Dekolonisierung als Praxis?! Zwischen Academia, Gesellschaft und Aktivismus

Studierende der Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie (FU Berlin) im Gespräch mit Adela Taleb und Ibou Diop

In its contribution to the ongoing lecture series "Decolonizing Anthropology - A self-critical appraisal of the current state of research and teaching", students from Freie Universität Berlin meet with Adela Taleb and Ibou Diop in a participatory roundtable discussion to address decolonisation from a perspective that expands beyond university. The aim of this exchange is to drift away from academia and its neocolonial limitations and discuss themes such as the legitimacy and radical restructuring of modes and institutions of knowledge production, the artificially created divisions amongst disciplines, collaborative work with activist groups, and the possibility of multimodality and interdisciplinary strategies to actually change and decolonize both academia and the ‘real world’.

Adela Taleb is an anthropologist and currently PhD candidate in European Ethnology at Humboldt University Berlin. She is also a founding member of the Amo Collective Berlin that since 2020 has been conducting performative city tours under the label of „Decolonial Flânerie“. In 2022, she completed her training in Storytelling in Arts and Education at Universität der Künste, Berlin, and has since been exploring ways of using artistic and performative modes of knowledge production in anthropological research. Adela’s research interest lies in configurations of “race” and “religion,” processes of Europeanization and practices of space-making and decolonization.

Ibou Diop is a literary scholar, curator, and cultural historian. He is a jury member of Resonance – A Festival of Black German-Language Fiction, curated by Sharon Dodua Otoo. Currently, Ibou is responsible for developing a concept of reappraising and remembering Berlin’s colonial past on behalf of the Berlin Senate (Gesamtstädtisches Aufarbeitungs- und Erinnerungskonzept zur Geschichte und zu den Folgen des Kolonialismus des Landes Berlin).

Please note: The round table discussion will be held in German, there will be a live English translation. This hybrid event forms part of the lecture series “Decolonizing Anthropology. A Self-Critical Appraisal of the Current State of Research and Teaching”, for more information and registration, please see https://boasblogs.org/decolonizinganthropology-info/about/. Online participation via Webex is possible.