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Diaspora and Cosmopolitanism: Wisconsin, June 2008.
By Noreen Bowden | June 1, 2008
UW-Madison Postcolonial, Migration and Transnational Studies
(Part of Worldwide Universities Network (WUN)
International Network in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies)
International Conference on Diaspora and Cosmopolitanism
June 20-21, 2008
Diaspora and Cosmopolitanism
An International conference to be held June 20-21, 2008 at the University of
Wisconsin, Madison
http://africa.wisc.edu/postcolonial/
Conference Description
The term “diaspora” designates the scattering of a given population like
seeds (spore) on the wind through migration-conventionally often in the form
of forced migration rather than its opposite. The term “cosmopolitanism”
refers to the politics and philosophy of inhabiting a polis or political
community on the scale of the cosmos rather than the metropolis. Both
paradigms thus constitute alternatives to models of community in which a
society is organized around a single geographic space, with the metropole at
its center. While diaspora studies are generally associated with the
identities and claims of marginalized populations, cosmopolitanism has, in
the words of Amanda Anderson, “close ties with universalism.”
Cosmopolitanism, Anderson notes, “endorses reflective distance from one´s
own cultural affiliations, a broad understanding of other cultures and
customs, and a belief in universal humanity.” Recently, Anthony Appiah has
suggested that cosmopolitanism in the wake of globalization is virtually
inevitable through not only the cultivated praxis of reflective distance as
a means of accommodating a world of difference, but also the quotidian
praxis of mimetic acquisition of diverse cultural tastes, behaviors, and
relationships in globalized societies. Yet histories of the non-integration
of migrants, of the hostile co-existence of “hosts” and “guests” in the
state framework, or of the explosion of national populations into new
traumatic diaspora through economic, military, ecological, and cultural
upheavals, provide challenges to political and philosophical models of
cosmopolitanism.
Full Text at
http://www.africa.wisc.edu/postcolonial/postcolonialdescription.htm
Speakers
http://www.africa.wisc.edu/postcolonial/Speakers.html
Forwarded on behalf of Tejumola Olaniyan tolaniyan@wisc.edu
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