Colonialism
and its Aftermath
Seminar on Hybridity and Diaspora, July 27
All sessions except the last will be held at the Staff Club
at the Hobart campus of the University of Tasmania
9.15 -10.35 Session 1
Pam Allen: The enigmatic Indo
The paper examines the status of the Indo (Eurasian) in colonial
Dutch East Indies and in postcolonial Indonesia to suggest that
the Indos occupy what Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin call
the 'psychological abyss between cultures'.
Cassandra Pybus: Gilbert Robertson:
that troublesome mulatto
Gilbert Robertson, free settler, radical newspaper editor
and Aboriginal conciliator, son of a wealthy West Indian planter
and his slave mistress, fitted uneasily into the colonial gentry
mould. This paper considers how he embodies both the concept of
diaspora and of hybridity.
11.00-12.20 Session 2
Mitchell Rolls: The Meaninglessness of Aboriginal Cultures
This paper considers the issue of cultural identites and whether
they fit within deterministic models of identity, or are more
fluid and vulnerable to assumption. In pointing to the existence
of an Aboriginal diaspora, the paper also considers the sort of
cultural identity pursued and privileged by the diaspora.
Julie Gough: The gaze, guise, ruse of
'hybridity'
The paper considers how in current western thinking the 'now'
operates within the guise of dealing with the past and how the
introduction of terms like 'hybridity' is about obscuring and
layering; twisting and binding, and is ultimately distanced from
reality.
12.20 -1.00 Session 3
Nigel Penn (University of Cape Town) 'Drosters',
'Bastaards' and 'Oorlams':
Hybrid societies of the Northern Cape frontier zone
The paper will consider the colonial interaction between the
Boer settlers and later the British with the imported slave community
and the indigenous Khoi and San people of the Cape.
2.00-3.20 Session 4
Kirsty Reid (University of Bristol): It cuts me even to the hart:
Love and Separation in the Convict Diaspora
The paper will examine a series of nineteeth century letters
from convicts and their families to explore the issues of love
and separation generated by the process of penal transportation.
Clare Anderson (University of Leicester):
Convict Women and Border Crossings in the Nineteeth Century Indian
Ocean World
This paper will explore the context in which women went from
Australia to Calcutta and elsewhere in the Indian Ocean and how
ordinary working people tapped into the oral culture of the Indian
Ocean world, to become part of the flow of people and information
crossing the seas.
3.20 -4.00 Session 5
Barbara Hatley: The Tyranny of Authenticity: Female Identity and
Women's Writing in Post-Colonial Contexts
The paper will be looking mainly at Indonesian texts in a
broad framework exploring the particular way women in colonial/
postcolonial societies experience authenticity and East-West hybridity
as putative bearers of authentic cultural tradition.
4. 00 Coffee and discussion of future seminars in this series
5.15 -6.30 Removing the Boundaries at the St Ives Lucy Frost and
Susan Ballyn (Barcelona University): Exiles of a Diaspora:
the Sephardi Convicts in V.D.L.
On the 500th anniversary of the expulsion of the Jews from
Spain, there were claims that the Sephardi were being written
out of the record as they had been pushed out of the space half
a millenium before. This paper will consider the Sephardi diaspora
in London and those transported to Van Diemens Land.
$20.00 for staff and $10.00 for students incl lunch and coffee.
Places are limited.
