Guest lecture by Dr. Richard Baxstrom

Power, Planning, and the Emergence of Baroque Forms of Life in Urban Malaysia

Dr. Richard Baxstrom, Social Anthropology, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh is Visiting ERASMUS Scholar. On 28 April he will give a talk on "Power, Planning, and the Emergence of Baroque Forms of Life in Urban Malaysia" at NIAS.

Date and time: 28 April 2011, 12.15-13.15
Venue: NIAS, Leifsgade 33, 3rd floor, 2300 Cph S

Abstract

In this talk I will argue that ‘the plan' exists less as a simple technique than as a specific mode of living in the present that disrupts dogmatic, teleological notions of a singular future achieved under the guidance of the state or any authoritative institution. Such plans at the individual level operate discursively in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, both as evidence of mastery or aptitude in a particularly fluid present and as forms of strategy and hope that directs movement in the present. This movement is very often not towards an authoritarian, teleological sense of ‘the future' but rather embodies the practical, multiplictious outcomes of a baroque sense of the world and modes of living.