KEYNOTE ADDRESS

“Globalization and Children’s Narratives: Critical Reflections from Asia”

Mainstream European and North American scholarship on children’s literature and film, like other areas of humanities scholarship, tends to overlook, if not ignore, knowledge and intellectual traditions and discourses that have emerged outside of Europe and the United States. Let us not forget that to live critically under globalisation is to be aware that the supposed two-way flow and narrative of globalisation masks the reality that for all the transactions between cultures, the balance of geopolitical power and flow of ideas and knowledge still remain asymmetrically weighted towards the West and the North. There is thus an urgent need to give representative power and recognition to children’s literatures and films of and from Asia, and to the scholarship on them, which remain under-represented on the global stage. The need to decentre the dominance of scholarly perspectives and cultural productions from the West in the field of children’s literature and films, even if these are not Eurocentric in their underpinnings, is as urgent as ever. Indeed, it would be useful to keep in mind that even anti-hegemonic Western discourses, such as multiculturalism and “tolerance”, are premised on liberal humanist ideals that in turn are predicated on unequal power relations and essentialist conceptions of cultural otherness. An occasion like this conference then is important as it gives us another opportunity to reflect on these power inequalities and asymmetries and to articulate once again the need to shift the locus of critical attention “eastwards”.

Sharmani Patricia Gabriel

Professor

Department of English

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Universiti Malaya