ACS Institute

The ACS Institute 2023 will discuss the question of decolonization in the 21st century. We face the drastic increase of international migration and stateless persons, the prolonged pandemic, extensive digital surveillance, the prevalence of extended platform economies, the precarity of temporary laborers on land and at sea, the environmental crisis, and climate change. Along with these developing conditions, the intensified social inequality worldwide also escalates.

We encourage scholars and students of cultural studies to re-think the project of decolonization in the 21st century. Today, colonialism indicates the colonial matrix of uneven power relations interwoven with various local/geopolitical structural factors. Under the systemic structure of colonial power relations, a part of the community/population/city becomes a colony/subalternate space. The project of decolonization in the 21st century, first and foremost, is to identify and analyze the colonial power relation that engineers and reproduces the unequal social relations and environmental injustice, to disclose its historical formations, and to challenge the fixations of institutional and ideological exclusions. We invite interdisciplinary critical analysis and innovative artistic projects to engage with the regeneration and experimentation of alternative forms of creative decolonization.

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