Join us for an expansive talk and 'poetic wandering' with Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.). 

Dr. Akomolafe is a widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, self-styled ‘trans-public’ intellectual, and essayist, deeply rooted in his Yoruba heritage. Central to Dr. Akomolafe’s explorations is his expression,
“the times are urgent, let us slow down”. 

“Darkness is not the absence of light as we’ve been so forced to believe. It is the very dance of light—it is light in rapturous contemplation of herself, in poetic adoration of her own contours and sensuous nuances. And we will never see this except we join her, unless we marvel at her rapid steps, unless we get caught up with her in her festive charade of realness, in her chaotic performance, in her heady spin, in full embrace of her extravagant sweaty waltz—for when we do, we will realize that shadows are merely the spaces she has tenderly left for us to place our feet.“

Dr. Akomolafe is the Hubert Humphrey Distinguished Professor of American Studies in Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA, as well as the visionary founder of The Emergence Network, a planet-wide networking project and inquiry at the edges of the Anthropocene that seeks to convene new kinds of responsivities, sensuous solidarities, and experimental practices for a posthumanist parapolitics. 

He is the author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak (along with Professors Molefi Kete Asante and Augustine Nwoye). He is currently writing his third book, ‘An Ocean of Milk: Morality, Desire, and the Monster at the Edge of the World’.

Happening Tuesday June 2nd at 6:30pm, doors at 6pm at the Chocolate Church Arts Center Annex. Tickets are sliding scale, $5-$20. Don’t miss it!