Keynote Speaker: Nelson Maldonado-Torres
Beyond Critique: Decolonial Thought/Combative Acts
On Monday, April 25 invited scholar Nelson Maldonado-Torres joined us for a keynote lecture. His presentation focused on the Frantz Fanon Foundation’s call for a combative decoloniality. From a Fanonian point of view, combativity is different and more comprehensive than critique. The exploration and critical engagement with the concept of critique paves the way for an elaboration of the idea of combative decoloniality in dialogue with responses from social movement leaders and collectives. The presentation will focuses on the work of the Black feminist and decolonial collective La Colectiva Feminista en Construcción (Puerto Rico) and the Strike MoMA campaign of the International Imagination of Anti-national, Anti-imperialist Feelings formation (New York City, USA).
Nelson Maldonado-Torres is Professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies and Chair of the Program in Comparative Literature at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. He is also Director of the Rutgers Advanced Institute for Critical Caribbean Studies, Professor Extraordinarius at the University of South Africa, and Honorary Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. He is a former President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association (2008-2013) and co-chairs the Fondation Frantz Fanon with Mireille Fanon Mendés France. His publications include dozens of articles and book chapters on decoloniality, and several monographs and edited books, including, Against War: Views from the Underside of Modernity (Duke UP 2008), and La descolonización y el giro des-colonial (Universidad de la Tierra, 2011).
Co-presented with the Latin American Speaker Series and The Power Plant