FLUP | "O Mundo de Joelhos" - Achille Mbembe entrevistado por Iman Rappeti - Legendado

[Applause] [Music] akili me bambi [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so the floop literary festival is an online event this year and the theme is vulnerable bodies we're talking about the lgbti qa plus communities we're talking about black and indigenous peoples these are crucial topical and universal focal points in the context of the covert 19 pandemic and the anti-racism demonstrations of 2020. my name is emandra petty i'm a journalist i'm a writer and i'm a businesswoman based here in johannesburg but i call the world my office and it gives me great pleasure to host this conversation on

behalf of flip our panelist today is none other than the esteemed professor ashil mbembe who has a long and stellar career i was joking with him off camera just now that i had to really abbreviate his cv so i'll give you some of the highlights just to share with you just how important a public intellectual and academic we have joining us for this conversation today he is a cameroonian-born thinker writer political theorist and he has been the recipient of many accolades including a phd in history from the sorbonne in paris no doubt assistant professor of

history at columbia university in new york a senior research fellow at the brookings institute in washington d.c associate professor of history at the university of pennsylvania and on and on the list goes he's a major figure in the emergence of a new wave of french critical theory and he has written extensively on contemporary politics and philosophy among them a book i know is big in brazil the critique of black reason and it is a pleasure my friend to have you as part of this discussion today thanks iman it really is and i don't think that

you did you know that the festival's been trying to get you for the last five years uh to be a part of their proceedings i know this is a victory for them and a great honor so thank you on behalf of the festival organizers so i think the appropriate place to begin is to really recognize the context of the world in which we live so much is happening and it feels like in some ways there is a convergence of very specific themes calls for justice uh things like the recognition that the wealth in the hands

of an elite is a grotesque blot on the world effectively in a context of inequity and these things of course have been magnified by covet 19. how would you characterize our world right now i would what strikes me the most about the moment we are going through is the amount of brutality that is unleashed almost everywhere in our planet brutality against nature the environment brutality against those amongst us who are the most vulnerable and brutality which is epitomized by the kind of economic system we live in which is appended by technological developments of a caliber

we have never seen before in the history of humanity so the combination of technological escalation and forms of violence both archaic and futuristic that combination has left many people on the pavement so the question of who counts and who doesn't and what to do with those we believe do not count that question has uh gained uh attraction it didn't have say 50 years just the last bit about um you know the systemic kind of like you know the institutionalized things that keep us in the type of scenario that we find ourselves in so the the

combination of technological escalation and the brutalization of the weakest among ourselves this seems to me to have raised to a dramatic level the question of who counts and who doesn't and what to do with those we believe do not count how do we treat them how should we say attend to to their needs or not all of these it seems to me has made the period we live in extremely tricky there's there's a beautiful metaphor that has sort of pirouetted into my mind as you were characterizing it in that way we are in an age

where we have never had as much information as we do now but our consciousness is impoverished it's akin to having a library of books but when you open the book themselves the pages are empty yes we you're absolutely right um the amount of knowledge we possess right now is astounding the amount of that knowledge that is accessible is also amazing and yet the paradox is that the level of ignorance and willful ignorance have never been as as high as they are now it's probably because ignorance is the daughter of irresponsibility and indifference ignorance is cultivated

as a strategy both by those who dominate and some of those who are dominated a strategy to not take responsibility for either oneself or even less so for the state of our world yet what's fascinating is that we haven't abandoned our ability to coalesce and to galvanize around issues that we feel very very strongly about and i think that builds into the question around those who have become almost martyrs and and figureheads in mass protest that we've seen around the world people die every day and they die under really terrible circumstances whether it is police

brutality or assassinations yet some deaths have the ability to really galvanize both the the community the person was in the country they live in and then across the globe i mean when we think about um what happened with george floyd for example um or even before that time we think of martin luther king mariel franco adama and now as i mentioned george floyd why are some deaths especially in a scenario of necropolitics just not tolerated where the world says enough no more those deaths or those murders assassinations talk about george floyd he was he was

murdered his death was not at all accidental it appears to be an accident but it's not um those deaths that tend to to speak by which i mean to to be more than just my own death those deaths that become which we experience as the death of more than just the individual who is being put in a grave are usually deaths that speak to a cause a cause many recognize themselves in you mentioned martin luther king mariela franco these were individuals who during their lifetime were committed to a cause and they died as a consequence

of their commitment to the cause of justice in the case of martin luther king in particular and in that sense he was a martyr of that cause we spoke well beyond himself his family america spoke to the world at large george floyd's death is of a different type it happens as the result of the workings of a system that has been there for a long time that pretends to be invisible and yet we see it it its results in terms of the the lives that it's breaking not every single kind of life but the life

of black people so floyd is the victim of the the war that has been waged against black people i would say worldwide but in particular in in those societies that underwent the experience of slavery and colonialism and his death spoke to the world at large because it was a scandal to common sense is it more amplified because we can see ourselves represented in that story definitely we can see ourselves being put to death during those eight minutes and a number of seconds during which he is pleading for mercy and all that he is getting as

a response is more cruelty and that's why i'm i see it's it's something that a scandal against common sense against the very idea of what it means to be human which means to respond to a plea that is addressed to us and do something about it i mean we'll tease it out a little bit more because i think it's an important pathology for us to pick apart a little bit more so that we understand more succinctly why the world is able to coalesce or to galvanize around something and why in some ways it's not necessarily

a single story but a multiplicity of stories that converge in a moment that that then breaks the whole thing open because what is the difference then between the death of a mario franco and the death of claudia silva claudia was filmed being dragged by a police vehicle after being shot in a police operation the question is what is so intolerable about the death of george floyd to trigger a worldwide movement of indication indignation when we see these types of abuses these horror stories in many different parts of our world it seems to me that what

is uh um necessary is you need a community in the strong sense of the term you need a community that acknowledges that something has happened and a community that takes care of the event that has happened embraces that event as an event of about which the community is not just as an observer the community is implicated in its very being in that event and it takes responsibility for it so without the existence of that community that gives a meaning to the death that has happened many deaths become purely anonymous so building those communities and organizing

what you call the convergences is the key in order to turn these traumatic moments into moments of high mobilization in search for a different mode of existence so professor 321 so professor bamber when we think of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the black lives matter movement today what are the similarities and the differences between those two seminal movements the key similarity is that they are both fighting for racial justice which means that the the question of systemic racism hasn't been resolved just by the civil rights movement and the access of blacks in

america to citizenship but it seems to me that the black lives matter movement is going a bit further in the sense that it is aiming fundamentally at putting an end to the war against black people in america which is a war that has been going on since the times of slavery it wants to achieve this through a set of practical political propositions such as the demilitarization of the police such as the redirection of huge military budgets towards a whole set of social goals like health education housing community participation it wants to re-engineer the practice of

democracy in america in all of this in relation to a care a concern for the state of our planet so it's a broader goal which assumes that by taking black life seriously we'll be able to open up a space to reimagine our world at large i think it's important to belabor the point because there's a strategy embedded in what you said in the previous two questions about why why this moment this movement now when we've had similar horrific acts of violence it happened what is in some ways the magic of this moment that allows it

to have longer legs and to force the world into a position of really looking at itself let's bear in mind that the flip festival theme this year is around vulnerable bodies we're talking about lgbtiq a plus we're talking about black women we're talking about black communities around the world and i think there's an important hack or a strategy that you alluded to in your earlier answer around what makes that moment more than just you know abrogation of justice at any given point and you talked about how communities when communities get involved and when suddenly people

say not in our name or they amplify what happened that is one of the tools that we can use um in other communities who might sadly have to inc you know experience this kind of tragedy that those are some of the strategies that as the rest of the community we need to employ and to harness to make it a moment where those who are guilty are held to account indeed we we are going through such moment of huge demand for accountability we see it here in where we you and i live in south africa with

the so-called decolonization movement the injunction to decolonize which means to bring to an end a set of relations of subjugation and subordination not have structured the world order at large not only the usa not only south africa not only brazil or the rest of the continent but the entire international order to decolonize it but decolonization involves of course assembling a community reassembling a community imagining who belongs under what conditions reimagining modes of caring taking care in particular of those lives that are the most exposed to all kinds of risks so it seems to me that

that reimagining of the community that re calibration of modes of coming together around that which is common all of that is an impetus black lives matter has redeployed in a context once again which is highly technologized using of course all the devices we use nowadays in order to to call for people to come come out i think our brazilian counterparts might indulge us on the next point i'm going to make which is on the concept of ubuntu because the concept of ubuntu in south africa is the seeing of the other person the i am because

you are and if your neighbor is in misery if they are suffering and they haven't had bread you cannot you cannot sit down and eat you cannot sit at your table and enjoy that meal and it segues into the concept of of community our community is not just our family and our you know our immediate surroundings if they are well we can be well and we can be well for longer together and so there's a shift in that consciousness as well in this really selfish world in which we live you see what strikes part of

what strikes me is clearly just come back since we our interlocutors as iman said are brazilians the iman used the term ubuntu and she explained it really well ubuntu has to do as she argued with the the idea of the community um the idea of of uh that which we have in common that which we have in common which makes it such that i am because you are that element of mutuality and reciprocity without which we we can forget about politics basically about well-being and so forth and so on and and therefore my feeling is

that most of the struggles we are witnessing in our world today have to do precisely with the refusal by some to embrace the idea of community the desire we see all over the world the desire of apartheid to put it in these ironical terms that people don't want to live with others any longer we see it on matters of immigration the ways in which our cities are built the emergence of countless enclaves the difficulty we face to make a space for for the other in our midst um and therefore the project of ubuntu becomes absolutely

important in that context which is characterized maybe we haven't highlighted this strongly enough by the impending ecological catastrophe the world is facing it's not at all clear that we will be here let's say in 100 years that the human species will will be alive because part of what is going on and we have seen it in brazil i mean with all that is going on in in the amazon um the fires the so-called crisis of climate what is at stake in those transformations is the very exists the possibility of our very survival as a species

so so we won't be able to survive if indeed we do not bring back at the center this idea of the common of the in common of the community and reimagine it and to reimagine it means confronting racism at its core and again the structures that enforce that experience in the world you spoke very early on about reshaping our economies and we know that debate very well here in south africa you know we can have a series of laws that give black people access to opportunities and approximate them you know to the seat of power

but it doesn't translate in numbers that really show that there has been a real plate tectonic shift if you will towards an equitable work environment economy representation for for black women specifically so those are the structures we need to dismantle how how does one begin that when as we told while you while you're ruminating year after year you know in an oxfam report that a certain percentage you know of of the world the the you know the world's wealthiest will own you know one percent will own half of the wealth of the rest of the

world i mean you know these are staggering numbers we we shift the pendulum first of all by initiating new forms of organization we have to reorganize we have to learn once again how to organize and how to organize at a time when the um what we are fighting against is becoming more and more invisible more and more virtual uh more and more digital and e-material capitalism because that's really the call i mean what we're talking about is a system the capitalist system in its neoliberal incarnation all of this is becoming more and more algorithmic it's

proceeding no longer via matter as we knew it but more and more and increasingly through technologies that are technologies that are almost untouchable so how do you fight against that which is untouchable a bit like the virus like covet i mean we know virus is somewhere here but we can't see it we can't touch it capitalism is turning into that kind of enemy quote unquote so so we have to say come up with a different intelligence of the struggle in conditions that are becoming more and more virtual immaterial and ever more so brutal and violent

so it seems to me that we won't do it without re-imagining what it means to to fight we won't do it without re-imagining the finality of the economy what is the economy for the economy has nothing to do with the destruction of the planet when understood properly we cannot keep going on with an economic model which results in the very destruction of the biosphere because if we persist along that trajectory it is our own survival that will be at stake not as brazil not as south africa not as iman or myself but the human species

at large so humanity cannot go on destroying everything around itself nature animals each other the environment each other and hoping that something good will come out of that so it's an entirely different paradigm that we have to come up with and this one has to be built on the the care and concern we exhibit in relation to both humans and non-humans and by the way you were mentioning ubuntu the concept of ubuntu we tend to forget is more than about humans it's about the universe at large it's about the concern for life at large the

living living species how to make a space for all the inhabitants of the earth the only one we have the only one where life exists which we have to share as a precondition for our own survival it seems to me that the grand horizon we need to to to begin to to think about as well as the the strategies and the mechanisms to to bring it into being so it's a big task that's what black lives matter is all about it's not simply about black people by the way it's we tend to forget but when

we read the pronouncements of those who are involved in the movement it's not just about black people in any case the way black people have always been treated in modern times many others who are not black in the vulgar sense of the term are being treated like that and the way they used to treat us they are now treating many more others exactly in the same manner so it is and it is beyond racial matter it's about the survival of the human species and especially those who are the most vulnerable among amongst us if the

world is not waking up it certainly certainly needs to wake up in this moment and as you talk about all of these themes and and it's interesting none there is no singular theme everything in the same way that our biosphere is interconnected the way we as humans coexist is also interconnected our fates are intertwined whether we like it or not talk to us then and share with us your reflection on the participation of the descendants of enslaved people you'd have seen in the news recently some moves again towards the discourse around correcting the past colonial

powers well i haven't seen anyone really apologize for you know what they've done in the name of expansion but the participation of descendants of enslaved people who are at the basis of for example the formation of the us what is the impact of the children and even the grandchildren of the new migratory waves but they are part of that history whether they like it or not i teach in the u.s at least once once a year i have seen them you have of course african americans who are descendant of african slaves who were transported in

in the new world and then you have had many different waves of uh migration uh the most recent dating from the last quarter of the 20th century early 21st um these are not slaves they don't arrive in america slaves they arrive in america as daughters and sons of people who who are well educated who are diplomats who have studied in great institutions you have that you also have of course a more underclass form of migration they go there they are not americans in the traditional sense of the term but it doesn't matter from the moment

you are a black person on earth or from the moment you are a descendant of an african your fate is immediately linked to the fate of africa whether you want it you like it or not first of all you are perceived as such and second as long as africa is not standing on her own feet you won't be able to enjoy the benefits of full human hood it doesn't matter where you are so so it's not a matter of choice it's a matter of commitment to redrawing let's say the map of the human in relation

to matters of race gender but also in relation to what we were talking about a moment ago the whole world of the non-human the biosphere the ecology the environment nature and so forth and so on and re-imagining something something new that's how i see it so racism the fight against racism is intrinsically connected to for instance the fight against uh let's see planet climate injustice the two are absolutely connected we won't save the planet if we do not fight against racism and in order to defeat racism we will have to attend to the decisive matter

of the future of our planet and that's what i see for instance emerging this new planetary consciousness which is still extremely fragile but which forms as a common ground where people of all colors creeds genders can transcend the apporia of identity politics and commits to the in common that which is common which we were calling ubuntu a moment ago you are credited with already writing or painting on our canvases for the longest time through all the books that you have produced the conversations that you have had in society and that for me is where intellectualism

um you know the specialized knowing is of benefit to humankind otherwise you know the the intelligentsia or the the learned class have these param you know conversations that perambulates around certain places and themes and among certain people and the greater society is always deprived of that kind of nourishment of philosophy and deep thinking the black movement had few theoretical references in the 80s you had wbe du bois i i always say dubois then i was told it's dubois franz fernand m in addition to the generation of pan-africanists formed by leopold sengo and and others who

fought for the independence of african countries throughout the ages um and nowadays several important movements of thoughts from different countries are feeding the thinking and the motivation for why young people in particular take to um the streets the english school whose epicenter stewart hall's cultural studies the american school which includes a black feminism of people like angela davis i mean the list is just on and on and on and we think about your book as well the critique of black reason can be seen as a counterpoint to emanuel kant's critique of pure reason to what

extent can we now say we are experiencing or seeing what is an extension of the reading of these intellectuals and what impact do they have on the activism that we see today i am very optimistic about what is going on first of all we we the we have a a new generation of intellectuals who are coming in the aftermath of those you you listed a new generation of intellectuals most of whom are women at least in the definitely we do not talk as much as we should about them for instance in in a country like

france um isa travori has been at the forefront of uh a new movement that links some of the thinking you were referring to and the the current situation of young black people and beyond that in the balloon for instance she is an intellectual she is an organic intellectual most of those who launched black lives matter in america are women um so so something is in gestation there we have to pay attention to this the same thing goes for the domain of of arts in general because a lot of black diasporic intellectuality emerges out of that

field um it is a field that is in in a face of renaissance i would say with new connections being made between the diaspora and the continent a new geography of thought within the continent itself being articulated as i said about the question of decolonization but it also goes beyond beyond that it takes africa as possibly the uh the place one of those places on earth where the future of the planet is being played out uh it's thinking in terms of african futures which are not necessarily uh futures uh similar to what we have gone

through in the past colonialism and so forth and so on but which are futures of possibilities and potentialities so so all of this means that there's a huge reservoir of ideas um which is there which is being tapped into by some movements not many but which is in need of being turned into as you were calling it a mass a mass movement so as to affect uh actual practices uh in specific locations and this is where you know the frustration lies is that we have the most amazing forward-thinking thinkers on this continent who have as

their as the earliest teachers the singles and the caesars and the the fanuns you know who have impacted what we referred to as african intellectualism and yet we are still and again a continent with the massive kind of opportunities that we see in terms of the youth population boom um you know the the deposits of wealth that we have in our earth in you know under the soil here on the continent which gets sent elsewhere for beneficiation and sold back to us at 10 times the price how is it then we when we are you

know the the reservoir of all this amazing forward thinking but we haven't yet had a movement that sweeps across our continent and in places where people have their roots in africa live in a significant enough way that is able to shift the needle and say this far and no further it's coming it's it's coming it's coming it is coming and that's my belief um but it needs a push first of all it needs to get out of these reserved spaces it needs to be popularized and in order for it to be popularized we need to

open africa to herself that's a precondition the continent is gigantic in all senses of the term square in its superficial geography in terms of what it has underneath its soil the amount of wealth that is deposited in the bowels of the continent in terms of the other amount of natural capital it has its rivers its forests its deserts everything it is a power in reserve africa but that power in reserve we have to turn it into an actual power for the benefit of african people people of african descent but also for the benefit of humankind

at large because all of this is interconnected but to achieve it we have to turn africa into a vast space of circulation opened to itself to begin with which requires a methodical phasing out of its internal borders but which implies also turning the continent into a place of hospitality for anyone on earth who is running away from risks or danger and we have to open the continent to its diasporas so the connection with brazil the connection with america with other parts of the world where they are substantive communities of people of african descent that's absolutely

capital and it cannot be done spontaneously it has to be planned it has to be executed in a long-term perspective we have for instance to make it possible for black people in america in brazil and elsewhere who want to come back to come back and resettle in the continent which means extending citizenship to them in case they want to do so or making it possible for them to go in and out since now we live in a world where circulation is absolutely important where people need to be in many places at the same time we

have to do that a place like south africa which has been which is to some extent after haiti long ago 250 years ago south africa at the end of the 20th century south africa has to take the lead in re imagining this diasporic global community in exactly the way the thinkers you are referring to spoke about it from the 19th century on so so it's a huge task which is political which is artistic cultural and intellectual which requires many different movements organizations that's really the task of the century if by the end of this century

africa cannot stand on its own feet then we'll have a serious serious problem i mean i think it's interesting you talk about the paradigm shift between or the shift from hostility to hospitality in a real material where hopefully things like the african continental free trade agreement those kinds of arrangements will move us in the correct direction we have to move us there there are many other steps we can take i mean some people say oh yes we cannot abolish overnight borders inherited from colonism of course we cannot just wake up and then it has to

be prepared has to be planned we can do many many things such as allowing for the obtension of visas at arrival for anyone traveling with an african passport in our own continent we do not need to replicate in our continent the strictures untie immigration entire african strictures embedded in immigration policies in europe for instance we have to turn our back to that open the continent that's how we will turn africa into its own center and turn it into a place of hospitality for those of us those of ours who are persecuted by racist policies everywhere

in the world that's the horizon and and we have to turn it into a historical reality during this century it goes to you know the repainting or the recasting of what the african story is and it's not just a single story as uh chimamanda adi chingozi is one to say and it brings me to her presence in the context of mainstream um where through her works and and the writings of you know of others even the movie for example black panther which seemed to capture the imagination of so many black people around the world who

could finally see themselves in a movie in a way that was empowering uh where the black person was the superhero you know and and there was the existence of of a magical um you know powerful place that was you know created by black people uh and so these re-imaginings but more than that just moving from what's deemed to be the parochial and the niche into the mainstream is happening through you know writings like people you know by people like chimamandai uh and movies like black panther and even a continuing rise in the crossing over of

african literature art intellectualism how do you think um that that has manifested in the mainstream culture has it kind of you know stripped the world in a sense a little bit more of the ignorance that they they might have had i'm talking about the rest of the world outside of the continent about who we are in this place we have to do it at two levels we have to do it for ourselves in the task of building i would call it an afropolitan sphere afropolitan sense that africa is part of the world it is the

world i cannot imagine the world without africa it would no but it's impossible i mean it's impossible to imagine a world in which africa and africans don't exist it would would be some some other planet or so if it is impossible to imagine the earth without an african presence then we we have to shift our minds we have to shift our mind in two ways one in terms of reconceiving this continent as the birthplace of humankind is the mother which it is every human being have they started and therefore everyone has a stake here it

all started here and it might all end here only looking to the past but more importantly looking at the potentialities the possibilities the futurities so how is it that we write africa into the future history of of the earth it seems to me that is the fundamental intellectual but also political and artistic challenge of the 21st century i say it strongly because in fact by the end of this century most people on earth will be living here just as a result of sheer demographic transformations the biggest number of young people on earth will be coming

from here so we the future is written into this place and we have to write this place into the future in to the future of the earth that is the political and philosophical challenge an artistic challenge i keep coming back to this question of art and aesthetics as absolutely foundational if indeed we have to change the story not only change it but enrich the story because as it is spoken about now it is an impoverishing story anyone who writes the history of humanity history of the earth by subtracting africa is impoverishing us all fundamentally so

so it seems to me that is what is going so you mentioned black panther black panther is a mosaic of all those debates that have been going on in fact from the 19th century up to now about how is it that we turn this continent into its own center for our sake but also for the sake of the earth it is a summary of all those those discussions and it opens up our imagination to that time when to be black won't be a liability anywhere in the world because so far it is that's why george

floyd is killed that's why mariel franco is killed that's why those people are brutalized not accidentally but as a result of an organized system that has been waging a war against black people for a long time so to put an end to the war against black people we have to undertake these efforts most of which are mental and intellectual it it goes back again and isn't it just so beautiful how a lot of these themes superimpose themselves on the other because if you think about vulnerable bodies again the theme of this literary festival if you

think about lgbtiq plus communities highly invisible in many spaces especially on this continent where there are laws to write them out of existence when you think about the concepts of ubuntu where it is about the gaze when you see someone in whom you can see yourself reflected you are less willing to harm that because you realize by harming them you're harming a piece of yourself and so the question is even though we've had these movies and we've had these um amazing writers who show us that africa is not one-dimensional this brutal face that needs to

be re-brutalized in a contemporary setting where the shackles are not physical but they are emotional and they are psychological and they are economic are these enough to redirect the world's consciousness are they enough to change the lens with which we see the thing that we otherwise the communities that we otherwise and render invisible you see things perceptions will change the day africa stands on her own feet that's the generic response as long as we seem to not be able to stand by ourselves on our own feet perceptions will remain the same so the way we

change them is by taking ourselves taking care of ourselves turning these huge magnificent region of the world into a big hospitable place for life for that which is alive for the living that's how we turn our back to long histories of brutalization elsewhere but also here because the two are connected so if we are to bring an end to the brutalization of blacks to the fact of them being exposed more than any other group of people to premature death that you die before your time has arrived that is the conditions are such that you might

have lived 70 for 70 years but you will only live for 35 years not as an accident but because that's how things are made things are made organized legislated for in such a way that you will never reach 70 years you will always reach half you will disappear before you reach rigid premature death that's what we have to bring to an end if we bring it to an end here if we show signs already that is happening perceptions will begin changing so the two things are connected yeah well how do we how do we amplify

that i mean we spoke about totems um in a sense you know a totem is a george floyd in a sense a totem in terms of the living would be the contributions that great writers and great filmmakers make to the cause um in the sports field you know i mean we saw in the united states in the in the nba they've taken a very explicit stance against police violence um it's a turning point a lot of people are reflecting in the importance of training young athletes in for example you know america um universities in the

u.s those institutions that would provide scholarships for you know young black people with with talent they can be nurtured and grown very specifically very conscientiously magic johnson remembering they you know talking about the the hiv virus for example that giving you know allowing us a moment to see it in in a way that is different to the death and devastation that was painted when we didn't know too much about hiv seeing someone in other words what what they would say in politics a peripatetic face for hire or you know somebody who is has a powerful

platform um that everyone can see themselves represented in and it gives a certain sense of legitimacy do we need more of those more of those totems yes we need we need many many more people who have a voice because these people have a voice they not only have a face sports men and women have a face of course but this face has to be turned into a voice and a certain kind of voice you mentioned some of them in soccer for instance people like lilian chiram who won the world cup in in 1998 i think

who has become a writer an amazing philosopher who has just published a few days ago a new book called white thinking which is a frontal engagement with the drama of of racism how is it that we we we transcend it so people like that we need more but but we also need to expose them to others with whom they can learn expose them to writers journalists and thinkers like yourself musicians we need a transdisciplinary symphony if you want between all these talents so that writers don't write alone in the corner while sportsmen are playing in

the and women playing in the corner and we have to institute dialogues across all these platforms both within the continent and with the diasporas i really believe that we need a an entirely new approach in relation to african diasporas and african diasporas in the largest sense of the term not only in the united states of america but also in brazil after all brazil is probably after nigeria the second biggest black country on earth so it doesn't make any sense that we do not entertain more constitutive relationships with brazil so so i'm not only talking about

old diasporas because they are new geographies of diasporas that is emerging which of course includes also parts of asia in particular china china has become an african question if you want if only because of the its implication in our present and in our future in fact not only did we have a problem with the west but china has become an african problem and and we have to think of our position in the world in relation to this emerging emerging power which is present in our midst and will be so more and more i mean i

you know my observation listening to you is is akin to being in a room that has been starved of oxygen and then you crack open a window and the oxygen just flows through and it's so refreshing when you talk about things like transdisciplinary symphonies it just you know when you hear something and you realize that it's right but you haven't heard that before i think that's so powerful what you're saying because again given the interconnectedness of the world in which we live that suddenly you can't see things in silos anymore everything has an impact on

everything else i i really i really appreciate that perspective and i think that it is something we have to focus on a lot more keenly in taking things amplifying them you know kind of re-packaging and redirecting them for real change the kind of change that shifts the needle what do you think then is the role i mean you've touched on it variously in our conversation now the role you know for africa in global anti-racism movements um in asking the question i recognize that it's also tough for me to ask the question because for example here

in south africa you're dealing with the hangover of apartheid um whose shadow still stretches very definitely over this new dawn of democracy that we experience systemic racism exists you will see protests just recently around the characterization of black people's hair we are living and we continue to live with the legacy of apartheid thinking um and a non materially reconfigurated economy um and so we think okay so you know we're busy fighting our own battles how can we lend some troops to fight this other battle somewhere else so how do we fully become part of that

and they become part of us i think that africa in general has a fundamental responsibility when it comes to this question of the struggle against the global struggle against racism it's of course a global issue in the sense that it should concern every single human being but i think that we haven't played as a continent the role we we could have played and i talked about the continent in general i'll say one word about south africa if you want we have to take responsibility for people of african descent all over the world we owe them

to take that responsibility africa now we can say who in africa is it the eu is it uh are we talking about individuals or small organizations all of us but we need an official voice to speak on behalf of black life wherever it is harmed or threatened in the world we haven't heard it when george floyd is killed in minnesota we need the african union to speak and to testify on behalf of his life and the lives of all those in america who have been killed as a result of structural racism i say america it

could be elsewhere but what about on our very own i'm coming to our own continent but you ask me whether africa may play a role i'm saying this is what the role should what role it should play it should take responsibility for people of african descent wherever their life is threatened all over the world it should be on our mind in our thoughts it should be at the center of our international relations with other nations so far that is not the case and african people have the right to ask that this be the case that

it should be placed at the core of africa's international and geopolitical relations but we cannot go on taking responsibility for the lives of black people in other countries if we not take responsibility for the lives of our own people and we still live in the continent with political regimes that brutalize the lives of their people when they do not abandon them entirely so as we were saying early on this a dialectical thing you we have to hold both at the same time south africa is a huge symbolic asset in these uh it's a configuration it

is a huge symbolic asset for all kinds of reasons and one wishes that south africa would stop naval gazing it is a huge symbolic asset in the sense that at the end of the 20th century colonialism racism and imperialism were defeated here and we have to take seriously that defeat although it is of course incomplete but they were defeated here because in south africa we had the most brutal instantiation of the denial of our humanity in the african continent this is where it happened and that's no longer the case at least symbolically now how to

turn the symbolic aspect of it into something practical which means of course de-racializing the economy which means opening up south africa too as the freedom charter puts it to all who live in it and the goal of opening up this niche country into let's say to all who live in it is a universal goal it's not simply south african we have to open the earth and all its inhabitants to all who live in it and in that sense africa is like let's see the an abstract a summary of universal aspirations and has to embody them

in its politics in its relations with other nations and assume them uh fundamentally one last point about south africa you see black people are not a minority here and that must count for something they are not a minority here this is in fact the only place on earth where black people rule over a powerful and substantive white minority there's no other place on earth where you have this configuration so it must mean something i don't know exactly what but for me is absolutely empowering provided of course we tease out the political philosophical consequences of what

it means you see i wouldn't of course i would be happy to live in other parts of the world but if i have to live in africa i find it's really refreshing to live in south africa i'm so glad you said that for all these these reasons yeah for for what it opens up in terms of potentialities what we can do which we might not have done yet but we can do so much and one really wishes this country would embrace that uh that opportunity yes but we're so glad to have you drive it drive

it for the benefit of humankind yeah exactly there is another story that can be written about us and i love the way you put it and that's why i'm saying you know i just i'm really enjoying this conversation because when you talk about this country in terms of its legacy being a symbolic asset in the world you know there's a real power in that and and and i appreciate you i want to if we can't talk about politics without talking about religion and the sources and the wells from which you know various communities of us

uh draw from religions play a fundamental role for black people this is undeniable especially when we talk about black people of popular origin so we can't think about the anti-racist struggle in the u.s for example without thinking about the protestant churches and of course one of the greatest products of that was pastor martin luther king in brazil the largest black country outside africa as you already reflected uh candomble plays a central role in the identity of black people even young people who've been raised in evangelical churches seek condomble which is um which is voodoo or

the characterization of voodoo but they understand themselves as black people and realize that they need to participate in anti-racial struggles africa is a continent predominantly influenced by so-called african religions islam and christian churches are also deeply implanted on the continent bearing in mind this complete diversity um and sometimes complicated nature of religion what would you say the role of religion is in africa's greatest political clashes see ours is a continent that has been hospitable to all manifestations of of faith whether they they take the form of churches or not we we we are probably the

one place on earth where we are willing to to make a space for for any form of of religiosity some critics believe that that's part of our so-called weakness but but it all depends on on a number of factors it strikes me in any case that openness radical hospitality in relation to anything not many places or cultures or societies are so as as open as african societies which allows for an extraordinary plasticity and extraordinary capacity to engage with that which is coming from afar will we we are not afraid of that which is coming from

afar gods included and we have developed an extraordinary capacity to mix all of that produce those mixtures the classical technical term is syncretism but it's a pejorative term so let's not use it a capacity for creolization let's put it putting blending together elements which at first sight do not seem to go together we managed to blend them together and we have created in so doing cultures that might look cacophonic if you want but in fact are full of life and extraordinary dynamism so religion as a matter of fact is part of that foundation that you

build a house you have the foundations religion belongs to the realm of the foundations and its main major major function as i see it has been to attend to the process of healing because of healing which is required has been required by the history of brutalization we're talking about we wouldn't have emerge out of that long history of brutalization more or less intact without that attachment to what you do not see what is beyond those forces which move the universe and individuals and give some meaning to why it is that we are here what are

we doing here why is it that the day we are no longer here something is missing or someone is missing these final questions questions of ultimate meanings religion has helped to in attend to them and in attending to them to to appease the mental violence we have been subjected to so i see it playing exactly the same role today in face of political violence in face of economic insecurity in face of the uncertainties and instabilities of of the times and that's how i see it and i think that is still a repository for deep forces

which we can invoke and assemble as we try to move to the next next step i'm going to end with a very delicious question which comes from from one of our hosts in brazil but before i do just a reflection on the religion question is that i think for i won't say a lot of people because i can't measure this accurately there's a transcendental moment that is occurring especially in places like africa where religion has largely been imposed or it's been superimposed on some of the indigenous practices and cultural rituals or explanation you know kind

of you know things that we've needed to do to own and affirm our existence here and i think for me just on a personal note there is more of a leaning towards this time being a time of personal responsibility in a way that you know religions have sought to create a distraction or in my estimation of a fake bomb for the wounds that it has allowed history to inflict upon us a movement in a new direction in the world which harnesses some of what we call indigenous religious or traditional religious systems or philosophies or the

notion of what existentialism is and i think that's an important note to make in the context where some of us are leaning away from deity and back into self and accountability yes you wanted to comment on that well i would i would love it if no i find it extremely interesting because what you are putting on the table are the the contradictions inherent in some thing like religion which is you suggest a historical occurrence or invention which means that it is full of contradictions it's it can go any anywhere it can be used in in

any any way possible it was imposed of course but it was also embraced by some who christianity for instance who wanted to part ways with traditional systems which they found oppressive um the talk about christianity in particular we witnessed the secession by a number of africans from established churches com having come from coming from europe and the institutionalization of african churches with their own interpretation of the gospel liberation churches and what i mean is that religion is not necessarily the opium of the people it can also be uh a key element in the project of

of emancipation and liberation in america in black america in particular black americans from slavery on would have never survived without some relationship sense of transcendence so to see but as far as personal responsibility is concerned you see what strikes me is the fact that it strikes me a number of studies done by anthropologists in particular highlight the fact that in some of these new churches the question of personal responsibility is absolutely at the the core of the new the new gospel now of course we have to insist on personal responsibility without losing sight or so

of that which is beyond personal responsibility um it's not true that if we fail it's always a matter of individual responsibility it all it is also a matter of structures um it's maybe a part of the discussion we probably don't need to have in the official [Laughter] but but you opened up a huge huge uh set of questions i would have loved to i think i think this conversation you and i are definitely going to have over it definitely yeah over over some some wine if that is your poison in the weeks to come let's

end with this one from eugenio lima who indicated that the book critique of black reason which was published in 2016 for n1 your brazilian publishers he did the same for afrotopia by his friend uh falwin sar so some intellectuals like bruno latour say that brazil will have a fundamental role in the world in the coming decades according to him uh nowhere and else in the world and i think you touch on it briefly as well do climate and political crises coexist with such intense intensity brazil is experiencing a perfect storm saying brazil today is like

spain was in 1936 during the civil war it is every it is where everything that will be important in the coming decades is visible so in your opinion how does brazilian racism or racism in the brazilian reality impact this perfect storm taking into account there's significant evidence that brazilian authorities including the president at some point in the near future will answer for crimes against humanity and be investigated for genocide what role is brazil likely to play in this new moment in the world i like it when when you know when there's a pause it means

these questions are really reaching inside of you and you've got to summon all of your abilities to answer because it is an important one there's a it's a pivotal and a tangential moment that's kind of happening you know at the same time you see he mentioned uh questions of racism at some point in in his question there are there are three as far as i'm concerned there are three uh see some words come come in french so i have to translate three nodal centers historical nodal centers mattresses of racism in modern in the modern world

the first one is of course um the united states of america and in the caribbean let's see where modern racism anti-black racism was not only invented but legislated for implemented with the effects we see we saw then and we see now a racial order that was uh instituted in america there is a that that's one model the other model is south africa and the third model was brazil so you have these three modern models paradigms of how it is that racial rule is uh conceived of and implemented and executed and with what consequences and how

do we manage the consequences in such a way as to allow that model to keep reproducing itself and transforming itself as history goes by now in the kind of world of debates which is academia one model has become somewhat of the paradigm for all the others is the african-american model the they have been able to think about it conceive of it study it and elaborate a discourse on it which has become somewhat global so that in spite of the specificities of the south african model or of the brazilian model we all keep referring to black

america when we are looking for to articulate discourse on the fact of racism and we look for concepts there we look for theories there we look for empirical examples there and we do not take seriously our own historical experiences i've seen it here for instance with my own students now all of this means that if we are serious about fighting against racism as a global problem not as a u.s problem but as a global question then we absolutely need to draw a bit more from the other two mattresses brazil and south africa and we need

to triangulate them so that when we speak about racism in america we necessarily have to see its refractions in other other places otherwise we have a provincial discourse one dimensional one locational we need a planetary discourse on racism in this age which is a planetary age as we have been trying to argue since we started our conversation now brazil is of course a huge not only country geographically but it's a concatenation of many different histories and many different worlds in a way that is not exactly what we see in the usc or in a way

we see in south africa because africa too is a concatenation of histories and and worlds our interest in brazil as africans derives from the fact that is the second most important black country in the world it derives from other factors but more importantly it derives from the connection between brazil and africa which i have to say in spite of many efforts connection which remains somewhat unthought politically it has been written a lot about it there's space to write more but we haven't taken that connection as the object of political meditation are of which we tease

a certain number of consequences and i want to look at brazil from that point of view that's all i can say about i mean the question that was raised so if we were wrapping this conversation up ordinarily i'd be shaking your hands profusely we are in this covert 19 moment so you accept my my handshake virtually and in my heart thank you so much for sharing your perspective for sharing your your wisdom and your intellectualism and for everyone who's going to watch this conversation i hope that you enjoy it and it triggers something in you

beyond just the enjoyment of a conversation but into action in your community and perhaps a shift in your own conscience in in your own consciousness and perhaps even your conscience so thank you very much uh sheila member for joining us today and for agreeing to be part of this important conversation really do appreciate you saying thank you thank you you