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The epistemological crisis wrought by postcolonial studies beginning in the 1970s, and currently by decolonial studies, testifies to a deep disenchantment with the category of universality, sometimes understood as an unkept promise of equality that is actually quick to break into violence.
In the 20th century, the universalist paradigm was put in crisis by thinkers of the black radical tradition such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon, then by African-American feminists who were marginalized both from the women's movement because of their skin color, and from the civil rights movement because of their gender. The epistemological crisis wrought by postcolonial studies beginning in the 1970s, and currently by decolonial studies, testifies to a deep disenchantment with the category of universality, sometimes understood as an unkept promise of equality that is actually quick to break into violence. According to Antoine Lilti, the critique of the "tension between universalism and Eurocentrism" concerns three points: the complicity of certain works of the Enlightenment with colonial ideology, the confiscation of universalism by Western thinkers who reduce other voices to silence, and finally, the pretentions to universality of a discourse that is in fact geographically and historically circumscribed. In their reassessment of the blind spots of universalism inherited from the Enlightenment, critics such as Edward Said, Dipesh Chakrabarty or Gayatri Spivak have brought to light the Eurocentrism of universalist thought, revealing murky connections between the Enlightenment's claim to universality, the colonial enterprise and the racialized discourse that underlies it.
- Submission deadline: September 30, 2022
- Notification from the scientific committee: early November 2022
- Please send your proposals (200-300 words), in French or in English, as well as a short bio-bibliography to the following address: crises.universel@gmail.com
- Publication: this conference will be followed by a peer-reviewed publication.
Organizing committee:
John DeWitt, Catherine Lanone, Ronan Ludot-Vlasak, Caroline Pollentier, Alexandra Poulain, Antonia Rigaud, Apolline Weibel.
Scientific Committee:
Isabelle Alfandary (Sorbonne Nouvelle), Sandra Laugier (Université Panthéon-Sorbonne), David Lloyd (University of California, Riverside), Fiona McCann (University of Lille), Samuel Weber (Northwestern University).
Please find more information in the attached files:
Call for papers
Jusqu'au 30 septembre 2022
Organisateurs
