Mapping Memory in the Wake of the Posthuman: India and …

School of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Management

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY BHUBANESWAR

in association with

Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, New Delhi

Invites you to join

the Virtual International Symposium

on

Mapping Memory in the Wake of the Posthuman: India and Canada

25-26 March 2022

Concept Note: Since the onset of Gutenbergs print culture in 1440, the human presence has been central to the existence of social, political, cultural contexts of recorded imagination on planet earth. For centuries now, western thinkers have dwelled upon the human condition; the seemingly innocuous universalization of epistemological engagement emanating thus, has found recurrent encouragement from conventional sources of wisdom. Sociologist Maurice Parmelee in her 1916 essay titled Poverty and Social Progress first propagated the possibility of the Posthuman. However, Ihab Hassans declaration of the rise of the Posthuman in the later part of the eventful twentieth century (1977) and the subsequent onset of the postmodern, upset held conventions as well as paved way for a dramatic recapitulation of the world as it was conceived till then. While it is indeed challenging to express the Posthuman in concrete and definite terms, Donna HarawaysA Cyborg Manifesto and Cary Wolfes What is Posthumanism? with their striking observations of the concept tell us that the idea of the Posthuman not only decentralizes human beings from a hitherto grand narrative and replaces them with other nonhuman/inhuman possibilities such as nature, animals, cyborgs, robots and such like, but also opens a minefield of discourse that can potentially negate all kinds of hegemonic signifiers currently in circulation. The most palpable outcome of the emergence of the Posthuman, quite similar to what the Postmodern brought in for the modern, is that humanism, as we knew it for quite some time in recorded history, is about to witness an irreversible change. When Hayles amalgamated the postmodern and hallucination, cybernetics and informatics in her interpretation of the Posthuman, little did one realise that the Posthuman in no more to be dismissed as forever suspended in future, that the Postmodern is both immediate and intimate in the temporal as well as spatial sense, that it exists here and now.In the wake of the Posthuman then, how does one make sense of a world perforated by long drawn conflicts, war zones, forced displacements and voluntary migrations, and diseases? Is the Posthuman likely to emerge from a degenerative space inherited by a depleted earth or is it likely to create a more thanhuman existence, a utopian occurrence that lay hitherto unimagined? What lies ahead and how is it plausible to negotiate memory from what has passed by? How do India and Canada, diverse in terms of their populations, communities, cultures, and geopolitical realities, deal with this inevitable onset of the Posthuman? What prepares these two diverse democracies of the world for what is about to appear? How will it impact their narratives of existence and sustenance? What ruptures and continuities are these two giant nations of our interest likely to experience owing to the sweeping changes brought in by an ever expanding possibility of the Posthuman? The two day Symposium seeks to invite papers from Faculty, research scholars, independent researchers, students and other interested professionals in the following areas to deliberate upon: The human and the posthuman Speculative fiction Resistance Literature Utopia and dystopia Memory and the posthuman Borders and the Posthuman Animal Studies Disease and the Posthuman Displacements and Migrations Conflicts and warzones Human, inhuman and nonhuman Indigeneity and foreignness Home and exile Memory and trauma Select papers from the symposium will be published after peer review with a publishing house of repute.

Keynote Address by: Dr. Rijuta Mehta, Asst. Professor of English, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.

Organizer:

Dr. Punyashree Panda

Asst. Professor

School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Management

IIT Bhubaneswar

Email: ppanda@iitbbs.ac.in , punyashreepanda@gmail.com

Contact Details of Team Members:

Ms. Trina Bose, Research Scholar, School of HSSM, IIT Bhubaneswar (Email: tb15@iitbbs.ac.in) (Call: 91-6294945611)

Ms. Sayani Konar, Research Scholar, School of HSSM, IIT Bhubaneswar (Email: sk90@iitbbs.ac.in) (Call: 91-8906750724)

Mr. Sanarul Haque, Research Scholar, School of HSSM, IIT Bhubaneswar (Email: sh23@iitbbs.ac.in) (Call: 91-9775445313)

Important Dates

Deadline for Abstract Submission: 10 March 2022

Notification of Abstract Acceptance: 12 March 2022

Deadline for Submission of Full Paper: 20 March 2022

Deadline for Registration: 15 March 2022

Symposium Dates: 25 - 26 March 2022

To join:

Link to register: https://forms.gle/JKt3FF812mimuC6CA

Link to submit abstract: https://forms.gle/F1Ku3PQdP84Yhcgv5

Registration fees: INR 500/- (Indian Rupees Five Hundred only)

Bank Details

Institution Account Name: CEP, IIT Bhubaneswar

Account No. : 24282010001960

IFSC Code : CNRB0017282

Bank Name: CANARA BANK Branch Name: IIT BHUBANESWAR, ARGUL BRANCH

MIRC No. 752015014

Branch Address: IIT Bhubaneswar, Argul, Jatni, Khorda- 752050

Telephone No. of Bank: 91-9437112821

Link:

Mapping Memory in the Wake of the Posthuman: India and ...