Rewriting the Humanities from Africa: For an Ecology of Knowledge – Felwine Sarr

First Berlin Southern Theory Lecture with Felwine Sarr on 11 December 2019 at the Foyer of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in Dahlem.

Welcome, Introduction and Moderation:
Alexis von Poser (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)
Hansjörg Dilger, Sandra Calkins, Kristina Mashimi (FU Berlin)

Discussant:
Kai Kresse (ZMO/FU Berlin)

The annual Berlin Southern Theory Lecture foregrounds southern theory and epistemology. It honors diverse starting points and relations – "from", "with" and "for"– forms of theorizing whose trajectories often depart from dominant Euro-American traditions. Thereby, this lecture series redresses lingering postcolonial asymmetries and aims to decenter and diversify theoretical debates in the social sciences and the humanities.

Felwine Sarr teaches at University Gaston Berger in Saint Louis (Senegal). His lectures and academic research focus on epistemology, economic policies, and history of religious ideas. In 2018, Sarr and French art historian Bénédicte Savoy published a report on the restitution of African artifacts taken by France during the colonial period, commissioned by the French president, Emmanuel Macron.

The event was organised by Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient and the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the Freie Universität Berlin in cooperation with the Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.