Ataya: HUMA Interdisciplinary Seminar Series

Speaker: Markus Arnold, University of Cape Town

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English: 

 

 French: 

 

Bio: Markus Arnold is Associate Professor of French and Francophone studies at the University of Cape Town. His interests comprise comparative and Francophone literatures of the Global South (notably Indian Ocean), postcolonial theory, cultural studies, and text-image relations. He has authored the monograph La littérature mauricienne contemporaine (2017), coedited the books L’image et son dehors (2017) and Borders and Ecotones in the Indian Ocean (2020), and a special issue on African literary and artistic manifestos (2021). He was visiting professor at the Sorbonne-Nouvelle (Paris) in 2021 and held a research fellowship at the Maison Francaise of Oxford in 2022. Markus is a project team leader of “Thanatic Ethics: The circulation of bodies in migratory space”, co-investigator of “Spaces of Precarity: Migration, Spatiality and the Refugee Graphic Narrative” and member of “NOVI – the Norms of Live”. He is editor of the journal French Studies in Southern Africa and part of UCT’s “2030 Future Leaders Programme”. 

Topic: In his essay Afrotopia (2016), Senegalese writer Felwine Sarr attempts to sketch out the contours of an “active utopia” aiming at “fertilising the vast spaces of possibility in African reality”. While the book is among the intellectual foundations of the research platform ‘Ateliers de la pensée’ in Dakar, this interdisciplinary forum establishes a space for reflection, reinvention, and possible transformation about African societies and global cohabitation. In its afrotopian/utopian ambition, the platform appears to be a kind of conceptual “ecotone” – a hybrid and transitory space – within which alternative visions and narratives to neoliberal realpolitik are developed. This paper will identify and discuss various conceptual connections between Afrotopia and the ecotone. Sarr’s and the Ateliers’ positions reveal indeed significant resonances with the ecotone, which, deterritorialised from its primary habitat (ecology), opens a range of perspectives for reflecting on today’s socio-historical and ethno-cultural identities. The ecotonal characteristics (the interconnection of the living, the relational logic, the tension of the plural, etc.) thus become a critical tool for reading the scope and vision of the Afrotopian project: the “radical newness” of the continent’s epistemological renewal, a genuine plural democracy, planetary hospitality. 

How Ataya works: One presenter and their work – in exchange with the audience. Each Ataya session engages with selected work by the presenter (a text, artwork, performance, even food). The presenter introduces their work and grounds the subsequent discussion with the participants. For best engagement, we recommend participants to view the work (made available in advance on our website) before the session. More on the Ataya Series

Lunch will be served at 12:30 SAST (GMT+2).

Register to attend: send us an email at huma@uct.ac.za

Attending online? Register to join via Zoom: 

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