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Black Atlantic Affordances. Contested Memory Cultures

Dr. Deborah Nyangulu (RTG Contradiction Studies) & Dr. Jana Weiss (The University of Texas at Austin)

02/23/2024 –02/25/2024

U Texas at Austin

Dr. Deborah Nyangulu and Dr. Jana Weiss convened the ‘Black Atlantic Affordances. Contested Memory Cultures` conference at the University of Texas at Austin from Feb 23 – 25. The event featured a range of speakers who engaged with, among others, questions of Black freedom, memory cultures, , the Black radical tradition, African diaspora, and digital humanities. Prof. Dr. Ashley D. Farmer (UT Austin) and independent researcher, writer, and political analyst Nanjala Nyabola gave the keynote addresses. The conference also featured a roundtable on the topic of ‘Black Atlantic Affordance and Digital Humanities’ with speakers Kelly Baker Josephs, Justin Dunnavant,  Amani Morrison, and moderated by Deborah Nyangulu.

More Information here.

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coherence in thought

“The imperative of non-contradiction generally produces a coherence in thought that is often at odds with social complexities.”

Yan Suarsana
ideal of a contradiction-free world

“Science has long been animated by the ideal of a contradiction-free world in which logical orders could merge with society, politics, culture and language. In the GRC Contradiction Studies we are working on ways of describing the multiplicity and complexity, the danger and beauty of our worlds that clearly go beyond concepts of freedom from contradiction.”

Michi Knecht
problem to be solved

“Contradiction is not primarily a problem to be solved but a motor we cannot do without.”

Martin Nonhoff
Afterlife of colonialism

“Contradiction comes in many different forms. None is so debilitating than when the coloniser transitions, textually not politically, to decoloniality without taking the responsibility for the afterlife of colonialism, which they continue to benefit from. Self-examination and self-interrogation of the relations of coloniality, a necessity, seem nearly impossible for the coloniser who continues to act as beneficiary, masked in the new-found language of White fragility, devoid of an ethical responsibility of the very system of White domination they claim to be against.” (Black Consciousness and the Politics of the Flesh)

Rozena Maart
decolonial scholarship

“Creating decentralizing and decolonizing scholarship on contradiction, contradictory phenomena, and contradicting processes is a challenging task.”

Kerstin Knopf