Second Annual Social Theory Forum on Edward Said, 2005, UMass Boston


Theories and Praxes of Difference: Revisiting Edward Said in the Age of New Globalizations

Proceedings of the Second Annual Social Theory Forum, April 6-7, 2005, UMass Boston


Discourse of Sociological Practice
Department of Sociology, UMass Boston

Volume 7 • Issues 1&2 • Spring/Fall 2005


Guest Editor of this Proceedings Issue:
Mohammad H. Tamdgidi, UMass Boston

 


Description

In this age of new globalizations, when technologies of mass communication and terrestrial and space transportation have made the image and the experience of our shared planet an artifact of our actual and virtual everyday lives, and seemingly brought us together in unprecedented ways, we seem to be drifting apart and fragmenting more and more. The gap between rich and poor people, regions, and nations has steadily grown world-wide; our claimed dialogues of civilizations, or discourses on class, race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, etc., have turned into clashes in disguise despite our politically-correct denials; and our United Nations has turned from an institution originally conceived to prevent imperial world-wars into an increasingly virtual opera that camouflages our imperial aspirations. The many faces of our newly discovered overt terrorisms, flagrantly vicious or subtle, often hide the deeper, long-term, and large-scale terrorisms of our old, neo-, and “post” colonialisms as embedded in our practices of economic exploitation, cultural conversion, and political repression — to such an extent that even our scholarly dialogues and theoretical discourses in search of alternatives and solutions are doubted, ridiculed, or symbolically terrorized.

The Second Annual Meeting of the Social Theory Forum, held on April 6-7, 2005, at the University of Massachusetts Boston, was devoted to the theme “Theories and Praxes of Difference: Revisiting Edward Said in the Age of New Globalizations.” The life and works of the late Edward Said, the prolific thinker, scholar, and cultural critic was revisited to serve as a guiding (though not necessarily exclusive) theme to explore our meanings and theories of difference in the applied settings of our self, global, and world-historical narratives. Said’s writings have exposed the underpinnings of the Orientalist looking glass self images of the East in the mind of the West, and ushered a lively, sophisticated, and long lasting critical dialogue in our academic and public forums—leading among others to debates on Occidentalism as well, that is, the romanticizations of the West in the eyes of the East. The conference dialogue on difference paid special attention to the context of the allegedly new globalizations of the long-inherited clashes of our colonialisms and anti-colonialisms— in the hopes of finding creative and peaceful ways out of the vicious cycles in favor of authentic selves and liberating world-histories.


Number of Pages: 370
Language: English
7×10 inches


Contents

From the Journal Editor: Theories and Praxes of Difference
Siamak Movahedi

KEYNOTES

The Great Dis-Orientator: Edward Said
Winston Langley

Said & “Edward”: Dispossession and Overcoming Nostalgia
Charles Lemert

Edward Said: The Colonial Spirit in a Globalizing World
Bruce Mazlish

POLITICS OF ORIENTALISM

Occidentalizing and Orientalizing the Self in the Middle East
Khaldoun Samman

What Future for Palestine: Independence or Bantustans
Leila Farsakh

The Challenge of Globalisation for the Left: Marxism, Post-Colonialism or Republican Nationalism
Uni Adiv

Orientalism as Praxis
Hormoz Shahdadi

PSYCHOANALYSIS OF DIFFERENCE

Blaming the Victims Revisited: Fantasy and Politics in the Context of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Michal Ginach

Oriental(ist) Scenes: Orientalism of Psychoanalysis / Psychoanalysis of Orientalism
Frank Scherer

Verdi’s Disciplined Subjects: Radamès, Amneris, and the Power of the Panopticon
Christopher Gauthier & Jennifer McFarlane-Harris

CLASH OF ORIENTALISMS

The African Orient: Edward Said’s Orientalism and ‘Western’ Constructions of Africa
Agnes Czajak

Constructing Decolonizing Methodologies: Theories and Praxes of Difference
Jemadari Kamara & Tony Van Der Meer

The Theoretical Construction of a Latino Oppositional Culture in Samuel Huntington’s “The Hispanic Challenge”
Jorge Capetillo-Ponce

INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE

The Global Public Intellectual, Academic Professions and the Intellectual Hero: Reflections on Edward Said
Neil McLaughlin

Intellectuals Rethinking Politics of Difference: A Pedagogical Project
Panagiota Gounari

Orientalist and Liberating Discourses of East-West Difference: Revisiting Edward Said and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Mohammad H. Tamdgidi

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ORIENTALISM

A Contextual Analysis of the Integration of Muslims in Four Western Societies
Pamela Irving Jackson, Peter Zervakis, & Roderick Parkes

Oil Revenues and Problematic Development: The Case of Algeria
Fouad Bouguetta & Sally Bould

Reevaluating State Formation and Transformation in Light of the Current Debate on ‘Failed States’
Mehmet Kucukozer

Hegel’s Philosophy of Freedom, God, and the State as World-Historical Discourse on Power and Domination: The West Versus the Rest of the World in Edward Said’s Critical Hermeneutic
Samuel Zalanga

Differences in Difference: “Cognitive Mapping” of the Landscape of Otherness
Amil K. Jain

ORIENTALISM, MASS CULTURE, AND IDENTITY

Discussant Commentary: Orientalism and the Poverty of Imagination
Rajini Srikanth

Homeless Mind: The Fate of Persian Identity in Exile
Orkideh Behrouzan

Veiling as Identity Politics: The Case of Turkey
Solen Sanli

The Hyper-Real Enemy & Spectator-Sport Warfare in the West: The U.S.-Iraq War Paradox
Atossa Movahedi

Flying While Arab (Or Was It Muslim? Or Middle Eastern?): A Theoretical Analysis of Racial Profiling After September 11th
Bart Bonikowski

GURLZ N GUNS: Popular and Firearm Culture in Contemporary America
Peter Van Do

Abstracts

About the Contributors


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