We acknowledge that this strategy was developed on the traditional territory of many nations incl... more We acknowledge that this strategy was developed on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. We also acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13, signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Anishnabeg Nations. (2)
“Participate or Perish”: Reckoning with the time bind of graduate student life, 2023
This article revisits a graduate course I taught between 2005 and 2014, ENGLISH 779-The Times We ... more This article revisits a graduate course I taught between 2005 and 2014, ENGLISH 779-The Times We Live In, in light of the temporal stresses of graduate student life. Thinking with Donald C. Goellnicht's 1993 article, "From novitiate culture to market economy: the professionalization of graduate students," alongside the more recent work of several graduate students (Blanchard, Wilks and Vogan 2022, Brown 2022; Stoneman 2012; Tootonsab 2022), the article explores the increasing pressure on graduate students to engage in and record activities that are "off-the-clock" of program requirements. In particular, the article considers the contradictory celebration of graduate students' participation in extracurricular activities that challenge the temporal dynamics of capitalism and colonialism while those dynamics continue to define performance expectations within their graduate programs. Recognizing the complicity of faculty members in exacerbating temporal stress by encouraging the incorporation of extracurricular activism into the timelines of graduate programs, the article concludes by considering ways to revise ENGLISH 779-The Times We Live in to address more honestly, if not to loosen, the time binds of graduate student life.
Resilience: Journal of Environmental Humanities, 2017
Our discussion in this introduction offers a (necessarily partial) account of the historical emer... more Our discussion in this introduction offers a (necessarily partial) account of the historical emergence of environmental futurity. While acknowledging that concerns about the intersecting domains of the environment and the future have waxed and waned over millennia, we consider the emergence of a particularly modern conception of environmental futurity in relation to three historical conjunctures: European colonialism; the development and deployment of nuclear weapons; and the naming of the Anthropocene. As we explore this history, we make particular note of the various temporalities and scales environmental futurity embodies.
This essay uses Indra Sinha's 2007 novel, Animal's People, as a critical lens to analyse the disc... more This essay uses Indra Sinha's 2007 novel, Animal's People, as a critical lens to analyse the discourse of scenario planning. I argue that scenario planning, a strategy of speculation about possible futures, elides history—specifically the intertwined processes of colonialism and capitalism—in favour of the idea of globalization as an inexorable unfolding of the world as a complex system. Following a brief genealogy of the discourse of scenario planning that highlights its Cold War origins, and ongoing function in imagining, and helping to secure, the future of global capitalism, I offer as counterpoint a postcolonial reading of Animal's People. A fictional exploration of the aftermath of the 1984 Union Carbide factory gas leak in Bhopal, India, the novel contests (thematically and formally) the hegemonic temporality of globalization that informs scenario planning and the model of risk management it inspires.
ISBN: 0868409871. $34.95 AU In his 1987 book Time Wars, Jeremy Rifkin heralds the arrival of a ne... more ISBN: 0868409871. $34.95 AU In his 1987 book Time Wars, Jeremy Rifkin heralds the arrival of a new kind of politics. No longer oriented according to the traditional (spatial) metaphor of right vs. left, political positions will be increasingly defined by attitudes to time. At one end of the spectrum are temporal rationalists, who emphasize efficiency over sustainability in the name of promoting economic growth. At the other end are those who insist on the irreducibility of time, and who call for the 'resacralization' of life, driven by the values of empathy and ecology. The fate of the planet hinges on the outcome of the growing
This paper explores the themes of resilience and hope in postcolonial literature via Joseph Meeke... more This paper explores the themes of resilience and hope in postcolonial literature via Joseph Meeker s theory of literary ecology. Written in 1972 and revised and reprinted in 1997, Meeker s seminal book, The Comedy of Survival: In Search of an Environmental Ethic advances the ...
KTH 234, 1280 Main St W, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4M4 (905) 525-9140 Ext. 27556 http... more KTH 234, 1280 Main St W, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4M4 (905) 525-9140 Ext. 27556 http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~global/ CONDITION INSTITUTE ON GLOBALIZATION 2003 HUMAN Preface This collection of short essays comes to the Institute by way of a conference entitled Content Providers of the World Unite! The Cultural Politics of Globalization, which was held at McMaster University in October 2001. The initiative for the conference came from Susie O'Brien and Imre Szeman, both faculty members in the Department of English at McMaster University. They were ably assisted in their organizational efforts by Stephanie Parker, a part-time employee of the Institute at the time and a student in McMaster's Theme School on Globalization, Social Change and the Human Experience.
Publikationsansicht. 36123685. Moving beyond words : patterns of orphic transformation and narcis... more Publikationsansicht. 36123685. Moving beyond words : patterns of orphic transformation and narcissistic frustration in post-colonial literature (1991). O'Brien, Susie. Abstract. Includes bibliography. Details der Publikation. Herausgeber, [St. Lucia, Qld.]. ...
We acknowledge that this strategy was developed on the traditional territory of many nations incl... more We acknowledge that this strategy was developed on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. We also acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13, signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Anishnabeg Nations. (2)
“Participate or Perish”: Reckoning with the time bind of graduate student life, 2023
This article revisits a graduate course I taught between 2005 and 2014, ENGLISH 779-The Times We ... more This article revisits a graduate course I taught between 2005 and 2014, ENGLISH 779-The Times We Live In, in light of the temporal stresses of graduate student life. Thinking with Donald C. Goellnicht's 1993 article, "From novitiate culture to market economy: the professionalization of graduate students," alongside the more recent work of several graduate students (Blanchard, Wilks and Vogan 2022, Brown 2022; Stoneman 2012; Tootonsab 2022), the article explores the increasing pressure on graduate students to engage in and record activities that are "off-the-clock" of program requirements. In particular, the article considers the contradictory celebration of graduate students' participation in extracurricular activities that challenge the temporal dynamics of capitalism and colonialism while those dynamics continue to define performance expectations within their graduate programs. Recognizing the complicity of faculty members in exacerbating temporal stress by encouraging the incorporation of extracurricular activism into the timelines of graduate programs, the article concludes by considering ways to revise ENGLISH 779-The Times We Live in to address more honestly, if not to loosen, the time binds of graduate student life.
Resilience: Journal of Environmental Humanities, 2017
Our discussion in this introduction offers a (necessarily partial) account of the historical emer... more Our discussion in this introduction offers a (necessarily partial) account of the historical emergence of environmental futurity. While acknowledging that concerns about the intersecting domains of the environment and the future have waxed and waned over millennia, we consider the emergence of a particularly modern conception of environmental futurity in relation to three historical conjunctures: European colonialism; the development and deployment of nuclear weapons; and the naming of the Anthropocene. As we explore this history, we make particular note of the various temporalities and scales environmental futurity embodies.
This essay uses Indra Sinha's 2007 novel, Animal's People, as a critical lens to analyse the disc... more This essay uses Indra Sinha's 2007 novel, Animal's People, as a critical lens to analyse the discourse of scenario planning. I argue that scenario planning, a strategy of speculation about possible futures, elides history—specifically the intertwined processes of colonialism and capitalism—in favour of the idea of globalization as an inexorable unfolding of the world as a complex system. Following a brief genealogy of the discourse of scenario planning that highlights its Cold War origins, and ongoing function in imagining, and helping to secure, the future of global capitalism, I offer as counterpoint a postcolonial reading of Animal's People. A fictional exploration of the aftermath of the 1984 Union Carbide factory gas leak in Bhopal, India, the novel contests (thematically and formally) the hegemonic temporality of globalization that informs scenario planning and the model of risk management it inspires.
ISBN: 0868409871. $34.95 AU In his 1987 book Time Wars, Jeremy Rifkin heralds the arrival of a ne... more ISBN: 0868409871. $34.95 AU In his 1987 book Time Wars, Jeremy Rifkin heralds the arrival of a new kind of politics. No longer oriented according to the traditional (spatial) metaphor of right vs. left, political positions will be increasingly defined by attitudes to time. At one end of the spectrum are temporal rationalists, who emphasize efficiency over sustainability in the name of promoting economic growth. At the other end are those who insist on the irreducibility of time, and who call for the 'resacralization' of life, driven by the values of empathy and ecology. The fate of the planet hinges on the outcome of the growing
This paper explores the themes of resilience and hope in postcolonial literature via Joseph Meeke... more This paper explores the themes of resilience and hope in postcolonial literature via Joseph Meeker s theory of literary ecology. Written in 1972 and revised and reprinted in 1997, Meeker s seminal book, The Comedy of Survival: In Search of an Environmental Ethic advances the ...
KTH 234, 1280 Main St W, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4M4 (905) 525-9140 Ext. 27556 http... more KTH 234, 1280 Main St W, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4M4 (905) 525-9140 Ext. 27556 http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~global/ CONDITION INSTITUTE ON GLOBALIZATION 2003 HUMAN Preface This collection of short essays comes to the Institute by way of a conference entitled Content Providers of the World Unite! The Cultural Politics of Globalization, which was held at McMaster University in October 2001. The initiative for the conference came from Susie O'Brien and Imre Szeman, both faculty members in the Department of English at McMaster University. They were ably assisted in their organizational efforts by Stephanie Parker, a part-time employee of the Institute at the time and a student in McMaster's Theme School on Globalization, Social Change and the Human Experience.
Publikationsansicht. 36123685. Moving beyond words : patterns of orphic transformation and narcis... more Publikationsansicht. 36123685. Moving beyond words : patterns of orphic transformation and narcissistic frustration in post-colonial literature (1991). O'Brien, Susie. Abstract. Includes bibliography. Details der Publikation. Herausgeber, [St. Lucia, Qld.]. ...
This paper is part of a book project on the concept of resilience in culture and ecology. Drawing... more This paper is part of a book project on the concept of resilience in culture and ecology. Drawing primarily on postcolonial and ecocritical theory, I'm interested in the use and limitations of resilience for thinking about social and environmental justice.
This essay forms part of an investigation of the meaning of resilience for the postcolonial envir... more This essay forms part of an investigation of the meaning of resilience for the postcolonial environmental humanities. I am interested here in examining how Arundhati Roy, a writer who has long been engaged with the intersection of postcolonial and environmental issues, deploys and interrogates the concept of resilience in her work. I suggest that both the promise and the pitfalls of resilience emerge with particular clarity in Roy's non-fiction, which has comprised her work since the 1997 Booker-Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things. I focus here on her 2011 collection, Walking With the Comrades, whose title essay describes the period she spent with a Maoist group that is engaged in a violent campaign against bauxite mining in the Dandakaranya forest. * * * "Walking with the Comrades" begins with the description of a meeting that almost didn't happen. After waiting for months to make contact with the Maoists, Roy receives a typewritten note advising her to be at the agreed-on location, at any of four given times on two given days; the window was to allow for the possibility of "bad weather, punctures, blockades, transport strikes and sheer bad luck" (Walking 37). The note went on to say "Writer should have camera, tika and coconut. Meeter will have cap, Hindi Outlook magazine and bananas.
Two thirds of the way into Indra Sinha's novel, Animal's People, is a description of a simulation... more Two thirds of the way into Indra Sinha's novel, Animal's People, is a description of a simulation exercise. A chemical company, referred to simply as "the Kampani" conducts a drill based on the hypothetical scenario of a terrorist attack. Police and emergency services participate in the exercise, versions of which have become commonplace in industry and government planning circles. As a variation of scenario planning, simulations like this one are designed to cope with a world in which the future is seen as increasingly uncertain. Ideas of linear change, and a corresponding faith in the possibility of prediction, have given way to a model of perpetual global turbulence, and practices of rigorous yet imaginative risk-management. The Kampani's counter-terrorist drill reflects this sense of imminent mayhem, personified by a gang of terrorists from the Indian city of Khaufpur. The exercise is typical in its ambivalent imagination of the world as a single global system (exemplified in the Kampani's multinational operations, which include a factory in Khaupur), which nevertheless remains divided into distinct imaginary communities, and the "terrorists" that haunt their borders.
In her remarkable 2001 book, Advocacy After Bhopal: Environmentalism, Disaster, New Global Orders... more In her remarkable 2001 book, Advocacy After Bhopal: Environmentalism, Disaster, New Global Orders, Kim Fortun meditates on the challenges, both ethnographic and political, of addressing the aftermath of the 1984 explosion of the Union Carbide factory in
Resilience: Journal of Environmental Humanities, 2017
This special issue pays attention to “futurity” as a discursive formation, a historically specifi... more This special issue pays attention to “futurity” as a discursive formation, a historically specific mode of technology, knowledge and power, because we think that frameworks of environmental futurity have profound implications not only for what is to come but also for the present and our understandings of the past. Imagined futures help to structure and organize social relations, often solidifying and legitimizing existing inequalities in the process. We pose these questions: who gets to imagine and to occupy environmental futures? What publics and political possibilities are enabled and which foreclosed in particular imaginings of environmental futurity? What alternative futures have been or might be imagined from postcolonial and other marginalized perspectives? What are the historical conditions that shape their emergence, and what role do they posit for history and memory? And how—through what institutions, technologies and genres—do different futures get produced and contested?
AQCL/ACQL (Association for Canadian and Québec Literatures/Association des littératures canadienne et québécoise), University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, 2019
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Papers by Susie O'Brien