Homi K. Bhabha with discussant Saskia Sassen
Does the concept of security assume a distinctive cultural form in the midst of deafening patriotic calls for protection and precaution?
This lecture explores the role of culture and the arts in cultivating an ethic and aesthetic of "living side by side" that contributes to our contemporary understanding of "cosmopolitan right" (Kant). Homi Bhabha will reflect on the global scale of cosmopolitan affiliations to ask what kinds of neighbourliness are possible in a time of partial sovereignties and paradoxical communities that constitute our Age of (In)Security.
Homi K. Bhabha is the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, where he is also Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center and Senior Advisor to the President and Provost at Harvard University. He is a leading cultural and literary theorist and the author of numerous works exploring postcolonial theory, cultural change and power, cosmopolitanism and human rights. His seminal work, The Location of Culture, presents a theory of cultural hybridity to understand the connections between colonialism and globalization. In 2012 he was conferred the Government of India’s Padma Bhushan Presidential Award in the field of literature and education.
Co-presented by the Asia Society and The Heyman Center for the Humanities." />
2013 Global Thought Lecture with Homi K. Bhabha
April 29, 2013
The Honorable Homi K. Bhabha
Living Side by Side: On Culture and Security
- Homi K. Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University
- Discussant: Saskia Sassen, Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Co-chair of the Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University
Does the concept of security assume a distinctive cultural form in the midst of deafening patriotic calls for protection and precaution?
In the First Annual Global Thought Lecture, Bhabha used the works of W.E.B. Du Bois, Toni Morrison, Kathleen Battle, artist Zarina Hashmi, and dozens of other thinkers to explore the role of culture and the arts in cultivating an aesthetic of “living side by side” that contributes to our contemporary understanding of “cosmopolitan right”. Bhabha addressed how the partial sovereignties and necessary exclusions of the era of globalization impact one’s sense of self, of belonging and of dispossession. In doing so he argued that many people experience globalization from a quasi-colonial position—neither fully incorporated into modern politics nor excluded from it.
Special thanks extended to the Asia Society, the Heyman Center for the Humanities, the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, the Center for Global Economic Governance (SIPA) and Columbia Journalism School