Gillian Moore

The New Ge­o­gra­phies: Stud­ies in Post-colo­nial­i­ty and Glob­al­i­sa­tion in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence was launched at UWI's Daa­ga Au­di­to­ri­um, St Au­gus­tine, last Thurs­day. Pre­sent­ed by the De­part­ment of Lib­er­al Arts and the In­sti­tute for Gen­der De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies (IGDS), the con­fer­ence asked such ques­tions as: "Where are we head­ing? Has post-colo­nial­ism end­ed? Are we still caught in ...eu­ro­cen­tric, west­ern thought par­a­digms? The open­ing cer­e­mo­ny start­ed off by look­ing to the past.

Due to a med­ical emer­gency, Ar­jun App­tadu­rai, se­nior ad­vis­er for Glob­al Ini­tia­tives at the New School in New York City, who was sched­uled to be the keynote speak­er, was un­able to at­tend. In­stead, a film, the Mid­dle Pas­sage, was screened. The movie de­pict­ed the hor­rors of an ocean cross­ing dur­ing the slave trade.

Co-chairs Dr Tia Coop­er and Dr Shilpa Venkat­acha­lam, dur­ing their wel­come ad­dress, said the idea for the con­fer­ence sprang from a con­cept for a book on the same sub­ject. They thanked the par­tic­i­pants, in­clud­ing stu­dents and in­ter­na­tion­al aca­d­e­mics in at­ten­dance, as well as the con­trib­u­tors and artists who had come to­geth­er to make the con­fer­ence hap­pen. Coop­er gave spe­cial men­tion to artist Dean Arlen, who con­tributed an in­stal­la­tion to con­fer­ence and the uni­ver­si­ty, en­ti­tled Re-Hu­man Seat.

Rho­da Red­dock, UWI St Au­gus­tine deputy prin­ci­pal, wel­comed par­tic­i­pants and said the New Ge­o­gra­phies con­fer­ence was an op­por­tu­ni­ty for "bring­ing lo­ca­tions of schol­ar­ship (north and south-based) to­geth­er." She said that in the post-colo­nial con­text, there was still too much fo­cus on schol­ar­ship and lead­er­ship from the glob­al north, and she hoped the con­fer­ence would "re­dress im­bal­ances" and help south-based cen­tres of crit­i­cal and trans­for­ma­tive schol­ar­ship be­come more recog­nised. She said she al­so hoped it would fa­cil­i­tate greater south-south col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Fun­so Aiye­ji­na, dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Hu­man­i­ties and Ed­u­ca­tion, con­grat­u­lat­ed the or­gan­is­ers of the con­fer­ence. He com­ment­ed that "our lo­ca­tion in­flu­ences our vi­sion of the past, present and fu­ture," and said for­mer­ly colonised peo­ples should "not con­tin­ue to be the sub­jects of oth­er peo­ple's nar­ra­tives," but "to be at the cen­tre of our worlds." He looked for­ward to the pan­els, dis­cus­sions, film screen­ings, etc, which he said promised an en­joy­able ex­pe­ri­ence for par­tic­i­pants. Dr Piya Pangsapa, head of the IGDS, co-spon­sors of the con­fer­ence, Dr Paula Mor­gan, head of de­part­ment for Lib­er­al Arts; and In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Malay Mishra al­so ad­dressed the gath­er­ing, af­ter which UWI stu­dent Amil­car Sanatan per­formed a spo­ken word piece en­ti­tled In My Moth­er's Back Yard. The Mid­dle Pas­sage, a har­row­ing ac­count of the cross­ing of en­slaved Africans to the New World, was well re­ceived, and di­rec­tor Guy Deslau­ri­ers, who was present at the screen­ing, was praised dur­ing a ques­tion-and- an­swer ses­sion. He said part of his mis­sion as a film­mak­er was to "fill in the gaps" and tell the un­told sto­ries around slav­ery's "painful col­lec­tive mem­o­ry." Af­ter the for­mal part of the open­ing, guests were treat­ed to re­fresh­ments. The con­fer­ence con­tin­ued un­til Sat­ur­day.