Centre for the Study of Social Systems
School of Social Sciences
Invites you to CSSS Colloquium
On
The Crisis of Orientalism and West Asian Intellectual Responses
by
A.K.Ramakrishnan
(Professor, CWAS, JNU)
November 14, 2019 (Thursday), 11am
CSSS Committee Room (R. No: 13), SSS-II
Abstract: The famous article by Anouar Abdel-Malek in 1963 examines the crisis of the Orientalist knowledge enterprise with deeper insights. Edward Said continues such a tradition with acritical interdisciplinary mooringthat had far reaching influence. The current presentation will introduce critical intellectual responses from the West Asian region on the assumptions of Orientalism by invoking the contributions of Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Sadik Jalal Al-Azm, Aziz al-Azmeh and others.
Bio-Note: A.K. Ramakrishnan is Professor and former Chairperson of the Centre for West Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He has also been Director of the Human Rights Studies Programme at JNU. Earlier, he was Professor and Director of the Centre for West Asian Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, and Director of the School of International Relations and Politics, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala. He was a Distinguished International Scholar at Bucknell University, Pennsylvania, USA and a Visiting Professor in Allameh Tabatabai University, Tehran, Iran. He was also Erasmus Visiting Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain and Kaunas Technical University, Kaunas, Lithuania.Areas of his interest include West Asian Studies, Theories of International Relations, Gender and Postcolonialism. He has published widely in English and Malayalam. He has published the book US Perceptions of Iran: Approaches and Policies and co-edited Society and Change in the Contemporary Gulf. His articles and reviews have been published in journals such as International Studies, Scandinavian Journal of Development Alternatives and Area Studies, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Contemporary South Asia, and Inter-Asia Cultural Studies.