Locations of African and African Diaspora Critical Thought
Within the domain of critical thought, it is clear that the Western archive is in danger of being exhausted. Humankind is faced with the fundamental question: in what ways can we think about the present, develop categories of thought and, most importantly, map new forms of human life? The aim of this workshop is to generate a dialogue about these possibilities. It is a platform from which to grapple with a hermeneutics of the world from the perspective of Africa and the African diaspora.
Its second objective is to draw from the existing archives and to begin to develop critical theory that will be African inflected. By this we mean drawing from the various intellectual traditions of African and African diasporic thought to begin to content with the world, not in any provincial sense, but in ways that allow for a renewal of critical thought for our times.
For those of us in Africa and for the African diaspora now, there is an urgent need to rethink and reformulate our horizons of thought. We are no longer colonies, but the afterlives of colonial power lingers. The end of the colonial empires reorganised a world system of nation-states, but importantly, it continued to keep Africa as the site of the other and of strangeness. This workshop pushes against this trend and hopes to start to develop a network of thinkers, artists, scholars, writers who are committed to dialogue about the world and Africa.
The histories and contemporary predicaments of both African and African diasporic critical thought will be discussed on Saturday by, among others, Achille Mbembe and Hortense Spillers.
Monday’s focus will be continental and Afro-diasporic emerging epistemes while on Tuesday the programme opens with emerging voices in African thought and closes with the open session: ‘Towards an African and African Diaspora Platform in Critical Thought.’
This is a joint project with Brown University and the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (University of the Witwatersrand).
Locations of African and African Diaspora Critical Thought
August 12-15 2017
Hosted by the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) and the African Diaspora Knowledge Project in the Africana Studies Department at Brown University.
Saturday August 12
10am-10.30
Opening Remarks: Sarah Nuttall and Anthony Bogues
10.30-12.30
Roundtable 1: African Critical Thought: Histories and Contemporary Predicaments
Achille Mbembe, Hlonipha Mokoena (TBC), Rogers Orock, Anthony Bogues
12.30-1.30 Lunch
1.30-3.30
Roundtable 2: African Diaspora Thought: Histories and Contemporary Predicaments
Brian Meeks, Hortense Spillers, Geri Augusto, Rupert Lewis
Dinner at 1, 9th Avenue, Parktown North
Sunday 13 August
Activities in Johannesburg
Monday 14 August
10.00-12.00
Roundtable 3: Emerging Epistemes: Continental
Bongani Madondo, Claudia Gastrow, Juan Obarrio, Achille Mbembe
12 noon Lunch
1-3pm
Roundtable 4: Emerging Epistemes: Afro-Diaspora
Ronald Judy, Isabel Hofmeyr, Victoria Collis-Buthelezi, Albino Jopela
Dinner: Free evening
Tuesday 15 August
8.30-10.30
Roundtable 5: Emerging Voices
Candice Jansen, Grieve Chelwa, Bedour Allagraa, Kristen Maye
10.30-12.30
Open Session: Towards an African and African Diaspora Platform in Critical Thought
Facilitated by Achille Mbembe and Hortense Spillers
Summation: Tony Bogues and Sarah Nuttall
CLOSING Lunch