present
a lecture series by

วิทยาลัยนานาชาติปรีดี พนมยงค์
คณะสังคมวิทยาและมานุษยวิทยา
วิทยาลัยสหวิทยาการ
มหาวิทยาลัยธรรมศาสตร์

ขอเชิญร่วมสัมมนาและฟังการบรรยายสาธารณะ โดย

Professor Pheng Cheah

Rhetoric Department
University of California, Berkeley

January 15, 2013

1 pm-4 pm
PhD Seminar || สัมมนานักศึกษาปริญญาเอก

The Biopolitics of Recognition:
Making Female Subjects of Globalization

Sociology and Anthropology PhD Seminar Room,
4th Floor, Faculty of Social Administration Building,
Thammasat University (Thaphrachan, Bangkok)
ห้องบรรยายโครงการปริญญาเอก คณะสังคมวิทยาและมานุษยวิทยา
ชั้น 4 อาคารคณะสังคมสงเคราะห์ศาสตร์ มหาวิทยาลัยธรรมศาสตร์ ท่าพระจันทร์
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abstract

This paper evaluates the rise of recognition as an important analytical category in critical theory for understanding the normative grounds of social and political struggles for global justice in the contemporary world. It begins with a discussion of different variants of the recognition paradigm (Nancy Fraser, Axel Honneth, Judith Butler and postcolonial theory) in order to argue that none of them can adequately account for the formation of various female subjects of globalization. It then addresses the following questions: how does the account of normativity in the recognition paradigm ironically consolidate and reinforce the oppressive dynamic of power in contemporary globalization? How are progressive policies for global human development focusing on women and supporting human rights instruments necessarily woven into the processes and technologies of power that capitalize humanity?”

Jan 16, 2013

1 pm-4 pm
Public Lecture || การบรรยายสาธารณะ

Post-Colonial Literature as World Literature

Pridi Banomyong International College, Room 206,
Thammasat University (Thaphrachan, Bangkok)
ห้องบรรยาย 206 วิทยาลัยนานาชาติปรีดี พนมยงค์
มหาวิทยาลัยธรรมศาสตร์ ท่าพระจันทร์

abstract

The central premise of the recent revival of interest in world literature is that the concrete reality of contemporary globalization has led to the emergence of world literature, which has rendered merely national literature obsolete or even illusory. In this contrast between ‘world literature’ and ‘national literature,’ the attachment of the adjective ‘world’ to qualify the noun, ‘literature’ indicates the conflation of the globe, a bounded object or entity in Mercatorian space, with the world, a form of relating, belonging or being-with. One says map of the world, but one really means map of the globe. It is assumed that the spatial diffusion and extensiveness achieved through global media and markets give rise to a sense of worldhood, of belonging to a shared world, when one might argue that such developments lead to the undermining of worldhood. An understanding of worldliness in terms of the material processes of globalization leads to a deficient understanding of the normativity of world literature. Through an examination of Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide, this paper argues that certain kinds of postcolonial literature can help us throw into the sharpest relief the normative dimension of world literature because they craft new figurations and stories of world-belonging for given postcolonial peoples in situations where the devastating impact of globalization for the lower strata of these societies makes opening onto another world especially urgent.

Jan 17, 2013

1 pm-4 pm
Public Lecture || การบรรยายสาธารณะ

The Physico-Material Bases of Cosmopolitanism

Sociology and Anthropology PhD Seminar Room,
4th Floor, Faculty of Social Administration Building,
Thammasat University (Thaphrachan, Bangkok)
ห้องบรรยายโครงการปริญญาเอก คณะสังคมวิทยาและมานุษยวิทยา
ชั้น 4 อาคารคณะสังคมสงเคราะห์ศาสตร์ มหาวิทยาลัยธรรมศาสตร์ ท่าพระจันทร์
[map]

abstract

The problematic of cosmopolitanism and the world-wide solidarity it entails has primarily been posed in terms of the deficiencies of vision, perception and the imagination. While we can imagine the bounded community of the nation, it is more difficult to imagine common humanity. This is exemplified by the difficulties of implementing human rights instruments, insofar as they require a common acknowledgment among individuals and sovereign nation-states alike that we all belong to the same world community and must abide by its norms. Marx argued, however, that cosmopolitanism was not merely an ideal nor even a perspective embodied in institutions of right but something that had been made actually existing by virtue of the global mode of production and the world market created by industrial capital. This paper suggests that we must locate the physico-material bases of cosmopolitanism at an even more fundamental level: in the biopolitical making of concrete human beings with all their capacities and needs who can subsequently recognized that they thereby have human rights. It then examines how these physico-material bases of cosmopolitanism radically challenge conventional philosophical understandings of human rights.