Eating In Public: Desire for a Post-Racist Commons

Spring 2009 Speaker Series

INTERNATIONAL CULTURAL STUDIES CERTIFICATE PROGRAM

"Eating In Public: The Desire for a Post-Racist Commons"

Gaye Chan, Department of Art and Art History, UHM

Dr. Nandita Sharma, Departments of Sociology & Ethnic Studies, UHM

The idea – and increasingly the practice – of the commons is once again invigorating political theory, popular culture and popular imagination. "Eating in Public" was co-founded in 2003 by Chan and Sharma who began by planting food without permission on land awkwardly designated as both "private" (under the ownership of the Bishop Estate) and by the state of Hawai'i as "public." A key element of "Eating in Public" is the eschewing of modernist identities of nationhood, 'race,' and binary gender roles, and an imagining of a common ground sustained through shared practice rather than abstract and hierarchical affiliations. Using "Eating in Public" as our vantage point, we analyze our contemporary usage of anarchist and Marxist politics coupled with the deployment of contemporary art practices as tactics to disrupt both Right and Left hegemonic assumptions about the naturalness of designating land, place and community through nationalist ideologies of blood and soil.

Date:Wednesday, September 30th
Time: 12 pm – 1:20pm
Place: Burns Hall Room 2118


Sponsored by:
The UHM/EWC International Cultural Studies Program
Telephone: 808-944-7593
Fax: 808-944-7070
Office: Burns Hall #2069
Email:culture@hawaii.edu
Website: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~culture

Event Sponsor
International Cultural Studies Graduate Certificate Program, Manoa Campus

More Information
Program Manager: Patricia Hart, 808-944-7593, culture@hawaii.edu, http://www2.hawaii.edu/~culture/

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