What does it mean to say we live in a world that is "post-colonial"? Have our geopolitical relations, institutions, structures of knowledge been "decolonized?" Who is the "we"? Mary Louise Pratt asks what a critical scholarly practice might be in the context of changing imperial dynamics in the contemporary world and inquires as to what content and lived experience are referred to or occluded  by the terms "globalization" and "modernity." Focusing briefly on the current controversy surrounding the testimonio of Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchú, she also draws on recent attempts to postulate "alternative modernities" as a way of addressing these issues.

This lecture is held in conjunction with the three-year, interdisciplinary program Area Studies, Identity, and the Arts, funded in part by the Ford Foundation.

Sponsored by: The Ford Foundation

In conjunction with: Art History Program, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Department of Anthropology, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Department of Educational Policy Studies, Department of Linguistics, Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH), Krannert Art Museum, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory,  Women's Studies Program