[INDOLOGY] Questioning South Asia Conference

[Walter Slaje]

Dear Colleagues,

I should like to draw your attention to a conference dealing with the
notion of "South Asia" as a geopolitical construct with hegemonic agendas:
http://habib.edu.pk/questioningsouthasia/

[Announcement excerpt]
"The geopolitical significance of South Asia has been a well-known fact in
policy and security studies for the last several decades. In academic
circles too, the logic of South Asia has become a naturalized reality: its
appearance in the area studies departments of many US/western institutions
signals acquiescence if not participation in an agenda informed by pursuit
of global hegemony. The naturalisation of South Asia as a discourse recalls
European precedents of producing knowledge about the ‘other’ in order to
foster a morally and epistemologically superior European identity – as
witnessed in the historical invention of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
[...] Questioning South Asia as a discourse that at present burdens the
scholarly imagination, and overdetermines conference agendas and research
funding, might reconfigure the strategies we employ to understand the
region. Some of the questions we seek to investigate are: What are the
obstacles to developing comparative research perspectives for scholars
constrained by ‘South Asia’? How can we shift away from the dominant
framework of South Asia as an already-determined category, and devise new
research agendas? And what demands for change, transformation, or
recalibration might this place on us as subjects undertaking research?"

Kindly regarding,
Walter Slaje

-----------------------------
Prof. Dr. Walter Slaje
Hermann-Löns-Str. 1
D-99425 Weimar
Deutschland

Ego ex animi mei sententia spondeo ac polliceor
studia humanitatis impigro labore culturum et provecturum
non sordidi lucri causa nec ad vanam captandam gloriam,
sed quo magis veritas propagetur et lux eius, qua salus
humani generis continetur, clarius effulgeat.
Vindobonae, die XXI. mensis Novembris MCMLXXXIII.


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