In Conversation with Bayo Akolomafe

12 May In Conversation with Bayo Akolomafe

During the second half of 2022, Bayo Akomolafe and I had a series of recorded Zoom conversations, with my Institute colleague Janet Wootten spurring us on, Bayo and I both wanted to make these conversations public. and you can find slightly edited transcripts of them here, titled A Meandering Search for Method: Becoming Human in a Post-Human World.

We two, Bayo and Lois, come from different cultural and political traditions and environments and, as you will see, speak quite different languages. What fun we had creating meaning together!

We share our conversation with you hoping that you will enjoy and/or be provoked not only by what we say but equally by how we play and dance with each other. Please write back with your comments and questions!

from our conversations…

The badge of honor of victimization (and trauma’s misplaced role in creating that) draws our attention away from what’s actually going on whether or not the person is victimized or not. 

So as the space for the citizen shrinks, the only other space that might be inhabited is the space of the victim.

So even human-centeredness is a performative dismissal, a performative turning away from all the voices, not just a poly-vocality, but a transcorporality that is already at work when we claim to be the center.

It seems that there is a sense in which the world is inviting us to a different form of participation within language that doesn’t privilege understanding, so to speak.

Do I have to imagine that a tree has feelings before I decide not to cut it down?