Events

Law and The Modalities of Nostalgia

A Workshop will be held at the IPCS in early December 2010 on Law and The Modalities of Nostalgia. It will focus on issues raised by, amongst others, Paul Gilroy in Colonial Melancholia and Svetlana Boym in The Future of Nostalgia regarding the ambivalent and often conflictual nature of social memory both in colonising and colonised states. The complicity of ‘law’ in the colonising process means that in the interplay of past and present it often depends on one’s vantage-point as to whether law might afford a possible solution to conflicts and perceived social problems in the present in postcolonial states, or alternatively be perceived as contributing to the irresolution of a grim colonial past. This ambivalence is epitomised in Australia by the co-existence of a cathartic moment – a formal apology to indigenous Australians by an Australian Prime Minister – with the legally sanctioned neo-colonialism of the ‘Intervention’ in remote indigenous communities and the offshore ‘processing’ of ‘boat people’. This ambivalence underlines the importance of developing what Gilroy has suggested as “a revised account of European modernisms and their complex relationship with colonial and imperial experiences both at home and abroad”. The Workshop is supported by the Griffith Law Review, one of Australia’s leading law journals, and the Australian & New Zealand Law and Society Association. Those interested in attending or giving a paper should contact either Rob McQueen (robert.mcqueen@law.monash.edu.au) or the Institute.

NB. Please note that the date for the workshop has not been fixed.