Possibilities and Limits of a Decolonized Anthropology from the Perspective of African Philosophy

Souleymane Bachir Diagne (Columbia University & WoC Guest Professor) & Tyler Zoanni (U Bremen)

05/23/2024 6:15 pm –7:45 pm

U Bremen GRA2 0030 & online

In this dialogue with renowned philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne, we will take up central themes in his work and connect them to ongoing conversations about anthropology and decolonization. Topics include: language and life, the postcolonial and the decolonial, Africa in/and the world, philosophy and anthropology. The session will begin with an interview and conversation with Diagne and then open the dialogue to the audience.

Part of the lecture series “Decolonizing Anthropology”.

Please register for digital participation:

Register

Suggested reading:

Diagne, Souleymane Bachir. 2018. Decolonizing the history of philosophy (Anton Wilhelm Amo Lectures Vol. 4). Halle (Saale): Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg.

Back to overview
articulate

“Contradictions need to be articulated in order to exist.”

Martin Nonhoff
city

“The city is a laboratory not only of modernity, but also of contradiction.”

Julia Lossau
hierarchy of norms

“If social contradictions are reflected in law, law cannot form a hierarchy of norms free of contradictions.”

Andreas Fischer-Lescano
sustained engagement

“The history of Western philosophy can be understood as a sustained engagement with contradiction.”

Norman Sieroka
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