Menu
Rose Marie Beck
Leipzig University
Prof. Dr. Rose Marie Beck, Institute of African Studies, Leipzig University, is interested in the sociology of knowledge practices; in particular postcolonial linguistics, sociology of concepts, language philosophy, and Science Studies. Currently she wonders whether and how non-representational theories could help overcome some ideas about language and representation deeply rooted in the Western history of ideas, thus contributing to a diversification of linguistic theory and decolonization at the same time.
Talk Information:
“Seeing like a City” – Sorting ‘Wire Spaghetti’ in Zanzibar Stone Town
July 28, 2023 | 9:00 AM
In this presentation I experiment with a non-representational approach to urban studies, following Amin & Thrift 2017. I ask what an ethnography that tries to account for the complexity of the city can do that an ethnography that focusses on people and communities, or the interrelationship of social and physical space could not. More importantly this experiment has lead me to a critique of the representational foundations of Western ideas about the relationship between words and the world that have become universalized and are in need of ‘provincialization’.