'Unsettling the Coloniality of Being', session #2
Friday 17th February | 4:30 - 6:00pm | Meeting room G.01, House 10 Cavendish Road, School of English In this session we will be continuing our discussion of one of Sylvia Wynter's most prominent essays 'Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation - An Argument' , with a particular focus on section 2 (283-303) . In this section, Wynter continues her exploration of the various shifts in the descriptive statements of the human and the respective order of knowledge to which they give rise. In this second part in particular, she details the invention of “the modern phenomenon of race as a new, [ostensibly] extrahumanly determined classificatory principle and mechanism of domination” (296). Through her distinctive ability to seamlessly bring together literature, biology, history and anthropology, she weaves together a fascinating and compelling analysis of the origins of our current conception of the human as ...