“In an age of near-global commodification, how do we study cultural and ethnic difference, and how do we navigate the complicated map of plural multiculturalism?” — Dr Farish Ahmad Noor
In this talk, Dr Farish Ahmad Noor will engage with the history of Southeast Asia. He will speak about how the colonial imaginary envisioned Southeast Asia as a land of boundless opportunities for capital, and thus regarded it as a fertile zone for conquest and appropriation, bringing the colonial enterprise within the ambit of a modernist-instrumentalist mindset.
This Exhibition (de)Tour is part of the public programme of Amar Kanwar: The Sovereign Forest.
Dr Farish Ahmad Noor (Malaysia/Singapore) is presently Associate Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he is the Head of the Doctoral Studies Programme. A political scientist and historian, he has served as researcher at the Centre for Modern Orient Studies (ZMO), Berlin, Germany; taught at Freie University Berlin, Germany; the Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM), Leiden, The Netherlands; and Sciences-Po, Paris, France. Currently he is also a member of the United Nations’ Alliance of Civilisations’ Panel of Global Experts on Religion and Politics in Asia.
