Rewriting the “Decline of the West” in the Black Atlantic

Matthieu Renault, Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès (France)

17 January 2024
16:00 – 17:30 GMT
Online

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Contact: s.bromberg[@] gold.ac.uk

This seminar is part of the 23/24 CPCT research seminar series on ‘What is Global Critical Theory? Pt.3’ [link]. 

About the talk 

What happens, from both theoretical and political viewpoints, when intra-Western notions and laments on the “decline of the West” – pessimistic, conservative, and sometimes openly fascist – are taken up, translated and transformed from a non-Western perspective – with emancipatory or even revolutionary aims? My talk will begin to explore this question by examining Caribbean and African-American rewritings of this theme as it found its inaugural formula in Oswald Spengler’s (in)famous The Decline of the West (1918-1922). After briefly tracing back the massive transatlantic circulations of Spengler’s philosophy in the interwar period, I will focus on the writings of key figures in twentieth-century black radical thought: W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, Suzanne and Aimé Césaire, George Schuyler, and Malcolm X.

About the speaker 

Matthieu Renault is Professor in “Critical history of philosophy” at the Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès (France), and a member of the Research Team on Philosophical Rationalities and Knowledge (ERRaPhiS). His research focuses on the relationships between philosophy and non-European societies, the (post)imperial history of knowledge and its minority rewritings (class-gender-race). He is the author of: Frantz Fanon. De l’anticolonialisme à la critique postcoloniale (Éditions Amsterdam, 2011) ; L’Amérique de John Locke. L’expansion coloniale de la philosophie européenne (Éditions Amsterdam, 2014) ; C.L.R. James. La vie révolutionnaire d’un « Platon noir » (La Découverte, 2016) ; L’empire de la révolution. Lénine et les musulmans de Russie (Syllepse, 2017) ; W.E.B. Du Bois. Double conscience et condition raciale, with Magali Bessone (Éditions Amsterdam, 2021,) ; and, forthcoming, Maîtres et esclaves. Archives du Laboratoire d’analyse des Mythologiques de la modernité (Les Presses du réel, 2024) Kollontaï. Défaire la famille, refaire l’amour (La Fabrique, 2024), with Olga Bronnikova.