Cost: FREE FOR ALL

On the 10th of May, Dr. Divine Fuh from the University of Cape Town will provide a lecture about Chatgyptism.

Abstract

The birth of the Rhodes Must Fall (#RMF) movement at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, in 2015 recentred long-established critiques of knowledge production, epistemic violence and ontological dehumanisation. Across the world, a push for curriculum change, particularly within universities, has brought to the fore not just the problematique of a science driven by Eurocentricism, but also a push for deep introspection amongst Europeans as a dominant group.

This drive to decolonise has especially caught on amongst the youth who find in it an aspiration for an alternative world, or a world that reconnects with other parts, or a world where other futures are possible. Why are young people attracted to decoloniality, what should they do with it, what can it do for them and others, what kind of work needs to be done to decolonize?

In this paper, I develop the concept of Chatgyptism to explore the seduction of decoloniality amongst young people and the challenging question of how to move beyond recycling current critiques of Eurocentric knowledge production. I will draw on some of the critical reflexive work on epistemic disobedience that colleagues and myself at the Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA) have began to undertake since relaunching the Institute at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, in 2020.

Biography

Associate Professor Divine Fuh is a social anthropologist from Cameroon and Director of HUMA – Institute for Humanities at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. His work examines the politics of suffering and smiling amongst urban African youth; the political economy of African knowledge production, particularly publishing; and the ethics of Artificial Intelligence in African contexts. He has done work in Cameroon, Botswana, South Africa, and Senegal.

Dr. Divine Fuh