This academic symposium is held in honour of the 2024 Holberg Laureate Achille Mbembe and his research. The Laureate introduces the topic, followed by presentations by three speakers, a panel discussion and in the end an open Q&A session.

"In African cosmogonies, all living entities are composed of symbiotic relations while complex infrastructures are required to sustain personhood.

Personhood itself is differentially redistributed among humans, animals, plants and material artefact. As technological escalation, the impending ecological catastrophe and wars of extermination unfold, can these cosmogonies form the basis for new ways of inhabiting the Earth and reenchanting democracy? What kind of democracy? What will it take to create and sustain milieux which are hospitable to a variety of ways of being a person in this brutal and unforgiving world? "

SPEAKERS
Achile Mbembe, recipient of the 2024 Holberg Prize; research professor at Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research.
Ato Quayson, professor at Stanford University.
Nasrin Olla, assistant professor at the University of Virginia.
Paul Gilroy, Founding Director, Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Race and Racism, University College London.
Moderator: Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, professor at the Universitetet i Bergen and Academic Director of the Holberg Prize.

Illustration: Adam Ashby Gibbard / The Ecopolitics Podcast, licensed under CC by 2.0.