In a recent interview on French television to promote his new book “Sortir de la Grande Nuit: Essai sur l’Afrique Décolonisée,” Johannesburg-based political philosopher Achille Mbembe suggested that Europe “seems to be gripped by an enormous desire for apartheid.” (We blogged about it here.) This is also the implicit theme of a recent lecture by British social theorist Paul Gilroy entitled “Multiculture in Europe: Melancholia or Conviviality?” which I managed to stumble on earlier this week. (Gilroy was speaking at the FORMER WEST Project at the Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University in The Netherlands.) One option is to listen to it while you’re cleaning the house. I did.

Source.

Further Reading

No one should be surprised we exist

The documentary film, ‘Rolé—Histórias dos Rolezinhos’ by Afro-Brazilian filmmaker Vladimir Seixas uses sharp commentary to expose social, political, and cultural inequalities within Brazilian society.

Reading List: Barbara Boswell

While editing a collection of the writings of South African feminist Lauretta Ngcobo, Barbara Boswell found inspiration in texts that reflected Ngcobo’s sense that writing is an exercise of freedom.

Kenya’s stalemate

A fundamental contest between two orders is taking place in Kenya. Will its progressives seize the moment to catalyze a vision for social, economic, and political change?

An annual awakening

In the 1980s, the South African arts collective Vakalisa Art Associates reclaimed time as a tool of social control through their subversive calendars.

More than a building

The film ‘No Place But Here’ uses VR or 360 media to immerse a viewer inside a housing occupation in Cape Town. In the process, it wants to challenge gentrification and the capitalist logic of home ownership.