Shillong, Nov 06: The English and Foreign Languages University @FLU), Shillong Campus, in association with Indian Council of Social Science Research, NERC; Central Wtnte of Indian Languages, Mysore; Indian Council of Social Science Research, Delhi and Manlana Abdul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies; will organize a three-day International Seminar on “Cultures of Memory: Memo cultural Praxis in South, Southeast and Other Asian Countries from 7th to 9th of this month. At EFL University, Shillong Campus.
Honourable Governor of Megbalaya, Dr. KK. Paul, will inaugurate the seminar on the 7th at the Multi-Purpose MIatl, EFLU Shillong Campus. Viw-Chancelln; EFLU,Professor Sunaina Singh, will be the Guest of Honour and the Inauguration will be chaired by Professor K.C. Baral, Director, EFLU Shillong Campus.
The Seminar seeks to problematise issues concerning Memory and Culture in initiating an inquiry into cultures of memory in South Asia in particular and in other Asian countries in general. South Asia is singularly focused for its shared cnltmes and hiitories. These countries have suffered historical erasure of cultural memory under colonialism. The continued amnesia has resulted in cultural anxiety not only in our postcolonial dispensation but under fcaces of internal comadiction as well as of external ones such as globalization This historic ‘crisis’ has led to unstable democracies resulting in ‘million mutinies.’ If attempts to recover loss of cultural memory are salutary such actions howeva are not free from cultural politics, for in many cases, the recavered memory in the f m of cultuml singularity has resulted in complex identity politics across Asia Having such a premise in view, the seminar endeavours to have a critical theoretical debate on cultures of memory that is signilkant from literary, hmmnisic and social science perspectives.
In many studies, the full force of memory has its critical value not only in civilizationalconstructs but also in literary, historical cul- and evayday life. First used by Germanarchaeologist Ian Assmanu (1992) to imply the collective memory of a community in order to recoverthe meanings of bnried cultures, the idea has been critically examined by many contemporary scholars in historiography and cultural studies. Richard Terdiman, in his work Present Part: Mbdemity md the Memoiy Crisis (1993), deliberates on how memory is essential to our functioning in the world. The force of the past in memory maps is a constant theme both in culture and individual experience. In canying f rom the same premise, Andreas Hoyssen in his 2002 work Present Pasts makes a forceful argument in explaining why hnmam require memory in order to understand the essence of everyday world and also links memory to imagined futures of a globalised world.(SP News)
