Lecture | Adriaan Gerbrands Lecture
Knowledge on/in African societies: re-opening the paths
- Date
- Friday 25 October 2024
- Time
- Series
- Adriaan Gerbrands Lectures
- Location
- Museum Volkenkunde
Steenstraat 1
Leiden
During this presentation Professor Sarr will engage with epistemological questions such as What types of knowledge? How are they produced? For which purposes? These questions are fundamental to Africans in their struggle for political, cultural and economic emancipation. In order to imagine and construct different presents and futures, it is necessary to interrogate the enunciation of knowledge paradigms, because knowledge production sustains and reproduces a political, economic and social order.
Deconstructing the colonial library and establishing African social sciences are important steps towards the liberation of African discourse (philosophical, and scientific). But more urgently, there is a necessity for Africans to engage in an epistemic shift by widening the vision of what knowledge is and by reactivating resources of knowing embodied in their cultures. More specifically, by producing new knowledges that will be useful for African societies and for the world in general. For that purpose, it is necessary to establish an African ecology of knowledges.
Adriaan Gerbrands Lectures
The Adriaan Gerbrands lecture is an annual public lecture by a laureate chosen for his or her contribution to the broad international field of the study of visual and material culture.