The Indian Ocean and the Past Present of Empire

With Dr. Nienke Boer, Sean M. Kennedy, and Dr. Usha Rungoo.

Moderated by Dr. Pallavi Rastogi.

The primary themes of the panel include reconstructing material histories of imperial settlement in the Global South and the trade in people, goods, and ideas both within South Asia and from outside it and back; analyzing the relationships between forms of unfree labor in the development of racial capitalism and settlement; querying the possibilities for transformative political and economic solidarities in the long wake of Third Worldism; tracing affective relations and anti-normative socialities; and utilizing the aesthetic and the literary as modes, not simply objects, of theorizing.

Dr. Nienke Boer, “Oceanic Tales, Imperial Legacies: Robinson Crusoe in the Indian Ocean”

Sean M. Kennedy, “Corruption: A Pre-History From Fanqui-Town”

Dr. Usha Rungoo, “The Shipping Container and the Human Cargo Ship: Bridging (Neo)Colonial Histories in Amal Sewtohul’s Made in Mauritius”

Neelofer Qadir, ‘Kifa Urongo’: Structures of Unfreedom in Paradise”