« Print Cultures Before the Postcolonial » Journée d’étude

This workshop will focus on the miscellany in colonial and postcolonial print cultures, as a way of fostering communication between scholars of pre- and post-independence print cultures in different regions. “Miscellany” is a catchall term for the various kinds of anthologies that were such a distinctive element of nineteenth-century print culture and which persisted in various forms in the first half of the twentieth century. “Cut and paste” was the dominant technology of imperial print culture (Hofmeyr), enabling the assemblage and circulation of images and texts across continents. In the workshop we will think about the aesthetics and politics of “cut and paste” (or “collage”), of assemblage, extraction and compression as technologies and practices in the various print cultures of empire, resistance, and post-colony.

What kinds of native or indigenous practices of assemblage were also in operation in colonial contexts ? And have colonial practices of assemblage impacted the way we access, read and hierarchize postcolonial texts ? And to what effect ?

There will be three sessions on the following themes :

 Printing presses : technologies and cultural transfers

 Forms of Miscellanies : Miscellaneous forms

 Politics of Periodicals, from colonial to postcolonial contexts”.

Confirmed participants : Charlotte Cary-Beckett (Chicago), Rosinka Chaudhuri (CSSSC), Paulo Horta (NYU Abu Dhabi), Coraline Jortay (CNRS), Josephine McDonagh (Chicago), Jonathan Sachs (Concordia), Neelam Srivastava (Newcastle), Ulrike Stark (Chicago), Sara Thornton (U Paris-Cité), Mark Turner (KCL), Priyasha Mukhopadhyay (Yale), Laetitia Zecchini (CNRS).

Full program and participants forthcoming