After explaining the rationale for bringing the author of The Old Drift, Namwali Serpell, and critical theorist Homi Bhabha into conversation, this interview with both of them explores some of the key themes of Serpell’s novel in relation to its wider geopolitical and historical context. Beginning with how we can understand the state of the planet in the present historical moment, the discussion expands to explore the broad context of more themes in the novel, which includes the place of gender and sexual politics, a global pandemic in a time of national and financial closures, cosmopolitanism, the space race and reverberations of the Cold War in the present, and the continued relevance, if any, of postcolonial theory, technology, revolution, and futurity.


Research in African Literatures, vol. 53(3): 161-167. muse.jhu.edu/article/900039.

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space

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

Julia Lossau
paradox

“The basis of law is not an idea as a systematic unified principle but a paradox.”

Andreas Fischer-Lescano
hierarchy of norms

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

Andreas Fischer-Lescano
articulate

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

Martin Nonhoff
coherence in thought

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

Yan Suarsana