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WINGS WITH ROOTS - DYNAMIC BELONGINGS
Our new project series Wings with Roots - Dynamic Belongings is inspired by the renowned philosopher, professor and writer Kwame Anthony Appiah and his book The Lies that Bind - Rethinking Identity (Profile Books 2018). The new series is dedicated to diverse worldviews and alternate forms of knowledge production and invites us to open up to literary voices that convey a dynamic understanding of identity. Excellent Black writers tell stories from plural worlds with all the challenges and creative potentials that unfold in our global and diversely intertwined world(s).
Dynamic Identities and their Creative Potential - Talk by Kwame Anthony Appiah & poetry performance by Lubi Barre, followed by a conversation with Liz Shoo
Prof. Kwame Anthony Appiah spent his childhood in Ghana and England and has taught philosophy on three continents and is currently professor at NYU. His talk will highlight the potentials of dynamic identities in literatures and thus marks the start of the new literary series by stimmen afrikas.The Hamburg-based writer Lubi Barre, born in France, raised in Somalia and the U.S., will perform some of her poetry. Afterwards both guests will enter a discussion with TV-moderator Liz Shoo on the great potentials of international and dynamic biographies offering a rich, divers and flexible repertoire of skills and experiences.
About The Lies That Bind - Rethinking Identity from Kwame Anthony Appiah
We often think identity is personal. But the identities that shape the world, our struggles, and our hopes, are social ones, shared with
countless others. Our sense of self is shaped by our family, but also by affiliations that spread out from there, like our nationality, culture, class, race and religion. Taking these broad categories as a starting point, Professor Appiah challenges our assumptions about how identity works. In eloquent and lively chapters, he weaves personal anecdote with historical, cultural and literary example to explore the entanglements within the stories we tell ourselves. We all know there are conflicts among identities; but Professor Appiah explores how identities are created by conflict.
Identities are then crafted from confusions - confusions this book aims to help us sort through. Religion, Appiah shows us, isn't primarily
about beliefs. The idea of national self-determination is incoherent. Our everyday racial thinking is an artefact of discarded science. Class is not a matter of upper and lower. And the very idea of Western cultureis a misleading myth. We will see our situation more clearly if we start to question these mistaken identities. This is radical new thinking from a master in the subject and will change forever the way we think about ourselves and our communities.
The German edition is called Identitäten: Die Fiktion der Zugehörigkeit (Hanser Literaturverlage).
Both, the english and the german edition will be available on our public events.
Kwame Anthony Appiah (born May 8, 1954, London, England) is a
British-born American philosopher, novelist, and scholar of African and African American studies, best known for his contributions to political philosophy, moral psychology, and the philosophy of culture. He attended Bryanston School and later Clare College, Cambridge, where he earned a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1982. He taught philosophy, African studies, and African American studies at Yale University (1981–86), Cornell University (1986–89), Duke University (1990–91), and Harvard University (1999–2002). In 2002 he joined the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, where he stayed until moving to New York University in 2014 until today.
Lubi Barre, born in Paris, France, is a writer of poetry and short stories. She published in the anthology My Old Man at Cannongate Books, the German language collection Here and There at Punktum Verlag as well as in the anthology Kontinentaldrift - Das Schwarze Europa by Wunderhorn Verlag. She is the co-organizer of the independent reading series AHAB, founder of Sprachlos series and FRAMED, and a member of the Residency Writers Room. From 2017-2020 she was co-organizer and co-moderator of the reading series Hafenlesung as well as the 2020 and 2021 literary curator of the Fluctoplasma festival in Hamburg. She also is the co-curator of the first Black Writers Book Festival of Hamburg in 2024. She has received numerous grants for writing and curation and in addition teaches creative writing seminars at various universities.
Liz Shoo is a multilingual journalist with years of experience as a presenter and moderator. Currently she’s a TV presenter for WDR aktuell. She is also the host of the TV shows Focus on Europe and The 77% at Deutsche Welle, Germany's international broadcaster. On top of that, she has been the moderator of numerous events, among others at the UN Climate Conference, TEDxBonn, film premieres, galas, award ceremonies and various panel discussions. She is also the ambassador of TanZanEye.
Gefördert von: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung/bpb, Kunststiftung NRW, Stadt Köln
