Decolonising Westernised Solidarity through Epistemic Blackness (JIAS Seminar)
In Februari 2020 I embarked on a stimulating Writing Fellowship at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Studies (JIAS) in Johannesburg, South Africa.
On 18 March 2020 I got the chance to present my work in progress – a monograph for the special book series Kilombo, of Rowman and Littlefield International. The prezi slides I used can be consulted here.
Abstract:
“The seminar invites a conversation on Rutazibwa’s monograph-in-progress. In it, contemporary hegemonic solidarity thinking and practices – e.g. aid & development, humanitarianism, state building and democracy promotion – are seen as technologies that reproduce coloniality and Whiteness and therefore in need of decolonial rethinking. The project explores the possibility of anticolonial solidarity from a Western positionality by centring ideas of Agaciro/dignity, restitution/reparation and ethical retreat sourced from experiences and philosophies in/of post-genocide Rwanda, Black Power and autonomous recovery in Somaliland.”
// Olivia U. Rutazibwa 