Vulnerability and language games in aesthetic approaches to knowledge

Aoileann Ní Mhurchú will discuss the concerns about inclusion closely linked with questions about ‘voice’. What she stresses on is the difficulty of hearing marginalized voices given their need to speak within dominant structures (and languages) of knowledge which are highly racialized.

When looking at this in the context of postcolonial peoples, conversations often revolve around the question of what types of languages need to be mastered to develop voice through identity and resistance. She will look in particular at shame and failure as feelings in language and consider playfulness as an imaginative response to these.

About the speaker

Aoileann Ní Mhurchú is a senior lecturer in International Politics at the University of Manchester. Her research interests lie in the areas of critical citizenship studies, international migration, sovereignty and subjectivity, and theories of time and space. She recognises the limits of existing frameworks for understanding experiences of political resistance and participation from positions of marginality or ambiguity. And therefore engages with aesthetic forms of meaning and representation in literature and vernacular music and language.