In this course, we delve into a collective close reading of selected African and (politically) Black thinkers and texts in the context of ongoing conversations of decolonisation and decoloniality. 

Peoples of African descent have historically been subjected to sustained mass human rights violations:  violences, dehumanisations, captivity, destruction of life environment, forced labour and imposed poverty. Deconstructive critical, decolonial approaches have revealed the extent to which existing hegemonic Human Rights regimes, set out to combat these injustices, instead more often than not sustain colonial status quo in the present. 

The course is organised around 5 themes: 1) Epistemologies, 2) Political Decolonisation and Self-determination, 3) Ecology and Political Economy of Global Racial Capitalism, 4) Gender, Race and the (im)possibility of the Human, 5) Conviviality and Transversal Solidarities. The aim is to engage the ethos of human rights constructively; we turn to epistemic Blackness to expand our sociological imagination of the good life. Through a close reading of historical and contemporary Black Thought we seek to unearth forgotten aspects, new perspectives, alternative priorities of human rights as well as address questions of possibilities and impossibilities of human rights for all.