Partisan Universalism

Essays in Honour of Ato Sekyi-Otu

Edited by Gamal Abdel-Shehid & Sofia Noori

Afterword by Lewis R. Gordon

This timely volume of essays speaks directly to the onto-metaphysical issues that will give Africana thought the new foundations that will enable it to move beyond the linguistic turn, brush aside the ashes of Afro-pessimism, engage Badiou’s new mathematical universalism, and to launch new projects of liberation on decolonized grounds of greater epistemic independence. A must read for all concerned with the future of Africana theory and praxis.

— Paget Henry, author of Caliban’s Reason

Responding to the invitation ‘to re-member severed but shareable things’, these lovers of truth, freedom, and dignity celebrate the searing intellect, generosity, wit, and compassion of the person and the scholar Ato Sekyi-Otu. … Combined with Sekyi-Otu’s autobiographical reflections of learning to be Black in the United States and insistence that Afropessimism turns the perverse ontology of the antiblack world into a Black ontology, this is a precious contribution. Not to be missed!

— Jane Anna Gordon, author of Statelessness and Contemporary Enslavement and co-editor (with Drucilla Cornell) of Creolizing Rosa Luxemburg

Ato Sekyi-Otu’s thought is one of the most important and exciting in Africa today. The texts compiled in this volume bear eloquent witness to Sekyi-Otu’s stature as a thinker and to his consistent commitment to the universalization of humanity in both theory and practice. Deeply anchored in African cultures and modes of life, Sekyi-Otu has shown how ideas of human universality are ingrained in African popular sayings and proverbs and are regularly reflected in artistic creations.

— Michael Neocosmos, Emeritus Professor in the Humanities, Rhodes University, South Africa

This collection of essays celebrates the work of Ato Sekyi-Otu as a scholar, teacher and friend, marking his extraordinary contribution to the philosophy, politics and praxis of liberation.

As Ato Sekyi-Otu has argued in his most recent book, Left Universalism, Africacentric Essays (Routledge 2019), universalism is an ‘inescapable presupposition of ethical judgment in general and critique in particular, especially indispensable for radical criticism of conditions of existence in postcolonial society and for vindicating visions of social regeneration’.

Universalism must and can only be partisan. Edited by Gamal Abdel-Shehid and ­Sofia Noori, the collection includes ­essays by Stefan Kipfer, Patrick Taylor, ­Sophie McCall, Gamal Abdel-Shehid, Jeremy M. Glick, Nigel C. Gibson, Jeff Noonan, Esteve Morera, Tyler Gasteiger, Olúfeṃ́i Táíẃò, Susan ­Dianne Brophy, Nergis ­Canefe, Christopher Balcom and by Ato Sekyi-Otu himself.