Anti-Black Ontologies of the ‘Human’ as a Problem for International Relations

Anti-Black Ontologies of the ‘Human’ as a Problem for International Relations

Organised by the Intersectional Humanities Research Hub, and the African Languages, Literatures and Cultures TORCH Network

Friday 3 May 2024, 2pm-3pm

Seminar Room, Radcliffe Humanities Building

Online and In person

Register to join the seminar online

Speaker: Ola Osman (University of Cambridge)

Moderated by Dorothée Boulanger (University of Oxford), and Cinthya Cecilia Alvarado Rivera (University of Oxford)

In exploring the conventional treatment of the transatlantic slave economy and 'post-colonial armed rebel movements in Africa' as separate phenomena, this talk challenges the disciplinary boundaries of International Relations (IR). Drawing on Clausewitz’s notion of war as 'politics by other means,' this talk interrogates how the enduring legacies of colonialism and racial slavery shape contemporary systems, ideologies, and scholarly methods in IR. I propose an epistemic shift to understand Africa's 'unending' wars not merely as puzzles but as manifestations of historical and systemic racial injustices, particularly reflecting on U.S. plantation racism's global influence. The case of Liberia, with its unique history as a settlement for emancipated Africans, serves as a critical site for re-evaluating the broader impacts of the slave trade on continental African communities. Despite extensive historical literature, the analysis of race and racialization within these dynamics remains meagre. This talk aims to address these critical gaps by drawing on the theoretical protocols of Afro-pessimism to comprehend the geopolitical landscape of Liberia, and it suggests new terrains for understanding the influence of geopolitics on post-conflict situations in sub-Saharan Africa.

Biography:

Ola Osman is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge's Center for Multi-Disciplinary Gender Studies and a Gates Scholar (2019). Her doctoral research maps the continuities between transatlantic slavery, its attendant racial logics, and their relation to the role ethnicity played in the Liberian civil war. She completed her MSt in Women’s Studies at the University of Oxford, where she was a Clarendon Scholar. She is also the Co-Founder and facilitator of the Race Talks Seminar Series, based in the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies.

Online registration closes 15 minutes before the start of the event. You will be sent the joining link within 48 hours of the event, on the day and once again 10 minutes before the event starts.

Intersectional Humanities, African Languages, Literatures and Cultures Network