Norman Ajari: Hosts of the Dead. Black Thought as Necromancy
University of Nebraska Omaha
Barbara Weitz Community Engagement Center
6400 University Dr S, Omaha, NE 68182
Room 201/205
Hosts of the Dead. Black Thought as Necromancy
Lecture by philosopher/theorist Norman Ajari
Respondent: Nikitah Okembe-RA Imani
This event will take place in-person with limited capacity and on Zoom. RSVP + face coverings required.
Limited free parking is available in Lot E. MAP
Join us to hear philosopher/theorist Norman Ajari delve into the notion of Black thought as necromancy. This provocatively fertile notion reconfigures corporeal hospitality by welcoming untold trades and liberatory intimacies between the living and the non-living. Respondent Dr. Nikitah Okembe-RA Imani will respond to the lecture, offer insights, and share a few questions. This talk launches the four-part lecture series that accompanies I don’t know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality.
In 1814, in the newly sovereign kingdom of Haiti, Baron de Vastey published The Colonial System Unveiled, the first systemic critique of colonialism written from the perspective of the colonized. Calling out the former French colonists, he describes his intellectual endeavor as follows: “I shall awaken the remains of the numerous victims you thrust into the grave and borrow their voices so that I might unveil your foul deeds. I shall exhume those poor wretches you buried alive.” If necromancy is defined as the ritual or magic practice of communicating with the deceased, endangering the frontier between life and death, then historically, modern Black critical thought could be defined as a singular form of necromancy. Drawing from examples from the period of chattel slavery through the 21st century, I will discuss both the constancy of invocations of the dead throughout the history of Black thought, it liveliness and numerous functions. Because of the ever-present proximity of execution, the difficulties to mourn the dead, and distinctive religious and artistic imaginaries of the hereafter, which all defined their existence, people of African descent have often re-imagined necromancy as first philosophy. In the process, the haunting proximity of death is turned into an opportunity for humanization and empowerment.
Image: (left) Norman Ajari. Photo by Vice Leaman.
Norman Ajari is Lecturer in Francophone Black Studies at the University of Edinburgh. He holds a PhD from the University of Toulouse, France. His research interests comprise critical race theory, Africana philosophy, Black male studies and continental philosophy. His first book, La Dignité ou la Mort: Éthique et politique de la race, was published in 2019. It was translated into Spanish; an English translation is forthcoming by Polity Books. He has lectured internationally, in academic and artistic institutions including Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Bozar (Brussels), Philarmonie de Paris, University of Southern California, CUNY’s Graduate Center. He is a member of the Frantz Fanon Foundation’s international board.
Nikitah Okembe-RA Imani is Professor and former Chair of Black Studies at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Dr. Imani earned his BSFS in International Politics, Law, and Organization from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, an M.A. in Political Science and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Florida. Dr. Imani’s scholarly books and articles concentrate on Africana societies, cultures, spiritualities, and worldviews and their implications for the African diaspora and the world.
Join us for upcoming lectures in the series:
March 3: Sophie Lewis: What Goes Around Comes Around: Fleshy Toxicities Return Home as Kin
March 10: Irina Aristarkhova: Technics of Self-Welcome in Contemporary Art
March 17: Deirdre Cooper Owens: Slavery’s Hospitality and the Extraction of the Black Body
Developed by curator Sylvie Fortin in collaboration with UNO Medical Humanities/Ted Kooser Center for Health Humanities, this lecture series is co-presented by Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and UNO Medical Humanities/Ted Kooser Center for Health Humanities and funded, in part, by Humanities Nebraska.
I don’t know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality and its related public programs are generously supported, in part, by:
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