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Conference on "Latin American Utopian Visions: A Critical Look for the 21st
Century"
April 19-20, 2013 hosted by CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social
Sciences and Humanities), University of Cambridge
Convenors
Sandra Brunnegger (University of Cambridge)
Karen Faulk (Carnegie Mellon University)
Latin America currently stands at a crossroads. The demise of neoliberalism
as the hegemonic ideological force across much of the continent has led
many inhabitants and observers of Latin America to publicly reopen
fundamental questions as to the future and direction of the region and its
nations. Democracy, citizen participation, participatory budgeting, human
rights, resource nationalization, and pan-indigenous projects have all, at
varying moments and in different ways, been invoked as fundamental
principles for forging a new ideal future. At this critical juncture, a
re-examination of the role of idealist visions in Latin America's political
programs and cultural production can reveal the multiple entanglements and
implicit assumptions underlying these visions.
This conference seeks to bring together recent scholarship on how
utopian visions have shaped Latin America throughout its history. Uniting
work from across and between disciplinary boundaries, the conference looks
to explore the history, construction, contexts, and effects of imagined
utopias, as well as, and crucially, the interrelations between them. From
its inception as an ideologically constituted unit born of the colonial
encounter, Latin America has been a subject and producer of idealized
imaginaries of universal order and humanity's place within it. Its
relegation to Europe's 'savage slot' (Trouillot 2003) and the projections
of European escapist fantasies onto its terrain was a fundamental
determinant of colonial policy for several hundred years. In exploring a
range of utopian visions, from the lasting allure of communist revolution
to the idealist programs that directed modernism's drive to develop, this
conference explores the multifarious ways in which Latin America has served
as the landscape upon which utopian ideas have been imagined, designed, and
attempted. Furthermore, in bringing together a diverse set of scholarship,
the conference aims to excavate the complex entanglements and overlaps
between seemingly contradictory but inherently intertwined elements of
different utopias. Fundamentally, the conference seeks to serve as a forum
for productive discussion and debate of the nature and potential in
contemporary utopian visions, or in what Fernando Coronil has described as
"the present-day future imaginary" (2010).
We are looking for papers by scholars from a range of disciplines,
including literature, film studies, anthropology, history, and sociology,
and especially welcome contributions that can speak to one or more of the
following sub-themes: human rights, modernity, indigeneity, cultural
narratives, or colonial legacies. By focusing on a particular theme -
utopia - we seek to unite perspectives from across historical time periods
and spanning multiple forms of cultural expression, enabling a collective,
multivocal exploration of the past, present, and future of the imagined
future in Latin America.
Please send abstracts of up to 500 words, your name, and a brief
biographical statement to [log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask] by Nov
30, 2012. Decisions will be made by December 15, 2012.
Further information can be found at http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/2072/
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