Human Rights

Politics & Government - Social Conditions

Social Movements - Developing Countries

Abstract:

Corinne Kumar brought together some of the world’s best known writers and thinkers, sharing their ideas of a new world order in a series of books that takes its title from the Zapatista slogan „Asking, we walk“- The South As New Political Imaginary, the massive tomes (Streelekha Publications, 124 essays, 2289 pages). The essays, and so will be the talk, are arranged around the theme of this new understanding of the south where the alternatives of epistemic disobedience come from. The supposed gifts of modernity like democracy, development and progress are critiqued and challenged as they look at the darker side of the Euro-centric Western civilization that has colonized the world. In her talk, Corinne Kumar will challenge the master houses and dominant discourses with their ‘truth-production’ and tries to offer a new political imaginary – from the perspective of the south. „Asking, We walk“ constitutes the core idea of this perspective and challenges the master narrative of the world, including the houses of reason, the houses of science, and the houses of patriarchy, of power, of politics and of privilege.

Corinne Kumar is Secretary General of El Taller International, an international NGO committed to international women’s human rights, sustainable development, and both North-South and South-South exchange and dialogue across diverse cultures and civilizations. She was formerly Director of the Centre for Development Studies (CIEDS Collective) in India. She is a founding member of the Asian Women’s Human Rights Council (AWHRC) and of Vimochana, an NGO in Bangalore, India working on issues such as domestic violence, dowry-related deaths, and workplace sexual harassment. A philosopher, poet, human rights theoretician and activist, she is editor of two human rights journals, Sangarsh and The Quilt, and has written and spoken extensively on refugees, violence against women, militarization, and the dominant human rights discourse, critiquing it from a gender and Global South perspective

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