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Forum on Contemporary Theory
XII International Conference
Theme: “The Political Economy of Social Division: Race, Gender, Class, and Caste as Fetishized/Fetishizing Borders”
14-17 December 2009
Venue: The Residency Tower, Trivandrum, Kerala
Convener: Prof. Abdul R. JanMohamed, English Dept, UC, Berkeley
The twelfth International Conference of the Forum on Contemporary Theory will be held in Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram), Kerala from the 14th to 17th December 2009 in collaboration with Samyukta: A Journal of Women’s Studies and the Centre for Women’s Studies, University of Kerala.
A major strand in contemporary thinking about race, gender, class, and caste tends to view them as socially constructed modes of social and political division and as identificatory containers that structure various forms of group tensions and antagonisms. Even when they are theorized as performatively generated formations, they tend to be recontained within prevailing structures of political, binary oppositions arrayed along a spectrum of the relative presence/absence of power. While these formulations are illuminating and productive, it may be useful to begin reconceptualizing these modes of social division through a somewhat different set of theoretical lenses.
Three different but overlapping (sometimes conflicting) theories of production, exchange, investment, and circulations of cultural values may prove most useful in this reconceptualization: first, a Marxian theory of political economy applied to the terrain of cultural signification would permit the mapping of different kinds of cultural values and exchange mechanism that are involved in the production of these modes of division; second, a psychoanalytic understanding of libidinal investments would permit a mapping of identificatory investments that suture the relations between individual and collective subjectivities that are crucial to the function of these modes of division; and, finally, a Foucauldian understanding of the circulation of power would help to trace the circuits of empowerment that charge these apparently static modes of division. Furthermore, this reconceptualization can become even more productive if we are willing to think of these modes of divisions as “borders,” fashioned to permit highly selective permeability, and as fetishistic matrices, designed to transform (and permit the accumulation of) the values generated by these structures of division.
Thus, heuristically at least, one can posit that “natural borders” (e.g., human skin) and “socially constructed borders” (e.g., skin color in racially charged societies) are both selectively permeable. They can be seen as finely tuned filter mechanisms that permit variable absorption and rejection of certain natural and social elements (e.g., bodily fluids in the former case and racialized identificatory investments in the later case). If we proceed with such a (provisional) definition of “race,” “gender,” “class,” and “caste” as forms of social division that function as border mechanisms designed to control the flow, the distribution, and the accumulation of socio-political and psycho-political identificatory structures and investments, then the next logical question we must ask is “what is the political economy of the system of exchange that implicitly structures and is structured by these forms of social division?”
While it might be most useful to begin mapping the economies of these modes of division in the above manner, it would be a mistake to confine the inquiry to that level. From both the Marxian and Freudian viewpoints, these kinds of economies have a tendency to structure themselves via complex mechanisms dedicated to the process of fetishization. As Freud argues in his essay on “Fetishism,” the identificatory mechanisms that underlie these economies seem to be characterized first by denial and repression and then by substitution. Denial and substitution together produce a magical, transformative matrix which permits complex, if often unconscious, rearticulations of social and psychic similarities and differences. In addition to functioning at times as static structures of division that permit particular forms of oppression, race, gender, class, and caste could be mapped as constantly active matrixes designed to facilitate the unconscious transubstantiation of equivalences and values; their capacity for transubstantiation allows them to channel and arrest identificatory investments, of the individual as well as the collective subject, in order to mask the underlying, fundamental structures of social relations.
An examination of race, gender, class, and caste as permeable border mechanisms and as fetishistic transformative matrices encourages us to compare and contrast the structure and the functions of each mode of division with those of the other modes and raises the following kinds of questions:
n do race, gender, class, and caste have similar or different structures of selective permeability;
n do they invest their fetishized objects with similar structures of value;
n how different or similar are their mechanisms of libidinal investment;
n do they fetishize their selected object of value through similar or different structures of disavowal and substitution;
n what are the patterns through which fetishized objects are circulated and eventually accumulated;
n are the political economies generated by these selectively permeable and fetishistically transformative matrices best articulated through a Foucauldian notion of circulation of power or through a Marxian model of production, exchange, and accumulation;
n what does the political economy of each of these modes of social division have in common with the other modes?
While the above four modes of division are all social construction, it is possible to argue that race and gender are grounded in a (mis)appropriation and a (mis)articulation of ontogenetic differences, that is, “natural” anatomical and epidermal differences. Class and caste, by contrast, have no ontogenetic ground whatsoever; as categorizations of differences they are both necessarily phylogenetic: they can be produced as structures of differences only on the register of aggregate and collective social formations (this does not, of course, mean that an individual subject cannot retroactively be inserted into either category; but all such insertions are by definition retroactive). If such a schematization is heuristically permitted, then caste provides a fascinating case of a transubstantive political economy: while it is, on the one hand, an irremediably phylogenetic form of categorization, it seems to make strong claims, on the other hand, to be ontogenetically grounded. If caste can be analyzed as a hybrid between class and race, then the political economy that structures it may be able to shed needed light on the political economies that structure the other categories.
Special Session
In conformity with our earlier practice, a plenary session on a regional text will be one of the special features of the conference schedule. This year’s choice for the panel are two Malayalam novels: Indulekha (1889) by O. Chandu Menon and Parangodi Parinayam (1892) by Kizhakkeppattu Ramankutty Menon. These are published in English translation by Oxford University Press, Delhi (2005) and Samyukta 4.1 (Jan 2004) respectively.
Indulekha (1889) by O. Chandu Menon and Parangodi Parinayam (1892) by Kizhakkeppattu Ramankutty Menon are two texts in Malayalam which have the nair tarawad of the late nineteenth century Malabar as their setting. Indulekha narrates the love between Indulekha and Madhavan who are schooled in the English ways. Parangodi Parinayam about Parangodan Marar, a lawyer and Parangodikutty his lady love, is a burlesque on Indulekha. Both the texts could be considered as discourses on colonial modernity depicting how the people in Malabar were trying to negotiate the knowledge systems brought into existence by the power structures controlled by the British.
Women served as one of the major sites for reform in socio-cultural spheres in the nineteenth century across the world. The domesticating of women through training manuals and creative writing was the hallmark of the period, in Europe and India. In Indulekha, the author apparently glorifies the colonial systems of knowledge and values internalized by the hero and the heroine. However, the subtext of the novel critiques the same through the remarks of the characters of the older generation. Parangodi Parinayam foregrounds this subtext of critique of colonial modernity with reference to women. Both the texts bring home the idea that notions contesting colonial discourses had their origin at the very moment of institutionalization of colonial presence.
Submission Deadline
500-word abstract or proposal is due by August 31, 2009. It should be mailed as an email attachment to Professor Abdul R. JanMohamed, the Convener of the Conference. Complete papers should be limited to 12 pages (approximately 20 minutes of reading time). A longer version may be submitted for possible publication in the Journal of Contemporary Thought or in the conference volume brought out by the Forum. The completed paper should reach the Convener of the Conference by October 30, 2009.
Conference Volume
Select papers from the conference and from those submitted in response to the “Call for Papers” will be included in the conference volume, which will be ready for formal release at the 2010 conference of the Forum. Completed papers should reach us as email attachments by the end of June 2010.
Registration Deadline
The last date for receiving the registration fee is September 15, 2009. The fee may be paid through a bank draft drawn in favor of Forum on Contemporary Theory on a Bank in Baroda. The overseas participants may pay the fee through checks drawn in favor of Forum on Contemporary Theory. The amount should be sent to the address of Forum on Contemporary Theory mentioned on this leaflet. We encourage participants to register early so that their accommodation at the Diamond Hotel is assured. All participants need to be pre-registered. The registration fee is non-refundable. Each participant will be sharing his/her room with another participant, as there are no rooms with single beds in the Hotel.
- Participant from India (member of the Forum) Rs. 4000/
- Participant from India (non-member) Rs. 6000/
- Overseas Participant (non-SAARC countries) US $ 300/
- Overseas Participant (SAARC countries) US $ 150/
- Local Participant (member of the Forum) Rs. 1500/
- Local Participant (non-member) Rs. 3000/
- Student Participant (from University of Kerala) Rs. 500/
The registration fee from the outstation participant will cover room and board from the morning of the 14th December to the afternoon of the 17th December, and cost of the conference volume dedicated to the eleventh international conference held in Banaras. The fee from the local participant will cover lunch, conference tea and the cost of the conference volume. The participants should arrive in the afternoon of December 14th and stay on until the morning of December 17. The conference will begin at about 9 am on the 15th and will be over with lunch on the 17th December.
Convener
Abdul R. JanMohamed is Chancellor’s Professor in the English Department at University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Manichean Aesthetics: The Politics of Literature in Colonial Africa; The Nature and Context of Minority Discourse, ed. with David Lloyd; and The Death-Bound-Subject: Richard Wright’s Archaeology of Death. Among his many articles, “The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature” (www.jstor.org) is probably the most relevant to this conference. Currently he is working on a book on the “Birthing of the Death-Bound-Subject.”
Keynote Speaker
Hortense Spillers, currently the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in English at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA will deliver the keynote address on the topic “Race, Gender, and the Citizen.” Over the past three decades, she has taught at Wellesley College, Haverford College, Emory University, and Cornell University. She has been the recipient of numerous prizes and honors, among them, grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Humanities Center, and the Center for the Advanced Study of the Behavioral Sciences. She sits on a number of editorial boards, including, boundary 2, College English, Modern Fiction Studies, and Twentieth Century Literature. She is a member of the executive council of the Modern Language Association and is a past president of the Society for the Study of Narrative. Her essays have appeared in different distinguished venues in the United States and abroad, such as Critical Inquiry, diacritics, and boundary 2. A collection of her essays—Black, White, and In Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture—was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2003. Other works of hers include: Conjuring: Black Women, Fiction, and Literary Tradition, a collection of essays, which she coedited with Marjorie Pryse, brought out by the University of Indiana Press in 1985, and for the English Institute, a volume of essays published by Routledge in 2001, Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex, and Nationality in the Modern Text. She is currently at work on a new project, “The Idea of Black Culture,” which she hopes to finish in 2009. She teaches courses in Faulkner, Black Women Writers, and in the cultural theory of the African Diaspora. Professor Spillers is currently at work on a new national and international initiative in higher education called Issues in Critical Investigation: The African Diaspora, a program designed to foster the production of scholarship on the diaspora, encourage cross-generational dialogue among scholars in the field, and promote a cooperative model of scholarly production and exchange.
For further information any of the following may be contacted:
Prafulla C. Kar
Convener, Forum on Contemporary Theory, Baroda
Tel: 0265-2338067
Email: prafullakar@gmail.com
Abdul R. JanMohamed
Chancellor’s Professor
Department of English
University of California at Berkeley
Email: abduljm@berkeley.edu
G. S. Jayasree
Editor, Samyukta: A Journal of Women;s Studies
& Director, Centre for Women’s Studies
University of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram
Mobile: 09447024545; Email: krishnapurath@asianetindia.com
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