[Reader-list] Two Talks at AUD: Maria do Mar Castro Varel and Nikita Dhawan/ March 16

[OISHIK SIRCAR]

School of Liberal Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi and the
Collaborative Research Programme on Law, Postcoloniality and Culture,
Jindal Global Law School, Sonepat

invite you to lectures by

*Maria do Mar Castro Varel*, *Professor of Pedagogy at the Alice Salomon
University, Berlin *on

*Governmentality and Citizenship*

*&*

*Nikita Dhawan*, *Junior Professor of Political Science at the
Goethe-University, Frankfurt* on

*Solidarity Across Borders: Cosmopolitan Justice, Alter -Globalization and
Subalternity*

Date: 16th March 2012

Venue: CR 4, Kashmere Gate Campus

Time: 2.30pm-5pm

All are Welcome

*Talk abstracts:*

*Maria do Mar Castro Varel* - "*Governmentality and Citizenship"*

In his 1795 treatise on *Perpetual Peace*, Immanuel Kant proposes *ius
cosmopoliticum *(*Weltbürgerrecht*) and the principle of universal
hospitality grounded in humankind’s common ownership of the earth. One can
hardly imagine a right that has been so extensively violated as the freedom
to move across borders. The nation-state system has monopolized the
authority to determine who shall enter its territory and who will be
treated with hospitality. In this, sense, the transnational migrant,
especially from the global South, is the unintended bearer of the Kantian
message of the unfulfilled right to be treated without hostility.

Migration regimes in Europe, specifically Germany, are a good case in
point. Since the Immigration Act (*Zuwanderungsgesetz*) came into force in
January 2005, which officially affirmed Germany as a country of immigration
(*Einwanderungsland*), a new phase of migration policies and politics has
been ushered in Germany. A crucial aspect of this is the discourse about
integration, which seeks the successful assimilation of migrants into
German society. Here “German culture” and the “culture of migrants” are
represented to be incommensurable, so that the only solution for a
harmonious co-existence is through the assimilation of the *Other* into the
*Same*. Consequently, on one hand, migrants are encouraged to
*mimic*German cultural practices and are accordingly rewarded for
their efforts
with the privilege of citizenship rights. On the other hand those unwilling
to internalize “German core norms and values” are made responsible for
their social exclusion. Their “reluctance” to adapt to German society is
interpreted as a sign of disrespect to their host and even evokes
suspicions regarding their intentions. These migrants are accused of living
in “parallel societies” (*Parallelgesellschaften*), which are coded as
sites of repression and discrimination against women and other minorities.
In contrast, mainstream German society is represented as secular and
progressive, wherein gender justice and tolerance prevails. In my
presentation I will focus on the Foucaultian notion of
*governmentality*and relate it to the current migration regime in
Germany. From a
Foucaultian perspective this politics of integration can be seen as
organized practices and techniques through which migrant subjects are
governed. I will unfold how these technologies of power are inextricably
linked to processes of the building of ‘fortress Europe’ and a systematic
disenfranchisement and disciplining of those perceived as the *Other*.

*Nikita Dhawan* - "*Solidarity Across Borders: Cosmopolitan Justice, Alter
-Globalization and Subalternity"*

In recent discussions on transnational justice, there has been renewed
interest in cosmopolitanism as an ethico-political imperative and
commitment to planetary conviviality in a postnational, globalized world.
In the face of growing global interdependence, the project of
cosmopolitanism promises to facilitate a transnational citizen’s movement,
which could potentially galvanize the establishment of democratic global
institutions. The figure of the ‘cosmopolitan’ has gained prominence as an
agent of global justice, peace and democracy. In the face of increased
transnational movement of capital, commodities, people, ideas, and images,
cosmopolitans seemingly overcome narrow territorial-based affiliations in
favour of an allegiance to all of humanity. Such an expansive consciousness
of world citizenship has the pursuit of ‘solidarity across borders’ as its
normative ideal. Detractors of liberal cosmopolitanism highlight the
specter of global capital which is seen as the necessary pre-condition for
the emergence of a cosmopolitan sensibility. It is argued that
cosmopolitanism leaves intact the privileges of the global elite by erasing
the continuities between cosmopolitanism, neo-colonialism and economic
globalization. Postcolonial feminists locate the shortcomings of liberal
cosmopolitanism by unpacking how it can be mobilized for predatory global
capitalism and imperialism. Despite well-intentioned efforts to offer a
more critical version of plural and discrepant cosmopolitan identities
which challenge the Eurocentric and androcentric bias as well the imperial
origins of cosmopolitanism, critical discourses risk reproducing a form of
“Feudality without Feudalism” (Spivak). This leaves us with the challenge
of how to reimagine cosmopolitanism from and for the postcolonial world?
How can the discontinuity between the dispensers of justice and rights and
those coded as receivers be undone through a remapping of subject-formation
through “epistemic change” (Spivak) at both ends? Against this background,
my talk will critically engage with discourses of global (gender) justice,
development politics, human rights, decolonisation and democratisation from
a feminist-postcolonial perspective.





-- 
OISHIK SIRCAR

oishiksircar at gmail.com
oishik.sircar at utoronto.ca