Event

Decoloniality, Ontology and the Structure of Racism
Tuesday, April 27, 2021
12:00 p.m.
Online
For More Information:
bcwp@umd.edu
http://www.bahaichair.umd.edu/benyera

Decoloniality, ontology and the structure of racism

April 27, 2021 
12:00pm (6:00pm Pretoria) 

Virtual Event Registration Link: https://tinyurl.com/bahai-benyera(link is external)

Professor Everisto Benyera, Associate Professor of African Politics, Department of Political Science, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa

Abstract: 

In this lecture Prof. Benyera explores the meaning and structure of racism, paying attention to the mechanisms that sustain it. Using the decolonial lenses, he argues that racial ontology as a product of capitalism not only structures racism, but also sustains it. Racial ontology as the sustainer and underwriter of racism relies on five institutional and systems into which humanity was forcibly incorporated. These five Euro-North American centric phenomenon which have been efficacious in structuring racism are: (1) the international legal system, (2) the global financial and monetary system, (3) the world capitalist economy, (4) Euro-North American-centric world culture especially the languages, (5) Euro-North American-centric moral order which is dominated by Christian thought. These structures and institutions are enforced by four types of violence: (1), foundational violence, (2), institutive violence, (3), routinising violence (4), and maintenance violence. Racisms deals with its victims in three dormant ways, it either absorbs (assimilates), disciplines, or dispenses.

Speaker Bio:

Everisto Benyera is an Associate Professor of African Politics in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of South Africa in Pretoria, South Africa. He holds a doctorate in African Politics from the same university. Everisto researches and publishes on community based non-state transitional justice, human rights, transitology, and decoloniality. Everisto has worked and researched in Zimbabwe, South Africa Namibia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He teaches two undergraduate classes in Political Behaviour and Participation and Understanding the State and one postgraduate class Peace, Conflict and Security Studies. He also supervises doctoral students at the University of Limpopo and the University of Pretoria.

Everisto has three edited books, 18 book chapters, and 13 peer-reviewed journal articles. His books are (1) 2020. Breaking the Colonial “Contract”: From Oppression to Autonomous Decolonial Futures. (2). 2020. Reimagining Justice, Human Rights and Leadership in Africa Challenging Discourse and Searching for Alternative Paths. (3). 2019. Indigenous, Traditional, and Non-State Transitional Justice in Southern Africa: Namibia and Zimbabwe. His latest book, The Fourth Industrial Revolution and (Re)colonisation of Africa: Coloniality of Data is in print at Routledge.

He is actively involved in peace-building in Africa working as a peace envoy of the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference in the Eastern Democracy Republic of Congo’s Walikale Territory, North Kivu Province. In his native Zimbabwe, he is involved with bottom-up peacebuilding with the Heal Zimbabwe Trust.