Drawing from various radical anti-colonial thinkers, the talk will posit a history of liberalism and its deep relationship to illiberalism, raising questions of the figure of the human and of life itself.

We live in a tumultuous world in which there is the regularisation of death. We live in a world in which the stories of human life are told in  tales of death. Is this a new conjuncture? Are we at the end of neoliberalism? How did we get here? Are there histories  which have morphed into a dangerous present? 

This talk will attempt to think  through our current moment by arguing that perhap one element of  the core of the present catastrophic crisis are the ways in which the figure of the human and life itself has been configured. Drawing from various radical anti-colonial thinkers  the talk will posit a history of liberalism and its deep relationship to illiberalism.  

Meet our speaker and chair

Anthony Bogues is the Asa Messer Professor of Humanities and Africana Studies at  Brown University, where he is the inagural director of the Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. He is the author and editor of 11 books and a curator of Caribbean and African Diasporic art. He has curated shows in  the Caribbean, South Africa and the USA and has produced three film documentaries. He is currently a distinguished visiting professor at the University of Johannesburg and a visiting professor at LSE.  

Sara Salem is is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Co-Director of LSE Human Rights at LSE. Her main research interests include political sociology, postcolonial studies, Marxist theory, feminist theory, and global histories of empire and imperialism.