Public Lecture: From the African University we no longer want, to the one we will unavoidably build, Speaker: Abdorahmane Seck (Université Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis)

Abstract:
From China to Africa, passing through Europe… are we not all wise? do we not all dance and sing? do we, indisputably, take care of ourselves, then? Taking up this simple common sense, I draw the two objectives that I intend to achieve in this presentation. Firstly, to draw a critical and epistemological reflection on the possible meaning, possibilities and virtues of the academy’s knowledge in the context of African realities. Secondly, and consequently, to do so from an experiential and heuristic approach that deliberately disregards the academic exercises of method and their corollaries. Corollaries being, among other problems, the maintenance of analogous forms of power relationships and validation, of hierarchies of legitimacy; and the perpetuation of the systemic imbalances that characterize the brutal interplay of international relations.

Abdourahmane Seck is a Faculty Member of the Department of the Center of social science studies of religion at Gaston Berger University- Senegal. Abdourahmane Seck has multidisciplinary background encompassing philosophy, anthropology and modern and contemporary African history. He has widely published on Islam, migration, and the question of the in-commons, in Africa (West Africa – Senegal). Alongside, Dr Seck has been active in building concrete links, through “Third places”, between academic spaces and community initiatives for resilience. In 2020, during the first outbreak of Covid-19, he co-founded the Groupe d’Action et d’Etude Critique -Afrique. A decolonial collective based in Saint-Louis, Senegal.