Detail

Dr Markus Arnold (University of Cape Town – A/Prof, French & Francophone Studies, SLL):

In his book 'Afrotopia' (2016), the Senegalese writer and academic Felwine Sarr sets out to draw the contours of an "active utopia” which aims at “uncovering the vast spaces of the possible in African reality and fertilising them". Sarr’s essay is part of the intellectual foundation of 'Les Ateliers de la Pensée', a research platform initiated by himself and Cameroonian thinker Achille Mbembe in 2016 in Dakar. The ambition of this scholarly, artistic, and literary interdisciplinary platform is to think about the challenges of a "positive transformation of African societies" and, more generally new forms of cohabitation from the Global South. It therefore constitutes a space for reflection, reinvention and possible transformation within which alternative visions and narratives are developed in relation to neoliberal realpolitik. This workshop will address some key notions and contributions of the ‘Ateliers de la Pensée’, discuss the leitmotifs of Afrotopia, and will refer to excerpts from Sarr’s literary production – e.g. the semi-autobiographical works 'Dahij' (2009) and 'Méditations africaines' (2012) – which productively echo his critical emancipatory proposals.