Call for Papers
The West or the Rest? **Latin America**’s Global Embeddedness in
Historical Perspective****
****June 14-16, 2012****
Latin American Institute, Freie Universität ****Berlin********
****
Ever since the penetration of postcolonial studies in the social
sciences and humanities since the 1990s, a widespread uneasiness or
outright confusion has reigned as to how to insert (or not) the
historical experience of **Latin America** into postcolonial paradigms.
The issue that is at stake can be illustrated best along the lines of
one of the classic dichotomies of postcolonial studies, drawn upon even
by scholars intent on deconstructing such binaries, namely that between
“the West” and “the rest”. Does **Latin America** belong to “the rest”,
as other “third-world” countries have been conceptualized by mainstream
postcolonial approaches to the subject? Or does Latin America’s
historical specificity foreclose the possibility of thinking about Latin
America with the same categories that have been used to study Asia and
**Africa**? These are some of the questions that this workshop aims to
address.****
In an older strand of historiography, Latin America was occasionally
cast as “the extreme West” (Alain Rouquié), alluding to attempts to
create a perfected overseas version of idealized blueprints of Iberian
societies, which in the long run inflated and exacerbated, as through a
magnifying lens, the inbuilt structural imbalances of “Western
modernity”. This older literature, however, had been largely forgotten
by the time postcolonial theory began to make inroads into the
historical discipline from the 1990s.
Sitting uncomfortably with the dichotomy between the West and the rest, Latin Americahas been largely ignored, or at best relegated to a few uneasy
footnotes, by historians of other world regions indebted to postcolonial
paradigms. Historians perhaps more so than scholars of other
disciplines of **Latin America**, meanwhile, have for the most part
remained reluctant to engage with what they identified as
postcolonialism’s unwarranted universalizing impulse, which in their
view was ill-suited to explain the historical specificities of “their”
region.****
The starting point of this conference, by contrast, is that **Latin America** can provide an instructive testing ground for challenging the
West/rest dichotomy, which many historians identified with postcolonial
theory, after all, have themselves sought to question. Our aim,
therefore, is neither to point an accusatorial finger at postcolonial
studies for their lack of attention to **Latin America** nor to “rescue”
a specifically Latin American tradition. Instead, we seek to create a
bridge between postcolonial studies and Latin American historical
trajectories. For this purpose, we aim at bringing together historians
of **Latin America** who have critically appraised the challenges that
postcolonial studies have posed for their work. More specifically, we
seek scholars working on topics including, among others,
alternative/multiple modernities and globalization, the condition of
coloniality, hybridity/*mestizaje*, anticolonial nationalisms, empire
and postcolonial histories, postcoloniality and gender.****
****
Confirmed keynote speakers include:****
Peter Burke (****Cambridge** **University****)****
Ricardo Salvatore (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella)****
Mark Thurner (****University** of **Florida****)****
Barbara Weinstein (****New York** **University****)****
****
To propose a paper, please send a 250-word abstract to
cecitoss@gmail.com by October 31, 2011. Abstracts should be accompanied
by a two-page curriculum vitae and relevant contact details.****
****
The working language of the conference is English.****
Travel and accommodation funding for participants will be provided
conditional upon success in fund raising.****
****
Selected applicants will be informed by e-mail by 28 February.****
****
For more information please contact Cecilia Tossounian at
cecitoss@gmail.com.****
