Entanglements and Aftermaths:

Reflections on Memory and Political Time

criticaltheoryconsortium.org / wiser.wits.ac.za

Entanglements and Aftermaths will investigate connections between histories that persist into the present and reflect on the role of memory in our understanding of political time. Do histories end when they are declared to end, or do they have an afterlife that makes it difficult to distinguish the past from the present? What is the role played by silence, repression and absence as technologies of forgetting? How are reparations claims shaped by the politics of memory? When and under what circumstances do the trials of memory, invested with the injunction to justice, turn from matters of personal or public healing to a reiteration of violence? These are just some of the questions that the conference will pose and confront across a wide range of sessions.

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Thursday, February 22

13:00 | Remarks by Sarah Nuttall (WiSER) and

Debarati Sanyal (UC Berkeley)

 

Judith Butler (UC Berkeley)

David Goldberg (UC Irvine)

Achille Mbembe (WiSER)

Matters of Time: An Introductory Roundtable

 

14.30 | Penny Siopis (University of Cape Town)

Time and Again

Convened by Pamila Gupta (WiSER)

 

15:30 | Coffee/Tea

 

16:00 | Achille Mbembe (WiSER)

Eating Time: Memory in the Absence of Traces

Convened by Dilip Menon (CISA, Wits)

 

17:00 | Paul Gilroy (King’s College London)

Rhythm in the Force of Forces: Music and Political Time

Convened by Hlonipha Mokoena (WiSER)

 

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Friday, February 23

9:00 | Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela (Stellenbosch University)

Traumatic Ruptures and Legacies of the Past: Pre-Senting Memory

Convened by Robyn Bloch (WiSER)

 

10:00 | Marianne Hirsch (Columbia University)

Stateless Memory

Convened by Candice Jansen (WiSER)

 

11:00 | Coffee/Tea

 

11:30 | Vilashini Cooppan (UC Santa Cruz)

Time Maps

Convened by Srila Roy (Sociology, Wits)

 

12:30 | Lunch break

 

13:30 | Vron Ware (Kingston University London)

Memorializing Perpetual War

Convened by Zen Marie (School of Arts, Wits)

 

14:30 | Meltem Ahiska (Boğaziçi University)

All Silences Are Not Equal: Fertile Memories Beyond the Walls of Silence

Convened by Richard Pithouse (WiSER)

 

15:30 | Coffee/Tea

 

16:00 | Debarati Sanyal (UC Berkeley)

Arts of Memory and Persistence within the Refugee ‘Crisis’

Convened by Nolwazi Mkhwanazi (WiSER)

 

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Saturday, February 24

9:00 | Hoda Elsadda (Cairo University; The Women and Memory Forum)

‘Who Owns the Street?’: Gender, Narrative and Memory in Post-Revolutionary Egypt

Convened by Simon van Schalkwyk (English, Wits)

10:00 | María José Contreras Lorenzini (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)

Performance Art in Postdictatorship Chile or How to Embody Critical Thought

Convened by Philomena Essed (Antioch University)

 

11:00 | Coffee/Tea

 

11:30 | Victoria Collis-Buthelezi (WiSER)

1913

Convened by Sinethemba Makanya (WiSER)

 

12:30 | Lunch break

 

13:30 | Jane Taylor (University of the Western Cape)

Of Uncertainty

Convened by Mbali Khoza (Rhodes University)

 

14:30 | Patricia Hayes (University of the Western Cape)

Photography and the Refusal of Light in 1980s South Africa

Convened by Isabel Hofmeyr (African Literature, Wits)

 

15:30 | Open Session with Coffee/Tea

Convened by Sarah Nuttall (WiSER)

 

16:30 | Concluding Panel

Convened by Judith Butler (UC Berkeley)

and Victoria Collis-Buthelezi (WiSER)

 

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Convened by Sarah Nuttall, WiSER | Debarati Sanyal, UC Berkeley

Organized by the International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs, UC Berkeley | Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand

Supported by a grant to UC Berkeley from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. For more information, contact info.ictconsortium@berkeley.edu.