The Center for Critical Democracy Studies at The American University of Paris and Professor Miranda Spieler invite you to the sixth symposium of a 7-part series on "Race, Law and Justice."
A Prophetic Vision of the Past: Glissant's Poetic of Nonhistory (Gary Wilder)
This chapter of my book manuscript, entitled 鈥淯ntimely History, Unhomely Times: On the Politics of Temporality and Solidarity,鈥 analyzes听脡douard听Glissant鈥檚 innovative understandings of history and critique of contemporary historiography. He developed both from the standpoint of Antillean historical experience which, in his view, anticipated a globalized future that we now inhabit. Specifically, I propose ways of understanding Glissant鈥檚 conceptions of听nonhistory,听tormented chronology, a听painful sense of time, and a听prophetic vision of the past. These temporal concepts are as important for Glissant鈥檚 thinking as his more familiar spatial concepts (e.g., creolization, wandering, detour). They are integral to his poetic politics of worldwide Relation. Glissant鈥檚 attempt to employ an Antillean optic to think history otherwise also helps us to grasp untimely temporal objects, processes, and practices that shape social life (especially in post-slavery societies), but for which conventional disciplinary history cannot easily account, or even recognize.
Gary Wilder
Gary Wilder is a Professor in the Ph.D. Program of Anthropology, with a cross-appointment in History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he is also Director of the Committee on Globalization and Social Change.听He is the author of听Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World听(Duke University Press, 2015) and听The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism Between the World Wars听(University of Chicago Press, 2005).听听His newest book, entitled 鈥淯ntimely History, Unhomely Times: On the Politics of Temporality and Solidarity,鈥 will be published by Fordham University Press in 2021. In Spring 2018 he co-authored听Theses on Theory and History, an open-source digital publication, with Ethan Kleinberg and Joan Wallach Scott.听He is co-editor of two books:听The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present, with Jini Kim Watson (Fordham University Press, 2018) and听The Fernando Coronil Reader: The Struggle for the Life is the Matter, with Mariana Coronil, Laurent Dubois Paul Eiss, Edward Murphy, David Pedersen, and Julie Skurski, (Duke University Press, 2019). He is currently working on a听manuscript provisionally entitled 鈥淢ore Abundant Life: Black Radical Humanism and the Atlantic World.鈥
Registrants will receive an email, including the event details and the link to join the event, 24 hours prior to the event start time.
听