[Anthropgrad] RSH Friday Forum 10 August - 'Coevalness Denied: Locating Difference in Time'

[Ida Nursoo]

The Research School of Humanities 
presents the:

FRIDAY FORUM

1-2.30 pm, 10 August

Coevalness Denied: Locating Difference in Time
 
Presenters: Barry Hindess & Margaret Jolly
Facilitator: Ida Nursoo
 

Well that is ludicrous ... This idea that we're stealing a generation,
we're protecting a generation, this idea we're grabbing land, we're
trying to secure the future for these people but they can do, you know,
they can do their damnedest but I don't really care because we know what
we're doing is right.
John Howard, 29 June 2007
 
Consider the temporal reference in the Prime Minister's response to the
accusation that the Commonwealth's intervention in Aboriginal
communities cloaks a land grab ...
 
In this Forum Professors Barry Hindess and Margaret Jolly reflect on the
contemporary significance of the denial of coevalness, taking examples
from the humanities and social sciences.
 
Johannes Fabian's Time and the Other mounts a sustained critique of
anthropology's allochronism, or denial of coevalness, that is, of its
'tendency to place the referent(s) of anthropology in a Time other than
the present of the producer of anthropological discourse'. While his
analysis focuses specifically on anthropological fieldwork, Fabian
acknowledges that the denial of coevalness is a more general feature of
modern Western thought, one that draws on 'entrenched political
cosmology ... [with] deep historical roots'. 
 
The problem Fabian addresses is no less evident in the other social
sciences than it is in anthropology itself. It appears most obviously in
the discourses of modernity, modernisation and development which divide
the contemporary world into portions which are fully of our time, those
which unfortunately remain at greater or lesser distances behind it and,
those who have moved on to a post-modern condition.
 
Barry Hindess is Professor of Political Science in the Research School
of Social Sciences at ANU. He has published widely in the areas of
social and political theory. His most recent works are Discourses of
Power: from Hobbes to Foucault, Governing Australia: studies in
contemporary rationalities of government (with Mitchell Dean),
Corruption and Democracy in Australia and Us and Them: anti-elitism in
Australia (with Marian Sawer), and numerous papers on democracy,
liberalism and empire, and neo-liberalism.
 
Margaret Jolly is Professor and Head of the Gender Relations Centre in
the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. She is an historical
anthropologist who has written extensively on gender in the Pacific, on
exploratory voyages and travel writing, missions and contemporary
Christianity, maternity and sexuality, cinema and art. She is currently
writing on gender in discourses of nationalism and diaspora in the
Pacific, with an emphasis on visual arts and literature. Her next book
will consider gender, race and sexuality in both documentary and feature
films about the Pacific.

 Venue: Old Canberra House, Lennox Crossing, ANU

For further information consult the co-convenors: John Docker
(john.docker at anu.edu.au); Carolyn Strange ( carolyn.strange at anu.edu.au
<mailto:carolyn.strange at anu.edu.au> ).

For more information please contact:
Phone: 61252434
Email: administration.rsh at anu.edu.au 
Web: http://rsh.anu.edu.au/
 
All Welcome
Please circulate widely
This lecture is free and open to the public. Parking vouchers are
available upon request.

 

Ida Nursoo

PhD Student

School of Archaeology and Anthropology

A.D. Hope, Building 14

The Australian National University

Canberra, ACT  0200

 

T: +61 2 6125 5198

E: Ida.Nursoo at anu.edu.au