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The Holberg Masterclass: "Thoughts on the Planetary"
The greatest challenge facing critical theory now is the reframing of the disciplines in light of the long-term sustainability of life on Earth.
To tease out alternative possibilities for thinking life and human futures in this age, there is no better laboratory than Africa. Our planet's destiny might be played out here. Yet, to write the world from Africa, or to write Africa into the world is an exhilarating and, most of the time, perplexing task. Why?
Five PhD candidates in the Nordic countries are invited to participate in a masterclass with Holberg Laureate Achille Mbembe. Each participant will be asked to prepare a 5-minute presentation related to the theme chosen by the Laureate. After the presentations there will be a panel discussion.
Speakers
Achille Mbembe
Achille Mbembe is the 2024 Holberg Laureate. Mbembe is a Research Professor of History and Politics at Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Witwatersrand. He is also Director of the Innovation Foundation for Democracy. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the British Academy, Mbembe is the author of ten books and his work has been translated into 17 languages. His latest book is La communauté terrestre (Paris, La Découverte, 2023).
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Maipelo Gabang
Maipelo Gabang is a Botswana-born and South African-trained artist-researcher, educator and embodied practitioner. She currently serves as a PhD candidate in performative and media-based practices at Stockholm University of the Arts. Her work and practice centre on the experiences and knowings of Black women within the Southern African diaspora.
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Signe Søndergaard Moore
Signe Søndergaard Moore (she/they) is a PhD candidate with a BA and MA in Theatre and Performance Studies from the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen. Moore is working on American Legacies in Danish Stand-up Comedy: Intersectional Perspectives on Queer and Racialized Humor.
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Marta Mboka Tveit
Marta Tveit is an independent writer and PhD candidate with the CoFutures Resarch Group at the Department of Cultural Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo. Her work, academic and non-academic, has generally centered on (de)coloniality and identity, also in relation to climate change and nature-culture, with a cosmopolitan approach to both Nordic and (Sub-Saharan) African contemporary texts and discourses. Her PhD-research takes an ecocritical look at African and Norwegian speculative fiction.
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Apostolos Tsiouvalas
Apostolos Tsiouvalas is a PhD candidate at the Norwegian Centre of the Law of the Sea (NCLOS) affiliated to the Faculty of Law, UiT The Arctic University of Norway. He also works as a Research Associate at The Arctic Institute - Center for Circumpolar Security Studies, Washington, D.C. Apostolos holds an LLM in Polar Law from the University of Akureyri (2019) and an MPhil in Indigenous Studies from UiT The Arctic University of Norway (2020). His fields or research include international law of the sea, legal pluralism, new materialism(s), Arctic indigenous law and environmental law in the Arctic.
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Eeva Mäkinen
Eeva Mäkinen is a PhD candidate in political studies at the University of Lapland. Her research studies universal political imagination as an affirmative theory of freedom. Her research interests include theoretical perspectives to political freedom and aesthetics of thought.
Curriculum
The five participants have been asked to relate to the following curriculum:
- Achille Mbembe, Out of the Dark Night. Essays on Decolonization (New York, Columbia University Press, 2020), pp. 1-41; 42-89; 223-230
- Achille Mbembe, Critique of Black Reason (Durham, Duke University Press, 2017), Introduction (pp.1-9), Chapter 1 and 2 (pp. 10-77) and Epilogue (pp. 179-184).
- Achille Mbembe and David Theo Goldberg. "The Reason of Unreason: Achille Mbembe and David Theo Goldberg in conversation about Critique of Black Reason", Theory, Culture & Society, volume 35, 7-8, 2018.
- Achille Mbembe, "Futures of Life & Futures of Reason", Public Culture, volume 33, 1, 2021, pp. 11-33.
- Achille Mbembe, Brutalism (Durham, Duke University Press, 2023), Introduction & Conclusion, pp. 1-26; pp. 126-150.
- Achille Mbembe, The Earthly Community. Reflections on the Last Utopia (Rotterdam, V2_Publishing, 2022), Introduction, Chapter 5 and Conclusion (pp. 7-34; 101-125)
The curriculum amounts to around 300 pages.