"When one says the word 'Africa,' one generally abdicates all responsibility. The concept
of wrongdoing is evacuated on principle.
It is presupposed as well
that nonsense is constitutive, from the beginning, of the word itself. In other words, to say 'Africa' always consists in constructing figures and legend - it matters little which ones - on top of an emptiness".
(Achille Mbembe, in: Critique of Black Reason, Chapter 2, The Well of Fantasies, page 51-52
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Vi er nu på vej til Open Book Festival i Cape Town. Sidste års festival var en succes. Den imponerede med sin intime og inderlige stemning og tilbød vigtige bøger til at forstå det sydafrikanske samfund her 30 år efter afvikling af apartheid. Derfor ser vi frem til dette års festival med spænding.
En reportage fra festivalen forventes at være klar tirsdag den 1.oktober, men allerede her i september vil der være samtaler med tre af festivalens forfattere.
Som optakt kan man genhøre reportagen fra sidste års festival...
For a decade or so I have been coming and going to Kampala - a truly African City as close to the heart of Africa as you will ever get. That was probably what also the British were thinking when they build the railroad from the coast of Mombasa all the way to the border of Congo. During my time in Kampala (a place that I can sincerely say that I love) I have thought about being a white man among black men and women. Although I never seem to come up with good conclusions or answers, then it has given me ever lasting joy. I have always tried to be one of the crowd. Maybe not the most obvious ambition. My gratitude for the way I have been treated has always been tremendous. I have very rarely, if ever, been in a place, where people around me treated me with so much kindness, hospitality and respect as in Kampala. This is one of the many reasons why I call Uganda my African home. Recently I have come across Nada Andersen via Facebook. She is worried about the relationship between Ug...
Jeg er blevet mere og mere træt af betegnelsen Afrika. Ikke alene er det en stærkt generaliserende betegnelse for et stort geografisk område, men anvendelsen af Afrika virker også stigmatiserende. Måske burde vi derfor tænke os mere om, når vi bruger ordet. The notion of Africa is getting more and more on my nerves. There is something problemtic about how we in the western world perceive places on the African continent and the people who live there. I have just finished reading the novel "Il faut beaucoup aimer les hommes" (One must care much for men) written by Marie Darrieussecq. The male character Kouhouesso, a man from Congo, says "Africa does not exist". It is his response to his French lover Solange, when she declares that she wants to go to Africa. She insists and "he laughed his perculiar and sharp laughter, which sounded like he had borrowed it from another body". Thereafter he continues: "Africa is a fiction created by anthropoligists. T...
To my newer readers I shall provide a short summary. I have not yet approached you with this story. To my older readers I apologise for this repetion. Although even in a short compressed version there might be additional knowledge due to the power of words. What we usually call the cracks of language. The summary will squeeze hidden experience by sucking these small and thiny pockets. In Tanzania I met a man working for the Danish Foreign Ministry. At the time I was wondering why these state advisors seem so much more reasonable and sincere than all the NGO people who are supposed to be critical and progressive but are not. I began to queston the intention of my NGO employer. I never knew his name and we did not meet again. We only shared dinner one evening. He spoke to me and I to him. When he learnt that I was going to Kampala he felt the urge to tell about a book telling the colonial history of East Africa. He could not remember the exact title or even the name of the author. He sup...
Performance of poetry and narrative with reflexions about meeting the ‘other’; what does not make immedeate make any sense, and how it crushed my previous world view and riped every imagination of belonging into pieces. Jeg forstår ikke de signaler som bæres på snefnug der daler fra himlen eller haglslags rids i huden Langt bedre forstår jeg troperegnens korporlige sjaskvåde kys på kroppen og solens ubarmhjertige angreb ved Ækvator Geografisk placering tjener ikke som forklaring Mine gerninger har deres eget liv hinsides godt og ondt (Vinterdrømme, 2014) For 15 år siden rejste jeg til et sted, jeg ikke tidligere havde ønsket at tage til, nogensinde drømt om at skulle b...
"Privilege is an Aggressive form of Amnesia” I denne tid opstår ny information om verden. Jeg modtager det direkte i mit feed om morgenen. Det betyder ikke at verden forandrer sig, men jeg får nye venner, og de, jeg allerede havde viser nye sider af sig selv. Mest gode sider. En af de mange morgener møder jeg Elisa Gonzalez, som ved meget om polsk poesi, selvom hun er inkarneret NewYork’er og har sine rødder i Las Americas. Hun taler om en polsk digter som jeg ikke kender og hvis navn jeg allerede har glemt om end det minder mig om en polsk humanist jeg engang arbejdede sammen med. Til sidst læser hun sit eget digt op. Det er et fejlslagent forsøg på at skrive om privilegium, men en enkel verselinje vil ikke igen forlade mig. Hun siger, at privilegie er en aggressiv form for hukommelsestab. Kun det menneske der har prøvet at miste forstår hvad det vil sige ikke at have. Jeg har levet længe med race og hudfarve som daglig...
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