[ecrea] Representations of Slavery in Neoliberal Times

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Representations of Slavery in Neoliberal Times
Friday 25 May 2012, 1-6pm.
Newcastle University, Research Beehive, Room 2.20

A symposium hosted by Media and Cultural Studies, with the Postcolonial Research Group and the Gender Research Group at Newcastle University

Speakers:

Professor Marcus Wood
School of English, University of Sussex
Title: TBD

Professor Julia O’Connell Davidson
School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham
Title: ‘Debt, Freedom and Slavery in Neoliberal Times’

Professor Lubaina Himid
Centre for Contemporary Art, University of Central Lancashire
Title: ‘Negative Positives: The Guardian, The Slave, The Wit and The Money’


Alluding to George Orwell’s famous condemnation of dead metaphors and dishonest writing, many critical commentators have claimed that the word ‘neoliberalism’ has no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’  As Lawrence Grossberg notes in Cultural Studies in the Future Tense (2010), neoliberalism seems to stitch different meanings – new forms of capital accumulation, the expansion of the reach of corporate capitalism, and the indirect economization of areas of social and political life – into an apparently dominant and harmonious formation. Many researchers have also found it difficult to define slavery – discussions of modern slavery include, but are not limited to, studies of coerced labour and sex trafficking in contemporary times, the role of the transatlantic slave trade in the making of the modern world, and the social memory of abolition movements. However, little work has been done to connect the study of neoliberalism with the study of contemporary slavery and modern slavery. This one-day symposium brings together speakers who address the intersections among  neoliberalism, contemporary slavery and modern slavery through the concept of representation (visual, affective, cultural and media). It is particularly interested in developing discussions of slavery and neoliberalism that are used in specified and contextually located ways.


Key questions to be addressed include:
How might we understand the raced, gendered, classed and sexualised politics of neoliberalism through concepts developed for the study of modern slavery?
How do different forms and practices of representation (visual, affective, cultural, media) figure, fuse and/or interrogate links between neoliberalism and contemporary slavery?
More specifically, how might thinking through the connections between neoliberalism and slavery affect how we conceptualise the contemporary politics of representation and difference?
How do practices of social memory and the commemoration of slave abolition intersect with the cultural projects of neoliberalism?
How are neoliberal conceptions of ‘domestic’ (home and nation) and ‘abroad’ mobilised in representations of contemporary slavery?

Event organisers: Daniel McNeil, Carolyn Pedwell, John Richardson and Anne Graefer (Newcastle University)

This is a free event, but places are limited. To book a place, please contact: Carolyn Pedwell: (carolyn.pedwell /at/ ncl.ac.uk)


Dr. Carolyn Pedwell
Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies
School of Arts and Cultures
Newcastle University
Room 2.82, Second Floor
Armstrong Building
Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE1 7RU
Tel: 0191 222 6527
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/sacs/staff/profile/carolyn.pedwell

Just out in paperback:
Feminism, Culture and Embodied Practice: The Rhetorics of Comparison (Routledge, 2012)
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415528887/



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