Abusive Fidelities: Diplomacy, Translation, and Colonial Genres of Man (webinar)

Dr Sam Okoth Opondo (Vassar College N.Y), Chair: Dr Olamide Samuel (SOAS)

Heeding the insights from the critical conception of diplomacy as the ‘mediation of estrangement,’ this lecture is an invitation to reflect on the ethics of encounter and translation that animates both modern diplomacy and ‘colonial difference.’ By exploring a variety of colonial and diplomatic “transculturation” and “translation zones” where identities and meanings are constructed, negated, and negotiated,  the talk interrogates professional fidelities, ideals of knowledge and genealogies of diplomacy that take the question of man as already settled. Through a reading of fictional and historical diplomatic and colonial encounters, Dr Opondo calls attention to the necessity of amateur and more life-affirming ‘diplomatic methods’ as part of the practice of decolonizing diplomacy and knowledge.

Sam Okoth Opondo is Associate Professor of Political Science and Africana Studies at Vassar College N.Y. His research focuses on the dynamics of ‘mediating estrangement’ and the ethics and aesthetics of co-habitation in settler colonial and postcolonial societies. He has written journal articles and book chapters on the often-overlooked amateur diplomacies of everyday life, postcolonial cities, the politics of genre, and cultural translation in Africa.

Chaired by Olamide Samuel : Dr Olamide Samuel is currently teaching diplomacy and international security at SOAS, and is Project Coordinator for CISD's SCRAPWeapons global disarmament initiative. He previously worked as a consultant on defence and intelligence issues.

Please join the Webinar on Blackboard Collaborate .

Organiser: CISD, CAS

Contact email: fe5@soas.ac.uk