with Prof. Michael Sawyer,
Author and Professor of African American Literature & Culture, University of Pittsburgh

 

In 1776, a declaration was made in the name of freedom. It did not include those who would become known, in the words of Professor Michael Sawyer, as the "philosophical and political problem" of the next two and a half centuries. His public lecture takes the 250th anniversary of American independence as its occasion — and its target. Rooted in African American studies and Africana political thought and philosophy, the lecture asks: What does Black independence sound like? What does it demand?

Prof. Sawyer will introduce his “Black Event Theory,” which proposes that Blackness is not a lack of freedom but a different way of being (a different ontological address). He will demonstrate this by the performance of the sound installation “CALL ME I 124: A Polyvocal Composition,” which deconstructs and recombines opening lines from the literary works of Melville, Ellison, and Morrison. His discussion will outline what he calls the “Event of being-as-Black” — and we all become part of the living archive.

 

Michael Sawyer is Professor of African American Literature and Culture in the Department of English at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of An Africana Philosophy of Temporality: Homo Liminalis (Palgrave, 2018); Black Minded: The Political Philosophy of Malcolm X (Pluto, 2020); Sir Lewis (Legacy Lit/Hachette, 2024); and The Door of No Return: Being-as-Black (Temple University Press, 2026), and he is an artist in residence at ONX Studios in New York City and Athens, Greece.

 

This event will be held in English.

 

 

Seats are limited and will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. We kindly ask you to only reserve the number of tickets that you will definitely use.

 

You do not need to print out your Eventbrite ticket. The name under which you reserved your tickets will suffice to enter.

 

Please note that the venue is not wheelchair accessible, unfortunately.

 

This event is held in cooperation with University of Cologne, allerweltshaus col.lit.ive, Theodor Wonja Michael Bibliothek, Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies at the University of Bonn, and TU Dortmund. Kindly supported by the State Government of North Rhine-Westphalia.