Against Decolonisation: Taking African agency seriously Professor Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Cornell University
Event details
Politics and International Relations Lecture
Join us for the keynote lecture of the Anticolonial Agendas workshop with Professor Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, who is visiting York for the first time.
Professor Táíwò will present his latest book Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously, which provides an intellectual and moral critique of today’s decolonisation movement. He argues that decolonisation has lost its way. Originally a struggle to escape the West’s direct political and economic control, it has become a catch-all idea, often for performing ‘morality’ or ‘authenticity’; it suffocates African thought and denies African agency.
This thought-provoking lecture will be followed by a Q&A and drinks reception, and is hosted by the University of York Anticolonial Reading Group, with support from the Department of Politics and IR.
About the speaker
Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò is a philosopher and professor of African political thought at the Africana Studies Research Center at Cornell University. His first book, 'How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa' was a joint winner of the Frantz Fanon Book Award of the Caribbean Philosophical Association in 2015.