REMINDER - CALL FOR PAPERS (deadline, 1/12/09)

Caribbean Enlightenment
An Interdisciplinary Caribbean Studies Conference
8th to 10th April 2010, University of Glasgow

Keynote Speakers
J. Michael Dash, Professor of French, Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University
Charles Forsdick, University of Liverpool
Paget Henry, Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Brown University
Nick Nesbitt, Centre for Modern Thought, University of Aberdeen

Call for Papers
In a speech widely regarded as instigating the series of events that would lead to the
overthrow of the Lescot government in 1946, André Breton’s proclamation of Haiti’s
‘inalienable enthusiasm for liberty and its affirmation of dignity above all obstacles’
articulated the enduring revolutionary conviction in the Enlightenment-inspired principles
of liberty, equality and fraternity. This artistic, cultural and political expression of a
universal right to freedom and self-determination reflects the diverse and complex ways
in which Enlightenment ideals have found expression in the Caribbean. From the Haitian
Revolution of 1791-1804 to The Black Jacobins, surrealism, négritude, and the
contemporary writings of such theorists as Antonio Benítez-Rojo, Édouard Glissant, and
Wilson Harris, the interrogation of universality has both contributed to the ongoing
dissemination and creolization of Enlightenment discourse and has subjected it to a
thorough critique. This conference aims to explore the various ways in which the site of
the Caribbean, with its writers, artists, revolutionaries, and diverse peoples, has adapted
and questioned the legacies of the Enlightenment. Acknowledging the Caribbean’s crucial
role in the Atlantic world, the Enlightenment’s history of empire building and slave
rebellions, colonial domination and postcolonial nation-building, the valorization of reason
and its role in the division of knowledge, will be interrogated against the dissemination of
a discourse promoting universal human rights, democracy and equality.

This conference seeks to bring together interdisciplinary perspectives on Enlightenment
themes, both historical and contemporary, in order to trace the spread of a universalist
discourse across the Caribbean. We hope to bring together Anglophone, Francophone and
Hispanophone perspectives that explore figurations of the universal within the Caribbean
context. Noting the region’s national and linguistic divides, this conference will expose the
ways in which Enlightenment ideals have been adapted to express the particular
experience of the Caribbean peoples. Finally, we pose the question: ‘Does the
commitment to universalism amount to a totalizing discourse, or can universalism be
revisioned?’

We invite papers and panel suggestions that deal with any aspect of Caribbean
Enlightenment, but which may include:

Reason and Rule of Law
Revolutions and uprisings
Shortcomings of the Enlightenment: slavery and racism
Development of ‘improvement’ in technologies, medicine and language
Universal Human Rights, Democracy, Marxism, Self-determination
Economics of Caribbean Enlightenment
The impact of surrealism
Négritude and the universal
Appraisals of The Black Jacobins
Contemporary Caribbean literature/philosophy and universality ‘revisioned’
Gendered, gay, racial, and class perspectives on universality
Religion and the Caribbean
Caribbean thought and ‘post-continental’ philosophy.

Please send panel proposals and/or paper abstracts (300 words) with a brief biographical
statement (150 words) to Lorna Burns and Michael Morris at
[log in to unmask] by 1st December 2009.

A limited number of postgraduate travel bursaries are available by application. Further
details & a full call for papers are available at www.gla.ac.uk/caribbeanenlightenment