The present conjuncture:
Illiberalism, War and Violence:
A Perspective
a public lecture BY Distinguished VISITING PROFESSOR anthony bogues in collaboration WITH VIAD
the Forge, 87 De korte street, braamfontein, johannesburg
10 September 2025
The Present Conjuncture: Illiberalism, War and Violence: A Perspective begins with the observation that we live in a tumultuous world. One in which the conventional frames of politics and human life have rapidly shifted and where older forms of domination have reorganized themselves. It is a new conjuncture. In this talk, Prof Anthony Bogues will attempt to tease out some of the features of this conjuncture. Working from the frame of an African and African Diaspora critical tradition Bogues will discuss the ways in which violence has morphed into power and how new death-worlds are being created in the present.
Thinking about the question of the human, The Present Conjuncture: Illiberalism, War and Violence: A Perspective will ask critical questions of the practices of being human today and what that practice means for possible alternative forms of life which will create a different world.
Professor Anthony Bogues will speak at The Forge on Wednesday, 10 September 2025 at 18h00 for 18h30. A recording will be available via YouTube.
ABOUT PROF ANTHONY BOGUES
Prof Anthony B. Bogues is a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Center, University of Johannesburg. He is a writer, scholar, curator and the Inaugural Director of the Ruth J Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University, Rhode Island, USA. He is currently the Asa Messer Professor of Humanities and Africana Studies at Brown University, where he is also an affiliated faculty member of the departments of Political Science, Modern Culture and Media, History of Art and Architecture.
Bogues is a political theorist, intellectual historian, writer and curator. He is also a Visiting professor of African and African Diaspora Thought at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Professor at Large at The Africa Institute, Global Studies University. In 2024, Bogues received an honorary degree (D. Litt) from SOAS, University of London.
Bogues’s research interests include literary and cultural history; radical political thought; critical theory; Caribbean and African politics.
