Kontak:Nel-Mari Loock
- 021 808 2652
Plek: Seminar Room, 2nd Floor, Adam Small Theatre, 15 Victoria Street, Stellenbosch
On this occasion Sylvia Tamale
professor and coordinator of the Law, Gender and Sexuality Research Centre,School of Law at Makerere University
and STIAS fellow will present a talk with the title:
Peeling away the layers of colonization:
The case of the African academy
Abstract
Any
discussion of decolonization must first grapple with the content and
intent of coloniality. Coloniality is manifested at two fundamental but
interlinked levels. The first involved the expropriation of indigenous
worlds by imperial colonizers. Such expropriation included the
corralling of indigenous peoples and their ecological spaces for the
benefit of imperialism. It ended with formal independence but the
extraction and exploitation of indigenous worlds continues today through
neoliberal capitalism and globalization. Second level coloniality is
much more insidious and dangerous. It involves the colonization of the
mind, patterns of knowledge and social structures of indigenous
peoples. Historically, the African Academy has, if unwittingly, been
key in facilitating level two coloniality. The lecture addresses ways
that Africa's academies can break free of colonial legacies and
domination. It discusses five layers or sub-systems of colonization
that we have to painstakingly peel away in the second-level
decolonization of our institutions of higher learning. Those layers lie
on a potent kernel, which is the engine that pumps fuel into the veins
of the layers. That kernel is called internalized colonialism.
Consequently, the lecture commences with a brief discussion of how internalized colonialism operates before tackling the five layers that we need to peel away from their launch engine in decolonizing the Academy.
Sylvia Tamale is
a leading African feminist, multidisciplinary scholar and Coordinator
of the Law, Gender and Sexuality Research Centre based at the School of
Law, Makerere University in Uganda. Prof Tamale was the first female
Dean of Law in Uganda and has been a visiting professor at several
universities including Oxford, Pretoria and Zimbabwe. Prof Tamale
combines her academic scholarship with activism and adopts a critical
approach to the Law that aims at enhancing students' transformative
personal growth and agency. She has served on several national and international boards, including the Global Commission on HIV and the Law. She is the author of numerous publications, including the African Sexualities Reader which she edited in 2011.
Prof Tamale is currently a fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute of
Advanced Studies (STIAS) where she is developing a book on Decolonizing
and Reconstructing Africa: An Afro-Feminist-Legal Perspective.