Decolonizing Social Theory Lecture Series

27 Setembro - 15h - Sala 2 -  ICS-ULisboa & Zoom

https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/94720288714

Lecture
Pamila Gupta, University of the Free State (UFS)
“Heritage and Design: Ten Portraits from Goa”

Abstract: My presentation is based on my recent Cambridge Element in Critical Heritage
Studies entitledHeritage and Design: Ten Portraits from Goa (2022). This Element looks at the
relationship between heritage and design by way of a case study approach. It offers up ten
distinct portraits of a range of heritage makers located in Goa, a place that has been
predicated on its difference, both historical and cultural, from the rest of India (Gupta 2009).
I attempt to read the heritage of Goa--a former Portuguese colonial enclave (1510-1961)
surrounded by what was formerly British India (1776-1947) as a form of placeness, a source
of inspiration for further design work that taps into Goa of the 21st century. My series of
portraits is visual, literary, and sensorial, and takes the reader on a heritage tour through a
design landscape of villages, markets, photography festivals, tailors and clothing, books,
architecture, painting and decorative museums. I do so in order to explore heritage futures
as increasingly dependent on innovation, design, and the role of the individual but also always
as a member of a heritage community.

Short Bio: Pamila Gupta is Research Professor at the University of the Free State in
Bloemfontein, South Africa, affiliated with the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies (CGAS).
She was formerly Full Professor based at WiSER at the University of the Witwatersrand (2008-
2022). She holds a PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University. Her research and writing
interests include Portuguese colonial and Jesuit missionary history in India; diasporas, islands,
tourism, heritage and design in the Indian Ocean; photography, tailoring and visual cultures
in East Africa; and architecture, infrastructure, and affect in South Africa. She is the co-editor
of Eyes Across the Water: Navigating the Indian Ocean(with Isabel Hofmeyr and Michael
Pearson, UNISA 2010) and author of three monographs: The Relic State: St. Francis Xavier and
the Politics of Ritual in Portuguese India (Manchester UP, 2014); Portuguese Decolonization
in the Indian Ocean World: History and Ethnography (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019);
and Heritage and Design: Ten Portraits from Goa (India) (Cambridge UP, 2022). She has a
forthcoming edited volume with Sarah Nuttall, Esther Peeren and Hanneke Stuit
entitled Planetary Hinterlands: Abandonment, Extraction, and Care that will be published with
Palgrave’s Series on Globalization, Culture and Society (2023).

Org: Project Race Trouble (FCT-2022.04225.PTDC)