Orality in Philosophy

Prof. Souleymane Bachir Diagne (WoC Guest Professor), Prof. Anke Graneß (U Freiburg), Lindokuhle Shabane & Prof. Norman Sieroka (RTG Contradiction Studies)

06/06/2024 6:00 pm –8:00 pm

U Bremen CART 067 & online

The role of orality in philosophy is an old and intriguing topic. Some have claimed that philosophy cannot exist as an oral tradition because sophisticated thought presupposes a written form. Others (including Plato) have claimed that writing destroys memory. Still others have formulated central statements in catchy aphorisms and proverbs that are easy to memorise and immediately invite you to unfold their meaning: „You cannot enter the same river twice.“ Fortunately, however, we can enter into discussion with Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Anke Graneß & Lindokuhle Shabane, to unfold the role of orality in philosophy, especially in an African context where oral traditions have always played a crucial role.

Guests
Prof. Dr. Souleyman Bachir Diagne | WoC International Guest Professor
Prof. Anke Graneß | U Freiburg
Lindokuhle Shabane | RTG Contradiction Studies

Moderation
Prof. Norman Sieroka | RTG Contradiction Studies

Please register for digital participation.

Register
Back to overview
name contradiction

“Contradiction becomes real where someone names contradiction.”

Ingo H. Warnke
idea of democratic critique

“If you think that acts of contradicting someone always need to point to better solutions, you haven’t really understood the idea of democratic critique.”

Martin Nonhoff
Bhabha on enlightenment and coloniality

“Homi Bhabha says about the contradiction between the ideals of the enlightenment, claims to democracy and solidarity and simultaneous colonization and ongoing coloniality: ‘That ideological tension, visible in the history of the West as a despotic power, at the very moment of the birth of democracy and modernity, has not been adequately written in a contradictory and contrapuntal discourse of tradition.’”

Kerstin Knopf
prison of difference

“‘Contradiction is the prison of difference‘ writes the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Worlds of Contradiction asks: how can we explain and describe the world without making it more coherent and systematic than it is?”

Michi Knecht
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