Deberlinization

A multidisciplinary volume reflecting on the epistemological legacy of the colonial partitioning of Africa.

In 1884, the Chancellor of the German Empire, Otto von Bismarck, convened a conference in Berlin to organize the division of the African continent among the industrial and military powers of the time. The result was a profound dismemberment of Africa’s original political structures, which, driven by nationalism and a barbaric ethos of rule, had a lasting impact on the continent’s political, socioeconomic, cultural, and spiritual development. One hundred and forty years after the Berlin Conference, it seems more than urgent to disentangle this complex of colonial appropriation, identify its after-effects, and question its epistemological legacy—all the more so as Europe searches for a new positioning in the changing geopolitical balance of power.

This multidisciplinary anthology takes up the idea of a transnational performative utopia to explore the possibilities of refabulating the world order and its future. Between creative action and resistance, memory and foresight, Deberlinization opens up perspectives on trans-African cohesion and outlines a new poetics of sovereignty.