CfP: Living Transcultural Spaces

Living Transcultural Spaces, the inaugural chapter of the international conference Diaspore Italiane – Italy in Movement, will be held in Melbourne, nominated the most liveable city in the world for six consecutive years, and arguably Australia’s cultural capital. The unique multicultural society of Australia, with a significant Italian community now entering the third generation, is the backdrop of this discussion, which explores the notion of transcultural living as both a consolidated practice (in specific contexts) and a qualified ideal.

Transcultural contexts show cultural identities in motion as they react, adapt and develop in reciprocal contact. The transcultural subjects who, within varying degrees of structural constraint, navigate, evaluate and negotiate different cultural options, emerge as the potentially rational agents of these changes. In parallel, cultural identities emerge as historical constructs, this-worldly products of the human imagination.

  • How do these ideas of identities in motion compare with traditional ways of understanding cultural identities as fixed essences, typically anchored to metaphysical notions such as blood, the land, or the divinity?
  • Can the ‘third space’ of transcultural negotiation inhabited by migration, diaspora and colonial studies be construed as a privileged space of reason, in the Enlightenment sense of the word?
  • Are migration, diaspora and colonial studies paradigmatic of new emancipatory discourses and practices for the 21st century?

More information.