[Bilimsel Haber] Conf: Waiting for the Barbarians: A Tribute to Edward W. Said, 25-26 May 2009, Bogazici University

[Onur Inal]

Waiting for the Barbarians: A Tribute to Edward W. Said
25-26 May 2009
Bogazici University

Waiting for the Barbarians: A Tribute to Edward W. Said is an event
planned to pay tribute, revisit and engage with the richly variegated
erudition and seminal scholarship of Edward Said. Drawing inspiration
from his work and legacy as critical theorist, intellectual and
activist, this tribute is an occasion to rekindle a conversation amongst
academics, activists, writers, poets, and artists, to think our being in
the world anew.
Once the celebrated site for social, political, historical and
intellectual exchange, cohabitation, knowledge and enrichment, the
bedrock for a collective experience of mixity, hybridity and plurality,
culture seems to have acquired a negative, violent political capital.
Beginning from the last two decades of the twentieth century until this
present moment, it has become the grounds for sovereign nations to tear
apart from within in violent armed civil conflicts and to fall victim to
the trap of ³the clash of civilizations². 
This tribute shall, we hope, be an occasion to reflect critically on the
location and significance of Said's intellectual legacy in light of our
lived experience full of such violent conflicts and the political
imperative that rules our present. As the world is flattened,
blind-folded and muted, a conversation amongst his colleagues, students,
friends and admirers from across the globe is perhaps a step towards
making our imagined other world possible.