Freedom is a Place: The Struggle for Urban Land in South Africa

Richard Pithouse is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Global Centre for Advanced Studies in Dublin and New York, an International Research Philosophy Department at the University of Connecticut, a Research Associate in the Philosophy Department at the University of Johannesburg, and a columnist for the Mail & Guardian.

This presentation examines Fanon’s thinking about collective movement, of being in a shared political movement. It makes an argument about Fanon’s theory of being, of the human as ‘motion towards the world’, of his ethical commitment to recognising what he calls the ‘open door of every consciousness’ and to relations premised on mutuality, and to his thinking about praxis and, in particular, praxis in the African postcolony. Following the approach of the prison reading group lead by the late Lindokuhle Mnguni (assassinated on 8 August 2022) and the work undertaken in the Frantz Fanon Political School formed at the eKhenana Commune, a process in which Mnguni and Mqapheli Bonono played leading roles, the paper examines Fanon’s ideas in the context of past and current struggles in South Africa.

This event will take place in room 0A13 at Georgetown University in Qatar