Jakob-Fugger-Zentrum
21st Century Solutions from No Man's Land: A Framework for a More Sustainable Planet from Ancient Africa - Tsitsi Dangarembga in Augsburg
Tsitsi Dangarembga in Augsburg
The International Visiting Professorship at the Jakob Fugger Centre offers students and teachers of the University of Augsburg as well as interested citizens the opportunity to experience internationally renowned personalities from politics, business, science and the arts in Augsburg. With lectures, seminars and discussions on central questions of our time, the International Visiting Professorship promotes exchange between lecturers, the University of Augsburg and the municipal community. The International Visiting Professorship is a joint initiative of the faculties of humanities, cultural studies, social sciences and the Jakob-Fugger-Zentrum.
With writer, playwright and filmmaker Tsitsti Dangarembga from Zimbabwe, we have succeeded in winning a significant author and director of recent African cinema for the international guest lectureship in the summer semester of 2025. Her lectures in Augsburg will focus on the topic ‘21st Century Solutions from No Man's Land: A Framework for a More Sustainable Planet from Ancient Africa’. The lectures will be held in English.
Lecture Series: 21st Century Solutions from No Man's Land: A Framework for a More Sustainable Planet from Ancient Africa
This lecture series proposes utility in for finding solutions to contemporary challenges in Africa's development trajectory. It traces some key features of Africa's encounter with global Europe in the age of modernity and manifestation of these into the now where the notions of "meta-colonisation" is invoked to account for crises in government in politically independent African countries. It considers the notion of social independence and reflects on the extent to which this may be said to exist in a context where moving images narrative increasingly exerts hegemonic socialising pressure. It explores an ancient existential framework of African Bantu-language speaking cultures to suggest a socio-cognitive framework for more sustainable human behaviour in a global context of "meta-colonisation".
Events: 21st Century Solutions from No Man's Land: A Framework for a More Sustainable Planet from Ancient Africa
May 27, 2025, 6:30 p.m.
Counting the Cost: How the Age of Discovery Delivered Human Society to the Now.
Universität Augsburg, Gebäude H (Jura), Hörsaal 1009
This lecture considers the questions "What is colonialism? Has it ended? Where if anywhere might it still be practised How?" by situating the ideological impulse for southward expansion of Europe in the Doctrine of Discover which emerged in western Europe at the end of its middle ages. It characterises this Doctrine of Discovery as a shared rationalisation by the Western European Christian Church and the region's political leadership of the economic policy of the time, a project continued by the philosophy of the Enlightenment. It proposes the notion of "meta-colonisation" in answer to the questions posed.
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June 5, 2025, 6:30 p.m.
Decolonise the Rest of Us: An Example from Mainstream Cinema
Rokokosaal der Regierung von Schwaben, Fronhof 10, 86152 Augsburg
This lecture considers cinema and other moving images narrative as a potent force for constructing subjectivities and thereby identities. It explores how this powerful medium was deployed in support of western European expansionism in modernity, and how, given the global slide to the right of recent years, Europe is left vulnerable by an ongoing expansionist logic of the moving images industry. The lecture reflects on the question: "What can be done to fulfil cinema's, and other moving images narrative's potential as a medium of democratic construction and consolidation?
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June 6, 2025, 10:00 a.m.
Workshop für Master- und Promotionsstudierende
Universität Augsburg, Gebäude D, Raum 4056
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June 24, 2025, 6:30 p.m.
Ubuntu 2.0: Five Ways of Being for a More Sustainable Future
Rokokosaal der Regierung von Schwaben, Fronhof 10, 86152 Augsburg
This lecture presents the Bantu language speaking culture's philosophy of being human, "Ubuntu", which arose over several millennia as a result of the social cohesion needs of societies in flux on the African continent. It identifies five foundational elements of the ubuntu philosophy and considers how these elements may possess utility in contributing to building a foundation for meeting some of human society's named contemporary existential challenges.
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About the speaker
Tsitsti Dangarembga's 1988 debut novel “Nervous Conditions” (2019) was included in the BBC's list of “100 Books that Shaped the World” in 2018. Her novel “This Mournable Body” (2021) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020. “The Book of Not” (2022) concluded the novel trilogy, which tells of the upbringing and life of a woman striving for self-determination in post-colonial Zimbabwe. Tsitsi Dangarembga has been committed to freedom and women's rights as well as political change in Zimbabwe for many years. She has headed the Creative Arts for Progress in Africa Trust since 2009. She has received numerous awards, including the 2021 PEN Pinter Prize, the PEN International Award for Freedom of Expression and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, in 2022 she was a member of the Berlinale jury and was honored with the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize 2022 from Yale University.