remembering bell hooks: pedagogy of hope
The visionary bell hooks left us at the end of last year. Between then and now, and with the ruptures that come with the annual break, there have been limited opportunities to grapple with the magnitude of this loss. This event is an intimate gathering to begin navigating the loss, and to reflect on the hope of hooks' writing; a breather to reflect and pick up the threads.
remembering bell hooks: pedagogy of hope, a panel discussion, will take place online from 18.30 – 20.00 on Wednesday 23 February, featuring esteemed activists and academics Zethu Matebeni, Kelly Gillespie and Lebogang Ramafoko. The event will be chaired by Senior Lecturer in UCT's Department of English Literary Studies, Polo Moji.
About remembering bell hooks: pedagogy of hope
The vision for the event draws from bell hooks’ observation in Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope that:
Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community.
In the wake of hooks’ recent passing and in light of her immense scholarship, the ICA brings together Matebeni, Gillespie and Ramafoko – three scholars and activists from diverse fields – to reflect on hooks’ influence over their thinking, writing and activism, and how we might consider, or indeed re-consider, her legacy today.
The event is intended to invite intimate reflections, rather than exclusively academic engagements, with hooks’ work, and on the question of hope. How – to borrow from Paulo Freire – might we maintain hope “even when the harshness of reality may suggest the opposite”?
After the three contributions, there will be an opportunity for audience members to engage with the speakers.
From left to right: Zethu Matebeni, Lebogang Ramafoko, Kelly Gillespie.
Registration
remembering bell hooks: pedagogy of hope will take place entirely online, via Zoom, on Wednesday 23 February 2022, from 18.30 – 20.00 (SAST). Registration is essential.
About the speakers
Kelly Gillespie is a political and legal anthropologist at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), with a research focus on criminal justice in South Africa, and the ways in which criminal justice has become a vector for the continuation of apartheid relations. Prior to joining UWC in 2018, Gillespie worked for a decade in the Department of Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), serving as Head from 2015 to 2017. She writes and teaches about law and justice, urbanism, sexualities, race and the praxis of social justice.
Zethu Matebeni is a sociologist, activist and writer whose research focuses on African Queer Studies. She has edited various volumes on African LGBTQI life, including Reclaiming African: queer perspectives on sexual and gender identities (Modjaji, 2014); Queer in Africa: LGBTQI Identities, Citizenship and Activism (with Surya Munro and Vasu Reddy – Routledge, 2018); and Beyond the Mountain: queer life in 'Africa's gay capital' (with B Camminga – UNISA Press, 2020). Since 2020, she has been a visiting professor at the Nelson Mandela University’s Centre for Women and Gender Studies. She is the SARCHI Chair in Sexualities, Genders and Queer Studies at the University of Fort Hare.
Polo Moji joined the Department of English Literary Studies at UCT in 2018, after lecturing French and Francophone Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand (2015-2018). Moji specialises in comparative literature, working with both English and French/Francophone narrative forms. She has co-edited the special journal issues "Ghostly Border-Crossings: Europe in Afrodiasporic Narratives” (2019), "The Cinematic City: Desire, Form and the African Urban" (2019) Cinematic Imaginaries of the African City, Social Dynamics (2021). She led the organising team for the 4th African Feminisms Conference (November 2021) and her forthcoming book is Gender and the Spatiality of Blackness in Contemporary AfroFrench Narratives: Black Flâneuses (Routledge, 2022)
Lebogang Ramafoko is a feminist and social activist, and Chief Executive Officer of Tekano, a non-profit organisation committed to building a more equitable South African society with improved health status across all populations. Prior to joining Tekano, Ramafoko was CEO of the Soul City Institute for 8 years, where she provided strategic leadership to the organisation during the implementation of large grants from the National Department of Health, PEPFAR, DFID, EU and the Global Fund. After 20 years of being globally recognised as a Health and Development communication organisation, Ramafoko led the provisioning of Soul City into a Social Justice Organisation for young women and girls.