In the economic South, access to global flows of goods, technology and ideas increasingly occurs through a culture of piracy that sidesteps the global juridical and economic norms set, for instance, by the WTO. To date, academic discourse has addressed such practices of piracy predominantly from three different angles, viewing them either in terms of criminal theft, as expressions of creative freedom, or as acts of anti-capitalist resistance.
Against such overtly ideological readings, this conference promotes a re-orientation that focuses on postcolonial piracy primarily as a strategy of access to global modernity and as a culture that demands to be understood in its own right. Participants will discuss examples from across the globe that show how both everyday and artistic strategies of medial copying and recycling are currently changing legal, economic, social and aesthetic concepts of authorship and originality.
Speakers include Marcus Boon, Adam Haupt, Ramon Lobato, Ravi Sundaram and yours truly.
International Symposium, organised by Prof. Dr. Lars Eckstein and Prof. Dr. Anja Schwarz, Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Potsdam. Literaturwerkstatt and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin 2 – 4 December 2011.
Update: Photographs
One comment