On a rainy summer day in Berlin-Neukölln Edna Bonhomme, Moritz Gansen and Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss met for a ‘theory conversation’ initiated by Nacre Journal and loosely centered around the theme of its Issue 4, General Public. Planned to be held at a public garden in Rixdorf inspired by the work of the philosopher and educational reformer John Amos Comenius, due to the closure of the garden for maintenance work, the discussion ended up taking place in a nearby beer garden. The conversation was first published as a text here: https://nacre-journal.com/issue-4-general-public/

S4E4: Everything for Everyone

In this episode, Edna Bonhomme spoke with Bino from Wearebornfree! Empowerment Radio(WeRadio!). WeRadio Is an independent is a radio programme organized by Refugees & Friends to empower each other; it was formed throughout the German Refugee Resistance 2012. The group serves as a platform for all marginalized people like women, children, LGBTIQ, Black people and People of Color and others.

Website
https://wearebornfreeberlin.wordpress.com/category/radio/

S4E5: Born Free

Edna Bonhomme interviewed Shay-Akil McLean, Ph.D. (@Hood_Biologist. Shay-Akil is a Queer Trans masculine & gender queer man racialized as Black, on stolen Indigenous land, an educator, organizer, writer, public intellectual, human biologist, anthropologist & sociologist. Shay-Akil earned his Ph.D. from the UIUC School of Integrative Biology’s Program for Ecology, Evolution, & Conservation (PEEC). Shay-Akil studies Du Boisian sociology, STS/HASTS, race/ism, human health demography, evolutionary genetics, & theoretical population genetics. He holds degrees in biological anthropology (BA & MA) & sociology (BA & MA) which he uses to study bioethics, medical ethics, philosophy of biology, population genetics, evolutionary theory, health inequities, & knowledge production. As a scholar, Shay-Akil studies how systems of human practices produce the differential distribution of health, illness, quality of life, and death. He is also the founder of the free political education website decolonizeallthethings.com & the free scientific ethics website decolonizeallthescience.com.

SE4 E6 Decolonize All The Things with Shay-Akil McLean

Discussing the necessity for an ever-expanding intersectional climate justice movement, edna bonhomme and Indigenous lawyer and climate activist Yi Yi Prue are in conversation for this episode, expanding on Prue’s legal actions that took Germany to court for global warming, holding the German state accountable for the ongoing climate catastrophe, a crisis created by the Global North that has already created devastation and unlivable conditions around the world especially in the Global South. Prue shares more about her legal practice in Dhaka, Bangladesh, her journey as a climate activist, and her commitment to practicing climate justice.

Yi Yi Prue is an Indigenous lawyer and climate activist from Dhaka, Bangladesh. Prue advocates for the Indigenous perspectives of the Indigenous Marma and Munda Communities of Bangladesh and Nepal, who are heavily affected by climate change-related catastrophes, that are the result of historic colonial and current neocolonial exploitation. In January 2020, she successfully led an appeal at the German Institutional Court against the insufficient German climate protection measures.

S4E7: Taking Germany to Court: Legal Actions for Climate Justice & the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Fenja and Alina from the Black Student Union (BSU) at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin join edna bonhomme to share about organizing the BSU at the university. Expanding on the BSU starting in December 2020 and their first actions which included meeting with the Mittelbau (or department administration) at the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Alina and Fenja also share more about the BSU’s current action of an open letter of complaint to hold the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin accountable for anti-Black racism on all levels including the institute’s colonial inception and foundation as well as the ongoing coloniality of its structure and curriculum, everyday student experiences of racism and discrimination, university hiring practices, uses of racialized language within the classroom as well as the German education at large: Open letter of complaint about the conditions in the Seminar for African Studies of the Institute for Asian and African Studies (IAAW) of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. 

Fenja and Alina also expand on BSU’s ongoing work which includes launching a mentoring program for new students focused on creating networks of care and ways of sharing experiences at the HU, building community forms of support and exchange, working towards creating a safe pathways for Black students, and publishing stories about being a part of BSU. Fenja and Alina also share more about organizational uses of Blackness and histories of Blackness with an emphasis on contextualizing Blackness, discussing political Blackness in the UK, Blackness in Germany, Blackness in Nigeria, and Black Student Unions in the US (Mississippi Student Union) as well as direct-action, Black student-led organizations (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) during the Freedom Summer campaigns of 1964 and the US Civil Rights Movement. 

BSU Website: 
https://bsuhu.wordpress.com/

Open Letter of Complaint: 
https://www.change.org/p/frau-prof-dr-kunst-wir-fordern-diskriminierungskritische-afrikawissenschaften-an-der-hu-berlin

S4E8: Blackness as Organizing Tools & Principles: Black Student Union at HU Berlin

In this episode Edna Bonhomme is in conversation with Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro. Mba Bikoro's work analyses processes of power & science fictions in historical archives critically engaging in migrational struggles & colonial memory focusing on queer indigenous and feminist biopolitics. The artist creates immersive performative environments for alternative narratives and future speculations of colonial resistance movements led by African women of the German diaspora and indigenous communities. Sedimented in narratives of testimonial Black queer experiences of sonic nature archives, revolt, queering ecologies and postcolonial feminist experiences towards new monuments which reacts to the different tones of societies shared between delusions & ritual. The work offers complex non-binary readings pushing  new investigations about the architectures of racisms in cities, the archeologies of urban spaces & economies of traditional systems by exposing the limitations of technologies as functional memory records. She has developed frameworks of rituals and healing in performance work that often reveal the entangled colonial histories of migration at site-specific spaces to dismantle prejudices and organise accessible levels of consciousness through testimonial archives of local communities to build independant emancipatory tools for liberation, education, consciousness, intimacy and healing. 
She is lecturer in Curating Black Visual Cultures & Philosophy at TransArt Institute New York & Fine Arts practice at the University of Liverpool, artistic & curatorial supervisor of the Artists in Training Programme at the UdK and the University of Bergen Norway. She is Artistic Director of Nyabinghi_Lab Collective, recently curating the performance programme 'Radical Mutations' at Hebbel Am Ufer Theatre Berlin with Wearebornfree! Empowerment Radio and "Free State Of Barackia: 150 Years of Decolonial Urbanisms, Solidarities and New Berlin Utopias". She moderates the annual Berlinale Film Festival & currently has an Artistic Fellowship from the Goethe Institute In Bahia Salvador and is the TURN2 Award Fellow Curator at NCAI Nairobi. Her work was recently published in ARTE Twists series "Our Colonial Heritage" and Deutsche Welle TV in a series of short films on German Colonialism and Black Resistance. Her work has been featured in several international exhibitions and Biennales including the Havana Biennale (2019), Dak'art Biennale (2012; 2018), Venice Biennale (2016) and La Otra Biennale in Bogota (2013) and RAVVY Performance Biennale Yaoundé (2018).

S4E9: Our Histories are not Missing

lyonga and Lucas Odahara join edna bonhomme to talk about collectivizing around anticolonial activism of the Coalition of Cultural Workers against the Humboldt Forum (CCWAH) and BARAZANI.berlin and how their activism is oriented towards creating a space of resistance and community, acting in solidarity with long-term calls for repatriation.

The Coalition of Cultural Workers against the Humboldt Forum (CCWAH) formed in the summer of 2020. It is an open and constantly growing alliance of cultural workers based primarily in Berlin. BARAZANI.berlin uses the possibilities of virtual space to locate itself on the empty Schlossplatz in the center of Berlin. It occupies the lost wasteland of 2012 and uses it as a place of resistance; as a place of artistic practice; as a place of listening and creative utopia, where decolonial perspectives meet and are negotiated.

Over the past year, CCWAH and BARAZANI.berlin have been running together the physical space Spreeufer. A space of resistance and community on the riverbank opposite the Humboldt Forum.

https://ccwah.info
https://barazani.berlin

S4E10: The Coalition of Cultural Workers against the Humboldt Forum and BARAZANI.berlin

During this final episode of the season, Edna Bonhomme spoke with Zoé Samudzi.

This is Edna's last episode with the podcast after which Edna will continue to focus more on writing essays and books. You can get updates about Edna's work from www.ednabonhomme.com, Twitter  @jacobinoire, or Substack Newsletter Mobile Fragments https://ednabonhomme.substack.com/


Zoé Samudzi is a writer whose work has appeared in The New Inquiry, Verso, The New Republic, Daily Beast, Art in America, Hyperallergic, and other outlets. She is a contributing writer at Jewish Currents. Along with William C. Anderson, she is the co-author of As Black as Resistance: Finding the Conditions for Liberation (AK Press). Samudzi was a 2017 Public Imagination Fellow at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and holds a Ph.D. from the University of California San Francisco.

References
As Black as Resistance: https://www.akpress.org/as-black-as-resistance.html

The Holocaust Analogy: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3908-the-holocaust-analogy

Looking After: https://www.artforum.com/slant/zoe-samudzi-on-museums-and-human-remains-86153

The Paradox of Plenty: https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/otobong-nkanga-2-1234583810/

For some info on the Herero and Nama genocide, you can read more about it here: https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/herero-and-nama-genocide

S4E11: Putting Black Radical Theory into Practice

In part 1 of this inaugural episode, we invited Dr. Noa Ha and Prof. Dr. Tahani Nadim to discuss the relationship between German colonial history and Berlin—the metropole of that colonial past. We focus on Berlin’s street names and the Natural History Museum as spaces of remembrance and resistance. In this episode we ask ourselves, in what ways does colonialism continue to shape Berlin institutions and the city of Berlin itself?

S1E1: Decolonizing Berlin (Part 1)

In part 2 of this inaugural episode, we continue the conversation on coloniality in Berlin with Dr. Noa Ha and Prof. Dr. Tahani Nadim to interrogate how decolonization is currently being understood within Berlin institutions.  We also discuss our guests’ own positionalities  within academia, museums, and political organizations, as well as the decolonial and anti-colonial methodologies they employ in their work and activism.

S1E1: Decolonizing Berlin (Part 2)

Interview with Dr. Luiza Prado de O. Martins whose work engages with material and visual culture through the lenses of decolonial and queer theories. In this episode we talked about her artwork, Brazil, reproduction, and the climate crisis.

Luiza Prado: https://www.luiza-prado.com/about

Vilm Flusser Residency: https://transmediale.de/content/vil-m-flusser-residency-for-artistic-research-2019-luiza-prado-de-o-martins

S1E2: A Topography of Decoloniality

In this episode, edna bonhomme and Wendi Muse discuss the long history of leftists of color. Creator and co-host of the podcast Left POCket Project, Wendi explains how she uses the medium of podcasting to make the many histories of leftists of color from around the world accessible while also actively creating community, initiating the podcast as an interactive platform for co-reading, co-learning, and co-discussion. Rather than defining leftist movements by the language used, Wendi argues that leftist activism is a form of everyday engagement, putting leftism into action. She also shares her research on how the left in Brazil has been influenced by decolonizing movements in the former Portuguese colonies in Africa. In addition, she talks about her research on Afro-Latinx communities in Brazil and forms of white supremacy in Brazil, especially in the media, that actively construct Latinidad around whiteness rather than reflecting people of color who make up most of Brazil’s population. By looking to the histories of when power was successfully resisted, Wendi activates the past also as a source of hope for the future.  

Left POCket Project Patreon page: https://patreon.com/leftpoc (free books and additional content is available here)
Twitter: @LeftPOC; @MuseWendi
Facebook: @LeftPOC 
The LeftPOC podcast is available on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spreaker, Spotify, and Youtube ("LeftPOC")

---
Mentioned in the discussion:
Wendi's interview on The Dig Podcast (May 30, 2019): https://www.thedigradio.com/podcast/bernie-and-black-voters-with-malaika-jabali-and-wendi-muse/

"On the Imperative of Transnational Solidarity: A U.S. Black Feminist Statement on the Assassination of Marielle Franco" (March 23, 2018):
https://www.theblackscholar.org/on-the-imperative-of-transnational-solidarity-a-u-s-black-feminist-statement-on-the-assassination-of-marielle-franco/

S1E3: Leftism in Action: A History of Leftist People of Color

In this episode, Kristyna Comer is in conversation with Kiel Ramos Suarez, a PhD candidate in history at Linnaeus University. Kiel discusses her current research on the medicalization of homosexuality and the ongoing impact of Spanish and US colonial rule.

S1E4: Colonial Medicalization and Homosexuality in the Philippines

Dr. Alden Young is a political and economic historian of Africa. He is particularly interested in the ways in which Africans participated in the creation of the current international order. He is an assistant professor of African American Studies at UCLA and a member of the International Institute, affiliated with the International Development Studies Program. In 2019–2020, Young will be a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His first book "Transforming Sudan: Decolonization, Economic Development, and State Formation" was published by Cambridge University Press in December 2017. 

Photo:  Dan Komoda/Institute for Advanced Study

S1E5: Economics, Expertise, and Revolution in Postcolonial Sudan

In this episode, edna bonhomme and Professor Chakanetsa Mavhunga discuss the history of the African continent with relation to scientific, technological, and medical innovations. A center piece of this conversation is the role that philosophical traditions and space have in shaping the epistemology of knowledge. They also examine Africa's colonial history, the power of historical narrative, African women scientists, and the future of innovation on the African continent. Chakanetsa self-identifies as a critical thinker-doer, who deploys historical research in service of problem-solving. Chakanetsa is a tenured associate professor of science, technology, and society (STS) at MIT and the founder of Research || Design || Build, a village-based institute in rural Zimbabwe dedicated to promoting interdisciplinary problem-solving, innovation, and entrepreneurship among Africa’s rural poor.

MIT, Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society (STS)
https://sts-program.mit.edu/people/sts-faculty/c-clapperton-mavhunga/

RECENT PUBLICATIONS
The Mobile Workshop: The Tsetse Fly and African Knowledge Production (MIT Press, 2018)
What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa? (MIT Press, 2017)
Transient Workspaces: Technologies of Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe (MIT Press, 2014)

Image: "Technician in biotech laboratory" by IITA Image Library is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

S1E6: Towards an African Technological & Scientific Imaginary

This episode focuses on Black and African people who dedicate their creative practices and activist work to climate justice and sustainable futures. While the UN Climate Change Conference (COP25) is taking place in Madrid, edna bonhomme discusses the climate crisis with Rebecca Abena Kennedy-Asante from BLACK EARTH - BIPoC Environmental & Climate Justice Kollektiv Berlin, and Antoinette Yetunde Oni, an architectural designer and artist based in Lagos, Nigeria.

Photo by BLACK EARTH - BIPoC Environmental & Climate Justice Kollektiv Berlin 2019

S1E7: "Climate Justice Matters For Black Lives Now": Black Interventions in the Climate Crisis

In this episode, Dr. Duane Jethro discusses the ways that heritage sites are constructed and re-imagined through the senses with special emphasis on post-Apartheid South Africa and Germany.

Duane Jethro is a post-doctoral research fellow working in the Making Differences project at the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) Department of European Ethnology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. CARMAH was established in the Department for European Ethnology at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, in partnership with the Museum of Natural History Berlin and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, as part of the research award for Sharon Macdonald’s Alexander von Humboldt Professorship. His research looks at the mobilisation of post-colonial and decolonial language in the context of contested street renaming, heritage commodification, as well as heritage aesthetics and social difference in Berlin.

His book Heritage Formation and the Senses in Post-Apartheid South Africa is published by Bloomsbury Academic. The book references the pathbreaking, sensuous work of the historian and journalist Jacob Dlamini. See his book Native Nostalgia, here. It also frames South Africa’s fraught memory politics. 

Some of the organisations doing important black activist work in the city, especially in regards to colonial legacies marked in street names and sites:

Africavenir - http://www.africavenir.org/
Berlin Post-Kolonial - http://berlin-postkolonial.de/en/home-2 
Each One Teach One - https://www.eoto-archiv.de/
Institute for Schwarze Mensche in Deutschland - http://isdonline.de/

Image was photographed by edna bonhomme.

S1E8: Heritage Formation

In this episode, edna bonhomme and Dr. Christienna Fryar discuss the history of Britain and the Caribbean and what it means to be teaching 500 years of Black British history. Recognizing that Black British history has only recently starting to gain institutional support in the British academy, Dr. Fryar puts institutional practices in context, discussing how history departments have for so long separated the colonial history of the British Empire from British domestic history as well as marginalized histories of migration within the UK and intellectual contributions of Black Britons. Sharing her work on Jamaica postemancipation and Britain after the abolition of slavery in 1834, Dr. Fryar refutes and carefully unpacks the implications of the national myth of humanitarian Britain after abolition and exposes ongoing racism and imperial expansion after the end of slavery. Linking this myth and the division between the British imperial and domestic histories with the present-day realities in the Caribbean and for Black Britons, especially in reference to the recent Windrush crisis, Dr. Fryar addresses what is at stake when the colonial past and its aftermath are not fully accounted for.

Dr. Christienna Fryar is a historian of Britain and the Caribbean, focusing on Britain's imperial entanglements in the Caribbean region. Her work embeds modern British history within the fields of comparative slavery and emancipation, and she is finishing a book about disaster politics and imperial governance in postemancipation Jamaica. She occasionally comments—usually on Twitter—about the state of higher education in the US and the UK. She is also a 2020 AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker.

Credits
Interview, recording, and post-production by edna bonhomme
Assistance by Kristyna Comer

Image
Port Royal Street, West, Jamaica.' Jamaican Earthquake, 1907
Creative Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%27Port_Royal_Street,_West,_Jamaica.%27_Jamaican_Earthquake,_1907._Postcard._(7233469520).jpg

Music by NALALIONGIRL (442612, Attribution License, Creative Commons) and X3nus (450539, Attribution License, Creative Commons)

S2E3: What it means to be Black in the Union Jack

Will Fredo Furtado is a non-binary artist, writer and editor exploring power dynamics, cultural dislocation and the intersection of pop culture, decolonial thought, kuirness and technology. Born in Portugal of Guatemalan and Cape Verdean heritage, Will is based in Berlin, Germany. Since 2017 Will is the deputy editor of Contemporary And, an art platform focused on African perspectives, and previously the art and digital editor at Sleek, an art and fashion magazine. In their artistic practice Will Fredo Furtado works with images and text to explore decoloniality and Global South epistemologies. Will has exhibited with institutions and art projects including Ludwig Forum Aachen, Körnerpark Galerie Berlin, Supplement Projects Miami, 1.1 Basel, whitebox.art and Sharjah Film Platform.

Bibliography and Links
https://www.instagram.com/posa.suto/
http://www.carabantu.org/
https://www.instagram.com/redcomunitariatrans/
https://www.instagram.com/calleshortbus/

https://willfredo247.tumblr.com/
https://www.instagram.com/o_principe_das_trevas/
https://www.contemporaryand.com/?s=will+furtado
https://www.sleek-mag.com/author/will-furtado
https://frieze.com/contributor/will-furtado

S2E5 Apologies are not Enough

In this episode, edna bonhomme interviews Mihir about the Black Lives Matter movement, climate justice, the history of resistance in the Global South, the German left, and the power of internationalism. Mihir is a researcher with the group Anthropology of Global Inequalities at the University of Bayreuth where he also teaches courses in political anthropology. His current research project deals with social movements, race, class, and activism in St. Louis. Follow Mihir @mihirzabaan on Twitter, or Mihir.Sharma@uni-bayreuth.de 


This episode was edited and produced by edna bonhomme.
Music by MattiaGiovanetti and NALALIONGIRL from Freesounds.org through Creative Commons.


Groups mentioned in the podcast: 
Black Earth Berlin
BIPOC Environmental and Climate Justice Collective Berlin
Bloque Latinoamericano Berlin
Xart Splitta
ISD Berlin, Berlin Postkolonial, Black Lives Matter Berlin, EOTO
Reclaim the Power UK
Wretched of the Earth

Bibliography
Selected resources towards a decolonial “climate” praxis
„Climate Futures“. ZED Books, https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/climate-futures/. 

Jaskiran Dhillon, Tami Navarro, and Macarena Gómez-Barris in conversation on the politics and theory of climate change. Recorded at Verso Books in Brooklyn, September 13, 2018.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txtoe06ypY4

Senthuran Varatharajah: https://www.pact-zollverein.de/en/journal/senthuran-varatharajah-ecotopia

Comaroff, Jean, and John L. Comaroff. Theory from the South: Or, How Euro-America is Evolving Toward Africa. Routledge, 2016.

Estes, Nick. Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance. Verso, 2019.

Malm, Andreas. Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam-Power and the Roots of Global Warming. Verso (UK), 2015.

Verges, Francoise. “Racial Capitalocene.” Versobooks.com, https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3376-racial-capitalocene.

Yusoff, Kathryn. A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. University of Minnesota Press, 2018.

Schneider-Mayerson, Matthew, und Brent Ryan Bellamy, Herausgeber. An ecotopian lexicon. University of Minnesota Press, 2019.

https://www.aaihs.org/haitian-and-french-petrol-protests-in-the-age-of-climate-change/

S2E7 How do you decolonize everything?

In this episode, edna bonhomme interviews Hiba Ali and they discuss COVID-19, multimedia performance art, surveillance, global shipping, Amazon, and modes of healing. 

Hiba Ali is a digital artist, educator, scholar, DJ, experimental music producer and curator based across Chicago, IL, Austin, TX, and Toronto, ON. Her performances and videos concern surveillance, womxn of colour, and labour. She conducts reading groups addressing digital media and workshops with open-source technology. She is a PhD candidate in Cultural Studies at Queens University, Kingston, Canada. She has presented her work in Chicago, Stockholm, Toronto, New York, Istanbul, São Paulo, Detroit, Dubai, Austin, Vancouver, and Portland. She has written for THE SEEN Magazine, Newcity Chicago, Art Dubai, The State, VAM Magazine, ZORA: Medium, RTV Magazine, and Topical Cream Magazine.

Image, A still from we are living: workers liberation as environmental justice, YouTube 360 Video, 2020

Bibliography
Simone White, Of Being Dispersed
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women and Queer Radicals, Saidiya Hartman
River of Fire, Qurratulain Hyder
NTS: Nkisis (https://www.nts.live/shows/nkisi) and Fauzia (https://www.nts.live/shows/fauzia)
Decolonization is not a Metaphor, Tuck & Yang
Hito Steyerl, Duty-Free Art 
Artists: Saskia Sassen, Mariame Kaba, Simone Browne, Ruha Benjamin, Lisa Nakamura, Cedric Robinson, Lisa Nakamure, Lisa Parks, Saidiya Hartman, Diamond Stingily, Tabitha Rezaire, Sondra Perry, Nina Sarrelle, Joelle Mecedes,cAmina Ross, Liz Mputu, Hito Steyerl, Mika Rottenburg, Black Audio Film Collective, Otolith Group, John Akomfrah, Carrie Mae Weems
Detroit Digital Justice Coaliton: http://detroitdjc.org/
Mandy Harris Williams Reading Group - Algorithms of Oppression Reading Group, Women Center for Creative Work: https://www.feminist.ai/aoo-book-club
Toronto Digital Justice Lab : https://digitaljusticelab.ca/virtualgrounds
Abolition Futures Reading Group: https://abolitionistfutures.com/pre-conference-events/abolitionist-reading-discussion-group/reading-list/
NGHT SHFTS Festival: https://www.nghtshfts.org/

S2E8 I don't center domination

In this episode, edna bonhomme speaks with Thuc Linh Nguyen Vu about migration, cultural history, Vietnamese Polish relations, Black feminism, and African/Asian diasporas.

Thuc Linh Nguyen Vu is currently a postdoctoral fellow (Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin) in the Global History Division in the History Department at the Freie Universität in Berlin and will start her new position as a postdoctoral fellow at the Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET) at the University of Vienna in October. Linh earned her PhD from the European University Institute in Florence.

 

Linh is currently working on a book manuscript that examines the intersection of pedagogy, everyday practices of care and radical bonds of loyalty in the formation of the dissident milieu around Jacek and Grażyna Kuroń under state socialism in Warsaw, Poland. By investigating the wealth of activity that took place in the private realm, this manuscript brings into light complex political identities, critical pedagogies and an embodied set of practices that unsettle the division between the public and the private.

 

Simultaneously, Linh is developing her second book-length project that looks at how East-South solidarities between Poland and Vietnam, under the global Cold War, decolonization and socialism, were made and unmade by international collaboration, cultural transfers and everyday encounters between Vietnamese students and Poles. Zooming in on the micro-histories of socialist solidarities allows us to ask how the experiences of students of color in late socialist Poland fit into the larger picture of global cultural and educational collaboration.

DIA S2 E10 There is no one Vietnam

In this episode, edna bonhomme speaks with Dr. Natasha A. Kelly about Afrofuturism, Black feminism, German colonialism, and the word "Rasse" in the German language.

S3E2: Black Feminism is Intersectional Justice

This panel, entitled, "Revolutions from the Kitchen: On Technologies of Resistance and Radical Care," was part of the Alt_Cph20, co-produced with Salon Hysteria as part of the summer seminar series Hysterical Utopias, and curated by Ida Bencke. The conversation was between edna bonhomme, Luiza Prado de O. Martins, and Nazila Kivi on technologies of resistance and radical care. The talk is hosted by Alt_Cph20, Patterns in Resistance and co-produced with Salon Hysteria as part of the summer seminar series Hysterical Utopias.

LUIZA PRADO DE O. MARTINS
Is an artist and researcher engaging with material and visual culture through the lenses of decolonial and queer theories. O. Martins holds an MA from the Hochschule für Künste Bremen, and a PhD from the Berlin University of the Arts. She is a founding member of the Decolonising Design collective and the research duo A Parede. Her current artistic research project, titled “A Topography of Excesses,” starts from a call to re-appropriate the concept of excess in relation to gendered and racialized bodies in the modern/colonial gender system.
https://www.luiza-prado.com/

NAZILA KIVI
Is an independent scholar on reproduction and decoloniality, editor, essayist and co-founder of the feminist magazine Friktion. She teaches gender study courses, among others the course From Witches to Cyborgs: Gender, Race and Resistance.SALON HYSTERIA
Salon Hysteria is a space for next level conversations on society, politics and science.

edna bonhomme
Is an art worker, historian, lecturer, and writer whose work interrogates the archaeology of (post)colonial science, embodiment, and surveillance. A central question of her work asks: what makes people sick? As a researcher, she answers this question by exploring the spaces and modalities of care and toxicity that shape the possibility for repair. She has collaborated and exhibited critical multimedia projects in Berlin, Prague, and Vienna. In addition to her academic interests, Edna has written for publications such as Africa is a Country, Aljazeera, Analyis und Kritik, The Baffler, Daddy Magazine, Der Freitag, Mada Masr, The Nation Magazine, and more. Bonhomme earned her PhD in History of Science from Princeton University
https://www.ednabonhomme.com/

More information about Patterns of Resistance can be found here: https://altcph.dk/event/revolutions-from-the-kitchen-on-technologies-of-resistance-and-radical-care/

S3E3: Revolutions from the Kitchen

In this episode, edna bonhomme spoke with Natasha Marin, curator of "Black Imagination: Black Voices on Black Futures" (2020 McSweeney’s).

Natasha Marin (NONWHITEWORKS) is an antiracism consultant based in Seattle, specializing in communications, community building, and digital engagement. Marin is also the curator of Black Imagination: Black Voices on Black Futures (McSweeney's, 2020) and a conceptual artist whose people-centered projects have circled the globe since 2012 and have been recognized and acknowledged by Art Forum, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, NBC, Al Jazeera, Vice, PBS and others. BLACK IMAGINATION — a series of conceptual exhibitions amplifying, centering, and holding sacred a diverse sample of voices including LGBTQIA+ black youth, incarcerated black women, black folks with disabilities, unsheltered black folks, and black children is her bravest work thus far. Her viral web-based project, Reparations, engaged a quarter of a million people worldwide in the practice of "leveraging privilege," and earned Marin, a mother of two, death threats by the dozens. Find more online:  www.Black-Imagination.com

S3E5 Black Imagination

edna bonhomme interviews Tiffany Florvil and they discuss Black-led social movements in Germany, the history of German colonialism, and transforming academic institutions.

Bio
Tiffany N. Florvil is an Associate Professor of 20th-century European Women’s and Gender History at the University of New Mexico. She specializes in the histories of post-1945 Europe, the African/Black diaspora, social movements, feminism, Black internationalism, gender and sexuality, and emotions. She received her PhD in Modern European History from the University of South Carolina and her MA in European Women’s and Gender History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has published pieces in the Journal of Civil and Human Rights and The German Quarterly. Florvil has coedited the volume, Rethinking Black German Studies, and has published chapters in To Turn this Whole World Over, Gendering Knowledge in Africa and the African Diaspora, and Audre Lorde's Transnational Legacies. Her forthcoming manuscript, Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement with the University of Illinois Press, offers the first full-length study of the history of the Black German movement of the 1980s to the 2000s. 

She is a Network Editor of H-Emotions and a Network Editor and an Advisory Board member of H-Black-Europe. She serves on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee for the German Studies Association, the Editorial Board for Central European History, the Executive Board for the Journal of Civil and Human Rights, and the Advisory Board of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History (IFRWH). She is also an editor of the “Imagining Black Europe” book series at Peter Lang Press. Her next projects include a volume on Black Europe, examining the experiences of Shirley Graham Du Bois in Central Europe, and analyzing the activism of Black diasporic women in 20th-century Europe.

Florvil has wide-ranging interdisciplinary and intersectional interests and training in Modern European History, Black German Studies, African Diaspora Studies, Emotion/Affect Studies, Black Cultural Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her research interests include Black Europe, Black internationalism, Black intellectualism, global 1960s and the Cold War, space/Black geography, social movements, transnational feminisms, and African diasporic literature and culture. She works to excavate the narratives of Black Europeans, expanding our understanding of identity, belonging, and space. Her Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement focuses on the birth and evolution of the modern Black German movement of the 1980s to the 2000s. In it, she demonstrates how Black German women’s efforts at political activism involved intellectual, cultural, internationalist, and queer practices and strategies that shaped their larger diasporic movement. Using an array of sources from both sides of the Atlantic, Mobilizing Black Germany is one of the first books to provide a detailed history of the modern Black German movement.

Co-founder and Series Editor of "Imagining Black Europe," Peter Lang Press
Co-founder and Co-chair, Black Diaspora Studies Network, German Studies Association, 2016-2021
Co-founder, Advisory Board Member, and Network Editor, H-Black-Europe 
Co-founder and Network Editor, H-Emotions 
*Forthcoming Book: Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement (Illinois, 2020)
Edited Volume: Rethinking Black German Studies: Approaches, Interventions and Histories (Peter Lang, 2018)
*Latest Essay: "Anti-racism Protests and Black Lives in Europe" (June 2020)

S3E6 Mobilzing Black Germany

Season 3, Episode 7: Reading May Ayim through Poetic Revolutionaries in Berlin

This episode opens with spoken word poetess Savannah Sipho reading May Ayim’s poem titled “blues in Schwarzweiß” (“Blues in Black and White”) during a recent critical walking tour in Berlin called Dekoloniales Flanieren, or Decolonial Flaneur (August 21, 2020), organized by the Nachbarschaftsinitiative Anton-Wilhelm-Amo-Straße led by students, scholars, and professors from Humboldt University, which aimed to establish a broad coalition with activists, artists, Institute for European Ethnology, Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland (ISD), SAAVY Contemporary, and the recently established Decolonize Berlin to mobilize demands to change a racist street name in the Berlin District of Mitte called M*Straße or M Street—which is an abbreviated form of a street name that has been called out for its anti-Black racist language for well over 30 years—where the Institute for European Ethnology and other departments of Humboldt University are also located. After decades of activism and one day before Dekoloniales Flanieren took place,  the District of Mitte in Berlin announced on August 20th that M*Straße will be renamed to honor 18th-century philosopher, professor, jurist, and poet Anton Wilhelm Amo.

In conversation with Kristyna Comer, Savannah Sipho shares more about her reading of May Ayim’s poem during Dekoloniales Flanieren as well as more about her creative process and the transformative experience of writing and performing poetry while also acknowleding spaces and organizations led by the Black POCs in Berlin that continue to support and empower Black artists. 

This episode begins and ends with poetry: At the end of the episode, Savannah reads “exotik” by May Ayim and Decolonization in Action host edna bonhomme reads one of her own poems titled “Foremothers.” 

A special thanks to Savannah Sipho and edna bonhomme for contributing their readings to this episode.

— Biographies — 

Savannah Sipho

Savannah Sipho—born and raised in Berlin—is a 24-year-old student of Area Studies Asia/Africa. She was inspired by May Ayim's life and poetry to start writing as a young girl.

Identity, the array of emotions, racism, and life in Berlin are recurring themes in Savannah Sipho’s writing. 

She had her debut performance in May 2019.


edna bonhomme

edna bonhomme is an art worker, historian, lecturer, and writer whose  work interrogates the archaeology of (post)colonial science, embodiment, and surveillance. A central question of her work asks: what makes people sick? As a researcher, she answers this question by exploring the spaces and modalities of care and toxicity that shape the  possibility for repair. She has collaborated and exhibited critical multimedia projects in Berlin, Prague, and Vienna. In addition to her  academic interests, Edna has written for publications such as Africa is a Country, Al Jazeera, Analyis und Kritik, The Baffler, Daddy Magazine, Der Freitag, Mada Masr, The Nation Magazine, and more. Bonhomme earned  her PhD in History of Science from Princeton University.

www.ednabonhomme.com


— Show Credits —

Interview and Post-production

Kristyna Comer
Poetry

“blues in Schwarzweiß” by May Ayim, read by Savannah Sipho, recorded by Michael Westrich

“exotik” by May Ayim, read and recorded by Savannah Sipho

“Foremothers” by edna bonhomme, read and recorded by edna bonhomme
Images

Profile photograph by Leo Wolters; Courtesy of Savannah Sipho

Cover image: still image from video documentation by Thị Minh Huyền Nguyễn of Savannah Sipho’s reading of May Ayim’s “blues in Schwarzweiß” with Claire Irene Künzel, co-organizer of  Dekoloniales Flanieren who curated and introduced the third stop of the critical walking tour
Music

All music is from ﻿Freesounds.org (Creative Commons)

— Please visit www.decolonizationinaction.com for the complete show notes for all episodes. —

S3E7 Reading May Ayim through Poetic Revolutionaries in Berlin

In this episode edna bonhomme is in conversation with artist and writer Grace Ndiritu. Ndiritu has been engaged in “The Year of Black Healing” which is an artistic response to President Macron’s declaration that 2020 is the year of Africa in the entire French territory. In order to counterbalance the co-opting of Black Culture by politicians to promote their own agendas, Grace Ndiritu has declared that 2020 is in fact The Year of Black Healing. A year long programme of exhibitions, performances and talks in collaboration with different institutions, focusing on Ndiritu’s work and its relation to decolonization, spiritual practice, black and indigenous culture, neoliberalism and racism #georgefloyd.

The conversation was originally recorded for HAU Radical Mutation: On the Ruins of Rising Suns which was Curated by Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, Saskia Köbschall, Tmnit Zere, in collaboration with Wearebornfree! Empowerment Radio

S3E8: Curing Our Bodies

In this episode, Kristyna Comer welcomes Wendi Muse — creator and host of the Left POCket Project Podcast — back to this podcast. This episodes begins with Wendi talking about the need to listen, making reference to Paulo Freire’s "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" and listening in the context of collective empowerment, anticolonial resistance movements past and present, and for creative work in general. This episode is dedicated to what listening can mean with a special focus on the Left POCket Project Podcast. In addition to talking more about her podcast and the critical histories of leftist people of color the podcast makes available, we talk about how Wendi activates anticolonial practices in the very design and expanded forms of her podcast.

Wendi Muse is a PhD candidate in History at NYU, and is currently finishing her dissertation regarding the activities of leftist networks formed between Brazilians and Lusophone African activists during their concurrent struggles against dictatorial rule and colonialism, respectively. She also has an MA in Latin American Studies and has lived and worked in Brazil, where, in addition to her current work, she has also conducted research on the black press, black women's activism in the early 1900s, and  political subversion among samba performers during the dictatorship.

The LeftPOC podcast is available on Soundcloud and iTunes as well as many other podcast platforms:  https://soundcloud.com/leftpoc

For all show notes, please visit: 
https://www.decolonizationinaction.com/episodes/season-4-episode-1

For all episodes, please visit
https://www.decolonizationinaction.com

Follow on Twitter: 
@decinaction

Image: 
from the Left POCket Project Facebook Page: https://web.facebook.com/leftpoc/?_rdc=1&_rdr

S4E1: Listening Sessions with Wendi Muse

In this episode, edna bonhomme spoke with Saadya, an activist who has studied and worked on the larger issue around justice and climate activism. Her work has looked at renewable energies, transport change, energy efficiency, and these solutions-based approaches were closely linked to sustainable digitalization and strengthening of civil society. They have also been attuned to decentralized movements on climate and climate justice through KlimaDeSol more closely and the history of sustainability initiatives in Germany.

Reference
https://decolonize-your.net/

Find the complete show notes here:
https://www.decolonizationinaction.com/episodes/season-4-episode-2-energy-and-climate-policy-in-germany

S4E2: Energy and Climate Policy in Germany

On self-empowerment, solidarity, and Black diasporic experiences, this episodes shares a conversation between Black feminist podcasters based (usually) in Berlin, featuring edna bonhomme from Decolonization in Action, Kate Cheka from Love in the Time Of, Cassianne Lawrence from Tones of Melanin, Goitsy Montsho and Rhea Ramjohn from Tanti Table, and Ropafadzo Murombo from Afro Comb.

S4E3: Black Feminist Podcasters

Decolonization in Action Podcast interrogates how people are challenging the legacies of colonialism through art, activism, and knowledge especially as people advocate for reparations, restitution, and repair. This podcast is hosted by edna bonhomme and co-produced by Kristyna Comer.

Decolonization in Action Podcast

Popular tracks