Poetry's Essential Place in Anti-Colonial Philosophy

A Discussion with Dr. Jason Allen-Paisant and Company

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Please join us on Friday, March 15th for a Philosophy Department Co-Sponsored Colloquium with Dr. Jason Allen-Paisant, Yesenia Escobar Espitia, and Rawad Wehbe

The event will start at 3pm in room 402 of Cohen Hall, with a reception to follow.

Brought to you by the Anti-Colonial Poetry and Philosophy working group, with generous support fromThe Greater Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium and University of Pennsylvania Organizations including: The Wolf Humanities Center, the Department of Philosophy, the Department of French/Francophone, Italian, and Germanic Studies, Penn Department of English, and Penn's Center of Africana Studies.

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This event seeks to address the problematic undervaluing of poetry and poetics in philosophical discussions , and the impossibility of the removal of poetry in anti-colonial philosophy. The primary goal of this evening of discussion will be to assert the essential nature of poetry and poetics to anti-colonial philosophy, and that poetry inofistself can be a site of philosophical rigor. This rigor is particularly present when deployed as a means by scholars marginalized under colonialism to challenge western hegemonies of “acceptable” modes of philosophical knowledge production. 

The main speaker, Dr.Jason Allen-Paisant (Associate Professor in Critical Theory and Creative Writing in the Department of English, American Studies, and Creative Writing at the University of Manchester), has work that centers directly on poetry’s philosophical face as seen in the work of Aime Cesaire. Aside from Cesaire, Dr. Allen-Paisant’s  work as a dual scholar and poet, interrogates the generative precarity of afro diasporic being.  Dr.Paisant has recently received the T.S Eliot Prize for his collection of poems, "Self-Portrait As Othello".

With the addition of two phenomenal discussants, Yesenia Escobar Espitia (PhD Student Temple University, Spanish and Portuguese) and Rawad Wehbe (PhD Candidate University of Pennsylvania, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations) with expertise across a broad range of disciplines and regions, the conversation to be be had expands beyond Cesaire and the Caribbean to discuss poetry/poetics , philosophy, and anti-colonial revolutionary potential across the world. This conversation will be moderated by Gwendalynn Roebke (PhD Student University of Pennsylvania, Interdisciplinary/Philosophy).