The Politics of Time

As we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, the world is undergoing a major historical displacement: Africa, and the Global South more generally, is increasingly becoming a principal theatre in which the future of the planet is being played out. But not only this: Africa is at the same time one of the great laboratories from which unprecedented forms of social, economic, political, intellectual, cultural and artistic life are emerging. These new forms of life and of the social, which often emerge in surprising places, become concrete in sets of practices which draw on the long memory of societies while simultaneously displaying distinctly contemporary, or even futuristic, elements. In November 2017, the second session of the Ateliers de la pensée - Workshops of Thought - was held in Dakar, Senegal. Fifty African and diasporic intellectuals and artists participated and their debates unfolded along numerous thematic lines, approached from the standpoints of many different disciplines. This volume is the result of this encounter. Among the many issues discussed were the development of multiple temporalities and their entanglement, the politics of life in the Anthropocene, and decolonization and the circulation of different forms of knowledge. At a time when the world is haunted by the spectre of its own end, the contributors to this volume ask whether one can, by taking Africa as a point of departure, seize hold of other options for the future - not only for Africa but for the world. The Politics of Time and its companion volume To Write the Africa World will be indispensable works for anyone interested in Africa - its past, present and future - and in the new forms of critical thought emerging from Africa and the Global South.