Internationalization of Colonial Knowledge Production

Abstract

The workshop aims at bringing together current trends in historiography, addressing the transnational workings of knowledge production, with a focus on the production of colonial knowledge / the colonial production of knowledge. In our understanding, this nexus of (trans)national, (trans)imperial and colonial dynamics in the production of knowledge is a vital crux of global history as it underpins nineteenth- and twentieth-century academia as much as it facilitated and drew upon colonization in Africa and Asia. We particularly want to emphasize the institutionalization of transnational and transimperial ‘colonial sciences’; its contribution to the establishment of academic disciplines, with all its Eurocentric, universalistic and imperialist underpinnings; and the enmeshment with colonial policy-making and lived realities in African and Asian colonies under control — or out of control. In terms of the format, we envisage an intensive discussion of pre-circulated papers, in preparation of a joint publication.

The workshop is open to everybody interested but we ask for pre-registration by e-mail  (geert.castryck@uni-leipzig.de or katja.naumann@leibniz-gwzo.de).

This workshop is organized by Geert Castryck (SFB 1199, Leipzig U) and Katja Naumann (GWZO, at Leipzig U) in cooperation with the Network on Transimperial Cooperation at the University of Erfurt and with the support of the Forum for the Study of the Global Condition and the CRC ‘Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition’ at Leipzig University.