The land is always stalking people. The land makes people live right. The land looks after us. The land looks after people.
– Mrs Annie Peaches, a 77-year-old member of the Western Apache community of Cibecue (Basso 2000: 41)
A narrative is an orally or verbally disseminated account that captures events, attaches meanings to them, and configures the world around us. So, when we propose “Narratives of Land”, the first query that confronts us is – is it at all possible for a land to speak or communicate? Does land possess any agential faculty to affect us? Is a land always mute or it speaks through its materiality?
There is a sense of co-existential and affective interconnectivity between land and humans regarding our empirical perceptions of it. These multi-sensorial faculties shape or orient human identities, our perceptions, and our sociocultural lifeworlds and also redefine the land itself. David Manuel Navarrete and Michael Redclift, in “The Role of Place in the Margins of Space” have talked of the “human dimension of spatiality” (3). In their theorization, place or land is not static or an inert actor instead it is a living entity with a degree of dynamism, fluidity, and changeability. The materialities of any place confer a sense of belongingness, and rootedness to its people.
South Asia is a colonial cartographic construct that has its own regional diversities, histories, and memories. South Asia is a space where the interaction or ‘intra-action’ between land and human has long been the crux for critical inquiry. Land as a geographical entity has long been discussed by geographers, historians, geologists, ecologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and so on. It has also been the subject of poets, novelists, and also literary critics for many generations. So, to talk about land is to dive into the ocean of multiplicity where there is no terminal point rather any juncture here is a point of departure. The human mind as an isolated entity distinct from its environment since, in the words of Robert Pepperell “a human cannot be separated from its supportive environment … it seems the human is a ‘fuzzy edged’ entity that is profoundly dependent into its surroundings, much as the brain is dependent on the body” (Pepperell 20).
Every human being has their own way of communicating with the land. A diasporic subject often sees the land as not only a physical entity but a ‘topophilic bond’ that transcends the physicality of land. Yi Fu Tuan has used the term “topophilia” (1990) to suggest a sense of attachment or a feeling-link between people and place. Land can be seen as an open ground of action, being and becoming. A land can be a political construct as well. During the partition of India land becomes a defining category of human existence. The sense of belonging to a land informs one’s social, political, and cultural identity. Even, in this age of Anthropocene and Capitalocene, the mutilation and commodification of South Asia has been interrogated by different environmental theorists. Even a post-apocalyptic or a post-war land also speaks a different narrative which is yet to be heard. All these implications can be made to subscribe to the idea of indigeneity.
The conference intends to engage with these multiple concerns emerging out of the land of South Asia. The conference is going to be an interdisciplinary space for scholars of all disciplines to showcase indigeneity contained within the narratives of the land. So, to convey thoughts in language, the conference is ready to set an epistemic dialogue with the land and bring forth an alternative domain of critical explorations.
Abstracts are invited but not limited to the following sub topics/themes:
· Environmental Studies
· Diaspora
· Border Studies
· Human Geography
· Posthuman Studies
· Narratives of War
· Space/Place
· Migration
· Indigenous Epistemes
Abstract Submission: On or before 16th November, 2023
Acceptance of abstract: By 30th November, 2023
Full paper submission: On or before 3rd January, 2024
Seminar dates: 10 th and 11 th January 2024
Seminar will in-person but owing to enough overseas candidates, we'll try to arrange an online session if/when necessary
Send your abstracts to narrativesofland@gmail.com
For further details contract narrativesofland@gmail.com
Send in abstracts of around 300 words along with a bio note of 150 words to the above mail id.
Registration details will be communicated in due course.
