[ecrea] CFP Politics of Representation: Human Rights, Witnessing... (11/1/06; ACLA, 4/19/07-4/22/07)

>American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting
>April 19-22, 2007 in Puebla, Mexico
>Deadline for proposals: Nov. 1 (via the ACLA website at 
><http://acla2007.complit.ucla.edu/>http://acla2007.complit.ucla.edu/)
>
>The Politics of Representation: Human Rights Violations, Witnessing, 
>and Transnational Readership
>
>             In the discussion of human rights violations, the 
> emphasis on violence and repression often portrays the violated as 
> victims needing to be rescued by the "west" or by the rich "north." 
> Scholars and members of violated communities have challenged this 
> representation to show how "victims" can be the site of both 
> oppression and resistance. The drive is toward how texts, with 
> their transnational readership, became sites of revitalization of 
> the image of different victim groups as agents of their own 
> history. Targets of human rights violations have turned against the 
> elite politics of representation of human rights abuse which have 
> depicted the violated as mere "victims."  In a classic example, the 
> lower caste woman turned bandit turned Parliamentarian "Phoolan 
> Devi" attempted to block the release of a film about her life 
> produced by Channel 4 in the UK.
>             In light of the vehement criticism of the cultural 
> politics of the elite-subaltern relationship, this panel seeks to 
> examine the politics of representation. Instead of confining 
> ourselves only to the text, the panel will also examine how such 
> representational politics inflects the political in the material 
> world of human rights activism. Thus papers might also consider the 
> influence of these texts on legal and public opinion, as seen in 
> the courts, political discourse, and media. In other words, we 
> would like to situate texts and textual traditions in the material 
> politics of human rights and explore how textual representations of 
> violence enable the disenfranchised to exert "pressure on sign 
> systems that uphold existing political and moral hierarchies," as 
> Bishnupriya Ghosh says. Well-known examples include such texts as 
> I, Rigoberta Menchu and India's Bandit Queen whose circulation 
> marked and influenced the real world of activism, but the panel is 
> open to discussions of texts from any cultural or linguistic context.
>and
>
>Although we are looking forward to examining new interventions in 
>this topic, the following questions might also suggest possible 
>routes of exploration:
>
>    * How do we responsibly archive violence in postcolonial 
> contexts so that we do not strengthen the imperial claim that 
> certain juvenile nations need to be parented by others?
>
>    * How do we avoid commodifying violence for a global market 
> thriving on profit from texts on postcolonial violence that enhance 
> the self-righteous claims of the discipline of the "north"? 
> Instead, how are we to mobilize sensitivity and accountability in a 
> transnational readership that rallies against such violence? How 
> can that readership  co-operate in acts of resistance with the 
> disenfranchised, thus avoiding a patronizing ideology of protection?
>
>    * Is there an ethical imperative for writers and scholars 
> depicting and studying violence in postcolonial contexts to trace 
> how postcolonial violence is generated out of cumulative structures 
> of oppression that place the pre-colonial, colonial, and 
> postcolonial in a continuum as agents of violence?
>
>    * Can the representation of violence in Northern Ireland, 
> indigenous Australia, and the 9/11 and post-9/11 United States take 
> us further than the literal and geopolitical connotation of 
> "post-colonial" to re-signify the term itself?
>
>    * How does integrating the "small" voices of women in the 
> project of historical violence galvanize a politics of human rights 
> representation that makes audible the "smaller" voices of children, 
> the aged, and the disabled during geopolitical upheavals?
>
>    * Can historic injustice against certain communities be 
> addressed within the boundaries of the post-conflict nation-state, 
> or is the only forum for reconciling the rights of violated groups 
> with those of the state the transnational venue of human rights politics?
>
>This panel will meet on two or three consecutive days (depending on 
>the number of papers), and presenters are strongly encouraged to 
>plan to attend all sessions of the panel. This is a unique 
>conference format that allows a small group of researchers to pursue 
>a particular topic in depth within the context of a larger conference.
>
>For questions about the panel, please contact the seminar organizers:
>Annedith Schneider 
>(<mailto:(schneider /at/ sabanciuniv.edu)>(schneider /at/ sabanciuniv.edu))
>Basuli Deb (<mailto:(debbasul /at/ msu.edu)>(debbasul /at/ msu.edu))
>
>For more information on the conference and to submit paper 
>proposals, please visit the official conference website at 
><http://acla2007.complit.ucla.edu/>http://acla2007.complit.ucla.edu/.
>

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Carpentier Nico (Phd)
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Studies on Media and Culture (CeMeSO)
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Katholieke Universiteit Brussel - Catholic University of Brussels
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F: ++ 32 (0)2/412.42.00
Office: 4/0/18
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European Communication Research and Education Association
Web: http://www.ecrea.eu
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E-mail: (Nico.Carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
Web: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
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