The Imagined New – Volume III brings together scholars and artists to critically engage with questions of war, catastrophe, and the human condition, examining how historical and contemporary forms of violence shape our realities and possibilities for the future. This internal workshop will take place from April 7–9, 2025, at The Africa Institute, Global Studies University, Sharjah, and will culminate in a new publication.
The Imagined New is a collaboration between Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre, University of Johannesburg, and the Ruth Simmons Centre for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University, with a network of global partners. Volume III includes collaboration with The Africa Institute, Global Studies University, Sharjah.
This volume is a four-part project spanning 18 months connecting African and African Diasporic critical thought and practice around issues of contemporary violence and catastrophe in historical and creative formations. In its workshop, this edition mainly thinks through the question: what does it mean to be human in contexts where war and violence are not instruments of power but become power themselves?
Acknowledging the possibility of war and various violence as catastrophes in the twenty-first century does not constitute the political in our articulation of the human condition. Critical theory reminds us that amazement alone is not the foundation of knowledge—rather, it is the product of flawed historical perspectives that must be deconstructed.
Drawing from Black radical feminist thought, participants will engage in “world scale” analysis to consider what it means to conceive of humanity through intertwined, intersectional, and compounded calamities. These catastrophes have long histories, with 1492 marking a pivotal moment that introduced enduring structures of occupation, dispossession, terror, and hierarchical systems of racial, economic, and gender-based classification imposed on so-called “non-Europeans.”
Entangled with this past, the contemporary world is shaped by two dominant forces:
i) A form of power that seeks to suppress human imagination, and
ii) Forms of violence that render human life superfluous.
This context demands alternative ways of thinking. Workshop participants will critically engage with new theoretical and practical approaches to planetary imagining, world-building, and reimagining the human in the face of violence and catastrophe.
The Imagined New – Volume III brings together scholars and artists to critically engage with questions of war, catastrophe, and the human condition, examining how historical and contemporary forms of violence shape our realities and possibilities for the future. This internal workshop will take place from April 7–9, 2025, at The Africa Institute, Global Studies University, Sharjah, and will culminate in a new publication.
The Imagined New – Volume III brings together scholars and artists to critically engage with questions of war, catastrophe, and the human condition, examining how historical and contemporary forms of violence shape our realities and possibilities for the future. This internal workshop will take place from April 7–9, 2025, at The Africa Institute, Global Studies University, Sharjah, and will culminate in a new publication.
The Imagined New is a collaboration between Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre, University of Johannesburg, and the Ruth Simmons Centre for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University, with a network of global partners. Volume III includes collaboration with The Africa Institute, Global Studies University, Sharjah.
This volume is a four-part project spanning 18 months connecting African and African Diasporic critical thought and practice around issues of contemporary violence and catastrophe in historical and creative formations. In its workshop, this edition mainly thinks through the question: what does it mean to be human in contexts where war and violence are not instruments of power but become power themselves?
Acknowledging the possibility of war and various violence as catastrophes in the twenty-first century does not constitute the political in our articulation of the human condition. Critical theory reminds us that amazement alone is not the foundation of knowledge—rather, it is the product of flawed historical perspectives that must be deconstructed.
Drawing from Black radical feminist thought, participants will engage in “world scale” analysis to consider what it means to conceive of humanity through intertwined, intersectional, and compounded calamities. These catastrophes have long histories, with 1492 marking a pivotal moment that introduced enduring structures of occupation, dispossession, terror, and hierarchical systems of racial, economic, and gender-based classification imposed on so-called “non-Europeans.”
Entangled with this past, the contemporary world is shaped by two dominant forces:
i) A form of power that seeks to suppress human imagination, and
ii) Forms of violence that render human life superfluous.
This context demands alternative ways of thinking. Workshop participants will critically engage with new theoretical and practical approaches to planetary imagining, world-building, and reimagining the human in the face of violence and catastrophe.
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