Project manager
Diana Brydon, Peter Forsgren, Gunlög Fur
Participating organization
LNUC Concurrences, Linnaeus University
Financiers
Vetenskapsrådet (Swedish Research Council), LNUC Concurrences, Linnaeus University
Timetable
2014–2017
Subject
American Studies, Art History and Visual Studies, Comparative and Swedish literature, English literature, Globalization and Cultural Studies, History, Sociology.
More about the project
This project shows that comparative and transnational study that brings together seemingly unrelated concurrent events can have illuminating results, sparking new ways of seeing and thinking about familiar places and times. Reading for concurrences enables a non-hierarchical recognition of the diversity of knowledge systems in a pluriversal world.
In a variety of case studies contributors from different disciplines confirm the productivity of listening for, reading in, and looking at concurrences. Attention is given to Nordic colonialism, at home and abroad, is complemented by studies of colonial practices in Asia, Africa and America, and of the variety of texts from these concurrent encounters from the nineteenth century to the present. By advocating analysis for concurrences, the contributors seek alternative groundings for comparative study and a mode of thinking about similarity and difference together, without privileging one over the other and without assuming parameters of rationality.
This project had to date resulted in the anthology Concurrent imaginaries, postcolonial worlds. Toward revised histories, ed. by Brydon & Forsgren & Fur, publishes by Brill / Rodopi 2017, as well as in a special issue of the journal Culture Unbound, 2014.