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Faces of Enslavement: Contradictions, Contestations and Complexities

Prof. Rozena Maart (Mercator Fellow at the RTG Contradiction Studies)

10/15/2024 4:15 pm 5:45 pm

U Bremen GRA2 0030 & online

Within the history of the Cape, the southern most tip of Africa, the period of Enslavement began in 1652 from the East and West of Africa, then from Bengal, Indonesia, Malaysia and Mauritius. The project “Faces of Enslavement” is part of a larger project called HISTORIES OF ENSLAVEMENT, and focus on how the enslaved population were named after the month of their enslavement.

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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
limits

“Resistance is a democratic right, sometimes a duty. With literature we can find models for this right and think about its limits.”

Gisela Febel
diversity and plurality

“Join us to create more diversity and plurality in knowledge production.”

Gisela Febel
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
coherence in thought

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

Yan Suarsana