Topics:

SAME AS G57.2901 & G13.2901.

Recently there has been an explosion in “theory from the South.” Some of the most exciting interventions have come from African theorists such as Ato Quayson, Achille Mbembe, Jean and John Comaroff, and Mahmood Mamdani. Taking recent works by these theorists as our starting point, we will explore the application and adaptation of metropolitan thinkers such as Foucault, Derrida, and Schmitt, in order to theorize “necropolitics,” genocide, and xenophobia, among other burning issues. We will also take stock of earlier endeavors by Africanist and Afro-Americanist thinkers such as Du Bois, Senghor, Mudimbe, and Ngũgĩ to define critically Africa’s specific contributions to the making (and making sense of) the world that all of us inhabit. Since a number of these thinkers are also writers and/or literary theorists, we shall also be analyzing key recent texts by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ahmadou Kourouma, Phaswane Mpe, and Antjie Krog.