Abstracts accepted in English.
Nipesh Palat Narayanan
nipesh.palat.narayanan@inrs.ca
Categorizations construct realities. South, one such category, is crucial in critical geography. Being used both as a geographical location and an ontological position, it aids us to critically interrogate concentration of knowledge and power (Connell, 2011). However, this session intends to question the hegemony of the category of south itself, asking the question: Where, how, and what is south; and what knowledges this categorization produces. In this light, the session invites both empirical and theoretical work along (but not limited to) the following:
1. How does ‘south’ as a category, aids or restricts our modalities of research, our data, and our results?
2. Is south an ‘other’, which justifies extractivism and coloniality?
3. How can critical geographers mobilize the existing notions of south, or modify it?
4. South in relation to other similar categories like metropolis (and periphery), west (and the rest), as manifested in different research contexts.
The session intends to bring together works that could collectively move towards an epistemic disobedience (Mignolo, 2009). To be able to move beyond North-South distinction, and illustrate, critique, and engage with a more diffused political existence of knowledge hegemony (Palat Narayanan, 2021).
References:
Connell R (2011) Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science. Polity Press.
Mignolo WD (2009) Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom. Theory, Culture & Society 26(7–8): 159–181.
Palat Narayanan N (2021) Southern Theory without a North: City Conceptualization as the Theoretical Metropolis. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 111(4): 989–1001.