Achille Mbembe: Thinking the World from Africa
Welcome to an open seminar about this year’s Holberg Prize winner: historian, political theorist and public intellectual Achille Mbembe.
Main content
In collaboration with the Holberg Prize, Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK) and the Research Group for Radical Philosophy and Literature invite you all to an open seminar/reading session on this year’s Holberg Prize winner: historian, political theorist and public intellectual Achille Mbembe.
The seminar will give short introductions to key texts and concepts in Mbembe’s thinking and opens for broad discussions on his work at large. Each introduction has attached to it a suggested reading, but all are welcome whether or not they have had time to read the texts.
The seminar will be held in meeting room 904 on the 9th floor in Lauritz Meltzers hus, Fosswinckels gate 6 (Mazemap link) and online. It is free and open for all. We would like online participants to register ahead of the seminar, so go here to register and get the Zoom link for the seminar. In-person attendees do not have to register.
Program and suggested reading
Introduction: Kari Jegerstedt, Head of Centre at SKOK: Thinking the world from Africa
Marry-Anne Karlsen and Christine M. Jacobsen, Department of Social Anthropology: Temporality in the Postcolony
Suggested reading: "Time on the Move" and "The final Manner", in On the Postcolony (2001)
Kjersti Aarstein, SKOK: Necropolitics and Palestine
Suggested reading: Necropolitics (2003)
Johannes Grytnes, Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies:
Decolonization and the University in Neoliberal Times
Suggested reading: "Decolonizing the University: New Directions" (2016)
Gisle Selnes, Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies:
Violence, State of Exception and Enmity in Politiques de l’inimite
"The Society of Enmity" in Necropolitics (2019)
Svati Shah, SKOK: Critique of Black Reason and the Antropocene
Suggested reading: "The Clinic of the Subject" in Critique of Black Reason (2017)
Kari Jegerstedt, SKOK: The Becoming Black of the World and Mbembe’s Planetary Trilogy
Suggested reading: "Preface" and "Introduction" in Brutalism (2024) and “The Universal Right to Breathe” in The Earthly Community (2022)
All readings are available online. Should you request a pdf, please contact Kamilla Stølen.
Welcome!
