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Colloquium “Two cheers for the Enlightenment: Nostalgia and Postcolonial Disquiet”
22 February 2017 @ 15:30 - 18:00
COLLOQUIUM PHILOSOPHY, VU AMSTERDAM
You are cordially invited to attend the second colloquium organized by the Department of Philosophy, VU Amsterdam, in collaboration with student association Icarus.
Two cheers for the Enlightenment: Nostalgia and Postcolonial Disquiet
SPEAKER: Speakers: Dr Michael Onyebuchi Eze (Universiteit van Amsterdam, AUC).
COMMENTARY by Angela Roothaan (Philosophy, VU Amsterdam)
DATE: Wednesday 22 February, 15:30-17:00
LOCATION: room 11A-24, Main Building VU, De Boelelaan 1105, Amsterdam.
PROGRAM:
15.30 – 15.35 Welcome & Opening
15.35 – 16.15 Presentation by Michael Eze
16.15 – 16.35 Response by Angela Roothaan
16.35 – 17.00 Questions & Discussion
17.00 – 18.00 Drinks at Icarus (HG-0E07)
SUMMARY
Two cheers for the Enlightenment: Nostalgia and Postcolonial Disquiet
“Postcolonialism […] is the theory that attempts to understand the post-colonial condition. […] Postcolonialism involves the challenge or the attempt to decolonize the mind from its ideological prison.” (Eze, M. O. (2010). The Politics of History in Contemporary Africa. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.: 95)
Postcoloniality is not something that affects only nations that were colonized by former European powers. All peoples in the global age are together in the condition of postcoloniality. A condition characterized by a (growing) desire of peoples across the world to affirm their cultural and political identities (peacefully or through violence) – sometimes conflicting with simultaneously needed transcultural and transnational global economical and legal arrangements. To interpret this shared postcolonial condition, Eze has adopted a philosophical eclecticism, which avows to use any theory that can help us to that point. He gives a special place to the European Enlightenment thinkers, such as Kant or Hegel, even though they have been called out to legitimize colonialism on the basis of a racist anthropology or conception of world history. For Eze however, for all its limitations, the Enlightenment ought to be rehabilitated as a critical resource to understand the vicissitudes of our modernity.
In her reaction to Eze’s presentation, Angela Roothaan asks to also include thinkers from the African continent, such as Diop or Cabral, who, because of their role and place in history in the period when the relations between Europe and Africa were changing, produced fresh and stimulating frames of understanding that should be taken into account to reflect on the condition of postcoloniality. (cf. Roothaan, A., 2017. “Political and Cultural Identity in the Global Postcolony: Postcolonial Thinkers on the Racist Enlightenment and the Struggle for Humanity”. Acta Politologica. Vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 31-44; http://acpo.vedeckecasopisy.cz/publicFiles/001247.pdf)
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