Frieda Ekotto (University of Michigan) „Towards a Phenomenology of the Body“

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Darüber hinaus gibt es am 10.7. von 10-12 Uhr einen Workshop mit Frieda Ekotto, an dem interessierte Kolleg*innen (insbesondere auch Promovierende und Postdocs) gerne nach Anmeldung teilnehmen können: dramaturgies-afterlife@rub.de

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Frieda Ekotto

The University of Michigan

Towards a Phenomenology of the Body

“My final prayer:

O my body, make of me always a man who questions!”

Franz Fanon

Black Skin, White Masks (1952)

Zurura Zurura: The Smile Blooms is a visual philosophical essay. Grappling with how, or even if, a Black body  is able to represent  a site of power, I would like to raise a crucial question for us to consider: How are queer, Black queer bodies talked about? Is there an epistemology of queering blackness, a language, a new tool of reflection for a new grammar for a queer Black woman in the world? Attending to the possibility of this new epistemology which opens possibilities for a language that can articulate the experiences of Black LGBTQIA2S+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual and Two-Spirited) individuals. In my work, I am looking for ways to imprint the possibility of this new language in a way that changes the gaze  of my Black body as well as its grammar for future generations.

Frieda Ekotto

Lorna Goodison Collegiate Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies, Comparative Literature and Francophone Studies at the University of Michigan. As an intellectual historian and philosopher with areas of expertise in 20th and 21st-century Anglophone and Francophone literature and in the cinema of West Africa and its diaspora, she concentrates on contemporary issues of law, race and LGBTQIA2S+issues. Her primary research to date has focused on how law serves to repress and mask the pain of disenfranchised subjects; her intention in this work is to trace what cannot be said in order to address and expose suffering from a variety of angles and cultural intersections and reassess the position and agency of the dispossessed.  She is the author of multiple books, and numerous book chapters as well as many articles in prestigious literary journals. She is currently working on LGBTQIA2S+ issues, with an emphasis on Sub-Sahara African cultures within Africa as well as in Europe and the Americas. In addition to her academic work, she is also a creative writer. She received the Nicolàs Guillèn Prize for Philosophical Literature in 2014 and in 2015 she was awarded the Benezet Award for excellence in her field. In 2016, she was awarded the John H. D’Arms Faculty for Distinguished Graduate Mentoring in the Humanities at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In 2018, she was awarded an Honorary Degree at Colorado College. She has produced two documentaries in 2017 Vibrancy of Silence: A Discussion with My Sisters and in 2021 Zurura Zurura: A Smile Blooms as part of the ongoing research on Vibrancy of Silence: Images and Cultural Production of Sub-Saharan African Women. She was the President of Modern Languages Association (2023-2024).