Public Lecture: Anton Wilhelm Amo: In-between Life Worlds; Speaker: Stefanie Bognitz

Abstract:

This lecture revisits the scholarship on Anton Wilhelm Amo, the first and only philosopher in early Enlightenment Europe born on the continent of Africa. It dwells on a selection of his network of interlocutors, mentors, and history of ideas that informed Amo’s life and thought. By returning to the worlds that shaped his intellectual journey, the lecture highlights source documents from archival research alongside anthropological inquiry in Axim and Shama in today’s Ghana, following Amo’s movements between Africa and Europe to illuminate his intellectual life. In doing so, it proposes new ways of un/knowing Amo, recovering lost biographies, forgotten conversations, and the possibility of memory beyond the margins of Enlightenment history.

Stefanie Bognitz (PhD) is a social anthropologist. Her regional expertise, professional experience and theoretical concern cover aspects of legal, political, applied, public and critical anthropology spanning contexts in South Africa, Rwanda including the Great Lakes region of Africa and more recently Ghana and Germany. As an Individual Fellow at the Median Centre for Advanced Study in Africa she works on a book manuscript entitled “Anton Wilhelm Amo: In-Between Lifeworlds”. Her publications include: Bognitz, Stefanie 2024a. Anton Wilhelm Amo: Signposts of a Precarious Biography. Special Issue: Spectres of Anton Wilhelm Amo, guest-edited by Fazil Moradi and Stefanie Bognitz. Janus Unbound: Journal of Critical Studies 4 (1): 55-64, and Bognitz, Stefanie 2024b. Anton Wilhelm Amo: A Biography In-Between Worlds. Special Issue: Spectres of Anton Wilhelm Amo, guest-edited by Fazil Moradi and Stefanie Bognitz. Janus Unbound: Journal of Critical Studies 4 (1): 65-76.

This lecture is open to the public.

For virtual participation via Zoom, please use the following link:

https://uni-freiburg.zoom-x.de/j/69710225655?pwd=qAaywaQOeODkwUvgfNb1k8WrwhfdhM.1

Meeting-ID: 697 1022 5655
Code: YV5j8AdHT