Koehn Lecture: James Clifford
Department: Critical Theory at UCI
Date and Time: November 8, 2017 | 4:00 PM-6:00 PMEvent Location: Humanities Gateway 1030
Event Details
This talk addresses the theoretical, representational, and practical problem of engaging with historical process. Three distinct, apparently unrelated, areas of work are juxtaposed and links between them are explored. Scarpa, an idiosyncratic architect and designer, refuses the opposition of traditional and modern in his influential projects of renovation. The concept of articulation in the lineage of Gramsci, Laclau and Hall conceives of history as unevenly layered, a political praxis of connection and disconnection. Indigenous societies and arts today translate and perform deep cultural roots in emergent situations, opening spaces for alternative futures. The talk offers resources for a historical realism that can do without ideas of continuity and discontinuity, epochal change, and narrative closure. It is illustrated by photographs of Scarpa projects recently taken by the speaker.
James Clifford is Emeritus Professor in the History of Consciousness Department, U.C. Santa Cruz. He is the author of The Predicament of Culture, Routes, and most recently Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty First Century.