Northern Heterotopias
Event Date/Time: Nov 07, 2008 | |
Abstract Submission Date: Jan 15, 2009 |
Description
Digressing from Foucault’s original coinage of the term to re-conceptualize specific sites and places (cemeteries, cinemas, boats, brothels, etc), we interpret the idea of heterotopia, and the mapping logic of heterotopology, as an alternative way to think of the experience of space as a whole, and a conceptual lens through which to analyze and bring to light the multiple imaginations, experiences, embodiments, and inscriptions of space and place that are inherent in all sites.
What, then, would a heterotopology of the (idea of) North look like?
For this conference, we invite scholars, artists, storytellers, writers, poets and activists to examine different ideas, imaginations, experiences, and inscriptions of the North beyond hegemonic conceptions (the Great “White†North; hegemonic articulations of indigenism; the North and its ‘untapped resources’, etc.).
We leave it up to participants to navigate through that contested space (discursive, physical, human) that is the North, and to identify both Northern utopias (or hegemonies) and the counter-sites they have silenced.
Thus, we hope to bring together a broad range of voices and experiences that highlight the fundamentally plural (contradictory? cacophonic? contrapuntal? heteroglossic?) and heterotopic nature of the North.
We are particularly interested in papers that address the following issues:
Identity
Migration, diaspora and metissage
Critical Indigenous perspectives
New epistemologies
Race, gender and sexuality
Queer Issues
Globalization and transnationalism
Art as Resistance
Critical pedagogies