What are the social and territorial markers of African identity? Who is a person of African descent?  And how might we reconstitute African identity outside of settler colonial imaginations?

In this session, scholars and artists think through constructions of identity, interrogating the socio-historical precedents of what it means to be African and the plurality of experiences and contestations that produce polyvocal understandings of identity among African people.

Drawing from Achille Mbembe’s Critique of Black Reason (2013) and a conceptualisation of blackness as “a collection of voices, pronouncements, discourses, forms of knowledge, commentary, and nonsense, whose object is things or people “of African origin,” we question the positioning of African identity amidst entanglements with western imperialism and colonialism. This session complicates both continental and trans-diasporic perceptions of blackness as a racial construct and probes the implications of rigid social identifiers such as citizenship and ethnicity in the establishment of a so-called “African-ness.”

Conceived by Zeitz MOCAA in collaboration with the Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA) at the University of Cape Town (UCT), the When We See Us webinar series is part of a larger project that comprises a major exhibition of the same name as well as an extensive publication. When We See Us will attempt to unveil the deeper historic contexts and networks of a complex and underrepresented genealogy that stems from African and Black modernities and spans several generations from the early 20th century to the present. To watch previous episodes, please click here. For the full schedule of webinars, visit our website. 

Zeitz MOCAA’s curatorial and exhibition programming is generously supported by Gucci.

Date & Time:

Tuesday, 29 August 2023
6.30 PM SAST

Cost: The series is free and takes place via Zoom. No registration is required.

Webinar Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88378717647 or click here.