Research Network South Asia: Achille Mbembé’s "On the Postcolony"
Friday, November 20, 2009 at 07:33AM Reading Achille Mbembé’s On the Postcolony
Joint event with the POSTCOLONIAL RESEARCH GROUP
Wednesday 25 November 2009, at 5 p.m. Room Win 1-04
Refreshments from 4.45pm
All welcome
More details about the Research Network South Asia here: http://web.me.com/mdae/RNSA/Events.html
Readings for the event are available here http://www.cameronius.com/helen/RHPRG/page-events-1.htm
Achille Mbembe’s On the Postcolony is one of the most influential texts published in recent years to theorise about the nature of the postcolonial state in Africa. It ranges widely, drawing on political theory, literary criticism and ethnography. Mbembe asks demanding questions about the problems of contested sovereignty, violence and the ‘aesthetic spectacles’ of postcolonial government in Africa. As he says, ‘the notion of postcolony identifies specifically a given historical trajectory - that of societies recently emerging from the experience of colonization and violence which the colonial relationship involves.’ The echoes of colonialism, in short, shape the present. This begs the question of African exceptionalism; how far can this book help us understand the contemporary South Asian state? How should we conceptualise state power in South Asia today? This reading group will read two chapters from On the Postcolony alongside work by Thomas Blom Hansen on the Indian state – in order to open up a discussion on theatricality, violence and sovereignty in Indian political life.