On the 28th of January (5:30pm, Main Lecture Theatre, Old Divinity School) Decolonise Politics will be hosting a panel with Dr Shruti Kapila, Dr Tom Hopkins, and Dr Tejas Parasher to discuss and question the relationship between global intellectual history and decolonisation.
The connection between decolonisation and global intellectual history is not a straightforward one. The ‘global’ in global intellectual history resonates with the calls to decolonise scholarship: by decentering Europe as the source of epistemological innovation and treating the postcolonial world as sites of theoretical originality, scholars have, as Omnia El Shakry points out in a recent article, unsettled the temporal foundations of modernity in the history of the postcolony. The past decade or so has thus also seen important new work on the intellectual history of empire, traditions of thought beyond European ones and more.
However, the two projects are quite obviously not identical, though their intellectual and political affinities are rather evident. For instance, decolonising is sometimes more pedagogical in focus, as one of its more useful contributions is to ask how we can teach in ways that account for other possible modes of knowledge beyond the received wisdom of a white, Western canon. It can also be more directed at institutional inequalities, for of course these questions about teaching lead us to reflect on what research is valued in the university, and how that translates into patterns of pay, hiring and promotion.
With these and other questions in mind, this forum thus invites comment on how to conceive of the relation between doing global intellectual history and decolonising, and how the two projects can support each other moving forward.
Join us at 5:30pm on the 28th of January in the Main Lecture Theatre of the Old Divinity School as we question the links between these two projects.
Decolonise Sociology @ Cambridge 