Mahmood (University of California, Berkeley)
Religious Difference and the Minority Problem in Contemporary Law

Registration

The £30 registration fee covers attendance on 12 and 13 November 2012 and includes conference materials, lunches, refreshments and evening reception on the first day.

Discussions
 
Thinking about 'citizenship after orientalism' involves addressing two theoretical issues. Firstly, what do we understand by orientalism thirty years after Edward Said's seminal investigation? How can orientalism be re-articulated beyond its cultural or representational forms? Secondly, what do we mean by citizenship as a possible mode of political subjectivity? Is any articulation of political subjectivity which enacts a claim to rights, or to the right to claim rights, to be understood as citizenship? Keynote speakers Saba Mahmood and Walter Mignolo together with a selection of panellists will address these questions from multi-disciplinary perspectives.

Panel 1: Citizenship, colonialism, orientalism

Speakers: Sukanya Banerjee (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Piyel Haldar (Birkbeck), Jack Harrington (The Open University), Meyda Yeğenoğlu (Istanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi).

This panel traces the relations and tensions between Western colonial enterprises, orientalism and the institution of citizenship. Though intertwined in complex ways, these tensions are also distinct. How can these strands be pulled apart in order to understand how they have operated and continue to operate singly and together? How have colonial dominations and Empires acted upon the particular configuration of political subjectivity called citizenship and how do they continue to do so?

The panel aims to address the following questions: Is 'political orientalism' different from other forms of orientalism? If so, in what ways? Was orientalism a disposit if at play in the establishment of law as the language of state authority? How can we think of orientalism and colonialism in relation to the way in which the 'global south' is currently constructed? How do we investigate their traces in citizenship practices today?

Panel 2: Democratizing politics, decolonizing citizenship

Speakers: Bela Bhatia (Tata Institute of Social Sciences), Charles Hirschkind (UC Berkeley), Sasha Roseneil (Birkbeck).

Having questioned the institution of citizenship as euro-centric and inherited from colonialism, the panel asks what images of the citizen might emerge if we think about democratic politics 'after orientalism'. From the postcolonial nationalist struggles to anti-globalization resistances, from the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East to the 'Occupy movements', what democratic demands are advocated and circulate as forms of resistance against states and supranational powers? How does the signifier 'democratic' operate differently in different contexts? Can it question what is conceived as 'political'?

Departing from these interrogations, how can we think of alternative subjectivities (plural, communal, religious, intimate, etc) and informal political actors (non-elected representatives, religious leaders, big men, private armies, vigilantism, local fixers, etc) operating in postcolonial societies?

Panel 3: The universal after orientalism

Speakers: Gurminder Bhambra (Warwick), Sudeep Dasgupta (University of Amsterdam), Antke Engel (Institute for Queer Theory), Kate Nash (Goldsmiths).

The access to citizenship of 'former' colonial, sexual, religious, racial, indigenous others (who became rights-bearing subjects in that process) and the expansion of rights has promoted a potential universalisation of citizenship. Despite the critique of universalism made from multiculturalist, pluralist and feminist perspectives, the tension with regards to the horizon of universalised rights survives. To what extent have the universalist assumptions about the subject of politics, merely understood as a human subject of rights, limited the scope of politics to an euro-centric view?

This panel discusses alterity as a condition of citizenship in ways that question universalist ideals. It brings together speakers whose work troubles the distinction between the human and the citizen and interrogates the scope of the universal in relation to forms of political subjectivation.

Further event information

A limited number of bursaries to facilitate attendance at the event are available. If you have any further queries please contact us via: [email protected]

The Symposium is organised by the European Research Council funded project Oecumene: Citizenship after orientalism based at The Open University, which will offer a series of symposiums. Each symposium will focus on specific aspects connected with reconsidering
citizenship beyond Eurocentrism.

Contact:

Brigid Vigrass, Project Administrator
Oecumene Project
Faculty of Social Sciences
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)1908 659958
Email: [email protected]