The Empire Speaks Back: Orality, Performance and Decolonial Resistance
N/A
Organization: NeMLA
"The decline of print as our culture's primary means of codifying, presenting, and preserving information isn't merely a methodological change; it is an epistemological transformation" - Dana Gioia
This panel explores how oral traditions, performance poetry, and non-canonical forms of expression function as alternative forms of knowledge challenging the dominant colonial and hegemonic structures. Developed by individuals primarily outside of academic society, new popular forms of poetry sought to create a unique relationship between the performer and the audience independent of institutional validity. This zeitgeist marks a shift away from seeking validation from university’s monopoly and canonical structures towards non-elitist orientation.
How does weaponising the demotic, code-switching, inflections and linguistic hybridity help writers and performers reclaim language as a site of cultural agency? Aligned with the 2027 conference theme "Empowering Communities", we invite discussions on how such practices foreground how alternative modes of expression become tools of identity assertion, egalitarian community formation, and empowerment.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- Auditory avante-garde, performance, slam poetry, rap as sites of alternative knowledge
- Postcolonial linguistic hybridity and transformation in Anglophone writing
- Codeswitching, multilingualism and politics of language
- Nation Language, creole poetics and vernacular aesthetics
- Decoloniality, non-standard forms and weaponisation of the demotic
- Decolonial South Asian writing and ‘chutnification’ of English
- Resistance and survival in oral and performative cultures
- Relationship between writer and reader, performer and audience in community building
- Community building beyond academia’s ivory towers
- Digital era and new emerging forms for oral or performative resistance
Description: This panel explores how oral traditions, performance poetry, and non-canonical forms of writing or expression function as alternative forms of knowledge challenging the dominant colonial and hegemonic structures. We invite discussions on how such practices become tools of identity assertion, egalitarian community formation, and empowerment.
Modality of the session: Virtual Only
https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/22659
Shivani Gnanasekaran