CfP: Global Challenges: Borders, Populism and the Postcolonial Condition

NUC Concurrences, Linnaeus University, June 14-16, 2018.

Global Challenges: Borders, Populism and the Postcolonial Condition is an interdisciplinary

conference that brings together scholars in Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, History and Postcolonial

and Decolonial Studies. Confirmed keynote speakers are Dominick LaCapra, Carolyn Dean,

Boaventura de Sousa Santos, and Gurminder Bhambra. The conference considers current global

challenges in the light of the international development of the past 10 years. 2008 was the time when

the invasion of Iraq ground to a definitive halt, the global financial crisis unfolded, triggering a tactic of

austerity in many western nations. At the same time, 2008 was the year of Obama’s first presidential

campaign and, shared among transnational activist groups, a critique of what was understood as a

general moral and economic failure of the West.

From the vantage point of the present moment, some crucial questions arise: What happened to the

liberal hopes of a moral horizon that were expressed in 2008? In view of the Trump presidency, the rise

of populism and facism, massive refugee and labour migration, what has happened to the European

project, and to globalisation. What does the construction of new intellectual and physical borders mean

for humanities and social sciences scholarship? What new ways of thinking about society, sovereignty,

and the human and non-human animal, have emerged and what new critical venues do they offer

humanities and social sciences research? How does the long history of colonialism still inform present

society?

In order to address these and similar questions, LNUC Concurrences and alumni of the 2008 School of

Criticism and Theory at Cornell, are organizing a 3-day conference at Linnaeus University, Sweden

June 14-16, 2018. In an effort to closely involve all participants in the conversations that emerge, the

size of the meeting will be limited. The conference will be comprised of a number of thematic sessions

that include, but are not limited to:

• Contemporary cultural discourses on torture, dignity, and victimization

• Sovereignty, violence, and citizenship

• Migration, mobility, and borders

• Postcoloniality, nationalism and human rights

• Non-human animals, suffering and resistance

• Austerity, populism and the demise of the left

• The continuing impact of the long history of colonialism

Our aim is to traverse varied intellectual and geographical spaces and to approach the themes from

multiple disciplines including literature, history, visual studies, sociology, geography, political science,

philosophy, anthropology, and other relevant fields. The venue for the conference will be Teleborg

Castle situated on the Växjö campus of Linnaeus University.

We welcome both suggestions for panels and for individual papers. Please send either a panel proposal

of 600-900 words or a 300-word abstract for an individual presentation by January 15, 2018. Panel

proposals should contain both a short description of the focus of the panel and the 3-4 abstracts that

make up the content. Individual abstracts will be allocated a panel after review. Please include basic

contact and affiliation details. Submit your abstract or panel by using the submission function that you

find at the conference website: https://lnu.se/en/research/conferences/global-challenges/