Re-orientating Screen Studies: A Preliminary Reflection Seminar

My intervention in this call will be on two fronts. First, I question the very notions of de-westernization and decolonization and ask if such missions are impossible or even desirable, and for whom. Second, I suggest that the forces of neoliberal capitalism have so deeply penetrated elite universities across the world that the notion of de-westernization has become a moot point even or especially in the so-called non-west. Taken together, this talk argues that the global dynamics and identitarian politics of the twenty-first century demand that any reckoning with de-westernization and decolonization must take into account the legacies of colonialism in both the metropoles and the ex-colonies as well as the basis of knowledge formation as shaped by forces of the Enlightenment and neoliberal capitalism. It will use examples from Singapore, Taiwan, and China and from across the western world to illustrate that the stakes for such a call must lie beyond the academe and be rooted in social justice.

Our speaker: Song Hwee Lim is Professor of Cultural Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and author of three monographs, namely Taiwan Cinema as Soft Power: Authorship, Transnationality, Historiography (2022), Tsai Ming-liang and a Cinema of Slowness (2014), and Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Chinese Cinemas (2006).

Please register using Eventbrite and you will then be sent a Outlook meeting request which will include the link to the seminar. Please note the seminar will take place online using Microsoft Teams. The deadline for registering for this event is 1pm on the day of the seminar (30/11/2021).

Any questions or queries please contact Tracy Storey on tps@southampton.ac.uk.