https://doi.org/10.25058/20112742.n29.07

Laura Catelli
Universidad Nacional del Rosario / Conicet, Argentina
laura_catelli@hotmail.com

Abstract:

This paper explores questions around the senses of the colonial in contemporary times. Specifically, I will address the topics of the imaginary, archive, and cultural memory in relation to the colonial. I will underscore the critical and political potential of heuristics that may arise from that configuration, to produce deep dislocations within the framework of modern/colonial imaginary devices and formations. These concerns are brought up in light of the experience of my first doctoral seminar in Colonial Studies in the United States, simultaneous to the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, and the official beginning of the War on Terror. This essay highlights the institutional spaces where the established colonial imaginary can be disputed by different actors, and aims to look upon our practices and stances in the our domains of intervention, concerning how we are building upon imaginaries and memory in the present.

Keywords: colonial, imaginary, archive, memory, post-colonialism, colonial studies.