Ecopolis 2022

Colonisation as exploitation of people and nature

Date:

15 Oct 2022 - 16:00

Place:

Ancienne Belgique - Anspachlaan 110, 1000 Brussel

Language:

English (simultaneously translated into French and Dutch)

Writers and artists from different backgrounds discuss the ongoing suppression of land, nature and people and offer alternatives.

Colonalisation is more than a system of dominance over a population and territory. ‘Coloniality’ as a conceptual framework makes a single system of thought exclusive : western man dominating nature and other population groups has erased other ways of being and the connectedness with the more-than-human-world. What is called ‘development’ today, is often a continuation of the colonial process of appropriation and suppression of land, nature and people.

In this panel discussion, writers and artists from various backgrounds will discuss what this means and will focus on the many narratives that survived colonialism while offering alternatives. They will talk about what the ’decolonialisation’ movement involves.

With: Dalilla Hermans, Bayo Akomolafe, Jumana Emil Abboud, Mihnea Tănăsescu and Olave Nduwanje (moderator)

ECOPOLIS 2022: MULTIPLE (HI)STORIES, MULTIPLE FUTURES

The panel discussion is part of the program of Ecopolis 2022: Multiple (hi)stories, multiple futures.

Jumana Emil Abhoud is a Palestinian artist who reflects on the connectedness of human with more-than-human entities using a variety of story telling practices. She examines themes of dispossession and memory through contemporary stories, mythologies and folklore.

Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.) is rooted in the Yoruba people and in a more than-human world. He is a partner, father of two, son and brother. He is a celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist and author of two books: These Wilds beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell Our Own Story: the Lions of Africa Speak. Besides, he is founder of The Emergence Network and host to the online post-activist course We Will Dance with Mountains.

Dallila Hermans is a journalist, author, playwright and podcast host. In 2017, her book Brief aan Cooper en de wereld was published. She contributed to the ‘Zwart’ publication in 2018 and later that year, she published the children’s book Brown Girl Magic and in 2019 the thriller Black-out. In 2020, Het laatste wat ik nog wil zeggen over racisme was published and also that year she made her debut as a playwright for NTGent with Her(e), followed by a second play, Us, (k)now, two years later. Dalilla writes columns for the daily De Standaard and has hosted the Keihard podcast together with Jozefien Daelemans since 2021.

Mihnea Tănăsescu is a political theorist in the Political Science department of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium. He has worked in political ecology and the environmental humanities, on topics ranging from the legal and political representation of nature to the politics of nature restoration. His most recent books (2022) are Understanding the Rights of Nature and Ecocene Politics.

Burundi-born Olave Nduwanje is a published author, legal scholar, educator (anti-racism, LGBTQI+ rights, anti-capitalism, disability rights, anti-ecocide, etc.), curator and facilitator. Nduwanje has provided literary contributions to the following titles: Zwart-Afro-Europese literatuur uit de Lage Landen(2018), De Goede Immigrant (2020) and Being Imposed Upon (2020). She has been based in Brussels since 2019.

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