No registration needed – free and open to all.
The term ‘westsplaining’ became popularized amongst political theorists in Central and Eastern Europe in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and was used critically to denote the ‘phenomenon of people from the Anglosphere loudly foisting their analytical schema and political prescriptions onto the [Eastern European] region’ (Smoleński and Dutkiewicz). As such, it was a specific example of a wider, long criticized, problem to do with the colonial nature of knowledge production and the hegemonic status of (western) European and North American epistemic practices.
The critique was a response to debates in political theory, but it might be applied to many other domains of inquiry, including the humanities. It has gained increasing currency in art history, and this workshop aims to consider the different forms of art historical ‘westsplaining.’ The term implies the need for an intellectual archaeology, a recovery of local discourses and intellectual traditions that have been eclipsed by hegemonic western discourses.
Speakers at this online workshop have been invited to explore such alternative models of art historical analysis. Full abstracts, schedule, and Zoom link are available here: https://www.ncad.ie/files/research_files/Westsplaining_Programme.pdf.