UCLA Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies presents
UCLA Trans-Pacific Symposium / A New Horizon of Knowledge after 9.11 and 3.11
May 28,9:30 am – 5:30 pm
Charles E. Young Research Library, Main Conference Room
University of California, Los Angeles
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Opening Remarks
Katsuya Hirano, UCLA
Hirotaka Kasai, Tsuda College
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Session 1 | The Horizon of Postwar History Spoken from the Future
Chair Kelly McCormick, UCLA
Minoru Iwasaki, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
William Marotti, UCLA
Hirotaka Kasai, Tsuda College
Discussants Kevin Richardson, UCLA
Wakako Suzuki, UCLA
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Session 2 | The Horizon of Critique and Literary Studies Spoken from the Future
Chair Sarah Walsh, UCLA
Seiji Lippit, UCLA
Kōji Toba, Waseda University
Jonathan Glade, UCLA
Discussants Takano Mariko, UCLA
Jack Wilson , UCLA
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Session 3 | The Horizon of Post-National Thought Spoken from the Future
Chair John Leisure , UCLA
Setsu Shigematsu, UCR
Katsuya Hirano, UCLA
Ryūichi Narita, Japan Women’s University
Discussants Mariko Tamanoi, UCLA
Ken Shima, UCLA
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This symposium will debate the ways in which questions posed from the future (as opposed to question towards the future) structure our research perspectives.
Following events like the terrorism of 9.11 or the nuclear disaster of Fukushima at 3.11, discourse about the future has been colored with images of fear and instability, and thinking through and discussing the diverse and open-ended possibilities of the future have become increasingly difficult.
The politics of fear and instability have normalized patriotism and nationalism, unregulated economic growth and state’s violations of human rights and accelerated our world’s turn to violence and fragmentation.
It controls the present through colonization of the future, and robs those living today of their will toward change and imagination. In this state of affairs, it is necessary to bend our ear to the voice uttered by the ‘Other’ of the future, and to attempt to think what kinds of research activities can provide a possible response to that call.
A majority of researchers on the one hand themselves deeply acknowledge that an awareness of problems has been generated from the dialogue between past and present, yet they do not speak of it as forming an answer to the future (or possibly that the future can be called the researcher’s ‘unconscious’).
In recognizing some messianic image in a new kind of the present brought about by our response to the future, Derrida called it the “Coming of the Other” and awoke the importance of shouldering moral responsibility to those living in the present.
While resisting nation-states, nationalists, and neo-liberalists that shut their ears to questions posed by a future Other and that attempt to control the present by appropriating it, we would like to consider the possibilities of creating a new horizon(s) of knowledge.
If interested in attending, please RSVP
Cosponsored by UCLA Social Science Dean’s Office & UCLA Department of History.
