Waiting for the Barbarians: A Tribute to Edward W. Said
25-26 May 2007
Bogazici University, Istanbul
Waiting for the Barbarians: A Tribute to Edward W. Said
is an event planned to pay tribute, revisit and engage with the richly
variegated erudition and seminal scholarship of Edward Said. Drawing
inspiration from his work and legacy as critical theorist, intellectual
and activist, this tribute is an occasion to rekindle a conversation
amongst academics, activists, writers, poets, and artists, to think our
being in the world anew.
Once
the celebrated site for social, political, historical and intellectual
exchange, cohabitation, knowledge and enrichment, the bedrock for a
collective experience of mixity, hybridity and plurality, culture seems
to have acquired a negative, violent political capital. Beginning from
the last two decades of the twentieth century until this present
moment, it has become the grounds for sovereign nations to tear apart
from within in violent armed civil conflicts and to fall victim to the
trap of the"clash of civilizations".
This
tribute shall, we hope, be an occasion to reflect critically on the
location and significance of Said's intellectual legacy in light of our
lived experience full of such violent conflicts and the political
imperative that rules our present. As the world is flattened,
blind-folded and muted, a conversation amongst his colleagues,
students, friends and admirers from across the globe is perhaps a step
towards making our imagined other world possible.
