Important Dates

An Afternoon with ADEFRA

Friday, December 13, 2019, 13:00.18:00 h

Venue: Iwalewahaus Auditorium

The GDO has invited ADEFRA Berlin e.V. for this first ICDL event for the winter semester 2019-2020 at the University of Bayreuth; the event is envisioned as a kick-off workshop as a means to address the timeliness of intersectionality and critical diversity literacy approaches as pertinent concepts for research methodologies and diversity-oriented organizational development for Cluster activities. The event will proffer research tools conducive to reflexive academic relations within the Cluster, with regard to knowledge production agendas about Africa with African scholars. Hence this workshop will be a closed event focussed on Cluster members’ needs.

ADEFRA’s Workshop Agenda:

In this workshop we start out by defining the concept of ‚Political Intersectionality’ and clarifying its embeddedness in the CRT, Critical Race Theory intellectual movement/s.
We then explore the nexus of the concepts ‚Intersectionality’ and ‚Intersectional Justice’ vis-a-vis diversity politics (‚Politics of Diversity as Recognition’, ‚Politics of Dignity and Equal Respect’, ‚Politics of Difference’, ‚Politics of Redistribution’).
We discuss the impetus for the slogan „Decolonize not Diversify!“, situating this specific critique in the intellectual activism of transnational student-led movements for the decolonization of the university.
And finally we use the text „ReClaiming Our Time in African Studies” (Auma/Otieno/Piesche, 2019) to map out the tensions, investments, paradoxes and difficult but necessary conversations to be facilitated around institutional restructuring (Increasing Diversity) in higher education and in institutions of transnational African Studies.

Cluster Reading:

Auma, Maureen Maisha, Otieno, Eric and Piesche, Peggy: “Reclaiming Our Time” in African Studies - Conversations from the Perspective of the Black Studies Movement in Germany”.  In Journal of Critical African Studies, Special Issue: “Decolonizing the Academy”. (Eds.) Elelwani Ramugondo, Shose Kessi, and Zoe Marks. Volume 11, 2019. Taylor and Francis, Milton Park Abingdon. Forthcoming.
[NB: This paper will be disseminated among the Cluster members as soon as it is available]