The Centre for African Studies invites you to a lunch time encounter with the philosopher Norman Ajari (University of Edinburgh).

Norman Ajari, PhD, is a French and American philosopher specializing in the history of Francophone and Anglophone Black thought, social and political philosophy, Critical Race Theory and Black male studies. He is the author of "Dignity or Death: Ethics and politics of race" (Polity, 2022), in which he developed a critique of continental philosophy from the perspective of the Black radical tradition. His second book "Noirceur: Race, genre, classe et pessimisme dans la pensée africaine-américaine au XXI^e siècle" (Divergences, 2022) reflects on the contemporary resurgence of a long tradition of Black radical pessimism under the guise of contemporary African-American intellectual movements such as Afropessimism and Black Male Studies.

Ajari’s theoretical approach deploys, on the one hand, a theoretical actualization of the global Black Radical Tradition and, on the other, it explores the untold racial unconscious of western philosophy. This endeavor is led by the belief that the specific type of dehumanization that has plagued Black people for centuries has given rise to unique forms of Black revolutionary organizing, philosophical thinking, and artistic modes of expression. His works thus explore the interstice between life and death inhabited by African slaves, colonial subjects, and contemporary dehumanized Blacks.

Moderation by Henri Michel Yéré