About this event
This will be a hybrid event. There are limited availability in-person tickets, as well as online registration for joining via Zoom. Please choose the appropriate ticket option when registering: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/connecting-knowledge-queer-race-and-decolonial-theorisation-tickets-344121776497
The in-person event will take place at: University of Edinburgh, Chrystal Macmillan Building, Seminar Room 5, B.01, 15a George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9LD.
The event will be broadcast live via Zoom for remote attendance online. Joining details (Zoom link and password) will be emailed to attendees on the day of the event.
Abstract
Contemporary theoretical engagements in anticolonial and decolonial studies take cognisance of epistemicide (dos Santos 2014), intentional erasures, obliterations and substitutions (Pratt 2022) in formation of knowledge systems in the Global North. Implicating putative peripheral knowledges in the centre, they offer nuanced analyses of power imbalance resulting from ongoing coloniality in all spheres of our troubled times. The labour in addressing the meaning of ‘decolonising’ knowledge, however, calls forth an honest-cum-thorough critical appraisal of euro-american canon of knowledge without eliding critical questions of privilege in terms of race, gender, sexuality and social capital, among others.
Going beyond critique, this talk gestures towards linking decoloniality to queerness in an attempt to 'de-link' from disciplinary rigidity. Extending on my work emplaced under the rubric of 'decolonising queerness', I aim to read queer and decolonial theories, broadly conceived, in a singular frame to chart the contours of a burgeoning field of knowledge en chantier that enacts a refusal of the 'either/or' imperative, signalling 'and' as a connective thread in conceptualising frameworks of knowledge. In my view, a double-pronged approach implicating sexualities, genders and race in theorisation of decoloniality constitutes a necessary generative paradigm that allows for exercising vigilance apropos of un-/intentional erasures produced in decolonial knowledge and worldmaking.
Dr Sandeep Bakshi: Associate Professor in Decolonial, Postcolonial and Queer Studies, LARCA/Université Paris Cité
Dr Sandeep Bakshi's research foregrounds the critical significance of intersecting lines in queer and decolonial studies. After being awarded a PhD from the School of English, University of Leicester, UK in queer and postcolonial representations of South Asia, Dr Bakshi currently researches transnational queer and decolonial enunciation of knowledge. He has developed two connected strands outlining narratives of decolonisation, including curriculum and pedagogy, and queer of colour critique and its attendant concern of non-normativity as practice of resisting all forms of domination.
Dr Bakshi coordinates two research seminars, 'Peripheral Knowledges' and 'Empires, Souths, Sexualities', and heads the 'Gender and Sexuality Studies' research group at LARCA. He is also co-editor of Decolonizing Sexualities: Transnational Perspectives, Critical Interventions (Oxford: Counterpress, 2016), Decolonial Trajectories, a special issue of Interventions (2020), and the French language publication, Qu’est-ce que l’intersectionnalité? Dominations plurielles: Sexe, classe et race (2021). He has published on queer and race problematics in postcolonial literatures and cultures, and is one of the founding members and coordinators of the Decolonizing Sexualities Network. He is a 2022 IASH-SSPS Research Fellow.