As part of the Fighting Racism lecture series, we are honoured to have Kehinde Andrews who will talk about his latest book 'The New Age of Empire'. Tundé Adefioye will introduce.
The New Age of Empire takes us back to the beginning of the European Empires, outlining the deliberate terror and suffering wrought during every stage of the expansion, and destroys the self-congratulatory myth that the West was founded on the three great revolutions of science, industry and politics. Instead, genocide, slavery and colonialism are the key foundation stones upon which the West was built, and we are still living under this system today: America is now at the helm, perpetuating global inequality through business, government, and institutions like the UN, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. The West is rich because the Rest is poor. Capitalism is racism. The West congratulations itself on raising poverty by increments in the developing world while ignoring the fact that it created these conditions in the first place, and continues to perpetuate them. The Enlightenment, which underlies every part of our foundational philosophy today, was and is profoundly racist. This colonial logic was and is used to justify the ransacking of Black and brown bodies and their land. The fashionable solutions offered by the white Left in recent years fall far short of even beginning to tackle the West's place at the helm of a racist global order. Offering no easy answers, The New Age of Empire is essential reading to understand our profoundly corrupt global system. A work of essential clarity, The New Age of Empire is a groundbreaking new blueprint for taking Black Radical thought into the twenty-first century and beyond. Kehinde Andrews is Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University. His latest book is The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule World, published by Penguin Allen Lane in 2021. He also wrote Black to Black: Retelling Black Radicalism for the 21st Century and Resisting Racism: Race, Inequality and the Black Supplementary School Movement and is editor of the Blackness in Britain book series with Bloomsbury. Kehinde has written opinions pieces for outlets including the Guardian, Independent, Washington Post and CNN. He is founder of the Harambee Organisation of Black Unity; and editor-in-chief of Make it Plain Tundé Adefioye is a performing arts dramaturg and lecturer. He is a Nigerian-American based in Belgium. He co-founded the youth platform Urban Woorden in Leuven (BG) and was awarded the Prize for Cultural Education by the Flemish Government. In 2016, he began working as “city-dramaturg” for KVS in Brussels. He has done dramaturgy for projects including Malcolm X and (Not) My Paradise. In 2019, he made his directorial debut with Contact Theatre Manchester, with the piece Old Tools > New Masters ≠ New Futures. Additionally, he is a lecturer of Cultural Criticism and US Popular (Black) Visual Culture at St Lucas Antwerp Art college.
Make sure to register for this lecture!
This Reason and Engage lecture series was created in collaboration with BIRMM and many other partners: deMens.nu, Humanistisch Verbond - department Brussels, Wtnschp, Crosstalks, WeDecolonizeVUB, UPV, Citizenne, The World needs you, Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union & De Wetenschapswinkel - Brussels.
© Picture Birmingham City university
