Thinking from the South on Traditions of Politics and Aesthetics
Other Universals is a supra-national consortium supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The consortium consists of scholars from several universities in Africa (in South Africa: University of the Western Cape, University of Cape Town, University of the Witwatersrand University of Johannesburg; in Ethiopia, Addis Ababa University; in Ghana, University of Ghana- Legon); in the Caribbean, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus; and, in the Middle East, the American University of Beirut. Other Universals brings together scholars across different geographies to convene conversations around shared intellectual and political preoccupations. Other Universals hosts seminars, workshops, discussion groups across an array of thematic interests to support research on the long histories of radical anticolonial thought and cultural practices from the South. The consortium provides graduate student fellowships and creates a dynamic co-curricular programme for emerging scholars at the participating universities.
Thematic Areas
Other Universals encourages scholarship that draws on multiple anticolonial traditions to speak to universal predicaments. Currently, the consortium engages with the following.
Revisting Marxist traditions and the global South
This thematic area explores the relationship of Marxism/s to race, ethnicity, religion and sexuality. How might histories of internationalism in Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East and South Asia offer ways to connect with traditions of Marxism in the metropoles that engaged cultural and political identities as they affect the colonial and postcolonial subject? What can a living tradition of Marxist thought proffer to our current imaginings of a future beyond coloniality?
Translation and Comparison As Method
In investigating methods of studying living archives of critical thought, this thematic area asks the following questions: How do we read figures, texts and objects across radical political and aesthetic traditions? How do we do translation and comparison across and within these different systems of meaning? What does it mean to read a text, figure or object conjuncturally towards historicizing the practice of critique?
The Epistemic Question
This thematic area examines questions of epistemic violence/justice in the modern university of the global South. What is the relationship of secular criticism to modernity, universal knowledge to particular knowledges, and the making of the distinctions between the sacred and the profane?
Identity and Identification
The relationship between the making of the colonial political subject and postcolonial political subjectivities is central to this thematic area. Wherein identities like Black, Queer, Dalit, Muslim/Jew, Tribal exist inside of political formations yet also exceed them. How might we understand the relationship between identity and identification in political and aesthetic worlds? What modes of cultural citizenship and idioms of difference define insider and outsider? How do notions of majority and minority work to produce the nation?
Webinars
News & Events
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The Other Universals Consortium Virtual Talk
The Other Universals Consortium Virtual Talk
The Other Universals consortium will be running a 7 week writing workshop, facilitated by Anais Nony for Masters and PhD students working on their thesis. Further details on the poster attached.
On the Subject of Citizenship: Late colonialism in the world today, edited by Professor Suren Pillay
On the Subject of Citizenship: Late colonialism in the world today brings together reflections on citizenship, political violence, race, ethnicity and gender, by some of the most critical voices of our times.
Roundtable and Book Presentation
The Other Universals consortium congratulates our long standing collaborator Prof. David Scott on his recognition as a Guggenheim fellow for 2023.
The Centre for Humanities Research and the Other Universals Consortium invites you to the following event, organised by the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana.
March 06, 2023 / 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm
3401 Dwinelle Hall, UC Berkeley
The Other Universals Consortium and the Center for Race, Gender and Class (University of Johannesburg) are organizing a colloquium on Race and Caste; Hierarchy and Universality at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study on Feb 21-23, 2023.
The Other Universals consortium hosted a webinar with Dr Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò on 28 October 2022.
The Other Universals consortium will be hosting a webinar with Dr Mohsen al Attar is an Associate Professor at the University of Warwick and a Visiting Lecturer at UCL and Beijing Foreign Studies University.
Professor Denise Ferreira da Silva (The University of British Columbia) will be delivering a keynote address “Unpayable Debt” as part of the Other Universals Consortium’s 2022 public engagements on Theorizing Aesthetics and Politics from Postcolonial Locations. Date: Friday, May 20th. Time: 7 pm SAST
Professor Thembinkosi Goniwe will be delivering a keynote address “A prolegomenon towards ukuNqakula as an Aesthetic and Political Location” as part of the Other Universals Virtual Institute 2021 inquiry into Aesthetics and Politics on Tuesday, 23 November.
Professor David Scott will be delivering a keynote address titled “The Conjecture of 1956” as part of the Other Universals Virtual Institute 2021 inquiry into The Question of the Political: Thinking Difference in the Aftermaths of the Colonial Political Economy.
The Other Universals Consortium and CODESRIA invite you to a webinar with Professor Mahmood Mamdani about his new book Neither Settler Nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities.
A CHR Webinar held by the Other Universals Consortium with Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
The CHR congratulates Professor Elizabeth Giorgis on her latest book Modernist Art in Ethiopia achieving finalist status for both the ASA Book Prize (Herskovits) and the ASA Bethwell A. Ogot Prize.
A CHR Webinar held by the Other Universals Consortium with Aditya Nigam
The Other Universals consortium will be hosting a webinar series from July – November 2020
A CHR Webinar held jointly between Winter School and the Other Universals Consortium with Fadi Bardawil
The Other Universals consortium will be hosting a webinar with Adom Getachew.
The Other Universals consortium will be hosting an online seminar with Souleymane Bachir Diagne
The Other Universals consortium of the CHR invites you to a panel
The formation and practice of Social and Political Theory in the Indian conceptual imagination have, by and large, been a low profile enterprise.
Other Universals presents a public lecture by Dr. Aaron Kamugisha (Cultural Studies, University of the West Indies) on "Sylvia Wynter's Black Metamorphosis and the World We […]
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Contact us
Postal address |
Physical address |
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| Other Universals University of the Western Cape Private Bag X17 Bellville 7535 Republic of South Africa |
University of the Western Cape Robert Sobukwe Road Bellville Republic of South Africa |