In the final presentation in the Beyond Multiculturalism: Back to Cosmopolitanism(s) series, University of Toronto Professor Rinaldo Walcott looks at "Genres of Man: Multiculturalism, Cosmo-politics and the Caribbean Basin" on Tuesday, April 8.
The lecture, which grapples with the Caribbean basin as a multicultural as well as a cosmopolitan geo-political entity, takes place from 3 to 5pm, at 286C Winters College, Keele campus.
"In the paper, I worry about cosmopolitanism as a higher order of man….the paper suggests a cosmopolitanism in which ‘the archipelago of poverty’, as Sylvia Wynter has called it, becomes a place where new genres of man proliferate," says Walcott.
Right: Rinaldo Walcott
He will argue that the Caribbean is in an utterly unique place as an extension of Europe, Africa and Asia, as amputation, extension and incubator of the modern and as an overseas department. In addition, as import and export, as slave and free, indenture and in-between as well as the contemporary backyard of the US and the playground of Europe, it is a place where the cosmo-political takes route in all the messiness that ethnicity and raciological thinking brings with it.
Walcott will look at the history of ideas produced in and beyond the Caribbean, but also at those influenced by it, to try and develop different and better conversations about the genres of man in these troubled times.
A Canada Research Chair in Social Justice and Cultural Studies from 2002 to 2007, Walcott is a professor of black diaspora cultural studies at U of T’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, where he also teaches in the Women and Gender Studies Institute and Sexual Diversity Studies Program. He is the author of Black Like Who: Writing Black Canada (Insomniac Press, 1997; second revised edition, 2003) and the editor of Rude: Contemporary Black Canadian Cultural Criticism (Insomniac Press, 2000). He has published widely in the areas of cultural studies, post-colonial studies, queer theory and multicultural studies. Walcott is also the founding editor of the online journal, New Dawn: the Journal of Black Canadian Studies, which launched in 2006.
Cosmopolitanism, as a critical concept that brings together academic and political concerns, has featured prominently in contemporary scholarly debates, signaling a renewed attention to the complex ways in which globalization, nationalism, questions of citizenship and multiculturalism are being linked together in the context of a post 9/11 world.
The presentations and conversations in this series are an intervention in the ongoing debates around this subject. This last presentation in the series will be followed by a reception. The series is sponsored by the Graduate Programs in Social Anthropology, Social & Political Thought and Education; and Founders College.
For more information about the lecture series contact Professor Daniel Yon in the York Faculty of Education at 416-736-2100, ext. 88806 or by e-mail at dyon@edu.yorku.ca.