Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory IX / The Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism
29 June – 11 July 2014

The Programme
The 2014 programme will span two intensive weeks of lectures, seminars, public events, exhibitions and performances. The idea behind the planning of this mobile Workshop is to travel to significant critical sites in the history of South Africa’s notorious racial project in order to open the question of the “non-racial” both in South Africa and in its manifestation in other parts of the world. Workshop participants will travel by bus from Johannesburg to Swaziland, Durban, Mandela’s grave at Qunu, Steve Biko’s Ginsberg, and conclude in Cape Town. At each site, the Workshop will convene conversations that explore the histories and legacies of racisms in these particular places, posing these histories in relation to broader conversations about the post-, non-, and anti-racisms across relational global contexts. Lectures, panel discussions and performances will draw on research from the African continent, China, Australia, the Middle East, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Euro-America, as well as on some of the oceans that connect them.

Speakers and Performers
The 2014 Session will feature a range of local and international speakers and performers. These include: Ackbar Abbas, Ruha Benjamin, Keith Breckenridge, Mwelela Cele, Sharad Chari, Angela Davis, Gina Dent, Philomena Essed, David Theo Goldberg, Siba Grovogui, Ghassan Hage, Salah Hassan, Isabel Hofmeyr, Premesh Lalu, Liu Sola, Achille Mbembe, Dilip Menon, Neo Muyanga, Sarah Nuttall, Deborah Thomas, Francoise Verges.