Part 2 | Session 6 | 23 May 2024 | Philosophy, Anthropology and Decolonization

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In this dialogue with renowned philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne, we will take up central themes in his work and connect them to ongoing conversations about anthropology and decolonization. Topics include: language and life, the postcolonial and the decolonial, Africa in/and the world, philosophy and anthropology. The session will begin with an interview and conversation with Diagne and then open the dialogue to the audience.

Suggested reading:

Souleymane Bachir Diagne received his academic training in France. An alumnus of the École Normale Supérieure, he holds an agrégation in Philosophy (1978) and he took his Doctorat d’État in philosophy at the Sorbonne (1988) where he also took his BA (1977). Before joining Columbia University in 2008 he taught philosophy for many years at Cheikh Anta Diop University, Dakar (Senegal) and at Northwestern University. His field of research includes history of logic, history of philosophy, Islamic philosophy, African philosophy and literature. He is the author of African Art as Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson, and the Idea of Negritude (Seagull Books, 2011), The Ink of the Scholars: Reflections on Philosophy in Africa, (Dakar, Codesria, 2016), Open to Reason: Muslim Philosophers in Conversation with Western Tradition, (New York, Columbia University Press, 2018). He is currently U Bremen WoC International Guest Professor 2024.

Tyler Zoanni is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Bremen. His research focuses on politics, health, religion, kinship, aesthetics, personhood, and subjectivity, grounded in fieldwork in East/Central and Indian Ocean Africa. Tyler grew up on a farm in Montana, and studied in Chicago, Cambridge (Mass), and New York. His work appears in edited collections in Cambridge Anthropology and Somatosphere and other articles in Cultural Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, Ethos, Current History, and Anthropological Quarterly.