Note: Updated September 30, 2011 with video and photos from the lecture

The Committee on Globalization and Social Change Presents

Achille Mbembe

Democracy and the Ethics of Common Life

Notes from the South African Experience

Tuesday September 20^th 2011 from 2pm to 4pm

The Skylight Room | CUNY Graduate Center,

365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Free and open to the public

Roundtable Q&A with Achille Mbembe

Wednesday September 21^st at 12pm

CUNY Graduate Center, Room 5109

Graduate students are encouraged to attend

Seminar participants are encouraged to read the following articles for discussion during the Q&A session:

• Aesthetics of Superfluity
• A Critical Humanism
• Passages to Freedom: The Politics of Racial Reconciliation in South Africa

Achille Mbembe (b. in 1957), is a Cameroonian research professor in history and politics at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and a senior researcher at WISER (Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research). He has written extensively in African history and politics, including his article “Necropolis“. He is the winner of the 2006 Bill Venter/Altron Award for his book On the Postcolony (University of California Press, 2001).

Co-sponsored by The Center for Place, Culture and Politics

Video from Achille Mbembe’s talk on September 20, 2011:

Video from the Roundtable discussion and Q&A session on September 21, 2011:

Professor Kandice Chuh was generous enough to share several photographs taken during Achille Mbembe’s talk on September 20th:

Achille Mbembe during his lecture

Core faculty member Susan Buck-Morss poses a question after Achille’s lecture.

Another Globalization Committee core faculty member, Uday Mehta, engages Achille Mbembe