On Saturday, April 1st, at 3 P.M., join Nadia Yala Kisukidi and Omar Berrada for a conversation around Kisukidi’s debut novel La dissociation (Seuil, 2022).

Nadia Yala Kisukidi– known for her writings on Bergson, postcolonial studies, and Africana philosophy–was inspired by folk tales and 18th century literature when she wrote La dissociation. There is something reminiscent of the picaresque tradition in her narrator’s quest for the right community. One can read La dissociation as a bildungsroman of sorts: the story of how a young black girl finds her own intellectual autonomy; how she learns to resist others’ attempts to control her; how she travels, imagines, and laughs freely in spite of hostile surroundings.

Kisukidi is interested in the birth of revolutionary ideas. Instead of bearing witness to the violence inflicted by society on the working classes, she builds on traditions of magical realism and the adventure novel in order to poetically consider how one can escape social domination, refuse to be determined by it, and invent ever new forms of resistance.

In English. Free with RSVP.

Nadia Yala Kisukidi was born in Brussels, from a Congolese (DRC) father and a Franco-Italian mother. She is Associate Professor in philosophy at Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis University. She was vice-president of the Collège International de Philosophie (2014-2016) and is a member of the editorial committee of Cahiers d’études africaines (EHESS). Kisukidi is specialized in French and Africana philosophy. Her publications include Bergson ou l’humanité créatrice (CNRS, 2013), Dialogues transatlantiques (Anacaona, 2021) co-written with the Brazilian philosopher Djamila Ribeiro, and many articles in philosophy.

Omar Berrada is a writer and curator whose work focuses on the politics of translation and intergenerational transmission. He authored the poetry collection Clonal Hum, and edited or co-edited several books, most recently La Septième Porte [The Seventh Gate], a posthumously assembled history of Moroccan cinema by Ahmed Bouanani. Omar’s writing was published in numerous exhibition catalogs, magazines and anthologies, including Frieze, Bidoun, Asymptote, and The University of California Book of North African Literature.