A public lecture by Prof
Achille Mbembe (WISER, Wits) entitled: “Non-racialism and the New Native
Question in South Africa”
Date Wednesday 6th August
2014
Place: Humanities Seminar
room, 1 Prince Alfred Street @ 5pm
In addition, Professor
Mbembe will conduct 2 Master Classes for Graduate students on “Reading Fanon in
the 21st century”. These will take place from 10 am to 2pm at the Humanities
seminar room with a break for lunch on the 7th and 8th August. Places are
limited to 20 people only. Students
wishing to attend should write to uhuru@ru.ac.za detailing their name and study
programme and write half a page on why they wish to attend.
Professor Achille Mbembe,
born in Cameroon, obtained his Ph.D in History at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1989
and a D.E.A. in Political Science at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Paris).
He was Assistant Professor of History at Columbia University, New York, from
1988-1991, a Senior Research Fellow at the Brookings Institute in Washington,
D.C., from 1991 to 1992, Associate Professor of History at the University of
Pennsylvania from 1992 to 1996, Executive Director of the Council for the
Development of Social Science Research in Africa (Codesria) in Dakar, Senegal,
from 1996 to 2000. Achille was also a visiting Professor at the University of
California, Berkeley, in 2001, and a visiting Professor at Yale University in
2003. He has written extensively in African history and politics, including La
naissance du maquis dans le Sud-Cameroun (Paris, Karthala, 1996). His work On
the Postcolony was published in Paris in 2000 in French and the English
translation has been published by the University of California Press, Berkeley,
in 2001. English speaking readers on our continent probably know him best for
his essay on ‘African Modes of Self-writing’.
His most recent books have been written in French Sortir de la Grande
Nuit, La Decouverte May 2013 and Critique de la Raison Negre, October 2013. He
has written the introduction to the new French edition of Frantz Fanon’s
collected works. He is a public intellectual who contributes regularly to the
South African media. He is currently
Research professor at WISER, University of the Witwatersrand.
