Philosophy in a World of Multi-Crisis: Deborah Nyangulu in Conversation with Souleymane Bachir Diagne

Between May and July 2024, Prof. Dr. Souleymane Bachir Diagne from Columbia University was a U Bremen WOC International Guest Professor at the Collaborative Research Platform Worlds of Contradiction (WOC) at the University of Bremen. During his stay, RTG Contradiction Studies Postdoctoral Researcher, Dr. Deborah Nyangulu sat down with Diagne in a video interview. Filmed at the Übersee-Museum in Bremen, the interview covers a range of topical issues from  the importance of philosophers/academis to speak out against injustices, decolonizing museums, to strengthening African institutions.

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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
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
coherence in thought

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

Yan Suarsana
space

“According to Niklas Luhmann, space is a ‘special facility to negate contradictions’”.

Julia Lossau
diversity and plurality

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

Gisela Febel