The end of Apartheid in South Africa coincided with a renewed drive to expand our definition of the human and to reimagine democracy as a community of life.
During the first decade of democracy, South Africa became a model of how to dismantle a racist state, achieve justice through reconciliation, equality through economic redress, and freedom through the transformation of the law and the restoration of a variety of rights, including the right to dignity. Thirty years into democracy, what remains of the dream of disentangling the old nexus between democracy and necropolitics?
The day after receiving the Holberg Prize in Bergen, Holberg Laureate Achille Mbembe (https://holbergprize.org/en/holberg-prize/prize-winners/achille-mbembe) will join Sindre Bangstad in conversation at the House of Literature in Oslo. The conversation topic is chosen by the Laureate. The event is open to the public, but registration is required. Watching the livestream does not require registration.
This event ends the 2024 Holberg Week, which takes place from 4 to 7 June, in Bergen and Oslo.
Achille Mbembe
Achille Mbembe is the 2024 Holberg Laureate. Mbembe is a Research Professor of History and Politics at Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Witwatersrand. He is also Director of the Innovation Foundation for Democracy. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the British Academy, Mbembe is the author of ten books and his work has been translated into 17 languages. His latest book is La communauté terrestre (Paris, La Découverte, 2023).
Sindre Bangstad
Sindre Bangstad is an anthropologist and Research Professor at KIFO (Institute For Church, Religion And Worldview Research) in Oslo, Norway. He was the Stanley Kelley Jr. Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Teaching of Anthropology at Princeton University, USA 2022-23. Bangstad has undertaken ethnographic fieldwork on Muslims in Cape Town, South Africa. Bangstad has co-authored the introduction to a selection of essays by Achille Mbembe in Norwegian translation published as Nekropolitikk og andre essays (Cappelens Upopulære Skrifter, 2022).
