"Empowering Communities: Indigeneity, Colonial Power, and Agency" (The Northeast Modern Language Association)
Organization: The Northeast Modern Language Association
Event: The Northeast Modern Language Association
DESCRIPTION:
This panel examines how colonial regimes constructed, managed, and contested the category of “indigeneity” as a shifting site of power, governance, and resistance. Focusing on the Spanish colonial presence in Morocco (1859–1956) as a primary case, the panel situates indigeneity within broader imperial frameworks in which racial, legal, and cultural categories were continually redefined through encounters between colonial authority and local agency.
ABSTRACT:
This panel examines how colonial regimes constructed, managed, and contested the category of “indigeneity” as a shifting site of power, governance, and resistance. In alignment with NeMLA’s 2027 theme, “Empowering Communities,” the session explores how colonial and postcolonial communities are not passive subjects of imperial classification but active agents who negotiate, appropriate, and transform imposed identities. Focusing on the Spanish colonial presence in Morocco (1859–1956) as a primary case, the panel situates indigeneity within broader imperial frameworks in which racial, legal, and cultural categories were continually redefined through encounters between colonial authority and local agency.
Drawing on approaches from colonial studies, postcolonial theory, and cultural history, the panel also invites comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives on how indigenous and marginalized communities engage with structures of power through resistance, collaboration, and strategic adaptation. Particular attention is given to the role of bodies, knowledge systems, and cultural representations—including medical, military, literary, and visual archives—in shaping colonial governance and indigenous responses. Rather than treating colonial categories as fixed, the panel foregrounds their instability and the ways in which communities actively participated in their transformation.
Possible topics include colonial constructions of indigeneity; indigenous agency and resistance; community formation under colonial rule; colonial medicine, biopolitics, and governance; race, legal identity, and cultural categorization; archives and historical representation; decolonial and postcolonial approaches to indigeneity; gender and colonial power; nationalism and anti-colonial movements; comparative imperial frameworks; and contemporary reconfigurations of indigeneity and belonging.
Interdisciplinary and comparative contributions are especially welcome.
https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/22677
Omar Badessi