Focus
Prof. Kwame Anthony Appiah: Political Identiy
Prof. Kwame Anthony Appiah is a philosopher specializing in Black Studies and ethics, who often works in interdisciplinary contexts. His work is easily understandable and thus accessible to students without prior philosophical knowledge. Notably, he collaborated with Henry Louis Gates Jr. to publish the Encyclopedia Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience. Another significant achievement of Appiah's is his 1993 book In My Father's House, in which he addresses the scientific racism ("race theory" / "racial science") of the 19th century and its impact extending into the 1990s. However, the reason for our invitation to Cologne is based on Appiah's latest book publication, Rethinking Identity: The Lies that Bind. In this book, Appiah examines the contemporary concept of identity from an intersectional perspective of "creed, country, colour, class, culture," as he states in his subtitle. Although not part of this list, the categories of sex/gender and sexuality form an important constant in his analysis, as he views social gender in many cultures as the most fundamental of all dominance categories. Appiah's approach is philosophical, but perhaps even more importantly, he approaches the topic of identity biographically: he is the son of an English mother and a Ghanaian (Asante) father; he grew up in Ghana and England, has lived in the USA for a long time, and works prominently within African American Studies. As he writes himself, his identity is often unreadable to others, as his appearance, accent, and cultural involvements (his cosmopolitanism) surprise others, as if such an identity were (still) unthinkable. Appiah takes his own lived reality and the stories that shape his identity and abstracts them in a philosophical manner without dismissing the biographical and social components. Through this, he succeeds in capturing identity as a tension between prescribed normativity and individual freedom.
26 June 2024 I 12:00 - 13:30 (CEST)
Venue: Aula II, Hauptgebäude
Albertus Magnus Platz, 50931 Cologne
Organized by:
Global South Studies Center (GSSC)
Johanna-Pitteti-Heil (ESI)
stimmen afrikas
In Cooperation with:
Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies
Vrije Universiteit Brussels