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H-ASIA Nov 6 2009 ACLA Conference on Restrategizing Essentialism April 1-4 2010 **************************************************** From: Kevin Tsai <sktsai@indiana.edu> I'd like to draw your attention to the call for paper below for a seminar entitled "Restrategizing Essentialism" at the upcoming meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association in April 1-4, 2010. Even though the abstract does not explicitly mention Asia, we are very interested in submissions from Asianists who engage with larger theoretical issues. The deadline is November 13th. For those unfamiliar with the ACLA, a key advantage of their conventions is the seminar format, which is effectively a very large panel with abundant time for presentation and discussion with fellow scholars interested in the same issues. A seminar is effectively a mini-conference within a conference, and it does not preclude its participants from attending other seminars. This year we will be meeting in New Orleans, still a lovely city in spite of the recent trauma. I hope to see some of you there. Thank you. Yours, Kevin Tsai Assistant Professor Department of Comparative Literature, EALC, and Program in Ancient Studies Indiana University at Bloomington Profile: <http://www.indiana.edu/~complit/people/tsai.shtml> ------------------------------------------------- Restrategizing Essentialism Seminar Organizer: Jonathan E. Abel, Penn State; S. -C. Kevin Tsai, Indiana U Bloomington If essentialist notions of identity can be tolerated as expedient means for political ends, at what point do they become unquestioned categories for academic inquiry? Can identity continue to generate radical moments for ethical criticism when the Other is appropriated as a foil for the Western self; when the rhetoric of identity serves to shield Area Studies from engagement with the world; or when the original impetus behind expanding the canon is replaced by “expansion for expansion’s sake”? Encounters with the “brute reality of the Orient” or the “incomprehensibility of the South” often produce new epistemologies revealing the limitations of Western theory. Yet, this strategy can also be its own limitation, too committed to the particularity of the local to have relevance to the global. Indeed, despite valuable attention on the non-European in recent criticism, the asymmetry of “the West vs. the Rest” persists, condemning studies of “the Rest” to a cultural fetishism, bound in temporality, locality, and nativity outside of theory. Is it still possible to invoke the ethical necessity of strategic essentialism when the provisional nature of its strategy has been forgotten? Can criticism employ identity without continuing to risk the reinscription of the very asymmetrical relationship it aims to unseat? Do the new categories of cultural materiality, ecology, and the posthuman constitute a future form of this debate, or do they merely reiterate the old ontological dilemmas? What are the ends to identity criticism? This CFP may be found at: <http://www.acla.org/acla2010/?p=669> Submit by November 13th at: <http://www.acla.org/submit/index.php> ****************************************************************** To post to H-ASIA simply send your message to: <H-ASIA@h-net.msu.edu> For holidays or short absences send post to: <listserv@h-net.msu.edu> with message: SET H-ASIA NOMAIL Upon return, send post with message SET H-ASIA MAIL H-ASIA WEB HOMEPAGE URL: http://h-net.msu.edu/~asia/
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