Oecumene Symposium: Deorientalizing Citizenship?

Oecumene Second Symposium Deorientalizing citizenship? Experiments in political subjectivity has taken place on 12-13 November 2012 at the Goodenough College in London.

The symposium has been the occasion to discuss the following: what do we understand by orientalism thirty years after Edward Said's seminal investigation? How can orientalism be re-articulated beyond its cultural or representational forms? What do we mean by citizenship as a possible mode of political subjectivity? Is any articulation of political subjectivity which enacts a claim to rights, or to the right to claim rights, to be understood as citizenship?

Keynote speakers Saba Mahmood (University of California, Berkeley) and Walter Mignolo (Duke University) together with a selection of panelists addressed these questions from multi-disciplinary perspectives.

Audio podcasts are now available on the Oecumene website.

The symposium has also strengthened our partnership with Open Democracy. Engin Isin was Open Democracy’s guest editor for a week (5-9 November, 2012), and various members of the Oecumene team introduced Open Democracy readership to ideas and practises that will inform new modes of citizenship at a time when events from the Arab Spring to Occupy are calling for a deeper understanding of the purpose of citizenship.

For further details, please visit the OpenDemocracy and Oecumene: Citizenship after Orientalism websites.