2016 ~ SUNDAY JUNE 5: ROAMING ASSEMBLY #6 ~ INTRAACTION TRANSCOLONIALISM: ‘Epistemic Disobedience in Dutch (Post)Colonialism’ ~ by Paul Bijl
Epistemic Disobedience in Dutch (Post)Colonialism
by Paul Bijl
This talk will address forms of epistemic disobedience in both colonial Indonesia and the postcolonial Netherlands. Paul Bijl will work with Jacques Rancière’s notion of dissensus: the putting together of two worlds in one and the same world which creates an opening for equality. Indonesian authors Kartini, Soerjaningrat and Sjahrir, in the first decades of the twentieth century, as well as the contemporary Moroccan-Dutch rapper Salah Edin and Surinamese-Dutch women wearing headscarves named ‘angisas’ use writing and performance to imagine different worlds which are at odds with the world they live in. Of particularly interest are their critiques of racism and sexism and their implicit and explicit pleas for equal rights and citizenship. At the same time, the marginality of this knowledge on their knowledge begs the question as to the lack of diversity in the Dutch university curriculum and university faculty.
