Of Mimicry, Similarity, and Membership
6. Juli 2017
The roundtable aims at bringing into dialogue thematically overlapping research interests between Prof James Ferguson and colleagues at the University of Konstanz. To do so, Ferguson’s book “Global Shadows” (2007), especially the introductory chapter (p. 1-24) and the chapter “Of Mimicry and Membership: Africans and the ‘New World Society’” (pp. 155-176), will serve as the starting point of discussion. Following an introductory statement by Ferguson, two anthropologists (Bodirsky, Göpfert) and two scholars from the field of literary studies (Koschorke, Twellmann) will give brief statements that connect Ferguson’s work with their own conceptual reflections and/or research findings that for the most part relate to issues like ‘mimesis’, ‘similarity’, ‘modernity’, and the semantic construction of ‘Europe’.
9:00 – 9:05
Thomas G. Kirsch
Welcome and opening remarks
9:05 – 9:20
James Ferguson
Ten years after. Reflections on ‘Global Shadows’ (2007)
9:20 – 9:30
Katharina Bodirsky (anthropology)
Claims to membership (rejected): Turkey’s fraught relations with Europe
9:30 – 9:40
Albrecht Koschorke (literary studies)
Inside and outside. Paradoxes of post-eurocentric European thought
9:40 – 9:50
Mirco Göpfert (anthropology)
Of absurdity and resistance: Iranian cartoonists and the not-so-new world society
9:50 – 10:00
Marcus Twellmann (literary studies)
Intra-southern mimesis: How the colonized taught themselves to narrate ‘village stories’
10:00 – 11:00
Open discussion
Thu, 6 July 2017, 9:00 am
University of Konstanz, M 631
Contact
Prof. Thomas G. Kirsch thomas.kirsch[at]uni-konstanz.de