January 24, 2018 ALL

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Today: Lost in Translation Reading Group

Lost in Translation Reading Group

All interested students, faculty, and staff are warmly invited to the first meeting of the Lost in Translation Reading Group Wednesday, January 24, at 6 pm, in in the Philosophy Department’s Shula Chair Conference Room (AD B08).

Hosted by the faculty members of the Department of Philosophy and sponsored by the Shula Chair in Philosophy, the Lost in Translation Reading Group offers our campus community the opportunity to read classical philosophical texts in their original language.

For the Spring 2018 semester, Dr. Nathalie Nya will lead the group in a study of Frantz Fanon’s _The Wretched of the Earth_ (in the French, _Les Damnés de la Terre_), his best known work before _Black Skin, White Masks_.

Frantz Fanon “was one of a few extraordinary thinkers supporting the decolonization struggles occurring after World War II, and he remains among the most widely read and influential of these voices. His brief life was notable both for his whole-hearted engagement in the independence struggle the Algerian people waged against France and for his astute, passionate analyses of the human impulse towards freedom in the colonial context. His written works have become central texts in Africana thought, in large part because of their attention to the roles hybridity and creolization can play in forming humanist, anti-colonial cultures. Hybridity, in particular, is seen as a counter-hegemonic opposition to colonial practices, a non-assimilationist way of building connections across cultures that Africana scholar Paget Henry argues is constitutive of Africana political philosophy” (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

_The Wretched of the Earth_ speaks to this Africana tradition mentioned above. In our reading group, we will make sure to survey some of the themes from Africana political philosophy, and address racially polemical issues, such as: the question regarding the political resistance of the colonized, the use of violence by the colonized in the decolonization process, the effects of colonialism and/or racism on the psyche of the colonized, the failed Europeanization of the colonized elites, and the sub/humanity of the colonizer.

During our first meeting, we will ascertain the number of people interested in taking part in the reading group, plan out the sections of the text on which to focus, and also survey members on future texts they wish to study.

The LT Reading Group is open to the entire university community. All members will receive complementary copies of the English and original language editions of the group’s chosen texts.

We hope to see you the evening of Wednesday, January 24th. Refreshments will be served. Please direct any questions to Dr. Nathalie Nya (nnathalie@jcu.edu) or Dr. Michael Eng (meng@jcu.edu).