Wednesday, February 16, 2022
2 pm ET/1 pm CT/11 am PT on Zoom
This is an English language event.
This event carries forward the issues and debates that foregrounded our 2021 summit, Players: We Are All Practitioners.
Building on the North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative’s work to address the question of culture’s role in diplomacy, this event focuses on statist diplomacy as a Eurocentric practice to advance a discussion of a diplomacy that is refracted by applying posthumanist and post-anthropocentrist lenses. Taking as a starting point forms of diplomacy on the North American continent that were, and continue to be practiced by Indigenous Peoples, the panel also brings into play Islamic perspectives and posthumanist discourses.
This panel suggests that to properly examine “cultural diplomacy,” the centrality of a nation-state-based understanding of “culture” that excludes other ways of knowing and stands in opposition to “nature” must be problematized. Viewing diplomatic practice and orientation through the lens of what Glen Coulthard (2014) terms “grounded normativity”, this session challenges the ways in which Cartesian dualism of nature and culture provide a limited understanding of being in and relating to the world. Re-orientating our relationship to time and place, grounded normativity centers histories, practices, and ways of relating to one another which contest the state-centric and settler-colonial orders and broadens the scope of diplomacy to include non-human players.
Panelists
Linda Etchart, lecturer in Human Geography, University of Kingston, UK; journalist; editor; unsettler
Linda Etchart is a lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Kingston, Surrey, UK. She has worked in the private and public sectors as an editor and journalist. She was a consultant at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London 2001-2004 in the area of conflict transformation, and began teaching in 2006 in international political economy, globalization, and conflict studies, including humanitarian intervention.
Publications include:
Etchart, L. (2022) ‘Indigenous Environmental Movements’, in Maria Grasso and Marco Giugni (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Movements.
Etchart, L., & Cerda, L. (2020) ‘Amazonians in New York: Indigenous Peoples and Global Governance.’ City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action. 24:1-2, 5-21, March.
Etchart, L. (2019) ‘Indigenous Peoples and the Rights of Nature’ in Voices of Latin America: Social Movements and the New Activism, edited by Tom Gatehouse. London: Latin America Bureau/Practical Action. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Etchart, Linda (2015). ‘Demilitarizing the global: Women’s peace movements and transnational networks’ in Rawwida Baksh and Wendy Harcourt (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Feminist Movements. New York: Oxford University Press.
Tasha Beeds, Lecturer, Department of Indigenous Studies, University of Saskatchewan; Ron Ianni Scholar, Indigenous Legal Orders Institute, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor; Visiting Indigenous Scholar, Anako Indigenous Research Institute, Carleton University
Tasha Beeds is an Indigenous scholar of nêhiyaw, Scottish-Metis, and Bajan ancestry from the Treaty 6 territories of Saskatchewan. She activates as a mama, kôhkom, poet, Water Walker, and Midewiwin from Minweyweywigaan Lodge. Tasha’s collective work celebrates and promotes Indigenous nationhood and sovereignty. She advocates for the protection of Creation based on carrying ancestral legacies forward for future generations.
Tasha is in her second year as the Ron Ianni Fellow at the University of Windsor’s Indigenous Legal Orders Institute. She is the inaugural Anako Indigenous Research Institute Scholar at Carleton University, limited term Lecturer in Indigenous Studies at the University of Saskatchewan and a Na’ah Illahee Sovereign Futures Indigenous Environmental Leader. Having walked approximately 7000 kms for the Great Lakes and the Kawartha Lakes, Tasha recently led her first two Water Walks for Junction Creek in Sudbury and for the Saskatchewan River (year 1 of 4), continuing her late mentor Josephine-Ba Mandamin’s legacy.
Christine Daigle, Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Posthumanism Research Institute, Brock University
Christine Daigle is a Professor of Philosophy and the Director of the Posthumanism Research Institute at Brock University. She has published extensively on Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir. Her recent work focuses on posthumanist material feminism and its ethical potential. She is completing a monograph on Posthumanist Vulnerability: An Affirmative Ethics, to be published at Bloomsbury. She also works on environmental posthumanities and her essay “Environmental Posthumanities” recently came out in the Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism. She is the co-Principal Investigator on the New Frontiers in Research Fund – Explore funded project « Beyond Sustainability: radical transformation through system thinking. » She also works on another major research project which seeks to think what a joyful extinction might be, reflecting on the cultural, philosophical, and ethical meanings of the Anthropocene and extinction.
Azeezah Kanji, Muslim Canadian settler; legal academic and journalist; Director of Programming, Noor Cultural Centre
Azeezah Kanji is a legal academic and writer. She received her Juris Doctor from University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, and Masters of Law specializing in Islamic Law from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Azeezah’s work focuses on issues relating to racism, law, and social justice. Her writing has appeared in the Al Jazeera English, Haaretz, Toronto Star, TruthOut, National Post, Ottawa Citizen, OpenDemocracy, Roar Magazine, iPolitics, Policy Options, Rabble, and various academic anthologies and journals. Azeezah also serves as Director of Programming at Noor Cultural Centre.
Introductions by
Moderators
