2000-01 Seminar
RACE, RELIGION AND GLOBALIZATION
Faculty Co-Conveners:
Gregson Davis (Classical Studies),
Bruce Lawrence (Religion)
Walter Mignolo (Literature, Romance
Studies, & Cultural Anthropology)
We are committed to the notion that none of our three key terms is innocent. All are in need of exploration, contextualization and, above all, expansion. Consider “globalization” - Can we invoke the term “globalization” and still escape the reflex to filter our perceptions, memories, judgments and histories through our own cultural lens? Can we come to see as provincial not only Western Europe but also North America (that is, the North Atlantic of the modern/colonial world)? Or do we subscribe to the view that capitalist designs will always direct the outcome in all confrontations between peoples and cultures, regardless of the racial, religious or ethical profile of the player in question?
None of these questions admits of positivist or teleological answers, but together they would help us, in the seminar, to revisit the key terms: race, religion and globalization. We invite you to join us in year-long self-scrutiny. Last but not least, we will take this opportunity to reflect on the critical role of the humanities and social sciences in understanding and acting upon the logic and consequences of globalization, taking race, religion and globalization as "the case in point."
Regarding the specific project for the year, there are a number of issues and problems that we would like to explore. On the one hand, globalization is creating the conditions for a revival of religion and religious movements. On the other, religion-at least in the modern/colonial world that developed with the emergence of the Atlantic in the 1500's-has been strongly linked to race. These prompt us to raise the following questions:
a) What are the links between capitalism, belief systems and racial formation(s)? And,
b) How do religious and ethnic movements respond to and search for alternatives to capitalist globalization?
“Nationalism and race” is the topic of the first John Hope Franklin Seminar (1999-2000). A major issue of our time, it will be unavoidable in our discussions. Our perspective, however, includes nationalism as a specific historico-political configuration in the larger picture of the modern/colonial world system. Consequently, we propose to explore the links between race and religion in colonial/imperial expansion. After the American Revolution, Latin American independence and the French Revolution, nationalism and nation building re-converted the meaning of race and the role of religion. The social upheavals of the Napoleonic era led to a radically secularized world that promoted the building of the British and French colonial empires. The industrial revolution and the consolidation of capitalism are crucial historical developments that must be reexamined if we are to understand the connections between race, religion and ideology, from an Afro-Asian as well as a Euro-American perspective. Not only the consolidation of nationalism in Europe in the nineteenth century, but also the emergent post-colonial nationalism in the Americas (the U.S., Haiti, Latin American countries) and the new colonial expansion to Africa and Asia-all brought different religions of the world into contact and spawned conflicts unknown until then.
Furthermore, there emerged a strenuous new articulation of capitalism and the dominant Christian religion, which proved to be a cornerstone in the colonial reconfiguration of the Western world. Paralleling this major re-articulation “from above” were new forms of creolized religions “from below,” among them Haitian Vodun and Jamaican Rastafarianism. Both Vodun and Rasta challenged Christianity, even while assimilating some of its features into their linguistic repertoires. But how effective are creolizing strategies today, especially when global technocracy enthrones and perpetuates the dominance of English, nowhere more powerfully than in cyberspace? All these questions remain unanswered, but the problematic they engage will be central to our Seminar.
2000-2002 Seminar Fellows
Faculty Co-Conveners
Gregson Davis, Classical Studies
Walter Mignolo, Literature
Bruce Lawrence, ReligionFaculty Fellows
Teresa Berger, Divinity
Leo Ching, Asian & African Languages & Literatures
Rom Coles, Political Science
Katherine Ewing, Cultural Anthropology
Jean Jonassaint, Romance Studies
Bill Hart, ReligionGraduate Fellows
Michael Ennis, Literature
L. Kaifa Roland, Cultural Anthropology
Nicole Waligora, EnglishPost-Doctoral Fellow
Tomeiko Ashford, Franklin Institute