good evening everyone...

good evening and welcome

Good Evening

Good Evening from London

greetings from Tunisia

Greetings from Mauritius

Greetings from California

Hello from Edinburgh

Hello from Dublin!

hi from Glasgow

hello from Toronto

Hello from Greece!

Hello from Turkey

Hi from Prishtina

In Scotland, we have Shehu Bayoh who was killed by 6-8 police officer and none of then have been arrested as yet

Hello from India.

Good evening everyone from Bangladesh

Hello from Edinburgh (home: Delhi, India)!

Hello from India.

Hello from India

Greetings from India

It is interesting that one of the most lauded podcasts of 2020 is titled ‘We are having a moment’ - https://www.cnet.com/news/why-were-having-a-moment-is-the-most-important-podcast-of-2020/

Greetings from India

Thank you Niamh!

mosaic moments...lovely image

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Elif Shafak has written very urgently recently on the same theme in How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division - that the pandemic may be the lens through which we have discovered we are in global political interregnum

Highly recommend reading

Elif Shafak has written an excellent book

Sourit - audio?

Thank you folks!

frozen

We can’t hear Homi

its a great still though

Mourning the space of being together!

No Zoom is complete without this! Gives me a chance to read the chat comments too.

Exactly Helen!

we need more funding opportunities to do postcolonial studies

The phenomenological moment of...Zoom!

Totally !!!

We are together in the virtual space.. Thanks to Zoom!

Borders are not closed thanks to Zoom

From now on I am going to refer to Zoom Cubicles

I hope he knows that he has been disconnected and not continued speaking (speaking from experience)

Yes, Angela, it is so wonderful to hear where everyone is zooming in from.

Q Does decolonial studies need more of postcolonial theory’s attention to hybridity ?

And reparations

Hello and thank you from Northern California

Climate reparations - to add to the other concepts of reparation

Sourit will you please comment on the problems of the second-generation immigrants in England

If there was no Zoom, Angela from Mauritius would have never been in this space... Is Zoom the decolonizing factor?...

I would like to direct this question to Prof Homi, what are his thoughts on decolonisation in academia?

I would like to ask the same question

Absolutely! The pandemic highlighted all the existing cracks in the system so to say, and in return highlighted the response of governments globally.

More broadly the internet rather than just Zoom, Angela. I read David Eagleman's The Safety Net: Surviving Pandemics and Other Disasters this week, a book he wrote 10 years ago but has now updated for 2020 about how the web as a technology is a decolonising factor that is making the planet more resilient through knowledge share and rapid dissemination of information and ideas

Thanks for the questions. If there are more questions you would like us to ask, please post them here.

Thanks Kris. I will definitely read this book.

Q: Is working to prevent/mitigate the same as to prepare, or different? I'm thinking particularly of Homi's point that "we're unprepared, even though we've been forewarned" - we know climate change is happening, so should we be working to minimise or to brace ourselves (they feel different) - or both?

i.e. in some ways "prepare" feels like giving in?

I think that Jesmyn Ward’s powerful essay on the death of her husband and the BLM protests provides one example of thinking of the pandemic and protest together - https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2020/08/jesmyn-ward-on-husbands-death-and-grief-during-covid

Has the pandemic changed our relationship with the private and public in a new political way? I wonder if the emergency has also created dangerously an unwillingness to be politically engaged.

Coming from a war-torn country, I know how collective, rushed guilt can be dangerous and actually counterproductive. Thank you for mentioning this, Homi.

dang right!

Does decolonizing the trope of governence entail a kind of change in the way the regime of unpreparedness can be looked at?

Absolutely. Self-flagellation is still self-absorbed and self-indulgent.

That's an excellent point.

so true!

yes!

Perhaps another example of the utopia/dystopia mindset - in terms of the institutional identity

Quick temporary acceptance of guilt as a tool of manipulation, perhaps?

Q: In terms of being Unprepared - what do you make of the surge in people organizing themselves to weaponize their disengagement from reality via groups like Q-Anon? They are very prepared in some ways, and evidently, very unprepared in others...

Is it a form of narcissism that provoked some to rush to comment publicly - was there any depth to the intention or was it a 'social obligation' to be seen to have said something in the moment?

I think a more important challenge is to re-align the school (i.e. primary, secondary) school curriculum. I grew up in Scotland, studied Jacobite Rebellions (glorious defeat) WWII (glorious victory). No mention at all of Scotland and Scots’ role in Empire.

I believe racial justice is more important than racial equity.

catherinemackenzie: IYS Scotland are doing a push on this currently. check out their work, if you haven't seen it :)

Seizing the moment to plug this call for abstracts for a conference focusing on performing arts research by academics of colour organised by two of my colleagues: https://www.rcs.ac.uk/conferences/shared-narratives/?utm_campaign=1768955_Shared%20Narratives%20Flyer&utm_medium=email&utm_content=&dm_t=0,0,0,0,0

Thanks Flavia, I will share with my colleagues at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance where there will be some people interested I’m sure

Nicole: Thanks, will do.

Wonderful, thank you Niamh

Yes, hiring is a keystone

Algerian-french Hélène Cixous views on ‘intellectual’ as a ‘reserved’ concept. What are Pro Homi’s thoughts about the gatekeeping of intellectually?

prof*

while acknowledging the pressing need for a more substantial modes of academic critique and an ethical engagement with the unprepared, what we actually witness is a deliberate compromise with social justice, academic standards and ethics, as evidenced in the ways examinations are being held now in many Indian universities, and colleges. The provincial universities further corroborate the underlying hubris and the pervasive crisis.

Net here is unstable, so I am typing a rather large question regarding Prof. Bhabha's take on 'unpreparedness': I was curious whether the very idea of being 'prepared' has a connection with enlightenment, being 'prepared' is to believed that the scientifically explainable world can also be scientifically anticipated...but then comes this moment of 'unpreparedness', pushing us to the realm of 'un-scientific' ..especially in India, this apparent moment of rupture was swiftly captured by the religious nationalists; rituals, gods and 'traditional treatments' suddenly began popping up in our daily life more than ever, being even promoted by the government.

What about people who are elected but are not prepared to be in government?

Apologies for having to shoot off slightly early - thank you to everyone for a fantastic chat!

Great point, Ratul.

Ratul Ghosh, that very point is made by Vikram Chandra in his book "Sacred Games" which is a thriller, and probably not read by many academics

Uh huh !

"nothing is certain, everything is possible" (Havel)

thank you so much for the response, professor!

In terms of movement politics being moment politics - the role of the image of the moment (the arm raised over the crowd etc) that captures a moment, defines a movement, is taken in a moment, shared in a moment, becomes embedded in a moment - the idea of the tweet as the technology of the moment is so interesting

Not really - The Proleptic is Science Fictional thinking

Thank you Homi, Sourit, Colin and all at Glasgow who brought this about.

Speaking of conspiracy theories earlier, they seem certainly on the rise. German academic Michael Butter has recently published an illuminating book on this https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-nature-of-conspiracy-theories/michael-butter/sharon-howe/9781509540815

Ethical memory of the future is a great phrase to end on!

Thank you so much all! So inspiring!

Amazing thank you all

thank you :)

Yes, it is Rob and super helpful!

Thank you all!

Thank you so much Sourit, Homi and Colin!

Homi - thank you! reminds me of the late-19th-century future-based political utopias I have studied: William Morris's News from Nowhere, for example.

thank you so much. I could have listened all night.

Amazing!!!

Thanks

Thank you so much!

thank you so much!!

I have so many notes for my doctorate

thank you so much for this event

Thank you all so much - what a brilliant evening!

Really fascinating

Thank you for a wonderful session!

thank you so much everybody!

Thank you so much

Thank you!!

thank you

Yes the ethics of the future. Thank you all.

thank you!

Thank you!

This was so interesting, can’t wait to revisit these thoughts in my postcolonial class with Suirit next semester

Thank you!

thank you!

That was absolutely excellent. Thank you so much

Thank you everyone!

Thank you everyone! the chat box is also a gem !

Thank you so much!

Wonderful session - thank you

Thank you both very much

thank u so much !!!

Thank you for sharing so much

Thank you

thank you so much, this was very wonderful! good night :)

Thanks a lot

Thank you from Mauritius

Thank you!

Thank you so much!!

Thank you

Thank you

Thank you for bringing us together from many different corners of the world!

thank you all

thankyou!

Thank you!

Thank you!

thank you

Thank you

thanks

thank you!!!

Thank u

Lovely to see lots of Glasgow colleagues and teleport back for an hour!

thank you

Thank you very much !!!