Freedom Time : Negritude, Decolonization, And The Future Of The World

October 7, 2015 Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World

A panel discussion with Gary Wilder, Etienne Balibar, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, moderated by Bachir Diagne

Gary Wilder’s book Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Duke University Press, 2015) reconsiders decolonization from the perspectives of Aimé Césaire (Martinique) and Léopold Sédar Senghor (Senegal) who, beginning in 1945, promoted self-determination without state sovereignty. As politicians, public intellectuals, and poets they struggled to transform imperial France into a democratic federation, with former colonies as autonomous members of a transcontinental polity. In so doing, they revitalized past but unrealized political projects and anticipated impossible futures by acting as if they had already arrived.

Gary Wilder is Director, Mellon Committee on Globalization and Social Change and Professor, Ph.D. Program in Anthropology and Ph.D. Program in History, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Joining him for this panel discussion are Etienne Balibar (Visiting Professor at the ICLS and Department of French, Columbia) and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (University Professor in the Humanities, Columbia), with Bachir Diagne (Chair of Department of French and Professor of Philosophy, Columbia) as moderator.

Event co-sponsored by the Columbia Maison Française, Institute of African Studies, and Institute for Comparative Literature and Society.