SHUM 4509 - Temporalities of Empire, Nation and Colonial Difference

Spring. 4 credits.

Enrollment limited to: 15 students.

V. Munasinghe.

This course asks how do racialization projects constitutive of modern European empire figure in the making of nation states? How in particular did anticipation of rights bearing European publics, enshrining post Enlightenment values, implicate/disturb the linear narrative of nation states emerging from the ruins of empire? We will explore the temporal entanglements between racialization logics of empire and nation, one demanding difference the other, sameness. What are the logics and ambivalences of racialization when time of empire requiring difference is also the time of nation, requiring sameness? What are implications of such an entanglement for postcolonial nations? How do inherited racializations set limits on postcolonial aspirations for homogeneity? How does postcolonial homogeneity also produce difference in demarcation of the rights bearing subject of the nation?

For longer description and Fellows’ bios please visit www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/index.html.

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