Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 23:22:53 -0400
From: David Jefferess <jefferdm-AT-mcmaster.ca>
Subject: CFP Reconciliation


Call for Papers for Proposed Panel Session

Imagining A Different Future:
The Politics of Postcolonial Reconciliation

At the present moment in history there is an unprecedented proliferation

of public scenes and processes of collective reconciliation.  So global
and widespread is this current phenomenon of reconciliation that it
seems to have become a common, even guaranteed, feature of national and
international politics alike.  Witness, for example, the creation and
operation of truth commissions in South Africa, Chile, and Argentina,
the emergence of the “Sorry” movement in Australia, and the various
movements for reconciliation by Palestinians and Israelis.  Yet if
processes of reconciliation constitute a trend of almost international
proportions, postcolonial critics have barely begun the immense task of
assessing its import and implications, as well as problems and
possibilities.  Especially neglected by critics has been the question of

the role that literary and other cultural texts perform in contributing
to discourses of reconciliation.

We solicit proposals on a wide range of issues related to the topic of
collective reconciliation.  Specific questions that presenters might
consider could include—but are not limited to—the following:  What is
the relationship between postcolonial reconciliation and resistance?
How do discourses of reconciliation operate in a gendered manner?  What
is the relationship between reconciliation and related concepts such as
guilt, repentance, remembrance, apology, forgiveness, restitution, and
redress?  How do specific cultural, linguistic, religious and other
differences inform and affect demands and desires for reconciliation?
Do practices of collective reconciliation efficaciously undermine or
transform positions of dominance and subordination or only reinforce
them?  How does the proliferation of projects of collective
reconciliation relate to processes of globalization?  If postcolonial
reconciliation is indeed possible, what are its conditions of
possibility?  Given that it is often corporations and nation-states that

facilitate processes of reconciliation, what does it mean for
institutions to express affect (e.g. regret, shame, contrition)?  How is

it possible to apportion responsibility for (post)colonial crimes and
racial wrongdoing without resorting to such reified categories as
colonizer and colonized?

Papers will be presented at the annual conference of the Canadian
Association of Commonwealth Language and Literature Studies (CACLALS) at

the Congress of Social Sciences and Humanities, 29-31 May 2003,
Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.  Presenters must be
members of CACLALS at the time of the conference.

Send 250-500 word abstracts on any aspect of collective reconciliation,
as well as a bio of approximately 100 words to:
Julie McGonegal, Department of English, McMaster University, Hamilton,
ON, L9H 2YG (mcgoneja-AT-mcmaster.ca),
or,  David Jefferess, Department of English, McMaster University,
Hamilton, ON, L9H 2YG (jefferdm-AT-mcmaster.ca)

Deadline for submissions: November 1, 2002.




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