ASIA AND THE OTHER, International Conference, National Taiwan Normal University Taipei, TAIWAN, June 23, 2007
Deadline for Proposals: December 31, 2006 The year 1984 witnessed the taking place of a pioneering conference entitled "Europe and Its Others." With the publication of Edward W. Said's Orientalism only a few years apart, the conference organized by the University of Essex engaged in discussions heralded in Said's monumental work and presented some of the most groundbreaking writings in the then-emerging field, "postcolonial theory," with the participation of numerous thought-provoking scholars, Said himself included. Now, a little over two decades later, the Department of English at National Taiwan Normal University invites proposals for an international conference, ASIA AND THE OTHER, soliciting input on Asia's positioning in light of the question of the Other/other. Presenting a similar-sounding theme with slight revision to the Essex conference, we would like to examine whether or not the idiom of the Self/Other demarcation is still relevant in the context of Asia. If yes,relevant in what ways? Is the present-day Asia still imagined in the same fashion as the old Orient once was? Does the rising economic force of Asia grant Asian countries "Occidentalist" optics through which they represent their others as old Orientalists did them? Without fixed conceptual presumptions, ASIA AND THE OTHER is interested not only in Asia's relations with "its" others, but also in Asia's relations with "the Other/other" as an ethical, political, epistemological, or ontological problematic.
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